The Strongest Steel (25 page)

Jumping from the bed, she sprinted to the bathroom and pulled a brush through her still-damp hair. She rummaged through her purse for a hair elastic and quickly put her hair up in a messy bun.

Thankfully, she carried a small makeup purse, though it usually saw little action. She curled her eyelashes quickly and then flicked on a quick coat of mascara. Pushing the lip-gloss wand in and out of the tube to coat it, she took a good look at herself. Yep, she looked like she’d just had sex. Which she had, in the shower.

She’d put her dress over the back of a chair last night. With a quick shake, it looked like it could get away with another wearing. Unable to stand the thought of tying the bikini strings across her back, she’d rely on the little built-in shelf for support instead.

With less than a minute on the clock, she quickly put in her earrings and fastened her necklace before giving herself one last glance in the tall mirror that hung by the dresser.

The white flashing light on her phone caught her attention. It could wait, couldn’t it? Harper looked toward the kitchen, where she could hear Trent and his mom laughing.

She swiped the phone’s screen with her finger.

An out-of-state number, but a different one than from the previous messages.

Father wrongdoer cheek abasement
.
I’ll be seeing you soon.

Harper grabbed the dresser to steady herself, her heart racing and her hands clammy.

She forwarded the text to Lydia and looked toward the door. Taking one last deep breath to steady her nerves, she opened it.

Trent’s mom sat on one of the breakfast stools talking to her son, who was putting a filter into the coffeemaker. Harper would never have guessed that she was old enough to have a son Trent’s age. She was as petite as he was huge. Perfectly put together, she wore fitted jeans and a beautifully cut white jacket. She and her dark-haired, heavily tattooed son didn’t even look related. All the genes must have come from his dad.

“Your dad is just parking with Kit. She wanted to surprise you, seeing we didn’t get to see you for your birthday.”

“Well, I’m definitely surprised. You couldn’t have texted when you were thirty minutes away?” They both laughed.

He turned to get cups from the cupboard and saw Harper standing just off in the hallway. Damn those dimples. Did he have to make her melt every time she saw him?

He tilted his head to the speakers. “Tito and Tarantula. ‘After Dark.’ Blues-based drums, but sometimes almost metal guitar. Robert Rodriguez is a big fan.”

He walked around the counter and held out his hand to her before pulling her in to him.

“Mom, this is my girl, Harper. Harper, this is my mom, Diana Andrews.”

Diana grinned at the two of them before standing and enveloping Harper in a fierce hug. Harper flinched from a blend of pain from the tattoo and the still-present fear that only Trent had managed to defeat. Hopefully Diana didn’t take it personally.

“Well, aren’t you just as pretty as a picture? It’s so good to meet you, Harper. I must apologize for my very poor etiquette. Had I known Trent had company I would have knocked, but Kit gave me her key and I was just so excited to see my son.” Her blue eyes were bright with excitement as she continued. “Come sit while Trent makes us both coffee, and you can tell me about yourself.” Diana patted the stool next to her.

With a quick kiss to her forehead, Trent left her to continue making their drinks.

Where to start? Oh yes, I’m practically a haphephobic who is on the run from a psychotic asshat who tried to kill me. Great first impression.

“I’m twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine. It’s my birthday this month.” She looked to Trent, who raised one eyebrow at her. She hadn’t told him. Whoops. “I work at José’s, which is a small café, with my best friend, Drea. There’s not much to tell.”

“Where are you originally from? That doesn’t sound like a Florida accent.” Harper panicked, trying to think of a plausible lie. Why couldn’t she remember any of her stock answers to personal questions? Lying used to be so much easier.

The buzzer to the condo interrupted her, and Diana jumped to her feet. “Oh, they’re here. Wait ’til they see the two of you. It’s going to knock them on their asses.”

Trent leaned over the counter and reached for her hand, pulling her close. “Say whatever you need to say to feel safe, darlin’,” he whispered. “We can undo it all later if we need to.”

