Pride (3 page)

“Funny.” Miranda didn’t show a hint of a smile. “But I don’t buy it. You’ve got us up at the buttcrack of dawn, breaking a sweat. Just to get in shape so you can
ski
? And you don’t even know how to ski.”

Thanks for rubbing it in.

Harper knew it was ridiculous to want to impress Adam up on the slopes—and though she hated to admit it, she knew a couple hours on a stationary bike and a
Skiing for Dummies
book wouldn’t help her keep up with someone who’d been on the slopes since he was nine. But it couldn’t hurt to try, right? Adam was such the all-American athlete—skiing, swimming, running, he did it all with an ease that made Harper crazy. And his previous girlfriends had been the same way—even Beth, who’d never played on a team in her life, had a natural athletic grace that made Harper sick to watch.

She just wanted to make sure she measured up. Especially this weekend. This weekend, everything had to be perfect.

“Is this all to impress Adam?” Miranda persisted. Harper winced, hating the way her best friend could read every expression that flickered across her face. “Because you’ve known each other half your lives. Don’t you think it’s probably a little late to impress him? At least, more than you already have?”

Two months of dating—two months of fearing, every moment, that Adam would find out what she’d done to get him, would find out she wasn’t the person he was, she hoped, falling in love with. Harper needed to impress him, all right, every moment. Because if she wasn’t perfect—if they weren’t perfect together—Harper suspected there was an understudy waiting in the wings who’d be only too happy to replace her. Harper wasn’t about to give Beth the chance; but she also wasn’t about to admit any of her pathetic insecurities out loud. She had far too much pride to expose that part of herself—even to Miranda.

“I just want this weekend to be good, all right?” she snapped, staring resolutely at the tiny TV screen hanging on the opposite wall, and pretending to care how Jerry Springer’s latest guest had managed to accidentally sleep with her transsexual cousin.

“What makes this weekend any different from … oh!” A triumphant grin blossomed across Miranda’s face. She hopped off the machine and grabbed a handlebar on Harper’s bike, forcing Harper to face her. “Are you telling me that this weekend is …?”

Harper felt a tingling heat spread across her cheeks and jerked her head away. She couldn’t be blushing. She never blushed.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Miranda pressed on eagerly. “
WFS
. Are you kidding me? After all this time, you haven’t …”

WFS.

Weekend For Sex. Harper and Miranda had coined the term a couple years ago, the first time Harper’s parents had left her alone for the weekend. Justin Diamond, the JV lacrosse captain and her first serious boyfriend, had pulled into the driveway five minutes after her parents had left. (And about five minutes later, he’d been ready to pull out again.)

Harper gave Miranda a curt nod.

“WFS!” Miranda repeated in a hushed and wondrous tone. “I don’t believe it.”

“Rand, can we drop it?” Harper asked irritably, pedaling harder. Miranda was making it sound like she just hopped into bed with anything that moved—as if she had no patience, no discrimination, no self-restraint.

And, okay, it had been a long time since she’d made a guy wait so long. She knew that Beth was still a virgin, knew that sleeping with Adam would probably be the fastest and surest way to win his affection—but she wanted more than that. Adam was worth more than some guy, more than all of them put together.

Feeling like she was about to pass out, Harper sighed and stopped pedaling.

“Oh, thank God,” Miranda breathed, staggering off the treadmill and taking a long gulp from her water bottle. She tossed it over to Harper. “Here—you look even worse than I feel.”

Harper bristled at the suggestion (okay, observation of the obvious) that she was a tiny bit out of shape, but gulped down half the bottle before passing it back. “I didn’t
have
to stop,” she boasted. “I’ve just got a lot of errands to run before I go to work.”

Work. The word still sounded strange coming out of her mouth.

“Work?” Miranda repeated incredulously. “Work on what? Your nails?”

Harper looked away—she’d held off on telling Miranda about her little problem, but this moment would have had to come, sooner or later. “I got a job,” she mumbled, staring over her shoulder as Jerry’s guest tried to strangle her cousin with the microphone cord.

