All she'd done was pick it up off the floor to take it to the lost and found at the place where she was living. A place much like this hotel, cheap and with too much character for her tastes. It was all she could afford at the moment, thanks to her sister and brother-in-law.
If she'd been home none of this would have mattered. But her sister, Winnie, had people waiting for her to return so that she could be taken to another place, and who knew what would be done to her this time. Harper was pretty sure they wouldn't give her a nice piece of pie to enjoy, like she was craving.
Her sister, her loving bitch of a sister, was suing her. Then there was the paper she wanted her to sign, as well as what she demanded that Harper do with her child. Winnie had done this to her, had her kidnapped and held against her will while some doctors drugged and impregnated her. Then this piece of jewelry came along.
As soon as it brushed over her fingers, she nearly screamed when this voice started talking to her. The thing, the voice of a dragon, he told her, had caused her to check over her shoulder every five minutes since she'd picked the thing up. It would not shut up about someone or some group chasing her. It had been her plan to take this thing-a torque, he'd called it-to the McCades and be done with the lot of them.
Harper had thought at first that her head had been playing tricks on her. She'd been having these weird ass dreams for a while now about a man, and him turning into something else. She supposed it was a dragon … it was huge, but her mind had shied away from what he'd become and now she could hear voices. Or at least one voice. Harper thought she could no longer blame it on being huge with this kid.
Looking down at her belly, she wondered not for the first time what she was going to do when the baby was finally here. She wasn't even sure how to hold a baby, much less care for one on a constant basis. This was all Winnie's fault. And now she and her husband were suing her because they didn't want the child any longer, and they wanted the hard earned money back that they'd spent to make her this way.
Her sister, Winnie, and her husband, Jake Patrick, had wanted a child. Wanted one, they had told her, more than they did anything else, so people would think them perfect. And they were prepared to take one into their home and raise it in a way that people would see them as no longer a perfect couple, but the perfect family. Love, a word that she'd never heard Winnie use, was never mentioned regarding the child, nor that they'd care for it because they wanted to. They just needed it to look good.
Of course, they were the most faultless couple she'd ever known, even if Winnie didn't point that out to her every time she saw her. Winnie and Jake were both professionals, had a good place to live, and seemed to be on top of the world. All the things that Harper just had never really cared about. And that pissed her sister off too, how Harper didn't have her life together, which Winnie did. Nor did she have a real job. Harper, on more than one occasion, had told them that she was self-employed and had a nice savings account. But that didn't matter to either of them, because Harper wasn't as pretty or as special-their words, not hers-as they were.
Oh sure, she had a good home … a house that she owned, not an apartment like theirs. There was money in her bank account all the time because she didn't spend it on clothing, going out to eat, or keeping up with the neighbors. When she could get to it, she had money anyway.
Winnie, in an effort to make sure that Harper didn't run off with her money, had someone put a freeze on her personal account recently. Her reasoning had been that Harper would flee if she could and not repay her. Not that she was going to, but Jake was an attorney and that was how it was done. It had been impossible for her to get money from that account and live, but lucky for Harper, she had two accounts. Her personal account was frozen, but she had a business account that she could dip into when necessary. And it had become very necessary as the weeks, then months, had gone by.
Harper was a professional too, she thought. Not one that went to an office building every day, or sat behind a desk for endless hours. She was a professional potter. And it paid well for her, too. But neither Winnie nor Jake thought it was a real job, and told her countless times that she needed to find one that paid her weekly and had health insurance. Which, she had pointed out just as many times, she also had.
Then out of the blue about a year ago, Winnie had called and asked her to come to dinner, they had some things they wanted to discuss with her. Winnie wanted to talk to her about something important, she'd told her, and that she expected her to not only be on time, but to dress properly. Harper told them that she had some things to finish up but could come in a week, and that she'd wear what she wanted or she wasn't coming. In the end, Winnie agreed.