Page 19 of Unwanted
Harry huffed in frustration. “Can you blame me? My family lost their house. My dad almost lost his job. And then your brother put me in the picture – told me the truth.”
I reeled back in surprise. Heath had told Harry what was going on? “If Heath told you the truth, then I’m even more confused, Harry. If you knew everything, then why did you stop speaking to me?” Harry’s eyebrows went up. When he spoke again his voice was hoarse.
“How can you say that? You’d lied to me. I couldn’t trust you again. I was devastated.” The man looked genuinely confused and I decided that I’d had enough of this nonsense. I’d had enough of people trying to rewrite history for me over the years. Enough of having painful memories minimised and dismissed. Harry was standing there saying he had known all about my family and yet hestillwalked away? For hiding it from him?
“Don’t you try to mess with my head, hedgehog,” I said, taking a step towards him and poking him once in the chest. He took a step forward himself into my hand which then flattened over his heart. For a moment I froze feeling his heat burn through my skin and his steady heartbeat against my palm. He opened his mouth to speak but instead looked down at my hand then back to my eyes and I took a sharp breath in at the intense brown around his dilated pupils. Everything else fell away. It was just me and him. My hand on his shirt tensed and I let out a slow breath. His head lowered. I stretched up onto my toes and before I knew it my mouth had brushed his in a soft kiss, our breath mingling between us. “Ha–” I started to whisper against him, but that was all I managed to get out before he closed his mouth over mine. One of his hands went into my hair and the other arm went around my back, pulling my body into his. A small voice in the back of my mind tried to communicate with my body but it was all too much. His smell, the warmth of his chest and arms now surrounding me, his mouth over mine all combined and I melted into him, letting out a small moan in the back of my throat of sheer relief at being this close to him again. My mouth had just opened under his and my hands had just slid up underneath his suit jacket to feel the muscles of his back, when I heard a small cough behind him. Harry froze and I jerked away in shock. It took me a few more moments to register what was happening as he turned around, keeping me pinned behind him to shield me from view.
“Verity?” I sighed at the sound of Max’s voice. The last thing I needed was his heavy-handed input. “Oi, you, get away from her!”
Harry stiffened and put a hand to keep me behind him as if shielding me from Max, which was ridiculous. Max was a big teddy bear. He might bluster about and look intimidating, but he was marshmallows and kitten fluff inside.
“Calm down, Hardcastle,” he said his tone back to his normal cold. “Verity and I just had something to discuss in private.”
“Calm down? You should have seen the state of her the last time you two had aprivate discussion. Anything you need to discuss you can do with me.”
Max moved then to sidestep Harry and get to me, but Harry was faster. He blocked Max and gave him a shove in the centre of his chest, catching him off guard, causing him to stumble back a step.
“I’m not letting you near her when you’re angry,” Harry unwisely said to an increasingly angry and martial-arts-trained Max.
“Max would never hurt me, Harry,” I said, darting around him and putting myself between the two of them before the situation could escalate any further.
“Unlike some buggers,” Max put in. Harry scowled at him.
“I just needed to talk to her for one minute. Is it too much to ask that you could mind your own bloody business long enough for us to have an actual conversation?”
“Not many ideas being exchanged from where I was standing, mate,” Max retorted, and I felt my face heat.
“Max!” I clipped. “That’s enough.” Harry’s gaze flew to my face, which was now hot with mortification, and his scowl deepened.
“I’m only saying he shouldn’t be taking liberties with you on-site when you–”
“Will you shut up! For Christ’s sake, can’t you see you’re embarrassing her?” Harry said. There was a beat of silence.
“Verity’s never been embarrassed a day in her life,” Max said with confidence.
“Well then you don’t know her very well.”
“Idon’t know her? Listen to me, you cheeky sod. I’ve been mates with her for the last twenty-five years. Where have you been?”
“Verity, I just want to talk to you. I–”
“I’m sorry, Harry, but there’s nothing more to say.”
Max was right. Harry didn’t know me, not anymore. What just happened was a mistake. No more “private chats”. Clearly, I could not be trusted around him.
Harry
Verity had backed away from me and was now standing with Max. It was just like school again – me on my own, excluded. I’d worked hard to bury all of that insecurity, but it was surprising how quickly it came back when a pretty girl decided that I wasn’t good enough to speak to. In my rational mind I may have known that there were reasons Verity had avoided me for over a year and was rejecting me now, but rationality had no place in the broken heart of a teenager – and that was where my mindset shot back to in that moment.
“Fine,” I said, stuffing my hands into my pockets to stop myself reaching for Verity again. Her lips were still swollen from our kiss, her thick hair had fallen out of its sleek style. There was even a small smudge of mascara on her cheek, which was completely at odds with her normal perfection, but knowing I had been the one to mess her up made her look even more attractive. I had to get a grip of myself. Verity wouldn’t even have a simple conversation with me for God’s sake. I had to let this obsession go. Easier said than done when all I could think about was the way she felt against me, the noises she made in the back of her throat – and now I was adding in the image of her face after we’d kissed today in all its slightly dishevelled, glorious imperfection. “Well, if you’re quite finished here then maybe you could get on with the job I’m paying you for.”
With that I stormed away from them through the site entrance. I felt eyes on me as I headed to my car which made me even more angry. I was being run off my own property by the architects to whom I was paying perfectly good money. As I pulled away from the kerb, I glanced at the dashboard and caught sight of the small Baby Yoda that Toby had stuck there as a joke. Anger shot through me again and I ripped the figure off and threw it out of the window, deeply regretting having ever told Toby about my secret love for everythingStar Warsand let him convince me it was okay to have a geeky side. It wasn’t okay. It hadn’t been okay twenty years ago and it still wasn’t now. I squared my shoulders as I pulled out into the traffic. No more geeky Harry. From now on it was in-control-billionaire-finance-company-owner Harry.ThatHarry didn’t get rejected by pretty girls. That Harry wasn’t pathetically obsessed with a woman who very much did not return his affections in any real way.
Chapter9
Other humans aren’t scary, they’re just boring
Harry
