Finally, I shook my head at my reflection. “You're an idiot,” I said succinctly. Then, I turned on my heel and headed for the door.
When I got to the bar we had arranged to meet at, Harper was already there, sitting in the corner. She looked gorgeous, from her braided hair down to her long legs. She was wearing a sexy green dress that accentuated her curves in all the right ways. I paused for a minute, just staring at her, wanting to keep that image in my mind right there next to that image of her in her bed, the night that we’d had sex when I’d slipped out.
I smiled as I approached the
booth, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Hey,” I greeted. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me. You look incredible, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Harper said, ducking her head. It was hard to tell, given her dark complexion, but I was pretty sure she was blushing, and it made her all the cuter.
“You know, I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again after you disappeared like that,” I commented. It was what I’d been thinking for a few days, so it was no surprise to find the words on my lips, but I could have kicked myself for actually saying them.
Harper looked at me in surprise. “You were the one who disappeared,” she accused.
“We had a mission,” I told her. “All I had time for was to pack and head out. I thought you’d understand that. You’d been there long enough to know how things worked by that point.”
“I know,” Harper said unhappily, picking at the label on her beer bottle. She shrugged. “I guess I just started thinking that I might never see you again.”
“So you left.”
“There were other stories that needed to get done,” she said, but I could tell from the way she looked off to the side that there was something more to it than that.
Had she wanted more than she thought I was ready to give? Oh.
But no, I was probably reading too much into what she was saying. And anyway, what did that information give me anyway? I still wasn’t prepared to give her anything more than I’d been able to give her back then. In fact, I was probably less prepared to give her anything. Where once a fun relationship that mostly ended up with us naked between the sheets would have been something I might consider trying, even if it risked my job every time I ended up trysting with her, now there was the secondary consideration: Ava.
I still knew I shouldn’t be around the kid. That meant things were even more complicated now. There would be no fun flings; it was all or nothing.
The idea of having all of that, the family life and Harper and Ava, scared me so much that that was pretty much my answer right there. I couldn’t start that. Even if both of us wanted it.
Which I still wasn’t convinced of.
“So you’re still working for the Globe but just freelance now?” I asked, trying to change the topic. “Your choice or theirs? I know there’s been a lot of changes in the publishing world in recent years, with print turning into a dying art.”
“It was my decision,” Harper said, shrugging one shoulder. “Gives me a bit more flexibility on my stories. And my schedule.”
“You still seem pretty busy, though,” I pointed out. “You’ve got your name on a lot of important pieces over the past few years. I was pretty impressed.”
“I’m busy by choice,” Harper said. Yet again, she looked embarrassed by my praise, and I made a mental note to tone it down a little. “I like what I do; you know that.”
“I knew that in Kuwait,” I agreed. “I’m glad that hasn’t changed.”
“It’s weird getting to cover stuff here in Boston, though. It was a pretty big transition, coming back. I can only imagine how it must feel for you,” Harper said.
I made a face. “It actually hasn’t been as difficult as everyone kept telling me it was going to be,” I told her. Leaving out the whole fixation on her, things were pretty normal. I shrugged. “I got a job, I live with another former SEAL, and things are pretty good.”
“Why Boston?” Harper asked curiously. “Did you get to choose where you ended up?”
“I got the job—the dog training thing—through some contacts that I had,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t sure that I should tell her about that postcard of Cape Cod, or the fact that I’d clung to the idea of her, here, next to the ocean, all the sweetness in the world, for the rest of my time over there.
I wasn’t going to start something with her. I didn’t even have the guts to ask about Ava. I didn’t want her to feel like I was prying. I wanted to know more about the girl. And more about her father, too. Why wasn’t he in the picture anymore? Harper didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who would end up sleeping with some deadbeat. But then again, I imagined finding out that you were going to become a father might make a person react in unpredictable ways. Maybe he’d seemed like a good guy until she told him.
I never once considered that she might not have told the father that she was pregnant.
“But seriously, what’s been the hardest part about coming back?” Harper asked.
I snorted. “Figuring out where all the butter knives kept disappearing to,” I told her, only half-joking. When she gave me a quizzical look, I elaborated: “I knew we had, like, eight of them, for just the two of us. But I kept having a hard time figuring out where they were. They weren’t in the drawer or in the drying rack next to the sink. I thought Stone must be using them for something. When I confronted him about it, turns out they were all in the dishwasher the whole time. I’d just forgotten that we had a dishwasher.”
Harper burst out laughing. “God, bet that’s one of the things that they don’t think to go over in your reintegration and debriefing stuff.” She shook her head. “I know I was so happy with the first long shower I got to take back here. What a relief.”