Spring River Valley: The Winter Collection (Boxed Set) (9 page)

“You work all week long.” This wasn’t a road he wanted to go down at the moment. No use lying in bed trying to figure out why they would never work out as a couple.

She sat up, smiling. “Apparently I work weekends too, making centerpieces. And…oh crap. It’s Wednesday.”

“Yeah?”

“Part of that pesky week I have to work.” She threw herself across him, which he didn’t mind in the least, and grabbed her alarm clock off the nightstand. “I’ve got an hour and a half. Whew. Can I make you some breakfast?”

“Baby, I just had breakfast.” He rolled her over and kissed the back of her neck and down her spine. She squealed and wiggled out from under him, grabbing the sheet to wrap herself in.

“Ah, you’re clever. Distracting me like that. You can shower first if you want. I’ll make some toast and coffee.”

“Don’t worry about me.” He scooped up his clothes from the floor. “I’ll slip out quietly so the neighbors won’t gossip
, and I’ll go home. I don’t want to mess up your morning routine.”

She cocked a brow and gave him a sassy smirk. “Are you implying it’s routine for me to have
gentlemen callers in my bed on weekday mornings?”

He winked. “Only when you drink.”

She threw a pillow at him. “I’ll meet you downstairs. Bathroom is across the hall.”

He grudgingly obeyed and hurried off to the bathroom to slip on his hopelessly wrinkled shirt and pants. His tie hadn’t made it to her house
, and he only hoped none of the TF staff would have cause to go into the bridal suite first thing this morning. He hadn’t figured out how he would explain parts of his wardrobe having been left there.

* * * *

Harper threw on a nightshirt and a pair of sweats and ran downstairs, her heart thumping wildly and her stomach doing flip-flops. She’d really done it. She’d enticed Grant into her bed, and she wasn’t the least bit sorry. On the contrary, she felt fantastic. The thought of him, those deep blue eyes, his gentle skill in bed, the sound of him whispering her name—she had to hold on to the kitchen counter to keep her knees from buckling. Being bad had never been so much fun. She wanted to go to Taverna Fiora and just peek into the bridal suite. She’d never look wistfully at that room again. It was hers now. She owned it, and no bride would ever adore it as much as she did.

She had coffee brewing and toast
toasting by the time Grant came downstairs. He’d left the top button of his shirt open and had the collar standing up around his throat. His hair was mussed as though he’d tried to comb it with his fingers. She whimpered and clutched the counter. Who needed food? She could eat him alive.

“Your tie…”

“I lost it.” He grinned knowingly. “We were very careless with our clothes last night.”

“Hmm. I recall things being tossed all over the place.”

“Yeah. That’s why I need to get to work early.” He kissed her nose, her chin, her lips. She sighed.

“Okay. You sure you don’t want something to eat?”

He nibbled her ear lobe. “This is fine.” He kissed her lips. “And this.”

“Okay.”

He let her go, and she followed him to the front door. “I will call you later today. All right?”

“Sure, yes. Any time.”

She pulled the door open for him, reluctant to let him leave. Why hadn’t she picked a Saturday night to seduce him so he wouldn’t have to rush off at the crack of dawn?

“Who the hell is this?”
Bradley’s voice intruded on their good-bye kiss.

Harper’s spirits plummeted
, and her heart skipped a beat. In an instant all her giddy shamelessness transformed into guilt. This looked bad. Why? She couldn’t explain it. She knew she shouldn’t have had to. “What are you doing here, Brad?”

He thrust a plump paper bag into her hands. “I was bring
ing you bagels and coffee and I was going to suggest we have breakfast together and talk some more. I guess someone beat me to it.” He glared at Grant. “Who the hell are you again?”

Harper had to give Grant credit for his smooth style. His voice remained perfectly modulated and casual. “I’m Grant
,” he said as if that explained everything.

Brad shifted his hard gaze to Harper. “Now I get why you were so eager to break things off.”

“As I recall, I didn’t break things off. You walked out on our wedding. That, in my book, equals breaking things off.”

“And I suppose Grant here was just waiting in the wings.”

“Actually we met when she came to pick up the flowers at the catering hall,” Grant offered, his voice still even. He glanced at Harper, a question in his eyes. Should he leave? She didn’t want him to, but she also didn’t need him here to defend her.

“Oh, so I guess it’s all my fault
, then? I threw you two together?”

“Brad, I thought we’d been through this. It’s not going to work with us. Grant was just leaving
, and I think you should too.”

“So that’s it. You’re just going to walk away and not give me any chance to talk about what happened?”

