Page 87 of Seeing Harper

“Well, would you look at that? Summer somehow knows you’re already home,” Travis said.

“Apparently,” Harper said as her dad pulled into the driveway and brought the truck to a stop.

“Is Summer a good friend?” Joel asked, doing his best to establish some kind of truce between them.

“Yes. Best friend, and she doesn’t like being held in place or coerced by men who think they have certain rights over females either,” Harper snapped just as she looped her purse and her carry on bag over her shoulder, opened the door and slid out of the truck. She quickly grabbed her other bags out of the bed of the truck and sprinted across the yard toward Summer’s waiting car.

Summer pressed the button in her glove box to open the trunk and it sprung open.

Harper tossed her bags in, slammed the trunk closed, then hurried around to the passenger side of the car.

“Harper Elise!” Travis shouted.

“I’m staying with Summer until he’s gone.”

“You need to be here while we decide on what’s best for the farm and its agricultural direction in the future!” Travis demanded.

“Oh, I know. I will keep my word. I’ll be here bright and early in the morning,” she said as she opened the passenger side door and tossed her purse and carry-on bag in Summer’s general direction. She looked up at her father over the roof of Summer’s car again. “And don’t allow him to even peek into my room or I’m moving in with Summer permanently.” Harper got in the passenger side of Summer’s BMW and the car inched forward, before accelerating and pulling out onto the highway.

Travis stood his ground for a few moments before he turned and looked at Joel. “Boy, I think maybe you should go over exactly what happened one more time. And make sure you leave nothing out since I’m real good at detecting lies. If you have disrespected my daughter, you might not have as nice a stay as we’d hoped for.”

Chapter 15

Summer glanced at Harper, then into the rear view mirror for the fourth or fifth time since she’d seen the man, Joel, get out of Travis’s truck. “What the hell is going on? He’s pretty!”

Harper looked up from her cell phone and smiled at Summer sardonically. “Pretty does not always mean nice. And nothing going on that I can’t handle, just making a point. Give me one minute to call my mom.” Harper put her phone to her ear and waited until Libby answered. “Hey, Mom!”

“Harper, why are you calling? Didn’t you just pull up with Dad?”

“Yep. And now I’m driving away with Summer. I don’t like Joel at all. He’s pushy, he’s presumptive, he’s arrogant, he tried to coerce me into giving into an intimate relationship with him, and he’s a polished player. Just my opinions of course, but I refuse to be with him any longer than is necessary. I’ll give you all the details later, but I have a headache. I’m staying with Summer until he goes back to Utah. I love you, I miss you, I’m good.”

“Don’t you dare hangup yet. You sure you’re good? He didn’t do anything…”

“Not that I couldn’t handle. But, the honest truth is that he’s an arrogant prick. He decided because he wanted to be with me, I should just accept it, and possibly even be happy about it, who knows? I’m not interested at all, and he so is, and highly offended that I didn’t feel the same way. He thought because he took me to dinners and gave me rides to the show and back despite the fact that it was all his idea, I never asked for any of it, Dad did, though, that I should have been more grateful. And he was pushy, love-bombing and thinking he could force me into letting him get closer, physically. Didn’t happen and just really pissed me off so I slammed some extreme boundaries into place.”

“Are you really okay?” Libby asked.

“I’m fine. He didn’t hurt me, just made me unreasonably angry. I thought about it on the way home on the plane, and I did not overreact. The thing he said just really convinced me that I didn’t react enough. And honestly, the only reason I didn’t is because Dad is so worried about working with his company. I’ll leave you to decide if I overreacted or not later, but I just don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

“How extreme was your reaction? Does he need stitches?”

Harper grinned and glanced at Summer who was grinning also. “No, I didn’t hit him. But I’m pretty sure he could use a splint for his wrist. I didn’t break it, but I have no doubt it’s hurting. And Dad is acting like it’s no big deal and it really makes me angry that instead of reading this guy the riot act, he’s being all understanding and welcoming him into our home, where I live!”

“I think he’s still in business mode. I’ll talk to him about it.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow to do my part when this guy goes out and makes his assessment, and to add my two cents worth of opinion based on what I learned at the trade show, but I will not spend a single night under any roof with him. Not even my own.”

“Baby, you know I’ll go get my bat if you need me to and start swinging — even if you don’t need me to — but for you to say you are unreasonably angry in one breath, and you can’t even stay under the same roof with him in the next breath while saying you didn’t react enough shows me clear as day that something happened that your father isn’t aware of. I know you’re angry, but you also seem overly emotional. You get angry and react to things all the time, but there’s usually not a lot of emotion otherwise. Is everything else okay?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

“Alright, I’ll respect your privacy while you work through whatever else is going on other than this crapwad your father has brought into our house. But I don’t like it. I want to confront him right now.”

“He did not sexually assault me. He did sexually harass me, constantly. He even upgraded my room to a suite so there’d be plenty of room if I wanted to invite him up.”

“He said that?”

“He said somebody, not himself, but we all know what he meant. Like I should have been grateful or something.”