Page 53 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I laugh despite myself. “Fair.”

Sophia’s voice floats over from the center of the room. “Harper, what do you think about the lighting situation over the cash desk?”

“Warm bulbs, not cool,” I call back. “You want people to feel like they’re somewhere beautiful, not a dentist’s office.”

“Harper Brooks I love you,” Sophia announces to the room generally.

Raphael looks at me with a deeply entertained expression. “She has no idea.”

“Well, sort of, maybe? I mean she made a joke about me being her new mom but I didn’t elaborate. And I wouldn’t be her new anything would I?”

“This is incredible.”

“Raphael.”

“I’m done. I’m done.” He picks up the drill. “Shelving.”

We finish the staging mid-afternoon. The space looks real now, the bones of what it’s going to be, and Sophia stands in the middle of it with her hands on her hips and the expression of a woman watching something she built become actual. Lorenzo has his arm around her shoulders and I take a picture for her because she asks and because the look on her face is the kind of thing worth capturing.

Raph and I do the heavy lifting of the remaining flatpack pieces. By the time we’re done it’s past two and I’m hungry and my arms hurt and I feel better than I have in several days for reasons that have nothing to do with furniture assembly and everything to do with having said something out loud that I’ve been carrying alone.

I eat a late lunch with Raph at the outdoor tables near the tasting room and he doesn’t bring up what we talked about again and neither do I, because there’s nothing more to say about it and the company is easy and I don’t have to perform anything and that’s what I needed.

I head back to my suite around four, shower, change, open my laptop, and settle in for the event files I still need to get through before tomorrow’s briefing with Mallory.

The knock comes around seven.

I open the door expecting Sophia.

It’s a Vine server with a covered tray. He sets it on the table, lifts the cover with a quiet “Good evening, Ms. Brooks,” and leaves before I can ask who sent it.

I stand over the tray.

Short rib. Roasted root vegetables. Fresh bread with something herbed in the butter. A small card sits folded against the bread basket. I open it.

Blank.

No name. No note. Nothing.

I close the card. I look at the food. I look at the door.

I sit down and eat every bite.

19

ASHER

We’re going on two fucking weeks of this space thing and I’m about at my limit.

Four days. Four days of watching our girl, our fucking girl, having lunch with Raphael at the outdoor tables by the tasting room. Same time. Same corner. Same easy conversation that I can’t hear from the prep station but can see well enough because the window is right there and I’m not avoiding it, I’m just at the station, I’m always at the station.

I agreed to the space.

I want to be clear about that. I sat with the guys at Vine two weeks ago and I nodded and said yes, give her room, don’t crowd the process, and I meant it. It was the right call. I still think it was the right call in the same way I think a lot of things are right in theory while being genuinely brutal in practice.

The practice is: Harper laughs differently with Raphael than she’s been laughing with us lately.

Which is on us. I know that. Doesn’t make it easier to watch.