by Hazel Jacobs
But Slate had pulled away. So maybe it’s just a surface interest. Or maybe she’s not as hot as he’d thought she was. Maybe up close, or after an evening in her company, he’d decided that she wasn’t worth it.
Harper runs her brush hastily, painfully, through her hair, pulling aggressively at the tangles that have somehow formed. Then she pulls out the makeup wipes from her washroom bag and rubs one all over her face. Her done-up, more toned face disappears into the white cloth, leaving her fresher but less defined. Maybe even less pretty. She never thought that she was less pretty without makeup, just less refined. But maybe she was wrong.
“Oh my God, you are not rethinking your self-worth right now,” she growls to herself as she quickly cleanses her face and rubs in some moisturizer.
Really, it’s his loss, she tells herself. Slate paid for a fuck and all he’s getting is blue balls. Who’s the real winner here?
Harper pulls her dress off of her shoulders. Her pajamas are still in the bathroom from her shower that morning. She snorts at the sight of herself in the mirror—she’d bought sexy lingerie especially for this weekend. Her toned, tanned abs look fantastic in the lacy red bra and panties. And what’s Slate doing? Nursing an erection and talking to his bandmate in the other room.
Harper pulls her pajamas on over the lingerie and ties her hair back into a ponytail. When she’s satisfied that she looks like she gives zero fucks, she leaves the bathroom.
Slate’s sitting on the bed, his shirt unbuttoned and untucked, running a hand through his hair. He’s rolled up his sleeves to display his gorgeous tattooed arms. There’s a thoughtful frown on his face and the phone is still pressed to his ear. When he sees Harper, he perks up a bit. His eyes soften and his lips turn up in a smile. It’s as if their little rendezvous at the door never even happened.
“Hey, Tommy, I’m putting you on speaker. Repeat everything you just said.”
He switches the phone over to speaker and holds it up, offering it to Harper. Harper crosses the room and joins him on the bed, carefully putting a few inches between them so that she isn’t touching him.
“Yeah, hi… Harper,” a man’s voice says through the phone. It’s lighter than Slate’s, more boyish, but rough like he might smoke sometimes.
“And you’re Tommy?” Harper replies.
“That’s me,” Tommy says. “So, we’ve got a bit of a problem here. Our company hired a personal trainer for us so we can get fit for our next tour, but she started hitting on Logan and Mikayla nearly clawed her eyes out. It was kind of funny, actually. But terrifying...” he trails off, his voice awed. “So, so terrifying…”
“Bring it around to the point, big guy,” Slate says fondly.
Tommy clears his throat. “So the personal trainer was fired. Seems we need a new one. Slate was just telling me that you’re training to be a personal trainer. Would you be interested?”
Harper’s eyebrows rise up and she knows that she looks dumbfounded. She can tell from the amused look on Slate’s face.
“Me?” she asks, unsure. She looks at Slate again, as if to confirm that she’s heard correctly. “Seriously? I’m not qualified, I’m only learning.”
“That’s okay,” Slate says quickly. He slides a leg up onto the bed and turns so that he’s facing her properly, and eagerly waves his hand with the phone still in it. “You can use it as, like, an internship or something. Your university will probably give you credit for it.”
“Why would you even want an unqualified personal trainer when there are probably hundreds who would give their right arms to work with you?”
Slate gives her a wry look. “They’re all more interested in working with Black Lilith than they are in working with us,” he says. “And I know you don’t care about that. Besides, why wouldn’t we want you?”
Harper finds herself focusing on the ‘we’ in that statement.
Tommy chuckles lazily through the phone. “Slate has a habit of collecting people,” he tells Harper.
“Who’s that?” a tired woman’s voice calls through the phone. She sounds Irish and Harper wonders for a moment if Tommy is even in New York, before she remembers what Slate had told her about Tommy’s Irish girlfriend, a lyricist named Sersha.
