Pretend You're Mine: A Small Town Love Story (19 page)

“Anyway, the rescue in town took her, but they needed a place for her to stay until they can find a foster home — a week tops — and she looked at me with those big sappy eyes. And before I knew it, I was putting her in the car. And I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me. Or Lola.”

The dog’s tail thumped again.

“Harper, you can’t just bring a dog home.”

“I know! I think she hypnotized me. I’m so sorry.”

Lola swung her head back to Luke. “Why are her eyes funny?”

“It’s just a little infection. We put drops in three times a day.”

Lola’s tongue lolled out of her mouth. “Harper. She’s huge. She could swallow you whole.”

“She’s a sweetheart. There’s not a mean bone in her body.” Harper was wringing her hands together.

Lola rolled over on Luke’s lap, baring her belly.

“A week?”

“Tops.”

***

L
ola had them trained in a matter of days. She gently reminded them when it was meal time and potty time. Luke’s dog-free house soon included a large inventory of squeaky toys and bones that Lola perused hourly. And every night, she snored at the foot of the bed with her huge head resting on Harper’s feet.

Harper did her best to make sure she took on the majority of dog care. Walks, meals, medicine, she even tackled the poor dog’s overgrown toenails.

She tried to keep Luke’s inconvenience to a minimum, but still felt the sting of his sighs whenever Lola made her presence known.

Every day, she reminded herself how generous Luke had been to open his home to her and now Lola. Guilt and gratitude had her stocking the refrigerator with all his favorites and bending over backwards around the house to be helpful.

She tried to make it home before Luke in the evenings so she could let Lola out, but he was always there first. One night, she came home to find Luke and the boys trying to teach Lola to fetch. Lola wasn’t into it, but Henry was a good sport about chasing all the balls that Robbie threw.

Later, when they walked the boys home, Lola didn’t even flinch when little Ava toddled over and sat on her. She just yawned and allowed herself to be squished and stroked by sticky fingers.

For the first few mornings post-Lola, Luke asked Harper if she had heard from the rescue on a permanent foster home yet.

When he stopped asking and Lola started disappearing downstairs with Luke in the mornings, Harper got suspicious.

The next morning, she waited in bed until Luke headed downstairs with Lola. When she heard the front door close behind him, Harper threw the covers off and hurried down.

There was food in her bowl, but no sign of Lola in the kitchen. Harper snooped through the rest of the first floor and checked the back yard. No Lola.

She grabbed a cup of coffee and sat on the front porch to wait.

Her patience was rewarded ten minutes later by the sight of Luke and Lola bounding around the corner side-by-side. Lola’s muscled legs ate up the sidewalk while her tongue lolled to the side. Luke’s mile-wide grin matched his running buddy’s. They were happiness in motion.

She saw the slight stutter in his step the second he noticed her. He carefully rearranged his features to an impassive expression by the time they hit the walkway to the house.

Harper tried to hide her grin behind her coffee. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Luke said, oozing nonchalance. He handed her Lola’s leash. “She, uh, had to go out so I took her.”

“Around the block?” Harper asked innocently, petting Lola’s heaving sides. She was rewarded by a huge slurp from Lola’s tongue.

“Uh, yeah. The block.”

Lola sat next to Harper on the step and leaned into her arm.

“You are such a liar!”

Luke put his hands up. “Hey, we did go around the block. Kind of.”

“You’ve been taking her on your runs, which is why she’s totally exhausted when I take her for a walk an hour later!”

She could tell he was weighing his options behind his sunglasses.

He threw up his arms. “For Christ’s sake, look at her! She’s huge. I was worried she’d drag you around the block and knock everyone over.”

“So you took her out first to try her out?”

“Well, yeah. And to tire her out, so if she was bad on a leash, she’d at least be
less
bad tired.”

“That’s oddly sweet and thoughtful of you.”

“Hard to be mad at me, isn’t it?” The dimple flickered back into existence.

“Well it would be except for the fact that you’ve been making me feel so guilty for bringing her into your house when you clearly love having her around!”

“I wouldn’t say love —”

“Lucas Norbert Garrison!”

