Fourteen
“You are going to owe me big time for this!” Harper hissed as she walked into Julianne and Gavin’s house. “No Zumba, no warning and I see Mom and Dad’s car out there! You realize Brady’s with me, right?”
Julianne nodded and looked out at the driveway where Brady was standing by his car. “Isn’t he coming in?”
“He had a work call…”
“From the gym?”
Harper shook her head. “Something about the gaming job.”
“I think it’s a little weird that you still don’t know more about that. Aren’t you curious?”
“I guess I am but…I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about it much and when he does, I don’t really understand it so I just let it go. It’s not a big deal.”
“Oh…well…okay.”
“So what’s with the last-minute secret dinner? Why didn’t you give me more of a heads up?”
“Sunday I was just…ugh…I was a mess.”
Harper let out an evil laugh. “Serves you right.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…I know. Anyway, Sunday was a wash and then Gavin and I had some stuff to take care of on Monday and my work schedule was crazy and…sorry. Time just got away from me.”
Harper’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her sister. “You’re lying. You’re totally lying!”
Julianne’s hand instantly flew up to cover Harper’s mouth. “Would you shut up?”
Her words were muffled when she tried to speak up and it ticked her off even more when Julianne shushed her again.
“Okay, listen,” Julianne said in hushed tones, “Gavin and I had some…revelations about the wedding and we wanted to talk to everyone about it.” Slowly, she removed her hand.
“Revelations? What the hell…”
Julianne’s hand instantly went back up over her mouth. “I swear to you…if you don’t keep it down I will sit you right next to Mom!”
Harper instantly stilled and glared at her sister. This time when Julianne removed her hand, Harper kept her questions to herself. Partly because she was getting tired of having her words muffled and partly because Brady was at the door. The sisters stepped aside to let him in.
“Hey, Brady!” Julianne said with a smile that Harper suspected was a bit forced and made a mental note to make a lunch date so that the two of them could talk. Clearly there was a lot more going on with her sister than she realized and she had a sneaking suspicion it was partly because they hadn’t been spending a lot of time together like they used to. Between her new relationship with Brady and Julianne being busy with her normal schedule, they hadn’t planned any sister time.
“Hey, Jules,” he said. “I’m sure your students are going to be missing you tonight.”
Harper stepped back and listened to the two of them talk about the gym and on the surface, it all seemed fine, but the more she studied her sister, the more she simply confirmed that something was up – and it had nothing to do with the wedding.
“Oh, Harper, there you are!”
The groan that came out was probably only heard by Brady and Julianne, but as her mother made her way over, Harper seriously questioned how wise it was to accept the invitation to dinner tonight.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, pasting a smile on her own face. “How are you?”
“Fine, fine, fine,” Melinda said as she walked over and began to play with Harper’s hair. “You’re going to get your hair cut soon, aren’t you? It’s getting awfully long.”
And there it was. This could almost be a new record – first insult hurled in the first minute. Awesome.
“Harper’s got great hair,” Brady said as he stepped in close. His arm banded around her waist and she was so thankful for him. Leaning in to him, she drew a little strength from him. She looked up at him and then looked at her mother who was standing a little wide-eyed.
“Thank you,” Harper said softly when she looked back up at him. He leaned down and kissed her cheek.
“Well, um…it is very pretty but…it could use a trim,” Melinda said primly. Then she looked between her two daughters. “Why are we standing in the doorway?”
“Harper and Brady just got here,” Julianne said, “and we just hadn’t had a chance to move beyond this spot.”
“Oh…well…Gavin’s getting drinks for everyone so why don’t we move inside?” Melinda said.
It irked Harper to no end that she was coming in blind to this situation. Normally, Julianne told her everything. What was this big wedding revelation? What was the big deal? What was her issue with Brady? Her mind was spinning and she was beyond thankful for Gavin’s parents being there because it took some of the attention off of her so her mother had other people to focus on.
