by Ally Blake
Then his hands lingered, smoothing over her skull as if looking for bumps.
When they trailed down the sides of her face, his thumbs smoothing over her temples, his little fingers resting along the edges of her jaw, there was no pretence of examination in the touch. He touched her because he wanted to. He touched her because he could.
She held her breath. Wondered if she might hold it for ever.
“If you ask me if I’m okay,” Harper gritted out, “I will scream.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, his nostrils flaring, and she knew he was remembering another way he’d proven himself able to make her scream. Then a smile crinkled the corners of his eyes and he said, “I know you’re okay. You’ll always be okay. No matter what. It’s one of the reasons I can’t get enough of you.”
With a firm hand, Cormac herded her towards the far edge of the pool, away from the crowd. While Harper was so busy trying to digest his last words, she let him.
He heaved himself out of the pool first. Muscles in his arms bunching, clothes sucked tight to strong legs and a grade-A backside. To think she’d run her hands over all that, again and again, as if committing his shape to memory.
Then he ran a hand over his hair, droplets flying into the sunshine. When he looked back at her, her brain refused to believe he was real.
He pulled his shirt over his head the way men did—two hands behind his neck and tugging forward—before rolling it into a ball and tossing it onto a spare deckchair.
She couldn’t not stare at his chest, with its spray of dark hair, his washboard stomach, the happy trail that arrowed into his tight shorts. It was right there after all. While every other part of her was soaked through, her mouth went dry.
Then he leaned down and held out a hand.
Harper bit her lip before saying, “I’m not sure I can.”
A flicker of humour lit the depths of his eyes. “And why is that?”
“I’m wet.”
“So I see.”
“This dress is rather...thin. And I’m not wearing any togs.” Or a bra, for that matter.
His gaze lowered, that muscle in his cheek clenching as he realised it too.
“Would you prefer I closed my eyes?” Before waiting for an answer he did just that, waggling his hand her way, before squinting one eye open, just a tad.
“It’s not you I’m worried about. You’ve seen it all already.”
His eyes popped open. Dark, warm, and full of the knowledge of her.
Knowing it was several hours before sunset, a time when she might exit the pool in semi-darkness, Harper figured her only choice was to suck it up and get the hell out.
No way was she going to let him heave her out of the pool like a seal. She hiked her dress up into a knot at her thigh and waded to the shallows. Water dragging at her, she stepped out as gracefully as possible—meaning not in the least. Tugging her dress down as best she could, she made a beeline for the house.
She felt Cormac fall into line beside her.
“I’m fine,” she said; “I don’t need an escort.”
“Super. Neither do I.”
She tried to ignore the titters as they walked through the crowd. But she didn’t have enough hands to cover the bits of her the wet white dress revealed.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dee-Dee Chadwick rushing over, and Cormac holding out a hand, his head shaking just a little. And just like that, Dee-Dee stopped.
“Can you hold up?” he said.
“I’d really rather not.”
“Harper, wait for one second,” Cormac said, his frustration with her coming through loud and clear.
She stopped so fast he had to back up.
“What?”
Shaking his head at her, he looked at her as if she was nuts. As if she was stunning, and funny, confounding and nuts.
Then he held out a towel he must have gathered along the way, flicked it out flat and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was soft and warm from the sun.
Holding her by the upper arms, his face mere inches from hers, Cormac said, “I’m going inside with you. We are both getting out of these wet clothes. And then we are going to have a discussion, you and I.”
We’ll see, she thought. Without a word they made their way up the stairs, turning as one towards her bedroom.
He slowed as Harper headed into the bathroom on her own. When she caught sight of herself in the mirror she let out a squeal.
“What?” he called, rushing to the door.
“I look like a nightmare.”
Cormac leant in the doorway. “You look like a water nymph.”
She looked at him in the mirror.
“A mess of a nymph, sure. A little insecure. A little out of control. Beautifully fragile.”
Cormac couldn’t have used a more terrifying word to describe her if he tried.
“Don’t you mean brittle?” She’d had that one hurled at her more than once. Enough times she’d wondered if they might be right.
“No, Harper. I don’t.”
She caught his gaze in the mirror. Raw, honest and scorching hot.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re waiting for me to take off my wet dress.”
“But I am waiting for you to take off your wet dress.”
She laughed. Then hiccupped. As if the gods wanted her to know things could still get worse.
Cormac took a step inside the bathroom. Walked up to her, gently placed his hands on her upper arms as he caught her eye in the mirror. Goosebumps shot up all over her skin and it had nothing to do with the water still dripping down her limbs.
“I thought I made it clear the other day, Harper, that you don’t need to pretend to be so perfect. Not with me.”
The urge to ask why, why not with him, was so strong it filled her throat so that nothing came out.
He lifted a hand to sweep a wet hank of hair off her neck, his hand resting in the dip at her shoulder as his eyes rose to hers.
She hiccupped again.
