by Sarah Hegger
Matt took it from her and uncorked it. Pippa got herself a glass. That was appealing too. The way he opened doors, carried heavy stuff, opened a girl’s wine for her. It made her feel cherished, special somehow. What a dork she was.
The whole scene was domestic, nicely so. She’d never gotten this sort of contentment puttering around the kitchen with Ray. Then again, Ray had never rocked her world with mind-blowing, gut-twisting sex. The kind of sex that made a girl happy to hang around the kitchen with her man. Not her man, she quickly amended. Her pretend, on-loan man.
“So.” He handed her the wine. “You gonna hang around a bit longer, make sure Phi is all right?”
Oh boy. Her little bit of domestic happy ended sooner than she’d have guessed. “Um . . . yes.”
“You don’t sound so sure.” He lowered his beer, lion eyes on her like a beam.
Okay, confession was good for the soul and all. “Actually, I’ll be hanging around for longer than I thought.”
He sipped his beer, eyes still on her. “How long?”
“Indefinitely.”
Pippa took a big slug of wine.
Matt lowered his beer bottle and put it on the table with a thunk. “Aren’t you supposed to start on that series for that Germaine woman?”
Why didn’t she just open her mouth and tell him the truth? It’s not like she was staying with any expectation of them becoming a permanent thing. Except, his eyes were looking downright cold, and a bit hostile.
“Pippa.” It was a low rumble of warning, more growl than anything else.
She took a deep breath. “There’s been a change of plan.”
He stared at her.
“I turned the job down.”
“Say again?” No doubt on the hostile now. Those eyes could cut glass.
“I’ve been thinking.” She had another glug of liquid courage. “I think I need to be here for a while.”
He dropped his head, grabbed his beer, and drank. “How long is a while?”
“I don’t know.” Why was the idea of her sticking around so disturbing it warranted chugging an entire bottle of beer? “I wanted to be nearer to Phi, and my mother and Laura.”
He yanked open the fridge and grabbed another beer. “You and your sister can’t be in the same room without scratching each other’s eyes out.”
Pippa tossed back her wine. True, but asshat of him to say so. “We can change.”
He snorted and went at that second beer.
“I don’t have a relationship with my sister and I want one. My mother and I are finding common ground.”
“And this is why you turned down a job you’ve been fighting your whole career to get?” Matt shook his head and turned to glare out the window.
“Family has to come first. I’ve been selfish, ignoring—”
“Stop.” He whirled back to her and slammed his beer down. “I can’t listen to any more of this crap.”
What the hell was his problem? “The door’s right there.”
She’d been stupid to invite him in last night. All churned up from Phi being ill and mistaking comfort for . . . something else. Pippa whirled around and stalked out of the kitchen.
Only to find a solid wall of muscle in her path. “Listen to me, Pippa.” He gripped the top of her arms. “Better yet, look at me. I gave up everything for my family. To stay here in Ghost Falls and take care of them. And what do I have to show for it?”
“You have—”
“Fuck all.” He shook her a little bit. “I have fuck all. Don’t make the same mistake as I did. I’m not going to let you make the same mistake I did. Call that Germaine woman back, tell her you’ve had a change of heart.”
“Get your hands off me.” He didn’t, so she wriggled out of his hold. “Your situation is not the same as mine. It’s way different. You were a kid. Making the best decision you could at the time. I’m a woman—”
“Making a stupid decision.”
“Making the right decision.” She shoved past him, shoulder-checking him on the way past.
He barely even twitched. “You’re not even making a decision. That would be something at least, you’re just kind of going with the flow, however crappy that might be. Just like you did when you left LA.”
“What?” Pippa gasped as all the air left her body in a rush. He’d sucker punched her. “I had to leave LA. You know what it was like for me.”
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Then that Twitter thing sent you running even more scared.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Blood pounded against her temples.
He raked his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I do, Pippa. I’ve been running scared for most of the past seventeen years.”
