Page 9

Harper

All the sex dreams in the world didn’t make battling peak hour traffic any easier the next morning. Some idiot trying to ring me as I hunkered down between weaving cars and massive trucks was just the icing on the cake.

Bzzt… bzzt… bzzt…

I dared a sidelong look at my phone sitting on the passenger side seat, torn between the impulse to answer it and the very real desire not to get slammed with a massive fine for being on my phone when driving.

It was fine. Whoever the hell it was, they’d ring back later or leave a message.

It was probably just yet another call from that children’s charity I’d supported once when bailed up at a shopping centre.

I could ignore… The phone finally stopped ringing, but as I pulled up at the red light, letting a long breath of relief out, it started again.

Goddammit.

I snatched it up, hoping that there wasn’t a red light camera at this intersection, ready to turn it off completely, when I saw the caller ID.

Mum.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Torn between a need to obey the law and to appease my mother, who would ring and keep on ringing until I picked up, I tapped on the screen, answering the call via speakerphone as the lights turned green.

“Hi M?—”

“What’s this I hear about you dating animals?”

How did one woman convey so much disdain in so few words? I’m not sure, but my mother had mastered that ability.

“Animals?” I asked. “You bloody dickhead!”

“What?”

I shook my head at the car that swerved in front of me, forcing me to stamp my foot on the breaks to avoid colliding with them.

“Not you,” I explained hastily. “Look, Mum, I’m on my way to work and?—”

“So you don’t have time to talk to your own mother?” she said, her sigh audible.

This was the moment when I cited the statistics, that a distracted driver was more likely to have an accident, but Mum didn’t care. She wanted to talk, now, and there’d be hell to pay if she didn’t get her way.

“Of course not,” I said. “So while men are pigs, things haven’t gotten so bad I need to date actual animals.”

“So you didn’t have a bunch of those… shifters around at your place. Your grandmother said something about hanging some photos?”

Damn, Nanna sold me out. I was gonna get her to deal me in the next time she was playing cards and take her for every penny of her pension cheque.

“Some guys I met at the hardware store helped me put some photos up, Mum,” I explained. “So chill.”

“Chill? Chill?” Of course, that had the exact opposite effect.

I stared out the window at the massive truck driving in the lane beside me, momentarily wondering what it would be like to get sucked under its wheels and squished to death.

It would be a fast, painless death, right?

“How am I supposed to ‘chill’ when my daughter lets dangerous animals in through the front door?”

I blinked, trying to reconcile Tor and Kieran with the picture Mum was painting. Mack, maybe, but the other two…? My throat bobbed as I remembered just how ‘animal’ they were in my dreams.

“Mum—”

“Harper, you need to be more careful.”

“Mum—”

“I know you didn’t have the greatest male role models to look up to growing up.”

My throat convulsed, trying to keep down the snort of disbelief.

My dad bailed on us when I was little more than a baby, but that was OK.

Mum found guys, so many guys, to take his place.

It got to a point where I started tracking the length of time Mum spent single, and I think the longest period was like two months.

Each one seemed worse than the next, something she seemed to remember.

“I just wish I’d met Peter when you were still young.”

Mum was a good example of persistence paying off. At the end of a long line of disastrous relationships, she’d found Peter. He was calm to her crazy, sweet, supportive, and most of all, stable. It’d actually been nice to see her finally relax now that she’d found the love of her life.

“He would’ve been a fabulous father.” My eyebrows shot up, pretty sure the man himself wouldn’t have been on board with that. We got along fine, but probably because he wasn’t required to help me with my maths homework or vet my boyfriends. “Which is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Peter being my dad?”

I asked that with trepidation. Now she was settled, Mum liked to try to push the happy families narrative hard.

“No, silly. It’s too late for that.” I let out a sigh of relief as I flicked the indicator on, changing lanes to exit the freeway. “He’s got a lovely young man working for him now.”

“Oh god…”

I barely breathed that out, daring a glance at the phone, hoping she hadn’t heard that.

“His name is Brian. Very nice, respectful young man.” God, I hated him already, visualising some smarmy prick who sucked up to the boss’ wife to get ahead in the business Peter owned. “And best of all, he’s human. I gave him your number.”

“You did what?”

I yelped that out as I was forced to break hard. Going down the off ramp too fast, I was about to crash into the back of the car in front of me.

