He doesn’t immediately reply. He just stands there, looking at me, seconds ticking by before his gaze sweeps my mouth, his body so close to my body, and Lord help me, I think he might kiss me. I think I want him to kiss me, but he doesn’t. He pushes off the door. “The job offer stands. Safe travels, Harper, because we both know you won’t stay.”
My lashes lower with the rejection I’ve felt not once now but twice with this man. I open my eyes and force my gaze to his. “Thank you for seeing me.” I open the door and exit, my knees weak as I rush through the offices and toward the elevator. I punch the button and the doors open, allowing me to rush inside, but once I’m there, alone in the car, reality hits hard.
I am alone. Eric isn’t going to help me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Eric
I stand there in my office, staring at the doorway, hot and hard, with the scent of Harper’s perfume in the air, the memories of her naked and in my arms in my mind. I want her. I have always wanted her, but we aren’t even close to possible. She’s on top of the Kingston throne. I will never kneel to that throne, and yet, she has stayed with me all these years. Maybe because she’s on that throne. Maybe because she’s untouchable. Maybe because she has those damn beautiful eyes. All I really know is that me wanting her this fucking bad makes her a weakness that every Kingston, perhaps her included, would happily use against me.
I want to believe her intentions are pure, but six years in the folds of that family make that damn hard. I’d also like to believe that I know more about what’s happening at Kingston than her, which would make her visit authentic. I scrub my jaw and cross to my desk, where I grab my briefcase and head for the door. I have a deal to close and money to make for a man who deserves his success.
By the time I’m in a hired car on the way to the bar in Grayson’s apartment building, I’ve replayed every word of that conversation with Harper ten times, but I keep going back to Gigi, that bitch of a woman who all but ensured my mother’s miserable death. I hate her at least ten degrees deeper than I do my father, who at least saved his punishment for me, not my mother. The car drops me at my destination and I walk inside to find Grayson in his normal booth.
He lifts the bottle he’s ordered, an expensive-ass whiskey I welcome right about now. “I thought you might need this.”
“In duplicate,” I say, settling into the booth as he fills my glass.
I down the contents and pull a contract from my briefcase to get to work. “Where were we?”
He arches a brow. “Where were we? Talking about Harper.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You damn near turned down this job to go back there again and we both know it was over her.”
“That was when I thought she was too green to protect herself.” I refill my glass. “She’s been with them for six years. She doesn’t need her hand held.”
“She knows the company’s in trouble,” he assumes, downing his own drink.
“She knows.”
“And?” he prods when I offer nothing more.
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“No,” he says. “Because friends don’t let friends deal with shit alone, as you’ve proven over and over both professionally and personally. Talk to me.”
“We have a contract to deal with.”
“That we’ll handle.”
I inhale and let out a breath. “She wants me to go to Denver. She wants me to save them.”
“Them or her?”
“Both. My grandmother sent her.”
“Gigi?” he asks, incredulously. “Why would she think that you would ever help Gigi?”
“Obviously, that’s why Gigi sent Harper. Or the whole clan of them sent her.”
“You think they know you two hooked up?” he asks.
“When I look into her eyes, no, I don’t believe she’d tell them or use me. When I’m with that woman, I’m one hundred percent into her. She seems honest, sweet, smart, too smart to be with those assholes. When I step back like now, I see six years of her with them. Something doesn’t add up.”
“You almost went back to them just to be a part of a family unit,” he reminds me. “Maybe she needs that unit.”