*   *   *

“I keep meaning to tell you, Harp—I’m going to be gone a few days. I have to go to LA next week on business.” After grappling for a week with telling Harper the truth of why he was going, he’d decided against it. Granted, though, telling her in a restaurant in front of his family might not be the best idea he’d ever had.

The quick flash of disappointment that crossed her face did nothing to ease his guilt. “I’ve always wanted to go there,” Harper said softly. “I’d go to the Getty Center in the morning, Santa Monica Pier in the afternoon, and then Mann’s Chinese Theatre in the evening.” She let out a soft laugh that warmed him. “Not that I know if those things are even remotely close together. What are you going to do there?”

“Are you going to see Shane?” Kit’s crush on the guy was no secret, but thankfully one-sided, given that he was over a decade older than she was. Truth was, even if she’d been his age, Shane was a sucker for a woman with curves—real big curves—and Kit’s trim, athletic frame would have put her out of the running.

“Yeah, I’m going to check out his new tattoo shop, take one of his bikes up the coast, and go to the annual ink expo with him and Juliette,” he replied, chuckling at Kit’s grimace. Her nose piercing sparkled as she scrunched up her face in response to Shane’s wife’s name.

Didn’t it figure that LA was somewhere Harper would want to visit? Just when he couldn’t feel any worse about lying to her. Thank God, literally, that there wasn’t a circle in hell for the sin of omission. If there was, he was certainly going there when the big guy called. Assuming there was a big guy. Something Trent wasn’t absolutely sure of.

A part of him wanted to share the news about the TV show with her. To have someone to share his excitement with. But how would she respond if he didn’t get it? Could he live with disappointing her?

He watched as Harper tucked into her shrimp
al ajillo,
the creamy garlic sauce likely seasoned to perfection, as she listened politely to his mom go on about the latest sale at JCPenney. Harper glanced up at him and smiled.

“Thanks for choosing this place, Mom. It’s been a while since I came here.” Knowing him well, his parents had taken them to his favorite Cuban restaurant, Versailles, in Little Havana, the proud center of the Cuban community. Once you got past the ornately mirrored walls and row of large chandeliers, it was a pretty cool place. Just about every politician with ambition had drunk the rich café and kissed babies here. Bush, Thompson, Cain, they’d all sipped their coffees for the perfect photo op. If you wanted the Cuban vote, you started the campaign at Versailles.

“Hey,” Harper exclaimed as he speared one of her shrimp with his fork, smiling at her as he put it in his mouth.

“You can have some of mine,” he mumbled over the tasty shrimp. He loaded his fork with his
ropa vieja,
the shredded beef threatening to topple. “Open.”

“Mmm. That’s so good. We’ll have to come back so I can try everything.”

Yeah, he wanted to bring her back here. Take to her to some of the best restaurants in the area. And travel with her. She hadn’t been on vacation in nearly five years, hadn’t even ventured outside of Miami since moving here, and it was about time someone corrected that. The show, if it worked out, would certainly help him be the one to do it. Their lifestyle would change exponentially if it happened. But he wasn’t going to get her hopes up only to disappoint her. That path was a painful one.

Harper leaned over and whispered in his ear. “What’s got you looking so serious over there?” The warmth of her breath and her lips on his neck felt way better than she’d likely intended.

He turned and kissed her gently behind her ear. “There’s a full moon tonight and I’m wondering if I can get you to let me make love to you on the balcony.”

He felt like a heel as she blushed and laughed at him. Lying didn’t come naturally to him, and it felt particularly unsettling to be lying to Harper.

There was a very real chance he wouldn’t get the show once the producers realized he had no experience even remotely close to what they were looking for. And it wasn’t like the world really needed to know he’d failed at something if he didn’t get it. He had firsthand experience of seeing that look of disappointment on the face of someone he’d loved, and he wasn’t ready to see it there again.

“Any chance Drea might be able to cover some of your shifts before I go so we could spend some more time together?”

He watched her text her friend, doing his best to ignore the whisper that told him lying to her was a really bad idea.

