by Tessa Bailey
“It’s not fish and chips.”
“And that’s bad.”
“It’s not bad, it’s just not what I order.” He shifted in his chair, wondering if the seats had always been so uncomfortable. “I always order the fish and chips.”
Piper studied him in that way again, from beneath her long eyelashes—and he wished she wouldn’t. Every time she did that, the zipper of his jeans felt tight. “You’ve never eaten anything else on the menu?”
“Nope. I like what I like.”
“That’s so boring, though.”
“I call it safe.”
“Oh no.” A serious expression dawned on her face. “Do you think there is a female fisherman hiding in this pie, Brendan?”
His bark of laughter made her jump. Hell, it made him jump. Had anyone ever caught him off guard like that? No, he didn’t think so. He turned slightly to find the employees of the Red Buoy and a half-dozen customers staring at him. When he turned back, Piper was holding out the fork. “Try the pie. I dare you.”
“I won’t like it.”
“So?”
So? “I don’t try things. If I make the decision to eat the pie, I’ll have to eat the whole thing. I don’t just go around sampling shit and moving on. That’s indecisive.”
“If Hannah was here, she’d tell you your problem is psychological.”
Brendan sighed up at the ceiling. “Well, I didn’t seem to have any damn problems until you two showed up and started pointing them out.”
A beat passed. “Brendan.”
He dropped his chin. “What?”
She held out the fork. “Try the pie. It’s not going to kill you.”
“Christ. If it’s that important to you.” Brendan snatched the fork out of her hand, careful not to graze her with the tines. As he held the fork above the pastry shell, she pressed her knuckles to her mouth and squealed a little. He shook his head, but some part of him was relieved she didn’t seem to be having a terrible time. Even if her entertainment came at his expense. He reckoned he kind of owed her after the scene in the street, though, didn’t he?
Yeah.
He stabbed the fork into the pie, pulled it out with some chicken, vegetables, and gravy attached. Put it in his mouth and chewed. “I hate it.” Someone behind the counter gasped. “No offense,” he called without turning around. “It’s just not fish and chips.”
Piper’s hands dropped away from her face. “Well, that was disappointing.”
He kept eating, even though the runniness of the gravy curled his upper lip.
“You’re really going to eat the whole thing,” she murmured, “aren’t you?”
Another large bite went in. “Said I would.”
They ate in silence for a couple of minutes until he noticed her attention drifting to the window, and he could see she was thinking about the frying pan incident. Another stab of guilt caught him in his middle for yelling at her. “You planning on trying to cook again?”
She considered her plate of food, which she’d hardly made a dent in. “I don’t know. The goal was to make it through one night and go from there.” She squinted an eye at him. “Maybe I’ll have better luck if I give our stove a woman’s name.”
Brendan thought for a second. “Eris.” She gave him an inquisitive head tilt. “The goddess of chaos.”
“Ha-ha.”
Piper laid her fork down, signaling she’d finished eating, and Brendan felt a kick of urgency. They’d been sitting there a good ten minutes, and he still didn’t know anything about her. Nothing important, anyway. And he wouldn’t mind making sense of her, this girl who came across pampered one minute and vulnerable the next. Hell, there was something fascinating about how she glimmered in one direction, then the other, delivering hints of something deeper, before dancing away. Had he really talked about fishing for most of dinner?
He wanted to ask what Hannah had meant when she said men treat Piper like garbage. That statement had been stuck in his craw since he’d heard it. “You never answered me this morning. Why exactly are you in Westport?” was what he asked instead. She’d been running fingers through her hair, but paused when she heard his question. “You said three months,” he continued. “That’s a pretty specific amount of time.”
Beneath the table, her leg started to jiggle. “It’s kind of an awkward story.”
“Do you need a beer before telling it?”
Her lips twitched. “No.” She closed her eyes and shivered. “It’s more than awkward, actually. It’s humiliating. I don’t know if I should give you that ammunition.”
Man, he’d really been a bastard. “I won’t use it against you, Piper.”
She speared him with those baby blues and seemed satisfied with whatever she saw. “Okay. Just keep an open mind.” She blew out a breath. “I had a bad breakup. A public one. And I didn’t want to be labeled social media pathetic, right? So I mass texted hundreds of people and broke us into the rooftop pool at the Mondrian. It got out of control. Like, police helicopters and fireworks and nudity out of control. So I got arrested and almost cost my stepfather the production money for his next film. He sent me here with barely any money to teach me a lesson . . . and force me into being self-sufficient. Hannah wouldn’t let me come alone.”
Brendan’s fork had been suspended in the air for a good minute. He tried to piece it all together, but everything about this world she’d described was so far from his, it almost sounded like make-believe. “When was this?”