“It’s Slate and Harper,” Tommy tells Sersha, as if she should know who Harper is.
“Oh, tell them I said hi.”
“Did I wake you?”
“A little bit.”
“I’ll go downstairs, hold on.”
There’s shuffling as bedsheets are pulled aside.
Harper listens to the exchange but she’s only half-interested. She’s still reeling from the offer.
Is Slate seriously offering her a job?
As a personal trainer to one of the biggest up-and-coming bands in the country?
But he seems to be. He’s still watching her with an earnest, hopeful expression, and it’s so vastly different from the lust he’d looked at her with only minutes earlier, that Harper wonders if this is even the same man.
“What does he mean… you collect people?” Harper asks.
Slate shakes his head, abashed. “It’s just because of what happened with Mikayla. I could tell she was unhappy. No one with a college degree and her drive is happy as an intern. So I got her the PA job with Black Lilith.”
“And… you can tell I’m unhappy,” Harper says slowly. “So you’re offering me a job, too?”
Slate looks suddenly, deadly serious. “You said you wanted different for yourself,” he reminds her. “I get that, I do. There’s no shame in what you’re doing now, but if you have the chance to do something different then why not? And if I can help you, then why shouldn’t I?”
Harper chews on her lip. His eyes flicker to it, briefly, before shifting away just as quickly.
“So instead of being paid to fuck you, I’ll be paid to help you build muscle?” Harper questions.
A faint blush creeps over Slate’s cheeks, and a short bark of laughter from the phone reminds Harper that Tommy is still on speaker.
“I like her, Slate,” Tommy says.
“Yeah, me too,” Slate replies, still looking at Harper. “And yes, you would be paid. This is not one of those internship-slave programs where you can’t eat or hold a job on the side. With this, you’ll be able to live in Manhattan without taking another job.”
She hears the unspoken words, ‘if she takes this offer, she’ll be able to quit prostitution.’
Harper looks at the phone instead of into his eyes. Her first thought is, if he hires her as his band’s personal trainer, then he definitely won’t sleep with her. If sex is off the table now even though it’s already part of her job description, then it’ll be even harder for her once sex is no longer a part of what she’s supposed to be doing.
Then she reminds herself that Slate has made his feelings about sex with Harper clear. He doesn’t want her. No matter what she does, no matter how sexy she tries to be, he doesn’t want her.
That’s actually a freeing thought. It gives her the strength to look him in the eye and say, “If you can convince your bosses to take someone underqualified and inexperienced, then I’m in.”
Tommy whoops on the phone and Slate grins at her so wide that Harper can’t help grinning back. Their excitement is infectious.
It could all fall apart. She shouldn’t let herself get too excited yet. Their bosses may decide that the idea of a girl still getting her degree teaching some of their prized musicians how to stay fit is crazy, and not go for it. And then all this excitement will be for nothing. But right now, sitting next to Slate on the bed, she can allow herself to imagine what it would be like to hand in her resignation to Angelica. To work in the field she loves without worrying about money.
To work beside Slate every day. To just spend time with him, because she knows that he’ll never sleep with her, but he’s still the funniest, sweetest guy she could imagine. They get along so well, especially when there’s no one else around, and there’s no
pressure to pretend that they’ve been dating for weeks. To go to work every day and just hang out with him.
That would be close to heaven.
It doesn’t fall apart. On Sunday afternoon, Slate and Harper say a tearful farewell to Slate’s parents. His father seems sad to see his son go, and isn’t that a refreshing change from the day they met? On Thursday, Bass Note Productions contacts Harper with a contract—one year of part-time work on a salary that almost matches what she’s getting paid at the brothel. On Friday, Harper hands in her notice to Angelica.
“I’m happy for you, beautiful,” Angelica says, pulling a drag from her cigar and running a finger down her perfect jacket lapel. Her office looks like it was pulled out of a film noir and nothing like what Harper had expected a Madam’s office to look like. But Angelica always surprises her. “I think you’ll do a lot better in a gym than you would have here. Not that you wouldn’t have been a good little earner, but any idiot could see that your heart wasn’t in it.”
