some point in our lives, except Harry who left just as soon as he graduated high school. Of course, now Harry’s a cop so he doesn’t have to put in any time here to help out like Ellen and I do.”
Ana sucked in a breath and promptly started coughing when it went down the wrong pipe. Pounding a fist against her chest, knowing her face was beet red, she tried to get the cough under control but the harder she tried to stop the more she coughed. With panicked concern, Dan asked, “Man, are you okay?”
She nodded her head even as tears streamed down her cheeks. So, Dan having the same last name as Harrison wasn’t a coincidence. A glass was placed in her hand and Dan encouraged her to drink. Taking a tentative sip, she found it helped and a few moments later, the sudden coughing attack was under control. Wiping her eyes, she smiled at Dan, “Thanks.”
“What happened?”
“Swallowed wrong,” she hedged, her heart still galloping like a racing demon. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she looked up at Dan and wondered if it was Providence that placed her on that bar stool at that moment. Even though she already suspected the truth, she had to ask just in case there were two Harry Millers. Oh, Lord, what had his parents been thinking when they named him Harrison? No wonder he preferred Harrison… No, she preferred Harrison. She’d have to ask him what he preferred. Casually, she asked, “So, Harrison is your brother?”
Dan stopped wiping the counter and gave her a suspicious look. “Yeah. What of it?”
“He’s my, er, neighbor for the next couple of months,” she said, trying to sound as bland as possible, grateful that her cheeks were already bright red from her coughing fit. God, how could she have missed him? Even if she was dating Asher, she would have noticed Harrison. That kind of reaction was too powerful to just come into existence. Not knowing him before was going to plague her for the rest of the night. Casually, fishing for information while trying not to seem too obvious, she murmured, “I don’t remember seeing him around.”
“He wasn’t really around a lot back then,” Dan explained, leaning on the counter. “Besides, you were with Asher.”
“Not officially,” she muttered, not quite meeting Dan’s eyes. While she hadn’t had sex with the man, she had spent plenty of time kissing him in dark corners and locked rooms. “So, where had Harrison been hiding?”
Dan arched an eyebrow, “He wasn’t hiding. He was simply being a father to his daughter and didn’t like hanging out with Asher, especially after his divorce.”
“When did he get divorced?” she asked, knowing she wasn’t being subtle, also knowing she should be asking Harrison.
“Six or seven years ago,” he answered with a shrug. “He moved back a few months afterwards.”
Mentally, she was doing the math in her head, from the age he was when her aunt and uncle moved up there to when he got divorced. He would have been nineteen that first summer but she was certain she would have noticed him. She definitely would have noticed him at sixteen but she would have been too young to get involved with a man who had a small child. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if they had met all of those years ago. If her reaction was as strong as it was currently, she probably would have followed him around and spent too much time obsessing over him. And anything that might have developed between them would have been destroyed before it even had a chance because she wouldn’t have had the maturity to back off. Also, five years was too much when one was sixteen and the other was twenty-one. It hardly mattered because his marriage was falling apart by that time and he probably wouldn’t have been interested in a sixteen-year old girl.
Right, that would explain why she hadn’t met him when she was too young for him. Tilting her head to the side, starving for every little tidbit, she asked,
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