Page 81 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

Harper went into the maze.

Of course she did.

I switch to the maze’s interior cameras and pick her up at the third junction. She’s taken the left fork, the scenic route, the longer one that loops past the fountain before it hits the center. Her hands are trailing along the hedgerow and her face is tipped up a little like she’s looking at the sky through the corridor of green.

She just needed some air.

I pocket my phone and find the nearest entrance.

I hear Raph and Odette before the hedge path even connects to their section.

I move faster.

The maze at night is a different thing from the maze in daylight. Hedgerows black and dense, paths lit by the low ground lights along the base. I know it well enough that I don’t slow down, cutting through the interior shortcut via the third hidden panel, a door that swings inward when you find the right section of vine. I cross the center corridor toward the east section where Harper’s last camera position had her heading.

I can hear her footsteps. Light, unhurried, the pace of someone who’s got nowhere specific to be and doesn’t mind.

I track the sound through the parallel passage until the paths converge at the false dead-end in the east section. From her side it looks like solid hedge. From my side there’s a door, vine-covered, invisible unless you know it’s there.

I know it’s there.

Her footsteps slow. Then stop.

She’s hit the dead-end and she’s standing there looking at a wall of green that doesn’t go anywhere.

I find the latch.

The door swings open without sound and I step through and get one hand over her mouth before her sharp intake of breath becomes anything the whole garden can hear.

“Hey, sweetheart.” I keep my voice low, right next to her ear. “Fancy meeting you here.”

She goes completely still for about two seconds.

Then I feel her start laughing against my palm.

Not scared. Not residual adrenaline. Just genuine, helpless laughter shaking her shoulders and pressing warm against my hand, and something I’ve been carrying since Milan lets go all at once because that’s her, that’s exactly her, and I’ve missed it in a way I hadn’t fully accounted for when I booked the trip.

I pull her backward through the door and ease it shut behind us, then spin her around in my arms. She’s still laughing, one hand coming up to cover her mouth now that mine isn’t there, eyes bright in the low light filtering through the hedgerow.

She looks up at me.

I look at her in that pale yellow dress with her hair loose and the laugh still on her face and two weeks of being somewhere that wasn’t here compressing into this single point, and I don’t say anything because there isn’t anything I want to say more than I want to close the distance.

My lips find hers.

Not soft. Not a question. Two weeks of New York and Milan and security files and early flights and the specific absence of her, all of it coming through without preamble.

She makes a sound against my mouth that’s not laughter anymore.

Her hands find my jacket.

The maze is dark and private and I built every inch of it.

The second her lips part under mine, I know I’m fucked.

Not the kind of fucked where I can walk away. Not the kind where I can pretend this is just another night with another woman in another city. This is Harper, and she tastes like wine and summer nights and the kind of hunger that makes my hands tighten on her waist like I’ll die if I don’t hold her closer.

She gasps into my mouth, fingers twisting in my jacket. “You’re back.”