Burn For Him (17 page)

“What am I supposed to do, then? Keep you safe? Well, I failed on that one, didn’t I?”

I stood up to walk to where he was.  I put a hand on his arm to stop him from walking away from me.  “You really think that?”

“Carrie! I’m supposed to keep you safe.”

“Harper, that’s not your job.  You’re my friend.  You’re my best friend.  You’re my family.  You do everything you can for me.  Don’t beat yourself up over this.  It’s not your fault.” I hated to think that he was feeling guilty over this.  It wasn’t his fault.  None of it was. I was the one who had let Milligan into my life.  It was my guilt to bear, not his.

“Harper, look at me.” He wouldn’t, so I gently put my hand on his cheek.  “It’s not your fault.  Neither of us knew that this was going to happen.  He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t even mean to scare me. I think that was what probably scared me the most.  He seemed genuinely concerned for me.”

“Carrie, he could have hurt you.”

“But, he didn’t.”

Harper didn’t say anything.  I knew that he was brooding.  I also knew that there was nothing that I could say to make him feel any better.  All I could do was change the subject.

“Seeing as we’ve both got the rest of the day off, how do you fancy a pizza and a DVD? I’m starving!” I grinned at him temptingly. He looked at me blankly for a moment before his face softened.

“You’re feeling better now, I guess?”  He smirked.  That sparkle reappeared in his eyes.  I knew that he was a long way from being okay about this, but at least it was a start.

“I’m starving.”

Chapter Eleven

It really was quite unnerving how one day Milligan could walk straight into my home and drive me right out of my mind with his sexual antics, and then nothing.  Don’t get me wrong, I was pleased that I hadn’t heard anything else from him, but it left me walking on eggshells. Harper tried his best to get things back to normal for me, so I had to try as well.  It was quite perfectly normal for him to be dropping me off at work every single morning, seeing as my office was on the way to his gym anyway.  But, lunchtimes and picking me up after work? Taking me wherever I needed to go? Never letting me out of his sight? Not so normal. When I wasn’t at work, Harper was always within metres of me.  I wasn’t complaining, though.  I felt safer with him close by.

Dee was just the same.  She hadn’t changed for the better or for the worse.  She still looked like she was sleeping.  We routinely called in and spent every evening with her.  That was our life now.  It consisted of going to work and going to the hospital.  I knew that we weren’t going to be able to keep this up forever, but for the time being, it was working for us. We were making it work the best we could.

I really felt bad.  The nurses and whoever they answered to had decided to take the decision out of our hands and they’d put Dee’s father into a home.  He needed to be somewhere where he could get around-the-clock care.  I knew that would be the very last thing that Dee would have wanted to happen, but the matter was out of our hands.  We weren’t family.  We didn’t have a say in the matter.  We were just consulted of the outcome.

Harper had secured the apartment.  He’d put in extra locks on the main door and on my bedroom door.  He installed a security camera system.  It made him feel better, even if I thought that it was useless.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.

Even work had been a bit better.  Easier.  Steve hadn’t thrown a bitch fit in days now.  I think that the lack of dead flower deliveries had helped to improve his mood.

Then, this morning, it had all gone to hell again.  Steve called me into his office and his enthusiasm had been infectious.  He’d been practically bouncing off of the walls in his excitement.  I had been, too, until he started explaining the details of the job.

A new client had come in with a major new deal that was going to bag the company tons of money and recognition.  It had all sounded too good to be true.  They’d even requested me by name, which was a huge buzz for me.  They’d stated certain projects that they had seen of mine in the past that drew them to working with the company.  It all sounded great, beyond our wildest dreams.  That was until he told me that it was a nightclub called ‘Milligan’s’.  I flipped when I heard that name.  I didn’t mean to but I couldn’t help myself.  Things had been so quiet in the last week or so that I had thought that Milligan really had gotten the message this time.  But, no.  Now he was interfering with my working life as well.

