Harper thought about warning him that his job was to guard Gemma, not make out with her, but honestly, she didn’t really care much about upholding Brian’s attempt at grounding Gemma, and he was at work so he couldn’t enforce it. Usually Harper would back him up, but this time she understood that Gemma didn’t need to be punished for what she’d done.
Besides that, she didn’t think Alex should be punished. He’d worked hard to find Gemma, so at the very least he deserved to be an exception to the rule. And he could help protect and watch over Gemma when Harper wasn’t around.
Still, Harper didn’t plan on making her trip down to the dock a long one. She just planned to see Daniel, make sure he was all right, thank him again for his help, and then leave. If she could do all that without getting on his boat, that would be even better.
After overhearing his conversation with Alex the other night, Harper had become convinced that she couldn’t be around him anymore. She couldn’t become involved with him, not right now when so much was going on with Gemma, and it wasn’t fair to lead him on like that.
But more than that, things were becoming increasingly dangerous for everyone around Gemma. Harper had seen what the sirens could do, and she had a feeling that if they did find Gemma, and Harper and the others couldn’t stop them, the sirens would seek vengeance on all the people who had tried to help Gemma. That included Daniel.
Or it would, if he stayed a part of Harper’s life. It would be much safer for him if she stopped talking to him.
So today she would just check on him, and maybe tell him good-bye. No, definitely tell him good-bye. She just didn’t know how to word it yet without it sounding weird.
As Harper walked down the docks to where Daniel’s boat was moored, she tried to go over what she planned to say to him. Red, white, and blue flags tacked onto the docks’ posts waved wildly in the wind, preparation for the Fourth of July celebration this weekend.
When she reached Daniel’s boat, she was surprised to see a flyer taped onto the side, right next to the boat’s name, The Dirty Gull.
It was warped and faded from the sun and water splashing on it, even though it had only been there for a few days, but the words Have you seen me? were still legible above a large picture of Gemma. Alex had printed up a bunch of flyers and hung them around town.
Harper leaned over and grabbed on to the boat with one hand. She had to get the flyer down. For one thing, she didn’t want the reminder of Gemma being missing, but more important, she didn’t want the sirens to spot the connection between this boat and Gemma.
She grabbed one corner of the flyer, and had just started to pull when a boat zipped by, creating a wave that made The Dirty Gull rock hard to the side.
“Oh, no,” Harper groaned.
She gripped the boat tighter to steady herself, but that only succeeded in causing her to lose her tenuous foothold on the dock. She tried to wrap her arm around the railing so she could hang on, but she couldn’t get a handle on it.
Just when she was about to slip and splash into the water, Daniel’s arm appeared over the railing and grabbed her.
“I’m seriously starting to wonder how you survived without me,” Daniel said, grinning down at her.
“Much better, actually,” Harper said as his strong hands held both of her arms. “I wasn’t always trying to climb onto boats, so I very rarely fell into the ocean.”
Once he’d lifted her up and set her safely on the deck, she lingered in his arms for a moment before remembering why she’d come here. It was hard to do when he looked at her like that, his hazel eyes full of something that created heat in her belly.
And he was shirtless—again—which only made matters worse. It was getting harder and harder for her to reject someone who looked like Daniel did when he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“What can I do for you today?” Daniel asked, his arm still wrapped around her waist so her chest was pressed to his. His abdomen and chest felt so firm against the soft contours of her own body, like he was made of concrete instead of flesh.
“I, uh…” Harper couldn’t remember what he could do for her, so she shook her head and stepped away from him. It was impossible to think or even breathe when he held her close to him like that.
“Are you okay?” Daniel wrinkled his brows in confusion as Harper backed away from him.
“A flyer!” Harper announced excitedly when she remembered. “I was peeling a flyer off your boat.”
She’d actually managed to rip off half of the flyer. But in her attempt to hang on to the boat, she’d dropped it into the water, where the scrap of paper was presumably floating out to sea.
“You mean the missing poster for Gemma?” Daniel’s expression grew even more confused. “You came out to tear that off my boat? How did you even know that I had one?”
“I didn’t.” Harper leaned back against the railing behind her, trying to put some space between her and Daniel. “I happened to see it when I came out here, so I was trying to take it off, and then I slipped, and here we are.”