The Beautiful Daughters (26 page)

“Nope.” David slid back his stool and went to gather Adri at the end of the long bar. Instead of helping her stand, he simply picked her up. She looked like a little girl in his arms, slight and pale, her eyes damp and shiny with fever.

“Don't carry me,” she protested. “I'm still angry at you.”

David hushed her. “I promise I won't drop you down the stairs.”

Adri looked for a moment like she would struggle, but then she gave up and closed her eyes. Harper wondered if she was sleeping before David even tucked her into bed.

It was an early night for everyone, and long before midnight rolled around, the house was still but for the sound of the heater moaning through the old air ducts. Harper couldn't sleep. She wasn't much of a sleeper to begin with, but her unraveling life had made rest little more than a memory. Nights were spent pacing or drinking. Sometimes scribbling poetry on whatever slip of paper she could find. Of course, she usually tipped over the edge into a fitful sleep at some point in the long night, and when she woke in the morning she was often surrounded by evidence of her nocturnal wrestlings. Phrases and fragments that revealed a soul at war. Then she would gather them hastily, crumple them into tiny balls, and stuff them into the very bottom of the garbage can. Adri could never see them. Never.

But tonight, in David's house, with secrets and lies and a painfully unclear future before her, Harper was sick with insomnia. She couldn't write or pace. She couldn't even drink—her stomach was too bloated with guilt. Wakefulness throbbed beneath her skin, ached and burned dull. It made her want to scratch herself raw just so that she could release a little of the anguish that made every pore tingle like a bruise.

Harper didn't know where to go, so she went to the only place where she felt relatively safe from prying eyes: the tower. She climbed the stairs in the dark and emerged in the lookout to a sky so clouded that it was blackness itself. There was no moon, no stars, and the small, enclosed balcony was dense and close, so that Harper felt as if she was underground instead of standing at the highest point in the county. She had hoped to fill her lungs with air, but there was nothing for her to breathe here.

There was nowhere else for her to go.

Harper was in the tower less than five minutes when she heard footsteps on the spiral staircase below her. It wasn't Adri; she had been passed out for hours. Will? Jackson? Of course, David. She knew him by the way he walked, climbing the steps as if he had already conquered them, as if the tower itself, and the woman inside it, bored him half to death.

“Shouldn't you be nursing your wife back to health?” Harper didn't mean to sound bitter, but her words were razor-edged.

“She's not my wife.”

“Yet.”

Harper whirled on him, on the place where she thought he would be, but he was invisible in the thick shadows. “Are you really doing this? Are you going to play this game?”

“What game?”

Backing up until her shoulder blades touched the cool glass wall of the tower, Harper said, “I'm not letting you touch me with Adri sleeping somewhere below us.”

“So now you have a conscience?” David laughed.

“That's a horrible thing to say.”

“Come on, Harper.” His voice was as smooth as cream, but it snagged at the end. Caught on some emotion that Harper couldn't determine. “You know we're both going to hell.”

She was cold, but she pressed her palms to the glass behind her all the same. It was invigorating somehow. It woke her up, even though she wasn't tired and she was as sober as she had been in a long time. “We don't have to,” she said. “We can make this right.”

Harper didn't even know that she had been formulating a plan until that moment, but the second the words were out of her mouth, she could almost see the path laid out before her. They would do the only thing they could do. They would tell the truth. Because they loved Adri too much not to. At least, Harper did.

But David was having none of it. “How in the world can we make this right? You want to tell Adri? You think that would help?”

“Yes.” Harper could feel him moving toward her, his steps shuffling, unsure.

“You're completely insane. We aren't telling Adrienne a thing.”

“Adrienne?” Harper repeated softly. She hated how lately David insisted on calling Adri by her given name. It felt like he was already grooming her, turning her into a woman befitting the Galloway title. Harper stopped. “That's it, isn't it?” she said. “I mean, I've always guessed that you chose Adri because she was a more suitable wife, but that really is the reason, isn't it?”

He had found her, and though his hand fumbled as he reached, when he caught her wrist he held it tight. “You think you know me, don't you?” David leaned in close and drew his cheek along Harper's, his breath warm against her neck.

