But she couldn’t. This was too fast. Too crazy. She brushed emotion away, in hopes that logic lay beneath it, firm and steadfast.
“I’m more about hard work than fate.”
“So am I—usually.” His confidence had regained supremacy after that brief flash, and he jutted his chin as if he commanded both hard work and fate at once, king of both realms. Piper’s stomach danced at this, and suppressing a sigh, she had to admit that she kind of liked both those revealed sides of Zach Travis. “So, what’s holding you back?”
“One, I’ve got a boyfriend.” There. She’d said it. Even if Chad himself hadn’t ever quite couched their relationship in those terms, he did happen to be the only guy she was dating, or had been dating, for the past several months.
“I’d be surprised if you didn’t.” Zach leaned back and popped a grape in his mouth. Her eyes were glued to his jaw as he chewed, watching the movement of his temples in and out. He really was supernaturally handsome, blast him. “But ask yourself this: where is he right now? Why aren’t you having this conversation with…?”
“Chad.”
“Chad?” Zach raised an eyebrow, as if he thought the name wasn’t worthy of her right now. Maybe he’d known a jerky Chad way back when. “With Chad, then.”
Piper hated herself so much right now. This question was a hundred percent valid. Why had she let Chad leave for the airport without fully explaining the urgency of her situation to him? Why had she not simply gone to him, told him how much she needed him, everything that was at stake, all the horrors that would occur if she didn’t get this situation taken care of immediately—not some nebulous time after he finished his boxing matches against international fight champions?
At her long silence, Zach got a self-satisfied look on his face. He sat forward, leaning dangerously close to her, his grape-tinged breath caressing her lips in a sweet temptation.
“You know why. No need to tell me.”
She did know why. Curiosity had completely submarined her logic. Intrigue at the possibility of Zach Travis and his irresistibly magnetic magic had brought her to this crossroads. One way lay uncertainty of Chad’s return, and of his willingness to oblige her desperate need; the other way lay Zach Travis, his insane attractiveness, and his need for her help as well.
Zach edged a centimeter closer, the heat of his lips close enough now to radiate onto her own. If she even so much as lifted her chin…
“Sleep on it tonight,” he said, every word honey and butter. “I’ll come to the bistro tomorrow just before two and be your last customer. You can tell me then. Either way, the ring is yours. I bought it with you in mind, Piper.”
“You did?” she breathed, hardly able to intonate, his nearness making her whole body a taut bowstring ready to release.
“How could I help it? It matched your exquisite eyes.”
She gulped, and Zach suddenly pulled away as the gondola hove to at the shore, leaving her quivering and high strung and breathless.
“Lunch. Tomorrow,” he said. He’d take his answer then, after she’d had time to sleep and consider.
Sleep on it? Tonight? Ha. As if she could imagine ever slowing her heart rate enough to sleep again.
∞∞∞
The taxi Zach had placed her in, his hand lingering and persuasive, dropped Piper back at her apartment building not too far from the riverfront. Every fiber inside her still buzzed with electric Zach-ness, as she made her tottering climb up the stairs. Happiness and confusion and giddy feelings of first-love fluttered inside her like leaves on a quaking aspen. With each stair, she hugged herself and hummed the tune that cello had been playing on the water.
“Piper, is that you?” Birdie leaned over the railing and spoke down to her. “You look like you’ve had a drink too many.”
“No.” The spell was still woven completely over her, floating her in her ascent up the stairwell.
“Then you’re in love. I’d recognize it anywhere. It’s the face I make whenever I think of my one true love, Neil Diamond. And thank you for the album, by the way. I wish you’d delivered it personally—we could have listened to the whole LP.”
“You got it? That’s great,” she said through a dream. It must’ve been misdelivered by the postal service. Oh, well. At least Birdie got it.
“It’s my favorite! And you got a signed one for me. I had to kiss the signature about ten million times. Come on over tomorrow and give it a listen, since it’s your day off. I’ll order barbecue.” Birdie met her at the top of the stairs with a hug.
