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I’d spent the night at the house several times when I worked for Harper the first time around, always in a downstairs guestroom, on nights when I’d been caught up in a project and got too tired to drive home. This was something else entirely.
His bedroom was huge and primarily white with a few deep blue accents. Most of the color came from a series of ugly abstract paintings, which had involved smearing a lot of thick paint onto a canvas. I gestured at one of them and asked, “Is that really your taste?”
He glanced at it and shrugged as he took off his shoes. “I don’t hate it. When I bought this house, I hired a designer and let her do whatever she wanted, and she picked out the artwork along with everything else because I was busy shooting a movie in Vancouver. My only input was that I wanted the place to feel modern. It ended up a little cold for my taste, but it goes well with the architecture, so I guess I can’t complain.” He stretched his arms over his head and said, “I’m going to take a quick shower, because traveling always makes me feel grubby. I’ll be right back.”
When he returned a few minutes later with a towel around his hips, I was sitting with my luggage on one of a pair of chairs in the corner. I must have looked pretty forlorn, because he came over and knelt down beside me as he asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just don’t know what to do. Do I unpack my things, or live out of my suitcase? Should I ask for a drawer? Is there even room in your closet for my clothes? I know we weren’t going to call it moving in together because it seemed too soon, but if I’m staying a while, what do I do with my stuff?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I should have thought of that first thing. Come on, let’s make room for your things.”
The walk-in closet was bigger than the bedroom in my apartment, by a lot. When I followed him in there, he grabbed an armload of his shirts, lifted them and their hangers off the rack, and tossed them in a pile in the corner. He started to do the same to another section of clothes, but I stopped him and said, “That’s plenty. I don’t have that much stuff.”
“Okay. Hang on, I’ll empty some drawers.” The contents of two sock drawers were added to the shirt pile in the corner, and then he said, “I’ll go through that stuff later and sort it out. Please just leave it there for now, even though I know you’re probably tempted to clean it up right away.”
“You’re right, but it can wait until morning.”
“I’m going to go clean out a drawer in the bathroom. Is one enough?”
“That’s plenty. Thank you, Harper.”
He turned to me and drew me into his arms. “I want you to be happy here, Phee, so never hesitate to tell me when you need or want something. I can be dense sometimes, so I’m relying on you to help me.”
“You’re not dense, Harper. Far from it. And I’ll definitely tell you when I need something.”
“Do you hate the artwork? Is that why you asked? We can switch it out.”
It was surprising to see just how eager he was to please me. “It’s fine,” I told him. “I just wondered if it was really your style, because it doesn’t look like you.”
He grinned at me. “Doesn’t it? I’m basically a hot mess, and so are those paintings.” I laughed at that, and he asked, “Are you hungry? We can see what Tristan left us in the kitchen, and if it doesn’t appeal to you, I can make something else. Fair warning, that something else will probably be pancakes, since it’s the only dish I feel I’ve mastered at this point.”
I kissed him and said, “Pancakes are perfect.”
The next morning, I woke up alone in Harper’s very big, very white bed. That had almost always been the case in Hawaii too, because he tended to get up close to dawn, no matter what time he went to bed the night before. There was a mug and a silver carafe on the nightstand with a sticky note that said ‘drink me.’ I sat up and grinned, then poured myself a cup of coffee.
Once I finally got up, I showered and dressed, then opened the balcony doors to let in some fresh air. Down below me, the pool sparkled in the sunlight. A cute guy in shorts and a tank top was skimming the water with a net on a long handle, while another guy trimmed the hedges at the edge of the pristine lawn. Off to the left, Kel was feeding the chickens, and the housekeeper had collected some eggs and was bringing them inside.
