Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 79898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
I clenched my bag of tacos tightly. After seeing Harper with the same meal, I’d had the immediate compulsion to copy her, if only just to taste the same thing in my mouth that she had tasted in hers. It was insane, but here I was, out fifteen bucks for three measly tacos.
“I’ve hardly been a monk,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. “I still go out, you know.”
“Not nearly as much,” Clint countered. “And not just because I’ve got a ball and chain now, either.”
I didn’t say anything – Clint was unfortunately correct. I’d still slept around here and there, but not nearly like I had before I’d slept with Harper. She had ruined one-night stands for me. Back when I was in my early thirties, there had been nothing more exciting than going out with a woman and fucking her, then ditching her as soon as I’d gotten my nut off. It had been like a game. She’s a nine, clearly, can I get her to suck my dick in the bathroom? Or, oh, this one’s a redhead ... will she come home with me if I make a crack about her carpet matching the drapes?
After Harper, it had stopped being as fun. Ironically, that was just when I’d become as attractive as ever to women – it was if they could sense that I wasn’t desperate to get into their sweet panties, wasn’t hungry enough to fuck anything that walked in front of me.
“What’s the story?” Clint asked. “You date her or something?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. She used to work for me.”
Clint snorted. “And you chased off a honey like that? Jesus, man, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
I groaned. “You remember a few years ago, when my parents kept getting on my case about getting married? And they were coming for a visit, and my father kept threatening me?”
“Yeah, but they weren’t like, serious, man,” Clint said.
“You don’t know them,” I said. “They were very serious. And ... I don’t fucking know, I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to fake it, just for their visit. And I asked her – Harper – if she’d do it. She was my assistant at the time.”
“Well, fuck,” Clint said. “Not a great idea, bro. Women find that kind of shit insulting.”
“She found it so insulting that she quit on the spot,” I said, then hesitated. As close as Clint and I were, I didn’t know if I should tell him about the insanely hot sex or not.
I kept my mouth shut.
“It would have just been for a weekend,” I explained, feeling more cowardly by the second. “But she got so fucking pissed. And then she completely disappeared – but she told me that she’d been living in Boston, and that she’d just come back here.”
“Maybe she was living with a dude and it didn’t work out,” Clint offered.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t,” Clint said. “That’s the point. You have no idea what she’s doing here – hell, for all you know, it might be because of you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but his words had gotten my hopes up slightly.
Still, there was no way that Harper had come back just for me.
I got up and paced back and forth, running a hand through my hair with one hand and still crushing the bag of overpriced tacos with the other.
“What are you gonna do, man?” Clint asked.
I shrugged. “Not much I can do,” I replied. “She didn’t say anything else – I just told her to call me sometime.”
“Maybe she will,” Clint said.
I shrugged again. “Maybe,” I said darkly. “But I doubt it.”
Back in my office, I couldn’t concentrate on work. I had two college kids with great futures ahead of them in the football world and if you’d asked me, I couldn’t have even told you their names. All I could think about was Harper – her slender frame, that shiny brown hair, her sparkling green eyes that telegraphed her wit and intelligence.
Fuck, I wanted her again.
I felt like a stalker as I pulled up my browser and Googled her name. Harper Willow wasn’t a common name, and it didn’t take me long to find her Facebook page. Most of the information was private, but I saw her employment listed at an internet fashion start-up, HAUTESCENE.
And with a few more minutes of searching, I saw that HAUTESCENE had their office in a building not two blocks from Ulrich Sports.
God, she’s so close I can practically taste her, I thought as I stared at the screen. Fuck me!
I wasn’t just missing her body, though. As I watched Portia make mistake after mistake through the frosted glass of my office wall, I was missing Harper’s intelligence and savvy personality a lot more than anything else. She’d never made a mistake. She had been the only assistant who could hack it at Ulrich Sports, the only one who had lasted a year. She’d always had great ideas. She’d worked her ass off.