Steve had gone totally ballistic on me when I refused to take the job.  I even went as far to explain that the psycho who had sent me the dead flowers was the owner of the club. He didn’t care.  He was just pleased that we already had a connection.  That made me laugh.  Which didn’t really help matters.  But, there was no way that I was going to let Steve bully me into taking the job.  I’d simply told him that he could get someone else to consult on the job. 

Apparently, Milligan had told him that it was me or no deal.  I told him to shove it.  Steve had tried to offer me more money.  I told him no way.  Steve had even thrown a big girly hissy fit and told me to get out of the office and to never come back.  So, I’d left.

I wasn’t going to sweat it.  I knew that I would be able to find another job, but I also knew that Steve would call me soon with his tail firmly between his legs.  He needed me.  He needed me more than I needed him.  There was no way that I was going to back down on this one.

So, that explained why I was sat at home in the middle of the day watching crappy daytime soaps that made absolutely no sense to me. Harper walked in when he finished work and found me surrounded by empty bowls of ice-cream and chocolate bars.

“Oh, so this was why you didn’t want to me come home.  You didn’t want to share!” He laughed as he looked at the mess on the floor.

“Damn right.  You know me.  I don’t share ice-cream.” I tried to look serious, but the shit-eating grin that broke out on my face kind of spoiled the effect.

“So, have you heard anything from Steve yet?”

I’d told Harper on the phone what had happened.  He’d wanted to come home when he found out I was going to be alone in the apartment, but I told him that there was no point.  If he came running every single time he thought that I needed babysitting, then all the extra security stuff he’d put in was a total waste of time and money.

“Nope.  He’ll be too mad to call me today.  I think that he’ll call tomorrow at the very earliest.  Heck, he might not call me at all.  He’s too damn pig headed and he was really pissed at me.”

Harper shook his head.  “You’ll hear from him.  I’m sure of that.  He won’t want to lose you.  You’re too good. He’d hate to see you go to the competition.”

I didn’t bother to argue with him.  I wasn’t trying to fish for compliments.  I didn’t need them.  I knew that I was good at what I did.  I just wondered if Steve would swallow his pride and call me.  He was a stubborn bastard when he wanted to be, but I knew that he would put the business first.

“Have you been to the hospital?” He called from the kitchen.

“I called in on my way home. There’s been no change.  I thought we’d call in tonight as usual.”

Harper popped his head back into the living room, munching on an apple. “I rang and spoke to Colette on my way home.  I thought that we could have a night vegging out in front of the TV, you know, just some you and me time.”

I thought about it for a moment.  We’d fallen into this routine of spending every evening at the hospital with Dee.  It had become our way of life over the last month or so.  I knew that I would feel guilty if we didn’t go, but being there didn’t seem to make much of a difference to her condition.

“You think that she’d be okay without us?”

“I think she’ll be fine for one night.  I asked Sylvie to look in on her.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.  “Oh, you asked Sylvie, did you?”

Harper smiled sheepishly.  “I thought that we could do with an evening of relaxation.  I thought that you might say yes, so I arranged it with her.  We don’t have to, though.  We can go to the hospital if you want to.”

I laughed. It felt good.  I knew that Harper needed some time to himself as well.  We were going to burn ourselves out if we carried on this way.  We needed a little time to recharge. “I think that it’s a brilliant idea.”

“You do?” He looked pleased and I was glad that I’d made the right call.

“Yeah. Why don’t you go and get a shower. You stink.” I made a face at him.  He didn’t smell that bad.  It was a healthy, masculine smell.  But he’d just come straight home from the gym and I knew that he would want to freshen up.

“Oh, really? I stink?” Harper said with a glint in his eyes.  Before I could open my mouth, he’d launched himself at me and threatened to wipe his sweaty face all over my pyjamas.

“Stop it!” I shrieked.

He laughed and climbed off me.  “Don’t stay that I stink then.”

“I won’t.” I said as I held my nose daintily.  He swiped at me with the towel that was in his hand as he walked out of the room.