Harper’s face had heated to the boiling point. Despite the frigid air sweeping in from outside, her blood was sizzling and not in a good way. She shoved the bagels back into Brad’s gloved hands. “Let’s get one thing straight, Brad. Stop saying ‘what happened.’ It didn’t ‘happen’—you caused it. You walking out on me was not something that just occurred out of the blue like a thunderstorm or a car crash. You made it happen. Let’s use the real words and call it
what you did
. And I gave you a chance to explain, and you know what? I don’t care about the explanation. It doesn’t matter why you left. You did, and I actually do respect that you had your reasons for doing it. Now it’s your turn to respect the fact that I have my reasons for being glad it ‘happened.’”

Brad sputtered a few choice words, dropped the bagels on the porch and stormed off. Grant let out a slow breath and slipped his arm around Harper’s shoulders. “I’m sorry about that. Should I have decked him?”

She deflated, her cheeks cooling. In a second she went from ready to explode to shivering, and she huddled against Grant’s warmth for a moment. “No. Thanks for offering. I didn’t expect him to still want to talk.”

“Are you okay?”

She nodded and smoothed his shirt, then tugged the zipper of his own jacket up higher against the winter chill. “I’m fine. It’s all fine.”

He held her gaze for a minute
, and the depth of his stare had her heart rate up again. “I just want to be sure of one thing. That, between you and Brad, looked like it was over, but if it’s not…if there’s still anything there that needs to be resolved, let me know. I’ll stay out of the way.”

“No. No.” She kissed him once, then again, longer and deeper. “I told him the truth. I’m not trying to make him jealous.” But it had sort of felt good to let Brad see she’d moved on. That thought made her cringe
, so she refused to dwell on it.

“Good. I don’t want to be
the guy in the middle. I think we went a little fast, and I would really hate it if we both ended up regretting last night.” He tilted her chin up and rubbed a thumb along her lower lip. “I don’t want to regret last night.”

“Never.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.” He kissed her once more and left, taking a moment to hand her the discarded bag of bagels.

Once inside, in a fit of annoyance, Harper tore open the bag. Brad had bought all of her favorites along with coffee in a spill-proof box. He’d even included a small jar of her favorite orange marmalade. She sat down at the kitchen table and rested her head in her hands. She didn’t love Brad anymore
, and that broke her heart. He wasn’t a bad guy, despite Audrey’s growing collection of nicknames for him, but now, she imagined, he thought
she
was a terrible person, a cheater, a slut of some kind. Audrey would tell her not to worry about it, but it bothered her, and she hated that it bothered her.

Frustrated tears spilled down her cheeks when she realized she was losing control of herself. She was trying to prove something to herself with Grant, and maybe trying to prove something to Bradley
, and she had to stop making statements with her actions and start making decisions about where to go from here. “What have I done?” she asked herself through tears. “And what am I going to do?”

“You didn’t waste any time, did you?” Mrs. Dawson’s normally kind voice had taken on a shrill tone, and her words blared out of Harper’s cell phone loudly enough to turn heads in the diner where she’d met Audrey for lunch.

Why didn’t I check the calle
r ID?
She rolled her eyes and forced her own voice to a neutral tone. “I can’t talk right now.”

“
There’s nothing you can say to me anyway. I’m appalled that you were out digging yourself up a new man while my son was home worrying about how to make things right with you.”

Harper squeezed the phone tight. Across the table, Audrey stared at her
, agape. She could hear every scathing word, as could the people in the next three booths. “You have the timeline wrong, Mrs. Dawson. I was out digging up a new man while your son was enjoying the honeymoon he should have been taking with me. He could have made things right by talking to me instead of leaving town.”

“Don’t try to turn this around. You cheated on him.”

“You can’t cheat on someone you’re not with. Good-bye, Mrs. Dawson.” Harper hung up. With shaking hands she thrust her phone back into her purse. “That didn’t take long, did it?”

“Five hours. I would have pegged it for fifteen minutes actually. She’s been stewing for a while.” Audrey shook her head. “She has a lot of nerve.”

“I expected as much. I’ve gone from jilted bride to slutty tart.”

“I’m so jealous.”

“Don’t be. She’ll tell everyone she knows. It was one thing putting up with the sympathetic looks. This will be unbearable.”

“But now you have Grant, so that makes up for it.”

Harper covered her face with her hands. “Do I really have Grant? It was one night, not a commitment of any kind. And who am I to be making commitments anyway?”

“So don’t make a commitment. And don’t worry about what people think. They may talk about it, but any woman who sees Grant will only be envious of you.”

Harper couldn’t dispute that. The very thought of Grant gave her butterflies. His ability to commit didn’t concern her half as much as her own. She had to get over that. “You’re right. Let them say what they want or think what they want. I’m going to enjoy this and just see where it goes.”

