His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 164: Mosquito Bite

** Harper **

When Harper hurried to the conference room after a quick shower and a change of clothes, it was only two minutes before the meeting’s starting time. Lindsey, who was her presentation partner of the day and was waiting anxiously at the podium, let out an audible sigh of relief at the sight of her and looked almost ready to give her a bear hug.

"What happened?" Lindsey asked in a low voice as Harper scurried over. "You’re always at least fifteen minutes early to every meeting, even back in the office! Don’t tell me you overslept your alarm on a day that actually matters?"

Harper winced. "I—" Damn, she hadn’t had the time to come up with a good excuse yet while she rushed to get ready. "I, um, took a bit too long with ... breakfast ..."

That was a super lame one, but fortunately, Lindsey didn’t seem to have suspected anything out of the ordinary. "Geez." She simply rolled her eyes. "I know the food is good at the resort, but come on—"

Suddenly, she paused. "Wait, what happened to your neck?" She pushed up her glasses and reached out a hand with a look of concern, as if trying to check something on Harper’s collar, but then thought better of it and touched a spot on her own neck instead. "You’ve got a rash or something right here. Are you allergic to whatever breakfast it was?"

It took Harper an embarrassingly long moment to realize what Lindsey was talking about ... and what that mark on her neck might be.

Oh crap.

Last night, Eli had been nothing but careful and gentle, but this morning when they were in the kitchen, just before Harper remembered the time and abruptly called things off, he had been kissing her quite passionately ... and maybe suckled a little too hard on a particular spot on her neck ...

Crap!!! Who knew her skin could be so unreasonably delicate?!

Harper wished she could dig a hole in the ground and bury herself in mortification. Even if they were eventually planning to go public in front of coworkers with their relationship, wearing a hickey around the conference room all day was not the way she planned to do it. She slapped a hand to her neck instinctively, and she prayed that she wasn’t already blushing like a lobster to give away the juicy truth before she could come up with yet another excuse.

"Oh ... you mean this one?" She managed a confused expression at last as she scratched the skin there. "Must be a mosquito bite. I was wondering why it’s been so itchy all morning! Is it that red?"

She scratched it some more, letting the red lines from her fingernails blur the existing mark as much as possible.

"Oof, don’t scratch it like that, it’ll leave a scar!" Lindsey exclaimed, doubly concerned now, and batted at Harper’s hand. "Yikes, bug bites are the worst. It doesn’t look too bad though, so hopefully it’ll go away soon. Do you want some mosquito spray? I packed some for the trip, you can borrow it just to be safe for the future."

Harper felt a bit guilty that she had to lie to her cubicle mate, who was being so friendly and worried on her behalf ... Though at the same time, she was relieved that Lindsey bought those lies so easily.

Thank goodness that it wasn’t Naomi here instead. The marketing girl definitely seemed like the "experienced" type, and the conversation would’ve gone very differently if it were her.

"I can just go get some mosquito spray from the vending machine, but thanks a lot for the offer." Harper gave Lindsey a squeeze on the arm. "Anyway, should we get the presentation started now?"

~ ~

The meeting went well enough, despite Harper’s constant suspicion that her audience was staring at her neck the whole time and using wild imaginations to speculate what that mark could be. She knew it was most likely just her paranoid mental projection, but still ... if only Hawaii was cold enough for her to use a scarf.

Ironically, her schedule for the rest of the day was filled with meetings involving more or less the same attendees, so the paranoid suspicion hung around her for quite a few long hours. By the time the last meeting was over, she couldn’t wait a minute longer to go back to her room — actually, Eli’s room — and let out some good steam on him for giving her such an awkward day.

"Harper!"

Harper’s eager steps to run out of the conference room halted at the sound of her name in an unfamiliar voice. She turned around, somewhat surprised to find that it was a trio of Future Vision’s consultants calling behind her.

"Your presentation was really impressive," Adam, the lead consultant, said with a smile, although the same praise had already been given multiple times during the day’s meetings. "It’s a shame that the meetings were so tight on time, we still have so many questions for you that we could go on for another full day."

The professional yet genuinely friendly compliment caught Harper slightly by surprise. "Oh, thank you," she said. "Is there ... something you’d like to talk about in more detail? We can always do it offline, whenever it works for you guys."

"Precisely our thought!" The consultant next to Adam, whose name Harper vaguely remembered to be — Vincent? — chimed in. "We’ve been hoping to catch you at the evening socials for the past couple of days, so we could ask you some ’less technical’ questions such as what inspired your cool ideas. But we haven’t had much luck spotting you there as of yet."

"Where do you usually hang out for the evening event?" the third guy asked. "The atrium? The garden? Mind if we come to mingle with your crowd today?"

... Oops. They apparently had no idea that the reason they never saw her there was because ... well, she simply never showed up at all. Ever since her arrival at the resort, her evenings had been completely occupied by ... mingling with a completely different type of crowd ...

"Ah, I usually tend to move around quite a bit." Harper fixed her expression into something not at all suspicious — she was getting better and better at this through repeated practice. "But I would absolutely love to chat with you guys! Maybe I’ll see you at the atrium this evening?" In a likely unnecessary but just-in-case afterthought, she scratched her neck and added, "I’m ... not having much luck with mosquitoes these days, so I suppose I should try to stay away from the garden."

"Ugh, I’m sorry you got such a bad one." Adam made a face as if feeling her misery with the nonexistent mosquito bite. "Of course, we’ll look for you indoors then. See you there, and maybe it’ll help to get a bug spray? It doesn’t hurt to be safe, you are in the tropics after all. I heard the repellents made with deet are quite effective against mosquitoes."

... Why did everyone have to be so friendly and helpful while she lied through her teeth? This was just making her feel increasingly horrible!