She tossed her bag onto the passenger seat and climbed in, started her car.
“What's up with Harper?” I asked, lifting my chin in her direction. I was breathing hard but even. I wasn’t too worn down that I couldn’t hold a conversation as I kept pace. Sweat dripped down my temples, and there was no way I could wipe it away. I had my rhythm, the plastic rope clacking on the concrete floor.
Gray shrugged, leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. He wore his usual T-shirt—stained with sweat—and fighter shorts, plus his running shoes. No one would know by looking at him in the gym he preferred snap shirts and cowboy hats. After a quick head tilt to the guy who came through the door, he replied, “Emory won't say.”
This answer meant he, too, knew something was up. I hadn’t told him about the elevator freak out.
While I appreciated Emory’s ability to keep secrets like a bank vault, it would be really helpful to be able to figure Harper out. Was it claustrophobia? Obviously, she wasn’t bothered by being in a car. Did that mean she wouldn’t like to have her wrists pinned as she fucked?
I blew out a deep breath at the idea of having her beneath me. Shit. I was in trouble.
“I do know she's got issues with her family and was looking for a new place to live that was safe.”
“Safe?” I asked, wondering what that meant. Safe, as in, the house was falling down or safe, like her mother was a serial killer?
“After the incident at Emory's house last summer.” He bit off the words remembering what happened. Some lunatic had been beating up women for their pain pills, and Emory, who volunteered as a nurse practitioner at a family clinic, got in the guy’s way. He’d broken into her house to mess with her, and she’d escaped by climbing down a fucking rope ladder. I’d been there when Gray got to her. While she hadn’t been hurt, it had been a bad situation, and no doubt she had nightmares. Gray probably, too. If Harper had lived on the same street, it was likely she’d worried for her own safety after that.
“I thought maybe that was the reason, but when Emory mentioned a whack family, I started to think differently,” he added.
“Everyone's got a crazy family,” I countered. I didn’t really have parents as much as fucking criminals who’d spawned me. They were dead, so that made things simpler. I seriously doubted Harper’s mom was a drug addict, and her father made her be his getaway driver in armed robberies. No, probably her only parental problem as a kid was to worry if her parents would show up for her field hockey game. She was a princess.
Gray only arched a brow at my response, and I remembered the shit with his dad. Now he was an asshole. He owned Green Acres, a bunch of retirement communities all across the West. He might be successful, but he was a piece of work. A kid beater and worse.
Gray looked away from the window and focused on me. “All I know is, watch out for her.”
I stopped the jump rope, even with time left, let it hang down in front of me. I took a deep breath, then another, wiped the back of my hand over my temple to catch the dripping sweat. “You think someone's trying to hurt her?”
Not on my fucking watch.
He shrugged, pushed off the wall. Grabbing his towel from a nearby bench, he wiped it over his sweaty head. “Perhaps, but while she can run faster and farther than anyone I've ever seen, sometimes you can't escape your problems. I think she's got some stuff she's working on.”
Somehow, I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about elevators.
5
HARPER
“Did you get a new outfit for the holiday party?” Sarah asked. She stuck her head in my office door, her eyes wide with female glee at the idea of a new outfit.
“I won’t be here,” I replied, glancing up at her.
I sat behind my desk, piled high with papers that needed to be graded and notes from the latest article I was writing on the use of the Latin Cross layout in later cathedral structures in northern Europe. It was the last week of the semester, and everyone was in the chaos and insanity of exams before the long winter break. Instead of going to the department holiday party this weekend, I was going to the UK. I had to do research for my latest paper that was being published, and the only free time I had from school was between semesters.
The excitement slipped from her face. “That’s right. I forgot.” Then she smiled again, sighed. “God, a vacation in England. You can meet up with that guy, what’s his name? Giles?”
Giles. A professor at the university in London, or lecturer as he was called in the UK. A one-night stand I’d told Sarah about. I may have embellished him a bit more than what it really was. We’d hit it off then gotten off in the supply closet on the third floor of the arts building. I hadn’t lingered and hadn’t seen him since. I barely thought about him.
But, Sarah was little Miss Matchmaker, and having a possible boyfriend in another country allowed me to string her along and keep any blind dates she might scrounge up from happening. I let her think Giles and I emailed each other and did stuff when I was in the UK, which was fairly often.
“Right. Giles,” I replied.
“You’ll be there for Christmas, won’t you? If not, you’ll come over.”
She was married, had two kids who were in elementary school and a white Labrador whose shedding hair clung to all of Sarah’s clothes. Going to her house for Christmas dinner would be a three-ring circus and remind me of a family life I never had.
“I will be away, yes,” I replied vaguely.
“Dinner with Giles and his family?” she asked hopefully.