by Score, Lucy
Riding the wave of anger, she grabbed the checks and stormed over to his closed door. She smacked her palm holding the checks against the glass. “What the hell?” she mouthed.
Luke took his feet off his desk and had the good grace to look embarrassed. He shrugged and held up a finger signaling her to wait.
But she was done waiting. Harper dropped the checks on the counter outside his office and grabbed her purse. She would take an early, long lunch and he would just have to deal with it. She didn’t owe him an explanation.
***
Luke found her at the diner counter staring into the depths of her coffee mug. He took the stool next to her and swiveled to face her. He figured he could calm her down in a few minutes and maybe even grab a quick lunch. Time was becoming more precious as the days ticked down to deployment.
“Why are you so pissed off about a couple of checks?”
Harper turned to him and shot him a look. “Is that what you think this is about? Did you hit your head today?”
“It sounds like you’re questioning my intelligence,” he ventured, signaling the waitress for a coffee.
“It sounds like you’re trying to play dumb,” Harper snapped. “This isn’t about the checks. This is about what they represent.”
“Money?”
“I will knock your perfect ass off that stool.”
She might actually try it. “Me not telling you about money that you found going through my mail?”
“Really? That’s how you want to play this? Accusing me of snooping when I opened a stack of mail that you gave me to open? Try again.”
She had him there. He sighed. “Harper, there is nothing in our arrangement that says we have to tell each other everything.”
“Why are you like that? What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just share things? It’s not sexy-mysterious anymore. It’s hurtful.”
“Why is it hurtful? I didn’t purposely keep anything from you. The money is from a patent that Aldo and I hold on an engineered joist system. It’s not a big deal.”
“What’s a big deal to me is that I open up to you about all the sordid details of my past and you can’t even share good things with me. Why the hell is that?”
“I told you before, I’m not a hearts and flowers kind of guy.”
“We’re not talking about hearts and flowers. We’re talking about intimacy. And you can’t just expect me to share things with you when you have no intention of opening up to me.”
“That isn’t who I am, Harper.” Luke shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Those checks aren’t even on my radar. Not when I have less than two weeks before I leave my home and my family for six months.”
“That’s another thing you won’t talk about.”
“What? Deployment? What is there to talk about?” He let some of his frustration seep into his tone. “I’m leaving. End of story.”
“That is not ‘end of story’ and you know it.”
He spun her around sideways on the stool to face him and kept his hands on her thighs. “Look. You want something that I can’t give you. I think you’re getting in too deep here. You’re trying to establish a relationship where there can’t be one. I don’t share. I don’t open up and talk about my feelings or what I’m thinking. And even if I did, I’m leaving. For six months. There isn’t going to be an ‘us’ when I come back. And I’m starting to think that maybe there shouldn’t be an us now.”
“Do you want me to leave?” She leveled a look at him, daring him to say what he didn’t mean.
He sighed. “No, I don’t want you to leave.” There. How was that for honesty? “I like having you around. I even like having the dogs around. I think our working relationship is great. But maybe it’s time we back off of the more … intimate area.”
“Sex?”
The waitress paused wide-eyed as she put the coffee mug down in front of him.
Luke waited until she wandered down the counter to the next patron. “Yes. Sex,” he said quietly. “It’s starting to confuse the situation. Let’s just go back to the way things were for the rest of the month. Stick with the plan. You’re saving money and doing a job search. Thanks to you, I’m getting caught up at the office and getting things organized for when I’m gone. We can make this work, Harper. But not by complicating things.”
“So I explain to you that it hurts me when you withhold things from me and your solution is to further reduce our relationship to boss-employee?”
Why did women always make things so difficult? He was protecting her. Why couldn’t she see that?
“Harper, this is in your best interest.”
“So you’re saying you’re protecting me from my own feelings by taking sex off the table.”
She didn’t sound impressed, but Luke was committed. Maybe it wasn’t only her feelings he wanted to protect. There was something about the rawness between them that scared the crap out of him. He didn’t want it to go any farther. Any deeper.
“I’m saying we’re complicating a situation that doesn’t need to be complicated. Let’s just go back to the plan.”
“Fine.”
He gripped her legs. “Fine?” He had expected more of an argument.
“It’s your life. Your decision.”
Luke had the distinct feeling he was being played. “You’re fine with going back to the plan?”
“Yep.” She stared pointedly at his hands on her legs until he removed them. Harper turned her attention back to her menu. “I’ll see you back at work.”
“How about I buy you lunch?” he offered. The club special looked pretty good.
“No thanks. I’d rather eat by myself.” She snapped her menu shut. “But I’ll put your coffee on my tab. You can go.”
And just like that, Luke was dismissed.
***
He took the moratorium seriously and slept on the couch for two nights, thankful that it was a million times more comfortable than his grandmother’s. Yet it still paled in comparison to his bed and Harper.
What he thought was a move to simplify only turned out to be a complication. A rock hard one. The weekend turned into a two-day erection. Now that her body was off limits he wanted it even more. Those sweet curves called to him, demanding his attention, his hands.
