Burn For Him (4 page)

It was still a long walk home, but at least it was a quiet walk now that Dee had passed out in Harper’s arms.

Chapter Two

The sky had dried up considerably and we walked the rest of the way home in silence. It didn’t actually seem to take too long for us to get there. I was just thankful that my heels weren’t half as high as Dee’s were. If they had been, Harper would have been carrying the pair of us.

As we approached our apartment building, I ran ahead to enter the code to get us in the main doors. Standing to one side, I let Harper pass with Dee snoring softly in his arms. He rolled his eyes at me and I pressed the button to call the elevator. We waited in silence, only the snores of the drunken state in his arms pierced the night.

Entering the apartment, Harper took Dee straight into his bedroom and placed her on his bed. He joined me in the kitchen less than thirty seconds after me.

“Is she okay?” I asked him as I helped myself to a glass of milk.

The kitchen was spotless, with every surface gleaming. Harper could be a bit of a neat freak when he wanted and had put himself in charge of all cleaning duties in the apartment when we first moved in together. I can’t tell you how happy that made me. I hated cleaning and tidying, but I also hated living in a mess. Sure, the place could have been called ‘minimalistic’ but that was because we both hated clutter and it gave him less to clean.

“Yeah. She’s still fast asleep. I don’t think we’ll hear from her until tomorrow afternoon. I’ll take the sofa tonight.” Harper replied as he got himself a cup of coffee. The smell filled up the kitchen and I turned up my nose. I couldn’t stand the stuff. I hated the smell of it and couldn’t stomach the taste of it. Yuk.

“I guess I should go and wake her up enough to get her undressed.” I put the empty glass in the sink and made to walk out of the kitchen.

“No, just leave her. She’ll be fine.”

“I can’t just leave her. Can you imagine how uncomfortable she’ll be? And now much all that leather is going to rub? Ouch!” I shuddered at the thought.

“It might teach her to not get into that sort of state again.”

I turned to look at him. It wasn’t like him to be so mean. “That’s a bit harsh. What’s up with you?”

Harper slammed down his cup, spotting the clean counter with random drops of coffee. “I just hate it when she does that. What’s the point in it? What does she get out of it?”

“You know what she’s like.”

“I hate the effect that it ends up having on you and how much you worry about her. It’s not fair on you. She doesn’t give a damn about anyone else. As long as she has a good time, everyone else can go to hell for all she cares.”

I’d never heard him speak like that about her before. Harper was the kind of guy that always looked on the bright side of any given situation, making the best of things and doing everything he could to make sure that everyone else is happy. It was just a damn shame that Destiny had done this tonight and brought his mood down so low. I hated to see him down. It just wasn’t the Harper that I knew and loved.

“Harper…” I wasn’t sure what it was that I wanted to say to him. I wasn’t worried about me at all. I was worried about Dee. She had so much on her plate that when she had the chance to let go, she didn’t know when to stop.

“No. Don’t even think about defending her.”

“I wasn’t going to actually.” We both knew that was a lie. Harper raised his eyebrows at me and grinned. It was like he had suddenly flipped a switch and was back to being my Harper again.

“Sure, whatever. We both know that you are dying to go in there and make her more comfortable.” He laughed. “Why don’t we chill out and watch a film before we go to bed?” he looked over at me and smiled winningly. “I’ll even crack out the popcorn.”

I couldn’t resist when he looked at me like that. “I’ll go and get changed. You pick out a film.”

I walked out and left Harper to bang about the kitchen. I knew that no matter how much he seemed to change his attitude, he wasn’t going to forgive Dee easily over this one. I knew that he hoped all the banging and crashing would disturb her sleep. But, I also knew that we wouldn’t hear from her at least until midday tomorrow. When she really went to town like she had tonight, she would be in a complete comatose state that even the uncomfortable chaffing of leather couldn’t disturb.

I made my way down the short hall and into my own room. Harper’s door was opposite mine, the door was open a crack and showing the immaculately neat interior. The only thing that looked out of place was Dee sprawled ungainly in the centre of the bed.