“Now you’re talking! Can we get back to details, please? I believe you were talking about the ceiling of the bridal suite before we were interrupted.”

* * * *

Despite the added urgency of tax season at her day job, and spending her evenings working on the centerpieces and gift baskets for the Auxiliary Club dinner, the week dragged on for Harper. She wanted desperately to see Grant again, but with his own grueling schedule and problems with the kitchen staff at TF, she was only able to talk to him a couple of times on the phone.

By the following Tuesday, the night of the dinner, she was a wreck. They’d spent one glorious night together and hadn’t seen each other for a moment since. Their conversations had been short and casual, and in her opinion, somewhat perfunctory. Something was wrong, but he refused to admit it, even when she asked him point-blank. Between his inexplicable coolness and the couple of encounters she’d had with Brad’s friends and family members, she was just about ready to fly off to Tahiti on her own and never come back.

Even Audrey, who’d volunteered to help cart the decorations to TF, couldn’t cheer her up.

“You’re overanalyzing again.”

“No, I’m not.”
Harper unlocked her trunk and started stacking boxes into Audrey’s waiting arms. “When I talk to him it’s like that night never happened.”

“You said yourself, he’s busy, right? The head chef quit, two waiters were in a car accident and can’t work, his head’s on the chopping block if the place doesn’t make good money
, and we’re heading into the doomsdays of winter when no one schedules any big parties. Not to mention, it’s tax season. You’re working overtime too. Give yourselves some breathing room.”

Harper dragged in a deep breath of frigid evening air.
“I’ve been doing so much damn breathing, I’m hyperventilating. If I breathe any more, I’ll pass out.”

“Give me three seconds to look at the guy and I’ll tell you what’s going on. I can sense these things. I’ll know the minute we walk in if he’s pulling a Bradley on you.”

“Don’t even joke. I can’t go through that again.”

“Trust me, you won’t. It’s different with Grant.”

“And you know this because of the five minutes you’ve spent with the two of us?”

Audrey shrugged beneath teetering boxes. “Yes, I do.”

“Okay. I bow to your supreme awareness of all things. Let’s hurry this stuff inside before the candles crack from the cold.”

A
uniformed waiter let them into the lobby and led them to the main ballroom. Grant didn’t seem to be anywhere around, which troubled Harper even more. He worked every event, so he had to be on hand. The fact that he hadn’t come to say hello didn’t bode well.

She eyed Audrey as they began setting up. “Something’s definitely wrong.”

“Chill. It’s fine. He’s probably busy.”

“Okay. You’re right. The dark blue arrangements go on the round tables, and the white and blue ones go at the head table over there. That table in the back is for the gift baskets
, and that roll of red tickets goes next them. They’ll be raffled off.”

“
Aye-aye.” Audrey got to work placing centerpieces and fluffing bows, fixing blooms, and gently stripping off the occasional bent flower petal.

Meanwhile, Harper paced.
Her heart fluttered. Where was Grant?

When he appeared her stomach dropped
, and the butterflies she’d been battling turned to giant bats. She caught her breath. He looked incredible in a charcoal gray suit and red tie with matching boutonniere. He looked six inches taller than she remembered, and he moved with a sophisticated grace that had her damn close to swooning like a delicate Southern belle.

He didn’t smile when he saw her, but instead crossed the room at a determined pace and took her arm. “Hi, can we talk in my office for a second?”

“Sure…what’s—”

“My office. Let’s go this way.” He steered her toward the back entrance of the ballroom that would lead through to the kitchen. With a curious glance at Audrey, Harper followed Grant, running to keep up with his long strides.

“Do you mind telling me—”

He stopped walking so quickly she almost bumped into him
, and when she peered around his shoulder to see what had halted him in his tracks, she caught Mrs. Moriarty’s dark gaze.

“Oh. There you are,” the Auxiliary Club President said. “May I have a word, Ms. Shaw?”

Ms. Shaw? During their last meeting it had been Harper. Harper glanced up at Grant, whose jaw was so tight it was twitching. Why was he so angry? What had she done? “Of course. Is there a problem, Mrs. Moriarty?”

“Yes
, there is.”

“Mrs. Moriarty,
your guests will be her in less than ten minutes. Is this the time or the place for this discussion?” Grant’s voice was like sandpaper. Clearly the two were at odds.

“I would like her to know how I feel.”

“Grant, what’s going on? Did I miss something?”

“Ms. Shaw, I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Auxiliary Club holds certain standards of behavior for its members and by default for the contractors or organizations
with which it does business.”

