The Beautiful Daughters (22 page)

She didn't have a purse. No cash, no credit or debit card. The Bridge had given her a crisp twenty-dollar bill, but Harper couldn't even think of where that was right now. It had probably fluttered to the floor of Carol's car when she fell asleep.

Harper didn't know where to turn, or what to say. But Adri was already pulling her wallet out of her purse.

“I've got this,” she said. There wasn't an ounce of condemnation in her voice, and while the clerk counted out change from the till, Adri smiled and made conversation as if she had planned to pay all along.

“You didn't have to do that,” Harper said when they were in the car. Her shame was using up the air between them. “I misplaced my purse. I could have called my credit card company.”

She didn't have a credit card company. Sawyer had long ago combined their earnings, or rather, pocketed hers so that he could better “support her,” as he liked to say. Harper hadn't collected a paycheck in years. It chilled her to realize that she didn't have a penny to her name.

Adri wasn't buying it. She sat still for a few moments in the driver's seat, her right hand on the keys and her left hand on the steering wheel. Then she took a deep breath and turned to face Harper.

“I know it's been a while,” she said, “and I know that there is a lifetime between us. But you don't have to lie to me like that. I won't presume to know where you came from, or what you've been doing for the last five years, but this has to stop.”

“What has to stop?” Harper whispered.

“This lying. The way we dance around one another but never really touch.” Adri's voice broke over a sob, but she pressed her hand to her mouth and held it in. “Harper,” she said, and it was a plea, “look at us. What are we doing? Who are we?”

Harper tasted the words on her tongue. She tried. For the span of a few ragged heartbeats, she tried.

She wanted to tell Adri about the long string of dead-end jobs. The way she once attempted to return home, only to find that there was no home for her to return to. Julianna and Arthur were in the midst of their sticky divorce, and Julianna's lover made her new apartment an impossible place to be. Harper survived for a couple of years living from paycheck to paycheck and renting apartments that could only be described as the nastiest of tenements. But when Sawyer selected her from across a crowded bar, joked that he was making her an indecent proposal, a respite with a man like him sounded like a break. A place to rest her head for a while.

Yet how could she possibly begin to accurately describe her life to Adrienne? To the girl who had become the next Mother Teresa?

I've done unimaginable things. Harper tried to envision herself saying the words. If you google Stacey Hawk, you'll find me. She shuddered at the very thought of her pseudonym, the name that Sawyer called her when he photographed her in ways that made her want to curl up in a corner and die.

Harper knew that leaving him was just the beginning. Not the end.

Adri's cheeks were damp. She looked so sweet and trusting and innocent, Harper couldn't bring herself to say the words. What would Adri do if she knew the truth? Not just the truth about Sawyer and the life that Harper had led in the past few nightmarish years, but everything that came before?

What would Adri do if she knew about David?

“I'm Harper Marie Penny,” Harper said. It was the only thing she could say. She took Adri's hand in her own, pressed it between her palms as if she could love the hurt out of her very skin. “You're Adrienne Claire Vogt. We were best friends once.”

“More than that.”

“Yeah,” Harper nodded. “More than that.”

“And it got all messed up.”

“Life is messy,” Harper agreed.

“And now . . . ?”

“Now what?” Harper urged, because she was sick just wondering what came next. Where were they supposed to go from here?

Adri took a shaky breath. “I'm going to tell you the truth. I want you to do the same.”

“Okay,” Harper lied.

“Me first.” Adri pulled her hand away from Harper and brushed the tears from her face. She turned the car on and threw it into reverse.

“Where are we going?”

Adri's mouth was a slim, wavering line. “I have to show you something.”

19

A
dri took harper to piperhall and stepped out of the car with her jaw set. Harper didn't ask, she just followed.

They mounted the stairs to the loggia, but instead of taking Harper into the mansion, Adri turned to lean against the railing that overlooked the circular drive. They were almost an entire story off the ground, and from this vantage point they could see much of the estate. The stable cut a red slash against a bank of trees to their right, and the pasture unfolded beyond that. If she turned, Harper could just make out the edge of the so-called carriage house, its white paint starting to peel after too many years of sun and wind and snow. The rest of the grounds had been recently manicured, and though the lawns were washed-out green and the leaves were starting to brown at the edges, the view was impressive. Harper had always loved it here.

The estate felt safe. Permanent somehow. And David himself, though unruly and spoiled and proud, had been the embodiment of everything that was dependable and sure. One day, he would have become
the
Galloway of the Galloway fortune, and he would never have left. Harper had longed for that sort of security. In many ways, she still did.

David was a gift from Harper to Adri. At least, he was supposed to be.

Harper had fallen into friendship headlong, and she was dizzy with the possibility that someone—three someones, in fact—could like her for who she was instead of who she had for so long pretended to be. It was a drug of sorts, the sweetest kind of intoxication, and she wanted desperately to thank Adri for the simple act of being a friend. It was pathetic, Harper knew that, and she would never go so far as to admit such nonsense to anyone. But she had seen light in Adri's eyes at the mention of David Galloway, and she decided that if she could do anything to make that sparkle stay, she would.

