Page 24 of Redeeming Harmony

“Yes. Give me two more minutes,” Hal said.

Steeling herself, Harper walked a few feet to Nathan’s office and knocked on it. At his ‘come in’, she opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

Nathan glanced up from his desk. The sour look on his face when he saw her didn’t help calm her nerves.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

“I wondered if you had time to chat,” she said.

“Actually, no,” he said. “I’m meeting with your father in five minutes to sign the paperwork for the clinic. Unless you’re here to tell me that your spoiled brat routine worked, and you’ve convinced him not to sell the clinic to me.”

Okay, she deserved that. She had acted like a spoiled brat. Still, it bugged her more than it should that Nathan thought of her that way.

“No,” she said. “Dad’s still selling the clinic to you.”

He didn’t reply, but she could see the tension leaking from him. It made the lines around his mouth soften and the stiffness in his neck disappear.

“What I have to say won’t take long,” Harper said. “I want to apologize for what I said.”

“Is that right?” he said.

Shit. He wasn’t going to make this easy on her.

“Yes. It was wrong of me to assume that you were pressuring my father into selling the clinic, and I’m sorry for calling you lazy and accusing you of manipulating Dad.”

He stared silently at her for an agonizing thirty seconds or so. Willing herself not to squirm, she met his gaze steadily.

“Apology accepted,” he finally said before turning back to his computer.

After about ten seconds, he stared at her with one eyebrow raised. “Was there something else you needed?”

“No,” she said. She left his office, closing the door behind her. Her cheeks burned, and she felt sick to her stomach. She had apologized, and Nathan accepted her apology. He obviously still hated her and thought she was a spoiled brat, but what did that matter? They weren’t friends and never would be.

So, why did the idea that he didn’t like her bother her so much?

* * *

“You got a part time job already?”Kira sat down on Addie’s couch next to Harper. “That’s fantastic! Where are you working?”

“Grind my Beans,” Harper said. “I stopped in this morning to talk to Hazel and give her my resume. We had a mini-interview right then, and she texted me about half an hour ago to offer me the job. My first shift is on Monday.”

“Congratulations!” Kira studied Harper’s face before taking her hand and squeezing it. “I know it isn’t the work you want to be doing, but it will happen for you, honey. You still have your online shop, right?”

Harper nodded. “I do.”

“How are sales?”

She shrugged. “I sell a few prints a month, enough to cover the website fees. I haven’t sold an original in…”

She thought back, trying not to let her discouragement show on her face. “Before I went to New York.”

Her laughter was only a little bitter. “Ironic, right? I moved to New York to live my dream of becoming a full-time artist, and I don’t sell one original piece the whole time I’m there. Ugh… failure at its finest.”

“Stop it,” Kira said. “You’re not a failure. You just need the right person to see your drawings, that’s all.”

“There were tons of the right people in New York. All of them said my work sucked,” Harper said.

“They actually said it sucked?” Addie came into the living room with two glasses of water that she handed to Harper and Kira. “That’s awful.”

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