Page 11 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

Harper chokes on air. Actually chokes. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth and her eyes go wide and she makes a sound that is somewhere between a laugh and genuine respiratory distress.

I look at Maddox.

He looks back at me completely unbothered.

“Sorry,” Harper manages, still recovering. “I wasn’t— okay. Noted.”

“So,” Maddox says, like he didn’t just say what he said, “is there someone back home who’s going to be upset you’re spending the summer in France?”

She shakes her head. “No. Not seeing anyone.”

Something in the plane feels different when she says it. Quieter. I keep my face where it is.

“What about Raphael?” I ask.

Her brow lifts slightly. “Has Sophia gotten to you already?”

“Sophia hasn’t gotten to anyone. Just observing.”

She shrugs, pulling one knee up onto the seat. “Sophia has been trying to engineer something between us since she and Lorenzo got serious. I think she decided coupled-up was a good look and wanted to share it around.” She says it without any edge, just fact. “Raphael’s great. He’s not playing into it, which I actually respect. But there’s no spark. There’s either a spark or there isn’t and no amount of Sophia’s enthusiasm changes that.”

I ask the next question before I’ve decided to. “So you haven’t encouraged it at all.”

“Why would I?” She looks at me like it’s obvious. “The man is going to be great friend material for a very long time. No need for anyone to LARP a scene from Game of Thrones over a situationship that was never going to happen.”

Maddox makes a sound that might be a laugh he decided not to finish.

I look back at my hands. There’s something sitting in my chest that I don’t examine too carefully. The information that Sophia’s been pushing Raphael toward her and Harper hasn’t moved an inch in that direction shouldn’t land differently than any other piece of information. But it does.

I notice her table is still empty. No wrapper, no cup, nothing since we boarded.

“Have you eaten?” I ask.

She blinks. Looks at the table like she’s only just registering it herself. “I… no. I forget when I’m stressed.”

“You forget to eat.”

“When I’m stressed. Yeah.” She says it like it’s just a quirk. Something she’s said enough times she’s stopped hearing it.

“What’s stressing you out?” Maddox asks.

She picks at the edge of her sleeve. “I got laid off before this trip. It’s a whole thing. The point is I tried to tell Sophia I needed to stay in Tampa and focus on finding something new and she⁠—”

“She wouldn’t take no for an answer,” I say.

Harper points at me. “Exactly.”

“Sophia has never taken no for an answer in her life,” Maddox says. “Killian taught her to argue her position at age seven and she has never once stopped.”

Harper laughs. “That explains so much.”

I reach up and press the intercom.

Vivian answers. “Yes, Mr. Beckett?”

“Can you get the kitchenette open for me? I’m going to use it.”

A beat. “Of course.”