“A what?”

“A job,” Harper spit out, finally facing her. “I got a job, okay? My stupid parents wouldn’t pay for the ski trip, and I needed to go, so I just—oh, forget it.”

It was so humiliating. She was, after all, Harper Grace—as in, Grace, California. The town had been named for her family’s mining company, and for decades they had ruled like desert royalty. And then, years before Harper had been born—no more copper. No more mines. And just like that—no more money.

At least, if you believed her parents’ endless whining. But they had enough to get by. Enough for “important” things—they just didn’t understand the meaning of the word. And so Harper had to carry on the Grace name, the Grace legacy, all on her own. And if that meant a few weeks of menial labor—she shivered at the thought—so be it.

Miranda frowned, knowing better than to make light of Harper’s situation—not when it involved cash flow, and definitely not when it involved working hard, working for other people, working in
public
.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, quietly. “Maybe I could have—”

“Don’t even say it,” Harper snapped. Graces didn’t accept handouts. Not from anyone.

“So, where are you working?” Miranda finally asked, after a long and awkward pause.

“It doesn’t matter.” Like she was going to tell Miranda about her humiliating saga, traipsing from one bar to the next, only to be turned away for being too young. Not too young to drink—or too young to flirt with—but that was as far as any of these loser bartenders had been willing to go. She’d tried the Lost and Found, the Cactus Cantina, and then in desperation even Bourquin’s Coffee Shop and the decrepit vintage clothing store, Classic Rags—but in the end, only one place had had any openings. And no wonder—it was the last place any sane person would have chosen to work. Which meant plenty of openings for those poor saps with no choice at all.

She made a show of checking her watch and frowned as if she had somewhere far more important to be.

“I have to get out of here, Rand,” she lied, hurrying toward the locker room as fast as her weary, leaden legs could carry her.

“Is this weekend really worth that much to you?” Miranda called, scurrying to catch up.

Harper just shot her a look—the WFS look—and Miranda nodded. That said it all.

On her walk home, Miranda couldn’t stop thinking about Harper—maybe that’s why she didn’t see him. Her brain was stuck on the fact that her best friend, who usually told her everything—usually more than she wanted to know—had started keeping secrets. There was the job thing. The WFS—did that count as a secret too? Harper had clearly gone out of her way never to mention it—but then, she’d kept unnaturally quiet on almost everything having to do with her relationship with Adam. Oh, she talked about Adam plenty. Adam was, these days, almost all she talked about. How wonderful he was. How happy he made her. How much he loved being with her. And on, and on, until it seemed like their friendship had turned into nothing more than an Adam Morgan love-fest. But they never talked about anything real, like how Harper felt about being in her first serious relationship. Or how Miranda felt like her best friend was slipping away from her. And they never, ever talked about the biggest secret of all: how Harper and Adam had gotten together in the first place.

What had happened that day, when Adam went off to a swim meet, Beth stayed in town, and Harper inexplicably showed up the next morning with Adam hanging on her arm?

To be fair, Miranda had never come right out and asked Harper what had happened—that same night, they’d had a massive fight, and Harper had left Miranda crying and alone in the middle of the woods. Left her there for no good reason—and come home with everything she’d ever wanted, while Miranda had, as always, come home alone.

Harper had never really apologized. Miranda suspected, in fact, that in the warm glow of Adam-inspired happiness, Harper had totally forgotten. Miranda forgave her anyway. Like always. But that didn’t mean things had gone back to normal. Miranda and Harper had always been a twosome—but now, Harper plus Adam made two. And two plus Miranda made a crowd. There was this new part of Harper’s life that Miranda couldn’t have access to, couldn’t really understand. She was too embarrassed to even mention any of this to Harper, didn’t want to be seen as a lonely and pathetic third wheel, someone to be included out of pity. Out of obligation.

So there was another secret.

