The older woman lightly pinched Crystal’s pink cheek. “She is adorable. Aren’t you, sweetie?”
Crystal grinned.
Mrs. Petrillo inserted the key into the lock and opened the door. “Sorry about your husband.”
“Thank you.”
“Death is a terrible thing. I buried three husbands.”
Harper gasped. Knowing the pain of losing Clark and the emptiness that followed, the loneliness that never seemed to go away, she said, “I’m so sorry.”
“It never gets easier.” She turned to Harper with a smile. “My soap is on right now. But I’m next door if you need anything.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
The petite woman waved goodbye and was gone within seconds, but her comment that it would never get easier haunted Harper as a new wave of missing Clark swept through her.
But she barely had time to catch her breath. The doorman arrived with her and Crystal’s suitcases.
He led her to the extra room in Seth’s condo. A queen-size bed and a dresser easily shared the space, leaving more than ample room for Crystal’s crib. An adjoining bathroom with a shower made of black, gray and white glass tiles that matched a backsplash behind the white sink was small but not uncomfortably so.
The doorman left her suitcases on the bed and left. When he returned with the crib and high chair, he had two maintenance men with him. He introduced them, telling her they would set up the crib.
When they were done, Harper put Crystal in her bed to play with her favorite blanket and stuffed bear, and set about to unpack. She hadn’t brought a lot, only enough clothes for her and Crystal for two weeks. Everything fit in the one dresser and the small closet. Another indicator of how much her life had changed since she lost Clark.
Not wanting to dwell on that, she carried Crystal to the living space. A quick glance at the clock told her it was only six. Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten lunch. The mover was on too tight of a schedule.
Just when she would have gone into the tidy kitchen to see if there was something she could make for supper, something nice that could serve as a thank-you-for-keeping-us gesture, the condo door opened.
“Seth?”
The day before, she’d left as he’d walked back to his room to dress for work. She expected to see him in a suit, not a black crew-neck sweater with a white shirt under it and jeans.
Jeans to work? At his family’s prestigious holding company, where he wasn’t just on the board of directors, but was also a vice president?
“I canceled my meeting.” He ambled into the room and tossed his keys and wallet on the counter, along with some envelopes she assumed were his mail. “How’d today go?”
She couldn’t stop staring at him. Clark had gone to work in a suit and tie every day. He didn’t cancel meetings. He never came home early. But Seth was a McCallan. From what she knew of the family, they did whatever they wanted. Especially Seth. Joining the family business obviously hadn’t ended his rebellious streak.
“Busy. Exhausting.”
He picked up the mail. Rifled through it. “Mine, too.”
The conversation ended, and a weird silence stretched between them.
She sucked in a breath for courage. “I was just thinking about looking in your cupboards to see if there was anything to make for dinner.”
He sniffed. “Don’t bother. I’m pretty sure the cupboards are bare. There are takeout menus from a few local places. Order something for both of us. I have a credit card on file at all of them. Just tell them it’s for me.” He turned and headed back down the hall.
She frowned. “I thought you’d said you always have dates or dinner meetings or something?”
He stopped, faced her. “I did. Just like I canceled my last meeting, I canceled my date.”
Harper blinked as he disappeared behind his bedroom door. Canceled his date?
An odd sensation rippled through her. Not happiness. Surely, she couldn’t be happy that he’d canceled a date. She didn’t “like” the guy. He was good-looking—well, gorgeous, really—but he wasn’t Clark, a man she had loved. The feeling oozing through her was more of a recognition of how glad she was that she didn’t have to be alone.
The door closed behind Seth and he leaned against it, blowing his breath out on a long sigh. When he’d invited Harper to live with him, he hadn’t anticipated how uncomfortable it would be to have her in his house, but he was damn glad he’d canceled his date, so they could talk. About Clark. After a nice dinner, where he’d direct the conversation so she would remind him that she’d loved and married his best friend, he’d get his perspective back.
He took a quick shower. When he left his room and entered the living space, he found Harper at the table surrounded by boxes of Chinese food.
“I like Chinese.”
“Good.”
He walked over to the table, saw she’d found plates and utensils and took a seat.
“Your area of the city has just about every type of restaurant imaginable.”
“It’s part of the appeal.”
He lifted a dish, filled it with General Tso’s chicken, some vegetables and an egg roll.
“Oh, and I paid for it myself. I’m not destitute. And I’m not a charity case. I just need some help transitioning.”
Point number one to be discussed. How she wanted to be treated. “I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.”
“You didn’t. I just wanted to fix some misinterpretations.”
“Okay.”
She turned her attention to dishing out some food for herself. Her short hair gave her an angelic look, enhanced by the curve of her full lips. Her casual, almost grungy clothes took him back to a decade ago, when he was a kid who listened to hip-hop and lived right next door to the girl he thought the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
And that was point number two they had to discuss. Eight years had passed since he’d had a crush on her and she’d started dating Clark. They weren’t those people anymore. He didn’t have a mad crush on her. He’d had a mad crush on the girl she’d used to be. Since then, she’d gotten married, lost a husband, had a baby alone. They weren’t picking up where they’d left off.
He almost rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. He hadn’t even asked how she was.
“So... How are you doing?”
She shook her head. “You mean aside from being almost homeless?”
“Don’t make a joke. Clark was my best friend.” There. He’d said it. Point number three that he needed to get into this conversation. Clark had been his best friend. “You lost him. You were pregnant. You went through that alone. And now you’re facing raising a daughter alone. If we’re going to do this—live together—we’re going to do it right. Not pretend everything is fine. We used to be friends. We could be friends again.”
She set down her chopsticks. “Okay. If you really want to know, I spent most of the year scared to death. It took me a couple of weeks to wrap my head around the fact that he was really gone. But the more I adjusted, the quieter the house got. And the quieter the house got, the more I realized how alone I was.”
“And you couldn’t even talk to your parents?”
“My mom never had anything good to say about Clark, so after a visit or two when I was lonely, I quit going over.”
She stopped