“Harper, don’t make the mistakes I did.” My eyes squinted not against the morning sun, but at the emotional blackmail coming in thick and fast. “I wasted my life on men that didn’t deserve a second of my time.”

A realisation that would’ve been good to have when I was still a kid.

There was the guy who used to punch walls every time he was pissed, sending me scuttling.

The guy who tried to become my dad, bossing me around, but not demonstrating a skerrick of interest in who I was as a person.

It wasn’t until I got to adulthood myself that I realised each one of them was completely clueless, not knowing what to do with a woman like Mum, let alone her daughter.

“I just want to see you settled,” she continued. “With someone who’ll take care of you.” Aw, sometimes she could be sweet. “Someone that can cope with your… difficult personality.”

There it was. Always one for backhanded compliments, my mother.

“Right, well, I’m pulling up at work.” I wasn’t quite there, but she didn’t know that. “So I’ve got to go. Hopefully, I won’t put the customers off their breakfast with my ‘difficult’ personality.”

“That’s not what I meant, Harper.” How the hell was I supposed to take that comment? I wanted to snap, but I didn’t. Fighting with my mother was no way to start the day. “Just… answer his call when he rings. Shaun is a lovely guy, and this might be the start of something beautiful.”

Well, if the conversation was anything to go by, it wouldn’t be, but I said my goodbyes as I pulled up out the front of the cafe.

The car park was already full. All the guys from the nearby workshops converged here in the morning, starting the day with a meal packed with protein and washed down with a carton of iced coffee.

I shoved the phone into my pocket, careful to put it in do not disturb mode.

Nothing drove my boss madder than getting calls while working, and if Shaunie boy was going to ring, I didn’t want to get written up for it.

I locked up my car, swung my bag over my shoulder, and then stomped inside, my mood already ruined.

“Morning!” Geoff called out from where he was working his magic at the grill. “Coffee’s there for you.”

“God, I love you,” I said, walking over and wrapping my hands around the foam cup after I’d pulled an apron on. “Don’t tell Sharon.”

“Don’t tell Sharon what?” The woman herself came marching through the swinging doors only to shove a cluster of orders onto the metal clip that ran across the prep bench.

“That you’re ready to start your shift right now because every bloke in a ten kilometre radius has decided they need a bacon and egg sandwich right bloody now? ”

“You got it,” I said, taking a long sip of the coffee. It burned all the way down, but that just left me with a warm glow. I made sure my hair was tied back neatly, then grabbed an order book and pencil and walked out.

“Hi, how can I…?”

I needed to take the order and the man’s money fast, because the guys behind him were getting restless, so why did I stop and stare?

Probably because the last time I saw Kieran, he had a lot less clothes on.

He was also using those massive hands of his to…

With a shake of my head, I forced it to get back into the game.

“What can I get you?”

“Nine bacon and egg sandwiches,” he said and I scribbled that down. “Bacon extra crispy, and make them doubles.” I amended the order. “Add cheese and tomato sauce, please.”

“Can do,” I said, moving towards the cash register. “Anything else?”

I meant coffee, Coke, or other drink, but he just grinned. There was something almost shy and a whole lot sexy about that.

“I suppose asking for another date right now wouldn’t be appropriate?”

Of course, that was the moment when Sharon came to stand by the cash register.

Sharon’s eyebrows shot up, then her eyes narrowed as she took Kieran in.

Something about the way his high vis gear stretched over his shoulders seemed to meet her approval, because she turned to me, a questioning look in her eyes.

Sharon could be abrasive as hell, but she looked after her girls.

That look said a whole lot. Do you want this big lunk or should I get the cricket bat out from under the counter and knock his block off?

I shook my head slightly and that had her grinning, right as her fingers danced across the keys of the cash register, ringing up her customer’s purchases.

“Probably,” I said when the register was free. I rang up his order and then held out the EFTPOS machine for him to make a payment. “Seeing as I’m at work and this is my boss.” I nodded to Sharon.

“She gets off at two.” The bloody traitor! Sharon grabbed my order and hers and then headed towards the kitchen. “Ask her then.”

Right as I was going to say something about that, Kieran winked at me.

“Two PM. We’ll be here with bells on.”

I was left standing there, other guys swarming forward to take his spot as he stepped away, and right as I watched his back disappear into the crowd, my phone started to buzz in my pocket. I let it, grabbing my pencil and taking down the next order.