Harper’s grin is wide enough to split in two when she thanks Angelica for the opportunity.
On Monday, she’s in the gym at Bass Note headquarters. It’s small, and clearly designed for the executives to use in their downtime, but apparently Black Lilith had been banned from gyms all over Manhattan because their fans kept showing up and freaking out the other customers. And they couldn’t put a gym in the house where they lived because, as Slate had put it, “There’s only one room big enough and that’s the basement. We keep our PlayStation down there.”
Harper stretches her back and gazes around the room. It’s only 8:30, well past the time she would have liked to start working with a client, but when she’d suggested a 5:00 a.m. start, Slate had literally laughed in her face.
Even though it’s a late start, and the room is small, Harper is starting to feel excitement building in a way that she’d never thought she would experience. This is her first job as a personal trainer. She’s doing it. She’d called her mom on Thursday night and cried when she’d told her the news. She’s been working for this for so long, and now it’s finally arrived.
It’s exhilarating.
She decides to do a couple of reps with the barbells. They’re clean and hardly used, which reinforces Harper’s belief that the gym was originally intended for executives. Executives who are married to their desks and order their assistants to bring them coffee, so they don’t have to make the trip between the office and the break room.
Harper stares into the mirror as she brings the barbells up and down, pumping her arms. Her toned stomach is bare and she wears a yellow crop top and black running pants, her hair is tied up in a ponytail. The instructors at her parents’ gym always used to bear their midriff when they worked—if they were men, they would forgo the shirt altogether—because it reminds the client that they know what they’re doing. That they’re not asking the client to do anything that they wouldn’t do themselves. That they’re fit and they know how to stay that way. Depending on how well she likes Black Lilith, Harper may eventually decide to cover up.
And yes, when she’d been getting ready that morning her thoughts had drifted to whether or not Slate would like her outfit. She couldn’t help it, she’s only human. But then she reminded herself that Slate had pushed her away when she’d been completely naked. He certainly wasn’t going to lose his cool over a belly button.
The door opens behind her. Harper sees it in the mirror. When she turns she sees a curvy brunette woman in a fitted pantsuit, carrying a travel mug and dragging a grown man by the collar. Harper knows from her internet stalking that this is Mikayla and Logan.
“Hi!” Harper says, putting down the bells and wiping them off with a towel before crossing the room and shaking Mikayla’s hand. “I’m Harper Styles.”
“Mikayla Strong,” she replies. She releases Logan’s collar and he pulls away, rubbing his neck. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Harper takes a moment to observe Logan. His shirt is rumpled and some of the buttons are in the wrong holes. His eyes are bloodshot and he’s got a long, slow expression like he’s just woken up. His hair is a bird’s nest and his arm, which is covered in colorful tattoos, falls flat at his side when he’s done fixing his collar. He grimaces and sticks his own hand out.
“Logan,” he says gruffly. “Morning.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Harper says. “I hope you’re not planning to train in your jeans?”
“Ah…” He looks down at his pants as though he’s surprised at what he’s wearing. Then he shoots a cautious look at Mikayla. “No?”
She rolls her eyes at him. “Here,” she says, shoving a bag into his chest. Harper hadn’t even noticed it. Along with the travel mug, Mikayla also has a phone, a purse, and a set of keys in her hands. Harper would have dropped something by now, but Mikayla makes juggling all those things effortless. “Go get changed.”
He kisses her cheek. “Thanks, love you!”
“Love you, too,” she replies. She waits until he leaves the space, heading for the change room which is really more of a bathroom.
“Not a morning person, is he?” Harper asks, gesturing for Mikayla to join her in one of the seats in the opposite corner of the room.
