“You can’t just go around drawing anyone you feel like. That’s… that’s… well, it’s totally illogical and, I bet, illegal.”
I smiled at him, and this seemed to rachet up his annoyance a few notches. “Call the police if you like. It’ll be their top priority.”
He huffed. “I’m pretty sure you need my consent to sketch me, you know.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t,” I sing-songed. I was really enjoying this now – Harry had never deigned to speak to me for this long in the past. Getting a reaction from him was the most fun I’d had in ages. “Ah yes, that’s it – that’s the frown I want to immortalise. Just hold it there for a – oomph!” Harry had lunged for my sketchpad, which I automatically lifted above my head. His body pressed mine into the back of the sofa as he reached across me, and his much longer arm plucked the book out of my outstretched hand. For a moment he froze. His face was inches from mine. I could see each of his thick eyelashes and his deep brown eyes up close. He sucked in a breath and his pupils dilated before that familiar frown was back and he scrambled away from me, my sketchbook in his hand.
“Shit… um,” he muttered. “I’m really sorry. I invaded your personal space and I well…”
“Hey, it’s cool. No problem,” I said, trying to control my breathing, and smoothing my hair over my shoulder as I cleared my throat. Harry’s face was totally horrified which I tried not to take too much offence at. He fiddled with the binding of my sketchbook before flipping it over. He glanced at the sketch and his eyebrows went up.
“You were messing with me.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“This is really good,” he muttered as he flipped from the first sketch which depicted the interior of the library, including its floor-to-ceiling oak shelving, the heavy desks littering the room – everything except the people, of course. I hated drawing people. Buildings and interiors were much more my bag. But pretending to draw Harry had been too easy. “Woah, you’ve drawn every school building in here!” he exclaimed, flipping through the pages. Like most public schools, ours was insanely old, with expansive grounds and ancient buildings boasting ornate architecture. “What’s this one?” he asked, squinting at the last sketch in the book. I bit my lip and shifted on the sofa in a rare sign of discomfort.
“Oh, it’s nothing. It–”
“It’s modern but really beautiful. Where is this? Not around here.”
I shrugged and felt my face flushing with pride. He’d called my building beautiful.
“It’s nowhere. I mean… it’s made up. I made it up.”
He gave a low whistle as he held it out to get a better look. “You’re really talented.” The surprise in his voice was kind of insulting but I decided to take the compliment anyway. “You don’t draw any humans, do you?”
“Humans suck,” I said casually but he looked up, straight into my eyes again. Twice in one day was kind of a record for Harry.
“You’re right, theydosuck,” he said. “I just wouldn’t have thought you would… I mean, peopleloveyou.”
“Not all people love me,” I said, allowing a little bitterness into my tone. He cocked his head to the side and his brow furrowed. The last thing I wanted was new, chatty Harry digging into any ofthatshizzle, so I deflected. “Anyway, adoration gets boring. You know?”
Harry snorted, actually snorted, then gave me a lopsided grin. “I can’t say I do. That’s never been a problem for me, to be honest.”
“You surprise me,” I said, grinning back at me. “You seem like such a people person.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Listen, if you agree that humans suck why do you put up with me torturing you here on the reg?” I asked. “Why not find another human-free hiding spot.”
“I don’t find you as annoying as regular humans.”
As compliments went it wasn’t the most effusive, but at the time it felt like a huge win.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to clear the image of teenage Harry and his weirdly crap but satisfying approval. Why I needed to be seeking that same approval in my late thirties was completely beyond me. It did strike me as ironic that Harry had been the first to encourage my architecture dream, and a couple of decades later was doing his best to crush it. Well, fuck him, his condescending attitude, and convenient memory loss. He was not getting away with buggering me about. Not when it interfered with the fate of the company I’d built with Max. It wasn’t just my pride and business at stake here – the success of this bid affected all the employees we had working for us.
Since that disastrous dinner, Harry had done his best to make our lives difficult. We met with the panel again, this time with Harry present. He nit-picked pretty much every element of the design to the point that I wanted to scream. I was so angry that Max actually had to take control of the meeting, which was very much a last resort as far as anyone was concerned. Why Harry had to stick his nose into the bidding process so relentlessly was anyone’s guess. He seemed to be a very busy guy. When he wasn’t accumulating more wealth, he was busy escorting his famous girlfriend around town. And the most irritating thing about this whole situation was that even his unrelenting arseholedom did not seem to blunt the sharp edge of my jealousy. The whole situation was making me incandescent with rage.
So, when I knocked on the massive imposing door to Harry’s stupid Chelsea town house, it might have been a little more aggressively than was strictly necessary. I stood back on the step waiting for him to answer with my arms crossed over my chest, totally ready for the confrontation I had planned – I knew what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. But when the door was pulled open and Harry filled my field of vision, my mouth dropped open and every vicious word I’d planned to throw at him flew out of my brain. For a moment I just stood there stupidly, searching for words.
“What are you wearing?” I finally blurted out in a breathless whisper. Yes, those were the words that came out of my mouth, instead of the well-rehearsed smackdown I had been chanting in my head for the last hour. My gaze was fixed on his broad chest, or – to be more exact – on the very defined musculature of his broad chest. I could telljusthow defined it was because he was wearing a compression shirt which looked like it had been painted onto his body. Teenage Harry did not have muscles like this. Teenage Harry was skinny, gangly and had hands and feet much too big for his body – like a massive puppy that hadn’t grown into its paws quite yet. Teenage Harry was too busy hiding in the library to work out.ThisHarry didn’t look like he missed a workout… ever. Yes, I’d noticed the other day that this Harry filled out a suit well, but I had not been able to see the extent of his six-pack or the guns he was sporting.
But even though his body may have changed, the frown that he levelled at me was all too familiar.
“Er… I was about to go to the gym and I–” His hand went to squeeze the back of his neck, doing fabulous things for his arm-chest-abdominal muscles in the process I might add. I recognised the gesture. This was Harry flustered. I’d officially flustered him – caught him off guard. Good. “What are you doing here interrogating me on my outfit on a Saturday morning? How did you even get this address?”
“Calm down, Princess Diana. I’m not stalking you. Your partner gave me your address. He encouraged me to come here. Said it was good for you to be surprised and out of your comfort zone.”
