Harper entered, looking adorable in a baggy sweatshirt, her hair in a girlish ponytail. Grant broke into a wide grin. “I’ve got to go, Owen. Someone’s here. Call me with a date, and we’ll make it work.”
“Will do, man. Thanks.” Owen hung up, and Grant rose from his desk, still grinning.
“You look happy,” Harper said. “You have a date?” She winked.
Grant laughed. “I wish. No, that was my friend Owen. He just told me our friend James is coming home from the army at the end of the year. We want to plan a welcome home party. I know it’s early yet, but he’s been gone a long time. We miss him.”
“That’s awesome. He’s lucky to have a couple of friends like you.”
“We’re lucky. James is a great guy.” Grant fished his keys out of his pocket. “I guess you’re here for your samples.”
Harper sighed as she followed him out of the office and down the darkened hall toward the ball room. “I’m going to take them to the hospital. If they don’t need them for the lobby, Audrey can find patients who need some cheering up.”
“She works at the hospital?”
“She’s a nurse.”
“What do you do? I mean, besides flowers.”
“I work in the exciting field of payroll in an accounting firm.”
“You don’t sound all at excited about it.” Grant moved to open the ballroom door, but a sound caught his attention. He couldn’t quite place it.
“It’s fine. The company is nice, and I like my boss, but…you know. It’s paperwork all day. I like to get out now and—”
“Shhh.” Grant held up a hand. The sound was definitely out of place. It seemed to echo in the hallway, and he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry, I hear something. Do you hear that?”
She tilted her head and listened too. After a moment, she shrugged. “What am I supposed to be hearing?”
Grant turned in a circle. “It sounds like water running, but I’m the only one here this morning. Nothing should be on.”
“The kitchen? Maybe someone left a sink on?” She met his gaze for a second, then he turned to head for the kitchen, her samples forgotten.
“Come on.” The sound got louder as they approached the kitchen, and by now Grant had a sinking feeling. Something wasn’t right. He hit the lights to illuminate TF’s gleaming stainless steel kitchen. A quick check of all the sinks turned up nothing, but the sound of running water was definitely louder. It led him to the basement access door. “Uh-oh.”
Harper was right behind him. “Sounds like a leak.”
He groaned. “Worse. It sounds like a broken pipe.” He pulled the door open, and the unmistakable whoosh of gushing water reached them.
“Uh-oh,” Harper echoed.
“Stay up here. I’m going to go check it out.” He headed down the basement stairs, flicking on the light switch as he went. The dim overhead bulb didn’t illuminate much, but he could clearly see water on the basement floor. He cursed under his breath. Just what the place needed, water damage and a huge plumbing bill. The sound seemed to be coming from the far end of the basement, so he turned to head that way when he reached the bottom of the stairs. He’d taken three steps when a pop sounded over his head and ice cold water sprayed all over him.
Harper gasped at Grant’s shocked yell from below. Now the sound of rushing water was even louder, and he was swearing up a storm. She raced down the stairs. “Are you okay? What happened?” Water from an overhead pipe hit her immediately, almost causing her to lose her balance on the stairs. She gasped at the cold and gripped the now-slippery banister to stop herself from careening into Grant who was making his way up. She almost landed in his arms.
“Two broken pipes, it looks like. They must have cracked during the deep freeze, and now that they warmed up a little—poosh!”
“You’re soaked.”
“No kidding. So are you. Come on, let’s get upstairs. There’s a wrench in a tool box in the supply closet. I’m going to see if I can shut off the main valve. I can’t do it with my bare hands. Then I’ve got to call a plumber.”
Harper turned on the wet step but lost her footing and slipped. Grant’s caught her ass in both hands to steady her. She raised a brow but said nothing.
“Easy there. This old wood is slick.” He hoisted her back up, but his hand didn’t leave the small of her back. Together they climbed up the rest of the staircase.
Back in the kitchen, she eyed him. His cotton button-down shirt was plastered to his body, showing off some well-defined pecs beneath the white T-shirt he wore underneath. His brown hair was dark and spiky, and water dripped off his long lashes. She must have been gaping at him because he looked confused.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She shivered a little—not necessarily from the dousing of icy water, though. “You?”
He swiped the back of his hand across his brow, revealing a smudge of red on his palm. “Yeah. Just wet and mad.”
“No, you’re not okay. Look.” Harper grabbed his hand. The cut on his palm looked shallow, but it was still bleeding.
“Damn, I must have done that trying to turn the shut-off valve. It’s rusted open.”
“When was your last tetanus shot?” She grabbed a towel from the nearby stack and wrapped his hand.
He resisted just a bit as she tugged him toward the nearest sink. “I thought your friend Audrey was the nurse.”
“Where do you think I learned first aid? We need to clean this.”
“I need to call the plumber and get that valve shut before the whole basement floods.”
“Here.” She handed him her cell phone. “Dial with your good hand. My uncle’s a plumber. I’ll give you the number while I wash your hand. You must have a first-aid kit around here somewhere.”
“Supply closet, over there.”
