Chapter Nine
He didn’t think he’d ever screamed for a woman before, not even for his mother when he was small. But he was cold, wet, and bleeding, and at that exact moment, he really wanted Nikki’s take-charge presence because he was at the end of his wits.
He kept his hand over the water gushing out of the pipe, trying to keep the water spurting out around his fingers in the tub. And from drowning him as it funneled directly into his face every time he made a move to shut the water off.
“Nicole!” Harrison shouted again.
“Yes?”
His eyes flew open, startled that she was so close. She stood there, eyes wide, watching as the water sluiced all over him. “A little help, please,” he said around a mouthful of water.
She jumped and hurried over. “Right. Sorry.” She leaned around him and shut off the nozzle, waiting until the water pumping through the now-headless pipe had slowed to a trickle to speak again. “I had a sudden epiphany as to what men find so appealing about watching a woman standing under a waterfall.”
He wiped the water from his eyes. “I doubt I in any way resemble Miss Hawaiian Tropics.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear her. “What the hell happened?”
Harrison ran a hand over his head, brushing off as much water as he could before climbing out of the tub. “Chris said the shower wasn’t working in his room, so I came in to check.” He lifted his hand and gingerly dabbed at his head. “He was right.”
Nikki grabbed a towel from next to the sink, got it wet, and took over dabbing at the cut. “Showerhead get you?”
He nodded and flinched away from the towel she held. “It’s just a little scratch,” she said, giving the cut a final dab. “You’ll be fine.”
He snorted. “It doesn’t feel fine.”
“That’s because it’s a male wound. Those hurt more.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “A male wound?”
She nodded and got out the first aid kit that all the guest bathrooms were stocked with, rummaging around until she found the New Skin. “It’s a scientific fact. That’s why women have the babies. To even things out. I’ve heard that the pain a woman goes through in labor is the closest she can come to experiencing what it feels like when a man gets a paper cut.”
He tried not to laugh but couldn’t quite keep it in. It ended on a hiss of pain, though, when the antiseptic that was in whatever glue substance she’d painted on his head hit the cut.
“Ah, it’s not that bad.” She leaned forward to blow on the cut.
He wasn’t sure if it was her cool breath lessening the sting, or if her breasts being thrust in his face while she blew was just overriding every other sensation in his body. Either way, the cut hurt a lot less. And he had no objections to her method of healing.
“There,” she said. “All better.”
She stopped dabbing at his head but didn’t move away. Instead, she remained sitting, just staring into his eyes. If it had been anyone else, he’d have immediately gotten up. Sitting so close, not moving, not speaking, just looking at each other…it was too much. Too intimate.
Too perfect.
She started lowering her hand, but he caught it and wrapped his own around it, holding it close. Her mouth dropped open slightly with a small sigh, and her gaze dropped to his lips. She was so close. No more than a couple inches. He could just lean in…
Before he’d even made the decision to do so, his lips brushed across hers, so gently he almost couldn’t feel it. He could feel the energy between them though. A spark that he could have sworn literally jumped between them. He kissed her again, his heart thundering. What the hell was he doing?
“Harry,” she whispered, his name ending on a small gasp.
That one tiny sound undid him. He didn’t even care that she’d called him by that ridiculous nickname. In fact, coming from her lips, in that sexy, raspy little voice, he actually kind of liked it. Hell, she could call him whatever she wanted as long as she kissed him again.
All the reasons why this was a terrible idea beat at his brain, but he ignored them all. What difference did any of them make when she was right there, her eyes staring into his, her lips parting for him?
He took her chin between his thumb and finger and tilted her face up toward him, drawing her closer for a deeper taste.
“Do you think this falls under the assistant or fiancée part of her job description?” a voice from the doorway said.
“I don’t know,” another one said. “I mean, she is assisting him, I suppose.”
Nikki whirled around with another gasp, and he glared at the group that had gathered in the doorway. Cole, Brooks, and Chris all stood crammed into the narrow space while Kiersten, Leah, and Izzy were poking their heads into whatever spaces the men left open.
“Sorry, guys,” Kiersten said. “We tried to keep them out.”
“Speak for yourself,” Izzy said. “I totally wanted to see what’s really been going on.”
Harrison scowled. “Nothing is going on.”
Brooks snorted. “Well, yeah. Now. Way to go, guys,” he said, looking around at everyone. “You ruined their moment.”
Harrison glanced quickly at Nikki to gauge her reaction. She seemed a bit flustered, but her pert little chin was thrust defiantly in the air as she stared each of them down.
Impressive. Even he was having a hard time meeting their eyes at the moment. He hated to be proven wrong.
“We weren’t having a moment,” Nikki said. “Yet.”
His gaze flew back to her in surprise and then back to his friends, a couple of whom were whooping with a few ahhhhs and laughter. She raised an eyebrow at them.
Chris clapped the guys on the shoulders. “All right, boys. Let’s let these two get back to…fixing my shower,” he said, giving them a speculative, and amused, glance. It took him a second but the women helped pull Brooks and Cole away from the door, though not before Brooks shoved his phone into the room and snapped a picture.
“For your grandkids,” he said with a huge grin before Leah chased him off.
“Sorry,” she said, waving at them over her shoulder.
