Take a Chance (Chance, #1; Rosemary Beach #7)(64)

“For what?”

“For being so damn perfect for me.”

Harlow turned her face to rest on my shoulder. Her breath was warm on my skin, and getting her to her bedroom was becoming a top priority.

“I’m not going to lie. I was upset. I didn’t like that you went to Nan’s rescue. It was selfish of me, and I hated that I had that ugliness inside. I won’t ever react that way again. I don’t want to be that way.”

She was so damn honest. And she was also wrong. There wasn’t an ounce of ugliness in her. I slid my hand over her bare thigh. “Harlow, I don’t think you could be selfish and ugly, even if you tried. You reacted that way because you felt possessive of me, and that makes me the luckiest damn man in the world. You should have been upset. Hell, baby, I was upset. I was so damn torn. I didn’t want to be there, but Rush needed me.”

“And I resented that. So I was selfish.”

Laughing, I slid my hand up her thigh. “I tell you what. You can be selfish anytime you want to with me. It turns me the f**k on.”

Harlow eased her legs open. “Why?” she breathed as my hand brushed her already-wet panties.

“Because I want to belong to you. I want you to care when I leave. If you would’ve come after me I would have gladly let you go with me. I can’t tell you no.”

She moved against my hand and made a soft moaning sound in her throat. “Then f**k me in the truck before we go inside. I need you,” she said, throwing her head back and crying out as I slipped a hand inside her panties.

“Looks like I’m gonna get to live out that fantasy with you in this dress after all,” I told her and reached for her shoes. “I want these on you first,” I told her.

She laughed and slipped them on before crawling into my lap.

?

When the first alarm went off an hour after Harlow and I lay down to go to bed, I quickly turned it off and started to get out of bed to wake Nan. Harlow’s hand reached out and grabbed me and pulled me back down.

“No. I’m doing this,” she said and started to get up.

“Stay in bed. I don’t want you dealing with this,” I argued. Nan was not her problem.

Harlow pushed her long, thick hair out of her face and frowned at me. “You said that it was okay for me to be possessive. Well, I don’t like the idea of you going into Nan’s room with her in bed and waking her up. You stay here in my bed, and I’ll go wake her up,” she said.

Smiling, I lay back down. “Okay. Fine. You win,” I replied.

She had a point. There was no way in hell I’d let her go in another man’s room at night and wake him up to check on him.

She nodded and grabbed my discarded white tuxedo shirt and put it on without bothering to button it; she just held it closed and went out the door.

Little, sweet, sexy woman was going to make sure she checked on Nan while showing her just whose bed I was in. Made me grin. I liked knowing she had some fight in her. With a sister like Nan, she needed it. I hated to think of Nan hurting her in any way.

To think I almost lost this because I was worried about loving her and losing her. The fear of death had gotten its claws in thick. I had Rush and Blaire to thank for showing me that loving someone like this was worth it. I just had to find a way to tell Harlow exactly how I felt. I didn’t want to scare her off. The way she was looking at me lately, I wanted to believe she felt the same way.

The bedroom door opened and Harlow rolled her eyes. “She’s fine. Bitchy as ever. Said she wanted you to check on her next time,” Harlow said before dropping my shirt and crawling back into bed to snuggle up against me.

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“I told her to get over it. I was keeping your sexy ass safely tucked in my bed.” Harlow replied as she threw one of her long legs over mine and burrowed into me.

I held her against me and went back to sleep with a smile on my face.

Harlow

Rush found August. Even if Woods hadn’t fired him, he wouldn’t have been able to work. Rush managed to break the arm he hit Nan with and told him to leave town. Either Rush had an in with the police department or August had run scared. I’m not sure what exactly happened. I didn’t like talking about Nan with Grant.

Nan left town again, which was a normal thing for her, from what everyone said. She would be back when she was over the thing with August. I was just glad to have Grant alone. He seemed more relieved than I was.

The only thing standing between me and Grant now was my secret. The one that I had kept to myself most of my life. The one that made people treat me differently. And the one that kept me from telling him I loved him.

He hadn’t said he loved me. Was it fair to love him if I couldn’t give him things he deserved? For so long, I had lived without thinking about it because my grandmama hadn’t allowed me to use it as a crutch or an excuse. But now . . . I couldn’t do this without being honest. Telling Grant the truth was going to be hard. He would either understand or see this as a deception.

If I just had some more time. I didn’t want to ruin things. His heart was safe, even if mine wasn’t. I glanced back at Grant, who was on the phone with a construction site that we were headed to three hours out of town. He had wanted me to come with him, and I didn’t want to be away from him. We hadn’t been talking much on the ride because he’d been driving and making notes and talking on the phone to different people. I had even heard him argue with his father. It was a nice look into a different side of his life. He wasn’t like the other socialites in Rosemary—he actually had a job. A regular job for a blue-collar company. I liked it.