“So I shouldn’t be surprised if you come home with a new pet?”
“I don’t have space for a pet. Can you imagine a puppy creating havoc with my papers spread all over?”
He sipped his coffee. “Sounds like you’re enjoying going back to your roots after all.”
“I’m actually having a lot of fun with it, and I have you to thank. If I hadn’t found my groove with the new script, I probably wouldn’t enjoy writing the articles so much.”
“All I did was make a suggestion. The rest is all you, babe.” He walked over to the pantry and said, “Ready for your very first Wheeler Special?”
“I thought I had my first Wheeler Special in Virginia,” she teased, knowing he was referring to his father’s famous spinach omelets with a special sauce and homemade croissants.
He chuckled and began setting ingredients on the counter. “Smart-ass. This breakfast will blow you away.”
She didn’t need breakfast for that. He’d already blown her away with his encouragement, his humor, and the way he made her feel sexy, feminine, and adored, bedhead and all.
“It’s going to take me a little time to cook breakfast, so make yourself at home while the master chef takes control.”
“If you’re as good in the kitchen as you are in the bedroom, I might be in trouble.”
She blew him a kiss and wandered over to the bookshelves to check out the titles. Among the books she found a small framed picture of Gavin standing next to his father. Gavin was all elbows and knees. He couldn’t have been older than eight or nine. He wore shorts and no shirt. His shaggy hair hung over his eyes, and he was beaming at the camera, holding a fishing pole with a fish dangling off a hook. His father was smiling proudly, one arm around Gavin. His father had darker hair than Gavin, but he had the same smile, the same cut of his jaw.
Her heart hurt thinking about the years he and his family had lost because of a girl. She was glad they’d recovered from the rift, but she wished she could have been around then to help him find his way back to his family sooner, the same way he’d helped her see past her own issues.
She grabbed her messenger bag and the blanket they’d used last night from the couch and headed for the sunroom to get some work done. She set her bag on the floor, once again hit by the beauty of the spacious room. She spread the blanket out in the middle of the floor, and then she retrieved the vase of flowers from her garden and put it on the floor by the blanket. She opened all the windows to let the sound of the rain trickle in, and then she began laying out her papers and turned on her laptop. But the room still felt empty.
She went back to the bookcase for the picture of Gavin and his father, placed it by the flowers in the sunroom, and happily settled into her work.
WHEN GAVIN FINISHED cooking breakfast, he found Harper sitting cross-legged on a blanket in the middle of the sunroom with a stack of papers in her lap and a red pen tucked behind her ear, engrossed in reading over her work. She’d twisted her hair into a knot on the top of her head. A few sexy tendrils framed her face. Papers were strewn out across the floor, as they had been in her cottage, and the flowers they’d picked brightened the room in a vase beside her laptop. He glanced over his shoulder at the fishing-rod frames they’d hung over the fireplace. He still needed to figure out what pictures to put in them, but even without them, it added a homey touch to the room. They’d hung the mason jar plaques in the bedroom on either side of the bed. Even those small touches made his house feel more like a home. And now here she was, enjoying the room he’d spent almost a year ignoring. He took a moment to admire the woman who had made every aspect of his life better. In the span of a couple weeks, she’d woken parts of him that had been asleep for far too long.
He touched Harper’s shoulder, startling her. “Sorry, babe. I didn’t mean to startle you, but that’s a good sign. If you’re that into your writing, it has to be good.”
“I think it is,” she said confidently.
“That’s great. Does that mean I can read it?”
She looked down at the papers in her lap, her fingers curling possessively over the edges. “They’re not as rough as I thought they were. You can read it if you promise to be honest.”
He chuckled. “As I recall, last time I was too honest.”
“Maybe cushion it this time if it’s really bad, or soften the blow with a kiss. I need you to be too honest. It’s hard to tell if I think it’s good because my last story was so bad, or because it’s really good writing.”
“Okay.” He made an X over his heart. “One hundred percent honesty coming up, softened with a kiss if need be. But first, breakfast is ready. How about if I bring it in here? I like what you’ve done to the space, by the way.”
She wrinkled her nose and said, “Are you sure you don’t mind? I didn’t mean to take over. I just love this room.”
“And I love seeing you in it.”
He gave her a quick kiss and went to get breakfast. When he returned with a tray of food, she’d cleared a space for him beside her.
“Mm. It looks and smells delicious. Who do I have to thank for your mad cooking skills? Mom or Dad?”
He handed her a plate and said, “Both.” As he sat down, he noticed a picture of him and his father near the flowers. He set his plate beside the blanket and picked up the picture, warmed by the memory of when it was taken. “Now you’re confiscating my pictures as well as my clothes?”
“Didn’t I tell you I was a kleptomaniac?” She laughed softly. “It felt empty in here, and I was lonely, so I brought you and your dad in to keep me company.”
He loved the way she made herself at home, but what he liked even more was the way she was looking at him, with the same confidence she’d had when they’d first met.
“I remember when this picture was taken,” he said. “It was a great fishing trip, and Beckett missed it. I tried to wake him up to come with us at sunrise, but he sleeps like the dead. I couldn’t get him out of bed. When we got home that evening, Beckett snubbed me for hours.”
“Jana used to hate it when I’d get to do something she didn’t. But she wasn’t a snubber. She’d holler and stomp around, letting everyone in a ten-mile radius know she was pissed.” She took a bite of her omelet. “Mm, Gavin. You are definitely as good in the kitchen as you are in the bedroom.”
“You should see me in the sunroom,” he said flirtatiously.
She bumped him with her shoulder. “I can’t wait to find out. But first I need to eat this insanely good food my boyfriend slaved over.”
“And I need to read your story. Where do I start?”
She set down her plate and went around the room gathering papers. “I really think this was the right direction for me, using my bad dates and losing the show. You’ll see that my heroine is basically me, a woman who moved across the country to follow her dream, and then her life falls apart.” She handed him a stack of papers.
“What about the part where she meets the handsome, awesome guy who she can’t live without?”
“I’m not at that point in the story yet. I’m not sure it’s going to be that easy for her,” Harper said as she sat beside him. “I think this is perfect for a long series. I want to talk to Chloe and some of the other girls about their bad dating experiences and try to use them in the story. Maybe she meets the guy and thinks it could be right, but then things keep happening that make them go back and forth between friends and lovers.”