“Charles, actually.”

“You love her! Look her in those big dopey eyes and tell her you don’t.” Harper squished Lola’s face in her hands. “Look at Daddy. Make him feel like garbage for playing Mommy. You could have told me, you know. Should have told me.”

“I am pleading the fifth. Now if you lovely ladies don’t mind, I’m going to finish my run because Lola can only hang for a mile and a half.” He leaned in and kissed Harper and moved to drop a peck on Lola’s head, but she squirmed free and stuck her tongue in his mouth.

“At this second, I can honestly say I don’t love that,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

“Serves you right, Norbert!”

“Can we still have steak tonight?” he asked, backing down the walk.

“You knew I was kissing up to you! You are such an —”

“The neighbors don’t need you to finish that sentence,” he called as he turned onto the sidewalk.

“Fine, but Lola gets half of yours!” Harper waited until he was out of sight before laughing.

***

L
uke avoided the office all day, communicating primarily by text and email, even after Harper called him a chicken.

She beat him home and took Lola for a quick walk before starting dinner. Harper was busy prepping the steaks when she heard the front door. She headed down the hall to greet Luke with Lola ambling after her.

“Look who decided to face the music,” Harper teased.

Luke dropped his keys on the table by the door and shifted the strange bundle he was holding.

The bundle barked.

“Not a word. Not one word,” Luke muttered.

He was carrying a scruffy terrier under his arm like a football.

Harper bit her lip to keep from laughing.

Luke put the dog down on the floor. It had three legs.

“Wait a second. Shouldn’t we introduce them or something first?” Harper started towards Lola.

“Fine. Lola, meet Max. Max, meet Lola.”

Max scampered over to Lola and sniffed her. Lola blinked, turned around, and walked down the hall. Max pranced after her on her heels.

“I just went to pick up Lola’s meds and there’s this damn dog. Some old lady is trying to surrender him and they didn’t have any foster homes available, and if they took him to the shelter he’d probably be put down.”

“He has three legs.”

“And they were going to hold that against him. He can’t help it.”

Harper covered her mouth so he wouldn’t see her grin as he stalked down the hall towards the kitchen.

“It’s just temporary,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re just fostering.”

“It’s just temporary,” she whispered, even as she felt her heart stumble.

T
hey found it was easier to get used to two dogs than the first one. Max scampered seamlessly into their home life. He followed Luke around like a shadow and barked like a dog three times his size. In the mornings, Luke ran with Lola while Harper took Max for a few laps around the block. At night, he slept curled in a tight ball against Lola.

And every time Harper walked in the door, they both greeted her as if it had been decades since they last saw her last.

Lola would charge down the hallway with her deep
boof
, while Max pranced and yipped around her. The second the front door opened, they lavished Harper — or Luke, or the mail lady — with excited attention. It felt good to be welcomed home by adoring fans.

Just a few weeks ago, she couldn’t have imagined her life changing so drastically. She had a man she adored, a comfortable home, great friends, and two dogs who thought she was better than bacon treats. Even though it was all temporary. She tried not to think about what would happen in a matter of days. Luke would be gone from her life, she would be gone from Benevolence, and it would be someone else opening Garrison Construction’s massive piles of mail.

Harper opened the envelope with an efficient slash of the letter opener. Only Luke would let office mail go unopened for weeks. She had worked her way down to the bottom of the pile he had carelessly stashed on the shelf in his office. She found a handful of checks from clients buried in the pile. After a lecture from her on the importance of timely response, Luke agreed to let her handle all mail from now on.

As soon as she was done with this stack, she was going to run to the bank and make a deposit.

A check fluttered out of the opened envelope onto her desk. She picked it up and glanced at it. This was one made out directly to Luke in the amount of ...

A strangled gasp made its way past her lips. Harper’s knees buckled and she flopped down into her chair.

She had never seen an amount that high on a check before and there were three more envelopes just like this one. She opened them all and lined up the checks.

Pay to the order of Lucas Garrison.

She knew she was gaping at the surface of her desk, but couldn’t help it. There was just over half a million dollars sitting on it. What was it for? Was it legal?