She turned on warm water and thrust his hand under the faucet, then headed for the narrow closet next to the cellar door. Fortunately the first-aid kit was right up front. She grabbed it and opened it up on the counter. “Seven one six five five five one three four oh. His name is Mel, mention my name.”
“TF has a plumber,” he said, gingerly probing the cut. He’d set her phone down.
“Well, obviously not a good one, right? Plus I can probably get you a discount, being as I sort of work for you.”
“You’re amazing. You’re a magician with flowers, and you know first aid and a good plumber.”
Harper brought antiseptic and a thick bandage over to the sink. She shut off the water and patted Grant’s palm dry with a fresh towel. “You should see me amortize tax deductions. I’m incredible.”
“Yes, you are.” He met her gaze, and she stilled. His eyes seemed to have gotten a little darker blue, a little deeper, as her fingers caressed his palm. Her wet skin tingled, and her heart beat a little faster. She grabbed the antiseptic to distract herself from the thought of going up on her tip toes to kiss him. This was all wrong. All wrong entirely.
“Ow!” The moment ended with Grant moaning about the stinging antiseptic she poured into his palm.
“Sorry. It’ll stop hurting in a minute.” She carefully wrapped his palm with the bandage and secured it with a couple of strips of tape. “There. Now, that tetanus shot?”
“Last year. I’m covered.”
“Good. We don’t want you getting lockjaw.”
“Does anyone really get that?”
“I’ll ask Audrey. Here.” She handed him her phone back. “Plumber.”
“Why don’t you call? I’m going back down with the wrench. I can’t let it keep running like that.” He gave her back the phone and headed for the closet. A second later, a huge wrench slung over his damp shoulder, he headed back downstairs.
Harper stared after him for a moment. She thought he looked good in his suit and tie, but like this, all wet and manly, injured, and tossing around a huge tool—he was beyond hot. She shoo
k off the unprecedented wave of lust and concentrated on calling her uncle Mel. Now wasn’t the time to get all melty over the guy, but she wasn’t going to rule out the possibility of doing a little melting later on.
Chapter Six
“You didn’t have to stay you know.” Grant set a cup of coffee on the counter in front of Harper. Her uncle, Mel Shaw, had just left after a grueling afternoon replacing two broken pipes, which thanks to her, weren’t going to cost TF a ridiculous amount of money.
The rental of the industrial fans they’d need to dry out the basement was another story, though, and that meant he’d be back at the office first thing in the morning, making arrangements to repair or replace everything else in the basement that had gotten wet.
She breathed in the aromatic steam coming from her cup and smiled, closing her eyes. “I didn’t mind. Plus I got free lunch out of the deal.” She flipped closed the pizza box that sat between them on his desk. “How’s your hand?”
He glanced at the bandage, which hadn’t faired very well during his second bout with the rusted shut-off valve. It needed to be changed, and he wanted to ask her to do it—not because he didn’t know his way around a first-aid kit, but because he’d enjoyed having her soft hands on his skin and seeing the concern in her eyes. “It could use a little second aid, I guess.”
“I’ll get the kit.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, but he hoped she would.
“Audrey always says follow-up is vitally important to good medical care. Come on.”
“Yes, nurse.” He followed her happily out of the office and back to the kitchen. While she cleaned his cut and rebandaged it, he looked her over. Her heavy sweatshirt was still damp, as were his clothes. Though it was warm in the building, the temperature outside had plummeted again. “You know, you shouldn’t go out in these clothes. You’re going to freeze.”
She plucked at her shirt. “My coat’s dry. I’ll be fine.”
“But your pants are wet.” He recalled the feel of her round bottom in his hands when he caught her on the stairs. Her sweats fit nice and snug, but the thick material wasn’t going to dry any faster than her shirt.”
“You don’t have a clothes dryer here, do you?”
“No, but I do have a solution.”
She eyed him sidelong. “Oh?”
“Upstairs there may be a couple of jumpsuits the janitor uses for cleaning. They’re not pretty, but they’re dry.”
“A janitor’s jumpsuit. Yay.” Her enthusiasm was underwhelming.
“Do you want to get into your coat and your car in damp clothes?”
She pursed her lips. “Not really.”
“Come on.”
He led her up the winding stairs to the second floor. To the left lay the bridal suite where wedding parties usually spent happy hour before making their grand entrance down the staircase to greet their guests. He steered Harper away from this plush salon toward a smaller room the employees used for getting changed. The place wasn’t fancy. It had a couple of chairs and metal lockers, a small bathroom, and hanging racks where the wait staff hung their uniforms.
He pulled two oversized gray jumpsuits out of the closet and handed her one. The embroidered letters RAY adorned the left breast pocket of each suit.
“You can change in there.” He nodded toward the bathroom.
She eyed him skeptically for a second, but went in. Her startled yell a second later sent him running to the door.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Oh, God. I just saw myself in the mirror. You didn’t tell me I look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
He stifled a laugh. Was she kidding? She was adorable with her hair slightly mussed and tendrils hanging out of her ponytail. Her smudged mascara made her eyes look big and smoky. “You look fine.”
“I think your wound is affecting your brain.” After a few interesting grunts and groans she emerged from the bathroom, her damp clothes thrown over one arm. She seemed to be swimming in Ray’s jumpsuit, but she’d managed to repair her hair and her makeup, he imagined with nothing more than spit and toilet paper. “You must never speak of this.”
He couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Are you kidding? I should put this on YouTube. You look great!”
“I feel like an Oompa Loompa.”
“Well, the jumpsuits are meant to go over other clothes.”
“And they’re stiff and scratchy.” She looked down her front, probably without realizing what she was doing. The jumpsuits weren’t the only things that were stiff.
Grant swallowed. “Lose something?”
“I can see all the way to the floor.”
He longed for a look but held himself back. “I’m going to go change. Be right out.” Peeling off his wet shirt and jeans wasn’t easy, but he managed. It felt good to put on something dry that didn’t stick to him. When he emerged from the bathroom, Harper was gone. “Hey? Where’d you go?” Had she left? “Hey, I didn’t mean it about YouTube.”
“I’m here.”
He followed her voice across the hall to the bridal suite. She was standing in the doorway leaning on the jamb, her arms crossed over her chest. “This is a pretty room,” she said wistfully.
The velvet couches, gauzy curtains, and huge rustic paintings made the place look like Marie Antoinette’s bedroom. Grant didn’t understand the appeal, but the expression in Harper’s eyes made him realize it wasn’t the décor that had her misty-eyed.
“For what it’s worth, I think he’s an idiot.”
She sniffled a little, but he bet wild horses couldn’t make her admit she’d teared up. “Thank you.” She turned around and met his gaze. Her eyes shimmered like jewels. “He came back from Tahiti yesterday. Didn’t even call me.”
Bastard. Grant didn’t voice his opinion, but he wanted to. More than that he wanted to kiss Harper and let her know a man who walked out on the woman he was about to marry wasn’t a man at all. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I don’t know what I would say to him that I haven’t said already. Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m okay. I think I’m better off.”
“I know you are.” She was only inches from him, so close he could count her lashes and the few freckles on the bridge of her nose. “He’s the one who lost out.”
It happened quickly and not entirely without conscious thought on his part. Grant went from thinking about kissing her to doing it in a split second. She melted into his arms as he pressed her back against the door frame and caressed her warm lips with his. Beneath the voluminous borrowed jumpsuit, her body was taut but curvy. Her softness hid a rigid frame that told him she wasn’t quite sure she should be letting him put his arms around her, letting him slip his tongue into her mouth. She tasted like mint and fresh air, and despite the dousing from the broken pipe, her hair smelled like roses.
She responded with a controlled eagerness that surprised him. She surged against him, and her hands found their way to his hair, to the back of his neck where she twirled the fine hairs at his nape, sending a shiver down his spine that resulted in an immediate reaction in his groin. He let his own hands travel down her sides to grasp her waist, to caress her ass. She moaned, and he dove deeper, wanting more. He’d been thinking about this for a week, and now his mind went blank. All he could do was whisper, “I want you,” and those three little words broke the spell of the bridal suite.
She pulled back and slipped out of his arms, pressing the back of her hand to her lips. “Wow.”
Grant backed up. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, I—”
“I’m a jerk. You don’t need this right now.”
“I probably don’t, but—maybe we, maybe I should go.”
“I…yeah. Okay. I’ll walk you out.”
“I’m—I never got my samples.”
“We’ll get them now.”
“Don’t worry about them. I need to…”
“Sure.”
“Call me.”
> “Okay.”
“About the auxiliary dinner.”
“Right. I will.”
She was halfway down the stairs, and Grant just stood there, staring after her, wishing he could take back the last five minutes at the same time he wished he could relive them.
Elaine’s voice played in his head as he heard the lobby door open and close. Poor girl.
* * * *
“This is all your fault.” Harper put her slippered feet up on Audrey’s coffee table and glared at the marshmallows drifting lazily in her hot cocoa.
“My fault? I didn’t tell you to strip down and kiss Grant. Though not for lacking of thinking it.” Audrey grinned over her own mug. Her glee at Harper’s description of the searing kiss she’d shared with Grant only served to make Harper feel worse about it.
“No, you got me thinking how cute he was and put the bug in my ear that I don’t have to feel guilty about cheating on Brad.”
“You’re not cheating on Brad. ‘Bad Brad’ left you. Don’t forget that. There is no shame in you moving on, at warp speed.”
“Yes, there is. I mean, how will it look if I—”
“Oh, no.” Audrey sat forward and plunked her mug on the table. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Worry about what people are going to think or say. We’ve been over this. You let other people’s opinions control you too much. Who cares if you start dating someone a week after Brad bailed on your wedding? The wedding police are not taking notes.”
“Maybe not, but everyone else is. Uncle Mel was there—”
“You kissed him in front of your uncle?”
“No, he’d left, but he was there, fixing the pipes, and he kept looking at me like someone had died. I actually felt bad calling him.”
“You felt bad about calling your uncle the plumber, to come and do plumbing for which he got paid? You lost me.”
“I felt bad, like he was doing me a favor because he felt sorry for me. Everyone feels sorry for me.”
“They should. You got dumped.”
Harper cringed. “Thanks.”
“You know what I mean, and you did.”
Jilted in January Page 4
