Not Yet Yours

Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Liam

I head back up to our room with a cup of coffee in each hand. I had a lovely breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages, and mushrooms with toast, all washed down with orange juice and coffee. Harriet said she wasn’t hungry, so I left her to shower and get ready while I went down to the dining room to eat.

I get back to our room, open the door with my elbow, and enter the room. Harriet is sitting on the bed with her legs out in front of her reading a magazine. She looks absolutely stunning. Her hair is down, and she’s wearing a red bikini with a white gauzy sarong wrap tied around her waist.

She looks up as I come into the room, and she puts her magazine down.

“You look… wow,” I say.

“Thank you,” Harriet replies. I hand her one of the coffees and she says it again. “Thank you.”

She takes the lid off the cup and sips the coffee.

“I guess you want to spend some time by the pool then,” I say, indicating the outfit Harriet is wearing.

She nods.

“Yes,” she says. “But I think Max and Cullen are going off sightseeing today. If you want to go with them, don’t think you have to stay with me all day.”

“No, it’s fine,” I say. I sat down on the edge of the bed and drank some of my coffee since I gave Harriet her coffee. “I think I’d rather just stay around here today, let Max and Cullen have some couples time.”

“Ok,” Harriet says.

“Well, I’ll go and get into my swimming trunks. Give me two seconds,” I say.

Harriet nods and I get up and put my coffee on the dressing table while I get sorted. I get my swimming trunks from one of the drawers and I go into the bathroom and strip off my clothes and put the trunks on. I feel like Harriet is being a bit short with me, but I know I haven’t done anything to offend her, or at least I don’t think I have. I almost asked her if something was wrong, but I didn’t want to seem overbearing or make her feel like she had to be bouncing around laughing all the time. Maybe it’s just because it’s early and she hasn’t had any coffee yet.

I go back into the room and Harriet has moved from the bed. She’s sitting in one of the chairs finishing her coffee. She has put red flip-flops on her feet and a straw hat with a red ribbon around it on her head. She nods down to a matching straw bag.

“I have towels and sunscreen,” she says.

“Awesome, thank you,” I say. “Are you ready to go?”

She nods and I drink the rest of my coffee and we both put our cups in the trash can underneath the dressing table. I get the key card and my wallet and put them in the pocket of my trunks I decided against taking my cell phone. If Cullen wants me, Max can call Harriet and if it’s anyone else, it’ll only be work-related and that can wait until I’m back home.

We leave the room and I make sure the door locks. Harriet keeps walking and I jog a few steps to catch back up with her. She presses the call button for the elevator and we both get inside, and she presses the button for the ground floor. Again, I can’t help but think she’s being a bit standoffish. I don’t want to cause an argument by asking about it though, so I bite my tongue for now and decide to see how the day goes.

Another couple gets in the elevator with us on the first floor and that means I can’t ask Harriet anything even if I wanted to now. The other couple is behaving more how I consider to be normal, more how Harriet and I usually are, chatting away, laughing, teasing each other. Still, we ride in silence.

The elevator comes to a stop at the ground floor and the four of us get out. The couple heads toward the dining room and Harriet and I go the other way, heading to the back door which leads to the pool area.

The area around the pool is pretty spacious. White sun loungers sit all around the large blue pool. The area is immaculately clean and it’s quiet enough that we won’t struggle to get loungers together.

“How about over there?” I say, pointing to two loungers together with a small table between them. They are right on the poolside and in a place where we will get the sun for most of the day.

Harriet nods her agreement, and we go over to the loungers. Harriet gets the towels out of her bag and hands me one, we drape them over the loungers, and sit down. Harriet digs in her bag again and this time, she comes out with her sunscreen. She unties her wrap and begins to smooth the sunscreen over her legs and then her arms and her belly. I wish I was the one rubbing that in her. I can’t stop watching her and when she’s finished, she offers me the sunscreen. I shake my head.

“I’m ok, thanks,” I say. “But I’ll do your back if you want me to.”

“That’s ok, maybe later if I turn over,” she says and she puts the sunscreen back in her bag and lays back on the lounger.

I start to speak to her but then I see she has her eyes closed and I think she probably doesn’t want any conversation. There is definitely something going on here. I know I’m not just being paranoid, but I can’t think what could possibly have happened to make Harriet go so cold on me.

Last night we had a lovely night out, fantastic sex, and then we fell asleep in each other’s arms. Nothing happened this morning that could have upset her. It’s not like we argued or anything. I basically woke up and went in the shower and got dressed and by the time I came out of the bathroom, Harriet was awake. That’s when she said she didn’t want any breakfast.

Surely that’s not it. Was I meant to say no, I would wait and reassure her she didn’t have to rush? I mean I would have happily done that, but she’s a grown woman and when she told me she wasn’t hungry, I saw no reason to not believe her. It can’t have been that, because that was the first thing that made me think something was off. She seemed to be speaking in short, clipped sentences like she didn’t want to talk to me, but at the same time, she didn’t want to be rude.

I lean back on my own lounger and close my eyes. I’m done trying to work this one out. If something is wrong, Harriet can either tell me what I’ve done to upset her, or she can move on from it. I’m not getting anywhere sitting here trying to work it out, that’s for sure.

