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“Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t seen my bill.”
There would be no bill. Mike Porter might look like a hard-ass, but he was the softest touch in town.
As Harry turned in to the parking lot at work, it occurred to him that instead of pulling out all the stops for Pippa himself, he could have simply called Steve and filled him in and let him take care of things. Proving to himself—and Pippa—that she was wrong.
If it hadn’t been for the blank look on Steve’s face the other night, Harry might have, too. But that look … that look combined with Pippa’s comments had sprouted some ugly ideas in his head, and the fact was, he wasn’t ready to have them confirmed.
He and Steve had grown up together. Played footy together. Had their first beers, their first fights, their first girlfriends together. He didn’t want to think that his mate was capable of letting down people he should care about so profoundly.
So Harry would help Pippa. And he would hold off talking to Steve until he’d had a day or two to digest. And he’d hope that someone, somewhere, had got it wrong.
TWO DAYS LATER, Pippa eased back onto the couch and propped her aching feet on a cushion. Alice lay on her play mat, batting at the Fisher Price mobile Pippa had bought from the local charity shop. It was Friday night and she was exhausted.
It wasn’t ordinary, run-of-the-mill exhaustion, either. Having no car meant everything had to be started early and finished late, which meant she was waking earlier, going to bed later. Alice’s day care might be around the corner and the gallery only a little farther than that, but when she threw in grocery shopping and other errands, plus getting to the university and back, Pippa figured she was walking more than ten kilometers a day. Great for her thighs and ass, not so great for her feet or her schedule.
In short, it sucked, hard. And she still had no idea how she would get her car repaired. She’d managed to scrape together nearly five hundred dollars, but the two mechanics she’d called had quoted a minimum of one thousand to fix a head gasket.
Pippa pressed her lips together, staring at her much-abused feet. There was no getting around it—she’d have to ask her mum for the money. She would pay her back, of course—but it would take time. And it was humiliating.
Thirty-one and running to Mummy. Well done, Phillipa. Way to be an adult.
To think that not so long ago she’d prided herself on being unconventional and marching to the beat of her own drum. Whenever one of her more conservative friends had asked if she ever worried about the future, about owning a house or being able to afford to retire or having a career, Pippa had laughed and assured them she didn’t lose sleep over that stuff because she was too busy enjoying the journey.
What a load of old bullocks.
She’d been off with the fairies, tripping around in a fantasy world. Alice had been a cosmic wake-up call that it was time to stop playing around and grow up—there was nothing like being responsible for a tiny, helpless human being to sort a person’s priorities out, quick smart.
Pippa propped an ankle on the opposite knee and massaged the arch of her foot, digging in her thumbs until it hurt. Her thoughts drifted to Harry’s visit the other morning. He’d been the last person she’d expected to find on her doorstep at 7:30 a.m. Definitely he was one of the last people she would have chosen to catch her in her fluffy robe, complete with tangled bed hair and smudgy glasses. There was something very unsettling about being caught unprepared for the day by someone as dynamic and charismatic as Harry.
Still, it had been nice of him to drop in and warn her about the council’s policy on towing abandoned cars. The bit where he’d forced her to confess that she couldn’t afford to have her car fixed hadn’t been so great, but since he’d followed it with yet another offer of help, she figured his heart was in the right place. Fortunately, she wasn’t that desperate a case yet—stress on the yet.
That’s right. You’re only at the mooching-off-your-retired-mother stage. Mooching-off-strangers is a highlight for coming months, yet to be enjoyed.
A knock echoed through the house. She almost welcomed the interruption, even though it meant she had to get to her feet. Anything was better than lying around brooding.
“Ow,” she said as she started up the hallway. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.”
Funny how shoes that she’d thought were perfectly comfortable had turned on her after a few days of hard labor. Once she’d dealt with whoever was at the door, she would run herself a bath and soak her feet.
She pushed Alice’s stroller out of the way so she could reach the door. Because it was clearly her lucky day, the lock stuck and she swore under her breath.
Like the broken bedroom door, the dodgy lock had been reported to the landlord, but Pippa figured both would be repaired around the same time that Dairy Queen opened a concession in hell. The pitfalls of paying low rent in a working-class suburb.
