We were currently heading back to Portland; Brock and Dallas confident they’d identified the stalker and had him locked up where he couldn’t touch the Morgan sisters for the moment.
I was still restless, though. Harmony didn’t recognize Joey Walters, the young kid found lurking outside the hotel suite, and there was never any surveillance of him anywhere near the hotel until last night. He swore he was innocent, which every suspect did, but in this case, I was leaning toward believing him and I couldn’t put my finger on why.
This gorgeous woman sitting next to me was under my skin in a beautiful way, but the closer we got to ‘home,’ the more she retreated. Both physically and emotionally. I reached over and took her hand again, and she held it, but just for a few minutes before pulling away and staring out the window.
I didn’t push. I left her alone with her thoughts but I wasn’t going to leave her there for long. I was falling for her, hard.
Instead of taking her back to the hotel, I pulled up to my home in North Portland. Harmony glanced at me, then back out the window. “Where are we?”
“My place.”
“You mean, your home?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I figured you might need a day before jumping back into the mess.”
“Really?” She looked at me with watery eyes. Damn, she was cute. Not a lick of makeup meant her freckles were on display, and her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun with a few tendrils falling down her cheeks.
I frowned. “Unless you want to go back to the hotel?”
She shook her head. “No. I really, really don’t.”
I grinned. “Okay, then come inside and we’ll figure out a game plan going forward.”
She climbed out of my truck faster than I could, and leaned back inside. “Hurry up, slowpoke. I want to see how the great Jaxon Quinn lives.”
Her joy was contagious and I slid out of the driver’s seat and led her to the front door, stepping back so she could precede me inside, grateful my cleaning lady had come yesterday.
* * *
Harmony
Iwalked into the foyerand smiled. His home was clean, in fact, it was newly cleaned, and although it was sparse furniture-wise, it was really nice. The foyer opened up to a spacious living room, a granite peninsula separating the room from the semi-galley kitchen, and a small round dining room table sat in front of a bay window overlooking an atrium of sorts.
“Wow, Jax, this is really cute.”
He grinned, closing and locking the door behind him after he reset the alarm. “Yeah?”
“Whoever decorated did a really good job.”
“Cassidy helped out a bit, but it was mostly me.” He cocked his head. “Actually, if you like it, it was her. If you don’t, it was me.”
I chuckled. “Cassidy’s married to...?”
“Carter. Ace.”
“Right. I will never remember that,” I admitted.
“Once you meet them, you’ll remember.”
“I get to meet them?”
“Yeah, this is day one of us getting to know each other in the real world.”
I turned away from him and bit back tears. God, I wish I could believe that.