I kicked open the door to my room and walked in. To anyone else, especially Harper, it looked like a complete shit tip in there. To me, it was organised chaos. It wasn’t so much that it was dirty or messy, more like I had too much stuff and not enough places to put them.

My room wasn’t particularly girly. It was more functional. I had everything I needed in there and plenty more besides. A huge bed, several bookcases that dominated one entire wall, a walk-in wardrobe that was filled to the rafters and an entertainment unit that filled up an entire corner. It wasn’t a space that reflected my personality. Sure, it showed the things I loved most in life, like books, but it was kind of impersonal.

If I was completely honest, it was my humungous collection of books that took up most of the space in there. I was still pretty old school like that. Harper had bought me a Kindle for my last birthday and although I did use it on occasion, nothing could compare to the thrill of a new book. There was no way I’d ever give up my book collection. I would have rather give up my bed and sleep on the floor first.

I grabbed my pyjamas from the end of the bed and padded into the bathroom. I know that it’s crazy, but I always delayed taking off my shoes when I got in from a night out. Most people kick them off the second they step in the door, but not me. It was a moment that I loved to savour. As any other woman knows, kicking off a pair of high heels at the end of the night, the relief you feel is one of the most orgasmic feelings in the entire world.

I turned on the shower and braced my hands on the sink in the bathroom as I ruthlessly flung my shoes through the open doorway into my bedroom. I groaned in total blissful pleasure as my bare feet sunk into the rich soothing carpet.

I washed up as quickly as I could. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the film until I had checked to make sure that Dee was okay. I shut off the water and wrapped a towel around my still dripping body. I knew that it was really lazy, but I couldn’t be bothered to dry myself off. I was just too tired. How I was going to last through an entire film, I didn’t know. You know that feeling you get at the end of the night when you’re too exhausted to move and all you want to do is curl up in your bed? Yeah, that was how I was feeling.

I trudged my way over to Harper’s room and saw that, sure enough, he hadn’t even bothered to remove her spikey heeled boots. At the moment, watching her drool onto Harper’s pillow and snoring like an old man, I had to admit that I was inclined to agree with him. She could sleep in the restricting leather and hopefully it might teach her a lesson and make her think twice about going out on another bender. But, the boots had to come off. I couldn’t do that to her.

I went back into my own room and slipped on my pyjamas, wedging my feet into my fluffy bunny slippers. Harper had been my best friend forever and I never had to put any airs or graces on for him. He didn’t give a damn if I didn’t have on any make-up or if my hair was a damp mess piled on my head. Damn lucky, seeing as we lived together and no woman can look perfect twenty four seven.

Walking into the lounge, I had to admit that I wasn’t always quite as unaffected by Harper as he seemed to be by me. Seeing him standing there in the centre of the room, wearing only a pair of shorts, my pulse raced for a moment. Sure, I’d had a reminder earlier with regards to how much he trained and worked out, but seeing all of that uncovered flesh with ripped muscles on display in front of me, I would have had to have been a nun or a lesbian not to feel something stirring. He was a fine specimen of masculinity and I had to admit that, if it had been anyone else, I would have been jumping his bones. It wasn’t. It was Harper. He was my best friend. He was like a brother to me. I couldn’t think of him in that way. I still remembered the snotty nosed kid that he’d been. I didn’t often let myself drink in his raw beauty, but when he was strutting around half naked like that, it was kind of hard not to notice and appreciate.

“Wine?” he asked as he put an overflowing bowl of popcorn down on the frosted glass coffee table. It was the only available surface in the room, if you didn’t count the television unit or the music entertainment stand. Usually, if we decided to chill out with a DVD, we’d just sprawl on the floor and make a mess on the lush carpet.

“Just a Pepsi for me, please.”

“Coming right up.”

I curled my legs under me and got comfy on the floor. Harper came back in, placing the cans of pop on the table and he grabbed a fleece blanket from behind us. The night had turned a little chilly and getting wet on the way home didn’t really help. I sat back and got ready to be scared shitless. I knew what Harper’s choice of films were like. He was a horror freak.

And I wasn’t disappointed. I’d be having nightmares for a week, thanks to him and that freaky clown!

