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The car smelled amazing. Because it had been sitting in the hot sun, the butter-soft leather was warm and scented with the owner’s subtle aftershave.
Cate leaned back and rested her head. She was conscious the vehicle was moving, but little else impinged on her trance of utter disbelief and pain.
Harry drove as he did most things, with quiet confidence. At one point, he reached into the back seat and handed her a bottle of water. “You need to drink this. It was hot as hell in that church.”
She uncapped the bottle and downed half the water, wondering if her crushing headache was the product of dehydration or shattered dreams.
They zipped along Peachtree Street amidst lushly flowering landscapes and eye-catching glass skyscrapers. Buckhead on a lazy summer afternoon was Atlanta at her finest. This upscale neighborhood had been Cate’s stomping grounds since her father relocated the family from Blossom Branch to Atlanta more than a decade ago.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked dully, not really caring, but feeling the need to fill the awkward silence.
He shot her a brief sideways glance. “My place.”
Cate nodded. Made sense. The destination wasn’t far, and it had the added bonus of building security, which meant no one could get to her.
Harry, a decade her senior, had been a wunderkind architect who graduated from business school a few years after the financial crisis of ’08. Thanks to his genius and a driving urge to succeed, he had waded into the midst of the recovery. He’d begun by building houses. Now his preference was commercial real estate. Already, two iconic structures bearing his stamp graced the Atlanta skyline.
Though his architectural firm had fancy offices downtown, Harry preferred working in the privacy of his home study offsite. He was a distant part of her social circle in Atlanta because he was from Blossom Branch, also. There was something about that small, wonderful town that drew its expats together—like alumni who bonded over shared memories.
Because Harry was older, though, if he and Jason hadn’t been cousins, she probably would barely know him. Cate had been to one dinner party with Jason at Harry’s place, but that was three years ago, and she hadn’t been back since.
They drove into the underground parking garage and slid into a numbered spot. Harry came around and helped her out. A nearby couple goggled at them, but Harry shielded Cate with his large frame. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s get you upstairs.”
The elevator ride was swift and silent. Harry’s penthouse apartment occupied half of the top floor. The luxurious home boasted floor-to-ceiling windows in the public spaces and breathtaking views of the Atlanta skyline. Far in the distance, the unmistakable, monolithic, dome-shaped Stone Mountain marked the other horizon.
Cate sank into a chair, her legs literally unable to support her any longer.
Harry crouched at her side and wrapped a small, fuzzy blanket around her shoulders.
She clutched it tightly. Somewhere on the ride over, she had started shaking and couldn’t seem to stop. “Why are you being nice to me?” she asked. His usual MO was to tease her unmercifully and snipe at her clothes and her friends and her social life. In his presence, she always felt like a stupid, gawky kid.
Harry’s lopsided smile held so much sympathy her throat ached. He smoothed a stray hair from her forehead. “You’ve had a rough day, Cate. I’ve decided to cut you a break.” He put the back of his hand to her cheek and frowned. “You’re in shock, I think. I’m going to call my doctor and see what to do.”
“Okay...”
His words didn’t really make any sense. Her whole body ached with exhaustion. Pulling the warm cover all the way around herself, she drew her knees to her chest and rested her head against the arm of the chair.
It might have been minutes or hours later when Harry returned. “Open your mouth,” he said. “This is a mild sedative. The doc said it will help. Wash it down with this milk.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like milk.”
“Doesn’t matter. Open up.”
Protesting was too much work. She swallowed the pill along with the cold liquid and made a face. “You’re a bully.”
He chuckled. Scooping her up in his arms, he took the handful of steps to the sofa and laid her down as if she were unable to walk on her own. Without asking permission, he carefully removed her veil and headpiece and all the hairpins that were holding it in place. “I think you should sleep for a little while. We’ll talk when you wake up.”
That sounded ominous. “You won’t leave me?” She clutched the edge of the coverlet, hating the feelings of vulnerability and utter despair that stripped her raw and made her fearful.
His expression softened to something resembling gentleness, thoughgentlewas the last word anyone would use to describe Harry. If Jason was her dear Ashley Wilkes, then Prescott Harrington III, was definitely the dangerous rogue Rhett Butler. One never knew what he was thinking...
Grabbing a second blanket from a stash under the coffee table, he smoothed it over her lower half until not a single swathe of tulle or bare ankle was showing. Then he stood and looked down at her with his arms folded over his chest. “Sleep, Cate.”
His expression was inscrutable. She was nothing more to him than an experiment, a slide under a microscope. Suddenly, she blinked. “Why were there sedatives in your medicine cabinet?”
He shrugged. “I had to have a complicated dental procedure several months ago. They told me to take the drug the night before and the morning of so I would be calm.”
“And did you do it? Was this pill you gave me a leftover?”