Harper just raised a brow and waited for Mrs. Moriarty to start making sense.

“While I understand your personal life is not of public concern, I do feel it necessary to note that in the future our organization won’t be utilizing your services or those of Taverna Fiora, and had it not been for Mr. Addison’s…intervention, we would not be using them tonight.”

“Mrs. Moriarty, I’m completely sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve said your piece, ma’am, now why don’t you go get ready to receive your guests?” Grant wrapped his hand around Harper’s wrist and literally pulled her away from the seemingly irate club president.

Stumbling after him, Harper wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the absurdity of it all or cry. She still had no idea what she’d done to make Mrs. Moriarty and Grant so angry.

Without uttering a word, he led her into his office and slammed the door.

“Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on? What was that out there? She looked at me like I kicked her puppy.”

Grant was fuming. He paced back and forth for a second, breathing deeply. Harper just stared, completely flummoxed. “Sit down,” he said finally.

“No, not until you explain what’s going on. What did I do?”

He took a deep breath, and finally his expression softened. “You didn’t do anything. I was trying to hustle you in here to keep you away from
her
.”

Harper put her hands on her hips. “Why?”

“I got a call from her earlier this week. It seems she’s acquainted with Mrs. Georgia Dawson, and Mrs. Dawson told Mrs. Moriarty some things Mrs. Moriarty found objectionable…about you.”

Harper narrowed her eyes. Her blood began to simmer. “I see.”

“She wanted to cancel the decorations for tonight, but I told her she had two choices. She could drop the decorations from her order, but she still had to pay seventy-five percent of the cost because you’d already prepared a lot of the baskets, or she could act in a professional manner and not let gossip influence her business decisions. She was not happy with my tone, but she saw the merit in not wasting her money.”

Her mind reeling, Harper finally lowered herself into Grant’s office chair. “She said Taverna Fiora wouldn’t be getting her business either. She’s taking this out on you, because Mrs. Dawson told her about us?”

“No, that part doesn’t have anything to do with Brad. Our…discussion got pretty heated after she said she didn’t like your moral character. I said a few things I should probably regret, but I don’t, and she informed me this would be the last Auxiliary Club event held at TF as long as she remained President. She probably would have canceled tonight all together, but there was no way she was getting her deposit back.”

Harper’s shoulders slumped under the
thousand-pound weight he’d just laid on them. Now she was responsible for TF losing business, and it was all because of what people thought. “It’s like the eighteen hundreds. I’m some kind of fallen woman, and now no one wants anything I’ve had my hands on.”

Grant knelt down in front of the chair and took her hands in his. “Mrs. Moriarty is an old fool
, and Mrs. Dawson is…well, my mother told me never to say those words about a lady, but she’s no lady.”

“I’m sorry, Grant. I don’t want to hurt the business. After tonight—”

“No. You do amazing work, and I want your designs for TF. I don’t care what Mrs. Moriarty thinks or what Mrs. Dawson says about you. This whole thing is ridiculous, just because you hurt Brad’s feelings. I actually felt sorry for the guy. Losing a girl like you is something he’s never going to bounce back from, but now…he deserves what he gets if he lets his mother go around bad-mouthing you. Besides, Mrs. Moriarty is just one person.”

Harper shook her head. “
There’ve been others. Brad has a lot of family around here, and they all know I spent the night with you.”

He held her gaze, his eyes steady and deep. “Then they know what a hell of a lucky guy I am.”

“Grant…this is causing so many problems. It’s too soon. I shouldn’t have…”

He rose. “You’re regretting what we did?” His voice hardened again
, and that only added to Harper’s misery. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt him, but the weight of everyone else’s disapproval mattered to her. She hated herself for that.

“I can handle people making snide remarks about me, but your job depends on this place doing well. Mrs. Moriarty has a lot of influence. The Auxiliary Club is big around here
, and if they put the word out that they don’t like TF…”

“
They probably already have. We’ll get through it. Don’t worry about it.”

“I have to worry about it. It’s my fault.” Harper rose. She pulled herself up, straightening her spine and dragged her gaze away from Grant’s. “I’ve got to go finish setting up before the guests all get here
, and then I have to take Audrey home.”

“So it’s over between us?”

She couldn’t look at him. “I don’t know. I think…we should have given it more thought.
I
should have given it more thought.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I have to go.” Harper let herself out of the office. She stormed through the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the main ball room and launched herself into the now beautifully decorated room.

Audrey met her halfway.
She jerked a thumb in the direction of Mrs. Moriarty, who stood by the main entrance looking haughty and put upon. “That woman…that woman is
this
close to getting a candle stick up her nose. If I wasn’t a nurse…”