I knew him well enough to know that Harper’s version of vegging out in front of the TV with an extra-large pizza loaded with everything.  He was a bit of a work out and health freak when he wanted to be, but he still knew how to pig out like the rest of us.  I put a call in while he was in the shower and I grabbed some money from my purse and put it on the table near the front door. Harper walked back out of the bathroom in just a towel and his skin still glistening from the shower.  “Have you seen my shorts anywhere?”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Don’t be looking at what you can’t afford, lady.” He quipped and strutted off down toward the kitchen.

I chuckled.  He was a damn fine sight.  He was far from arrogant and he worked damned hard to get a body like that.  I called after him, “I put them in your bedroom with the rest of the clothes that I ironed.”

“Wow! Aren’t you the perfect little housewife?”

“Fuck you!” I replied in a friendly tone and Harper flipped me the bird in response.  Isn’t it just great when you can act like that with your friends?   He never seemed to take any offence, he knew me too well for that.

As he walked back into the living room where I was waiting for him, something clicked in my head.  I knew that I had seen one of Milligan’s tattoos before, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me where.  Harper had the exact same intricate design on his ribs.  The same design in the same place.  Weird coincidence.

Harper looked at me strangely when he saw me staring at his body and walked out to the kitchen to get us each a can of Pepsi, but the door bell rung and we were then too preoccupied by stuffing our faces like pigs to ask him about the tattoo.  It wasn’t until we had settled back down on the sofa in front of a horror movie, feeling sick from eating too much, that I remembered to ask him.

“Hey, where did you get that tattoo?”

Harper laughed.  “Which one? You’ll have to narrow the choice down for me.  There are quite a few to choose from.” Harper was covered in ink.  To look at him with his clothes on, he looked too neat and respectable.  But, without? He looked like a tough biker dude, totally badass.

“The one that is on your ribs.  That swirly design thing.” I pointed to my own right hand side so that he knew which one I meant.

“Oh, that one.  I don’t know.  It was a long time ago.” He carried on eating another slice of pizza and intently watched the film.  “Why? What made you ask that?” He glanced over at me with a mouthful of half chewed pizza.  I swiped at his arm and laughed at the grossness.

“Harper! That’s disgusting!” I shook my head at him and his total lack of manners tonight.  “I was just asking because Milligan has the same tattoo.”

I thought that he was going to choke on his pizza.  He started coughing and spluttering.  I put down my chocolate bar to jump up and thump him on the back.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” He gasped as he grabbed at his bottle of water and took a long soothing gulp.

“Are you sure? You shouldn’t try to inhale your food like that.” I tried to joke, but I had been worried for a moment.  Harper had turned a pale shade of white.

“Milligan has the same tattoo? That’s what you said, right?”

“Yeah.  It’s on his ribs, just like yours.”

I fell silent again and the food lay untouched. “That just means that you probably got it done at the same place, right Harp?” He was sitting very still, staring straight through the TV as opposed to actually watching it.

He shook his head slightly as if distracted and seemed to come slowly out of his trance-like state.  “Yeah, yeah.  That’s probably what it is.”

I leaned over to look at him closely.  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I hadn’t seen him look like this before.  I couldn’t explain it.  A look had crossed over his face.  I didn’t like it.

Harper coughed to clear his throat again and turned to smile at me with that normal glint back in his eyes.  “It’s just that I designed this tattoo myself.  It should have been a one off.”

“Uh oh.  Looks like the tattoo artist stole your design.” Now I could understand why he was acting so strangely.  Harper designed most of his ink designs himself.  All of his tattoos were personal to him, to highlight certain times in his life. No wonder he was shocked and a little pissed off to find out that someone had ripped off his design.  It wouldn’t mean something to someone else like it did to him.

I didn’t want him to brood over it anymore so I didn’t say another word about it.  We snuggled up under the blanket and got lost in a world of monsters and ghouls.  I loved horror movies, but they always scared the living crap out of me and I was glad that Harper was there to hold my hand.