“So, Nash, my niece here did her B.A. at Stanford. Robotics.” Duncan nodded, moving his head in a small bend like he knew I’d be interested in her and her background. Truth was, it was hard not to be.
“That right?” I asked, nodding to the waiter when he placed a scotch I didn’t order in front of me. Harmony kept her smile relaxed, friendly, but there was still a calm to it that I knew not to trust. It made her seem mysterious, sexy as hell.
“When I was fifteen, Uncle Duncan took me to the ICRA conference in Japan. I was hooked. So I started out in robotics at Stanford.”
“Why not MIT?” I would have remembered seeing her there. God knows, a woman like her would have made an impression.
Harmony shrugged, taking her time with her drink—the second of some fruity looking pink concoction she was working on that matched her nails—before she answered. “As much as I loved building animatronics and networks and applications, I just wasn’t good enough for MIT. By the time I finished my B.A. and was thinking about the future, the technology had advanced beyond the scope of my understanding and I lost the spark.” She took her drink again, smiling at Duncan. “Uncle Dee here was gracious enough to give me a job overseeing the New York office of his business incubator.”
The man had mentioned the business to me a few times and in the research I did on him, I’d found out a few things about it. But Harmony’s name had never come up. I shifted a glance at Duncan, tilting my chin toward him—a silent request for an explanation that I knew he’d gotten used to from me over the past few months.
“It was Harmony who looked over your tech when I discovered you. She was the one who encouraged me to invest.”
“Well then,” I told the woman, holding up my full glass to her, “I guess I owe you one.”
She smiled, copying my gesture before she drank, her gaze on mine as we watched each other drinking. We kept our attention locked, our focus sharp even as Duncan’s cell rang and the man excused himself and left the table. It was only then that Harmony let some of her smile lower.
“He can be full of shit most of the time,” she told me, relaxing against her chair.
It was the first thing she’d said that I believed fully.
“Yeah. That much I figured out.”
“Good.” Harmony leaned forward and that sweet, expensive scent came closer. “I just want you to know that even if he’s full of shit, he knows what he’s doing.” The slick smile was inching across her face, but this time when it appeared I didn’t feel as on guard as when I first sat down. “He can be a bit…” She waved her hand, smile widening with the small laugh that came from her mouth before she finished, “Okay, he can be a lot extra, but he’s a hell of a businessman. He’ll make you rich beyond anything you can dream up.”
“Oh, I can dream pretty big.”
When my head isn’t full of little girls from prohibition-era New Orleans.
“Then trust my uncle, Nash. Go all in. Play your hand.” Harmony lowered her hand, letting it rest on top of mine and for a second I forgot about the dreams and how they’d been messing me up for days. I forgot about Willow and how I kept wanting to blame her. How I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her.
Just then, the only thing taking up space in my head was that sweet, expensive scent and the softness of her warm hand. “Take the gamble,” she told me, her voice coming out like a promise. “Sometimes a gamble lands you the honeypot.”
I thought about that sweet-smelling Harmony and her flirty smile and the soft touch against my skin all the way home that night. She took up most of my attention until I got to Brooklyn and was four blocks from my building. Then Harmony melted away. Her sweet scent left me. The temptation in her smile fell with each step I made closer and closer down the sidewalk.
It was the dream. Sookie again. A face, a name that felt so familiar. A life I couldn’t shake and it had kept me distracted. I’d doze off and there she’d be and always behind her, next to that distraction was Willow and the soft slope of her mouth, those damn lips. She’d fallen asleep on my sofa after that cat rescue fiasco and the memory of her lying next to me, hair scattered like leaves all over my leather sofa, had kept me stunned more stupid than even the lulling scent of Harmony’s beautiful smile and expensive perfume.
There was a problem now and it had long chestnut hair and full, sweet lips. I knew that because after my dinner with Duncan and Harmony, while trying to avoid Sookie and that damn dream, sipping a beer on the roof deck, staring at nothing, at everything, Willow slipped into the seat next to me like she knew I’d be there. Like I’d invited her.
“There’s no wind,” she said, her voice so low and soft. I jumped when she spoke. My senses were out of whack, my instinct dulled because, as usual, I was running on very little sleep.
“No, I guess there isn’t.”
We sat there for nearly ten minutes, just watching the purple sky, staring up at the white dots of lights nearly visible above the smog in complete silence. I even passed over my beer and Willow drank from it, like it had been the most natural thing in the world to sit next to me, sharing my drink. It was natural. But when that realization hit me, all of a sudden I got flooded in worry and confusion.
“I’m… I still can’t sleep.” That admission left my mouth without much thought. That happened so damn much when Willow was around. Like being with her came with the permission to unload things I’d never tell anyone else. Except maybe Natalie.
She stopped mid-sip when I said that, holding the bottle just in front of her mouth with two fingers as she glanced at me, eyes a little wide, curious. But then she finished her sip and handed the bottle back, and I noticed that her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed.
“Sorry, but I can’t help you.” That surprised me. I hadn’t expected her to dismiss me like that when normally she was the one pulling me in kicking and screaming. In fact, putting together her red eyes with how subdued she was, and with how pale she seemed, made me wonder if maybe Willow had caught my insomnia. She damn well didn’t look like she’d been sleeping much.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked, gently. Or so I thought.
When she wouldn’t look at me directly, seeming to concentrate on the sky sliding from purple to dusk, I leaned forward, setting down the bottle between us so I could catch her gaze.
“I’m tired,” she finally said when she glanced away from the sky to look at me. “I’d be no good at trying to cleanse you again because I haven’t been sleeping much either.”
“You got a mondo cupcake gig or something?”
“Yes.” She moved back, laying down against the wooden lawn chair identical to the one I sat in. Her hair fanned out in a brown frizzy bundle and slipped through the slats opened in the back of the chair. “Or something. But even when I’m not working, even when I’m bone-tired, I still can’t sleep. Normally baking relaxes me, I’ve always made cookies or brownies or something when I’m distracted, mad or worried. Now I’m… it’s no good. I’m too… distracted.” She stared back out at the horizon.
In the moonlight, even as pale as she was—maybe because she was so pale—Willow looked like she glowed, like some wild child angel with her aura buzzing around her pretty face and curvy body. Out of the stillness, a breeze finally rose, meandering around us, and I caught the scent of jasmine coming from her skin and hair. Without thinking, I leaned closer, on my side, to get a better look at her, not understanding why I had the sudden urge to reach down and kiss her.