Chapter Three

I woke up on the sofa with a crick in my neck and my cheek resting on Harper’s bare, smooth chest.

We had done this many times before, but after those random sexual thoughts that I’d had about him last night, I could feel the blush rising over my cheeks. It was ridiculous!

Moving slowly so that I didn’t wake him up, I rose up off the sofa and laid the blanket over his still sleeping form. I went into the kitchen as quietly as I could. Glancing around, I could hear that Dee was still snoring like a fog horn in Harper’s bedroom so it looked like breakfast for one.

I grabbed a quick drink of water and headed into my bedroom, quickly getting dressed in jeans and a sloppy sweat-shirt. I tied my hair up in a messy ponytail, not having the patience to do anything with it this morning. It was Sunday, not a day to try and make an effort. I had no plans for today, anyway. The most that I would be doing was vegging out in front of the television with a bowl of mint choc chip ice cream and having a DVD marathon. I could already hear Edward Cullen calling to me, so Harper was going to have to sit through a Twiathon if he didn’t have plans to go out.

“Morning, Sunshine.” Harper called out as he passed by the closed door to my bedroom. I grinned to myself. It was good to hear him back to his cheery old self. I wasn’t particularly a morning person and sometimes it took me quite a while to wake myself up into the land of the living, but he never seemed to have that kind of problem.

Grabbing my phone off the bedside table, I walked out to find him in the kitchen, making himself a coffee.

“Did I wake you up?” I asked him as I grabbed a chocolate bar from the fridge.

“Nope.” He replied with his easy smile. “Is that seriously all you’re having?” He nodded to the chocolate.

That was one of the problems with living with a health conscious fitness freak – he was always watching what I ate even if I didn’t. “This? No. This is just the warm up for all the junk I’ll be eating later.”

“What am I going to do with you?” Harper shook his head in mock despair.

My plan for the day was to eat as much junk food as was physically possible. Harper was going to be disgusted. He knew how much I loved to pig out on junk after a night out. Sure, he was a bit of a health food freak and often mocked me for my choice of food, but he was never overly pushy about his opinions. Sure, he was the one who encouraged me to take up kickboxing as a way to get me off my unfit ass, but that never stopped him from running down to the late night store if I was in need of a tube of Pringles when the mood took me. And it didn’t stop him from pigging out with me every so often.

“So, what are you planning on watching today?” he asked as he set about making some kind of fruit smoothie.

“I’m not sure yet but I can feel Mr Cullen calling to me.”

Harper groaned. “Not again.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I haven’t decided yet. Are you training today?”

“No. Mitch has pulled a muscle and wussed out on me.”

I had to laugh. There wasn’t much that could stop Harper from working out so he had obviously planned to chill out at home with me and was probably secretly glad that Mitch had cancelled on him. Not that he would be overly impressed at having to sit through The Twilight Saga again, but he would.

“Morning.”

We both spun around to see Destiny standing looking blurry eyed in the doorway to the kitchen. She looked like she could have slept for a week and I wondered what had got her up and out of her pit so early.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her while I made a move to make her some coffee. I sure as hell hated the stuff, but she looked like she was in dire need of it this morning.

“Like shit.” She grumbled and pressed her head to the cool wall and closed her eyes, looking pained.

“Hhmpf.” Harper made a noise under his breath as he moved to walk out of the kitchen, refusing to acknowledge her. I didn’t think he’d still be so pissed this morning, but it was going to take quite a bit of grovelling from her to make things right again.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Dee looked up at him, her eyes flashing with barely concealed anger. I guessed that she wasn’t ready to grovel yet and feared that a full blown argument was about to erupt.

“You wouldn’t be feeling quite so shit if you hadn’t gotten so out of control last night.” Harper snapped back at her.

“Get a life and loosen up, Harp.” She shook her head at him. “I wasn’t out of control. I was just having a bit of fun. You might want to try it sometime.”

“Not out of control? Are you joking? You call getting pawed by some rough looking dude that you don’t even know in a club, having his hand up your skirt in the middle of the dance floor and throwing up by the side of the road in control?”