Conversation was fairly mundane as they all gathered in the kitchen while Julianne finished putting the meal together and Harper kept trying to figure out what was going on. It obviously wasn’t anything bad like Julianne and Gavin breaking up because they were just as loving and adorable as ever so that was off the list. It was possible they wanted to go a little bit bigger with the guest list. Harper remembered Julianne complaining how there were some friends and coworkers she and Gavin hadn’t been able to invite due to seating limitations at the venue. A possibility, but nothing that required a family pow-wow.
Beside her, Brady leaned down and whispered in her ear. “You’re frowning. And I’ve managed to keep your mom distracted by redirecting her every time she even looks this way. So what gives?”
Taking him by the hand, she led him out to the back deck and slid the doors closed behind them. “I’m trying to figure out why we’re here.”
He looked at her oddly. “Um…because your sister invited us.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean it like that,” she huffed. “Something’s up. This isn’t just a casual little get-together. Julianne said there’s been some sort of…revelation about the wedding and I’m racking my brain trying to figure out what it could be.”
He shrugged. “Can’t be anything too bad, I mean…look at them. Everyone’s laughing and smiling and it’s probably just good news.”
“Maybe…” She studied him and then looked back toward the sliding glass doors. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he said with a smile.
“You and Julianne…you get along, right?”
He gave her another odd look. “Yeah. Why?”
Okay, now what? “It’s…it’s nothing. I’m just…my mind’s all over the place right now. Don’t mind me.”
Luckily, he didn’t argue and when Gavin opened the door to tell them dinner was ready, Harper breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe now they’d get some answers!
Midway through dinner, she realized that unless someone prompted them, Gavin and Julianne weren’t in any rush to talk about the wedding.
And she opted to be the one to prompt them.
“So, how are the wedding plans going?” she asked, loud enough that conversation around the table quieted.
Julianne looked at her with a total WTF glare and Gavin just smirked.
“Yes, Julianne,” their mother said as she picked up her wine glass. “We have to finalize the flower order and I made an appointment with the caterer for Wednesday afternoon to discuss what we’d like to see for the cocktail hour. I was thinking since it’s going to be…”
“You really should have talked to me about that first, Mom,” Julianne said and Harper found herself sitting up a little bit straighter.
Melinda smiled serenely. “I checked on your schedule at the gym so I knew you’d be free. I already have the list prepared for what I’d like served but you’ll need to look it over, of course, and give the final approval.”
“You need to cancel the appointment,” Julianne said firmly, but there was a slight tremor in her voice.
“Nonsense, it won’t take long at all,” their mother countered. “And I spoke to Hailey over at Enchanted and it looks like they were able to locate the dress I originally wanted. Of course, with all the help I gave her, I probably should have just done it myself. Either way, it will be in on Saturday so I’d love it if you and Harper could come with me for the fitting.”
“Wait,” Harper said. “What happened to the dress you decided on a couple of weeks ago?”
Melinda shrugged. “It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted the dress from yours and Dom’s wedding…or rather…your almost wedding.”
If it wasn’t for Brady squeezing her hand under the table she would have bolted from the room and probably from the house. But his grip was strong enough to let her know he was there for her. Again.
“Mom,” Julianne said wearily, “that was beyond rude.”
“What was?” Melinda asked. “I explained to Hailey that no matter how nice that other gown was, it wasn’t the one I wanted. And after all, my daughter’s only going to get married once, so I wanted to have the perfect gown.”
Harper pulled her hand from Brady’s and stood up, kicking her chair out from under her. Everyone looked at her and she just didn’t care. She was done. Like it wasn’t enough that she had to deal with the failure of her past relationships, but she would never be free to move on when her own mother seemed to want nothing more than to keep throwing them back in her face.
When she turned to walk away, Brady called out to her, her father called out to her and Julianne stood up and shouted, “Gavin and I are calling off the wedding!”
****
You could have heard a pin drop.
For about three seconds.
Then all hell broke loose.
Julianne looked across the table at Gavin and caught his grin and did her best not to smile back. Right now, she was furious. Livid! And after listening to her mother’s careless remarks, she knew she and Gavin had made the right decision.
“What do you mean you’re calling off the wedding?”
“Do you have any idea how much money we’ve laid out?”