“I see.” Pippa gave the words a nasty sneer. “And now Eric has offered you a new job and you’ve had an epiphany?”
“Something like that.” He took a deep breath. “This is coming out all wrong. I don’t do the whole talking thing well. Stay because that’s what you really, really want. Don’t do what I did, and let life roll over you and take you with it.”
“I’ve never done that.”
He growled low in his throat. “You’re doing it now, and I don’t want you here because you feel trapped and like you didn’t have any options.”
“You don’t want me here because you’re scared I’m going to think we’re a real thing.” Pippa glared at him. Insufferable dick. “What’s the matter, Matt? Am I cramping your style?”
“Fuck, Pippa.” His face grew scary cold. “When you want to shove someone away, you don’t hold back, do you?” Matt was mad. Scrap that, furious. His eyes burned bold fire at her, the line of his jaw so tight, his teeth might snap. The tendons in his neck tightened as he dragged in a breath.
“Look.” This had gotten out of hand too fast. “You don’t have to worry about me. This is my career, and I’m making the right decision.”
“To walk away?”
“Yes.” Pippa took a step back, out of the arc of those intense eyes. “As for us, you have nothing to worry about. I don’t do relationships.”
“No, you don’t.” He shoved his balled fists into his pocket. “Because you don’t just walk away from those, either. No, those you run from.”
Pippa snapped her open jaw shut.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but if you look now, you’ll see that you’re already in a relationship,” he said.
“This is not—”
“Yeah, it is. Two people enjoying the hell out of each other’s bodies, being together, laughing together, sharing each other’s lives . . . loving each other.”
Pippa’s belly roiled. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was. Her heart set up an uncomfortable tattoo. “That’s not us.”
“Yeah, Pippa, it is. Or at least it could be if you’d stop running scared from anything in your life that demands you put your heart on the line. This thing with Chris is just a symptom. You’re too scared to really let yourself want something, because it hurts like hell when you don’t get it.” He stalked past her to the door, yanked it open, and stormed out into the night. “Not all men leave, Pippa.”
“You just did,” she yelled after him.
His wheels churned up gravel as he drove away.
Pippa crumpled like a used napkin. “Fuck.” She snatched up the bottle of wine and swigged. “Well done, Pippa. You really are the bitch America thinks you are.”
* * *
Matt hauled ass out of there. He pounded his hand on the steering wheel.
He was pissed at her on so many different levels. First off, what the hell! Giving up her job to rot in this dead-end town. How dumb could she get? Sure, Phi had scared all of them, but that didn’t have to mean the kiss of death on every dream Pippa had ever had.
“Shit!” The needle crept back up into the high sixties and he slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. She’d hit him where it hurt all right. Kneed him right in the balls. And he’d come out swinging. May
be because he was doing the same thing about Eric’s offer, scared to want something too much.
Eric was being patient, giving him space and time to think about what he wanted to do, but it couldn’t last forever. The idea of doing this thing with Eric sparked and rippled under his skin. A new challenge, one big enough to scare him. Scary enough to make him feel alive.
“Damn.” Used to be that scared feeling gripped him by the balls and drove him forward. Like the time he’d taken his high school team to regionals. Players got big at regional level. Big enough to make you ache ahead of time for the hits you were about to take. His younger self had loved it, welcomed the challenge with a thump to the chest and a “bring it” ringing through his brain.
The hits had come, and they’d sure hurt. But afterward, standing with his team as they made the play-offs had been pure magic. They’d lost the play-offs to a better team. The Ghost Falls Falcons had him, and Eric, and a couple of useful defenders, but not enough depth to hold off the better team. He’d picked up his college scholarship from the final game. Stood in the locker room with his team and known that their defeat had been his victory.
Some victory. Three weeks later he had backed out of the deal. He’d had a good reason. His mother was a wreck, the business broke, and the family heading straight to hell. He got it all back on track. No clue how, and hours spent staring out at Lovers’ Leap and wondering what the hell he thought he was doing, but he’d done it.
