“When we were sixteen Dallas and I ran off for an entire weekend,” Harper was saying with an almost impish grin on her face. “It was such a stupid thing to do, but it was so much fun. The first thing we did was stop here and buy enough food to last us all weekend, then we went downtown and got a hotel room for three days. We pigged out on Chinese and vending machine candy until our stomachs ached.”

“What happened when your parents found out?”

She shrugged. “My mother hadn’t even noticed I was gone. But my stepdad was furious. I wasn’t allowed to see Dallas for a month.” The look she gave me said that it had been a bad punishment in her book.

“Was it worth it?”

“Hell yeah!” She laughed and it was so infectiously contagious that I couldn’t stop from laughing back. “A whole weekend away from my mother? It was paradise.”

I wondered about her relationship with her mom, but something in her expression every time she mentioned the woman told me it wasn’t the best. “You don’t get along with her?” I couldn’t help but ask.

She grimaced, her brow furrowing and her lips pursing in the cutest way. “I get along with her. She just doesn’t get along with me.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It’s complicated.” She pushed an errant strand of silky caramel hair back from her face as she picked up her orange chicken with a chopstick. “I love my mother. When I was a little girl I was sure that she loved me too. But as I grew up, and I didn’t look anything like her, she…” She broke off when her cell phone vibrated on the table beside of her eggroll. Instead of answering it, she sent it straight to voicemail. “Speak of the devil,” she muttered half under her breath.

For nearly a full minute Harper sat staring down at the phone. The look in her eyes tugged at something deep inside of me, and all I wanted to do was comfort her. Just as I was reaching for her hand her head snapped up and she gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach her beautiful eyes. “What were we talking about?”

Realizing that talking about her mother was making her hurt, I shrugged. “You were going to tell me how much you like lemon gelato.”

The fake smile was replaced with a real one. “I was?”

I nodded. “And I was about to tell you that I know the best place in this one horse town that serves it.”

The smile turned into a full on grin. Gods! That grin was enough to undo me every time I saw it. “I’m not sure if I want lemon. Maybe I want chocolate.”

“Because chocolate is boring. Just like vanilla and strawberry are boring. But lemon? With the mixture of bitterly tart and sugary sweet? That’s just about perfect.”

Her cheeks filled with a pretty pink. I watched in complete fascination as she looked away from me and swallowed hard. My dick pulsed against the fabric of my jeans where it lay against my thigh. Well, shit! Who knew talking about gelato would make me nearly come in my pants?

Her phone vibrated again, keeping me from embarrassing myself in a freaking Chinese restaurant. Muttering a curse she sent the call to voicemail before turning it off and tossing it into her purse. “Sorry. She isn’t going to leave me alone.”

“It’s not a problem for me,” I assured her.

“Maybe not, but it is for me.” She reached for her water glass and took a long swallow. When she put it back down I found myself unable to look away as her tongue drifted out of that sinfully perfect mouth of hers to lick away a stray drop.

I nearly stroked out just watching her!

Yeah, I was positive. Getting this chick into my bed was going to be so much fun!

She was simply fun to be with. Being comfortable enough with her to find myself laughing and sharing some things that I didn’t normally share with anyone outside my band brothers and Emmie, that was just a plus.

After dinner we grabbed a cab and went the thirty or more blocks to get the gelato. When she ordered the lemon with a devilish grin, I nearly came in my jeans for the second time that night. We ate outside at one of the sidewalk tables. The street lights added a kind of mystical appeal to the night.

Halfway through our dessert, Harper pulled her camera from her purse and snapped a picture of me. I wasn’t expecting it and for a moment I thought it was actually one of the paparazzi. When I realized it was her I sighed with relief. It wasn’t that I was shy of the paparazzi. I just didn’t want them disrupting one of the best nights out I had ever had with a girl.

She laughed when she looked down at the camera after taking the picture. “Ah! You’re kind of cute.”

Cute wasn’t exactly one of the words most girls used to describe me, but I liked it coming from her. It seemed sweet and innocent, something I wasn’t.

An older couple came out of the shop. It wouldn’t have normally caught my attention, but when the man took his wife’s hand and linked their fingers, I was unable to look away. The woman smiled up at him, her face still beautiful despite the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. The look in her eyes was something I had become familiar with over the last year or more. It made me think of Emmie and Layla as they looked up at Nik and Jesse. Even Lana all those months ago before the whole Vegas incident had fucked up her and Drake.

As they passed hand in hand, oblivious to anything or anyone, Harper raised her camera and snapped a few more pictures. “Now that is a Carl and Ellie kind of love.”

Her comment confused me. “A what? Who?”

She giggled. “Carl and Ellie.”

Had my brain shut down? “Okay, I’m confused.”

Another giggle. “It’s from a movie. Haven’t you ever seen Up ?”

“There’s a movie called Up ?” I was drawing a blank as I tried to picture what such a strangely named movie would be like.

“It’s a cartoon.” She rolled her eyes when I raised a brow at her. “Laugh all you want. For me it is one of the best romance movies in the world. The first ten minutes are perfect. Carl loves Ellie from the time he meets her. They grow old loving each other in a way…” She broke off with a sigh. “Never mind. You’re right. It’s silly.”

“It isn’t silly.” I thought I knew what she was talking about. Hadn’t I witnessed that kind of love first hand when Layla and Jesse had first met? “So, you want that kind of love? The ‘Carl and Ellie’ kind of love?”

She shrugged. “It’s something to shoot for.”