But I can’t.

  Instead, I gently clear my throat.

  The small disturbance in the stillness does the trick. Harper’s eyes flutter as she wakes. She blinks several times, slowly, and then shoots upright.

  “Mr. Raynes!” she says softly.

  I laugh. “Jason,” I say. “I’m still Jason.”

  “Oh!” she jumps up. “When did you get in? I…” She shoots a look over to Charlie, who’s still slumbering peacefully. Then she crosses the room, padding in my direction.

  She’s wearing a white top, which is cropped short around her abdomen. Her pants are high waisted, and overlap beneath the top, so she still looks professional. The look accentuates her curves in a very flattering way, and I feel utterly mesmerized as she walks toward me. It’s almost as bad as it was this morning, when I could barely get out the door I was so flustered.

  Does she know what she’s doing to me?

  Once in a while, the playful look in her blue-green eyes tells me that she does.

  “I’m so sorry that I was napping!” she says, as if I might be mad.

  As if I could possibly be mad at her.

  “After our morning lessons, we went to the science museum. Mrs. Thompson told me that Charlie is in the middle of a project, and it was the perfect way to get some interactive research done. Then, Charlie wanted to take the long way home, so we ended up walking four miles through Central Park. I think it wiped both of us out!” She gives a nervous laugh.

  “That’s wonderful. I’m glad to hear that you got out of the house. Mrs. Thompson was in her late sixties, and I think she rarely had the energy for active trips.”

  “Oh, I think that’s one of the best ways to learn,” Harper says. “I always wished I could take my second-graders out into the world more—into nature, to museums, to historical sites…but it’s much harder with a whole classroom. Now that I can focus all of my attention on Charlie, I’d love to do field trips at least a few times a week!”

  I nod with approval. The truth is, I’m trying to listen to the words that she’s saying. I’m really trying. She looks excited about them, and I want to know what she has to say. But I can’t concentrate.

  All I can do is watch her lips move, and think about how she looked, sleeping on the couch. How peaceful, how beautiful. In my mind’s eye, I’m still imagining what it would have been like to kiss her, ever so gently, and have her wake as our lips touched. How she might stir, and wrap her arms around me to pull me closer. How our kiss might deepen, and…

  “What do you think?” Harper asks.

  She looks at me mischievously, as if she knows darn well that I’ve been daydreaming.

  “Uh… Ahem. About what?”

  “Do you think I should call your driver, or would it be better if I just jumped on the subway? I’m used to riding public transportation all over Boston, so it’s not a big deal to—”

  “You’re leaving?” I ask. Disappointment is clear in my voice.

  “Well, Jason, you didn’t ask me to live here, remember?” She shoots me one of those looks again. It makes me feel crazy inside…like I can barely control myself. I want this woman.

  She hurries on, not waiting for an answer to her rhetorical question. “Charlie’s already eaten—his nanny is here. I just wanted to wait for you because it’s my first day and all.”

  “It is,” I say, thinking hard. I don’t want her to leave! Though I am afraid of my growing attachment to Harper, my aversion to her absence is winning out in my internal battle. “How about you don’t head home quite yet? Let’s go out for dinner instead, and celebrate your first day.”

  I try to read the expression on her face, but I can’t. I keep talking anyways. “There’s a great place right around the corner from here—just a five-minute drive. My driver can take you back into the city after. What do you think?”

  Chapter 13

  Harper

  Just when I think I have Jason all figured out, he throws me a curveball.

  I’ve spent all day reminding myself to cut off the flirty comments and looks. Okay, so I haven’t been entirely successful with that resolution since he got home this evening, but I’m trying.

  But now, he’s asking me out to dinner?

  What’s that supposed to mean? Do tutors commonly end the day by going out to dinner with their bosses? That seems…unlikely.

  But what do I know? I’ve stepped into an alternate reality, where employee housing is five star and school lunches are cooked by a private chef. Here, it seems, everything I know to be true is turned upside down. So maybe I don’t need to read into Jason’s invitation.

