In Pursuit Page 13

  Harris instantly drops my arms and steps back. “Edith, I...”

  “Can you please take me home?” I ask in a small voice with my sight still blocked.

  Harris swoops down and picks me up into his arms. “Let me carry you.” He’s pleading with me and I don’t have the energy to argue.

  “You’re freezing,” he says, disapprovingly. Goosebumps have sprung up along arms and legs, giving my secret away.

  My eyes flutter open and I stare up at him. His gaze is firmly set ahead, determined on our destination.

  His car is parked at an ugly angle, waiting for us. He sets me carefully in the soft seat, taking care to buckle my seat belt. Before he closes the car door, the tips of his fingers touch my cheek. Then he closes the door and hurries to the other side.

  The ride home is short and quiet.

  When he navigates the car into the drive, I notice he doesn’t put it into park. He’s not coming upstairs, I note with disappointment.

  I do my best to unfasten my belt quickly, but of course my nervy fingers won’t work like I want them to. He ends up having to release me from the seat, crossing over the center console to unfasten the belt. As I am scrambling to escape, his hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. He immediately thinks better of it and drops my hand.

  Our eyes meet over the console, my free hand resting on the door handle, ready to make my escape. Then he shocks the hell out of me, leaning close and pressing a kiss so tender it makes my heart ache, to my cheek.

  “I’m not giving up this easily, exquisite Edith.”

  I say the only thing that comes to mind, though my delivery is breathless. “Good.”

  Finally, I figure out how to open the door and race inside.

  “Little mouse?” Claire calls as soon as I open the door.

  “Hey,” I say halfheartedly, my voice nearly cracking with emotion.

  “Come to me.”

  She’s on the couch, underneath the ivory throw. Her forever long blonde hair hangs in a high ponytail that sways when she turns her head to look at me.

  “Tell me what happened,” she says as I plop down on the couch next her.

  Belatedly, I realize I still don’t have my thong. Most of the sand came off in my travels back home, but there are still some grains stuck in my unmentionables.

  Gross.

  She tucks me underneath the blanket in an oddly maternal gesture.

  “Claire, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my, I guess it was a date, with Harris.”

  Claire clucks and gives me a sickly sweet smile. This is not the normal carefree grin, this one looks too tight across her cheeks, wrinkles displaying at the corner of her eyes. “Don’t fret.”

  “To be honest, I was just so surprised by his offer. But it doesn’t really matter. I don’t think there will be any more dates,” I mutter unhappily.

  The look on Claire’s face shifts and a genuine smile appears. She is happy it’s not going to work out. But then I remember the screaming match between the siblings, the night we all went to the club. Maybe she does want me all to herself. Or the opposite, she doesn’t want to share her brother.

  “Tell me what happened,” she coaxes.

  I explain how the night started well, the delicious dinner. She’s tense while I detail the good parts, then I dig into my lower lip with my teeth. “Then, um, something happened to remind me of my ex.”

  “From DC?”

  “Yeah. We broke up about six months ago because,” I halt, then steel myself to finish the story. “Basically we were together and things were never that fantastic. It was always a filler relationship for me, nothing special.” In my head I feel it all over again, his whiskey-tinged breath making hot stains along my neck. “It was all fine, but one night Jared forgot what ‘no’ means and -”

  “He raped you?” she shrieks.

  “No, no. Thankfully, it didn’t get to that. But he held me down, and he wouldn’t listen when I asked him to stop. He was really wasted and trying to force me, but because he was so messed up, I was able to escape. Being overpowered by a guy terrifies me now, apparently.” I put my hands into my face and let out a low groan.

  Like her brother did earlier, Claire wraps me in a protective embrace. “That sounds horrible.”

  “It – it really was.”

  Then she turns the conversation and it makes my gut pinch painfully. “Well, at least you were able to figure this out early on. Harris just isn’t the right guy for you. There will be another one, little mouse.”

  “Jared just held me down,” I repeat forlornly. “And not even for that long. I can’t believe it left such an impression.”

  “You should probably be with a guy who is timid, more your speed, than Harris. My brother should be the advertisement for possessive, controlling men. Way out of your league.”

  The words trigger anger inside of me. That’s what I thought at first, too, but that’s not true. A relationship has nothing to do with leagues; partners come together because they find a common bond. Harris and I connect on a deeper level than social circles and designer threads.

  But I keep my face expressionless when I respond to Claire. Let her think she influences my decisions.

  “You might be right.”

  The wall clock chimes the hour.

  “Thanks for listening, Claire.”

  Her gray eyes are light and all the tension on her face from when I arrived is gone. She looks positively peachy. Harris would laugh at that alliteration, I think glumly, but keep my features impassive. Living with a father who wanted little to do with my emotions trained me to keep my feelings to myself whenever necessary.

  Later, when I’ve washed the makeup off and brushed out the waves in my light brown hair, I’m laying in bed staring at the alarm clock when it hits me.

  Why would Claire tell Harris that I’m a virgin?

  The weekend rolls by uneventfully, Friday’s date gone, but not forgotten. Claire and Harris are out of town visiting family or something. As much as I want to see Harris, the time apart gives me the chance to recuperate.