“No, but I’m working on it,” Mikayla replies. She walks briskly over to the seats and sits herself down on the wobbly plastic, smiling at Harper when she joins her. “One thing you should know about the boys… they’re always late.”
“Maybe I should change the call time to 5:00 a.m. after all,” Harper says.
She snorts elegantly. “Then they won’t show up at all.”
Mikayla doesn’t give any indication that she knows where Harper and Slate met, or what Harper’s previous job was, but it occurs to Harper that there’s no way she could not know. Slate would have explained where he’d found her. Harper remembers when Slate had answered the call from Tommy at the airport before their flight when he’d said that they’re not calling Harper ‘Tiffany’ anymore. So obviously the band, at least, knows that Harper was a whore before she was a personal trainer. And Mikayla carries herself with the air of someone who knows everything.
Before Harper can ask or even hint, the door is banging open and Slate is sweeping into the room. Unlike his bandmate, Slate looks dressed to work. He’s wearing a black sleeveless top and gray slacks with a pair of well-worn running shoes, a gym bag slung over his shoulder, and his hair even looks freshly washed. Though nothing like the limp and lifeless mass that had been on his head when he’d been home with his parents. He pauses, looks around, and his face lights up when he sees Harper. Only to fall when he sees Mikayla.
“Don’t tell me Logan beat me here?” he asks.
“By seconds,” Mikayla confirms.
He huffs, annoyed. “Before you came along, I was the responsible one.”
“Tommy was the responsible one.”
“I don’t see Tommy here.”
“I do.”
Mikayla points and Slate swivels around to see a young man stepping into the room with a sheepish yawn on his lips.
“Did I miss anything?”
Harper immediately recognizes Tommy’s voice. He looks just like his pictures—flannel shirt and floppy hair, a sweet and self-conscious grin. He’s wearing sweat pants, which is something that Harper is willing to accept on the first session. She’ll definitely be telling him to upgrade for the next session, though.
She pushes herself to her feet and walks over to shake his hand. “Harper Styles.”
Tommy takes her hand and grins warmly. “Nice to meet you, Harper,” he says.
“I beat you here, Tommy,” Slate says.
“Yes, you did,” Tommy replies, in the tone of voice you’d expect from someone talking to a three-year-old. “Do you want a cookie?”
“I demand a cookie!”
Tommy sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out a cookie. Neither Slate nor Mikayla looks surprised at this, but when Slate reaches out to take it Harper slaps his ha
nd away.
“After training,” she says, sternly. “If you’re good.”
Tommy leaves the cookie with Mikayla for safe keeping, grinning at Harper as he does. Slate pouts for a full minute until Harper sticks him on a treadmill to warm up, which amuses Tommy until he’s forced, grumbling, to take the treadmill beside Slate. Mikayla waves the cookie gleefully in front of them and Harper can’t wipe the smile off her face as she watches the three of them interact. It’s how she’s always imagined siblings would interact.
As Logan returns from the bathroom wearing sweats and a bemused expression, another man tumbles into the room in a flurry of motion. This can only be Dash, Harper thinks. He’s a young guy too, probably younger than Tommy. He’s bigger than Logan, all bulky muscle, and he’s wearing a T-shirt that reads, Neville would have done it in four books. His own sweatpants look like he probably slept in them. He pulls Harper into a hug when he sees her and, after a brief moment of concern and confusion, Harper returns the hug with enthusiasm.
“You probably won’t like me as much by the end of the morning,” Harper tells him when she pulls away.
“Run, Dash… save yourself,” Tommy says from the treadmill.
“Okay,” Harper says, clapping her hands and drawing the attention of all four men. Slate turns off the treadmill and Harper quirks an eyebrow at him. “Did I say you could stop?” she asks. Slate is smiling as he groans and starts the treadmill up. “A couple of things. One… proper training gear.” She looks at Mikayla, who nods and makes a note on her phone. “Two… I thought it might be a good idea to have a group session on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and then individual sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
