Page 17 of Reckless

“I just brought you a smoothie and lunch, so you’d better find your gratitude.” Poppy managed the same level of hauteur as their mum when she got riled up. It worked on him too.

“Thank you for bringing me food,” he told her.

“Of course, I didn’t invite you. You were still asleep at seven thirty when this yoga class was.” She flipped him off before tossing herself into a chair. “You’re not a morning person, Miles.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. It was a thing by that point that if they had to be anywhere before ten the others in the band would leave him be to avoid his crankiness for the first hour. Though he’d love to see Harlow in yoga pants, he didn’t really want to get up early and exercise to do that.

“She’s not just yours,” Poppy said after a bit.

He grunted as he began to eat.

“I invited her to the after thing tonight,” Poppy told him as she looked through her calendar. “She’s very nice and she likes you. Maddie and I approve, but she’s our friend too. We warned her that you were bossy and that you’d be in her business.”

“Why? Are you trying to chase her away?”

She just stared at him, deadpan for long moments. “She’s an independent person and she takes that independence really seriously. It’s good for her to know up front. She’ll manage you I wager. A weaker person wouldn’t last a week with you. You’re not meant to be with someone who doesn’t want to walk at your side.”

“What do you mean?” He knew, but he wanted her to say it. Needed her to.

“Whatshername wasn’t your equal. She was never going to walk at your side. She wanted to warm herself in your celebrity glow, drain you of everything she could and if she destroyed stuff on the way out, so be it,” Poppy said of Sophie, his ex. Their whole group of friends generally refused to use her name after the breakup when she had set fire to his privacy on that way out his sister just mentioned.

“Maybe I just didn’t take care of her enough,” he said.

“Really? You think that? Because if you do, I’m going to punch your Adam’s apple.”

“No,” he admitted. It had taken him the better part of a year to truly process all the things that’d gone down between them, but he was at the point where he knew she’d never been as into him as he was her. Her attraction to him was about his access and that had been easier to accept than the way he’d let himself wallow in bullshit behavior during their relationship.

“I don’t want to talk about her. Back to Harlow. It just feels like I’ve known her forever. And I don’t mean in the way we have known one another since we were teens. I’m comfortable around her in the way I am with close friends and family. Not that I know as much about her as I do all you. But I feel like I can be myself. Like she doesn’t expect anything but that.”

“So, be yourself and try not to be too bossy while you’re at it,” Poppy told him like it was obvious.

He supposed it was. But what others thought of as bossy he considered protective. He liked taking care of people. “We’ll see.”

CHAPTERSIX

The house wasn’t very far from the venue, but Miles had no intention of not sitting his ass down next to Harlow on the ride over.

“I’m glad you three came along tonight. You’ll like Jeff and his wife Malorie.” Miles was still buzzing from their performance. Tired but in a satisfied sort of way. They’d swapped out some new material into the setlist and it had been a hit and had given the spotlight to each member of Earthquakes.

Harlow had changed out of her stage gear, and he was a little sad because she’d been wearing a body skimming dress that came to her mid-thigh and had gone without shoes as she’d moved with such aggressive self-discipline and unhidden joy, he continued to catch memory flashes of how she’d looked even hours later.

Conversation swirled all around them as he took her hand and she looked up at him briefly and went back to what she’d been talking about, leaving her fingers clasped with his.

Silas looked over and one eyebrow rose briefly. He’d hear more about it when he and Silas were alone, Miles was sure.

Ten minutes later they were being invited inside.

“So you said Jeff and Malorie like you meant random people with those names and not actually Jeff Speck and Malorie Priya,” Harlow told him after introductions had been made and they’d gone into the back of the house where the sliders were open to the night beyond. There was a pool that had been artfully lit and a comfortable common area just beyond.

“He’s just Jeff to me,” Miles said of his friend who currently dominated that part of country music that mingled with rock and roll. He sang rough edged songs about booze and sex and until Malorie had come along, he’d been plenty happy to live those songs out. But the equally powerful and successful photographer had changed Jeff’s life, though not his songs. He knew his strengths just like any other artist who wanted to continue to do what they loved.

There was a huge amount of food and ice-cold beer to go with it. Music started up in the background as the ebb and flow of people began and he settled in to catch up with some old friends he didn’t see often enough.

He couldn’t always sight Harlow, but he heard her laugh or caught the sound of her voice and that was enough. Until it wasn’t. Until he’d been off in a corner with Jeff and Silas and he’d justmissedher enough to want to seek her out.

Miles found her outside, sitting at the edge of the pool, jeans rolled up, feet in the water. Her back was propped against the wall of the hot tub and her gaze looked out over the valley below.

“Hey,” he said quietly, not wanting break the late night quiet, the hum of the gathering inside was in the background.

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