“Mr Reynolds, dinner is ready.”

Looking up from the discussion with Jason, Harry was surprised to see the sun setting. It couldn’t be. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him. He had only intended to ask Jason a quick question before finding Elena and ironing things out. If he was to believe his eyes, that meant that he had forgotten about her for the past three hours. This was not going to make his case of prioritising her.

“I’ll be there soon,”he told the maid, rising to his feet so fast that his chair almost toppled over. Ignoring Jason’s amused looks, he called the maid back. “Ah, do you know where Elena is?”

“She’s in the kitchen with April. They’ve been there the entire afternoon.” A whisper of emotion passing over her face made Harry uneasy but it left so fast that he had no idea how to decipher it.

“Thank you. Let them know we’ll be there soon.”

“What’s with the panic, cuz?”Jason asked as they made their way to the dining room. Harry didn’t know what to say. He knew he had messed up. In fact, he was in a worse area than messed up. Much worse. Messing up was what caused her to storm out of his office in anger. This was a few levels lower than that. He'd forgotten about her. This was going to compound his standing with her and he was coming up with a blank on how to rectify the issue.

“Does this have something to do with the fact that you allowed Elena to stew for three hours?”Jason asked, keeping up with Harry’s quick strides. Harry barely held back the urge to throttle his cousin. Jason had never learned to leave it all alone. One day, he was going to snap. “You know it's never a good idea to let a woman stew. It's only going to make your life all the more difficult.”

“I know that,”Harry said through gritted teeth, wondering when his house had gotten so big. Why was it taking so long to reach the dining room?

“Anyway, you didn’t tell me what she was so mad about. Did it have something to do about outing her to the world?”

“I didn’t have the chance to get to that,”he revealed, breathing out a sigh of relief when the entry to the dining room came into sight. That was followed closely by a tenseness by his shoulders when he realised he still didn’t have an acceptable excuse for his absence.

Knowing it wouldn’t do any good to delay the inevitable, he took a deep breath and entered only to stop short. The room, with large bay windows overlooking the pool and garden, was overwashed with the orange and red hues of the setting sun. Everything was ready, the table set and dinner waiting for them, but something was wrong. There should be four table settings. For Harry, Jason, April and Elena. However, if his eyes weren’t deceiving him for the second time today, he saw that there were three. Where was the final one?

“Oh, hey. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I had to make a pit stop at the restroom. You know what pregnancy does to the bladder. Hey, baby.”

Whirling around, Harry had to wait impatiently for Jason to release his significant other from their heated kiss. He had a feeling that Jason was pulling his leg when he pulled April deeper into the embrace. His feelings was confirmed when Jason sent him a smirk after pulling away. While Harry didn’t think that it was a good idea to do that with his girlfriend right in front of him, the dazed look on April’s face told him that Jason got away scot free. That was until April hit his chest.

“What was that about?”she demanded, her hands flailing about her as she touched her hair and shirt. “Is this a pissing contest?”

“What? Babe, no. It was nothing of that kind. I just, ah, missed you,”Jason said, smiling charmingly at her, his hand coming up to smooth her hair. Harry had a difficult controlling the urge to roll his eyes. This was too sappy for him. And he needed to know where Elena was. “Why don’t we grab something to eat? I’m sure you must be starving-”

“Where’s Elena?”Harry blurted out, taking a hold of April’s arm. And he immediately let her go. The glare she was directing at him didn’t make him optimistic.

“Well, now you ask about her. Where were you three and half hours ago when she was crying her eyes out?”she hissed, drilling her index finger into his chest. He had to take a step back when she advanced upon him. “I defended you, even when she was raising perfectly valid points about your unsuitability of being a father. A father who is actually present in his children’s lives. And what do you do while I was defending you? You went back to work. Oh yeah. Don’t bother denying it. I walked past your office while she was crying into a burger and, lo and behold, you were talking about work. Have you no shame?”

“Jason was there, too,”Harry pointed out, not above pulling his cousin down with him. Unfortunately, the fact that Jason was already a father had slipped his mind. As April reminded him with an affronted sniff.

“He has never forgotten about the twins. Except for that day after you guys came back from the club. But I’m going to blame the excessive alcohol the both of you had. Boy, was there a lot of alcohol. His room smelled like that inside of a vodka bottle for days,”she said, waving her hand in front of her nose. “Oh, don’t look like that, Jason. You know I forgot, too.”

Harry wasn’t paying attention to the interplay between the couple, Jason having pulled April away. He was caught up upon the fact that Elena had cried. He’d made her cry. He hadn’t known that. And he still didn’t know what he’d done wrong, much less how to comfort her. But he had to see her. Even if she was mad at him.

“Where is she? Is she not eating dinner?”he asked, cutting into their conversation.

“No. She’s exhausted so your housekeeper, Mrs. Grant, directed her to one of the bedrooms. When I last checked on her, she was still sleeping.”

Deciding that dinner could wait, he asked April which room and was surprised, and yet not, to discern that it was the room right next to his. And promising that he wouldn’t disturb her, he went to find her.

------@@@@------

For the umpteenth time, Elena woke up from the movements in her stomach. Her hand coming up to the spot where the movements were very active, she blinked the sleep out of her eyes. And her eyes widened when she realised that this wasn’t her room. Her body wanted to shoot up but her abdomen prevented that. Lifting her upper body up slowly with her arm outstretched at the back, she couldn’t help but look around.

It was a nice room. Burgundy walls with a cream ceiling. To be honest, it felt quite warm and comforting. Something she needed after the tumultuous afternoon she’d had. Her brows coming together as she recalled what had happened, she couldn’t help the tears that filled her eyes. It still hurt for her to realise that Harry was still putting his work above her, the boys. It was even more painful as she had opened up to him.

And yet, that didn’t explain his actions this afternoon. April had been more to happy to regale her with the reason the paparazzis had been hot on their tail this afternoon. It seemed that the paps had gone crazy in the diner when the men had found them. She, Elena, had almost been overwhelmed by them and, having lost her footing, she had been on the way down. Not that she remembered. Of course, she hadn’t actually made contact with the floor because Harry had been right behind her. However he had taken offense to her almost fall and had punched the nearest pap.

That had been when the paps had realised how important she was to him. Before this, he had never had a physical altercation with them, treating them like pesky flies. It helped that he hadn’t done anything newsworthy. But now, with the punch, he had put her in the spotlight.

And although a part of her was mad, most of her, a close 98%, was melting over this public proclamation. Public acceptance. This was a big deal for her. Even when she had been in the familial fold, she had never been as accepted as her younger sister. She’d always felt that she was merely tolerated. And it had done something to her, that feeling that she had been something other even when surrounded by family.

So even as she tried to caution herself, she couldn’t help but draw strength and hope his words in the office hadn’t been his real feelings, real thoughts about her.

“Oh, you’re awake.”