“What?”
“I went to get us some coffee after waking up. I figured we needed to talk about the night before, but I needed coffee first. Went to get it, came back, and you were gone.”
“Oh, I woke up in the room by myself and freaked, not knowing why I was there,” I whisper, shaking my head slightly. My nerves are starting to frazzle.
I don’t do well when my anxiety starts to get the best of me. I’m prone to having anxiety attacks when I’m stressed. My throat starts to feel as if it’s closing up on me.
Closing my eyes, I try to block everything else out and focus on myself. I’m okay. I’m breathing—no one’s hurting me. There’s no one coming after me. I’m alive.
“Harper?” Whip’s gentle voice brings me back.
I open my eyes, lift my head, and meet his gaze. Swallowing is still hard to do, but I can at least give him this.
“I’m sorry you were dragged into this mess.”
“Pumpkin, you don’t need to apologize for shit,” Whip says, closing the distance between the two of us. His hands come up to cup either side of my face. “I’m gonna leave, let you have the rest of the night. Tomorrow though, I’m picking you up at ten. You’re on the back of my bike and we’re going somewhere to talk.”
With that, Whip leans in and presses his lips to my slightly parted ones. His tongue swipes around them as he kisses me tenderly. The kiss is loving but quick. Pulling away, he lets me go and walks away.
I close my eyes as I sit there, not moving. I’m in a daze as I hear him close the door behind him.
I’m so screwed.
On weekends, I tend to get up early, regardless of not having to go to work. I’ve always been that way, unfortunately. This morning, I decided to ignore Whip telling me I was going to be on the back of his bike and spend the morning in my flowerbed.
I’m knee-deep in weeding when I hear him. I don’t bother looking up from what I’m doing or feel embarrassed by looking a hot mess in my cut-off shorts and tank top. If anything, it’ll make him leave faster.
I hope.
I have so many questions for him, but I don’t know where to start. Or how to even begin. But I do know I want to know how he knows my brother.
Whip pulls into the driveway and from where I am, I can see him out of the corner of my eye. I can’t see his eyes behind the shades he’s wearing. I ignore the way my body reacts to him. He’s the only man I’ve been with, and I don’t even remember the experience besides how I felt waking up being sore.
I focus back on what I’m doing.
“Fuckin’ beautiful sight, Pumpkin,” Whip says loud enough for me to hear as he climbs off his bike. I simply shake my head and keep at it.
His shadow falls over me, and I finally sit up on my knees to look at him.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“Told you I was picking you up at ten, baby. It’s ten. As much as I love the view of you in them shorts and shit, I want you on the back of my bike.” The grin he gives me goes straight to my core.
“Well, you should know; I don’t like to be told what to do. I had my own plans for this weekend and I’m not about to drop them for some ride on a death trap,” I snap, giving him my best glare.
“Alright, Pumpkin, I get you wanna get your shit done. That’s understandable, so how about I help you? We can get this done quicker,” he offers.
God, why did he have to be nice enough to offer his help?
“It’s okay, I can do this. I don’t need help,” I say, brushing him off.
“Too bad, Harper, I’m helping. You and me we’ve got shit to talk about. Since you don’t want to go for that ride with me, I’ll stay here, and we’ll talk while getting whatever you wanna do around here done.” The way he said that tells me he’s not going to budge.
Scrunching up my nose, I give Whip my best glare. “Fine, you want to help, then get down here and help me weed these beds. I’m trying to finish them up so I can get the bags of mulch and my mums down. Then I’m hedging the bushes.”
“My kind of woman. Likes getting her hands dirty.” He chuckles. “I’ll start with the hedges. You finish up the weeding, and then we’ll do the rest together.”
On that, he turns, goes to my porch, takes off his cut, and places it gently on one of the chairs. Whip turns back from the steps and comes back in my direction. “Where’s your hedger?”
“Um.” I point to the clippers I was planning on using.
“Fuck, Pumpkin, seriously?” he banters, following my finger. “To hell with those, I’m putting in a call. I’ll have some hedgers here in ten minutes.”
“Uh, okay,” I ramble, then get back to work while he makes his call. Sure enough, ten minutes later, he’s got a hedger and anything else you might need for a yard.
This is something I can’t allow myself to get used to. He’s only doing this to get to a point where I’ll talk to him and that’s it. Probably only wants me to talk to him to see if I’ll agree to have our marriage annulled.
God, I still can’t believe I’m married to a man I don’t know.
All thanks to Gigi and Salina for drugging me. And thanks to them drugging my drink, they also drugged Whip.
What in the hell did I do to deserve such humiliation in my life?
Chapter Six
Whip
After four hours of yard work that probably would have taken Harper all day to get done, we have it finished. I even helped her by weed eating and edging her yard while she planted her mums and other shit she wanted in her flowerbed.
But I gotta say after we finished it, the front of her house looks great. Harper’s definitely got an eye for flowers. She put groupings of red-orange and yellow mums together between the bushes already in the ground. I then helped her with the dark brown mulch she’d picked out.
“Would you like some tea or lemonade?” she asks as we head into her house.
“Yeah, I could use something to drink,” I mutter. Since we found out about Lincoln’s diagnosis, I haven’t had either, really because I didn’t want anything around him that’s sweet.
“I hope you don’t mind it’s unsweet tea, and the lemonade has a sugar replacer in it,” she says, washing her hands at the sink in the kitchen.
Damn.
“That’s fine. I’m used to it by now,” I grumble.
Nodding, she steps aside for me to wash my own while she dries her hands and opens a cabinet to grab two glasses. I watch her over my shoulder, unable to take my eyes off her. There’s something about her that draws me in. I can’t look away, no matter how much I try.
My hands itch to wrap around her waist and hold her to me.
I turn away long enough to turn off the water and dry my hands. I swing my body around to look at her as she finishes pouring the tea.
“I, um, I need to take a shower,” she announces, and my cock starts to come to attention at the mere thought of her naked in the shower. My fingers tingle to touch that body of hers.
“Want me to join?” I ask, halfway joking.
I don’t miss the way her cheeks flush when she looks at me then leaves the room without a word. Is that a yes?