*   *   *

“Remember, put the strongest body part you have available into the weakest part of them you can find. Let’s go again.” Harper memorized every word. Trent had said Frankie was an incredible fighter, had even shown her some of Frankie’s fighting footage online, but learning from him was worth the pain.

Harper flinched as Frankie grabbed her right arm slightly above her wrist. She rotated her arm at the elbow in a clockwise direction, forcing his hand to break his grasp. Raising her left hand, she aimed for his eyes with her fingers.

“Great, Harper. That was much better.” Harper took a deep breath. The amount of body contact she was experiencing was jolting but not quite panic-worthy. Frankie passed Harper her water bottle and she gratefully downed a few large gulps. She was sweating from places she didn’t know were capable of sweating.

“Ready to go again?” They’d been at it for nearly forty-five minutes, and it was as tough as any workout Harper had ever done.

“Sure thing, coach,” she groaned.

“You want to try an approach from behind to end the session?” Frankie scrutinized her face, watching for her reaction.

“Not really, but I have to get past this, right?”

“You need to remember that you are worth defending. You need to have courage, in the moment of attack, to take action. You might not like those actions. Hurting someone else doesn’t come naturally to most of us. But in that moment, you need to remember that you have a God-given right to defend yourself and do it unflinchingly.”

“When you put it like that.” Harper gave him a weak smile. “Let’s try it.”

“For starters, I’ll let you know when my arms are coming. You just have to get out of the hold. We’ll save the surprise grab for next week.”

Strong, muscular arms came around her shoulders and folded across her chest, palms holding tight to opposite wrists. Harper’s blood pressure spiked, her heart beating fast.
They’re not his arms, they’re not his arms,
she repeated to herself over and over.

Her feet were free, and her hands could do something to the lower part of his body.
Think, Harper, think.

“Come on, Harper. If this was for real, you’d be running out of time.” The feel of Frankie’s breath on her neck made her shudder.

She bent forward fast, taking him with her, and pinched the insides of both his thighs before lifting her foot and stamping down hard on his arch.

Frankie released her immediately, cursing and holding his foot.

“Holy shit, Frankie. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“Are you kidding me? That was the best I’ve seen out of you all night. That’s what you need to get out of a dangerous situation, but we’ll work on it coming from a place of control rather than a place of panic, okay?”

The showers in Frankie’s gym were utilitarian, but the water ran hot for much longer than the tiny tank in her apartment, so Harper indulged before heading home.

With the towel wrapped securely around her, Harper walked over to the lockers and grabbed her phone. She sat down on a bench that had been pushed up against the wall.

Can’t eat this without thinking of you!
Trent had snapped an éclair with a bite taken out.

Harper laughed.
Miss you, too!

She closed the message and saw the unsolved anagram.
Father wrongdoer cheek abasement.
It couldn’t be normal for her heart to beat that fast. The panic she had wrestled into submission earlier flooded through her.

For some reason, this anagram seemed harder to solve than the others. Harper had tried at various points in the day to solve it but appeared to be getting nowhere.

There were only eleven vowels so there couldn’t be more than five or six words. Unless someone had used
goateed
to throw off the averages. There was no
P
or
Y
so neither
Taylor
nor
Harper
was in this one. Which didn’t feel like a relief.

Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the clinical white tiles of the steamy shower room. No
I,
so no
is, in,
or
it
. Missing letters were as big a clue as included letters.

If she could just prove the message was clearly from Nathan through the choice of words. Or find some kind of irrefutable proof that would show she wasn’t imagining things. Trent would believe her—of that, Harper was certain—but nobody else would. That still wasn’t a good enough reason to drag him into her mess.

She opened her eyes and reached into her purse, pulling out her waitressing notepad. Carefully, she transposed the letters into a single alphagram, one long list of alphabetical letters. Hmm … the letter
E
appeared six times, meaning it would likely be in every word, maybe twice. And it increased the likelihood that the article used was
the
.

She struck through the three letters
T,
H,
and
E.
Each letter appeared twice.
Heart … the heart.
Home is where the heart is—no
F
in it. A loving heart is the truest wisdom … thank you Charles Dickens … again with the
F
.