Page 70 of Seeing Harper

“Let’s get you up and to bed. You’re so tired I’m surprised your eyes are open,” he said.

“Yes, that’s the problem,” Harper said, putting her purse over her shoulder and standing as Joel eased her chair away from the table. “And thank you for dinner. I could have just as easily put it on my room tab.”

“I’m glad to feed you. It’s the least I can do.”

She shot him a bit of side-eye. “For what?”

“A pretty woman on my arm, and in my booth… you have any idea how many people will stop to talk just because you’re standing there?”

Harper laughed as they walked toward the exit of the hotel’s restaurant and then stepped into the lobby. “I don’t plan to be standing in your booth all day. I’ve got presentations I want to attend, products I want to learn about and people I want to introduce myself to if I think they might have anything that would increase the profitability of our farm.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second. And when I’m free, I’ll track you down and introduce you to everybody I know as well.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“If I’m not standing right here, I might already be seated,” Harper said.

“I will find you, have no doubt.”

Joel watched as Harper went over to the front desk, got her extra key card, then went to the elevators and gave him a wave before the doors closed and she went upstairs to her suite. He smiled and shook his head as he thought about the beautiful, very enticing daughter of one of his most interesting customers. He’d had no idea Travis had been keeping Harper at home. If he had, he’d have made arrangements to go spend time with the Vitrano family long before now. Harper was the kind of girl a man could build a future with. He looked over at the elevator again and smiled to himself as he walked out of the hotel and to his car. Before she left here to go home, she’d know she was meant to be his, if he had his way about it. And he most usually got his way.

~~~

Harper walked down the hallway of the eighth floor, looking for room 816. She finally found it and used her key card to let herself in. She pushed the door open, noting how heavy and solid the door was, then paused inside the suite to lock the door behind herself. Her mouth dropped when she got a good look at the room behind her. She walked through a small foyer of sorts, then into a large, well lit living room with three floor-to-ceiling windows directly across from her. The lights from the city, and the traffic moving on the interstate in the distance were beautiful — almost mesmerizing. She stopped in the middle of the room and slowly turned in a circle taking in everything around her. There was a wet bar on one side, with a huge TV on the opposite side. There was a beautiful sofa, love seat, and two matching recliners arranged comfortably in the living room. She looked to the left and saw a door, then to the right and saw another door. She walked over to the left and opened it, finding a large bedroom done entirely in white with a connecting ensuite bathroom and a walk-in closet. “This is gorgeous! And so much overkill.” She went back through the living room and opened the door on the other side. There she found a duplicate bedroom and ensuite but in a soft sea foam green.

“Hmm. Let’s go sea foam tonight,” she said. She went back into her living room and began rolling her luggage into the bedroom she’d chosen, but then remembered her phone and searched the outside pockets of her carry on bag until she found it. “Ah hah!” she said, snatching it up and tossing it to the sofa. She took hold of the handles again and began rolling them to the bedroom. She took a few minutes to unpack her dress clothes and her new outfits so they wouldn’t be wrinkled in the morning, then went into the bathroom and immediately decided she’d chosen the right room. This bathroom had a shower/sauna. “Oh, yes!” she groaned. She spent a few minutes to read the directions and figure out how to work it, then did a little happy dance as the shower came on, shooting streams of hot water from all directions and above, while simultaneously steam began to fill the shower from strategically placed vents inside the glass enclosed space. She didn’t wait, she stripped off her clothes and stepped inside. “I might stay here forever,” she said as she moved under the overhead shower head and let it soak her hair and shoulders, while she turned in a circle and allowed all the side mounted nozzles to shoot steams of luxuriously hot water at the rest of her body.

When she was finally done with her shower, she turned off the water, but left the steam sauna engaged, taking a seat on the teak bench to drip dry as she enjoyed the sauna. When she finally got out she looked around and found a fluffy, white robe supplied by the hotel. She slipped into it, wrapped her hair in a towel to dry, brushed her teeth, and went back into the bedroom where she climbed into bed and promptly fell asleep. She never once gave a second thought to the phone she’d planned to look at later while admiring the view, for messages from her family, friends, and Clay.

~~~

The sound of a ringing phone pierced the most peaceful sleep Harper had had in months. She rolled over and patted the mattress beside her head for her phone. But it wasn’t there. She lifted her head and looked at the space beside her, immediately realizing she wasn’t in her room. She didn’t have sea foam green sheets. She sat up, looking around the room as she tried to determine where she was, before it all came rushing back.

Then the phone started again.

Her head turned quickly toward the bedside table where an old fashioned phone sat, ringing its ass off. She leaned over and picked the receiver up off the cradle. “Hello?” she asked.

“Good morning, Ms. Vitrano. I have a Mr. Beobaff at the front desk. He asked that we ring your room.”

“Oh! Yes! I’m so sorry. Please tell him I’ll be down shortly and to please start breakfast without me.”

“I’ll relay your message. Have a good day.”

“Thank you.” Harper quickly hung up the phone and jumped out of bed. She dug her makeup out of her bags and yanked the towel off her head. Of course, her hair dried in a cascade of loose ringlets. She had two choices — wet it, and blow it dry, or leave it curly and pull it up into some form of bun or twist. Experimentally pulling it up with both hands, she decided it would lie just fine if she pulled it up, and did just that. Employing scrunchies and hair pins, she had it up in no time. She quickly did her makeup, luckily she was never one to wear a lot of it, and brushed her teeth before applying her lipstick. She chose a sharp, fitted ladies suit in camel, with a sheer, white, lacy fitted blouse beneath it. Her shoes and belt were the same camel and white. She grabbed her wallet, a few incidentals — lip gloss, cough drops, Tylenol, — she always carried, and after a quick search of the sofa in the living room, her phone, and shoved them into the matching purse, double checked to make sure she had both key cards in her purse as well, and ran out of the door.

When the doors of the elevator opened, Joel was standing there waiting for her, the lapels of his suit jacket pushed back out of the way by his hands which were in his pockets, clearly showing his trim waist and the subtle widening of his chest and shoulders beneath his shirt. She only had a moment to catch sight of it before he spoke.

“Wow. Harper, you are stunning.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

He grinned at her, then stepped forward, curling his hand around one of her forearms. “Come on, let’s grab something to eat.”

“But I’m late,” she finally managed.

“If anybody has a problem with it, we’ll tell them I hit traffic on the way to pick you up. But nobody’s going to have a problem, and I’ll never get anything done this morning if I’m worried about you not eating.”