It wasn't hard to figure out who David Galloway was. He was exactly the person Harper would have sought out if she hadn't bumped into Adri first. And though Harper intended him for Adri, she reveled in the serendipity of the chance to have it both ways: a true friend and a trophy.

Harper suspected that a man like David Galloway wouldn't have many, if any, real friends of his own, and when she sought him out after class in the middle of a routine Monday morning, she was putting that theory to the test.

David was in Harper's Western Civilization class. And though there were more than a hundred students in their block, she'd singled David out on almost the very first day. She hadn't yet managed to snag a seat near him, but that morning, she slipped out early and positioned herself next to the drinking fountain. David always stopped for a drink. It looked innocent enough, but Harper had pulled that sort of move too many times herself to see it for anything other than what it was: an out. David left Western Civ with a small flock of people around him. But when he paused to drink, they all stood around awkwardly for a second or two before realizing how desperate they looked and drifting away.

Harper had spent most of the class practicing and discarding various introductions. She flirted with cute and sexy, available and coy, but when David finally straightened up from the fountain, she decided to just stick out her hand. “I'm Harper,” she
said. And because she oozed nonchalance, or because she was wearing a pair of cutoffs with one-inch inseams, David smiled and took her hand.

He was attractive from a distance, but he was even better close up. Broad-shouldered and handsome in a classic, well-bred way, David Galloway looked like he had just stepped off the set of a Ralph Lauren photo shoot. His hair was longish but expertly cut, and he held an expensive pair of aviators loosely in his hand. The cuffs of his shirt were rolled to reveal tan forearms, and the hem was wrinkled, half untucked. He even smelled amazing. Best of all, he had a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled at her. The most perfect imperfection Harper had ever seen. David was a stranger, but Harper couldn't shake the feeling that she knew him. Surely they had met before and this was a reunion of sorts. Surely she could throw her arms around him and laugh like he was a sight for sore eyes.

“Do I know you?” David asked after Harper had stared for just a moment too long. He was smirking a bit, enjoying the fact that she was tongue-tied.

But Harper was no simpering idiot. “You should,” she said, shifting her weight, and the full glare of her attention, away from him. She swept long, blond hair off her shoulder, revealing what she considered one of her very best features: the long swath of honey-colored skin from her neck to the stylishly frayed top of her low-cut shirt.

It was David's turn to stare. “Excuse me?”

“I can stop them from harassing you.”

“Who?” He glanced around as if Harper saw something he didn't. Students were filtering through the hall, moving from one class to the next, or heading out the wide, glass doors toward the campus center or their dorm rooms. Most passed Harper and David without notice, but there were a pair of girls near a bulletin board who watched them with hasty, furtive glances. When David caught sight of them he sighed.

Harper smiled sympathetically but didn't say anything.

“How can you stop them?” David folded his arms across his chest and gave her a skeptical look. “You offering to be my bodyguard?”

Harper laughed, a low, rich sound in the back of her throat, and took a step toward David. “You don't need a bodyguard,” she murmured when there was only a thin layer of air between them. She could feel the warmth of his body. The scent of cologne mingled with something that was distinctly David made her momentarily dizzy.

But this was for Adri, Harper reminded herself with a jolt of conscience. She was orchestrating a meeting—maybe more?—for the girl who melted a little at the sound of his name. Harper sucked a breath of air, got hold of herself, then leaned in further still and whispered in David's ear: “Follow me.”

He did. Close behind, his hand hovering just shy of the small of her back. Anyone who watched them would assume they were a couple, even though David never touched her. It was the simplest of ruses, but Harper guessed it would be effective enough to sprinkle the first few rumors around campus that David Galloway was taken. And by Harper Penny. She already knew that no one would mess with her.

The rest was simple. They talked like old friends, and in many ways they were. Kindred spirits at least, the kind of people set apart by looks and personality and the fickle hand of fate that had planted them in circumstances that forced them to grow differently than everyone else. They were orchids in a sea of daisies, and not at all afraid to admit it.

In the beginning, Harper wondered if David kept coming around in spite of Adri, Will, and Jackson rather than because of them. But affection is sometimes a slow boil, and by the time she nicknamed their little group The Five, she believed that David was as invested as she was. They were, against all odds, friends.

And Harper loved it all.

Her people. Maple Acres. The way that she felt for the first time in her life like she belonged inside her own skin.

Piperhall. Especially Piperhall. Harper never wanted to leave.

