His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 216: How Everything Started

** Harper **

At the end of the work day, Harper was running out of patience from not hearing back from either Eli or Tyler for way too long, when her phone finally made a sound with the message she had been waiting for.

[ Eli: Tyler wants to talk tonight. ]

[ Eli: He asked if you can leave the two of us to it this time. He promises to be calm, and he does sound like it. ]

Ugh. Sure he does.

Harper wasn’t sure if she trusted her brother anymore after last night. The surprise scene that greeted her when the door opened had been borderline frightening, and she didn’t want to think about how much worse things could get if she wasn’t there. Maybe Eli needed one of those pocket buttons he could press in a hurry to make emergency calls ... Either to her or to the hospital.

[ Are you sure about that? ] She asked, chewing her lips in concern. [ I can hang around outside the door and only barge in if I hear smashes. ]

The reply came quickly, though from a different text window that popped up:

[ Tyler: I’m sure the neighbors will call the cops at that point. You are too overprotective. I’m already here and he’s still in one piece just fine. ]

Ugh ... What the heck?

Harper glanced at the clock on her phone. It was only 5pm, still quite a bit earlier than the usual time when Eli got home from work. If the two of them were already at his apartment right now ... then Tyler must’ve made his plans at a much earlier hour and asked Eli to meet early. The fact that they had reached a peaceful arrangement — and were still peaceful enough to be able to sit together and text her — was a good sign. free𝑤ebnovel.com

Overprotective or not, Harper was relieved by the thought, and she wondered what could have possibly happened last night to bring her brother to that miraculous epiphany of reasonable logic.

She considered it for a few moments before swiping the text window back to Eli. [ Alright, then let me know when you’re done. You can tell him anything you want, just knock it into that dense head of his. ]

[ Eli: Will do :) ]

The phone went quiet afterward. Harper clutched it tight in her hands, wondering what kind of conversations were replacing the texts on the other side of the screen.

~ ~

** Eli **

Eli put down his phone and turned his attention back to Tyler. The latter was still scrolling down the browser page in front of him, eyebrows knitted as he stared pensively at the content on the website.

"So you’ve been doing this since you moved back to the city?" Tyler pointed at the laptop screen. "Eli Sterling, senior editor at The Wild Cat Romance. Have you not imagined how pissed your old man will get when he finds out about your unconventional side gig?"

"Do I look like I care?" Eli shrugged. "You could even say the plan had been to annoy him all along, so that he could have a better reason to get me fired from this job I never wanted in the first place. But of course, that part is not my goal anymore with the new venture project going on right now."

Tyler chose not to comment on that. Family drama wasn’t his thing, unless it had to do with his sister. "And one of these books is ... Harper’s?"

It was easy to imagine what he must be thinking at the moment, seeing all the book covers showcased on the website. As one of the biggest imprint lines at The Wild Cat, steamy romance was virtually everywhere on the front page, and the cover art would naturally remind him of that "filthy" email he had stumbled upon on Harper’s laptop.

"Hers is not published in paper," Eli explained. "It’s web based, posted on a phone app, but before you ask — no, I’m not going to show it to you. Her personal interest is her privacy. If she hasn’t told you about that novel before, then it means she doesn’t want you to read it, and I’m not letting you see it either just because you don’t believe what I say."

Harper might not have agreed with that comment if she were here — being in her overprotective mode, she’d probably be more than glad to shove the emailed Chapter in Tyler’s face as proof of their "decency". But Eli wasn’t willing to do the same. He would respect her choice the way it had been before, because as much as her brother was interfering out of good intentions, she didn’t owe anyone an explanation, and he would never put her through another awkward situation of showing her web novel to someone in real life.

Fortunately, Tyler didn’t press on the topic. "Fair enough," he said with a sigh. "I have to admit, this is still a big shock. It’s only been a few months since I saw Harper last, and I can’t believe how much she has changed from what I remember."

"Tell me about it." Eli huffed. "I haven’t talked to her in four years before this. Can you imagine my own shock when a book like that suddenly popped up on my desk with her name on it?"

Tyler was silent for a long moment. The guy had surely kept his promise well up till now, staying calm enough and seemingly logical enough to trust the first revelation that was hard for him to digest.

"How long after the venture project began did this happen?" he put away the laptop in the end and asked. "What changed to make you decide to ... help her?"

Well ... Now the real and hardest to digest part was coming.

"It happened before that, actually. You might not like this part of the story, Ty ... But that was how everything started."

Eli got up and poured himself a full glass of whiskey. He was going to need it to get through the rest of this conversation.