  Twice during the weekend, I picked up the phone to call my dad. In the two weeks that I’ve lived in Chicago we haven’t been in touch except for a text message letting him know I got settled in okay. We may not be the closest of fathers and daughters, but just hearing his voice could reassure me that I’ve done the right thing by moving here. Maybe.

  Today, I’m at an art studio space and in the thick of a necessary evil for an interior design blogger – a DIY (Do It Yourself) project. I loathe sewing, stapling and hammering, but my readers love simple fixes for their home decorating. Those readers keep my blog going, so here I am, painting a canvas royal blue. My cell phone cries out for my attention. I swipe it and press talk blindly.

  “Hello,” I huff into the phone.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  Harris!

  “Harris!” I gasp, nearly letting the paintbrush slip on my lap. I quickly drop it on the paint pallet, but not before droplets splatter on my denim cutoffs. “Shoot, shoot, shoot!”

  “What’s wrong?” He’s panicking. Lack of control does not suit this man. “Edith! Are you alright?”

  I laugh at my own foolishness. “Do you inherit clumsiness? I want to blame something other than the sound of your voice for paint I just spilled.”

  He chuckles. “Now would be a good time to admit how affected you are by me.”

  “Never,” I tease. The awkwardness from our first no longer exists between us. If he wants to forget it happened, I can, too.

  “What are you really doing?”

  “A project for the blog,” I grumble. “What are you doing?”

  “Working… thinking of you.”

  I beam with pleasure on my end of the phone.

  “Come to dinner at my place tonight. We’ll have a home cooked meal,” he requests.

  He cooks, too? Could Harris be any more perfect?

  “Only if you let me bring something
for dessert.”

  It’s an open opportunity for a sexual innuendo, but he doesn’t take the bait. Probably out of respect for my freak out.

  “I’ll come get you at eight.”

  Baking relieves tension in the sweetest way. Cooking the triple berry cobbler (made wheat free, if only I could send some to my dad) settled my lingering nerves in anticipation of the date.

  Tonight, I’m more casual. I’ve swept my hair into a ponytail and kept the makeup to a minimum. I’m wearing a soft orange skirt that accentuates my waistline, and a gray tank top tucked in. In lieu of heels to give me extra inches, I stick to flat sandals.

  Claire’s absent from the apartment again. Good, then she doesn’t need to grill me before Harris and I do a take two on this whole dating thing.

  Five minutes before eight, there’s a knock on the door. Never a minute late, Harris Grant waits when I open the door, holding a bouquet of white hydrangeas. My mouth drops open.

  “My favorite flower,” I say by way of greeting.

  A smug look of satisfaction crosses his face. “I know.”

  Yeah, I mentioned it in the blog three months ago. How far back did he read?

  “Thank you for the flowers,” I say bashfully as I study them. “Do you want to come in while I grab my stuff?”

  I turn and start making my way to the kitchen when a large arm slips around my waist, lifting me up against a wall of muscle.

  “Is that the kind of greeting a man gets on his third date?” he growls teasingly. Then, while still carrying me into the kitchen, he presses light kisses from my forehead down the side of my face and on the shell of my ear.

  “Harris,” I squeak in laughter. “Put me down!”

  “If you insist.” He settles me back on two feet, then spins me around. So he doesn’t crush my flowers, he sets them somewhere else and, in a blink of an eye, has me swept up in his arms. He’s lifted me so that we are at eye level, his strong hands find their way to the spot right above my ass.

  “I’m on to you, Mr. Grant.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Your fascination with this area of my body.” I wiggle against his fingers and he laughs that husky, dreamy sound, dropping me to the ground lightly.

  “You caught me.”

  While I gather my purse and the cobbler, Harris arranges the flowers in a vase. He knew where to find one faster than I did.

  “It’s like you live here,” I comment as he enters the security code and then locks the door behind me with his own key.

  “Didn’t Claire tell you I bought this place a few years back?” he asks, guiding me with a hand pressed to the small of my back.

  “That explains the masculine coloring.”

  Another weird detail that Claire left out. She always maintains that she owns the condo. What’s her motivation by keeping things from me? With every odd reveal, the time line on this living arrangement gets shorter and shorter.

  A tap to my nose gets my attention. “You left me again.”

  “Sorry,” I say sheepishly.

  He has brought me to the car. Harris lifts me into the passenger seat as per usual then leans in before I can get situated. “Kiss it and make it better?”

  I lean in and give him just a hint of peck. “That’s all for now.” I let our lips brush as I speak. I feel rather than see the twitch of his grin before he retreats.

  It’s less than ten minutes, and then the valet graciously escorts me from the car. I keep my dessert firmly in front of my torso as we enter the elevator to prevent any funny business with Harris. Despite the awful reaction I had to our intimacy, he’s unaffected. His warm hand cups my neck from behind in the elevator, and gives me a little pull, making me look up at him.

  “As badly as I want you, I will wait until you are ready.”

  I respond with a half smile and nod. With his hand still loosely at my neck, Harris and I enter the apartment. This time, I get an opportunity to observe my surroundings. Whomever Harris used to decorate his other place obviously had some hand in this one, too. It’s all clean lines and contemporary furnishings.

