“Your dad just doesn’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”
She wasn’t going to get hurt living in a bubble, but she wasn’t going to experience life that way either. “I know. But it just seems like he’s angry with me. Like he thinks I’m—”
Piper suddenly felt a shove, her head catapulting forward and her chin falling off her arm. The force was so powerful, she almost hit her nose on the table. When her shock wore off, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Rachel. There were none of her customary tears. Rachel was angry.
Rage distorted her shadowy features. Her eyes were narrowed, her eyebrows arched, her forehead furrowed beneath her severe hairstyle. Her mouth was twisted into a sneer, and Piper sucked in a breath. It made her feel a profound sense of sorrow, and she wasn’t sure why. More likely she should be afraid, but she wasn’t. She just felt like a huge weight had descended on her, like a wet blanket, like she was taking Rachel’s rage as tangibly as the blow she’d just been given.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she told Shelby, standing up and sliding to the left away from Rachel’s reach, her anxiety crawling up her throat. This wasn’t good. She wasn’t sure what had changed so rapidly, why Rachel was suddenly so aware of her and determined to hurt her.
Was the spirit of a murderess retaining the same rage she’d felt when she had found her fiancé cheating on her? Was she furious that she was forced to stay here, in this house, with him?
“Are you sure?” Shelby looked like she wasn’t buying the load of crap Piper was trying to sell.
“Yes, I just lost my balance and when my head fell I bit my tongue.” Piper couldn’t bring herself to tell her about Rachel. She didn’t want to be fussed over. Pitied. Questioned. She didn’t want to hear the suggestion that she should look into the history of her haunt. It was hard enough to know that Brady was off digging into the fiancé’s past.
She just wanted to pretend that none of it was happening. That really wasn’t so much to ask for.
“You look as nervous as a whore in church.”
“Well, my dad is upset with me. That upsets me.”
Shelby stood up and came around the table. Piper had managed to inch her way closer to the doorway, putting a good four feet between her and Rachel, who was watching them with a look of resentment. For a split second Piper thought Shelby was going to walk right through Rachel, but she just missed her.
“There’s a draft in here all of sudden.” Shelby glanced around her. Then it suddenly seemed to occur to her what might be happening and she opened her mouth to speak.
Which Piper was determined to avoid. “Where’s the stuff you wanted me to take to the house? I need to get going. I have open house at school tomorrow night and I still have some prep work to do.” The start of a school year was always an exciting time. It was only her third year teaching, but Piper didn’t think she was ever going to get tired of that fresh start a new year brought, a crop of nervous and excited little ones starting off on their big kindergarten adventure. Frankly, all the new parents with a thousand questions would be a welcome distraction. “How do the girls like their new teacher? Mrs. Lucas is really great.”
“Oh, they like her a lot. Lilly isn’t the reader that Emily is, so I might see about some reading intervention.”
“I can work with her if you’d like.”
With that, Shelby was off and running in the direction Piper had guided her to, discussing the pros and cons of various reading materials and what would be best for Lilly and whether there was really any cause for concern.
By the time Piper walked out the door ten minutes later, Shelby seemed to have forgotten entirely that Piper had almost cried and that the kitchen had a cold spot.
It was a definite talent to be able to remove all attention from herself at any given moment. There wasn’t a whole lot to thank her stepfather for, but she supposed she owed the bastard for this one.
That night when Piper took the sheets her mother handed her and went into the guest bedroom, she hesitated, then set them on the dresser, leaving the sheets Brady had used on the bed.
When she crawled into her new temporary quarters, she buried her head into the pillow and drew in a deep breath, the masculine scent of Brady still lingering on the linen.
Lame. Totally lame. That’s what she was.
Or was it possible to fall in love with someone she barely knew?
Or had she always loved him, from the first time she’d met him and he’d treated her as any other eight-year-old? Like she wasn’t weird or different.
Piper rolled onto her bed and stared at the ceiling. Being in love with Brady would be really, incredibly stupid. She liked to think she wasn’t that dumb.
But she was having a hard time convincing herself of her intelligence at the moment as she snuggled in the sheets hoping for a lingering scent of him.
Lame.
Piper sighed.
Chapter Twelve
BRADY TAPED OFF THE BASEBOARDS IN THE LIVING room of the house on Swallow Street and tried not to feel frustrated. It wasn’t working. He hadn’t seen Piper in four days. Not since they had done some serious pleasure seeking in the back of her truck. They had succeeded. Then nothing. He hadn’t seen her even for a minute.
It was deflating. When you shared something like that with someone, you wanted to see them again, share the secret of what you had done together, what just the two of you had shared, and no one else would ever have knowledge of. You wanted to laugh with them, kiss them. Do it again.
Piper had said they were having an affair. But as far as he could tell, they were having a whole lot of nothing. It was making him nuts.
When he pursued a woman, usually she let herself be caught right away, or she gave chase with lots of flirtation and games. Piper wasn’t doing any of those things. She wasn’t avoiding him, exactly, since she did answer his texts, and she did have reasonable explanations for why she couldn’t see him, but it still felt like a brush-off.
Why that made him so aggravated, he wasn’t exactly sure. But damn it, if half the town was talking about him and Piper, he wanted there to actually be a him and Piper.
Brady paused, blue painter’s tape stretched out between his arms. A him and Piper? Was that what he wanted?
He slapped the tape on the baseboard, disgusted with himself. That wasn’t going to happen. He had to go back to Chicago. She’d made her feelings on moving out of Cuttersville perfectly clear. Her father wanted to kill him. Plus his own family didn’t think he was good enough for her. Nothing about that said happy relationship.