Once, a couple of years after they became friends, Harper had almost told David as much. “I love it here,” she whispered. It was a Sunday night and they should have been heading back to campus, but it wasn't far and they couldn't tear themselves away from the stars. They had gone riding that afternoon, even Harper, and after the horses had been brushed and put to pasture, they wandered the grounds because the reality of the week ahead felt like too much to bear. Will and Adri were arguing about something in the sort of fond, sibling way that made Harper long for a brother, and Jackson was hand in hand with Nora, a new girlfriend who didn't quite fit. Harper couldn't help resenting her. When Nora was around, they were quick to pair up, but when it was just the five of them, they were a unit. A fist clenched tight.

Harper walked beside David, the others a few steps ahead as they wandered toward the orchard and the last of the autumn apples. Adri had gotten it in her head to make a pie. As if Adri had time to bake anything.

“Everyone loves it here,” David responded belatedly. He sounded bored, and Harper jerked her head to study his profile in the moonlight. She hadn't realized that he had heard her quiet reflection. “You really should stick around some summer instead of going back east to work in that coffee shop. You could come to the Piperhall summer picnic and watch the gawkers. It's quite entertaining.”

“I thought your mother stopped doing that.”

“I'd reinvent it for you.” David had a way of making Harper feel like she was the only person in the world during those rare moments. She slowed a bit to let the others pull even farther ahead, and stared up at the man she pretended not to love. Harper knew her charade was thin, but it didn't seem to matter much. Everyone loved David. Or envied him, longed to be with him, longed to be him. He was inescapable.

“How generous of you.” Harper couldn't smooth the lust
from her voice, and she sounded warm and inviting, even in her own ears. “But I'm afraid if I stay, I may never leave.”

David stopped and turned to her. They were close, closer than Harper had realized as they walked shoulder to shoulder in the near-dark. Because everyone else was ahead of them, and because of the gauzy veil of twilight, it felt for a moment like they were utterly alone. Harper had held David at bay, had pressed him away by the predictable standard of her own flirtatiousness. How was he, or anyone, to know where she had pinned her heart? Harper liked it that way. But as he stood over her, his head inclined as if he might bend a little more and kiss her, she found herself faint with desire.

“Never leave?” David repeated. And then he did the impossible. He lifted a finger and traced a line from the arch of her forehead over her upturned nose and stopped against the fullness of her lips. He parted them slightly.

Harper tried not to gasp when David leaned in a little, his fingertip still against her mouth. But he didn't kiss her. Instead, he brushed past her mouth and whispered in her ear, “I guess I'd have to redo the servants' quarters, wouldn't I?”

It was exactly the sort of thing David would say, and Harper should have expected as much. But his words stabbed all the same. Harper might have fallen to pieces, but she wouldn't let him have the satisfaction. Steeling herself against the ache in her chest, she laughed and tickled his ear with her whisper, “I'd own the place in a year, Mr. Galloway. They'd have to call it Harperhall.”

David either didn't realize that he had hurt her or didn't care.

Suddenly Harper was aware of Adri's eyes on her. She had been silent, lost in her own thoughts for far too long. “Piperhall is gorgeous,” she managed. “It always has been.”

“It's mine,” Adri said.

Harper's throat squeezed shut. “What?” Realizing that she probably sounded like she was jealous or upset or worse, she swallowed and tried again. “Victoria left you the estate?”

“Yup. I'm the executor of her will and the new owner of the Galloway mansion. Lock, stock, and barrel.”

“Well”—Harper forced herself to smile—“Victoria loved you very much.”

Adri snorted. “I don't think she would have said that, exactly. But I would have been her only family, had David and I married. Based on what I've learned about her these last few days, that meant something to her.”

“Of course it did.”

“If Victoria had known what I did to David, that I was responsible for her son's death, I don't think she would have left all of this to me.”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Harper grabbed Adri's hand and held it tight. “It was an accident.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing,” Harper interrupted. “If anyone is to blame, it's me. If I recall correctly, and I do, the backpacking trip was my idea. I booked the flights and I convinced everyone to go.”

“Yes, but—”

“I talked him into cliff jumping.”

It was all too much and too soon. A reminder of what had happened and how. Of blood in the water and his vacant, unseeing eyes. Adri and Harper were standing beneath the shadow of the Galloway mansion, but suddenly they could both smell the earthy, elemental tang of mountain and river and rain forest. Adri's hand trembled in Harper's tight grip.

“I don't want to talk about this,” Harper whispered. It was a black hole. It was just the beginning. She couldn't stand the thought of tipping over the edge and into the bottomless void.

“I do want to talk about this. You're the only person I can talk to.” Adri sounded desperate. “Please, Harper, let me talk about this . . .”

The sound of an engine on the long drive to the mansion made them both look up, and within seconds a truck came into view.

“Will,” Adri said, sounding defeated.

They watched as he pulled up next to Betty and cut the engine. He emerged wearing a pair of jeans and a heather-gray T-shirt that hugged his chest appealingly. When he caught sight of the girls between the arches of the loggia he gave a cheerful wave. Harper waved back.