  We walk to the prominently white kitchen, entirely open into the living and dining area. There’s food in the oven already, and the place smells like a roast. I eye Harris’ suit warily. “Did you cook?”

  “I instructed the cook,” he replies with a wink.

  That’s when I notice that his dining table is set romantically for two. Fine white china rimmed with platinum sits at each place setting, and a candle burns between them.

  “So lovely,” I murmur.

  He reaches down, taking the cobbler from my hands and dropping a light kiss on the spot in front of my ear. “You are.”

  We settle into the kitchen, both eyeing the oven. “How about you get changed and I see to our dinner?” I suggest.

  He opens his mouth with a retort, but I cut him off. “This time, let me be bossy. We’ll actually end up eating the food if I handle this.”

  He wavers for a moment then drops the sweets on the counter.

  “You win.” He disappears from the room.

  In the refrigerator I discover a watermelon, feta and tomato salad already plated. I pull out a crystal water pitcher and the appetizers, then place them on the table. I’m about to open the oven when his hands land on my waist, pulling my back to his front.

  “You like me in this position,” I say breathlessly. Despite what happened on Friday, I do want him, so badly. But I never want to react that way to him again – fearful.

  His tongue licks a trail around my earlobe, sending delicious tingles down my spine. “Yes.”

  With a teasing swat to my ass that makes me yelp, he asks, “Does the food look alright?”

  “If the smell is any indication, we’re going to be in heaven tonight.”

  “Good. My housekeeper, Eleanor, is a godsend.” He changed into low slung, light washed jeans a soft gray cotton t-shirt. As usual, he’s utterly lickable. I nearly sigh at the thought.

  Over our meal, I tell Harris about the new client Amanda connected me with, Mrs. Fletcher. It turns out she is the wife of the gentleman that Claire seemed to dislike at the Franklin & Smith party.

  Before I know it, we’re eating my cobbler, and Harris groaning in delight.

  “How did you learn to cook so well?”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “Lots and lots of practice.”

  “You just keep getting better and better, don’t you?”

  My cheeks turn rosy as I study my plate. “I’d like to think so,” I respond softly.

  “Do you want to see the rest of my place?” He pushes back from his chair, extending his hand to mine to help me up. He won’t let me do the dishes. After setting them in the sink under some warm water, he tells me that Eleanor will take care of everything tomorrow morning.

  The condo is room after room of flawlessly decorated space, luxurious furniture and gleaming technology. But the space is cold; there are no personal affects. Unlike Claire’s photo lined walls, I can’t find any indication that he even has a family.

  I don’t have too much time to dwell on the depressing notion, because the tour continues.

  Now he drops down on the couch, reaching for my hands and bringing me to stand before him. This is what got me in trouble last time, straddling his hips, so I sink into the space next to him. His palm cups my cheek. Though there is a tender smile tugging, his eyes darken.

  “In the fall, this is where we’ll watch games together,” he indicates the television dominating the wall across from the sofa. On our first date, Harris and I realized a mutual love of football. My heart leaps into the air, soaring like the hummingbird in Alex Clare’s song. The fall is a few months away and Harris is planning time for us then. We has a nice ring to it.

  I trace patterns on his t-shirt with my pointer finger, reveling in the hard ridges of muscle that flex underneath my touch.

  “That’s the one thing Dad and I did together. Watch games on Sunday. I
f he had a night shift, I’d wake him up in time for the one o’clock game.”

  Harris captures my hand in his and lifts it to brush his lips across my knuckles. “Would you be willing to try a new tradition?”

  I study him, his gray eyes now dark storm clouds, pupils dilated. I unconsciously lick my lips, forgetting our conversation. “What is that?” I ask, dazed. Both of his hands rise to my ponytail.

  “May I?” He asks softly, and I nod dumbly as he releases the elastic from my hair, letting it tumble down my shoulders. His hands cradle my skull and a thumb strokes the sensitive spot behind my ear.

  “If at any point you want to stop, just say the word,” he instructs huskily. I nod again. “Please, just don’t run. Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t.”

  The room shrinks to just us. Lingering music in the background turns into white noise that I no longer pay attention to, the stunning cityscape just a background, no longer holding our attention. We meet in the middle this time, the kiss one thought between our two bodies. Ours lips press together tightly, mashing together for maximum exposure.

  Whether or not I move or he pulls me, somehow I end up straddling him again. He places a whisper of a kiss on each corner of my mouth. The pleasure almost too much for me to bear as he peppers kisses along my lips, withholding what I desire.

  I whimper in frustration and he chuckles slightly.

  “Impatient, are we?”

  One hand now grips me lightly at my neck, and the other arm curls protectively around my waist. My hands rest on his shoulders, not moving because I am so swept up in the moment.

  “Yes,” I breathe in response.

  “What,” kiss on my chin, “is,” kiss on my left cheek, “it,” kiss on my right cheek, “that,” kiss the spot in front of my left ear, “you,” kiss the spot in front of my right ear, “want?”

  Even though we only met a few weeks ago, it feels like the answer has always been, will always be Harris.