She’d have to thank Violet for hooking her up, she thought drily.
The room was small but well done. There were towels twisted into swans in the bathroom, rose-scented bubble bath on the edge of the claw-foot tub, candles, lace curtains, red foil-wrapped heart chocolates on their pillows, a velvet love seat by the fireplace... Were this any other trip with any other man, Harper would be thrilled with the romantic vibe. It might help set the mood for their romantic ruse, but at the moment, pretending to have a boyfriend seemed pretty unimportant. Now she wished her only problem was being single.
As it was, it felt like the universe was just screwing with her.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Harper turned toward Sebastian with a frown. “What do you mean?”
He watched her, stroking his dark goatee with thought. “I mean, you’ve been acting funny since we got on the plane to come here. I thought it was nerves, but it’s been hours since we landed and you seem as distant as ever. We’re in Ireland. Everyone thinks we’re an adorable couple. You should be happy. What’s going on?”
It was just her luck that her fake boyfriend would be so in tune with her emotions. Quentin wouldn’t have noticed, but he was rarely concerned with anything but himself. She opened her mouth to tell him that she was fine, but his movement stopped her.
Getting up from the bed, he crossed the room and stood directly in front of her. He was close enough to reach out and touch. It took everything she had not to fall into his arms and let his strong embrace protect her from the outside world. But that felt a little too forward for their current situation.
Instead he stood close, without touching, looking deeply into her eyes. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing,” he added. “My mother carried the weight of the world on her shoulders but would always insist that everything was fine. It was something then and it’s something now. I know it when I see it.”
Harper wanted to tell him. She needed to tell someone. Maybe he would know what to do, because she sure as hell didn’t know how to handle this situation. She’d never been blackmailed before. Pulling away from him, she grabbed her purse off the entryway table and withdrew the small envelope from inside it. She handed it to Sebastian without a single word of explanation.
Sebastian’s gaze flickered quickly over the note. By the time he was finished, his mouth had fallen into a deep frown of displeasure. Combined with his dark hair and eyes, something about his usual easygoing demeanor seemed to shift to almost wicked. Like she’d angered Bruce Banner. She almost expected his eyes to glow red with fury when he looked up at her. Instead she found them unexpectedly soft with concern. He was irate, but not with her.
“Where did this come from?” he asked, holding the note up.
“It was on my seat when we got on the plane. That’s all I know.” Harper wrapped her sweater tighter around her, as though it would help. She wished she had something more to go on, but she didn’t. It was on generic white stationery and written with a block print text that anyone could do. There was nothing to give any kind of hint about who had left it there.
“Why didn’t you say something to me?” he asked.
“When? When we were trapped on a plane for eight hours with eighty other people—one of whom was probably the blackmailer? They were likely watching me, waiting for my reaction to finding their little love note. So I didn’t give them the satisfaction of panicking. I took my pills and went to sleep like it was nothing. But it’s not nothing. I’m worried sick about this whole thing. Thankfully you’re the only one to notice.”
Sebastian looked over the note again before handing it back to her. His mouth tightened with irritation, highlighting the sharp, square lines of his jaw and the dark goatee that framed it. “So you suspect it’s one of the wedding guests? Not the flight crew?”
Harper shrugged and tore her gaze from the tempting curve of his bottom lip. She wanted more than anything to focus on that. To lose herself in Sebastian’s kiss and forget about the mess she was in. She got the feeling he wouldn’t mind indulging her with a little distraction. But this wasn’t the time. Blackmail was serious business.
“I’d never seen any of the crew before. We were one of the last couples to board, so almost any of the guests could’ve put it on my seat. As you’ve read, I’m supposed to leave the money at the front desk, so it has to be someone that’s still here in Sligo with us. I’m sure the flight crew is back in Dublin.”
She sank onto the bed, clutching the note in her hand. Where she hadn’t allowed herself to really react on the flight, now, in the privacy of their hotel suite, she felt herself starting to emotionally unravel. “What am I going to do, Sebastian?” she asked with eyes squeezed tightly shut to trap the tears. She hated to cry.
She felt the bed sag beside her and Sebastian’s comforting warmth against her side. “The way I see it, you’ve got three options. One, you pay the blackmail. That will keep your secret under wraps, but you’re giving the blackmailer the upper hand. I don’t know what you’re being blackmailed for, but at any time they could demand more money to stay quiet. You’ll never really be free of the blackmailer’s hold on your life. But that’s a risk that might be worth taking. Only you can answer that question.”
She knew paying the blackmailer wasn’t the best choice, but it was the one she’d take if given the chance. Unfortunately that wasn’t an option for her. “I couldn’t pay it even if I wanted to. I told you before that I was in a tight spot financially. It’s possible that given some time I could go to a bank and get a loan with my apartment for collateral. But they want it tonight. By dinnertime. That’s just impossible, especially considering we’re in the middle of a remote estate in the Irish countryside. Even in Dublin, I couldn’t have pulled it off.”
“Okay,” Sebastian said after listening to her logic. “The second option would be to call the police. Blackmail is illegal. They could take prints off the card, perhaps leave a dummy package at the desk for the culprit to pick up and then arrest them. You’ll run the risk of the secret being exposed in the process, but they’ll get their punishment.”
Harper shook her head. She didn’t want cops involved. Not in this situation. It would be bad enough for her to lose her inheritance and for everyone to find out what she’d done. She didn’t need her story being in the newspapers, too.
“What’s option three?” she asked.
“Option three is to expose the secret yourself and take their power away.”
She could do that, but it would be a twenty-eight-million-dollar decision. Just the thought made her stomach start to ache with dread. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place. “I... I can’t. It will ruin everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
Harper felt Sebastian’s arm wrap around her shoulders. She couldn’t resist leaning into him and resting her head against his chest. It was soothing to listen to the beating of his heart and enjoy the warmth of his embrace. It had been a long time since she’d had someone in her life to hold her like this. To listen to her when she had worries on her mind. She knew she had been lonely, but she didn’t realize how deeply she’d felt it until this moment.
“Harper,” Sebastian said after a long silence with her in his arms. “I have to ask this. Whether or not you answer is up to you, but it’s hard for me to help you when I don’t know. What could you have done to be blackmailed for?”
She knew the question would come eventually. Harper dreaded having to explain her youthful stupidity to anyone, but for some reason it was worse to tell Sebastian. He was successful, like her brother. He never would’ve made the mistakes she’d made. But she needed to tell someone. To have one person on this trip she could trust. He was the only one she could eliminate as a suspect since he couldn’t possibly have left the note on her seat.
Harper sighed heavily and buried her face into his chest to avoid speaking for a little while longer. She pressed her nose to his collar and breathed in the spicy scent of his cologne and his skin. It was easy to stay there and pretend that everything would be okay for a little while longer.