  It’s just dinner. A nice, above-board celebration, between boss and employee.

  Then why do I feel butterflies in my stomach as we wave goodnight to Charlie? Why are my palms sweating as I reach for the door to the black Cadillac that will drive us down the block? And why does the back of the car feel impossibly small, like it might as well be the closet where I played seven minutes in heaven at my best friend’s ninth-grade birthday party?

  I’m finding it nearly impossible to make small talk as the chauffeur drives us to the restaurant that Jason has in mind. It’s not until we’re seated and I have a glass of wine in one hand and a slice of fresh-baked bread in the other that I finally begin to relax. I’m not Italian, but the family-style Italian restaurant that Jason has picked for our celebration is totally unpretentious, and I’m feeling more at home than I have all day.

  Instead of cathedral ceilings and rooms adorned with art that costs more than my college education, the restaurant has a cozy, intimate feel, and is decorated with grainy photographs of local heroes: firefighters, small-time actors, college athletes, and what I suspect are family photos.

  “Isn’t this place great?” Jason asks. He slips off his jacket, and hangs it on the back of his chair, and then unbuttons his shirt sleeves and starts rolling them to his elbows. “I feel like I can really relax here.”

  “You just read my mind!” I say, before taking a sip of the wine. “It feels like a real family restaurant. I love it.”

  Jason smiles. “I used to come here as a kid,” he says. “I grew up in Queens, and my dad was friends with the owner, so we’d come here for big family get-togethers. They used to close the whole place down and line up the tables in the middle of the room, all connected. I used to eat so much spaghetti, I’d practically have to roll out of here.”

  “Really?” I laugh, imagining the muscular, trim man before me as a child, stuffing his face with carbs.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Do you have any Italian in your family?” I ask. He doesn’t look Italian, and there’s that accent of his, but I guess appearances and accents can be deceiving.

  “Nope. I’m pretty much all Irish, with a little, tiny bit of French, on my mother’s side. What about you?”

  “I’m Irish too.” I smile.

  “I knew there was a reason we get along so well!” Jason says. He takes a bite of bread, and while he chews, he studies me.

  I feel a little bit self-conscious, but also flattered that he’s staring at me so appreciatively. There’s music playing in the background and a mild buzz of happy conversation, but everything else seems faded to me, as if it’s happening in another room. Our table is tucked up against the wall, and feels surprisingly intimate, given how busy the place is.

  This would be a great place for a date.

  “You do look Irish, now that I think about it,” Jason says. “Your hair has those red highlights. And your cheeks got pink today, just from your walk in the park.”

  “Yeah, I’m blessed with Irish skin,” I say sarcastically. “You look like you get tan—lucky.”

  He chuckles. “Yes, I’m some kind of genetic anomaly.” He holds out his forearm. “This is nothing, though. You should have seen me as a kid. I had a job cleaning pools when I was in high school. I used to work without my shirt on, and I’d get so brown, I looked like a different person altogether.”

  “You cleaned pools?” I can’t hide the surprise in my tone.

  “Oh, did I ever. I drained, scrubbed, even re-tiled the things. In fact…” He leans in, resting both elbows on the table. He lowers his voice, as though he’s sharing a secret. “I remember cleaning the pool in the backyard of the house I now own. There was a different owner then—rumor was he had connections with the mob.” He leans back, satisfied that he’d delivered his juicy gossip.

  “No!” I don’t know what surprises me more, that Jason was a worker at his current house, or that it was owned by a member of the real live mafia—a group I only know through television dramas.

  “Yes,” he says, nodding gravely. Then he grins. “Don’t worry—I pretty much had the place gutted and we rebuilt from scratch. You won’t find any hidden bodies or trap doors or anything.”

  “Wait, why were you cleaning the pool?” I’m having trouble connecting the dots. How did he go from scrubbing the chlorine off some rich guy’s pool to owning the place in its entirety?