“This is ridiculous! What are we supposed to tell people?”
“Are the two of you breaking up?”
Questions were coming at them without any breath to answer them. Julianne caught Harper’s eye and tried to convey how sorry she was, for not speaking up sooner, for not telling her what was going on, for…well…for putting her in a position tonight where she had to deal with this mess in front of Brady.
Slowly, Julianne sank back down into her seat and she was relieved when Brady reached out and convinced Harper to sit back down as well. She looked across the table at Gavin and motioned for him to explain.
“I have been in love with Julianne since the tenth grade,” he began and Julianne blushed. “It took me a long time to convince her to go out with me and I swore that once she said yes, I’d never let her go.”
“We all know this, Gavin,” his mother said. “We don’t understand what’s happening right now.”
He gave his mother a patient smile and took a sip of his wine before continuing. “When we got engaged, we both knew we were ready to get married. We just weren’t ready for planning a wedding.”
“That makes no sense,” Melinda said with a snort of disgust. “Everyone knows that to get married you have to plan a wedding. These things don’t happen overnight.” She looked at Julianne. “And you more than anyone should know that because you watched your sister go through three of them!”
“Okay, that is enough!” Harper shouted before Julianne had a chance to. She looked at their mother and Julianne could see the anger and the hurt and the frustration just radiating off of her. “I am getting so tired of your little digs about my past!”
“They’re not digs, Harper…”
“Yes, they are! Do you realize that I never planned any wedding?”
Melinda looked at her as if she were crazy. “Harper, you were engaged three times…”
Harper nodded vigorously. “Oh, I know, Mom. Believe me, I know. When Johnny asked me to marry him, we were still in high school. He gave me a ring that turned my finger green and we never planned a damn thing. When Dom and I got engaged – if you’ll remember correctly – he proposed on Christmas and I caught him cheating on me two days before Valentine’s Day. We never once started planning anything for a wedding. You saw a dress in a magazine and that’s about the only wedding talk we had.”
“No, no, no…,” Melinda argued. “You tried on a dress!”
“We were shopping for prom dresses for Julianne and you forced me to try one on! I didn’t want to and you carried on until I did!”
Melinda opened her mouth to say something and then instantly closed it.
“And with Steve,” Harper went on, “he didn’t want a wedding. He wanted to go to the courthouse and get married so I know for a fact there was no wedding planning there!”
“She’s right, Melinda.”
Both Harper and Julianne turned and looked at their father. Alan Burke was a man of few words and yet those few he just spoke said it all.
“I…I distinctly remember…”
“You planned stuff in your own head,” Harper said with more than a hint of annoyance. “And because of that, you’ve done nothing but take it out on me and I’m sick of it. If you have an issue with how I live my life, then that’s on you. I’m a good person and I was smart enough to know when something wasn’t going to work for me. You should be happy about that. You should be proud of me for that. But for some reason, you’re not and I’m done caring.”
Their mother turned and looked at Julianne. “Would you please speak to your sister?”
Julianne shook her head. “There’s no reason to. She’s right. You have taken every opportunity to drag the past up and throw it at her and it’s all based on some warped sense of reality in your head. And honestly, it’s one of the reasons Gavin and I don’t want this wedding.”
“But…but…”
“We want to get married,” Gavin said, stepping back into the conversation. “And we are going to get married. We just don’t want the wedding we’ve been planning.”
“So what are you going to do?” his mother cried. “What about all the plans that are already in place?”
“To be honest, we haven’t gotten that far yet. What we’d like to do is go someplace – someplace tropical,” he added and winked at Julianne, “and get married in a small, intimate ceremony and then…have a party or something later on with friends and family.”
“Wait, wait, wait…,” Melinda cried. “So you’re going to run off and get married and then still have a wedding? What is the point in that? If you just want to get married and get the legal part of it out of the way, then fine. But why cancel the rest of it?”
“Because I hate it!” Julianne cried. “I hate how none of it’s going the way I want. There are too many people involved and it’s all just too much!”
