Page 17 of Score to Settle
I nod my agreement. “And I get to ask you questions back.”
Her eyes narrow on me. “Why?”
I shrug, not really sure myself. “Because it won’t feel so one-way then.”
She nods slowly. “OK, but no more scowling at me.”
I laugh in disbelief. “I’ll stop scowling if you stop shooting me dagger eyes.”
Her lips tighten and she looks like she’s about to narrow her eyes, but stops herself. “Fine.”
A silence settles over our tentative truce.
“I’m starting now,” she says.
“Of course you are.” I start to frown but stop and she laughs. It’s a nice sound. Light and delicate.
Harper tilts her head to one side as she looks at me. “Have you ever dated Flic?”
I laugh. “That’s your question? No, I haven’t ever dated Flic.”
“Why not?”
I smile, thinking of my best friend. “Before Flic took over the bar, it belonged to her parents. But her dad was a useless drunk and left her mom to run the place on her own. Flic would hang around the bar all hours, collecting glasses and getting under people’s feet. It was no way for a kid to grow up. One day my dad came home and announced that from then on, Flic would come home after school with us on Fridays and stay for the weekend. Chase got put in with me and Flic got Chase’s bedroom, which is why my little brother said it was like old times sleeping on the pullout. And why none of us have ever dated Flic. She stayed with us pretty much every weekend through part of elementary school, all of middle school and most of high school, even after my dad died. She’s like my little sister.”
Harper seems to think about this for a while. “I can see that. She seems really nice.”
“She is,” I say. “My turn. Why were you really fired from your job in New York?”
“Hey,” she frowns. “I started easy on you.”
I smirk. “I never promised I’d do the same.”
She runs a hand through her hair, hurt radiating from her body. “It’s the biggest cliché in the book. I was working late on a story one night and the editor I was working with made a pass at me. I turned him down. The next thing I know, I was told I wasn’t cut out for journalism and was fired.”
A heat burns beneath my skin. The same protectiveness I felt in the bar watching Gordon make a pass floods back through me, taking me by surprise. “They can’t do that.”
“It happened,” she says with a shrug. “I’m over it.”
It’s pretty clear she isn’t, but I don’t push it. I still have a feeling there’s more she’s not saying, but it’s none of my business and it’s not like I even care.
She’s quiet a while before she speaks again. “Is the story about you and the three cheerleaders in the parking lot true?”
My jaw tightens at the mention of last September. But at least Harper is considering the possibility there might be more to me than the headlines and that fucking photo.
“Not even a little bit,” I reply.
“What happened?” she asks.
A tension pulls across my shoulders. It was the lowest point in my career and no one will let me forget it. “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s your questions done for today.”
Harper rolls her eyes and gets to her feet, tucking her laptop under one arm. I catch a glimpse of a pair of tiny shorts beneath her tee and the smooth skin of her thighs. “No more sweethearts, either,” she says when she reaches the doorway.
“Goodnight, Cassidy,” I reply, watching her disappear.
As I slip beneath my covers ten minutes later, I find myself thinking about the perfect ass I tried to stop myself from watching walk out of the kitchen. I push the image aside. A 2 a.m. business truce in the kitchen doesn’t change the fact that Harper thinks I’m a player, and she sure as hell is still a giant pain in my ass.
SEVEN