Jo had graduated years ago. The business had been running in the black for most of that time. His mother . . .
Matt scrubbed his hands over his face. Cressy was a mess. Way beyond what he could fix. Right now, there were five missed calls from her. Five chances to wrap him in the sticky web of her love and bind him close to her. Their talk in the kitchen the other day had gone right over her head. His mother didn’t see the need to change—and why would she? Even though he’d read the denial on her face, he’d said the words. Told her she couldn’t lean on him for everything, that he needed his own life. Still, it was going to be all up to him to work some healthy distance between them.
Creating space for him and Pippa. His brain finally rolled around to the biggest thorn in its flesh. He couldn’t track back and find the exact point when light and easy had transformed into something else. Hell, maybe he’d never truly seen his relationship with Pippa as casual. They had a relationship all right, as in she was the first face he wanted to see in the morning, and to shut his eyes on the same face at night. He wanted . . . so many things. He wanted Pippa. All of her.
* * *
Pippa spent the morning answering calls about Phi’s well-being. She finally got to the hospital around lunchtime. Phi had been moved to a private ward, and three nurses stood around her bed as Phi held court.
Phi looked great today. Her color was much more normal and with all her war paint in place, it was hard to believe she had been rushed here by ambulance less than forty-eight hours ago.
“Ma petite!” Phi caught sight of Pippa with a huge smile. “I am delighted to see you. Come and meet the girls.” She waved at her gaggle of admirers. “Meet Bethany, Gabby, and Tyler. She assures me this is her first name and not her family name.”
The “girls” nodded and smiled at Pippa.
“She should be resting.” Tyler gave Phi a half-exasperated smile. Poor woman, welcome to the force of nature that is the Diva.
“My darling Tyler,” Phi said with an eye roll. “I once gave three performances to Covent Garden in one day. Hell on the voice, I can tell you.” She cocked her head and studied Tyler. “I would have named you . . . Victoria. Such a strong, noble name for a girl with your regal presence. I named my granddaughter, you know.”
The girls swung to stare at Pippa.
“Yes,” Phi said. “Her mother, my daughter, Emily, had a torturous delivery with her. They had to perform an emergency C-section. Her husband, the poor girl, was a complete waste of oxygen.” The girls made the appropriate noises. “Whilst Emily was indisposed, I took up the burden and gave them the name for the birth certificate.”
“Yes.” Pippa shook her head. And Agrippina had been Phi’s idea of a good name for a girl. “Now stop being difficult and let’s get you resting.”
Phi made a rude noise.
“You’re still recovering from a major episode.” Tyler gave it a valiant effort.
Phi snorted. “Stamina. All the women in my family have it. Of course, three performances are torturous on the cords.” Phi stroked her neck. “But then I have a marvelous trick for keeping the vocal cords at their peak.”
Holy crap! Not that story. Pippa didn’t think the girls were anywhere near ready for that. “You don’t want to know.”
“Perhaps it’s something we could use on our patients,” Bethany, or maybe Gabby, said.
“Uh . . . no.” Pippa shuddered. She could only imagine the lawsuits if the hospital gave Phi’s solution a try. “You really don’t want to know.”
Phi chuckled like a bordello madam and gave Pippa a naughty eye gleam. “Perhaps not, but I did have men lining up to serve on my backstage crew.”
“I’ll bet.” Pippa fixed her grandmother with a stare. “Now, how about resting?”
“I have been resting all day.” Phi pushed her bottom lip out. Then her face brightened. “Emily was with me this morning. And Laura. She brought the lovelies with her.”
“Sam and Daisy were here?” Pippa dragged a chair to the bedside. The girls filed out of the room, Tyler stopping on her way to check the drip.
“They did not stay long,” Phi said. “Hospitals are miserable places for the young. Now”—she smoothed her bedding down over her stomach—“tell me why you’re looking like someone ran over your cat.”