  “It’s a long story,” he says.

  “Well,” I lean back, cradling my glass in my hand. “I’ve got time. Do you?”

  For once, Jason isn’t checking his watch. He’s not looking at his phone. I sense him relaxing. Maybe it’s something about this place and how it reminds him of his childhood. It’s like I’m seeing a whole different side of him.

  He leans back, too, and picks up his drink. “Well, where should I start? My mother got me the job when I was thirteen. She was afraid I’d start getting into trouble, like other kids in my neighborhood. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed it.”

  He pauses long enough to bite into his bread. I’m curious—I remember hating yard chores. I’m sure I would have resented it if my mother had forced me to do other people’s yard chores.

  Jason continues. “I got to see all of these huge houses—places I couldn’t have even dreamed up if I tried. Our family was on the poor side. Not completely destitute, but money was always tight. Our cleaning crew would go all over the suburbs—to Queens a lot, and even out to Long Island: Great Neck, Fresh Meadows, Auburndale. Wealthy neighborhoods. I loved it. I liked talking to the owners and they got a real kick out of me. I wasn’t shy about asking questions.”

  The waiter interrupts our conversation to take our orders. After he leaves, I prompt Jason again. “What kind of questions did you ask?”

  “Everything,” Jason says. “I wanted to know everything. What they did, how long they’d been doing it for. Where their money came from—that kind of thing.”

  “And they would tell you?”

  “Most of them,” Jason says with a laugh. “There were some people who acted like I was bothering them, but a lot of the time, people really opened up. I was just a kid after all—a shirtless kid from the city, holding a scrub brush. I wasn’t a threat to them, and they liked telling their stories.”

  “You must have learned a lot.”

  “You bet,” Jason says. “Enough to know that it wasn’t impossible. I remember standing in the backyard of the house I own, thinking, ‘This could be mine, if I play my cards right’.”

  “And you must have,” I say.

  “Yeah.” He shrugs, and looks down with humility. I can tell he doesn’t want to brag, but I want to know more.

  “So how did you do it?” I ask.

  “Well, I worked my ass off. I knew what I wanted, and I knew the steps that I’d need to take to get there. One of those steps was to get into a good college and get a solid education. I ended up getting a scholarship and then studying with some of the top engineering minds in the country. I guess they rubbed off on me, because while I was in senior year of undergrad, I came up with the formula for a steel that could improve structural flexibility under extreme conditions.”

  “And Rayne or Shine Steel was born,” I say.

  “Ha! You make it sound easy. It was years of blood, sweat and tears, plus a master’s degree, before I was able to get it off the ground. But yes, that’s the gist of it.”

  “Impressive,” I say, nodding.

  “Glad you think so,” he says. He lifts the wine bottle from the bucket it’s sitting in, and holds it up to me. I’m reminded of our time in Switzerland, when we had the lobby to ourselves.

  I nod, and hold out my glass. “Thank you,” I murmur as he fills my empty glass.

  He tops his own off as well.

  “Tell me your story, Harper,” he says.

  “Well, it’s not all that exciting,” I say. “I feel like it’s just beginning, really. All of the stuff that’s happened so far is just the first few chapters. The good stuff is yet to come.”

  “I like that,” he says. He lifts his glass. “To the next chapter in the Harper Kelly story.”

  I lift my glass too, and we cheers.

  His eyes are twinkling, and lock with mine as we each take a sip. Somehow, without the exchange of words, I understand that he’s wondering what the next chapter in my story will hold, just as much as I am.

  “Moving to New York was a good start,” I say. “I love it here. And you know what’s weird? I’ve always wanted to live here, but in all of the job searching I did before you hired me, I never once opened up my search to include New York. It almost seemed, I don’t know, outside of the realm of possibility.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I thought the cost of living would be too high, or that I wasn’t, I don’t know, sophisticated enough. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

  “You’re not stupid,” Jason says. “You’re brilliant. You’ve just been limiting yourself.”