“I’m cooking tomorrow.”
“I thought you take Saturdays off, close the restaurant.”
“I do, but this is special. I’m making lunch for someone.”
“Oh.” Birdie blinked. “Ohhhh. Say no more. That Chad is a lucky guy. I’m sorry I ever referred to him as Floyd the Steroid, or Roidy Floydy.” She named a couple more rhyming epithets. “You’ll forgive me, right?”
“Long ago,” Piper said.
However, Birdie’s mention of Chad snared her out of her Zach trance. Guilt suddenly compacted inside her, replacing the misty spell that had suspended her in cloudy fantasy since the river. She probably ought to clarify that tomorrow’s special lunch wasn’t for Chad, even though Chad was her boyfriend.
Pretty much.
Unofficially.
Sure, she’d used the term when talking to Zach about Chad, but hesitantly, trying it on for size. In her mind she’d repeated the words, my boyfriend, Chad, but until he made some kind of declaration, it felt like overthinking the relationship, despite the fact she’d semi-proposed to him today.
Piper was about to explain the misunderstanding, but a text chimed on Birdie’s phone and she tapped on her screen to answer it, and Piper slipped into mulling the past.
Mike, her last official boyfriend, hadn’t panned out well. At first, his cachet as a sexy Texas Ranger had made her all swoony, but things between them went south when he started calling her every night to ask where she was, and then every afternoon, and then every morning, as well. He’d stifled her.
When he attempted to put a tracking app on her cell phone, that was the last straw.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken we’re breaking up for an answer, so Piper had been forced to report him to the police. Mike ultimately lost his job.
Just remembering the last boyfriend situation made Piper a little shivery. Since then, she’d stayed away from calling someone her official anything.
Even after several months of dating only Chad, the term hadn’t applied.
But then again, maybe if Chad did get named as her official boyfriend, if she could clarify that status between them, then she’d get clarity on what to do about this situation between ICE and Zach and Chad and her, because more was at stake than the risk of having to field twelve phone calls a day from an obsessive, possessive guy at this point.
Her Zach buzz worn off now in the post-guilt-compactor clunkiness, she gave Birdie a goodnight hug.
“I’ll for sure take you up on your offer some other time, and when I do, I’ll bring the blueberry shortcake.”
“In honor of ‘Forever in Blue Jeans.’ Oh, you know me so well.” Birdie hugged and then released her.
Inside her apartment, Piper’s thoughts went to war: Piper and Chad versus Piper and Zach, and both sides fighting against Piper and Hobbits. May the non-hobbits win. While she washed her face and brushed her teeth, the battles raged. While she doodled possibilities for next week’s menu, cannon shots flared back and forth. No faction looked like it would ever gain supremacy.
Only one thing could give sufficient ammunition to one side or another: more information. Information was power. Information about her and Chad, information about ICE, information about Zach. If she had even a little bit more of that, she could settle her mind.
She could research immigration law online, but this late, her exhaustion after a stupid-long day might make her misinterpret legalese. In fact, she might not even be
able to blame that on being tired.
That left getting more info on Zach—who she’d just left, and who she wouldn’t mind chatting up some more, but would see tomorrow—and getting things nailed down with Chad.
A glance at the clock told her Chad was probably at the airport by now, waiting for his international flight. What could be more dull? Chad wasn’t a reader, so he wouldn’t begrudge an interruption. It was the perfect time to give him a call.
“Yo, babe! I didn’t think I’d hear from you.” Chad seemed pleased. Whew. However, the ambient noise from the airport made it hard to hear him. “I’m still waiting for the flight to board. Please tell me you’re here at San Antonio International and about to change your mind about coming on the trip.”
In the background on Chad’s end of the line erupted an indistinct female squeal. Or maybe—could his flight also contain livestock?
“Sorry. I wish.”