He started avoiding her like the drunk uncle no one wants to talk to at a reunion after he found her bent over the kitchen island reading a magazine in freaking boy shorts and a tank top. He turned around so fast he rammed straight into the refrigerator.
And damned if he didn’t see the smirk on her face before he hustled out of the room. She had to be playing him. It seemed like her skirts were getting shorter, her shirts tighter, and his dick harder.
He was pissed off all the time. A fact that Frank was currently pointing out.
“What the hell crawled up your ass today?”
“I’m just not in the mood to hear how another client pissed you off.”
Frank snorted and tossed the scrap wood in the back of his truck. “I was going to tell you that the doc called today about that addition she’s been talking about. She’s ready for the expansion. But since you’re being a whiny little bitch, I guess I’ll have Harper put the consult on the calendar.”
Luke slammed the lid of his truck toolbox. When someone like Frank called him out on it, he knew he had to be acting like an ass.
“Sorry, Frank. I’m just …” What was he? Hard, frustrated, agitated, distracted beyond belief by a certain curvy blonde who looked through him rather than at him in the kitchen this morning. “Stressed,” he finished lamely.
“Stressed? What the hell for? You’ve done this before. Your dad and I have everything covered.”
“It’s not work.” Luke used some water from his thermos to scrub the drywall dust off his hands.
“Would it have something to do with a certain female office manager who looks like she wants to jump you one minute and strangle you the next?”
“So it’s not just m
y imagination?”
Frank sighed and leaned against the truck. “Son, let me tell you something about women. Don’t piss them off under any circumstances. It’s not worth it. You’re risking life and limb over something that probably doesn’t matter in the first place. My advice? If you pissed her off, apologize before she turns your life into a living hell.”
It was Luke’s turn to sigh. “Should I really be taking advice from a man who’s never been married?”
“Don’t have to jump off the cliff to know you die at the bottom.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
One Week…
Harper had decided to let Luke have his way and give him some space to be stupid, but the idiot was driving himself out of his own house and making his last days home miserable.
When he texted her to ask her if she could come back to work for an hour or so that evening to help with a proposal, Harper decided to put a stop to the madness.
She dressed for war. The tight pencil skirt stopped a few inches short of modest and she buttoned herself into a tight, short-sleeved blouse in eye-popping red. She decided to forgo a bra, and shimmied into a simple black thong. Tall, strappy sandals completed the package.
She dried her hair with a little extra volume and painted on smoky eyes and plump lips.
Harper gave her reflection a nod in the mirror and slid on her sunglasses. She would win this.
She made sure to get back to the office before Luke and was already efficiently entering numbers into the accounting system when she heard him return.
She didn’t turn when he came in, just kept typing.
He stopped at her desk and dropped a greasy paper bag on it.
“I brought you dinner.”
Harper turned in her chair towards him. “Thanks, boss. That was nice of you.” He was dressed in his standard uniform of worn jeans and soft t-shirt. She wondered if her heart would always pound over the way the cotton clung to his chest and shoulders
His eyes immediately tracked to the exposed skin below her neck. She knew the second he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. The muscle in his jaw flexed.
Harper bit back a smile. She turned her chair back to her desk to resume typing.
Luke stayed put, cleared his throat. “You look … nice.”
“Oh, thanks,” Harper said brightly. “I was going to see if Gloria wanted to go out tonight after I finish up here.”
“Out,” he repeated flatly.
“Yeah, blow off some steam.”
Harper hit the print button on the screen and pushed back from her desk. “Excuse me,” she said, as she brushed past Luke.
“It might be pretty late,” he ventured.
Her back to him, Harper smiled. Who knew torture could be so much fun?
“I don’t mind. I’m happy to help you finish up the RFP. Damn, out of paper again.”
Harper bent at the waist to check under the counter for paper.
“Luke? Do you know where the paper is?”
Wordlessly, he appeared at her side. He opened the next cabinet over and knelt down. Harper moved, deliberately putting her breasts in his direct line of sight. “Oh good, there’s another ream.” She reached past him, brushing her breast against his arm.
Her nipples hardened instantly and Luke jumped back as if he had been burned. Harper bent lower, feeling her skirt ride up in the back, and grabbed the paper. “Thanks,” she said, standing back up. “I’ll put printer paper on the office supply list.”
Luke was running a hand over the back of his head. Harper spotted the familiar bulge between his legs and bit the inside of her cheek.
She strutted back to her desk, enjoying the tease of the fabric over her nipples.
“Um, why don’t you email me the draft you have so far and I’ll read it while you eat?” Luke made the suggestion without looking at her.
“Sounds good.”
She nibbled at the cheesesteak he brought her, but she was more interested in how his eyes tracked to her through the glass of his office.
She took a minute to check her email and saw that her job interview in Fremont had been confirmed for the following week. The familiar buzz of excitement at a potential new start didn’t appear this time. In fact, all she really felt was a ball of ice forming in her stomach. For the first time in her life, the appeal of a fresh start wasn’t there.