  “I have, haven’t I?”

  “Anything is possible, Harper. That’s what I realized when I was cleaning pools. Some people don’t realize it until much later in life. It’s a good lesson to learn.”

  Silence stretches out and I feel a pleasant warmth building between us. We’ve returned to that close, intimate friendship that we were developing abroad, but now we’re surpassing it. I feel even closer to Jason than I did on the couch in his penthouse suite.

  “I’ll have to remember that,” I say, looking down at my glass, and then up at him through my lashes.

  The waiter arrives, interrupting our heated stare-down. He places fragrant, steaming plates of rustic Italian food in front of us.

  As we eat, Jason continues to ask me questions about my past. I can tell that he’s just as curious about me as I was about him.

  I tell him that as a child, school was my favorite game to play, and that my stuffed animal collection rivaled Charlie’s, yet all of my “students” got individualized lesson plans. I tell him about college in Boston, and the excitement of getting my first full-time position. He’s a good listener. I notice how he takes time to look at me when I’m speaking, and always asks a thoughtful follow-up question.

  We’ve polished off the bottle of wine, and Jason insists that we take cannoli to go (“You’ll thank me later,” he promises, when I protest).

  With our little to-go packages, we wander out of the restaurant and onto the street-lamp-studded sidewalk.

  It’s dark out now, and though I’ve almost completely lost track of time, I’m guessing that it’s somewhere between ten and midnight. The driver is parked on the curb, ready and waiting.

  “I don’t want to monopolize your driver,” I say. “I can really just jump on the subway. You take the car home.”

  “No,” Jason says. “It’s a nice night. I’ll walk. My driver will take you into the city.”

  We’re standing so close together, I can almost feel his body heat. The May air is mild, with just a slight cool edge. I continue protesting, but at the same time, we’re both walking toward the waiting car.

  “I don’t know Jason, are you sure? I really—” My words are cut short when the back of my heel snags on a crack in the sidewalk, and I completely lose my footing. First, I rock backwards and then, struggling to regain my balance, I pitch forward.

  The whole world tilts, but suddenly I’m stable again and I feel two sturdy arms around me. Jason has caught me—I feel his breath on my cheek as he softly says, “Careful.”

  His arms are still around me as he sets me on my feet. I turn slightly, not looking right at him, but orienting my body toward his as I whisper, “Thank you. These heels…” I shake my head. I feel my hair slip in front of my eye, and then Jason’s fingers brush my face as he pushes the hair back behind my ear.

  We’re both silent, and the air crackles with tension between us.

  One of his hands is still resting on my lower back, holding me close to him. I’m steady on my feet now; he could let go. But he doesn’t, and that’s just fine with me.

  This feels too good.

  His other hand lingers on my cheek, and suddenly, I feel him leaning into me—closer and closer. My eyes are lowered, and my heart is hammering in my chest.

  His fingers are smooth and warm against my jawline. I feel him slip his hands down, along the edge of my jaw, until they reach the center of my chin. Then, ever so slightly, he applies pressure, tilting my chin upwards. My breath is coming out in shallow bursts, and each time my chest rises and falls, I feel myself press against his body—that’s how close we are.

  Slowly, as he lifts my chin, I lift my eyes.

  He’s so close, his lips just an inch from mine. And then, before I can take another jagged, shallow breath, his lips are on mine.

  His kiss is deep and hungry, but brief. His lips lock with mine, moving with such intensity it completely takes my breath away. A jolt of electricity passes through me, but before I can really react, he pulls away.

  His eyes are wide. He steps back, creating a gap between our bodies. “I’m sorry,” he says, while I’m still catching my breath.

  Sorry? That was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my whole life! I don’t want him to be sorry… I want him to do it again! Why is he sorry?

  But as I take in the expression on his face, the reality of our situation comes crashing back to me. He’s sorry because he’s my boss, and this shouldn’t be happening.