Cormac smiled.
And the words spilled free. “I am a mess.”
“That you are.”
“I don’t mean the hair. Or the dress. Or the make-up running down my face.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
He nodded.
“I came here on a mission,” she said, lifting a hand to her heart. Not that she’d tell him what it was. For she’d still not completed it. “But from the moment I stepped out of the car I’ve felt...disorientated.”
Cormac breathed, his hand lifting to tuck around hers, the backs of his knuckles pressed over her heart. He waited, as if weighing up whether or not she could handle what he was about to say.
“Is it wrong for me to say that I’m glad to hear that?”
“Yes, that’s wrong!”
Harper hiccupped again and Cormac grinned. A flash of white teeth. Of crinkling eyes. Good lord, the man was hot.
“Why, thank you,” he said, surprise lighting his voice. And Harper realised she’d said the last bit out loud.
With a groan she tried to sink her head to her chest, but Cormac caught her chin with a finger and lifted it so she had no choice but to look into his eyes. Then he turned her in his arms so there was no mirror getting in the way.
For a few moments they simply drank one another in.
Then Cormac said, “While I never saw you coming.”
Harper swallowed. “What does that mean?”
“It feels like a million years ago that I was sitting on my car, muttering under my breath as I waited and waited and waited for Harper Addison, the bolshie, curly-haired do-gooder in the ripped jeans. I had no idea I was really waiting for you.”
She wanted to look
away, she needed to look away. For, locked in Cormac’s gaze, she had nowhere to hide.
Then Cormac said, “I can’t rightly say what is happening here, with us, because I’ve never been here before. But I feel as if I see you in a way I’ve never seen anyone before. That you see me in a way no one has seen me before. From the moment you stepped out of that car, and levelled that blistering hazel gaze my way, I have been under your spell. I can’t decide if that’s wondrous or disastrous.”
“Disastrous,” she said on a sigh. “Definitely disastrous.”
“Okay, then. Glad we got that sorted.”
A single note flickered in the back of her brain—a reason she should push him away. Like flotsam in a post-storm sea, it bobbed on the surface a moment before it sank beneath the calming waves and was gone.
Harper felt the tears fill her eyes a mere moment before they spilled warm and wobbly over her cold cheeks. Who was she? She didn’t recognise this emotional being in Cormac’s arms. Would she ever know herself again?
“Cormac, I—”
“Harper!” Lola called from just outside the room.
“In here,” Cormac said, holding her as if he realised she’d collapse without him.
Lola burst in, her eyes full of concern. “What happened? The girls told me Cormac pushed you into the pool.” She glared at Cormac, eyes dark and ferocious. Lola as protector; that was new.
Harper quickly swept fingers under her eyes, as if trying to clean up her mascara. “Not exactly how it went down. Though I’m okay if you don’t wish to disillusion them.”
In the mirror she saw Cormac slip from the room. Felt the loss of him like a phantom limb.
“So you both fell in the pool.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Who took who with them?”
“I took him.”
Lola nodded. “Nice.”
“She’s wet, remember,” Cormac’s voice called from the bedroom. “And shivering. If you don’t get her out of those wet clothes, I—”
“Hey,” Gray’s deep voice joined the chorus of rescuers. “Lola has this, right, honey?”
“You bet I do, sweetie! You look after Cormac.”
“I’m fine,” Cormac called back, laughter tinging his deep voice. “I’ll be fine.”
Lola shut the door with a decisive click before turning on the bath taps.
For someone who was very much used to taking care of herself it was discombobulating. But nice, she realised, no longer having the wherewithal to fight. Really nice. She ran her thumbs beneath her eyes again before letting Lola look after her for once.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“OH-OH!” LOLA SING-SONGED. “Watch out for a temper tantrum! My sister is not a good loser.”
“Not a good poker player, you mean,” Cormac murmured as he dealt out the cards to the remaining players.
While Harper, who was an extremely adept poker player—her years of learning to read facial tics and tells standing her in good stead—watched as her chips were swept into a pile by Gray. So open-faced a novice could read him, he’d landed a full house and she’d missed it completely.
Harper barely managed to keep it together as he glared Cormac down. “Seriously?”
“What? Are you insinuating it’s my fault?” Cormac asked, hand to heart, glint in his eye.
As if she was about to tell the whole table that she’d been distracted by the man playing footsie under the table. How he’d brushed the edge of his hand against her thigh more than once. That every time she’d caught his gaze it had been hot enough to make her blood sizzle.
“Not at all,” she said, her voice cool. “You are a paragon of fair play, Mr Wharton.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “A paragon? You do flatter me so.”
She quickly pushed away from the table as her cheeks heated condemningly. “Drink, anyone?”
The others—Lola, Gray, Adele and a few others from the old gang—who’d been too busy focussing on their cards to even notice her byplay with Cormac, muttered a range of orders.