Nikki sat back and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Do they always sneak up on you like that?”
He snorted. “They’re like bloodhounds if they think something interesting is going on.”
She gave him an appraising look at that. “And is there?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. Of course there was something going on. Despite his best intentions, it seemed like every time he was alone with her for more than two minutes she ended up in his arms. And he enjoyed it way more than he should.
She watched him for a second and then smiled, shaking her head a little, and sat back so she could put everything away.
He frowned again. It was for the best. Their lives were going in two different directions. On two different continents. And her life was keeping her much too close to his family for his comfort. The fact that being in close proximity to his family didn’t bother her was also too much for his comfort. But it still took a lot more willpower than he expected not to pull her back to him and finish what they’d started.
He leaned his head against the tiled wall. Now that he no longer had a mouthwatering distraction in his face, all the stress and worry over the family’s new venture came crashing back.
“Maybe it was a mistake to try and pull this off this summer. There’s no way we’ll have everything ready in time.”
“Hey now. That’s no way to talk,” she said.
“It’s the only way to talk. Our first group of guests has been here ten minutes and already they’ve almost been crushed by masonry, accosted by a corpse, and nearly drowned in the bathroom. It’s a good thing that shower head hit me and not Chris or he’d have grounds to sue.”
“Your friend wouldn’t really sue you. Would he?”
Harrison sighed again and stood, reaching out a hand to help Nikki to her feet. “No.” He frowned again. “Probably not.”
She laughed.
“That’s not the point, though. Another guest would. And they’d have just cause.”
“So, we’ll go through everything again. Double check it all. Triple check it all. We’ll get this place restored to her former glory, don’t worry.”
Harrison watched her for a second. Long enough that she started to squirm.
“What?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’ve never met anyone so consistently optimistic before. There’s no problem too big to deal with. Everything has a bright side.”
“I know. Irritating, isn’t it?”
His lips twitched. “Occasionally.”
She sighed. “So I’ve been told.” She shrugged and threw the towel in the hamper. “Can’t help it, though. It’s how I’m wired. I’ve never seen the point in wallowing about something that can’t be changed. If there’s something that needs fixing, bitching about it isn’t going to help. Just suck it up and get it done. Whining about it will just make you miserable in the process.”
“Good point.”
She came closer, rising up on her tiptoes to lightly touch his head. He flinched back slightly, though he tried to hold still.
“I think that’ll hold. Stay away from loose showerheads for a while.”
He laughed. “Will do. In the meantime, I should probably change. Being soaking wet in a drafty old castle is a great way to catch one’s death.”
Her eyes traveled down his body, and for a moment he was almost self-conscious about how he might appear to her with his clothing plastered to every inch of his frame. It wasn’t an emotion he was used to feeling. He didn’t think he was vain by any means, but he knew he was attractive enough. And he put in enough hours at the gym to keep his muscles finely toned. Not chiseled into mountain man proportions like the apparently god-like actor who portrayed a certain character from a certain book that he refused to name. But he cleaned up okay.
And she apparently thought so too if the slight blush to her cheeks and quickened breathing meant anything.
Not that it should mean anything. Or could mean anything, he should say. She was his assistant. Practically a stranger. And by all appearances, nearly as crazy as his family. Which meant all signs pointed to her being extremely off-limits. Even if all that weren’t the case, they would very soon be separated by thousands of miles and an ocean. He couldn’t wait to get back to New York. And she’d made no secret of the fact that she never wanted to go back. Long-distance relationships never worked. Hell, short-distance ones never did, either. There was no future for them.
He cleared his throat and plucked at his clothes. “I’m going to get out of these.”
She nodded, a little absentmindedly. Then she shook her head and smiled at him, her cheerful, business-as-usual grin. “Right. You do that, and I’ll call a plumber to get that fixed and check on Bob and company and make sure they are getting that ceiling fixed ASAP. And we’ll need to get the bed fixed…”
She wandered out, now completely engrossed in their growing to-do list. He was still up in the air about whether or not he had been incredibly lucky or cursed to sit next to her on that plane. As an assistant, she was amazing. On the other side of things…well, she’d wandered into his bed, which had sparked their impromptu engagement, which even the people who knew it was fake seemed to want to make real. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about a woman his family seemed so willing to embrace. And vice versa. He loved them, but he certainly didn’t want to marry, or even date, anyone who fit in so well with them.
She was everything he’d spent his life trying to get away from. He craved structure, logic. He wanted…normal. He’d visited friends’ homes in his youth. Basked in the peace and quiet, envied the tempered affection between his peers and their families. His friends had never worried about being embarrassed if their parents had shown up at school for visits. Whereas his mother was always more likely to show up in full hair and makeup, springing from her car like she was performing for a sold-out house and towing his father behind her like a lost puppy who was apt to either ignore the world around him completely or hyper-focus on it in a maniacally enthusiastic way.
He knew his family loved him, but it was like they always made sure the spotlight was on them, for all the wrong reasons, when all he ever wanted was anonymity. He’d grown up with a father who was more absentminded professor than hands-on dad, a mother who’d pretty much made his childhood one giant theatrical production, and his grandmother…well, she was a whole different level of looney toons.
Nicole was too much like them—spontaneous, inappropriate, over-the-top. So why the hell was he so drawn to her?