“I know.”
“Do you?” Frankie said. “Did you hear that Harper’s losing her apartment, too? These are my friends. I may lose my job for saying this, sir, but these are livelihoods going down the drain. Money doesn’t make everything okay, people like Harper’ll need to find other jobs. Other places to live. They don’t need a Jericho playing more games with them.”
Bam.
Jake dialed back his gut reaction. No one spoke to him like that. But he wasn’t that person right now. Why not? He had no fucking idea.
He didn’t know why he was wearing a fake leather apron and arranging coffee and pastries on trays. He didn’t know why he was involving himself in something he had no business interfering with. His dad’s company was doing this to them, not him. Not Jake. Or not this Jake.
The Jake who left Harper Haley behind over a decade ago like only a jackass would.
“I’m not messing with anyone,” Jake said. “I’m trying to help.”
“By lying to them?” Frankie asked. “To her? And what’s the deal with you and Harper?”
“There’s—” Jake looked over his shoulder as she rang up and marked a cup for a teenage girl. “There’s no deal,” he said. “We just met a long time ago.”
“As Jake Smith? The guy that broke her heart?”
“Something like that.” And he had to fix it.
That thought stopped his words, cold. Why did he need to fix anything? He’d left hundreds of women in his wake. Why was Harper different? Why had she knocked his feet out from under him the second she’d turned around?
“Look, let me do this, okay?” Jake said. “Go—do whatever you were going to do today. Come back for me later?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not—shit.” Jake raked fingers through his short hair. Things were getting too confusing. “Not like that.”
Frankie nodded and headed back around toward the crowd. “But it is like that,” he said softly, the words melting into the noise.
• • •
“Jake, there are some CO2 canisters downstairs,” Mr. Haley said. “Go grab me one, and another box of to-go bags.”
Jake breathed a sigh of relief, relishing thirty seconds to himself and possibly a sneak sit on a chair. He’d been slapping orders together, sweeping, cleaning, doing whatever anyone told him to do nonstop for the past three hours. His back ached, his feet hurt, and he’d kill for one of those ugly bran muffins the girl named Christian kept trying to pawn off on people. Harper, on the other hand, did it all without missing a beat. Never stopped to stretch or roll a stiff neck. Her smile never wavered. Not even when their hands kept brushing.
“Harper, go with him,” Mr. Haley continued. “Show him where everything is.”
Until then.
That perfect smile faltered as her eyes darted around the kitchen, looking for an escape.
“Christian can take him,” she said. “I’m—”
She was nothing. The customer barrage had stopped. There was nothing left to do besides maybe wipe something down. But Harper glanced at the ceiling as if there was something vital she could do up there rather than go downstairs with him.
“Christian is elbow-deep in strawberry filling,” Christian called from the back. “You know, that comfort-food crap you like?”
“It’s all good.” Jake wiped his hands on a towel. Harper’s gaze met his as he spoke, and a flush lit up her chest. Oh, the telltale sign. When she was nervous—or turned on—he remembered that. “I can take myself. I’ll find it.”
“No, you’ll—” Harper yanked off her apron and tossed it aside. “You’ll mess things up. Follow me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, pulling off his apron and hanging it on a hook.
She tossed a look over her shoulder that Jake would have taken as a challenge in any other woman. On Harper, it looked like she might have a noose waiting downstairs.
He followed her through the kitchen and down the hall to a stairway on the right that headed down into darkness. Her blonde hair swung at her shoulders, shorter than it once was. The sway of her hips and her small purposeful movements hadn’t changed though. He could still watch her move for hours.
The sight of her heading down the dark stairwell was like old times. Suddenly, images of every stolen moment they’d shared in places like that hit him. The heated kisses in hideaway closets at the soup kitchen, hands hungry as they slid under clothing, needing skin. Needing more. The first time he’d made her moan with his fingers. And the first time—
Light burst around him as she hit a light switch halfway down, jolting him back to the present.
“All the paper goods are down here,” Harper said loudly, continuing down. “As well as storage for—” Reaching the bottom, she whirled around. “Why are you doing this?” she hissed.
As taken aback as Jake was with the sudden vitriol, the fire in those dark blue eyes sparked something else. Something he’d missed.
“So you do remember me,” Jake said slowly, crossing his arms as he stepped off the last step.
Harper backed up as he moved into her space, crossing her own arms. Her eyelids fluttered.
“You didn’t answer me,” she said, lifting her chin.
“You could have just said hi,” Jake said. “You didn’t have to pretend. Hey, Jake, how’s it going, been a long time would have been appropriate.”
“Really?” Harper broke into a laugh that hit him somewhere he hadn’t felt in a very long time. He wasn’t fond of the sensation. “That’s funny.”
Jake tilted his head, the sexy huskiness of her laugh and the feistiness in her body language cranking him higher.
“Is it?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said, her pupils going large and dark. “Because I thought about leading with Hey, Jake, nice fuck-’em-and-run plan, but you know. I held back.”
Pow.
The cockiness drained right out of him.
“Harper, it wasn’t like that,” he said.
