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“So is that cool?” His eyebrows went up then and he looked between me and Harper for a few seconds. “Oh. Unless…”
“It’s fine,” I said, and then immediately wished I hadn’t spoken so soon. Tuck had been considering whether there might be something between Harper and me, and my too-quick response had probably reassured him there was not. I was already envisioning them up there together, playing cards and laughing late into the night. My stomach turned over.
But maybe it was best this way.
“Great,” Tuck said. “I’ll grab my bags. Harper, give me the tour?”
I watched as they walked out the front door. Harper turned back and grabbed my hand before following Tuck down the stairs. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
Chapter 12
HARPER
I felt like the world was spinning more quickly than I could handle as I followed this big blond Australian guy up the stairs and into the giant house that had become my home in Kings Grove. He had an easy way about him, walked like he fit in wherever he went. Based on his good looks and flirtatious nature, I had a feeling he probably did.
“Home sweet home, eh?” he said, swinging the door open and standing back so I could enter first.
“Home huge home is more like it.”
“Bigger is better, right?” he grinned.
I stopped in front of him and looked him in the eye. “Depends what you’re talking about.”
“Course it does.” He closed the door and whistled long and low as he slowly walked through the open living space, looking around him. “You sure you want to share? This is pretty nice.”
“It’s not a one-person house,” I said. “You can have the master.”
“Where are you sleeping?”
“I like smaller spaces,” I said, leaving it at that.
He raised an eyebrow at me and then smiled. “So bigger isn’t always better. Fair enough,” he said.
Tuck moved right in, bringing in a couple loads of clothes from the green Jeep he’d left outside next to my car. On his third load into the house, arms draped with piles of clothes and his hands curled around a razor and a toothbrush, I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped my lips.
“What?” He stopped, arms overflowing, at the foot of the stairs.
“Ever hear of a suitcase? Or a duffle bag?”
He grinned at me again and then mounted the stairs, two at a time, and disappeared into the master bedroom. He came back out a few minutes later and joined me in the kitchen. “I’m a free form kind of guy,” he said. He pulled open the refrigerator and peered in. “Guess I’d better make a grocery trip. Care to join me? Since I have no idea whatsoever where a person buys groceries around here.”
Part of me wanted to say no, to spend a few minutes on my own, to think about everything that had happened between me and Cam just hours before. It seemed a little bit like a dream, like something I’d imagined because it was so far fetched. Cam wasn’t the kind of guy who let you know where you stood—the ground around him felt soft and shifty, and though I’d spent a wonderful morning in his arms, in his bed, I still wasn’t sure what to think about any of it. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to swing by with flowers later today or text me a reassuring message. I had a feeling it was just as likely that his plan was probably to act like nothing had happened.
And I wasn’t sure I could handle that. I wasn’t a drama queen, but I also believed people should feel their feelings, that when we don’t, they tend to carve out space inside us and make us hollow. I couldn’t tell Cam how to live or how to feel, but I could definitely tell him how I felt.
I just had to figure out how that was.
In the meantime, I agreed to go to the grocery store with Tuck to restock our kitchen.
“My car or yours?” he asked as we stepped back out the door into the clear Kings Grove day. The sound of water could be heard in the distance and a bird called overhead somewhere.
“I’ll drive.”
Tuck grinned at me, and I was reminded of a Golden Retriever I’d known once as a kid. Happy to be with people, happy to be included, just generally happy. I was sure Tuck was probably a little more complicated than he seemed, but I’d had plenty of complicated men for the moment, and it was easy to be in Tuck’s unassuming presence.
“One sec,” I told him, and I jogged the few feet back down to Cam’s. He answered the door as soon as I knocked, and part of me wondered if he’d been expecting the knock, maybe looking out the window, watching us.
“Hey,” he said, looking sheepish and essentially confirming my suspicion.