Harper glanced into Luke’s office where he was on a conference call with a supplier. He was kicked back in his chair, work boots propped up on the desk. Not a care in the world. He wasn’t concerned that he had gone and forced her to fall hard for him, only to kick her in the teeth with the reminder that he couldn’t even be honest with her about anything.

That withholding, sexy bastard was a millionaire.

She thought of her guilt-laden reaction to his furniture shopping. He could have furnished a dozen houses with the checks in her hand. What the hell was his problem? Why did he expect her to open up about long buried secrets when he couldn’t even say, “by the way, I’m rich.”

Riding the wave of anger, she grabbed the checks and stormed over to his closed door. She smacked her palm holding the checks against the glass. “What the hell?” she mouthed.

Luke took his feet off his desk and had the good grace to look embarrassed. He shrugged and held up a finger signaling her to wait.

But she was done waiting. Harper dropped the checks on the counter outside his office and grabbed her purse. She would take an early, long lunch and he would just have to deal with it. She didn’t owe him an explanation.

***

L
uke found her at the diner counter staring into the depths of her coffee mug. He took the stool next to her and swiveled to face her. He figured he could calm her down in a few minutes and maybe even grab a quick lunch. Time was becoming more precious as the days ticked down to deployment.

“Why are you so pissed off about a couple of checks?”

Harper turned to him and shot him a look. “Is that what you think this is about? Did you hit your head today?”

“It sounds like you’re questioning my intelligence,” he ventured, signaling the waitress for a coffee.

“It sounds like you’re trying to play dumb,” Harper snapped. “This isn’t about the checks. This is about what they represent.”

“Money?”

“I will knock your perfect ass off that stool.”

She might actually try it. “Me not telling you about money that you found going through my mail?”

“Really? That’s how you want to play this? Accusing me of snooping when I opened a stack of mail that you gave me to open? Try again.”

She had him there. He sighed. “Harper, there is nothing in our arrangement that says we have to tell each other everything.”

“Why are you like that? What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just share things? It’s not sexy-mysterious anymore. It’s hurtful.”

“Why is it hurtful? I didn’t purposely keep anything from you. The money is from a patent that Aldo and I hold on an engineered joist system. It’s not a big deal.”

“What’s a big deal to me is that I open up to you about all the sordid details of my past and you can’t even share good things with me. Why the hell is that?”

“I told you before, I’m not a hearts and flowers kind of guy.”

“We’re not talking about hearts and flowers. We’re talking about intimacy. And you can’t just expect me to share things with you when you have no intention of opening up to me.”

“That isn’t who I am, Harper.” Luke shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Those checks aren’t even on my radar. Not when I have less than two weeks before I leave my home and my family for six months.”

“That’s another thing you won’t talk about.”

“What? Deployment? What is there to talk about?” He let some of his frustration seep into his tone. “I’m leaving. End of story.”

“That is not ‘end of story’ and you know it.”

He spun her around sideways on the stool to face him and kept his hands on her thighs. “Look. You want something that I can’t give you. I think you’re getting in too deep here. You’re trying to establish a relationship where there can’t be one. I don’t share. I don’t open up and talk about my feelings or what I’m thinking. And even if I did, I’m leaving. For six months. There isn’t going to be an ‘us’ when I come back. And I’m starting to think that maybe there shouldn’t be an us now.”

“Do you want me to leave?” She leveled a look at him, daring him to say what he didn’t mean.

He sighed. “No, I don’t want you to leave.” There. How was that for honesty? “I like having you around. I even like having the dogs around. I think our working relationship is great. But maybe it’s time we back off of the more ... intimate area.”

“Sex?”

The waitress paused wide-eyed as she put the coffee mug down in front of him.

Luke waited until she wandered down the counter to the next patron. “Yes. Sex,” he said quietly. “It’s starting to confuse the situation. Let’s just go back to the way things were for the rest of the month. Stick with the plan. You’re saving money and doing a job search. Thanks to you, I’m getting caught up at the office and getting things organized for when I’m gone. We can make this work, Harper. But not by complicating things.”