“All brides feel that way…”
“Well, this is one bride who is putting her foot down,” Julianne said as she straightened in her seat. “The stress is killing me and I can either let it ruin my life, ruin what is supposed to be the happiest day of my life, or I can take control back and marry the man I love in the way that I want to marry him.”
For a minute, no one spoke. Then everyone seemed to turn to Gavin for confirmation. He nodded and smiled like the happiest man alive. “The only reason I was going along with everything in the first place was because I thought it was what Julianne wanted. When she mentioned that she was starting to have issues, I thought it was just nerves. Then when she mentioned eloping, I knew we had a problem and I was more than happy to find the solution.”
“But…eloping, Gavin?” his mother said sadly. “You’re our only child! We want to be there to see you get married.”
“And we would love if all of you were there with us,” Gavin said mildly. “That’s why we invited everyone here tonight to talk about it. But know this – this is our show – mine and Julianne’s. We are going to decide where the wedding is and when. And if any of you decide that you’d like to be there with us, then know that you are welcome. We’re going to invite Kayla and Natalie to join us and a few of my friends, but other than that, it’s all that we want.”
“But your gown, Jules,” Harper said. “It was so beautiful and you looked amazing in it!”
Julianne smiled. “It is a total dream gown and I did love it, but it’s just a dress. I’d much rather take the money and put it toward something else that I really want – like going to Cancun or Hawaii to get married.”
Funny how she was deciding that for the first time right now.
“Why can’t you still keep the reception at least?” Melinda asked. “The venue is booked, and the caterer is booked and…”
“Mom, you’re not listening to us. It’s not what we want. It would have been fine and lovely and all that, but…this wedding has caused a lot of problems. A lot of hard feelings. And my family and friends mean more to me than a party.”
“I promise I won’t bring up Harper’s…well…you know…anymore,” her mother said pleadingly. “I swear I’ll check with you before I make any appointments for you and…”
“It won’t matter, Mom. Gavin and I talked this through and…we know what we’re doing. When we plan our party, it will be a scaled-back version of what we have planned right now and we’ll be able to invite exactly who we want and it will be a little more casual and we’ll actually be able to enjoy it.”
She thought that would appease everyone, but conversation started up again and the remainder of the meal was spent trying to calm their parents down. Thankfully, Gavin fielded most of the questions and was able to keep a level head about him. Julianne was on the verge of crying and screaming all at the same time.
Harper and Brady were quiet – simply talking to each other softly as they finished their dinners. Julianne looked down at her plate and frowned. Her pesto chicken bruschetta was one of her favorites and now it was cold. Well damn, she thought. With a sigh, she pushed her plate aside and did her best to answer any questions thrown her way.
****
“I have to say, Jules, tonight was a complete surprise,” Harper said casually a few hours later. Both sets of parents were gone and it was down to just the four of them – Harper and Brady, Julianne and Gavin.
“I really am sorry I didn’t give you more of a warning. We talked about it and I guess I needed to wrap my brain around it before I said anything.”
“So you’re really going to fly off somewhere and do this? Get married?”
Julianne shrugged. “It’s a possibility. Although…”
“Although…?”
“I don’t know. Now that it’s out there, I kind of feel bad. Guilty. I mean, am I being selfish?”
“Hell, no! I know what I, personally, learned tonight, is that our mother is even more of a control freak than I thought possible. All this time, she’s been planning weddings in her head and then blaming me! That’s not right. And then you could see how she was trying to control yours. If you ask me, you escaped just in time.”
“Still…it would have been nice to have a wedding…”
“Sure. If you didn’t have to include Mom,” Harper commented.
They were sitting on the large sectional in the living room and it was a much more relaxing scene than what they’d experienced earlier.
“I don’t know,” Gavin said. “I think my mom got a little crazed at one point too.”
“Please,” Harper said with a snort. “Your mom was like Mary Poppins compared to ours. She was just a little shocked by the news. And you have to admit, you two really dropped a bombshell tonight.”
Gavin and Julianne looked at each other and smiled. “Yeah but…it was the only way to save your sister’s sanity,” Gavin said. “When my mild-mannered girl resorts to boxing to handle her stress, you know something’s wrong.” Then he turned to Brady. “Which, by the way, I still think is awesome how you were able to help with that, so thank you.”
