A Week With The Best Man. Ally Blake

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       CHAPTER TWO

      HARPER PACED UP and down the long wall of the Chadwicks’ library. A clock somewhere struck seven, and her eyes flickered to the open doorway as she waited impatiently for her sister to appear.

      It had been hours since Lola had burst into tears.

      In the several beats it had taken Harper to come to terms with the fact her sister was sobbing in her arms, Grayson Chadwick had filled the doorway of Harper’s room.

      With a grunt he’d lumbered inside, climbed up onto her bed and wrapped them both in a bear hug.

      At which point Lola had come up laughing, wiping her tears, looking from fiancé to sister with shining blue eyes, claiming she had no idea why she’d broken down. Likely nervous excitement, over-stimulation, and pure joy that Harper was finally here.

      Harper hadn’t pushed it. Not then. Not there. It had been clear Lola had not wanted to appear upset in front of Gray, which rang all kinds of fresh alarm bells.

      Lola had pushed away from the bed. “You must be exhausted. If you look in the bedside drawer you’ll find I’ve left you a little relaxer.”

      “Wow, you guys are close,” Gray had murmured.

      Lola had smacked her fiancé, her hand bouncing off his pec. “Not that kind of relaxer, you degenerate. A yoga nidra. I bookmarked links to some awesome guided meditations in my favourite yoga book so she can centre herself before heading down for dinner. If I know my sister, and I do know my sister, she’ll need it to handle your parents. I’ll come find you in the library,” she’d said, pointing a finger at Harper. “Seven p.m. sharp.”

      Then they’d piled out of her room, Cormac the last to go.

      “A little prolonged relaxation should never be underestimated,” he’d said with a nod towards her bedside drawer, before he’d caught her gaze, delivered a knockout smile, rapped a knuckled fist against the doorway and was gone.

      Harper swallowed. And rolled her shoulders.

      The moment she had her little sister alone Harper would get to the bottom of Lola’s tears. Would see how much Lola really knew about her future in-laws. And then she would fix everything.

      A scrape of shoe against floor had Harper turning to the library door and once again staring down Cormac Wharton.

      He’d changed into a charcoal suit, sharp white shirt open at the neck, no tie. He looked slick and relaxed. Debonair and yet with the unshaved scruff on his jaw a little rough around the edges. Forcing her to admit—if only to herself—that, while the boy had been swoon-worthy, the man was a far more dangerous beast.

      She said nothing as she waited for his gaze to finish its travels over her.

      She’d chosen a fortifying dress in which to meet the Chadwicks; midnight-blue and dramatically detailed, with a full skirt and fitted bodice, the sharp horizontal neckline and long sleeves leaving neck and shoulders bare.

      Cormac’s eyes paused at her ankles, her waist, her décolletage, before they swept swiftly back to hers. Her breath snagged in her throat as their gazes clashed.

      “Evening, Harper,” he said as he prowled into the room.

      She nodded, not yet trusting her voice. And began to pace as well. “No sign of Lola on your way down?”

      “I wasn’t upstairs. I only just arrived back.”

      She shot him a look. “Quick commute from the pool house?”

      “The pool house? I haven’t stayed there in years. How did you even know about the pool house?”

      Dammit. Harper feigned interest in the wall of books when her attention was wholly on where he was in the room relative to her. “Lola talks. She keeps me up-to-date with the goings on in Blue Moon Bay.”

      “But that was before Lola’s time. You been keeping tabs on me, Harper?”

       Double dammit.

      “Hardly.”

      Cormac stopped prowling to flick a speck of lint off the back of a chair and she came to a halt. When he began pacing once more, so did she. The smile tugging at the corners of his eyes grew into a grin as it became all too obvious they were chasing one another around the couch.

      Harper sat on the soft leather lounge and reached down to pick up a book from the coffee table, as if she’d been planning to do so the entire time.

      Cormac moved to take the other end of the same chair, lifting an ankle to rest it on a knee, stretching a lazy arm across the back of the seat, his fingers curled mere inches from her bare shoulder. “I wouldn’t have picked you as a fan of bird-watching.”

      “Hmm?”

      Cormac motioned to the book she was pretending to admire.

      She placed it back on the table and gritted her teeth.

      “You’re right about Lola,” Cormac said.

      Harper couldn’t help herself; she glanced his way, cocking a solitary eyebrow to show her care in anything he had to say was limited.

      “She talks,” he said. “She talks a lot about you.”

      “And I talk a lot about her.” Or she used to. Harper struggled to remember the last time she’d met someone new, someone she felt comfortable enough to talk about her sister with. “She’s my everything. And has been for a very long time. The fact that we live on opposite sides of the world hasn’t changed that.”

      “I’m going to tell you what she says about you too,” said Cormac, “because you looked a little delicate when we left you in your room earlier. Like you could do with a boost.”

      Harper opened her mouth to tell him where he could put his boost, but Cormac got there first.

      He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked back at her as he said, “I’ve never met anyone as proud of another person as Lola is of you.”

      Harper’s СКАЧАТЬ