“I do know you.” Harper stiffened beneath him, trying to resist the temptation to melt into his touch. She didn't want to love him, but when he held her close like this, when he
revealed just the tiniest bit of how very truly messed up he was, she couldn't help herself. There was hurt buried deep inside him, the kind of damage that called out to what was broken in her. She understood him. He just didn't know it yet. Or maybe he refused to accept it.

“Listen,” Harper said, rising on her tiptoes so that she could press herself against him. “You're not right for Adri.” It was the truth. It was the honest-to-God truest thing she had said in a very long time.

“Thank you for imparting that nugget of wisdom.”

She ignored him, and allowed herself the forbidden luxury of brushing her mouth over the place where his heart beat a steady rhythm beneath his jawline. It was just a second of contact, anything more and she knew that she would forget what she was saying and why. But it was enough to make David shut up.

“You will make her miserable for the rest of her life. And you know it. She'll make you miserable, too.” Harper could feel David take a breath to say something, but she didn't let him. “We have to tell her about us. It'll be hard, but it won't destroy her, David. She's a strong girl. Someday, she might even forgive us.”

“Us?”

Yes. Us. But Harper didn't say that. She said, “I love you.”

It wisped out of her so faintly, the words barely existed at all. But David had heard, and she couldn't take it back. Harper was tangled up in him, body and heart and soul, her face buried against his shoulder where she could taste the salty sweet of his skin, and she knew that she had never been more naked, more vulnerable with another person in her entire life. Not even Adri. She wished she could evaporate. But she was flesh and blood, and when David let go of her wrist, she trembled.

He didn't say a word.

Harper didn't know there was anything left of her heart to break. But when she reached the bottom of the stairs—a desperate, staggering tumble that was anything but stealthy—she was choking on sobs. She pressed both of her hands over her
mouth, shocked and furious at herself, but too wrecked to worry about the scene she was making. The people she might wake.

David caught her the moment before she fled to her room, and wrestled her into his arms, even though she fought him like a wildcat. “Come on,” he said into her hair. “Don't do this. Please don't do this. I love you, too.” But it was too late.

“You do not love me,” she gasped, pushing against his arms, his chest. They were steel. He held her fast. “You use me.”

“Harper—”

“You sleep with me.”

“Please.”

“I'm your whore,” she all but shrieked.

“You are not my whore.”

“And Adri's going to be your miserable wife. Why, David? Do you love her?”

“Of course, I—”

“Then what am I to you?”

But he never got a chance to answer. In the shadows there was a shuffling, the slightest scuff of slippered feet. David straightened and stepped away from Harper.

“Mother. Let me help you back to your room.”

22

T
hey picked up doughnuts and coffee from the gas station. The pastries were fresh from the oven, warm icing dripping down the sides. Harper licked the sweetness from her fingers as adri wove through blackhawk, the only place where harper had ever been happy.

When they cleared the city limits, Adri drove to Piperhall and they finished their coffee by the pool. The air was crisp but pleasant, and Harper chattered endlessly about every safe memory that popped into her head. She put on a good show, laughing and remembering, even though her heart was shriveling inside her chest. She longed to run.

“Would you like a tour?” Adri asked when it was obvious that every last drop of coffee was gone—and Harper's lighthearted anecdotes had run dry. “I think we missed that part the other day. Will interrupted us.”

Harper had been swallowing Piperhall in greedy gulps as they walked from the front entrance to the back veranda. It looked exactly as she liked to paint it in her dreams. Bright and lovely. Perfect. But the thought of a full-fledged tour was somewhat terrifying. Betrayal and lies and regrets hovered like ghosts around every corner. What could she say?

“I'd love a tour,” Harper said.

As they deposited their empty coffee cups in the garbage, a shiver ran up Harper's spine.

Someone was in the mansion. Harper could hear voices coming from the hall, and from the way Adri's head whipped toward the main living space, it was apparent that she could hear them, too.

“Were you expecting company?” Harper asked. Her hand floated to her throat of its own accord. She swallowed beneath her fingertips, then forced herself to hold her arms at her sides. She picked at her jeans.

“No.” But Adri wasn't afraid. There was no reason for her to be. She started toward the entry with her shoulders thrown back, and called before she was halfway there. “Hello? Dad?”

Sam. Who else could it be? Will and Jackson were undoubtedly working. It was mid-morning on a Wednesday. In Blackhawk, of all places. It could be a plumber, an electrician, the pool boy. Elena? Did she still deliver food to the estate? Of course not. Harper jogged a few steps to catch up with Adri, and prayed that her friend couldn't hear the irregular pounding of her panicked heart.