Pippa sighed. Sick or not, Phi was tuned in to her and her moods. “I had a fight with Matt.”
“Why?” Phi’s eyes rounded. “Pippa, if I need to tell you that one doesn’t spend one’s time with a man like Mathieu in fighting, then I have taught you nothing at all.”
“He was mean to me.” Pippa winced at the whine in her voice. “He said I’m hiding away here and letting life drag me along.” The rest of what Matt had said was staying clear of Phi’s ears.
“Hmph!” Phi glared at the opposite wall before turning her laser beams on Pippa. “I always did credit that man with remarkable sensitivity, despite the inhibiting factor of the penis.”
“You think he’s right?” That stung and Pippa blinked away the sudden moisture in her eyes.
Phi leaned forward and grabbed her hand. “You do not?”
“No.” The word snapped out of her. “I needed to leave LA because things were impossible for me there. And then, when I tried to do something, nobody would return my calls. Nobody wanted to help me. And don’t get me started on the Twitter thing. I tried, I lost.”
“Indeed.” Phi nodded. “I do not think anyone can deny that. I believe the more pertinent question is what have you done since then, and what you are planning to do from here.”
Pippa opened her mouth and shut it when the answer didn’t come. “I don’t know.”
“Precisely.” Phi squeezed her hand. “Pippa who flew out of Ghost Falls would have known the answer.”
“I was eighteen.”
“And you knew exactly what you wanted out of life and had a plan to get it. Good God, Agrippina, you have had your life planned since you were five. Do you remember that nasty Declan Sherman?”
How could she forget? He’d called her Duracell with the copper colored top one too many times. When she got mouthy back, he’d tripped her in the hallway in front of the entire football team. Would that Pippa have simply gone home to lick her wounds? No, that Pippa had made her objection known with a knee to his balls.
“Hello, darling.” Emily swept into the room on a floral breeze, her arms full of red roses.
Phi glanced at Pippa. “Think about it, ma petite.”
“The nurses say you are not resting as you should
.” Emily placed the vase on a table by Phi’s bedside.
“I have been entertaining,” Phi said.
Emily smiled at Pippa. “She’s impossible.” Her smile faded into an almost frown. “You look tired, Pippa. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” Pippa said. “But I think I will head back to the house now that you’re here.”
“Make sure you rest,” Emily said.
Rest? Wouldn’t that be great? If only she could get a pair of blazing topaz eyes the hell out of her head.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When one person called you a wuss, you could shrug it off. Coming from Matt and Phi . . . the conversations replayed in her mind all the way home. She had made an effort to salvage her reputation, put her life back on track. Hadn’t she called around to everyone she knew? They had turned her down, refused to help her.
How would eighteen-year-old Pippa have handled the situation?
She turned into Phi’s drive. Sunlight filtered through the trees and painted mosaics on the car hood. Eighteen-year-old Pippa would have kicked ass and taken names later. She had arrived in LA with a huge chip on her shoulder, and used it to shove through every closed door.
Parking the car next to the stables, she dropped her head onto the steering wheel. Somewhere in the fight to build her career she’d lost her hustle. Lost the force that propelled her forward. She’d been running in the same direction for so long, it was hard to pinpoint when she had stopped moving forward and ended up jogging on the spot.
With a sigh, she climbed out of her car. God, if that wasn’t her life anymore, and not the life she wanted, then what did she want?
All of it. The thought brought her to an abrupt halt. One of Phi’s chickens cocked its head at her, then resumed its pecking closer to her foot.
Wheeler Barrows was packing up for the day and waved his hello.
Nine Barrows kids, eight boys and one girl, most of them still living at home and only half of them working, and they produced a hard-working offshoot like this.
Wheeler approached her as she stepped out of the car. “Is she better?”
He looked like his one sister, blond, tousled good-looking. He must thank God every day for that, because his brothers ranged from homely to skeevy-looking.