She laughed again, and even its sexiness couldn’t erase the darts she was throwing.
“I know?” she said, eyebrows raising. “I know nothing when it comes to you. I didn’t then, and I sure as hell don’t now, so back to my question. Why are you here all up in my grill, pretending to need a job?”
Jake took another step forward, not breaking eye contact, silently applauding the glaze-over her eyes took on as she refused to back up again. He’d seen her happy, emotional, and even sad once, but he’d never seen her angry. It was magnificent.
“I never said I needed a job,” Jake said. “I said I was here to help.”
“I don’t want your help,” she said, her words clipped.
She was right. He knew she was right, and so was Frankie. He had no business coming in there and stirring up shit long since put away. Messing with her head. Hell, messing with his. He needed to return to his own life.
Whatever that was.
Jake held out his hands in front of him. “Fine,” he said. “I won’t come back tomorrow.”
Something passed through her eyes. Something that said she didn’t actually like that, and it was oddly satisfying. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Good.”
“But I can’t just walk out that back door,” Jake said, pointing at one of the arched bricked doorways.
“No, you can’t, since it’s a closet.”
Jake cut her a sideways look, pushing past her. “And this one?” he asked, gesturing to an identical one a foot over.
“Leads to the building next door.”
He frowned back at her. “Seriously?”
“That one too,” she said, pointing to a third. “Although Dad boarded them up inside years ago because I kept playing in them. Or he probably thought someone would rob us.”
“What were they for?” Jake asked, his nerdy old building curiosity resurrecting.
“The tunnels?” she said. “A lot of these old waterfront buildings have them.” She nodded to what was n
ow a closet. “This one used to go right out to the East River, with steps up to the boardwalk.”
“For?”
Harper shrugged, and for the moment her armor dropped.
“Smuggling? Prohibition? Who knows?” She ran a finger along one of the bricks. “They’re numbered,” she said. “See? It’s chipped out. One here. Two lines there.”
Jake ran his fingers along the three subtle grooves in the closest bricked entry, the cold stone speaking to him. This was what old structures were about. History. What they’d seen. The people that passed through them. He could feel the life that had lived there. The buzz. The energy. This was what he loved so much about old structures over new. New ones had no ghosts.
“There’s no telling what these were used for,” Jake said in awe. “If that one went out to the river, they could have smuggled anything.”
Harper’s lack of a response made him turn to look, and the expression on her face stopped him. Retrospection. Tinted with the narrow-eyed gaze of disgust.
“What?” he asked.
She shook her head and turned toward an opposite wall full of built-in stone shelves.
“Let’s just get what we came for.” She grabbed a tall step stool. “The CO2 canisters are on that bottom shelf.” She pointed with her elbow as she climbed. “The to-go bags aren’t used as much so they’re up here.” She stepped off the highest point of the stool onto a shelf itself and began scaling the wall.
“What are you—Harper, you’re gonna fall.”
“Done this my whole life,” she said. “I’m good.”
The front of one shelf crumbled dust onto Jake’s face, and he had to blink away.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You organized this.”
“Yes.”
“Why would you put things where you have to climb the wall?” he asked. “Please get down before you break something. Let me get them.”
“Excuse me, you’re heavier.” She balanced on one foot to stretch overhead. “Who would be breaking something?”
“Excuse me, I’m taller,” he said. “I don’t have to climb like a monkey.”
“Whatever, I’ve been doing this since—”
The sound of cracking stone was accompanied by a loud yelp as the foot Harper had all her weight on gave way in a shower of rocks and crumbled mortar. And to-go bags. Jake leapt forward as it rained down over his head and face, a big chunk bouncing off his shoulder while he groped the air to catch her.
Her leg went straight through his grasp and his right hand slid right up into her crotch as the rest of her body landed awkwardly on his head with an oomph of expelled breath, knocking him up against the wall.
“Shit!” she cried.
“Are you okay?” he grunted, his face in her belly, bracing himself on the wall so he didn’t drop her. He tried really hard to think about life and death and broken necks—not where his hand was.
“Yes, just can you—get your hand out of my hoo-hah?”
A chuckle escaped his throat as he shifted her weight and lowered her, moving his hand around to join the other one. On her ass.
“Your hoo-hah probably saved you from a broken skull,” Jake said.
“Okay, point taken,” she said. “Please put me—” Her words faltered as her breasts slid down over his face, and their eyes met as his mouth was cresting one of them.
He couldn’t blame her. He was a little speechless right then, too. When they were nose to nose, his grip on her tightened, holding her. He couldn’t help himself. Suddenly they were somewhere else. Pressed together in a heated embrace in another room. Another time. Another circumstance.
Her breathing quickened. He felt it on his face. And in that one second, nothing made sense. Something old and achingly familiar slammed into him like a wrecking ball and everything went upside down. Nothing in his world was where it should be. And the multitude of emotions that ran through her eyes didn’t help clear things up.
“Everything okay down here?” came a yell from the top of the stairs, breaking the moment and loosening his grip.