“Dad?” Still no answer, and they were only steps away from the arch that opened onto the back half of the house. Once they were seen, there would be nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.

Then Sam stepped into view, with a smile on his face that Harper could tell from half a room away was uncertain. Someone was with him.

“Hey,” Sam called. “I figured you girls would be here. Hope you don't mind that we just let ourselves in. We knocked, but no one answered.”

“We?” Adri flushed the tiniest bit. It made her look lush somehow, expectant, and Harper knew in that moment that she made the perfect foil for her lovely friend. She could feel the blood drain out of her face. It was pooling somewhere in
her feet, and she fought hard to stop herself from folding to the floor.

Sam noticed at once. “Harper, honey. Are you okay?” He took a few steps toward her, but before he could reach out a steadying hand, Adri gasped.

“Caleb?”

Caleb. Harper caught sight of him around one of the pillars that held up the sixteen-foot ceiling in the grand entryway. He was taller than she had expected, broad-shouldered and visibly comfortable in his own skin. The colorful arc of a bright tattoo peeked out from beneath the collar of his Henley, and trailed down the exposed skin of his forearm all the way to his wrist. Harper hadn't expected a full-sleeve tattoo, or the square jaw of a man who looked like he belonged in military fatigues rather than a pair of secondhand board shorts on a beach in some forgotten third-world country. But for all his tough exterior, Caleb was undeniably handsome, and the kindness in his eyes betrayed a heart that Harper couldn't help but love. Instantly. She nearly melted from relief, and then joy at the understanding that this was the man Adri was falling for. He couldn't possibly be more different from David.

“What are you doing here?” Adri didn't seem quite as happy as Harper was that the man before them was none other than her coworker.

But Caleb was undeterred. A grin spread across his face and he eliminated the space between them in a couple of long strides. Adri's subtle protests were completely ignored when he swept her up in a hug that made her feet dangle off the floor. He buried his face in her neck, breathed deeply of her hair and her ivory smooth skin, and then lowered her as gently as if she was made of porcelain.

“I'm here to see you,” Caleb told her, and though there was no way he could miss Adri's lukewarm reception, it appeared he didn't expect her to jump up and down at his surprise arrival. His smile was soft for her, but determination shadowed his eyes.
If Harper knew anything at all about men, she'd bet Maple Acres and Piperhall, too, that Caleb was going to do anything and everything in his power to win the woman before him.

Adri just stared at him. She looked a little mystified. A lot scared.

For a moment, it was as if Sam and Harper didn't even exist, and they exchanged a knowing smile behind Adri's back. Sam raised his eyebrows at Harper, and she shrugged to let him know that she had no insight to add into Caleb's sudden appearance in Blackhawk.

“I told you not to come,” Adri finally managed. But her hand had trailed down his arm when he released her, and she held it there lightly against the intricate design of a tattoo that Harper couldn't quite make out. Adri's words were accusatory, but her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted, as if she couldn't believe that Caleb was before her, in the flesh. “You can't just leave. That's not how it works . . .”

“I didn't just leave.” He tipped her chin with his finger and searched her eyes. Broke contact before she had a chance to rebuff him. “The board trip this year included a GP and his three kids: a nurse, a hand surgeon, and a dentist. A high-achieving family, I'd say. I think they wanted us out of the way for a week or two.”

“But—”

“No buts. My leave was scheduled months ago. They sent me home, and I told you I'd come. La Crosse is less than five hours from Blackhawk, by the way. I left at six this morning.”

Adri seemed poised to argue even more, but Harper couldn't stand to see her disappoint him. There was too much hope in his eyes. “Hi,” she said, stepping forward. “I'm Harper. It's nice to meet you.”

Caleb turned his startling gaze to her, and a shy smile nipped at the corners of her mouth. Harper felt distinctly unbalanced, and fear was still leaching out of her bones in slow motion. But he was not only beautiful, he was warmth itself, and when
Caleb took her hand, she felt the last vestiges of panic slip away.

“It's nice to meet you, too,” he said.

“Harper is an old friend,” Adri finally said, jumping into the conversation a couple of seconds late. A confused look flitted across her features as she struggled with what to say next. All the regular niceties were beyond her reach. She couldn't say exactly where Harper was from or what she did. Or even why she was in Blackhawk. She settled for “We go way back.”

