Falling for Mr. Wrong(31)

“You know something?” She twirled her fingers in Noah’s chest hair.

“What?”

“I thought you were working like a minimum wage job at the inn. I had no idea it was yours. Is it something you want to continue?”

He pulled her closer. “Honestly at first, I thought I’d only try to dig the thing out of debt. My mother was a lovely person but she mismanaged the hell out of the place. I’ve worked hard these past several months to correct inefficiencies, consolidate debt, everything to make this place work. And in the process, I sort of fell in love with it.”

“It agrees with you. I watched you working there. You can tell it makes you happy. And you’re comfortable with it.”

He smiled that half smile again. “I’m finding all sorts of familiar things have become particularly comfortable.”

He pressed his hands on her bottom and pulled her toward him. There was no mistaking what he was talking about. Comfortable would be an understatement.

“But wait a minute,” she said, holding up a finger. “One thing you haven’t confessed to yet: Who is the boy on Facebook? And what is your relationship with his mother?”

“Wait—you were spying on my Facebook page? Does that mean you were stalking me?” He grinned and she poked her finger into his arm, hard. “Ouch! What was that for?”

“Just because. It’s the least I can do to teach you a lesson.”

“Oh, I’ve got all kinds of lessons I wouldn’t mind teaching you. Or vice versa. I’m a good student. I promise.”

“You’re still not answering me. The boy with the whipped cream beard.”

Noah laughed. “You mean Tyler?”

“Tyler? Is this Matt’s boy? I think that’s the name Betty referred to.”

“And my relationship with his mother is that she’s my sister-in-law.”

Harper blushed. “When I saw that picture of you with him, I thought you had left me because you got some other woman pregnant. I thought he was your son.”

“Harps, do you seriously think I would have cheated on you?”

She pushed out her lower lip. “No, but I also never thought you would have abandoned me.”

He pulled her to him. “Fair enough.”

“You couldn’t get more out of character than that.”

He laughed quietly. “Probably knocking up some woman behind your back and leaving you for her would have trumped what I pulled.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’d hope you would have given me the benefit of the doubt. But I get it, Harps. You had no more benefit of the doubt left to give. Though I’m awfully surprised you hadn’t heard through the grapevine about Matt and Katie.”

“Maybe under other circumstances, I would have. But I shut out your family and everything to do with them. Everyone knew I was going to cut them off if they shared anything to do with you.”

“Ouch.”

“Did I mention how much that hurt me?”

“Maybe once or twice.”

Harper’s text dinged while they lay there. She grabbed her phone from off of the nightstand.

“Let me make sure this isn’t anything urgent,” she said. “It’s not like I get middle-of-the-night texts normally.”

She held out her phone as she pressed her thumb to open the text.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Danny,”

“The fly-eater?”

“Very funny.”

“Seriously, Harper, I’ve been meaning to tell you something about him.”

“Give me a sec,” she said, holding up a finger. “Wait. This is really weird. This is really weird.”

“Is everything okay?”

She shook he head. “It says it’s from his wife.” She read aloud from the text. “Listen, bitch. This is Danny’s wife. I know about you. I’ve been reading Danny’s messages. I know about all of his women. Let me tell you: if you ever fucking go near my husband again, you’ll have me to answer to.”

Harper’s eyes opened wide. “What the hell?”

Noah reached for her hand in the dark. “That’s what I wanted to let you know about. Only I wasn’t quite sure how to break it to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was on my way to the men’s room, and I overheard him having a phone conversation when you two were out together. I heard him talking intimately to someone on the phone and from the sounds of it, it seemed like it was a serious relationship.”

“And you didn’t let me know about it?”

He clasped her hand between his. “I wasn’t exactly sure of the best way to break it to you. I mean if I went up and told you, you’d never have believed me, would you? You’d have accused me of being jealous or trying to break you up.”

Harper was quiet while she mulled this. “You were jealous of him, though?” It was a statement, but she was asking as if it was a question.

He murmured into her neck. “Jealous doesn’t even begin to touch what I was feeling toward that fly-eating little shit. First off, I didn’t want him anywhere near you, and I had to bite my lip even though all I wanted to do was beat the crap out of him and tell him to stay away from you. When I found out he was likely two-timing you, I wanted to kill him. I knew that would be so hurtful to you and you didn’t deserve to be hurt again. I’d already hurt you enough for a lifetime. I’m sorry to have kept it from you, but until I had better proof, I could never have convinced you. Do you forgive me?”