Ally Blake - A Week With The Best Man

Cormac motioned to the book she was pretending to admire.

She placed it back on the table and gritted her teeth.

“You’re right about Lola,” Cormac said.

Harper couldn’t help herself; she glanced his way, cocking a solitary eyebrow to show her care in anything he had to say was limited.

“She talks,” he said. “She talks a lot about you.”

“And I talk a lot about her.” Or she used to. Harper struggled to remember the last time she’d met someone new, someone she felt comfortable enough to talk about her sister with. “She’s my everything. And has been for a very long time. The fact that we live on opposite sides of the world hasn’t changed that.”

“I’m going to tell you what she says about you too,” said Cormac, “because you looked a little delicate when we left you in your room earlier. Like you could do with a boost.”

Harper opened her mouth to tell him where he could put his boost, but Cormac got there first.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked back at her as he said, “I’ve never met anyone as proud of another person as Lola is of you.”

Harper’s mouth slowly closed.

“She talks so highly of your work, your ambition, how much you’ve sacrificed for her, we’d be forgiven for believing the sun shone out of your very eyes.”

Harper shifted on the seat. Blamed the softness of the cushions.

“She loves telling the story of how you didn’t freak out when she ditched her physio degree with a semester to go, even though you’d paid her way through uni. Goes on and on about how amazing you are. How happy she is that you’re her sister.”

He stopped there, as if waiting to see her reaction. As if he knew exactly how much she’d “freaked out” behind closed doors. And she had—calculating the costs, the overtime she’d put in to pay for it all, worrying how Lola might create a future for herself instead.

Only the relief in Lola’s voice, the joy, as she’d spoken about her decision had brought Harper’s outrage level down from eleven to a solid seven, which was pretty much her baseline.

Cormac’s gaze remained direct and unrelenting.

If she’d managed to keep her frustration and disappointment from Lola, then she’d damn well keep it from him. Her smile was worthy of the Mona Lisa as she said, “It’s true. I am amazing.”

A muscle flickered in Cormac’s cheek. “So it would seem.”

“Yet after what happened upstairs earlier, would you say that my little sister is truly happy?”

His eyes narrowed, and slowly, slowly he leant back in the chair. Then he waved a hand in the air and asked, “What is happiness?”

When Harper realised she didn’t have a ready answer, she said, “I imagine it’s different things to different people.”

“Then for me it’s a hot morning, an empty beach and a long wave.”

Harper cocked an eyebrow.

“There’s a chance ,” said Cormac, “it could be the exact same ingredients for Lola, but you’d have to ask her yourself.”

And she would. When she could get her sister all to herself for any length of time. Till then...

“Look, I know you’re in deep with the Chadwick family, so I’m talking to the wrong person about this, but right now you’re all I’ve got. I need to know that Lola’s okay. I need to know that she’s making the right decision.”

Cormac breathed out long and slow. She could all but see him picking her words apart and putting them back together in his mind. Then he said, “And if I said I couldn’t make any promises, what exactly would you do about it?”

Harper opened her mouth to tell Cormac exactly what she would do, when Cormac looked at something over Harper’s shoulder. His face creased into a smile. With teeth. And eye crinkles. And pleasure. Before he pulled himself to standing.

“Well, if it isn’t the folks of the groom!” Cormac said, holding his arms wide.

Every question fled from Harper’s head as she spun so fast her neck cracked, giving her no time at all to pull herself together before Weston and Dee-Dee Chadwick glided into the room, leaving her unprepared for how overwhelming it was to see them again.

They looked much as she remembered them. More grey in the hair, of course. More weather around the eyes. But still dripping money and success and ease. As if they had not a care in the world.

Harper was too busy noting the deep smile creases branching out from the edges of Weston Chadwick’s bright blue eyes as he took Cormac in a long hug, a hug fit for a son, to see Dee-Dee coming for her.

Cool, ring-clad fingers gripped Harper’s upper arms, pulling Harper to Dee-Dee’s cheek. “Darling Harper. We are all so glad that you’re finally here.”

There was that finally word again. Had they made a pact to use it any chance they had?

Dee-Dee turned Harper this way and that. “Aren’t you an absolute treat? Not much of Lola in you, but enough. In the eyes, perhaps. And, no doubt, the heart.”

Floaty, blonde and elegant, Dee-Dee Chadwick had an unexpectedly kind touch. Warm. Enveloping. Motherly. Not that Harper would know. She hadn’t seen her own mother since she was five.

The urge overcame her to twist away. To gain distance. Only her years spent as a star player in the field of corporate manoeuvring had taught Harper the value in smiling politely. While plotting quietly.

“Thank you for putting me up, Mrs Chadwick. Though I’d have been fine staying in a hotel—”

“Nonsense. We are to be family after all. And no calling me Mrs Chadwick. It’s Dee-Dee.”

“Then thank you, Dee-Dee,” Harper managed, right as Lola traipsed through the wide doorway, mouthing Sorry! as she dragged Gray into the room.

Harper shook her head and mouthed It’s okay .

“Weston, darling,” said Dee-Dee. “Stop talking business, this is a family gathering. Come meet Lola’s sister, Harper. Fresh in from her high-powered job in Dubai.”

“High-powered, you say,” said Weston as he ambled to Dee-Dee’s side, placing a hand in the small of his wife’s back as he looked into Harper’s eyes.

Harper’s breath burned in her lungs. Her back teeth ground together. Every inch of her skin felt as if it were crawling in microscopic bugs. For this man had been the cause of so much pain in her family. Did he remember? Did he care?

“She’s a corporate negotiator,” said Lola, sidling up beside them, her hand still locked tight in the crook of Gray’s elbow.

“For?” Weston asked, attention already beginning to slide away.

Harper knew just how to get it back. “The highest bidder.”

Weston blinked and seemed to see her for the first time. “That so?”

Harper wondered if Weston Chadwick recognised her father in her eyes. In her heart.

“And isn’t she luminous?” Dee-Dee gushed. “Look at her skin.”

“A benefit of not living under the Australian sun all your life,” said Weston, his deeply tanned skin creasing as he smiled.

All Harper could think was that the only reason she’d had to leave this place was in order to chase the highest bidders, was so that she’d make enough money to provide Lola with every opportunity the Chadwicks had been able to gift their son. And the only reason that had become her responsibility was because of him. Her sister’s future father-in-law.

“And that dress,” said Dee-Dee, cheerfully. “So striking. Not that Harper wouldn’t look just as beautiful in a hessian sack.” Dee-Dee looked around for agreement just as Cormac moved into her line of sight. “Cormac, wouldn’t Harper look lovely even in a hessian sack?”

Cormac glanced around the group before his gaze landed on Harper. She still couldn’t get used to it; those familiar deep brown eyes looking right at her.