She shouldered the door, pushing the lock up before twisting it. It gave grudgingly and she—finally—opened it to find Harry filling the frame for the second time in as many days.
“Harry,” she said, blinking up at six foot two of solid male dressed in an old gray surf T-shirt, faded jeans and steel-toed boots.
Why did she keep forgetting how big he was? And why did he keep turning up on her doorstep?
“These are yours.” He caught her hand and dropped a set of keys into it. “Before you say anything, it was my pleasure. Consider it an early birthday present for Alice.”
It took her brain a full ten seconds to process his words and understand their meaning.
“You fixed my car,” she said stupidly.
Sure enough, Old Yeller was in the driveway, brighter and larger than life.
“It was no big deal. Like I said the other day, it was the gasket. A few hours and the problem was solved.” “But … how did you get my keys?”
Then she remembered she’d left him alone in the kitchen while she took the phone call from her boss.
The first emotion to hit her was shame. She’d thought she’d been doing a decent job of covering how damned desperate she was, but clearly Harry had seen straight through her. That he understood exactly how powerless she’d been to change her situation and had been moved to act was galling and humiliating in the extreme.
Hard on the heels of shame came anger, a knee-jerk, defensive, irrational response to feeling so vulnerable and exposed. Who was he to take so much upon himself? To force his charity on her—stealing her car keys, no less—without asking if she wanted his help?
Finally, relief hit, so profound, so all-encompassing there was no room for anything else and she clenched her jaw to stop an instinctive, deeply pathetic sob from escaping. She curled her fingers around the keys, squeezing them tight, trying very, very hard not to cry with gratitude and relief. She blinked repeatedly but wasn’t entirely successful in vanquishing the tears.
“I don’t know what to say. You shouldn’t have. It’s too much. It’s amazing…. But it’s too much, Harry.”
“It was a couple of hours’ work, and Dad let me use his shop. Like I said, not a big deal.”
Pippa took in his tired eyes, five-o’clock shadow and fingernails still dark with grease. She knew from her inquiries that replacing a head gasket in a standard, four-cylinder car was an eight-hour job, minimum. He must have worked around the clock after hours to do this for her.
A thousand thoughts battled for supremacy, but there was only one thing she could say.
“Thank you. This means so much to me and Alice. You’ve literally saved my bacon.”
She held Harry’s gaze as she said it, wanting him to see how sincere she was, how grateful. It might embarrass her to have to be the recipient of his charity, but no way was she rewarding his generosity with anything other than sincere appreciation. The shame was her problem, not his.
He stuck his hands into his back pockets, stretching his T-shirt across his broad chest. “It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could have been. A clean replacement, no complications.”
He was clearly uncomfortable, which, oddly, made it easier to swallow her own discomfort. She felt a rush of fondness for her ex’s best friend. Harry had always been her favorite of Steve’s mates. No competition.
“You’re a good man, Harry.”
He frowned.
“If I can be a gracious receiver, the least you can do is accept my thanks,” she said.
“Thanks are fine. But we both know I’m no saint.”
“Did I call you a saint? I said you were a good man.” She stepped to one side. “Come in so I can make you even more uncomfortable with my gratitude.”
He glanced over his shoulder as though looking for an escape route.
“Come on. A little slavish gratitude won’t hurt you,” she teased.
His gray eyes creased at the corners as his mouth curled into a reluctant smile. He stepped over the threshold, brushing past her, and she caught the scent of clean sweat and spicy deodorant. Her gaze scanned his broad back before dropping to his butt.
She stopped the moment she realized what she was doing. Harry was Steve’s best friend. In every way that counted, he was completely and utterly off-limits. She didn’t need or want to register him as a man. She definitely didn’t want to notice he had a nice ass.
Even if he did.
Pippa shut the door, being careful to shoulder it so the lock slipped into place. She was aware of Harry watching her and she shrugged philosophically.
“This place is a bit of a work in progress,” she said and headed down the hall.
She heard Harry follow, his tread steady and sure. When they entered the kitchen she threw him a quick smile.
“One sec while I check on Alice.”
She ducked her head into the sunroom. Her daughter was chewing on the sleeve of her Onesie, a sure sign she was hungry. Pippa scooped her into her arms.