“A few weeks ago,” she said on an exhale. “Wow, it sounds a lot worse when it’s all strung together like that.” Chewing her bottom lip, she searched his face. “What are you thinking? That you were right and I’m just some rich, spoiled brat?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. You’re already making me eat this goddamn pie.”
“No, I’m not!”
He shoveled in another bite of crap, his mind circling back to the bad breakup she’d mentioned. Why did his spine feel like it was getting ready to snap? “I’m thinking a lot of things,” he said. “Mostly, I can’t imagine you in jail.”
“It wasn’t so bad. The guard, Lina, was a doll. She let me use the regular bathroom.”
“How’d you pull that off?”
“People like me.” She looked down her adorable nose at him. “Most of the time.”
He snorted. “Yeah, I can see that. Flirt.”
She gasped. Then shrugged. “Yeah.” A couple of seconds ticked past. “You didn’t let me flirt with you. And then I thought you were married. My whole pattern got thrown off, and now I don’t know how to act. Trying to flirt again seems pointless.”
The hell it was. “Try it.”
“No. I can’t!” she sputtered. “The third wall is already down.”
Was he sweating under his clothes? What the hell was wrong with him? “What is the next stage after flirting? Once you’ve settled in?”
“Settled in? Ew.” She shrugged. “Also, I don’t know. I’ve never gotten that far.” She crossed her legs, drawing his gaze to the slide of her shorts along that smooth underside of her thigh. And there went his zipper again, confining things. “We’ve gotten way off the topic of my whole sordid story.”
“No, we haven’t,” he responded. “I’m still digesting it all. Along with—”
“Don’t you dare bring up the pie again.” They each offered up half a smile. “Anyway, unless I can finagle a way back to Los Angeles, me and Hannah will be here until Halloween. I think my best bet is to spend less time cooking, more time figuring out how to finagle.” She tapped a fingernail on the table. “Maybe if there was a way to prove I’ve learned how to be responsible, Daniel would let me come home.”
Brendan was brooding over Piper being at a party that involved nudity—in what capacity, exactly? Had she been naked?—so he spoke more harshly than intended. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you try and actually enjoy your time outside the ninth circle of hell that is Los Angeles?”
“Who said
I’m not enjoying myself? Look at me, getting snipped at over fish and chips. If this isn’t living it up, I’ve been doing it wrong.” Smirking, she popped a fry into her mouth, and he tried not to watch her chew. “But you’re right. I could try harder. Maybe I’ll charm one of those cute fishermen up on the harbor into taking me fishing.”
Something acidic burbled in his windpipe at the prospect of her on another man’s boat. “You could. If you wanted a subpar experience.”
“Are you saying you could deliver a better one?”
“Damn right.”
Were they still talking about fishing? Brendan didn’t know. But he was turned on . . . and she appeared to be waiting for something. For him to ask her out on his boat?
A breeze of panic kept his mouth shut a moment too long. Piper gave him an assessing look and visibly moved on, rising to her feet when her sister and Fox appeared outside the restaurant. “There they are. I’ll grab a to-go box for the rest of this.” She leaned down and kissed both of his cheeks, like they were in goddamn Paris or something. “Thanks for dinner, Captain. I promise to stay out of your hair.”
As she dumped the remaining fish and chips into a container and bounced off to join her sister, Brendan wasn’t sure if he wanted Piper out of his hair. If he didn’t, he’d just missed a clear opening to ask her out. In the morning, he’d be leaving for a three-day fishing trip, so—assuming he wanted the opportunity to see more of the girl from Los Angeles—he’d have to wait for another one. And it might never come.
Fox dropped into the chair beside him, grinning ear to ear. “How’d it go, Cap?”
“Shut up.”
Chapter Ten
Piper was stuck in a nightmare in which giant mice with twitchy little noses chased her through a maze while she wielded a flaming frying pan. So when she heard the knock on the door the following morning, her waking thought was The mouse king has come for me. She pinwheeled into a sitting position and soundly smacked her head on the top bunk.
“Ow,” she complained, pushing her eye mask up to her forehead and testing the collision spot with a finger. Already sore.
A yawn came from above. “Did you hit your head again?”
“Yes,” she grumbled, trying to piece together why she’d woken up in the first place. It wasn’t like much sunlight could filter in through their window and the building next door. Not when a scant inch separated them and the neighboring wall. The apartment was all but black. It couldn’t even be sunrise yet.
A fist rapped twice on the door, and she screamed, her hand flying to the center of her chest. “Mouse king,” she gasped.
Hannah giggled. “What?”
“Nothing.” Piper shook off the mental cobwebs and eyed the door warily. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Brendan.”
