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“Well, yeah, but the rolling of the eyes never came up.”
“Oh, that’s probably because it’s not a bad habit. I did it all the time,” Sadie offered.
“Me too,” Harmony lifted her hand.
“Oh look. An organic red, let’s have that,” I said in hopes of distracting them from the topic. They were right, I didn’t roll my eyes, I had other issues, like always trying to top from the bottom, or at least that was what Jacob called it. In my mind, I was just being ambitious.
“Oh look, I win,” Harmony added haughtily.
“Well, not technically, but it is your party.” Sadie gave her an exaggerated eye roll.
Oh-oh, this wasn’t going well at all. “Here, let me open that for you, H.”
I grabbed the bottle and went digging for an opener.
“I want white. Can I 0pen this one?” Sadie asked Harmony.
“Hell, ya, it’s my bachelorette party. We can have whatever we want.”
Whew! That comment went far in returning the laughter to the party. The doorbell rang and in walked Catherine Denton. We’d only met at the reception breakfast, but I knew Harmony had worked closely with her and her husband Sam, who’d gone on the campout. Harmony and Jillian scurried out of the kitchen to greet Catherine while Sadie and I wrestled with the wine bottles.
A moment later, the doorbell rang again. Sadie popped her cork and went looking for glasses. I was about to ask her for help with my cork, as I’d never removed one before, when we heard more voices down the hall.
“Do you know them?” I whispered and handed my bottle over.
She extracted the cork and listened. “Yep.” Her lips quirked up into a smile similar to Jacob’s. Did everyone have a side smirk but me?
“I believe that’s the twins, Sam and Savannah. Catherine for sure. That dominant musical tone belongs to her and… oh,that’s Emily. Her man, Professor Dalton, tagged along on the campout.”
“Is he the one who helped Harmony become a writer?”
“The very same. And that last voice sounds like Moira. Have you met her yet?”
“Mmm is she a short, perky redhead with glittering green eyes?”
Sadie laughed. “The very one.”
I had seen all these people and probably met them during breakfast at the reception, but I’d been so wrapped up in the sexual tension between me and Jacob, my memories were vague at best.
A moment later, the noisy group of clucking hens entered the kitchen. So much big energy amongst them, including Harmony’s. I quickly poured some wine and beelined it out of there and straight to Harmony’s office, quietly closing the door.
I plopped down on the antique chaise lounge I recognized as being from her father’s study in her parents’ apartment. I thought she’d gotten rid of everything when she took over the family fortune but was happy to see something familiar at last.
I sipped my wine and gazed around the space. The room represented a version of Harmony I didn’t know. Except for the chaise I reclined on, there was nothing else in the room that was from her past, at least none that I could see.
I thought about my entire life being packed up in boxes that now took up most of the free space along the hallways of Jacob’s home. Nothing I had was older than seven years, yet I held on to it all like it was a lifeline. It was a mystery to me now that I had a different perspective to look at, that what I was doing wasn’t mainstream.
When Harmony came to Rawhide, she’d brought her wardrobe, which is what mattered most to her. When Jacob came to Rawhide, he’d done the same. Perusing his home thatfirst time, I’d noted then that nothing reflected his past, just a few photos he had lying around.
Yet here I was with my life packed in boxes, right down to the newer copy of the graphic novel I’d chased down on Amazon that had been on the bed the night of the fire.
I took a gulp of wine, enjoying the slightly numbing effects that allowed me to see perspective. Something Harmony had told me on one of our many conference calls was she drank a glass of red wine in the evening when she wrote. The next day, she would drink coffee and edit what she’d written the night before. When I questioned why, she quoted a famous saying, “write drunk and edit sober”.We’d giggled about it at the time, but in retrospect, I wonder if she really did that. Probably not. I couldn’t visualize Gray allowing her to get drunk every night.
I stood up, a little unstable on my feet, and gripped the back of the chaise until the dizziness passed. Jacob had said that most of what Harmony had told me was inspired from various books she’d read.
Only one way to find out. On the wall opposite the lounger was a bookshelf. Many of the books it held had various colored sticky notes poking out of them. I grabbed one and flipped open the page containing the first yellow sticky labeledM.POV Thoughts.
Jaxon wanted nothing more than to rip her panties in two and watch them flutter to the ground. It would be worth the look of surprise on her face he had no doubt she’d be wearing before he had Isabelle get to her knees in front of him.