I think I must have dozed off because I jumped when cold water splashed over my stomach. I prop myself up on my elbows and look around. A net has been erected in the pool and people are jumping into the water. There are some of the hotel reps organizing what looks like a game of volleyball and the water that hit me was just the splashes from someone jumping in. I glance at Harriet and see she’s sitting up looking across at the game too.

“Should we play?” I say, sitting up beside her.

She shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “But you play if you want to. I’ll be fine here.”

“It won’t be any fun without you though,” I say, trying to coax her around. She shakes her head again, and I cup her knee with one hand. “Come on, don’t be like that.”

She pushes my hand off her knee.

“I said no,” she says, loud enough that some people a few loungers down look in our direction.

I’m shocked by her reaction. I was definitely right that something is going on here.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Harriet says with a sigh. She glances at me for a second and then looks away. “I just… I don’t want to play, ok.”

“Ok,” I say.

She looks upset and I almost reach out and squeeze her shoulder and ask her what’s wrong, but the way she reacted to me touching her knee warns me not to touch her again. She jumped like my very touch was poisonous and if she does that again, I think the nosey couple who looked when she shouted will be up here demanding to know what’s going on.

The silence settles back between Harriet and me and while it’s not exactly an uncomfortable silence, it isn’t exactly comfortable either. It feels like that compromising silence where you know if you speak, you will end up arguing and you don’t want that so you both sit and pretend like there isn’t a huge amount of tension piling up between you. I hate it, but it’s better than us having a public showdown, I guess.

More than I hate the awkwardness of the moment or the embarrassment of having Harriet yell at me in public, I hate the idea that I have somehow upset Harriet. The last thing I would ever do is hurt her and if I have done something that has done that, I would rather she just tell me what happened so I could make it up to her.

We sit and watch the game of volleyball and somewhere through it, the atmosphere between us seems to thaw. The ball goes out of play and sprays water over a woman lying face down who jumps up in shock and forgets her bikini top is undone, Harriet and I look at each other and burst into laughter.

“Do you want to get some lunch?” I ask once the game has finished.

Harriet nods, and we gather up our things and head back toward the hotel. We go inside and make our way to the dining room. The meals in the hotel are buffet style and we grab a plate each and make our way around the various counters, taking scoops of the dishes that catch our eyes. We go and put our plates down at a table and I tell Harriet to sit down while I go and get us some drinks. She asks for an orange soda, and I get her a large glass of it and a large glass of Coke for myself. I take them back to the table and sit down.

We start to eat our lunch and while the atmosphere between us is nowhere near as tense as it was earlier on in the day, it still feels like something is off between us and no amount of me telling myself I’m being paranoid is going to convince me I’m wrong about this.

“The beef stew is delicious, isn’t it?” I say to test the waters.

“Yes,” Harriet agrees. “It’s really good.”

I’m definitely not imagining this over formal way of talking to me like we are two strangers making small talk with each other. I decide I have to ask her about it. If it’s something I’ve done then hopefully I can make it up to her, and if it isn’t something I’ve done, then maybe I can help her with whatever it is. Because I told myself this was going to be a good weekend, where I would show Harriet a good time and let her see how much I would spoil her if she was my girl and yet here I am, barely able to get her to string a sentence together.

“Harriet, what’s wrong?” I ask.

She spears a potato on her fork and twizzles it around in some sauce. She watches the potato and then looks quickly up at me.

“Nothing,” she says, and then her attention goes back to the potato.

She’s dragging the piece of potato so hard and fast on her fork that it breaks and falls away.

“I think that potato would beg to differ,” I say, hoping that if I can make her laugh, it will bring her walls down a bit.

“What?” she says, and then she looks down and sees what she’s done. She stops twiddling her fork. “Oh.”

“Harriet,” I say again, and I don’t go on until she looks at me. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. Is it something I’ve done?”

For a moment, she just looks at me and I’m starting to think she isn’t going to answer me at all, but then she drops her gaze and speaks down at her plate.

“No, it’s nothing you’ve done. It’s something I’ve done,” she says.

I want to prompt her to tell me what she’s done, but something tells me to stay quiet and let her speak in her own time, so I bite my tongue and wait for her to tell me what’s going on.

“Before we came here, I made a promise to myself that we would have a fun weekend and convince people we were together and that would be it. I promised myself I wouldn’t let my guard down again and let anything happen between us. But, well I think it’s fair to say that I failed miserably at that,” she says, and I see the ghost of a smile playing across her lips, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. “I guess I figured that it is best to keep you at arm’s length than keep leading you on.”

“That’s what this is about?” I say, shocked to hear the reason for her being standoffish with me today. “Harriet, you don’t need to feel bad about last night. I sure as hell don’t. And you’re not leading me on. We both made it perfectly clear we weren’t in the right space the last time we were together to start something. I know exactly where I stand and I’m just enjoying the sex. I was under the impression we both were enjoying it.”

“Well, when you put it that way, yeah, I guess we are,” Harriet says, and this time when she smiles, it’s her full, radiant smile, and it doesn’t fade away for a long time.

By the end of our lunch, we are flirting and laughing together like we always have, and everything feels pretty much back to normal. And if it meant I had to lie to Harriet a little bit and have her think I don’t want more from her, well that’s ok. I wasn’t lying when I said I know where I stand with her and that she’s not leading me on. I know I’m playing with fire, but I’m confident I can straddle this line of having at least some of Harriet rather than none of her without getting hurt.