“We’ve got a visitor. You want to come and say hello?”
Harry stood in front of the photographic montage she’d made of the first few months of Alice’s life, his expression unreadable.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Now, can I offer you a coffee or a tea? I think I may even have a stray beer in the fridge. And have you had dinner?”
“Coffee’s great, thanks.” He turned from the photographs, and his expression softened when he saw who she was holding. “Hello, little lady.”
Alice blew a bubble and gurgled in the back of her throat.
“That’s hello in baby-speak, in case you were wondering.”
Pippa settled Alice on her hip and crossed to the kettle to set it boiling. Acting on a hunch, she pulled out the leftover roast potatoes and chicken schnitzel from dinner and ferried them toward the microwave.
“If that’s for me, please don’t bother,” he said.
She slid the plate into the microwave before facing him.
“Tell me what you had for dinner and I’ll put it in the fridge.” She was aware of Alice latching on to one of the buttons on her bodice and she ran a finger distractedly over her daughter’s head.
He eyed her for a beat before responding. “Okay. I haven’t eaten yet, but I’ve got food at home.”
“If I can accept you repairing my car for me, you can accept a meal.” She hit the button to start the microwave and waved him toward one of the two stools tucked beneath the kitchen counter. “Especially when the reason you went hungry is because you were doing me a favor. Grab a seat.”
“I don’t remember you being this bossy.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Maybe.”
He sat as she collected coffee-making paraphernalia from the cupboard.
She laid out a knife and fork for him, grabbed a glass of juice, too, then folded a paper napkin and placed it beside the cutlery.
“Don’t go to any trouble.” He seemed awkward as hell sitting there, waiting for her to feed him.
“Relax. It’s a paper napkin.” She went very still when his gaze dropped to her breasts.
In all the time she’d dated Steve, she’d never—not once—gotten the vibe that Harry was interested in her as a woman. His attitude toward her had always been strictly friendly—no eye drops, no ass checks, no speculative looks. If she’d been asked by someone to describe the way he treated her, she’d have said his attitude was fraternal. Big brotherly.
Yet right now, right this second, he was staring at her chest with a single-minded intensity that made her belly tighten with nervous self-consciousness.
The moment seemed to stretch. Then Harry lifted his gaze to hers and realized he’d been busted. Dull color stained his cheeks.
“Sorry. It’s just … your dress …” He gestured toward her chest, his gaze trained resolutely over her shoulder now.
She glanced down and discovered that the top two buttons of her bodice were undone, offering him an untrammeled view of her deep red bra and a whole lot of cleavage.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE GATHERED THE sides of her dress together in her free hand, heat burning its way into her face. “Sorry. Alice must have—She’s never done that before….”
It was true. Alice was always fiddling—with Pippa’s necklace, her earring, the collar of her shirt or the buttons on her coat—but she’d never unbuttoned anything before.
Pippa tucked her chin and tried to rebutton her bodice one-handed, very aware of the warmth in her cheeks. Unlike many of the women in her mothers’ group, she had been unsuccessful at breast-feeding. A series of infections and an inadequate milk supply led her pediatrician to recommend bottle-feeding Alice when her daughter was barely a month old. Consequently, Pippa wasn’t nearly as casual about flinging her breasts around as some of her friends. To her, they were about sex and intimacy, not sustenance.
And Harry had copped a very decent eyeful.
“Here, I’ll take her.” Harry held out his hands, ready to accept the baby so she could secure her dress.
“You’re sure?” she asked, surprised. He didn’t exactly seem the baby type.
“She hasn’t just eaten, right?”
“She won’t throw up on you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Then we’re cool.”
She had to release her dress to pass Alice to him, and Harry kept his eyes averted during the exchange. She quickly refastened her dress, fingers racing to push the buttons home.
“Sorry about that,” she said once she was decent. “Bit more than you bargained for.”
She couldn’t quite make herself meet his eye.
“Should I slip the kid a tip or would that be overkill?”
He surprised a laugh out of her. “I don’t think she needs the encouragement.”
“Guess it depends on where you’re sitting.”
She risked a glance at his face. He was smiling, a devilish glint in his eyes. She grinned.
“You’re hopeless.”
“Because I’ve got eyes in my head?”
