“No one has your name, I bet. There can’t be a ton of Piper Tuckers running around.”
“Not that I’m aware of.” And technically her name was Piper Danielle Schwartz Tucker, because the Tucker part hadn’t belonged to her until she was almost nine, when her father had gotten legal custody. The Schwartz was her mother’s name, and sometimes Piper was sorry that it wasn’t more in the forefront because it made her feel guilty, like she no longer was acknowledging the woman who gave birth to her.
“I didn’t think there were any Brady Stritmeyers either. But apparently one was a man whore who got his head bashed in. It makes me feel very ordinary in comparison. He’s notorious. I’m just another cog in the wheel. It kind of sucks.”
That was a feeling Piper would never understand. She wanted to be ordinary, normal. She had always craved it. “Yeah, but your head isn’t squashed like a post-Halloween pumpkin.”
“Good point.”
“When I was a kid, I would have done anything to have a name like Emily or Nicole. I didn’t want to be a Piper.”
He cocked his head at her, feet swinging again. “How did you get that name? Do you know? But it suits you, in my opinion. I can’t picture you with something as common as a name like Sara.”
“I have no idea. My mom—my biological mom—was really young when she had me. Maybe she saw it on TV or read it in a book or something.”
“Do you remember her?”
“Yeah.” Usually Piper kept those memories tucked away, cherished and warm, like a loaf of bread in a brick oven. She didn’t talk about them unless someone asked. “She laughed and smiled a lot, when she wasn’t fighting with my stepdad. She liked to sing to me and to paint my nails. I think of her as a woman-child, you know? She really loved me, but she wasn’t completely grown-up herself.”
“And now you’re the woman-child.” He gave her a low, sensual smile.
The words were a bucket of ice water thrown over her desire. That was how he saw her. Still not his peer. Here he was sitting across the room from her and he was asking questions about her childhood, not her adulthood, not who she was now. It was disappointing and frustrating to think that no matter how thick her hair grew, people still saw the odd little duck of a kid she had been.
“I like to think more woman than child,” she told him. “I am a teacher with a car payment.”
“You do seem quite well-adjusted.”
He even managed to make that sound like an insult. Piper gave a snort, sitting up straighter in her chair and crossing her legs on the chair so she sat on her feet. “You mean, despite everything? Yes, I would say I’m fairly well-adjusted. I don’t have an imaginary friend anymore.” Except for the ghosts.
“Maybe ‘well-adjusted’ isn’t the word I was looking for. Content—that’s what you seem. Happy.”
“I am,” she told him simply. It was the truth. She may have longings, desires, for things she couldn’t have like anyone else did, but on the whole, she was a very content person. She had been given a second life at eight, and she was immensely grateful. “I have a great job, a home, a family who loves me.” Hair. “What more could I need?”
“A man,” he told her with a grin. “Isn’t that what every girl wants?”
“No, every girl wants to eat whatever she wants without gaining weight.”
Brady laughed. “Fair enough.”
Piper gripped her ankles and leaned forward a little. “But I’m a woman-child, according to you . . . so what would I do with a man?”
She knew it would get a reaction. She had been counting on it. It did. His eyes darkened. His feet stilled. Maybe she had learned something about flirting, after all.
“Oh, I can think of a thing or two.”
“So can I.” Piper moistened her lips.
That Piper could sit there in the bright kitchen, her legs crossed so that he could see almost entirely up her shorts, and say that so innocently made Brady hard. He couldn’t control it. He looked at her, she spoke, he had a boner. It had happened more than once already and he’d only been in the house an hour. But there was something so damn hot about a woman who had no idea how gorgeous she was. Who was clearly kind and generous and caring and yet so sensual.
His woman-child comment had offended her. Maybe he had said it on purpose to get this reaction, he wasn’t sure. To nudge her into admitting that she was attracted to him, because she was. He could read it in the tilt of her head, the toss of her hair, the way her tongue slipped out to slide along her plump pink lip. If he dipped a finger into her panties, either he would find her damp or he would be able to stroke her into it within seconds.
But she didn’t want to go there with him. Not really. Or at least she shouldn’t. He had been making out with girls in this very kitchen when Piper was still playing with Barbies. She belonged in the bed of some local yokel who would fill her table with food and her belly with babies.
Not a restless townie who’d failed at his attempts to storm the big city. He’d just muddy her sheets.
So he tried to put a halt to the sexual tension that had strung across the kitchen like the laundry line in Gran’s backyard. “You should be getting married to a nice guy, building a house on your dad’s farm, and having a baby. That’s what you should be doing with a man.”
Piper made a face. “Thanks for planning my future for me. Would you like to be my matchmaker, too? After all, you did babysit me once upon a time.”
“I did?” He didn’t even remember that.
The slight lick of anger across her words softened. “Yes. When my parents went to an appointment with their lawyer over my custody. It was for an hour or two.”
Maybe he remembered that, vaguely. But he’d been a self-absorbed teenager and his thoughts had run mostly around sex and how he could get it.
Clearly so much had changed in the past fifteen years. “They must have been desperate for a sitter. And I don’t imagine you need my help matchmaking.”
“No, I don’t suppose I do.”
Brady couldn’t read her tone. She didn’t sound amused, or flirty in return. She sounded annoyed, dropping her feet to the floor without waiting for his response. He had the distinct feeling he’d lost points with Piper, and he didn’t like that. At all. He wanted to be . . . what? What the hell did he want to be to her?
He had no clue.