Page 152 of One Wrong Move

“Yeah,” I say, but I’m grinning. “Sure.”

She shoves my shoulder. “It was. Very ungentlemanlike of you to look!”

“I’m not a gentleman.”

“Clearly not,” she says. She shifts to her back but snatches up the duvet. It conceals her in a crooked triangle, just barely covering her tits and across her abdomen, hiding the delta between her legs from my view. She puts an arm under her head and looks at me with eyes that make me feel ten feet tall.

“You know what I just realized?” she asks.

“That you’re hungry, and we should order takeout and eat in bed.”

“No,” she says, “but we should do that, too.” Her gaze leaves me, wandering to the walls of my bedroom. From one painting to another.

A month ago, I would have avoided showing her this—the full extent of the art collection I built entirely on her recommendations.

The art I bought because she said these works were her favorites.

“You really listened,” she says.

“Mm-hmm. You’re easy to listen to.”

Her smile softens, and she looks intently at the large Ricky Vega on the wall by the couch. “That is one of her largest pieces. It’s extraordinary.”

“It is. It’s grown on me since I bought it.”

“I remember when that went up for auction. I followed it from my phone at work. The purchaser was anonymous.”

I clear my throat. “Yeah. I like keeping some things private.”

“You paid an enormous amount of money for it.”

“Worth it,” I murmur.

Her eyes land on mine again. “I hope you have everything insured.”

“Of course I do.”

“And I hope…” a faint blush creeps up on her cheeks, “I hope you might allow me to take a few pictures of them? I can’t believe that I’m lying here, amid my favorite art. The sheer monetary value I’m surrounded by right now… is insane.”

“And you’re naked in front of them all,” I say with a tsk sound. “Where’s the honor? The respect?”

She giggles. “What they saw earlier today is so much worse.”

“Scandalizing the art.”

Harper shifts and runs a hand through my hair. My eyes drift close at the feeling. She scrapes her nails gently against my scalp, and I could have her do this forever.

“Tell me,” she says softly, “what you’d?—”

My phone rings.

It disrupts everything. Blares through the soft intimacy that had settled over my bedroom, the sound of birdsong in the garden, and the tranquility of the cool linen sheets.

“You should have it on silent,” Harper tells me.

I roll over to grab the phone from where it’s resting on my nightstand. “Trust me, I will.”

But the name on the screen stops me. It’s Dad. And I know exactly why he’s calling. The same reason Alec and I spoke for almost an hour yesterday.

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