Brady raised his bottle of beer in a mock salute. “My pleasure. She was a great student and she gave me the opportunity to finally meet Harper.”
“Finally?” Julianne asked.
Harper looked up and saw a slight flush on Brady’s cheeks. “Um…yeah. I’d noticed her at the gym a while ago but didn’t know how to go about introducing myself. I didn’t know you two were sisters until the first night you came up for lessons.”
“Ooohhh…” Julianne said as if something had just dawned on her and Harper filed that away as a need-to-know comment for later.
“So maybe her little freak-out benefited everyone,” Gavin said and then turned his attention back to Brady. “So, you’re a boxer?”
Brady shook his head. “Not anymore. I did that for a while back in my early twenties but…it’s no way to live. Getting punched in the head stops being fun after a while,” he said with a low laugh. “But I learned so much from my trainer and decided to take some courses and get certified to do personal training.” He shrugged. “It means I still get to step into the ring, but with a lot less pain.”
Gavin laughed quietly too. “Definitely not my thing. I enjoy all kinds of sports and love working up a sweat, but boxing was never my thing.”
“It’s not for everyone; that’s for sure,” Brady agreed and then looked over at Julianne. “Although your fiancée has some killer skills, so I’d be careful if I were you.”
They all laughed at that one.
“Yeah, well…I have to admit it was way more fun than I thought it would be,” Julianne admitted. “There was just something so freeing about being able to focus some rage at an object and just go at it.”
“Agreed,” Harper said. “I had no idea how good it could feel to punch something.”
Brady put his arm across her shoulders and hugged her close. “Oh, yeah. And this one here totally blew me away with one punch.” He relayed the story to Brady about how Harper punched the bag after arguing with Julianne that first night.
“Way to go, Harps,” Gavin said as he raised his beer to her. “Good for you.”
“You have to admit, I had a lot of rage bottled up that was just looking for a place to go,” she said with a self-depreciating laugh.
“Either way, I was seriously impressed,” Brady said, kissing the top of her head.
“Harper mentioned you do something with video games,” Julianne commented and Harper wanted to reach over and smack her. She knew what she was doing – trying to get Brady to talk about his job so that maybe she’d understand it this time. Still…it wasn’t her place to do that.
“Really?” Gavin said with interest. “Jules will attest to this – I still have a bit of an obsession with gaming. Our basement is a giant rec space – we’ve got a spot set up to work out, a spot with a bar and a pool table and then a giant-screen TV and multiple game systems. Total man cave territory.”
“But I’m still allowed to go down there too,” Julianne joked.
“What kind of stuff do you do?” Gavin asked.
“A little of this, a little of that,” Brady said vaguely and then took a sip of his beer. “What systems to do you have?”
“C’mon. I’ll show you,” Gavin said as he stood up.
Harper watched as Brady stood and the two of them walked away. When she and her sister were alone, she asked, “Do you think we’re going to end up crashing here tonight because they’ll start playing something and won’t want to stop?”
“Let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me.”
They both sighed and got more comfortable on the couch. After a minute, Harper turned her head toward Julianne. “You sure you’re okay? I worry about you.”
“Funny, I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Me? Why?”
“Oh come on, Harp. Mom was completely out of her mind tonight. Between the dress and the digs…I don’t know how you stand it.”
She shrugged. “I’m getting used to it. Plus…Brady being here really helped. He was literally holding my hand through it all and…I don’t know. It helped.
“Mmm…”
This was her opening. “Okay, I have to know. What is your deal with him?”
“Who?”
“Brady. I need to know why you get a little…weird where he’s concerned.”
For a minute, Harper thought she wasn’t going to respond. But then Julianne sat up and sighed.
“I thought Brady was into me,” she said lowly.
“What?”
Another sigh. “I thought I was getting…I don’t know…a vibe from him and it wasn’t…it kind of made me feel good.”
Totally not what she was expecting at all. “So…um…so what are you saying, Jules? That…you have a thing for Brady? You’re jealous or upset that I’m dating him?”
