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“Today was great,” she said. “Thanks for indulging my picnic craving.”
“You’re the one who fed us…again.” Conor placed the empty picnic basket on the floor. “We should be thanking you.”
“Prior to moving here, I could probably count on one hand the number of weekends I didn’t work, with fingers left over. You guys always make the weekends so much fun. And the weeknights. And lunchtime,” she added with a laugh.
Luca reached out, tugging her toward him. She expected him to give her a hug, so she was shocked when he broke the rules, pulling her chest flush against his, their faces close. “You’re easy to be with, sunshine. Spending time with you,” he glanced over her shoulder to where Conor stood behind her, “and Conor has become my favorite thing to do.”
Then he backed his words up with a hot kiss that was soooo not responsible.
Yes! This was what Harper had been hoping for. She was tired of denying herself what she wanted. A lifetime of dieting had been child’s play compared to abstaining from kissing Luca and Conor.
She behaved equally irresponsibly when she wrapped her arms around his neck, building on his passionate kiss by adding her tongue to the mix. Luca’s hands gripped her waist tightly, as if he was afraid she’d come to her senses at any moment and pull away.
“Luca,” she breathed, her lips still touching his.
One of his hands left her waist, and it wasn’t until she felt Conor’s chest brush against her back that she realized Luca had beckoned him forward.
“I thought we agreed—” Conor started, though he sounded a hell of a lot less convinced this was a bad idea than he had three weeks earlier.
“I never agreed,” Luca interjected.
Harper considered that, then realized he was right. While she and Conor had determined it would be a mistake, Luca had been quiet. Never uttering a word.
Conor released a long, slow sigh, and she held her breath, waiting for his continued refusal.
Before he could say anything, another sound captured her attention. It sounded like rain, which was impossible because it was still a beautiful, sunny day outside.
“Is that water?” she asked, when she realized Luca had taken a step back, hearing the same thing she was.
“Yeah.” Luca looked around the room, then toward the ceiling. “It sounds like it’s coming from upstairs.”
Harper was sorry she’d pointed it out when Luca and Conor both stepped away, Luca turning and walking toward the kitchen.
There were going to be two entrances to her apartment, the original one at the front of the building, accessed from the street, and the new one Luca and his crew had just finished putting in a few days ago that was off the kitchen. Luca hadn’t liked the idea of Harper having to go outside late at night after closing the restaurant to get into her apartment, so he’d created a safer inside entrance.
That was the one he was walking to now, she and Conor in his wake. They climbed the stairs, following the sound of running water until they reached what had been the bathroom in one of the former apartments. The room was one of the few that hadn’t been gutted yet.
“What the fuck?” Luca said as they spotted water gliding across the hallway floor. He quickly ran into the bathroom and crossed the small space, splashing and almost slipping in his rush to turn off the water. The bathtub was filled to the brim, overflowing onto the floor.
“Why is the water running?” Conor asked as they looked around. There was at least an inch of water on the bathroom floor, flowing out into the hallway.
“I don’t know.” Luca reached down into the tub, his arm causing a waterfall as more water splashed onto the floor. “Fuck. Someone plugged the drain with cement!”
“On purpose?” Harper was aware it was a stupid question the second she asked it.
“It looks like,” Luca replied, frowning. “No one was supposed to be here again until Monday morning. Do you know how much damage this could have done? It would have been worse than the fire.”
The second he said the word fire, he and Conor exchanged a look.
“This has to stop,” Conor murmured, pulling his phone out of his pocket, tapping on the screen.
“Checking the cameras?” Luca asked.
Conor nodded, clicking several times. “Yeah. Need to give it a second to load up.”
Luca rung out the bottom of his T-shirt, which was now dripping with water. “There’s no way these things aren’t connected. We assumed the space heater had been brought in by a squatter because there hadn’t been any other logical answer. Copper gets stolen from construction sites way too often. But this? This was done deliberately.”
The idea that someone would purposely try to destroy what they were building was hard for Harper to wrap her head around. “But who? And why?”
