He's a cynic. She's a romantic. One deal, one wedding, and one gigantic secret stand between them.
**
Harper Lane wants to believe in true love. After her parents split, she began photographing evidence of it. Couples holding hands. Valentine's Day...
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Harper was late.
She hurried along the narrow stone path, dodging iron lampposts and cyclists, crumpled newspapers and startled pigeons. London's sky was the colour of old tea today; milky grey light turned all the buildings into a smudgy painting. On her left, the Thames unfurled like a ribbon, snaking under old stone bridges and the bellies of battered boats.
"Amarus," Griffin said. "That's what you should call it."
Her stepbrother's voice crackled over the speaker. Harper frowned, switching the phone to her other ear.
"Amarus?"
"Or flamma," Griffin offered, as if this was somehow better. "It's Latin. For flame. Like the flame of love? Or a twin flame?"
"No offense, Griff," Harper said, "but that sounds like a venereal disease."
"What about Cathedral of Love?"
She skirted around a bin. "No."
"City of Love?"
Harper's mouth quirked. "You know that I don't actually get to pick the name of the exhibition, right? The Tate does that part."
The Tate.
The freaking Tate Modern.
Harper still felt sick every time she thought about it. Next week, dozens of her photographs would be displayed across the Tate's walls for thousands of tourists to see. Two women holding hands. A young man rushing to catch the tube with a bouquet of flowers. Diana draping a blanket over a sleeping David. The collection celebrated couples across the world, accompanied by plaques that explained how they fell in love.
It was everything she'd ever dreamed of.
And naturally, Harper thought wryly, something was going to go wrong. It always did. Especially with the Wilder Boys around.
"You won't explode anything, will you?" she asked.
"Of course not," Griffin said defensively. "Not on purpose, anyway."
Harper jumped over a stray newspaper. "And tell Haz not to be rude." She paused. "Actually, just tell Haz not to be himself at all."
"Tell him yourself," Griffin said. "Didn't you see him yesterday?"
"Only for a few hours."
Alisdair and Haz had stopped by to help Harper set up her new flat in Brixton. It was a modest one-bedroom — more closet than flat, really — but it had a boarded-up Victorian fireplace, and a dark room where she could develop her photographs.
She loved it. Warts and all.
Griffin continued. "Dalton said you made him put together an IKEA bedframe. And then a table. And then some sort of basket chair suspended from the ceiling."