Harper headed past the pool table in the huge upstairs games room to the bar, where the barman—yep, they’d kept on an actual bartender after the pool party—poured out the range of cocktails and spirits and Harper’s sparkling water.
She glanced over her shoulder to find Cormac watching her, his gaze on her backside. She slunk a hand to her hip. His gaze shot to hers. After which he shook his head, slowly, tellingly, everything he had done to her, everything he still wanted to do, written all over his face.
She spun back to the bar, struggled to catch her breath. To still the thunderous beating of her heart. Which was near impossible when every time she even glanced at the man her very atoms danced and twirled and near spun off into the ether.
Never track down a teenage crush, she thought; a life lesson that ought to be gifted to every woman upon entering adulthood. Along with other absolutes such as the need for financial independence, a quality skin-care regime and shoes that stunned but also fit like a glove.
Speaking of which, Harper nudged off a high heel, curling her toes against the back of her calf. Then asked for a Manhattan. She needed something strong to get her through the rest of this night. For the happy couple didn’t seem in any hurry to get to bed, even though the next day they were supposed to be getting married.
Drink in hand, she turned on one foot as she lifted out the stick, and caught the maraschino cherry between her teeth.
Cormac—who was now sitting back in his chair—watched her openly. Eyes dark, breaths long and slow.
Harper bit down on the cherry, her tongue darting out to catch a stray drip as it burst in her mouth.
“Fold,” Cormac said, his voice subterranean. Then he threw down his cards, pushed back his chair and strode over to the bar to join her.
Harper quickly tried to find her other high heel with her bare foot but it was nowhere to be found. Meaning she had to balance on one heel, or crane her neck to look into Cormac’s face.
So precarious was her self-control when it came to the man, she reached out to grip the bar, choosing precarious balance over giving up high ground.
“Need a hand?” he asked, motioning to the tray of drinks.
“Sure.”
He nodded. But didn’t make a move bar grabbing his lemon, lime and bitters and taking a sip, turning to lean a hip against the bar himself, so that his body curved towards hers.
She felt his warmth ease over her, around her, into her. It was like nothing she’d ever felt. As if her skin was too tight to hold in all he made her feel.
The fact that she had no control whatsoever over any of it, that another person was able to make her feel so much without her explicit permission, was unsettling. And—she would only ever admit this to herself—rather wondrous.
“Harper?” He nudged her with a knee, then left it there. Touching her. Connecting them. She could feel his energy racing over her skin.
“Hmm?”
“You ready and raring for tomorrow?”
His words were innocuous enough, but Harper knew what he meant. Was she ready to let her little sister go?
“Raring might be pushing it.”
“Come on,” he said. “Who doesn’t love a wedding?”
Having given up on finding her shoe, she’d plopped her bare foot onto the floor. “You mean that, don’t you? You are actually looking forward to it.”
“Of course I am. The chance to watch two people declare in front of everyone they know—and a few people they don’t—that despite the impediments, despite the overwhelming evidence that it is near impossible to sustain, they choose happiness. They choose eternal love.”
Harper searched his face for laughter, and found none. “You, Cormac Wharton, are a romantic.”
“Unashamedly.”
Harper cou
ghed out a laugh. She swallowed the sound, while inside her head it turned into a sob.
She—a realist, a doubter, and fine, a cynic of the highest order—had fallen under the spell of a romantic. An honest one. Who said what he felt and meant what he said.
What must that feel like? To have that kind of freedom? To feel that safe in your place in the world?
Harper’s entire life had felt like a game of chicken and refusing to flinch first.
Only with Cormac, she’d flinched. She’d flinched big-time. She’d flinched so hard it had knocked her off her axis. Made her forget who she was, what she stood for. He dragged her focus. Made her stumble. Her heart tumble. Until she found herself falling—
Wait, no, she thought, shaking her head. Not falling. She wasn’t falling for him. She was attracted to the man. Who wouldn’t be? She even liked him. A great deal.
But falling for the guy would be nothing short of self-destructive, a streak she did not inherit from either parent, thank you very much.
Across the room Lola slammed her cards on the table and growled. While Adele threw her winning hand onto the table and leapt out of the chair and did a fine impression of an NFL player, post-touchdown.
“I hate this game!” Lola cried, and it could have been Harper sitting there.
Because they were sisters. Family. The only real family either of them had. The only ones who’d never turned their backs on each other. Who’d loved one another no matter what.
Harper didn’t want freedom. Not from her. And yet it was coming at her anyway.
Tomorrow Lola would be married. The cord would be cut. And Harper would be truly adrift.
If Lola was grown-up enough to marry, she was grown-up enough to know the truth.
“Whatever it is you are plotting,” Cormac said, “stop.”
Harper pretended to ignore him as she took a step forward and motioned to Lola.
“You have that manic look in your eye, the kind that makes you look like you’re planning world domination.” Cormac wrapped a gentle hand around her arm. “What are you up to, Harper?”
