Forcing himself to draw back before he got completely carried away, Will said, “I enjoyed your brother’s company. I always do.”
“Am I allowed to say thank you for getting dinner and picking Jeremy up?” She gave him a cheeky smile. “Or do I say thank you too much, as well?”
“I love it when you’re polite,” he said as he curled a lock of her hair around his finger. Then he lowered his voice and added, “So polite one moment, and then so wild the next.” He was close enough to appreciate the sound of her breath hitching in her throat at his suggestive words.
He drank from her glass of wine, then stole a cashew off her plate. It was another intimacy he enjoyed, just like playing with her hair. From the first day they’d met, he’d had a need to touch her in small ways as well as big. It didn’t always have to be about sex—in fact, these little touches seemed to heighten their intimacy in a way simple sexual contact didn’t. He’d never been like this with another woman, never so much as thought about becoming intimate with one of them beyond a few hours in the bedroom.
But Harper was different. She was important to him.
So important that he hoped the wine had mellowed her. She’d already had a harried day, and he didn’t want to make things worse. But he didn’t feel right trying to seduce her before he’d talked with her about what had happened at the grocery store.
“There was an issue at the store when I arrived.”
She glanced at Jeremy, a deep line forming immediately between her brows. “What happened?” she asked in a low voice.
Will looked at Jeremy, too. Thankfully, the leopard cubs reigned over his attention. “He didn’t do anything. It was busy. Like it always is at the end of the work day,” Will added to bring home his point. “He wasn’t bagging fast enough for the checker or the customer, and he didn’t pack the groceries correctly. A cantaloupe on top of eggs.”
She waited, an expectant and on her pursed lips.
“And,” he said in a voice low enough that only she could hear, “the checker called him an idiot in front of the customers. Among other insults.”
Her gaze shot to Jeremy again, her eyes darkened with worry. And a deep sorrow that Will wished he could erase permanently. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. Your brother is resilient. Compassionate, too. He actually asked me not to have the woman fired, because she’s got a sick mother.”
Leaning forward, she slid her plate onto the coffee table, and somehow, when she sat back, she seemed farther away from him. “Why did he think you were going to have the woman fired?”
“I made her apologize. In front of everyone who had just witnessed her acting like such a jerk.” He shook his head. “I know I’m always telling you not to apologize, but when people do something they know is wrong, they need to apologize for their actions.”
He was one to talk, wasn’t he, considering he could never say he was sorry for all the things he’d done in the past. Still, that didn’t mean he would allow Jeremy to be denigrated.
“Do you know what it’s like in that store at that time of day?” he asked.
She frowned again. “I know it’s busy. I just never thought—”
Belatedly realizing his question might have sounded too harsh, he touched her hair again, drawing her back in. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m not so sure it’s the best place for him. It’s too chaotic.”
Her jaw tensed as though she was clenching her teeth. “It gives him purpose. He’s always said he likes it.” Once again, her gaze shifted to Jeremy.
This was Will’s chance to make a difference for them. “I’ve got a better idea. I talked to my people and I found him a place in my mailroom.”
Her nostrils twitched. Like a mother rabbit sensing danger to her young. Yet again, she reminded him of Susan, who had taken better care of him than anyone in the world. Better care than he’d ever thought anyone would.
“You work in the city,” Harper said. “He has school until noon, and the bus drops him off at the store. I can’t get him all the way up to your office.”
“I have a driver who can pick him up after school. And I can bring him home at the end of the day.”
“I see you’ve thought everything through.”
Yes, he’d considered the proposal from every angle. That’s what he did: analyzed each scenario and conquered every possible problem that could arise. “I’ll make it good for him, Harper. And he told me he’d like to do it, that he won’t miss his job at the grocery store.”