Harper sucked in a breath as she slid the rest of the way down his body and pushed back, raking fingers through her hair and fidgeting with her clothes as if they’d been caught doing the wild thing.
“Good,” she called back. “All good.”
“I heard a yell,” her dad said, heavy footsteps landing on the steps.
Shit.
Jesus. What was he doing, holding her like that? Thinking like that? Like he wasn’t the man behind the giant threatening to topple her world.
Her dad landed on the next-to-bottom step, his eyes knowing more than Jake wanted him to as he looked back and forth between them. The fact that Harper was brushing her clothes off didn’t help.
“You okay?” he asked her, narrowing his gaze back on Jake as if he’d defiled her.
“I’m fine, I just fell.” Harper nodded upward at the piece of stone shelf missing and gestured at the crumbled remains on the floor. “Jake caught me.”
Her dad’s expression softened to something less murderous.
“You were climbing the wall again, weren’t you?” he said. “We have a taller ladder in the closet, sweetheart, why do you insist on giving me a heart attack? You aren’t eight years old anymore.”
“Are you saying I’m heavy?” she asked, one hand on her hip and looking good enough to—no. No, she didn’t.
Get the CO2 and get the hell out of this room.
“I’m saying you keep breaking the shelves, we won’t have any left,” her dad said. “You could have gotten hurt. Good thing Jake was there to catch you.”
“Yeah.” She bent down to pick up the scattered to-go bags. “Good thing.”
Jake thought of his hand up between her legs, his grip on her ass, and her soft breasts pressing against his face.
“She was telling me about the old tunnels,” Jake said, ducking down to snatch a CO2 canister from a bottom shelf. Anything to distract himself. Frankie had been right. All of this was a bad idea.
“Yeah, a lot of history here in these old buildings,” her dad said. “Imagine the secrets these walls hold. Hundreds of years’ worth.”
Jake turned. “Did you say hundreds?”
“Sure. Our landlord told me once that these three—” He pointed to either side. “They’re the originals to the waterfront. Built in eighteen-hundred-something. You can see from the outside, the brick’s different. Bigger. And these tunnels—you know they’ve seen some crazy things.”
“All I saw in them were crawling things,” Harper said.
“Gonna be sad to see these old beauties come down,” he said.
Jake wasn’t listening anymore. “Do you mind if I take this up there and then take a break?” He held up the canister. “I need to make a phone call.”
“Go ahead,” Mr. Haley said.
Jake was halfway up the stairs before the second word was out of the older man’s mouth. By the time he made it out the front door, he had Marco on the line.
“Yes?” Marco said.
“I need a favor,” Jake said.
Chapter Four
Harper stepped into her apartment, flipped on the light, and tossed her bag on a chair, unable to stand the weight of one more thing.
She grabbed a bottle of water from her fridge and sank into an old worn-out chair that was so wrap-around-your-body delicious she couldn’t imagine getting rid of it. It had been her mother’s favorite chair, too. Harper remembered curling up by her side in this chair to read or ask her to play with her hair. She’d fall asleep with her nose buried in her mother’s shirt, surrounded by her scent and her warmth.
If she closed her eyes now, she could still smell her. Still feel her there. God, if only.
What would her mother do about the sale? Would she close the doors with grace and call it a good run, or would she fight for it? Or find another location and keep going?
Not to mention, losing her home.
There was no choice there.
She had to find another place to live. The thought made her stomach hurt.
She knew what her mother would tell her on that one. Relax. Embrace change. Be strong, get out there, find a place teeming with people and be social. She’d say that with a smile and a hug, knowing that those words would strike horror in her daughter’s introverted soul.
Harper loved being virtually the only one in the building, sharing it with someone possibly more hermit-like than she was. No obligatory small talk in the hallway. No building parties. Her job was social enough. At the end of a day of smiling and chatting it up with customers, pretending to be outgoing and engaging, she needed this haven. A place where solitude could be her friend.
The job might be going away. Acid built in her throat as she let that thought settle in. She’d been so blown away by the fear of losing the shop that the very real necessity of a new job hadn’t truly sunk in.
She closed her eyes and put the water bottle on the back of her neck, letting it cool her blood. It had run too hot most of the day.
Oh, God, that.
“No.”
Harper said the word out loud, and it sounded odd in the quiet room. Something about saying it aloud, however, made it stronger. Harder. And she needed both of those things now that Jake was back in the picture.
Damn it, why was Jake back?
Right when she had to make tough life changes, in walks the one guy who helped solidify her whole approach to life. Jake was the perfect example of stupid reckless choices. The one time in her life that she let go. That she took a risk, ignored her inhibitions, and let desire lead her.
It led her, all right. Led her right into a broken heart. Shattered all the self-esteem she’d managed to gather from his pretty words and heart-twisting heated looks.
She’d gone against her own grain to be with him, his nearness and his touch like an addiction. She’d given him her heart, her body, her trust. And she’d learned never to do that again.
Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since the bite of tort that morning. Which brought her right back to the moment Jake and Frankie walked in.
Hero in Disguise Page 3
