in pictures of flood or famine tacked to the post behind her, collection tin in hand, eyes locked on his with that same unrelenting intensity.
A wet snout pressed into Cormac’s hand and he flinched.
Eye contact broken, he glanced down. Novak leaned against his shin, his knee, his thigh, looking at him as if he was the greatest thing on earth.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured, giving Novak a scratch under the chin, before pulling himself the hell together and striding over to meet the woman he’d been waiting for.
* * *
Cormac Wharton.
Of course, his had to be the first familiar face Harper saw upon arriving back on home soil for the first time in a decade.
Her breath had literally stuttered at the sight of him ambling towards her. It had taken every ounce of cool she had not to choke on it.
Harper glanced back towards the Chadwicks’ gargantuan house, hoping Lola might still come bounding towards her, arms out, hair flying, exuberantly happy to see her. Alas, she understood what Cormac’s presence meant: the Chadwicks had enlisted him to babysit. And nobody in this part of the world said no to the Chadwicks, least of all Cormac Wharton.
Her fault, she supposed, for making her arrival a surprise. But the moment she’d fulfilled her rocky last contract, she’d wanted to get on the plane and fly away as fast as she could.
Pulling herself together, Harper turned her attention back to the man in question. Dark sunglasses covered half his face. A bottle-green Henley T clung to the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen, and his jeans fit in all the right places. His haircut hadn’t changed—all preppy, chestnut spikes. The sleek toffee-coloured dog trotting at his side was new.
He looked good. Then again, Cormac Wharton had always looked good. Dark-eyed, with charm to spare and a smile that lit up a room, he’d claimed the attention of every girl in school. Including, she deeply regretted, her.
“Ma’am?”
Harper turned to find her driver still standing beside the car, awaiting instructions.
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head and offering a quick smile. “Sam, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Sam’s the name. And no apologies necessary. I’m used to passengers coming off long flights. May I help take your luggage inside?”
“No. Thank you. I’m not staying. Not here. This was a quick stop in case my sister was here. Seems she’s not. You were kind to drive me this far, so I’ll point the way to the hotel and then you can head home.”
“Not at all, ma’am. It’s always lovely to find myself in here. Dare say it’s one of the prettiest places on earth.”
The driver’s smile dropped a smidge when a shadow fell over the car. A shadow in the shape of Cormac Wharton.
The back of Harper’s neck prickled as it always had when he’d walked by. She shut down the sense memory, quick smart. Enough water under that bridge to require an ark.
Seeing no use in putting off the inevitable, Harper turned, bracing herself against the impact of the man, up close and personal. He’d taken off his sunglasses, hooking them over the top button on his shirt revealing an array of frightfully appealing smile lines fanning from the edges of his deep brown eyes. Then there was the sun-drenched warmth of his skin. Sooty stubble shading his jaw. And the fact that, at five-foot-nine—plus an extra four inches in heels—she had to look up.
No longer a cute jock with a knee-melting smile, Cormac Wharton was all man. Just like that a warm flutter of attraction puffed at the dust shrouding her ancient crush.
“Cormac Wharton,” she said, “as I live and breathe,” her neutral tone owing to years spent working as a professional negotiator.
“Harper Addison. Good to see you.” His voice was the same, if not a little deeper. Smooth with just a hint of rough that had always brushed against her impressionable teenaged insides like the tickle of a feather.
For a second, she feared he might lean in to kiss her cheek. The thought of him entering her personal space, stubble scuffing her cheek, warm skin whispering against hers, was enough for her to clench all over.
Thankfully he pulled to a stop, rocking forward on his toes before settling a good metre away. His dog stopped, sat, leaned against him. A female, for sure.
“I’d hoped Lola would be here,” Harper said.
Cormac shook his head, his dark gaze not leaving hers.
She waited for an explanation. An excuse. It seemed he was content to let her wait.
“Right, then I’ll head to the hotel.” She turned to Sam, the driver, who moved like lightning, hand reaching out for the handle of the car door before Cormac’s voice said “Stop.”
Sam stopped, eyes darting between them.
Harper’s gaze cut to Cormac.
He said, “Dee-Dee and Weston are expecting you to stay here.”
She shot a glance at the Georgian monstrosity that was the jewel in the immoderate Chadwick Estate. It looked back at her. Or, more specifically, down on her. Dee-Dee and Weston Chadwick might be richer than Croesus, but they couldn’t pay her enough to stay under their roof. Water under the bridge didn’t come close.
“I’ve booked a suite at the Moonlight Inn for the duration,” she said, softening the refusal with a smile. “I’ll be perfectly comfortable there.”
“Your comfort isn’t my concern.”
Harper’s smile slipped. “Then what, exactly, is your concern?”
“Gray’s comfort. Dee-Dee’s and Weston’s. And your sister’s. Lola’s had a room ready for you here for some time now, on the assumption you’d arrive sooner. Not with only days to spare.”
Harper had been in transit for over twenty-four hours. And was still a mite tender after the rare, personal unpleasantness that had tinged the last negotiation job she’d completed in London.
All she wanted was to see her sister. To hug her sister. To see for herself that Lola was as deliriously happy as she said she was. And to do so beyond the long reach of the Chadwicks and their associates.
Tangling with a passive-aggressive Cormac Wharton hadn’t been on her radar. Yet he’d just up and slapped her with the trump card; the only thing that would make her change her mind: sisterly guilt.
Jaw aching with the effort to hold back all the retorts she’d like to fling Cormac’s way, Harper turned to her driver, her voice sweet as pie as she said, “Change of plan, Sam.”
Sam squared his shoulders before flicking Cormac a dark glance. “Are you certain, ma’am? If it’s still your intention to leave, all you have to do is ask.”
She glanced at Cormac right as his mouth twitched. Nothing more than a flicker, really. Yet it did things to his face that no other smile in the history of smiles had the power to do; pulling, like an insistent tug, right behind her belly button.
“Thank you, Sam,” she said, deliberately turning her back on the younger man. “You’re a true gentleman. But if my little sister wants me to stay, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Sam clicked his heels together before heaving her suitcase and accompanying bags to the ground. She feared hauling them up the stairs to the Chadwicks’ front door might do Sam in, so before he could offer she pressed a large tip into his hand and sent him on his way, hoping she’d made the right choice as she watched the car meander slowly up the long gravel drive.
“I think you have a fan there,” said Cormac, his voice having dropped a notch.
Harper tuned to Cormac and held his gaze, despite the butterflies fluttering away inside her belly. “Where is