Breathless In Love

She punched in his cell number, and he answered on the second ring. “Harper, I was just thinking about you.”

All he had to do was say her name in that sexy drawl and she melted like an ice cube in the summertime. It suddenly occurred to her that he might have picked up the call assuming she had something sexy to say to him. But since he knew how important her brother was to her, she hoped he wouldn’t be too surprised when she said, “I have a huge favor to ask. I’m supposed to pick Jeremy up by five at the grocery store where he works, but I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss.”

“I’ll get him.”

Just that quickly, her heart swelled in her chest, the same way it had last Saturday when he’d been so kind to Jeremy while working on the Maserati. His sweetness had prompted her instant decision to take a risk by spending a few hot nights with him. It meant a great deal to her that Will didn’t ask questions, didn’t make excuses. He simply offered to help.

At the same time, however, she knew running a billion-dollar corporation couldn’t be at all easy. And he’d already given her and Jeremy so much of his limited free time. “I thought you might have a driver? Or that maybe Mrs. Taylor could do it? I’m sure you’re probably still up in the city and I know how busy you are.”

“I’m happy to do it, Harper.”

She’d called him to ask for help, and now that he was giving it so freely—and she needed it so badly—she stopped trying to talk him out of it. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.” He had no idea how much. Not since her parents died had she been able to pick up the phone and call someone who would bail her out so quickly and easily. Not until Will.

He was too good, a dream come true. She didn’t have anything to offer in return. Except for sex. It shouldn’t make her smile to think of paying off her debts in his bed, but lately, everything about Will made her smile. “If you can drop him off at the house, I should be home by six-thirty. He’ll be fine until then.”

“No, I’ll stay until you get home. I know you don’t like him to be alone. Don’t worry about a thing tonight. I’ve got it covered.”

And maybe, she found herself hoping, even though she’d already had far more than a sensible quota of him for the week, he was also staying so that he could spend time with her, too. “Thank you,” she said again. “You’re sweet.”

He gave a burst of incredulous laughter. “No one has ever called me sweet in my entire life.”

“But you are.”

“Believe me,” he said in a voice that was suddenly serious, “I’m not sweet. But I promise I’ll always do whatever I can for you and Jeremy.”

Will made a lot of promises. And though Harper was still wary of letting Jeremy—or herself—get hurt, Will hadn’t broken a single one yet.

* * *

The grocery store was only a ten-minute walk from Harper’s house. Will figured Jeremy could probably have handled it just fine, but he knew Harper would have worried the whole time. It wasn’t Will’s business to say anything about how she handled her brother. Besides, hearing her voice over the phone had been the best thing that had happened to him all day, and even if he’d just blown off several meetings, he wanted to see her more than he wanted to sit in on a conference call. Not to mention the fact that he’d been able to hear her desperation when she’d asked him for the favor...along with a note in her voice that told him she’d expected him to say no.

Will loved surprising Harper. In fact, his plan was to keep surprising her over and over again, in the best possible ways.

Seeing Harper once a week wasn’t nearly enough. And he wasn’t just thinking about the hot sex they’d had in his garage after their date. He missed her laughter, her innate spark. He grinned every time he thought about the way she’d kicked him out of her house Wednesday morning, loving the way she could be so soft and pliable one moment, then strong and determined the next.

Both Harper and Jeremy added something to his life, something he couldn’t define, but that he now realized had been missing for quite a while. It had been in that strange weariness he’d felt in the months before meeting them, a sense that all the wealth and all the changes he’d made in his life were no longer enough.

The traffic was bad, but fortunately Will arrived at the grocery store before Jeremy’s shift was over. The place was a madhouse, with working moms rushing in and out, men with nothing but frozen dinners in their carts, and teenagers holding six-packs of soda. Though all the checkstands were open, the lines still snaked down the aisles.

He spotted Harper’s brother three checkstands away, loading a vast expanse of groceries into reusable shopping bags. The mother had a child in the cart and two more were milling around Jeremy’s legs. His tongue between his lips in concentration, Jeremy was trying to stack food carefully in the bags, but the kids kept screaming and jumping, bumping into him and knocking him off his rhythm. The mother shook her head, glaring at Jeremy with her mouth pursed.

Will headed down to them, his immediate thought being to intercede, or even help pack the groceries. Until he thought about the humiliation factor. Will didn’t want Jeremy to think he couldn’t handle the job. Here he’d just been thinking that Harper didn’t always give Jeremy enough credit, like being able to walk home by himself, but rushing to her brother’s rescue now would be exactly the same thing.

By that point, the checker, a stout woman with frizzy red hair, was furiously loading goods into plastic bags as well, tossing them at Jeremy and pointing to the cart. “Come on, come on,” she practically yelled at him.