Piper raised her eyes to study his face in the murky light, astonished. “How would I know?” she asked him, honestly.
He gave a soft laugh. “I don’t know. I guess I thought if you can see them, you know what they want.”
“No. I have no idea what they want. But that spirit just disappeared, like the smoke in the breeze when Boston lights a cigar on the front porch. So I think you’re safe.” Piper wasn’t feeling particularly safe in the basement, though. There was a tingle on the back of her neck and she was uncomfortable not being able to see the room behind her.
“I think it’s cool that you see ghosts. It makes you special. I wish I had a talent of some kind.”
If that was special, God could keep it. She didn’t want any part of being different. She frowned at Brady. “You do have talent. You’re an amazing artist.” That was something he created, not something that just showed up like dead flotsam bobbing around him.
He shrugged, his muscular shoulder raising upwards, a disparaging smirk on his handsome face. “I was mediocre at best and now I’m not anything. I don’t paint anymore.”
“You don’t?” Piper was almost as shocked as when he’d sucker-punched the ghost. “But you’re so talented.” She remembered the way he had been able to pick up a sketchbook and produce a lifelike image in just a matter of minutes. He had painted butterflies on her bedroom wall and she had danced around her room, pretending she was as graceful and beautiful as those monarchs he had created. She couldn’t believe that he could have insecurities about his abilities. Insecurities at all. She tended to think those were her province and hers alone.
“No, I’m really not. I’m average.” His voice was soft, distracted, like he wasn’t really thinking about his artistic career at all.
The way he was looking at her . . .
Piper swallowed, heat coiling between her thighs into a hard knot of desire.
“I can’t get over your hair,” he murmured, his finger reaching out to brush it off her cheek. “It’s beautiful. And it feels as good as it looks.”
“Thank you.” Her hair was too long, she knew that. It wasn’t stylish to have it so thick and wavy, cascading down the middle of her back. But she had a hard time cutting it. Part of her irrationally feared if she cut it, it wouldn’t grow back. And sometimes, when she debated a cut that would expose more of her face, she could hear her stepfather’s voice reaching out from the past like a horsewhip to tell her that she was disgusting, that no one should ever have to look at her ugly mug.
That Brady, of all people, would look at her the way he was, meant a lot to her, even if he was just being nice.
The corner of his mouth turned up. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
It was too close to the truth and she didn’t like it. “You ask a lot of questions,” she told him. “The twins ask less questions than you do.”
He laughed. “Sorry. Guess I should back off.” Shifting to the right, Brady took the shirt out of her hands and moved towards the washer and dryer.
Disappointed by his defection, she cursed that she still hadn’t completely conquered her childhood habit of blurting out whatever she was thinking. If she was savvier about these kinds of things, she would have smiled and laughed. She would have leaned closer to him or done some such nonsense that she had never learned. Amanda was a class-A flirt, but that particular talent didn’t pass from stepmother to stepchild, not even after years of watching her mom coax and cajole whatever she wanted out of her father by flashing him a little leg or trailing her nails down his chest. Piper couldn’t think on her feet like that.
She just said whatever came to mind or she said nothing at all.
Which apparently resulted in men walking away from her. While she might not know what to do with Brady Stritmeyer all in her personal space, she didn’t like him vacating it either.
Piper glanced down at her taut ni**les and sighed, silently apologizing to them.
For a brief few minutes, the girls had optimistically thought they were going to get to come out and play, and she was sorry to say that wasn’t going to be the case.
Not with Brady, anyway. Actually, it wasn’t ever really the case. Crossing her arms over her chest, she followed him to the dryer, watching the pull of his jeans over his butt as he bent over.
A girl could look.
Brady turned and caught her.
And a girl could get busted looking.
* * *
HITTING VARIOUS BUTTONS ON THE DRYER, NOT REALLY sure how the ancient thing worked, Brady tried to get a grip on himself. He was in trouble. Real, honest-to-God, he-was-going-to-lose-his-testicles kind of trouble. Because he had seriously been contemplating kissing Piper Tucker.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Not only was he considering going there with a woman who was totally off-limits if he wanted to live, he had confessed he wasn’t painting without hesitation. He didn’t talk to anyone about his failed attempt at being an artist. Not a single person. He went to his soul-sucking job and he went home and he went out with various friends and women and he pretended that nothing was wrong when everything was.
He was a first-rate fake, having perfected the art of happy-go-lucky man around town. It was the only art he had been successful at. Yet no one knew that, and he had told Piper all of twenty minutes after being in her company.
But it was those eyes. They were enormous, giant pools of understanding, and they looked at him like he was something important. It was disarming. Appealing. It had been a long time since he had looked at a woman and thought she was as beautiful as he thought Piper Tucker was. Her cheeks were flushed with health and color, her lips were full, her eyes the rich color of hot chocolate. And her hair . . .
It made him think of period films where the proper lady was shown in her boudoir with a lace nightgown on, her thick, luscious hair spilling around her as she brushed it with an elegant comb, contemplating getting f**ked by her secret lover.
Brady kind of wanted to be the secret lover. Like, a lot.
Which made him an idiot.
He turned to her in frustration, and not just because of the stupid dryer. “This thing is a thousand years old. I can’t figure it out.”
Piper reached around him and pushed a button. The dryer started up immediately.
“That was too easy,” he told her.
“It dries clothes just as well as it would if it were complicated.”
Brady laughed. That was a Cuttersville kind of comment if ever he had heard one. Piper sounded like his grand-mother.