“Will the pair of you please stop bitching at each other? You’re both giving me a bloody headache.” I banged down the empty cup to make sure that I had their full attention. “I don’t really care if you are pissed at her for getting so drunk she couldn’t walk last night, and I don’t care if you’re in a bad mood because you’re hung-over,” I took them both in my sight, “This is my day off. This is my one free day. You both know how hard things are for me at work at the moment. I am not going to let the two of you spoil it just because you can’t stop fighting like little kids!” I turned and threw the rest of my chocolate bar in the bin and stormed off into the lounge, leaving them both staring at me open mouthed.

Well, I didn’t give a rat’s ass. I’d had more than enough of them already and they had only been back in each other’s company for all of five minutes this morning. I wasn’t prepared to be around them if they were going to act like this all day.

I didn’t know what was said between the two of them in the kitchen, but soon enough, they both joined me on the sofa and acted as if they had never exchanged a cross word in the entire history of the world.

We sat around like that all day, watching television and eating our weight in junk food. It was perfect. Well, it was for me at least. I knew that, despite the happy front he was putting on for my benefit, that Harper was still annoyed at Dee and that she was nursing a monster hangover, but at least they were both making an effort to get on with one another and trying to relax and enjoy the peace.

It wasn’t all that often that we fought among the three of us. Lately, the amount of trouble that Destiny got herself into and how it was usually alcohol that was the root of the problem was getting to Harper lately. He’d had more than enough of her. I had to admit that she had been more out of control lately and in a way I hoped that last night would trigger the end of this intensely wild streak. I knew that she was having a hard time of it at home with her father at the moment, but I wished that she’d find a less destructive way to release all that stress and tension.

I could understand why it was all getting to her. I hated that there was nothing I could do to ease the burden. Even her father’s nurse had advised her once again that it was due time that she started thinking about looking for a place where he could live full time with round-the-clock care. But, it didn’t matter how much she was struggling caring for him and juggling her own life, Dee wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t want to give up on him just yet. For some warped reason, she thought she owed him better than that. He was her father and she wanted to live up to that ridiculous promise she had made her mother. Dee didn’t like to speak about it much, but I knew.

Just before Harper was about to put on the last film of the evening, Destiny announced that it was time for her to be going home. It was still pretty early so I knew that she was just making excuses this time. It was obvious that she felt like crap and she wanted to go home and get some sleep before the nurse left them to their own devices. I couldn’t say that I blamed her really. If she felt half as bad as she looked, then I knew that it was going to take more than a couple of pain killers and a few hours’ sleep to set her right.

I decided to hit the hay early as well. I was due for an early start in the office in the morning and last night had drained me. I knew that Harper would be getting up early to go and hit the gym so he gave me no argument.

Going out just wasn’t the same as it used to be. I could remember how I used to be able to go out six or seven nights in a row and still be able to function in my normal, everyday world. Not anymore. I guessed that it was my age and the ravages of real life that were starting to creep up on me. Isn’t that just great? Twenty three and I couldn’t hack it anymore…

How depressing was that?

              The week passed by in a blur. I spoke to Dee every single day, but I didn’t have the chance to catch up with her in person. Work was beyond hectic. We were halfway through a major project and I was working with my boss, Steve, closely on it. It was a special project that required attention to detail, nothing could go wrong. This was big bucks for the company and Steve was trusting me to do my best. It wasn’t easy, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. We were running through different swatches of material to see which the client would prefer to go with.

To say that Steve was stressing about it was an understatement. This special client was a personal friend of his who was mega rich and could bring in a lot of business if he was satisfied with our work. We were responsible for re-designing their up and coming modern bar/restaurant that was in the centre of town, and Steve’s friend was a complete pain in the ass. No sooner had they accepted one design that they found something wrong with it and wanted to change the whole goddamn concept.

I knew that it was all starting to get on Steve’s nerves and I was getting thoroughly annoyed, but what could we do? They were paying top dollar for us to work on this for them and as they say, the customer is always right.

Well, I don’t actually believe in that saying. In this case, the customer was clearly wrong, making my life a misery and was acting like an ass.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was my dream job and I was loving every second of it.