Julianne gasped. “Oh, God, no! No, no, no, no, no…”
“Protest much?”
“Here’s the thing…Gavin and I have been together for so long that I don’t even notice other guys.”
“Oh, come on…”
“True story,” Julianne argued. “And I don’t ever notice if anyone’s…noticing me. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true.” She paused. “But there was something about Brady and the way he was acting that…”
“Made you take notice,” Harper finished for her.
“Exactly. Now I know he was just buttering me up to get to you,” she said with a laugh.
“Okay, so then what’s the problem? He wasn’t into you, you’re not into him, so…”
“Ugh,” she growled and flopped back on the sofa. “It’s totally embarrassing.”
“No, it’s not,” Harper said lightly. “You can tell me.”
“No, that’s what I mean,” Julianne said as she sat back up. “It’s totally embarrassing! I know he has no idea what I was thinking, but I’m embarrassed that my mind even went there! I mean, why do I need someone other than Gavin to find me attractive?”
“That’s just human nature, Jules. We’ve been over this, remember?”
“I know. And Natalie said the same thing.”
“You talked to Natalie about this?”
She nodded. “I was kind of freaking out…”
“Wow…um…okay.” After a minute, she asked, “Why didn’t you say this the day we talked?”
“And say what? That I thought your boyfriend was hitting on me?”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend when you were thinking this…”
“True.”
“Okay, since we’re confessing,” Harper said and let out her own weary sigh, “I totally thought Brady was hitting on you too.”
Julianne’s eyes went wide. “You did? Really?”
Nodding, Harper explained the conversation she had with him where she warned him off. “That’s when he admitted that he’d been trying to find a way to ask me out. I felt like such a moron! But…I just wanted you to know that you weren’t alone in what you were thinking. I didn’t see it coming either.”
“Sometimes it’s like we share one scary brain, right?” Julianne said as she reached for her wine and took a long gulp.
“Yup.”
Gavin’s voice as he yelled out, “No way!” floated up the stairs and the girls laughed. “Maybe we should go down there before things get too out of hand,” Julianne suggested, and they slowly came to their feet.
Harper walked over and hugged her. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
“Thanks for not thinking I’m a weirdo.”
“Oh, I totally do, but you’re my sister and I love you – weirdo or not.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Together they walked down to the basement and stopped when they saw that the television wasn’t on, the guys weren’t playing video games and instead, Gavin was frantically looking around for something.
“What’s going on?” Julianne asked.
Straightening, Gavin looked at the two of them excitedly. “Harper, how could you not have mentioned this?”
“Um…mentioned what?” She looked over at Brady and noticed that he wouldn’t return her gaze. “What’s going on?”
“Found one!” Gavin said as he pulled a pen from a drawer in the coffee table. “Babe, remember my Battlecry Horizon game?”
Julianne sort of shrugged and made a sound but Gavin just kept talking.
“Brady designed that game! He’s the creator! That was one of the top games of the year a couple of years back and the series has been equally successful! We’re standing here with a celebrity!”
Harper froze. Wait…what?
“That series, the merchandising, the talk of making a movie…it’s huge!” Gavin said. “And can you believe this guy still works as a trainer?”
No, Harper thought. She couldn’t believe it.
“Sign the game box. Please,” Gavin said as he thrust the game at Brady. “This is so freaking cool!”
Brady obliged and then finally chanced a look at Harper. Beside her, she felt Julianne stiffen a bit.
“You know what, it’s been a really mentally exhausting night and I’m beyond beat. I’m sure Harper is too. Why don’t we let them get going and you and I can finish cleaning up?” she said to Gavin.
“But…Brady and I were going to play a couple of rounds,” Gavin said, seemingly completely clueless to the sudden tension in the room. “How often can a guy play against the creator of the game they're playing?”
“Probably more often than you think,” Julianne murmured. “And I’m sure we’ll all get together again, so…”
Brady nodded and put his beer down on the bar. “Um…yeah. Sure.” He looked at Harper again and then turned to Gavin and shook his hand. “Thanks for dinner and I’ll take a rain check on the game.”