How many secrets would it take, Miranda wondered, to kill a friendship?

The question kept bouncing around in her head—it was all she could focus on. And that’s why she didn’t see him—not until he was, literally, on top of her.

“Can you watch where you’re going?”

The boy who’d slammed past Miranda turned back at the sound of her angry snarl. He froze in the middle of the sidewalk when he realized whom he’d hit.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” Miranda stammered, backing away. “I didn’t—”

“No,
I’m sorry,
” he interrupted, with exaggerated solemnity. “I didn’t realize that I’d bumped into the high and mighty Miranda. What a fool I am.”

“Greg …,” she began, then stopped herself. What could she say?
Sorry I went on a few dates with you and blew you off? Sony that, even though you’re smart and funny and liked me a lot, it just wasn’t going to work?
Or how about,
Sorry that you overheard me telling my best friend that I deserve better than you?
Miranda didn’t think there was a Miss Manners-prescribed etiquette for the situation, but none of the most obvious options seemed particularly appropriate.

“Sorry I yelled, Greg,” she finally continued. “I didn’t realize it was you.”

“Oh, she remembers my name,” he crowed, not meeting her eyes. “I’m so honored.”

“Greg, can we just—do you have to …”

“Do I have to what?” he asked loudly, drawing curious stares from two women pushing their strollers across the street. “Do I have to stand here and pretend I care what you have to say?” He paused, and pretended to think it over. “Now that you mention it—no, I don’t.”

He brushed past her and strode down the street, pausing a few feet away to shout something back to her.

“I do sincerely apologize for bumping into you—you
deserve much better
than that.”

If nothing else, the encounter—her first run-in with Greg since the “unfortunate incident”—should have proved to Miranda that her instincts had been right: She was too good for that immature jerk. But telling herself that didn’t help much. She’d been feeling guilty for weeks about the things she’d said about Greg—and the look on his face when he’d overheard.

She had hoped that maybe, since all this time had passed, he’d have cooled down, be willing to forgive her, assure her that she wasn’t such a cold and horrible person. That maybe they could even be friends.

Apparently not.

Harper had lied—not a first. She had hours to go before she officially entered the miserable ranks of the employed. But she’d needed to escape before Miranda pried more information out of her about her job, or her boyfriend. It was exhausting, trying so hard to keep her best friend out of the loop. Sometimes, it was easier to just be alone.

So here she was, hours to kill on Grace’s main drag. As a general rule, the town offered only two leisure options: shopping and boozing. And since she didn’t plan to show up plastered for her first day of work, those options narrowed to one.

Time to pre-spend that first paycheck. (The second one would go to her parents, to pay back the money they’d loaned her—but as far as she was concerned, the first money she’d ever earned for herself was already earmarked for a fabulous new ensemble that would make her shine up on the slopes as much as she shined on the ground.)

First stop had been the local video store. She’d snuck in, skulked around the sparse fitness section for a few minutes, and then grabbed the cheapest and most painless-looking workout videos she could find:
Sweatin’ to the Oldies, Pilates for Beginners,
and a Paula Abdul dance aerobics tape clearly left over from 1987. After throwing a wad of cash at the clerk, she stuffed the tapes into the bottom of her gym bag and raced out of the store, hoping no one had spotted her. She wasn’t about to break a sweat in public again, not after her pathetic showing this morning, but she also wasn’t about to let anyone know she’d be sweating to the oldies at home with Richard Simmons. The potential humiliation factor was through the roof.

Next stop: Angie’s, Grace’s only “fine clothing shop.” Harper usually shopped online—most Grace gear was pretty much a fashion faux pas waiting to happen—but the ski trip was fast approaching, and she had no time to waste waiting for a package that, given the incompetence of her local postal workers, might never arrive. Just one problem: Angie’s was a desert clothing store, and even in the middle of winter, their cold-weather selection was limited to a shelf of thick socks, thin gloves, and a few wool sweaters covered with giant snowflakes.