“Me, too, babe. Me, too.” Chad’s gravelly voice went lower. “Because we could have fun in the tropics.”
Man, would he ever just focus? She loved that he wanted her, but right now she needed a little emotional support. It didn’t seem like the perfect moment to try to extract it, though.
“So, who all is going? I never asked.”
“Me, of course.” Of course. “And Trager, and Wolfgang. They’re kind of like my managers these days.”
Managers! He needed managers, plural? This had spun even farther beyond her understanding.
“Okay. And anyone else?”
“Just a few people from the gym. They’re all going down to support me.” This made Piper feel even worse. His gym buddies had his back, lined up for flights to Costa Rica just to cheer him on, and she, his own girlfriend (sorta) barely knew about his life.
Again, the indistinct squeals rose and fell. Sure, it could have been a baby—a legion of babies—or just random strangers. Airport lounges could be crowded. With squealing girls.
Piper’s Weirdness Radar started blipping, but she had something so much more worrisome to consider right now.
“Great. Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Shoot.”
Uh, it wasn’t a shoot kind of a thing. Oh, why hadn’t she done this when they were together at her apartment this afternoon, face to face, and lip to lip. It would have made so much more sense after a good, solid kissing session than right now, while he was surrounded by livestock noises and distracting airport strangeness.
“I’m not really sure how to say this.”
“Well, spit it out. I’m not really one to stand on ceremony. You can’t offend me, everyone knows that.”
Did they? Huh.
“Okay, I, uh…” I want you to declare me officially your girlfriend so I’ll have an excuse not to marry this gorgeous lawyer who was all over me on the river with candles and chocolate and cello music and a proposal offer I almost can’t refuse? That level of honesty could press even the limits of Chad’s offendability. “Uh…”
“Oh, babe. Sorry,” Chad snorted and there were some shuffling sounds. “They’re calling for our row to board. I’ve got to dig out my passport again.”
“Um, but—”
Chad said something to someone on the other side of him. She heard the mumbling.
“Was there something else?”
“Uh.” Time squeezed her like a garlic press. “Just…do you have any more definite idea of when you’ll be back?”
“Aw. You’re going to miss me.” Chad’s voice was tender. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Except it wasn’t what she’d said, or meant, which also made her feel a pang of guilt. Great. More reasons to hate herself right now. Self-loathing, thy name is Piper Quinn.
“It will probably go by slowly is all.” Lame. So lame. She was a chicken. Kentucky fried.
“It’s a fair question, babe, even though I don’t have a definite answer. But, according to Trager and Wolfgang—and the bookmakers in Las Vegas—chances are I’ll go pretty far in the tournament. It could be the full four weeks.”
Bookmakers! What the—? And, more to the point, four weeks!
“And one more thing. I mentioned it’s not going to be in Caracas, right? They’ve moved it deeper into the mountains. They’re trying to re-stage that legendary Rumble in the Jungle, you know? I mean, I can’t believe I’m part of something this big.”
Neither could Piper—for myriad reasons, not the least of which Caracas wasn’t in Costa Rica, it was in Venezuela last time she checked her map.
“That’s, uh, incredible.” As in unbelievable. “So, what does this mean?” Besides the fact that four weeks from now would be too late and she’d be deported and probably never see him again?
“Well, for us—you and me—it unfortunately means no cell service. I may get access to someone’s sat phone now and then, but if you don’t hear from me, it’s not that I won’t be thinking of you, it’s that I’m out of range and incommunicado.”
“Oh.” What else could she say to that?
“But you’ll be right here in San Antone, waiting, faithful and true to me for when I get back, hopefully as the conquering champion.” More commotion erupted on his end, but after a second he squeezed in a “Right?”
Piper didn’t respond, as he had started talking to someone else nearby. In a second, he made a kiss sound and hung up.
Four weeks.
Vegas bookmakers.
Rumble in the Jungle.