“No problem,” Gavin said, still gushing a little. “Glad to finally meet you.” Then he looked at Harper and said, “This one’s a keeper!”
She wanted to slug her soon-to-be brother-in-law, but refrained. They all walked up the stairs and Julianne handed them their jackets. After a lengthy round of goodbyes, they walked out to Brady’s car. Neither said a word. The entire drive back to Harper’s was spent in silence. It wasn’t until they were parked in her driveway that Brady spoke.
“I guess we need to talk about this.”
She nodded. “Uh-huh.”
He raked a hand through his hair as he leaned his head back. A long, wary sigh came out but he didn’t look at her. “So…I guess now you’ll want…”
“You lied to me,” she said, instantly cutting him off.
“Um…what?”
“You totally lied to me,” she repeated, twisting in her seat to look at him. “All this time you downplayed what you do and made it sound like you were working at the gym to supplement your income!”
For a minute, he looked at her as if she were crazy. “Wait a minute…are you…are you seriously pissed off right now?”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m pissed off!” she cried.
“Why?” he asked, his gaze narrowing at her.
“Brady, I’ve been brutally honest with you about every aspect of my life! You know everything – the good, the bad and the ugly. You witnessed my greatest humiliation at the hands of my mother time and time again. And you didn’t think you could share with me what you really did for a living? Why?”
At first he didn’t answer and that just pissed her off even more. But she could see the tension building in him – he gripped and released the steering wheel about a dozen times before he finally spoke.
“Do you know why it took me so long to ask you out?”
She shook her head.
“Because – not unlike you – I don’t have a great history with the opposite sex.”
“Wait…”
He shook his head and let out a sound of frustration. “I made a big name for myself when I was fairly young,” he explained, “and I used to brag about it a lot. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be my friend and women threw themselves at me. I didn’t mind it so much because I was young and a guy and…it was all great. But when I decided I wanted to settle down a bit and have a serious relationship, it was harder to find than I thought. Every woman I dated was more interested in my income than me.”
It was kind of hard to feel bad for him at the moment, she thought. Poor rich guy…all the beautiful women want to be with you. She frowned.
“Anyway, after a while I just got…discouraged. Disillusioned. That’s when I stopped being the tech-guy and focused on doing the gym thing.”
“So wait…you don’t do the game stuff anymore? You said you consult?” she asked with confusion.
He nodded. “I do consult. I own a company and…I’m really just a figurehead. Other people run it. I have some ideas for another game, another series but…I’m not the same guy that I was when I first started. I’m doing it because it’s just the way my brain works – I enjoy creating things and making them work. But I have a team of people now who take my ideas and make them into something. And I’m okay with it. I like the way my life is now. I like who I am now.”
She swallowed hard and tried to process everything he just said.
“I need to go,” she said quietly. “I need to think about this.”
“Why? I don’t see what the problem is here. I explained why I didn’t tell you everything and…I’m sorry for that. I don’t see why it has to change anything.”
“Brady,” she began, “it took a leap of faith for me to go out with you. I looked at you and I made a snap decision and realized it was wrong – that I shouldn’t lump you in with some preconceived notion I had. I trusted you. And now you’re telling me that you…you essentially lied to me.”
“But not in a way that changes anything, Harper,” he pleaded and reached for her hand. “I’m still Brady. You’ve been to my home, we’ve been around each other almost non-stop for weeks. Nothing’s going to change except now you know the full description of my job.”
Maybe, she thought, but it still felt like more of a betrayal.
“I just really need to let this all…settle in. And even then, it’s going to be weird.”
“Why?” he asked gruffly.
“Because now that I know, now that I understand, I’m always going to feel like you’re watching me and waiting for me to do or saying something off, something that makes you feel like I’m making demands on your money and…I don’t know if I can live with that. I don’t want you thinking anything different about me.” She paused. “I don’t want you to not trust me.”
He was so quiet that Harper could barely hear him breathe.
He released her hand and sat back in his seat. “Why don’t you call me tomorrow?” he said quietly. And with nothing more than a nod, Harper got out of the car.