Breathless In Love (The Maverick Billionaires #1)(27)

After all, who had the still perfectly pressed suit and tie?

And who had the sex-hair and barely closed robe?

Somehow, some way, she needed to grab the control she’d just lost. Which meant that instead of kissing him again the way he’d just commanded, there was only one way to reassert the control she’d given him from the moment he’d stepped inside without an invitation.

Harper smiled, held onto the doorknob, and said, “Have a great day, Will,” then closed the door with a soft, but final, click.

She barely breathed as she waited for the sound of his footsteps that would let her know he was heading back down her front path toward his car. None sounded for several long moments—moments where she knew he must be trying to decide whether to let her win this round or not.

Finally, he walked away, and her held breath left her in a hard whoosh as she heard him start up his engine and drive away. She tried to return to her day as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, tried telling herself that she was just as much in control of her life, and her emotions, as ever.

But all the while, she couldn’t help but wonder if the feel of his kisses still lingering on her skin revealed the true story: that where Will was concerned, she wasn’t in control of anything at all.





CHAPTER NINETEEN


“No, Miss Newman,” Harper’s client said to her over the phone the following afternoon, “there’s no way I can get there earlier. My son is sick, so I couldn’t take him to day care. But my husband will be home by five, and it will only take me fifteen minutes to get to your office.”

Harper breathed deeply, then calmly replied, “That’s fine. These things happen, and I hope your son feels better soon.” Hadn’t she run into the same problem when Jeremy wasn’t well? Illness was the bane of the working parent’s existence.

But the meeting delay left her in a real bind. She was supposed to pick up Jeremy from his after-school job at the grocery store at five. Finding someone to take over the task with two hours’ notice late on a Thursday afternoon would be difficult. There was no way she could make it to the store, then back to the office that quickly in rush-hour traffic. And she couldn’t postpone the meeting, either. Not when she had a position open that Carol’s resume indicated she’d be perfect for, and the first-round interviews shut down tomorrow.

She called Trish, who didn’t answer, probably because she was in class. After leaving a message, Harper mentally tapped her fingers waiting for a return call, but when it didn’t come after twenty minutes, she knew she had to find an alternative.

For some crazy reason, the first person she thought of was Will.

Actually, it wasn’t all that crazy, given that she hadn’t stopped thinking about him since Wednesday morning. To be honest...she hadn’t actually been able to stop thinking about him since the day he’d raced into their lives a month ago.

He’d told her to call if she needed anything. Had he meant it?

She picked up the receiver on her land line, holding it to her chest a moment, the dial tone vibrating against her as she thought about Will’s promise on Wednesday morning—that he was saving up his fully unleashed passion for her and the next fast ride they took together. She didn’t care that some might say it lacked the romance of moonlight and rose petals on a big, soft bed. Sex in a car, the almost clandestine nature of it, actually excited her more. As had the quickie in her living room, which had taken her to a level of heat she’d never experienced before.

Even after kicking him out to prove the point that he didn’t hold all the power, she’d still ended up working in a dreamy daze all day. He’d made their quickie on her couch all about her. What kind of man put his own pleasure second? Could it possibly be the kind of man who would help her out of a tight bind that had nothing whatsoever to do with sex?

She punched in his cell number, and he answered on the second ring. “Harper, I was just thinking about you.”

All he had to do was say her name in that sexy drawl and she melted like an ice cube in the summertime. It suddenly occurred to her that he might have picked up the call assuming she had something sexy to say to him. But since he knew how important her brother was to her, she hoped he wouldn’t be too surprised when she said, “I have a huge favor to ask. I’m supposed to pick Jeremy up by five at the grocery store where he works, but I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss.”

“I’ll get him.”

Just that quickly, her heart swelled in her chest, the same way it had last Saturday when he’d been so kind to Jeremy while working on the Maserati. His sweetness had prompted her instant decision to take a risk by spending a few hot nights with him. It meant a great deal to her that Will didn’t ask questions, didn’t make excuses. He simply offered to help.

At the same time, however, she knew running a billion-dollar corporation couldn’t be at all easy. And he’d already given her and Jeremy so much of his limited free time. “I thought you might have a driver? Or that maybe Mrs. Taylor could do it? I’m sure you’re probably still up in the city and I know how busy you are.”

“I’m happy to do it, Harper.”

She’d called him to ask for help, and now that he was giving it so freely—and she needed it so badly—she stopped trying to talk him out of it. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.” He had no idea how much. Not since her parents died had she been able to pick up the phone and call someone who would bail her out so quickly and easily. Not until Will.

He was too good, a dream come true. She didn’t have anything to offer in return. Except for sex. It shouldn’t make her smile to think of paying off her debts in his bed, but lately, everything about Will made her smile. “If you can drop him off at the house, I should be home by six-thirty. He’ll be fine until then.”

“No, I’ll stay until you get home. I know you don’t like him to be alone. Don’t worry about a thing tonight. I’ve got it covered.”

And maybe, she found herself hoping, even though she’d already had far more than a sensible quota of him for the week, he was also staying so that he could spend time with her, too. “Thank you,” she said again. “You’re sweet.”

He gave a burst of incredulous laughter. “No one has ever called me sweet in my entire life.”

“But you are.”

“Believe me,” he said in a voice that was suddenly serious, “I’m not sweet. But I promise I’ll always do whatever I can for you and Jeremy.”

Will made a lot of promises. And though Harper was still wary of letting Jeremy—or herself—get hurt, Will hadn’t broken a single one yet.

* * *

The grocery store was only a ten-minute walk from Harper’s house. Will figured Jeremy could probably have handled it just fine, but he knew Harper would have worried the whole time. It wasn’t Will’s business to say anything about how she handled her brother. Besides, hearing her voice over the phone had been the best thing that had happened to him all day, and even if he’d just blown off several meetings, he wanted to see her more than he wanted to sit in on a conference call. Not to mention the fact that he’d been able to hear her desperation when she’d asked him for the favor...along with a note in her voice that told him she’d expected him to say no.

Will loved surprising Harper. In fact, his plan was to keep surprising her over and over again, in the best possible ways.

Seeing Harper once a week wasn’t nearly enough. And he wasn’t just thinking about the hot sex they’d had in his garage after their date. He missed her laughter, her innate spark. He grinned every time he thought about the way she’d kicked him out of her house Wednesday morning, loving the way she could be so soft and pliable one moment, then strong and determined the next.

Both Harper and Jeremy added something to his life, something he couldn’t define, but that he now realized had been missing for quite a while. It had been in that strange weariness he’d felt in the months before meeting them, a sense that all the wealth and all the changes he’d made in his life were no longer enough.

The traffic was bad, but fortunately Will arrived at the grocery store before Jeremy’s shift was over. The place was a madhouse, with working moms rushing in and out, men with nothing but frozen dinners in their carts, and teenagers holding six-packs of soda. Though all the checkstands were open, the lines still snaked down the aisles.

He spotted Harper’s brother three checkstands away, loading a vast expanse of groceries into reusable shopping bags. The mother had a child in the cart and two more were milling around Jeremy’s legs. His tongue between his lips in concentration, Jeremy was trying to stack food carefully in the bags, but the kids kept screaming and jumping, bumping into him and knocking him off his rhythm. The mother shook her head, glaring at Jeremy with her mouth pursed.

Will headed down to them, his immediate thought being to intercede, or even help pack the groceries. Until he thought about the humiliation factor. Will didn’t want Jeremy to think he couldn’t handle the job. Here he’d just been thinking that Harper didn’t always give Jeremy enough credit, like being able to walk home by himself, but rushing to her brother’s rescue now would be exactly the same thing.