When they got to the house, he did stop her at the back door. “How about dinner one night this week?”
“Sure.”
He kissed her. “Good night, then. Since I don’t really want to kiss you in there.”
She smiled, her complacent mood shifting to anxious. It was one thing to throw caution to the wind when no one was around to see it. It was another thing to face her parents with rumpled clothes. Hopefully they’d be in bed.
They went into the house, and she kicked her sandals off in the mudroom and moved into the kitchen. The room was empty, a single light left on for her. Silently they moved up the stairs, and she was opening the door to the guest room when the hall light came on, stark and harsh. Brady squinted like she did. Her parents appeared and there were words exchanged, crap about sheets and extra pillows and coffee, and she didn’t hear a damn thing because she felt as awkward as she had the day she’d gotten her first period and her grandmother had baked her a cake in celebration of her womanhood.
Then Brady was in the guest room, the door firmly closing behind him, and she said, “Good night,” to her parents, or more accurately the floor, then she went into her room. Leaning against the closed door, she took a deep, shuddering breath. What the hell was she doing? She was in way over her head. Like she was at the ocean floor with sunken ships and weird eyeless fish and no hope of getting to the surface kind of over her head.
Her parents’ voices rose in the bedroom next to hers. If she went into her walk-in closet, she could hear them. It was a trick she had learned at fourteen, but one she had rarely used. She didn’t like to spoil surprises like Christmas gifts, and she didn’t want to hear them arguing or having sex. So if she heard them, it was usually an accident of her actually needing something in her closet. But tonight she went in and put her forehead to the wall so she could hear as clearly as possible.
“I should throw his ass out of here,” her dad said, sounding very, very angry.
“Danny, you can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not? This is my house, isn’t it? He said he was going to talk to her, the little prick. He told me he would tell her that he isn’t staying here, that she shouldn’t expect anything.”
He had told her that. Brady couldn’t be blamed for this. Piper crossed her arms over her chest.
“You don’t know what they talked about,” her mom said soothingly.
“I know they didn’t do any talking at all. They come tumbling in here, all wrinkled and smelling like sex. That’s not like her, Amanda, you know that.”
Embarrassment crashed over her. They smelled like sex? It made sense, but she hadn’t thought about it, and the realization that her dad could not only guess what they’d done but smell it . . . God, she wanted to crawl into a hole and die. After being beaten unconscious.
“She’s entitled to a social life.”
Her dad snorted. “If she wants to date, I’m good with that. A guy her own age. Who doesn’t just want a quick lay in a pickup truck. I’m sorry, I just don’t approve of what I saw tonight.”
Piper pulled herself off the wall like she’d been slapped. Never in the sixteen years she had lived with him had her father said he disapproved of her.
It stung.
She stripped off her sex-soiled clothes in the closet and pulled on a clean T-shirt. Out of her dresser she yanked a pair of panties and stepped into them. In bed, she tried to close her eyes and sleep, but they immediately popped back open. All she could see in front of her was the deep green of Brady’s eyes as he stared at her, their bodies entwined in the most intimate way possible.
And over that image she could hear her father’s voice, ringing with anger and disdain.
One man had a passing interest in her.
The other would always be there for her.
The choice was obvious.
But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
Chapter Eleven
BRADY PAUSED IN THE ENTRANCE OF THE CUTTERS-VILLE Public Library and marveled that while the world at large changed daily, life in Cuttersville remained very much the same. There were new books featured on the New Release wall, and the computers had been upgraded, but otherwise the library looked exactly the same as it had when he was a kid, rolling his way across the carpet through story hour with his stepmom. He hadn’t exactly ever learned to sit still for a book, either to listen or to read one himself.
Yet he remembered this room, the main entrance with its curved circulation desk, and the children’s area with a caterpillar mural painted on the wall, now faded and chipped. There were a couple of old guys using the computers and three mothers knitting while their kids flipped through picture books. He supposed a library was the sign of an elevated society, but the Cuttersville one looked like a place where the budget had taken a crap. It was mildly depressing to him.
Then again, maybe he was just having a moody moment. He’d missed Piper that morning, getting up after she left for work, and he’d had to endure the cold, barely contained fury of Danny Tucker, who clearly had no doubts whatsoever that Brady had bounced his only daughter. Which he had. Quite thoroughly.
Just remembering the way she had rocked onto his c**k had him wishing he were wearing looser pants.
His only defense was that no guy in his right mind would turn down what Piper was offering.
He’d talked to her. They were clear on what they were doing. It was a thing they were having for three weeks.
So why did he feel like he’d drunk too much apple juice? His chest burned. It wasn’t good.
Something really weird was happening to him and he had a sneaking suspicion it was something he’d been avoiding for years.
Intent on getting away from Danny and his rather large fists, Brady had driven to his grandmother’s to get her paint preferences, but was told to consult Piper on them. Then he’d gone to the hardware store for spackle and painting supplies but was told by the clerk that Piper had already purchased all of that for the house on Swallow, if that’s what he was doing, and was that what he was doing? Annoyed by that point, he’d gone to visit his stepmother, who had enveloped him in a hug, then asked him whether he was aware that gossips were suggesting he had an interest in Piper Tucker.
There was nothing left to do with his day but come to the library and see Bree Murphy-Carrington, Abby’s sister. He spotted her after a quick sweep of the whole room. There was no mistaking her black hair and long, dangling pewter earrings. She hadn’t changed one bit, and as he walked towards her, she looked up from her desk. “Hey, Brady, how are you? Abby said you might stop by.”