Take a Chance (Chance, #1; Rosemary Beach #7)(54)

Harlow didn’t ask questions; she just tucked herself under my chin and wrapped her arms around me. Mine. All mine.

I was just going to have to convince her of this first, because although I had this figured out, I knew she didn’t. She didn’t trust me. Not with her heart. Even if she owned mine.

“Thank you,” I said into her hair.

“For what? Hot counter sex?” she asked with a smile in her voice.

“For you,” I replied.

She didn’t say anything else. That was Harlow. She didn’t ask a lot of questions. She didn’t want to always talk about things. She just took it in and accepted it. I just hoped she accepted that she was mine. Or more accurately, I was hers.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting there, talking. She told me about her grandmama. There was no wonder she was special. She’d been raised very differently from the other females in my life. She also did an adorable impersonation of her grandmother.

I told her about my dad and what it was I did exactly. Back when Dad married Georgianna, he had worked in construction. Now he owned his own construction company. His company was all over the Southeast. I helped him handle the Florida Panhandle. I managed things and checked on things when he needed me. I also dealt with phone calls he didn’t have time for.

I left out the fact I had ignored two of my father’s phone calls today. I wasn’t in the mind-set to talk business, especially when I’d just figured out I was in love. I needed to adjust to that first.

?

“I’m hungry,” Harlow said as she sat with her legs in my lap on the sofa.

I knew I didn’t have anything here to feed her. “Me, too. Want to get some Chinese?” I asked while playing with her little silver toe ring.

“Can we get takeout?” she asked.

I was all about keeping her to myself. “Sure. I can call and order it and they’ll deliver.”

She didn’t respond right away. She fiddled with her fingernails as if they had her answers. “Are you going to take me home tonight?” she asked, then glanced up at me.

“I was waiting until I fed you and buttered you up with a fortune cookie before I brought this up, but I want you to stay here tonight. I don’t want to take you back to Nan’s.”

She let out a breath and smiled. “Good. I don’t think I’m ready to walk back into that just yet. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

I took her ankle and pulled her closer to me, making her squeal in surprise. “I’m all about keeping you here all the time. But tomorrow morning I have to do some work before I get fired. You don’t have to leave. You can stay right here. I just need to catch up on some things. Then I have a board meeting at the club at four.”

She scrunched her nose. “I didn’t think about how I was keeping you from work. I’ll leave in the morning. I have tennis anyway.”

Tennis.

I hated f**king tennis.

“I can be more fun than tennis,” I told her, crawling on top of her.

“Is this about Adam?” she asked, grinning up at me.

“Hell yeah, it is.”

Harlow laughed and shoved at my chest. “I don’t want Adam. I think I made that clear today. And yesterday, a few times.”

She had a point. But I wanted Adam to know it. “Okay, fine. Go to tennis, but if I come to watch while I work, don’t get pissed.”

Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t do that.”

I bent down to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Yes, sweet girl, I would.”

Harlow

It was three days later before I went back to Nan’s. Grant convinced me to come back to his place every evening. When he wasn’t working, he was with me, and sometimes when he was working he was with me. Like during tennis every day. Grant sat on the porch that wrapped around the main clubhouse. He drank coffee and worked on his laptop.

Adam got the hint. He would’ve been an idiot not to. Grant made it very clear, going so far as walking me to the gate and kissing me until I lost my breath before sending me to each session.

Today, however, I had to go back to Nan’s. I couldn’t move in with Grant. We had to get over this hurdle with Nan. This was my house, too. I also wanted to talk to Mase without Grant around so I had privacy if Mase wanted to ask me about Grant.

When Grant got a call to drive two hours south to check out a site for his dad, he wanted me to go with him. But I needed some space to think. I felt like we’d gone from taking things fast to super overdrive. My heart was having a hard time keeping up.

I knew the moment I’d given myself to Grant that I had deep feelings for him. Then he’d destroyed them. I had thought it would take a long time for those feelings to come back, or even resurface. But I was finding out how wrong I was. They were coming back hard.

?

While watching Grant brush his teeth this morning as I shaved my legs, I realized that this felt right. It was easy. And it scared me. He was making me picture a future for us. But what kind of future could I give him? Not the one I’m sure he always wanted. He wasn’t in love with me. Falling into the daily everyday details of life with him was dangerous. Before, I was worried about getting hurt. Now, I knew I was going to get hurt. It had gone too far.

And I didn’t know what to do about it.

I was hoping Mase had some wisdom to share.