The Foster Girls #1: Harper

Chapter 13: So, What's New?

She'd played me. I have to give her credit; she'd done an amazing job disappearing and it took Dom two full days to track her down once I'd finally realized she'd pulled a runner.

Her desire to disappear from my life and the willingness to do it threw me. She wasn't kidding when she'd said she wouldn't be with me as a married man and the depth of her feelings on that subject were no longer in any doubt. Harper wasn't fucking around. There would be no compromise here.

Which meant I either had to let Harper go, which was never going to happen, or find a way to get divorced while still not putting my family at financial risk.

When I realized that, I hired the best attorneys money could buy and told them to break the will or find a loophole, but to do it no matter what the cost. In the meantime, I called Sabine, the woman I was legally married to, and told her what I was attempting to do.

She'd cried. "God, Rome, I hope you can find a way. I want to marry Ty more than anything."

It took my team of ten lawyers four months and millions of dollars to find a way to break the will stipulations and still allow both families to keep the company.

During that time, even though it killed me, I stayed away from Harper but I always knew where she was. I had someone watching her and asked only to be notified if it looked like she was going to run again or if she went on a date. I allowed no other information to be relayed to me about her, her daily activities, nothing. Just knowing where she was...that was about all I could handle without flying out to get her and dragging her back home. This marital situation of mine had to be settled before I could approach her because she deserved that.

It took one month and some serious bribes to fast track my complicated divorce.

But I'd managed it.

And now, less than an hour after Sabine and I signed our divorce decree, I was already in the air to get Harper back.

Part of me burned that Harper had left me behind without a second thought. Part of me understood but still didn't like it. And another part, the one I kept pushed down, wondered if what I had kept from her had destroyed what she'd felt for me.

But all of me missed her, and I'd been moving through my days in a fog, not able to hear her voice or see her face or hold her close. It had been five months of pure hell.

I rang the doorbell, playing with the little box in my jacket pocket, finding out for the first time in my life what being nervous felt like.

She opened the door, which did not have a peephole, without asking who it was. I gritted my teeth, thinking lecturing her right off the bat wouldn't be a good opening move to get us back on track.

Finally, after five long months, she stood in front of me.

Gorgeous.

Shocked.

Pregnant.

Whoa. Back the fuck up.

Pregnant?

I moved forward, forcing her back into the room and slammed the door behind me.

Her eyes darted to the side, looking for escape, and I realized this probably drove home, more than any lecture I could give her, the importance of asking who was on the other side of the door before opening it. Lesson learned.