His needs were probably few.
He talked up Harper, honestly telling Art that she didn’t have office experience, but she was dedicated and a hard worker. When he mentioned that she was also funny and nice to have around, he clamped his mouth shut. Luckily, Art took everything he said in the context of an assistant and gave him a time to tell her to come for an interview Monday morning.
When Seth told her about the interview her eyes lit with joy, making him glad he hadn’t canceled his date that evening. Or the one for Saturday night. Not wanting to take any chances being around her, he also left Sunday morning and didn’t come back until late Sunday night.
Monday morning, he didn’t knock on her door before he left for work. He texted her from his office to wish her luck on her interview and make himself seem appropriately distanced from the woman whose blue eyes could inspire poetry.
He didn’t expect to hear back from her until after lunch, and relief got him through a morning of meetings. At noon, the sky was clear, the weather still warm. Feeling very good about helping Harper, he decided to accept his brother’s invitation to join him for lunch at a nearby restaurant.
But as they strode toward the lobby door, Harper walked in.
He caught Jake’s arm. “That’s Harper.”
“Harper?” His dark-haired, blue-eyed brother frowned. “Clark’s wife?”
“Widow. She needed help finding a job.” He craned his neck to see past the gaggle of people. “I got her an interview this morning.”
Obviously surprised, Jake peered at him. “You did?”
He batted a hand. “It’s nothing. But she could be here looking for me. Better go on without me.”
Jake left. Seth caught up to Harper, who was standing in front of the directory. “Harper?”
She turned to him with tears in her eyes. “I didn’t get it.”
His heart sank, but he said, “It’s your first interview. It’s fine.”
A tear rolled onto her cheek. “No. It’s not fine. I need a job. I have a baby to support.”
Her crying went through him like hot ice. He led her to the door and out onto the sidewalk, so she wouldn’t stand in one place long enough for anyone to really see or hear her. Her words would blend into the noise of the city around them.
As they started up the street, she said, “Seth, it was like a whole different world. I was even dressed wrong.”
She spoke stronger now. Her tears had scared him, but the fact that she gathered herself together humbled him. He thought he was helping her, but this was really her battle. She was a good woman, a good person, in a bad situation. And she was right. In her purple skirt and simple white blouse, she wasn’t dressed to impress. It was like she was hiding her light under a basket.
He glanced around and saw a small boutique up ahead. He’d frequented the store to get gifts for his mom, his sister and girlfriends. The clerks were quiet, discrete. If he took Harper inside and told the saleswomen they needed to look around, they would smile and give them some space. And he could give her some pointers on dressing for an office. Somehow in those years of being self-employed, she’d gotten the idea that office workers needed to be dowdy.
He took her arm and led her into the store.
“What are we doing?”
“You said you felt you were dressed wrong.”
She looked down at her white blouse and eggplant-colored skirt. “I was dressed wrong. I haven’t bought clothes in two years, unless you count maternity jeans.”
He pointed to the left at a long rack of tops beside a rack of skirts and trousers beside a rack of sweaters beside three rows of dresses.
“See the colors?”
“Pretty.” Her head tilted. “And not a dark purple skirt or blouse among them.”
“Go look.”
She faced him. “I can’t afford to spend a bunch of cash on clothes when I’m not sure if I’ll need the money for a down payment on a house.”
“Maybe. But because you’ve never worked in an office, I think you got the wrong idea about what to wear. Just look around.”
She frowned, glanced back at the racks. He could see from the way her eyes shifted that she didn’t just want to fit in. She almost seemed to long to run her fingers along the fabrics, try things on, get some clothes that would ease her into her next life phase.
“I can get you an account here.”
She bit her lower lip. “If I have to use my profit from selling my condo as a down payment for another condo, God knows when I’ll be able to pay it off.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that?”
She closed her eyes. “I can’t do that.”
His heart melted. He could afford to buy the whole damn store and she wouldn’t let him buy her a few dresses.
“What if we get the account, but you make the payments. Probably won’t be too much if you spread it out over a few months. And new clothes will give you the confidence you need on your next interview.”
She licked her lips. His libido sent blood straight to the wrong part of him, as his emotions zigzagged in four different directions. He’d always had a thing for Harper. But he’d also known her as his best friend’s wife. He wanted to help her. Almost needed to help her. But he loved her strength, her pride, her longing to make her own way and be herself.
Hell, hadn’t he fought to be allowed to be himself?
“Please.”
She glanced at him. “I know you’re doing all this to pay back a debt to Clark. But he never felt you owed him.”
“I owe him everything I am today. Which is why I understand why you don’t want to take the help.”
She chuckled, then shook her head as if amazed by him. “You will let me pay the bill?”
“I’ll consider forwarding that bill a sacred obligation.”
“I do like that black dress back there.”
He motioned for a salesgirl. “Then you should try it on.”
They shopped long past Seth’s lunch hour. She tried on dresses, pants, blouses, skirts, sweaters. Though Seth would have had her take it all, he let her sift through and find eight pieces she could mix and match, and three simple dresses.
The salesclerk happily tallied the price and boxed the first dress neatly. Expensively. From his days of living hand-to-mouth while at university and in his two years of working as a lowly broker for a big investment firm, he knew that little touches like a box with tissue paper made a person feel a bit better about themselves, about who they were.
He watched as the