“I surprised Adri, too,” Harper said to Caleb conspiratorially. But she didn't want even a hint of impropriety to bloom between them, so she extracted her hand from his and took a step back. Not that she had to worry. Caleb only had eyes for Adri. “I'm afraid I have something I need to do, so I guess I'll leave you two alone.”

Sam gave her a funny look, but quickly jumped on the bandwagon. “Me, too,” he said. “I'll drive you, Harper. Caleb, can we count on you for dinner?”

His smile was dazzling for Sam. “That sounds great.”

They left Adri standing beside Caleb, a bewildered look on her face. But Caleb didn't seem to mind. He put his arm around her shoulder, and instead of pulling away from him, Adri leaned slightly into his easy embrace and watched her father and Harper leave.

Sam and Harper climbed into his rusted pickup truck, Beckett between them. The huge dog seemed to take up most of the cab, but it was cold outside and he was stiff in the mornings. Harper didn't blame Sam for letting Beckett ride shotgun, and she took his graying head and pulled it down onto her lap. “So that's Caleb,” Sam mused as he put the truck in drive and took off down the lane.

“Guess so,” Harper said, and though there were a dozen
reasons for her not to smile, she couldn't keep the grin out of her voice. “I like him.”

Sam shot her a sideways look. “Me, too.”

“You do? You never really liked David.” It was out of Harper's mouth before she could censor herself. What an impossible thing to say. Senseless. Callous. Too close to the heart of the problem that had plagued them all for half a decade. But Sam wasn't ruffled by her outburst.

“I didn't much care for him,” he agreed.

The lid had been cracked, and there seemed no point in pretending that they weren't already talking about it, so Harper asked, “Why?”

“Lots of little reasons,” Sam said without pause. He was focused on the road, his attention on the intersection at the end of the drive, but Harper could tell that whatever he was about to say, it would not be flippant. “Don't get me wrong. He was a smart kid. Handsome and friendly. He had a lot of potential. But there was one big thing that always bugged me about him.”

“What was that?”

Sam turned onto the road, and when the truck was perfectly balanced in the center of his lane, he stared Harper straight in the eye for a moment. “He didn't love Adri.”

“Did you ever tell her that?”

“Did you?”

He had her there. As much as she loved Adri, apparently, as much as they both did, summoning the courage to have that sort of agonizing conversation was something that neither of them had been able to do. Who could blame them? What were they supposed to say? Adrienne, sweetheart, your fiancé doesn't love you and never has? It was a conversation doomed from the start, coming from her father (the man who had never liked David) or Harper (the woman who had always loved him).

Even so, Harper could tell that Sam regretted his own cowardice. They both did.

“Well,” Sam said after a moment. “You have plans for the day?”

“I need to get online. Does the library have computers?”

“Believe it or not, Harper, I have a computer. It's probably a clunker, but it works. Maple Acres even has Wi-Fi.”

“Well, aren't you tech-savvy?” Harper reached over Beckett and gave Sam's sleeve a little tug. “Thanks for the offer,” she demurred, “but I'd actually like some privacy.”

“Of course. Feel free to use my truck.”

Sam dropped himself off at the farm and left the engine running. It took a bit of convincing to coax Beckett off the bench seat, but when he finally lumbered down, Harper slid behind the wheel. “Thanks,” she said, holding Sam's sweet gaze for just a moment too long. Her gratitude was boundless, deeper than it should have been, and it seemed Sam could tell, because he stayed wedged in the open door.

“You're coming back, right?” he asked, searching her face.

“Of course.” She made a dismissive sound in the back of her throat, but it was weak and ineffectual.

“You don't have to run away from us.” It was a bold thing to say, but instead of feeling affronted, Harper found herself wanting to hug Sam and never let go.

“I'm not running from you,” Harper whispered.

“I know. But let me tell you something, Harper. It's obvious you're running, and if there's anything I'm sure of, it's that you can only run for so long. Eventually you have to stop, and when you do, we sure would love to be there for you.”

Harper couldn't look at him anymore. She put her forehead on the steering wheel, over the peaks and ridges of her knuckles, as she held on for dear life. “What if I'm getting exactly what I deserve?”

Sam put a hand on her back. “Come on, Harper. You're forgiven.”