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“Harper...”
“Thank you,” she said quickly, and looked away.
Fuck.
She was going to kill him with this hot and cold bullshit. How long would she deny her desire for him?
The problem was, Harper wasn’t the kind of woman who wanted him for his power or his money. She was the kind of girl who wanted a husband and picket fence. The exact opposite of what he could offer.
Everything about this was a bad idea.
She knew it. He knew it.
Yet here he was, not walking away, and he didn’t know why.
“You’re welcome.” he replied.
“So what’s it like living in Manhattan?” she asked, swirling her wine around in her glass.
Daniel tilted his head and pressed his lips together. He’d lived in New York City all his life. Sure, his address had improved over the years as Dufort Hotels began to grow, and then as a young adult, he had quickly become wealthy in his own right.
Daniel had shares in many other enterprises, and though he didn’t have much time to focus on them himself, he hired experts to grow his money.
Another reason his lawyer would be busy right now, ensuring everything he owned was rock solid and protected in his trust. Because of his role as CEO, all his financial assets were in public record.
Mostly.
“Cold right now,” Daniel replied, noticing Harper had unconsciously moved closer to him, their legs touching. “Busy. Noisy. Vibrant. Have you visited?”
She shook her head.
He studied her. “You’d hate it.”
“Why? How can you say that when you barely know me?” she asked, laughing at him.
“I know people,” he replied.
People like Harper got eaten alive in New York City. She was too nice. Not that he thought she wasn’t smart—she most definitely was—but there was a purity about her that would be lost after trying to survive in the big apple. It ate people and spat them out. “Tell me about New Zealand.”
She let him get away with his comment and described her country. “It’s a lot like Hawaii. It’s a set of islands that’s isolated from most of the world. It’s very green. We have some big cities, and the people are pretty friendly, but without the aloha spirit, unfortunately.”
Given her connection to Hawaii, it shouldn’t have surprised Daniel that Harper understood that aloha was more than just a greeting. It was an essence, or energy, which existed on the islands and within the culture of the people.
He wondered why it had taken him so long to return to Hawaii. Until he’d become CEO, he had regularly traveled the world visiting London, LA, Sydney, Paris, Rome, and many of their other hotels.
Hawaii had always been his favorite.
Daniel watched Harper tapping her foot lightly to the music and take in her surroundings. From time to time she pulled her hair over one shoulder and flicked it back and forth. She had no idea the impact she was having on him and many of the men nearby.
But it was only him she was giving little smiles to and blushing. Whether she was aware of it or not.
And fucking hell, he felt like superman.
From the moment they’d met, she had been so defensive, and now she had her walls down, relaxed. Still, he wondered what might make a woman be like that.
He suspected he knew.
It wasn’t just her father who had deserted her. A man she loved had. At a guess fairly recently. Harper was a young woman. Daniel put her somewhere in her mid-twenties. If she had been with her boyfriend for a few years, it meant she hadn’t had much experience with men.
He wasn’t saying she was a virgin, not at all. She was well aware of the sexual energy between them, and he could see in her eyes she knew what to do with it. Harper was simply fighting it.
Now he knew why. Or strongly suspected, but he was pretty confident he was right.
She might have been a woman he wanted to fuck, but she wasn’t someone you fucked and left.
And that was a problem.