Harper brought her hands to her face and closed her eyes. There was no way around this new start. No way for her current life to continue. Luke was leaving, and even if he wasn’t, there was no room in his life for her.
“What’s wrong?”
Harper jumped in her seat at Luke’s voice. He was standing at her desk staring at her. “You scared me! That’s what’s wrong. Jeez.” She put a hand over her heart knowing full well the real reason it was pounding. Because he was standing so close to her.
“Liar. What’s wrong?”
“I was just wondering if it was going to be hard to find an apartment that allows dogs.” It wasn’t. Hannah had already arranged an appointment to see a tiny townhouse next door to a dog park.
“You’re taking the dogs?”
“Well, yeah. I don’t think your unit would let you take them. Anyway, did you want something?” She uncrossed and then crossed her legs and smiled when he took a step back.
“Uh.” Luke skimmed his hand over the back of his head. “Yeah. Can you come take a look at some wording? Please.”
“Sure,” she said, hopping up to follow him into his office. She waited until he took a seat behind his desk and then leaned over him to look at the monitor. She heard him stop breathing.
“This text here?”
Luke nodded but remained silent.
“You’re worried it’s not clear enough that the geothermal is included?”
“Yeah. You’ve really picked up a lot in a very short amount of time.”
“It’s easy when it’s interesting. And there was a lot here I found interesting.”
“Harper.”
His flat warning tone immediately put her back up.
“Luke.”
“We’ve talked about this —”
She straightened away from him. “Talked about what? A. I was talking about my work here in the office, Captain Conceited. B. We didn’t talk. I tried and you shut down and started sleeping on the couch because you’re totally mature.”
“And totally mature is playing games with me when I ask for your help. I know you’re dressing like this on purpose.”
“I never claimed to be mature, and at least I’m honest about what I want.”
“You think I’m not being honest with you?”
She leveled him with a look. “You’re the one playing games here. You make it sound like you’re protecting me when it’s you you’re trying to protect.”
He started to argue and then snapped his mouth shut.
“Can’t argue with the truth. You’re the one worried about how intense this is. You’re the one who’s getting scared. Because you feel something and you think taking sex off the table will make that go away.”
“You understand why we can’t do this.”
“I understand that you don’t want to do this,” she corrected.
“Harper.” He sounded exasperated. “I want you. I have been hard since the second I walked in here tonight. There is no scenario that doesn’t involve me not wanting you.” He trailed a hand down her arm, his thumb skimming over the soft curve of her breast. “I want you more than I should.”
Harper leaned against his desk. “Why does that mean we have to stop? We have a week left. Shouldn’t we be making the most of it?”
“It’s hard for me to logically explain why when you aren’t wearing a fucking bra!” He was yelling now.
She brought her hands to her hips and the fabric gaped between the top two buttons. “You’re overthinking this.”
“I don’t want either of us to get any more attached. And yes, I’m attached, too.”
Harp
er rolled her eyes and pushed away from the desk. “We have ten days and then you’re leaving. I’m leaving. There is no attachment danger. This is all we have left and you’re hell bent on spending it punishing me.”
She turned to stalk out of his office, but he had her by the arm before she had taken a step.
He had her spun around and bent over the desk in the span of a heartbeat. “You drive me crazy,” he growled in her ear.
“And you piss me off,” she argued, rocking her hips back into his, trying to get some space.
His stone hard erection pressed against her, grinding her into the desk. “I can only fight you so long,” he warned.
“About damn time,” she snipped.
Luke cuffed her hands behind her and shoved her skirt up to her hips. When she heard the sound of his zipper she was instantly wet. She couldn’t help herself.
He forced her thighs further apart with his knee and yanked her thong down to her knees. Open and wet, she moaned. On the noise, she felt the smooth skin of his penis bob against the back of her thighs. Holding the thick shaft, he guided the crown of it between her legs, rubbing it against her slick folds.
“You already soaked, baby.”
He freed her arms only to grip the opening of her blouse and yank. The first three buttons pinged across the desk and onto the floor.
Her breasts tumbled out of the shirt and into his waiting palms. “Is this what you want?” He squeezed, rubbing calloused palms over the sensitive tips. “Me touching you? Me inside you? Me making you come over and over again?”
Harper’s legs trembled. He brought a hand to her hair and fisted it. Pulling her back, he gripped her neck with his other hand.
“That’s what I want. I want you to take all the dark, all the pain, and turn it into something beautiful. I want to fill you, hurt you, please you. Give you everything. I want it so bad I can’t think of anything else. The thought of never touching you again —” He trailed a hand down her neck to capture a breast. He tugged her nipple.
Harper gasped for breath, her pulse fluttered under his fingers.
“Is this what you want?”
His fingers pulled her bud like a mouth. She moaned again. “Yes, Luke. I want you. I want it all.” It was a whisper.
