“A common occurrence, it seems.”
Harper rolled her eyes at him, then shifted her gaze to the nook by the window. Shelves filled the walls, and a reading space had been set up with a homely green couch for adults and a colourful kids’ chair with giant crayons for legs. “How’s the Wi-Fi in here? Would I ever be able to come in here to work?” she asked Stephen.
“Oh, aye, that’s no problem with me,” Stephen said. “One of those freelancers, are you?”
“You could say that.” Harper rocked on her heels as though uncomfortable with her own version of the truth. She paid for her mountain of books, and Fraser swapped bags with her to shoulder the heavier stack before she could protest.
She pursed her lips, then quietly said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Bernard pulled Fraser impatiently outside and immediately cocked his leg on a lamppost, leaving them to simmer in an awkward silence. Their first one, he realised, since he’d met her.
“Did he think we were a couple?” Harper questioned finally.
Fraser chuckled. “Aye, I think so. He’s harmless, but he’s a nosy parker. I once visited with my mum and he thought we were together. Then when I set him right, he started hitting on her in front of me.”
“Yikes.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe Iwon’tbe working in there much, then.”
“He’ll leave you be if you ask him.”
“Fraser…” Harper gnawed at her lip hesitantly.
“Aye?”
She sighed. “I just wanted to thank you for helping me out. I know it’s a pain for you, but I appreciate it.”
He softened, unsure how to reply. Was it so surprising that somebody would support her in such a situation?
What company did she usually keep?
“It’s no bother, Harper,” he replied. “Well, it’s a wee bit of a bother, but I’m actually doing it for the literature of tomorrow. Who am I to stand in the way of an author writing their first book? I hope I’ll be mentioned in the acknowledgements.”
She burst into laughter and pulled out her phone. “We’ll see. Okay, let me take some pictures while I have data, and then we can head back.”
Fraser left her to it. He could put up with plenty, but an addiction to social media was a little too much for a man who didn’t even have Facebook.
8
Harper woke to the sound of a piercing, mechanical, constant whir. She groaned into her pillow and tussled with the thick duvet, unaccustomed to the new weight and strange smell. It took her a moment to remember where she was. A cabin in the middle of nowhere.
And her alarm was one hell of a racket.
“No!” she shouted at nobody in particular. She checked the time on her phone, which was charging on the nightstand. “No, no,no!” she repeated when she saw the time. Seven-forty. So early that the sun was barely up, the cabin shrouded in dusky shadows.
Angrily, she rose from the bed and stumbled her way to the door. Her brain was still foggy from sleep, but she could guess where the noise was coming from. She opened the door and bellowed: “NO!”
The whirring stopped. At the workbench, Fraser lifted his head from his power saw, his eyes filling with mirth behind a pair of goggles. “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine in the morning?”
She wanted to take that saw and use it on him. They’d agreed that Harper would not disrupt Fraser’s work schedule,but that was when Harper had assumed he would give her ample time to leave the cabin before he began hacking away at his wood. “It’s not even eight!”
Bernard dashed towards her, sniffing around her feet before jumping up for cuddles she was too tired to give.
Meanwhile, Fraser’s gaze scraped over her from head to toe, and back up to her head again, and only then did she realise what a mess she was. She looked down, finding her pyjama shirt rumpled at her waist, which gave him an excellent view of her shortest pair of shorts and her bare legs. She let out a disgruntled sound and yanked the shirt down to at least cover the most immodest parts.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
He flashed a set of white teeth as he grinned. The front ones overlapped just slightly, only adding to his rugged charm, but Harper was not focusing on that today. She was focusing first on the ungodly hour he had intruded upon, and then, after she had stewed in her own consciousness for a while, the book she planned to write.
