Page 28 of Harper

“Oh god, I’m sorry. What happened last night?” I ask.

“You happened.”

“What does that mean?”

Joe flicks a glance at his watch, then back at me. “Sorry, Harp, but I don’t have time for a full recap. If you want the blow-by-blow, we’ll have to meet up later.”

He heads for the bathroom.

“Please just tell me…is there anything I should know?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at him.

He turns around and shrugs. What does that mean? Yes? No?

“Gotta take a shower,” he says, stepping into the bathroom.

“Joe!” I cry. I’ve got to know what happened or my imagination is going to get the better of me. He turns around again, eyebrows raised in question.

“Where and when?” I ask him. “For the full recap?”

He lifts his chin, stares at me for a second, then says, “Here. Eight o’clock.”

“Tonight?”

“No, Harper,” he says, getting terse. “Half an hour ago.”

“Eight tonight. Check,” I say. “I’ll be here.”

Then I scurry down the hallway of Joe’s home in search of his washer and dryer.

***

“Happy Fifth of July to you!” says Parker, annoyingly chipper when she picks me up downtown half an hour later. “Where’d you sleep last night?”

“Nunya.”

“What, now?”

“Nunya business,” I say, giving her a look while I buckle my seat belt. I purposely walked ten blocks into town, so she’d have no idea who I was with last night. And wow, that walk hurt with a scorching hangover and Advil that had only just started to kick in.

“Don’t want to tell me? Fine. But here’s a newsflash for you, sister dear. Because you were nowhere to be found this morning, Hunter had to take your place on a three-day, two-night tour up to Whitehorse. And let me tell you, he was not pleased.”

“Aw, shoot.”

“Yeah. So you know what that means, right?”

“My brothers are pissed at me?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s a given,” she says. “But it also means you’re on cruise ship day excursions today, tomorrow, and Friday.”

Fuck. “What? No! Come on!”

“Hunter had ’em covered. You bailed. His jobs fall on you. Them’s the breaks.”

I groan softly, closing my eyes.

Of all the tours I hate to lead, back-to-back Beers, Brawls and Brothels in downtown Skagway is my least favorite. I prefer getting out of town to show our clients waterfalls and emerald-green lakes, to visit sled dogs and reindeer farms. I hate two- and three-hour cruise ship day tours. The tips are shit, and the people are all in vacation mode to the max, which means keeping their attention can be challenging. Not to mention, many of them are all in their twilight years and are prone to wandering off instead of staying close to me. God help me if I misplace one of them or—God forbid—they miss embarkation; the cruise companies will stop using us for tours, and we can’t afford to lose that income stream.

“Can’t you do it, Park?”

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