Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,199

finally managed, after she’d recovered enough to kiss Grandpa Oscar, who grinned and patted her on the shoulder and looked pleased as punch.

“No,” Harlan said. “We’re doing it now because I just bought it. The house.”

“The … house.”

“Yeah. The one we’re in is all right, but it’s not good for the baby. The railings on the galleries don’t work for a baby, and nothing’s carpeted. Plus, it’s not cozy. And let’s face it, it’s weird. It also doesn’t belong to me. Rented. I figured—family house, right? It took a while to find it, and I just signed the papers today, but I wanted you to see it right away.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well … it’s great. Really, uh, pretty.”

“I like having more rooms,” he said. “A little separation instead of that museum look. Also, the view’s nice, don’t you think? Here, I’ll show you outside.” He took her through a dining room with beamed ceilings and a wall of windows, a kitchen with every single convenience, out sliding doors, and onto a covered patio. “Outdoor kitchen, living room, all that. These guys are the caterers. The table isn’t mine. We’re doing dinner out here in a little bit. See, I told you I’d take you out to dinner.”

“You did. It’s a great surprise. I’m really surprised.” Her face hurt from smiling.

“You could use this even if it’s raining,” he said, “because there are heaters, and misters for summer. Another thing I really liked was that it has a full-size lap pool. I’ll have to get that fenced off, but there’s nothing like swimming outside.”

“Also a basketball court,” she said. “Putting green. Tennis. Et cetera.”

“Yeah. But come on.” Around the corner and back into the house at Harlan-speed—in other words, fast enough to make her have to hustle to keep up—and he started opening doors. “Media room. Game room with enough room for a ping-pong table and a pool table. Gym. Gym’s big, which is always good. Oh, and another staircase over here, so you don’t have to go all the way through the house to the curved one in order to get up to the bedrooms. Come up, and I’ll show you.”

She followed after him, and the rest of them trooped along behind. Four bedrooms up here, and three bathrooms. In an L shape, because the house had wings. “The views are beautiful,” she said. “The bedrooms are a nice size, too.”

He wanted her to say something more, she could tell, but she couldn’t think what to add.

Also, she was having trouble controlling her face, because she needed to cry. She’d thought, when she’d seen Blake and Dakota and her grandfather, that this was … something else. That it was a proposal.

Harlan always knew how she was feeling. He was sensitive. How could he have done this? How could he have gotten it so wrong? Didn’t he know how she felt about him?

Focus on the moment, she told herself, but it didn’t work. Because in this moment, all she felt was …

Devastated.

He couldn’t figure out what was wrong. He’d thought this was a great idea. Even Oscar had thought it was a great idea. At least, when Harlan had gone up to visit him after they’d come back from North Dakota, on a day he’d told Jennifer he had an offense meeting, Oscar had seemed pleased. Of course, that could be because Harlan had rebuilt the carburetor on his truck for him, which had seemed to put him a little further up the ladder, son-in-law-wise.

“I’d like to get her a house,” Harlan had told the old man while he was knee-deep in car parts. “A real house. Seems to me that a family ought to start out in a house together. She’s still got all her clothes in that apartment of mine, and it’s driving me nuts. Like—the house belongs to me, and she lives in the apartment. What do you think?”

“I think that’d be a good start,” Oscar had said.

Clearly not, because Jennifer’s tone was too bright, her face too stiff. She hated the house. Harlan had thought it was perfect, but he should have waited and let her choose. He’d been looking for weeks at the time, though, and had started to think it wasn’t going to work out. And then the realtor had showed him this one. It’d had everything he’d wanted, he’d been positive she’d love it, and it had been vacant, which meant he’d been able to buy it for cash and seal the deal in