Caracas.
Venezuela, not Costa Rica.
What exactly was going on?
Well, what was going on was Piper still had a huge decision to make—by two o’clock tomorrow, and nothing definite between her and Chad except his assumption that she’d be waiting for his return, faithful and true.
∞∞∞
Zach drove westward along Interstate 10 toward the Double Bar T Ranch, grateful for once that the sun had already gone down by the time he left the city. Usually staying well-past sunset made his stomach twist and his eyes blur from CBH’s dimly lit posh offices.
Tonight’s late hour, though, had been caused by an hour on the river—with the heady mix of good food, music, and Piper Quinn. The dinner set him back, timewise, but its after-effects set him back even more. How was a guy supposed to concentrate on warehouse property disputes when he could still smell Piper Quinn’s fragrance on his sleeve?
The clock on the dash read eleven-fifteen. It’d be fine to drop in, since Late Night was still on. They liked the comedians.
Ten minutes later, his old truck’s wheels crunched on the gravel of the yard. A glance told him the blue glow of the television still lit the curtains of the trailer, and Zach stomped up the front steps, hoping they’d hear him coming so his opening the door wouldn’t throw them out of their skin and send Dad reaching for his shotgun like that one time.
Dad wasn’t known for thinking before he…anything. At least not these days.
“Hey? Anybody home?” He knocked as he pressed the door open. “You save a bowl of microwave popcorn for me?”
Mom jumped to her feet and came over to hug him.
“Son. What are you doing here? It’s late.”
“It’s Friday night.” He drove out here every Friday night. “I would’ve come earlier, but I was tied up.”
“Tied up? I hope you had a date. You’ve got to meet a nice girl sometime.”
For a second he wasn’t sure how to answer. No sense getting their hopes up if Piper Quinn was just going to shoot him down tomorrow.
Nevertheless, the truth would make Mom happy.
“As a matter of fact, I was on a date.”
“Nice girl?”
“Very. She likes her family. She’s got green eyes.”
“Oh, you’ve always loved green eyes. You know, they’re the rarest color of eyes.” His mom had more to say about this for a while, the statistics of green eyes, the genetic likelihood, the occurrence by country. “One of the five l
ittle children I babysit right now has green eyes. And he’s not a redhead. Is your girlfriend a redhead?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Yet. But she might be his wife on Monday? This would be hard to explain. “Her hair is light.”
“Pretty!” His mom must have assumed Zach meant light brown, not blond because Mom started singing “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” in a warbling voice that summoned a crotchety growl from the TV room.
“Quiet in there. He’s making his jokes about the president. I don’t want to miss them.”
Zach leaned his head into the living room, with its thousand houseplants and three cats on the sofa.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Shush. I’ll talk to you during the commercial.”
Mom came up beside Zach.
“I’d better watch, too,” she said in a low voice. “He’ll want to repeat the jokes with me tomorrow, you know. I’d better know when to laugh.”
Mom’s attention then strayed out the window for a moment, and she got a faraway look. Zach knew exactly what emotions would cause a look like that, because they wrenched him every time he looked out on the burned remnants of the ranch life they’d once had.
After suffering through a few catcalls from the live studio audience, Zach shifted into the kitchen at the back of the trailer and checked the fridge. Sure enough, nothing but mustard, horseradish, three tortillas, and a half bag of Red Delicious apples. Could’ve expected it.
In walked Libby, her nose in a book. “Hey, Zach.” She drifted to the fridge, got one of the remaining mealy apples, and then drifted toward the bedroom again. “Nice you’re here. This is a good book.”
They always were.
Zach didn’t mind the lack of attention. It gave him time to do what he needed to—collect all their bills, statements, and other mail, and sort through them. He made two stacks, one to take, one to leave. The take pile he tucked in his jacket’s breast pocket to take care of. The leave pile he put in a file stand next to the sink, right beside the untouched leave pile he’d left last Friday night.
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