“Oh.” She glanced up and knew she was trading a frown with Hannah, even though they couldn’t see each other. What did the grumpy boat captain need from her that couldn’t wait until normal-people hours? Every time she thought they’d seen the last of each other, he seemed to be right there, front and center. Confusing her.
She hadn’t been lying about not knowing how to act in his presence. It was usually easy to charm, flirt, flatter, and wrap men around her pinky. Until they got bored and moved on, which they seemed to do faster and faster these days. But that was beside the point. Brendan had robbed her deck of the pretty-girl trump card, and she couldn’t get it back. He’d had too many peeks behind the curtain now. The first time they’d met, she’d been a drowned rat and offended his beloved Westport. Meeting two, she’d blasphemed his dead wife. Three, she’d almost burned this relic of a building down . . .
Although eating with him had been kind of . . . nice.
Maybe that wasn’t the right word.
Different. Definitely different. She’d engaged in conversation with a man without constantly trying to present her best angle and laugh in just the right way. He’d seemed interested in what she had to say. Could he have been?
Obviously, he hadn’t been instantly enraptured with her appearance. Her practiced come-hither glances only made him grumpier. So maybe he wanted to be friends! Like, based on her personality. Wouldn’t that be something?
“Huh,” she murmured through a yawn. “Friends.”
Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she slipped her feet into her black velvet Dolce & Gabbana slippers and padded to the door. Before she opened it, she gave in to vanity and scrubbed away the sleep crusties in the corners of her eyes. She opened the door and craned her neck in order to look up into the face of the surly boat captain.
Piper started to say good morning, but Brendan cleared his throat hard and did a quarter turn, staring at the doorjamb. “I’ll wait until you’re dressed.”
“Sorry . . . ?” Nose wrinkled, she looked down at her tank top and panties. “Oh.”
“Here,” Hannah called sleepily, tossing Piper a pillow.
“Thanks.” She caught it, held it in front of herself like a puffy shield.
Hold on. Was this man she’d judged as little more than a bully . . . blushing?
“Oh, come on, Brendan,” she chuckled. “There’s a lot worse on my Instagram. Anyone’s Instagram, really.”
“Not mine,” Hannah said, voice muffled. A second later, she was snoring softly.
For the first time, Piper noticed the tool kit at Brendan’s feet. “What’s all that for?”
Finally, Brendan allowed his attention to drift back to her, and a muscle wormed in his jaw. The pillow covered Piper from neck to upper thigh, but the curve of her panty-clad backside was still visible. Brendan’s eyes traveled over that swell now, continuing up the line of her back, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I changed the lock on the door downstairs,” he said hoarsely, his gaze ticking to hers. “Came to change this one, too. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Oh.” Piper straightened. “Why?”
“We leave this morning for three nights. Last fishing trip before crab season. I just . . .” He crouched down and started rooting through his box, metal clanging so she could barely hear him when he said, “Wanted to make sure this place was secure.”
Piper’s fingers tightened on the pillow. “That was really nice of you.”
“Well.” Tools in hand, he straightened once again to his full height. “I saw you hadn’t done it. Even though you’ve had two days.”
She shook her head. “You had to go and ruin the nice gesture, didn’t you?”
Brendan grunted and set to work, apparently having decided to ignore her. Fine. Just to spite him, she let the pillow drop and went to make coffee. On her sister’s trip to the record store with Fox, Hannah had found a mom-and-pop electronics shop, purchasing the kind of one-cup brewer you’d normally find in a hotel room. They’d been selling it for ten dollars. Who sold anything for ten dollars? They’d rejoiced over Hannah’s bargain hunting the way Piper used to celebrate finding a four-thousand-dollar Balmain dress at a sample sale.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Piper asked Brendan.
“No, thanks. Already had one.”
“Let me guess.” After adding a mug of water, she lowered the lid on the maker and switched it on. “You never have more than a single cup.”
Grunt. “Two on Sundays.” His brows angled down and together. “What’s that red mark on your head?”
“Oh.” Her fingers lifted to prod the sore patch. “I’m not used to sleeping with another bed three feet above mine. I keep whacking my head on the top bunk.”
He made a sound. Kept frowning.
His visible grumpiness made the corner of Piper’s mouth edge up. “What are you going fishing for this time?”
“Halibut. Rockfish.”
She rolled her eyes at his abrupt answer, leaned back against the chipped kitchen counter. “Well, Hannah and I talked it over and we’re running with your suggestion.” She picked up her finished coffee, stirring it with her finger and sipping. “We want to
enjoy our time in Westport. Tell me where to go. What to do.”
Brendan took another minute to finish up the lock. He tested it out and replaced his tools in the box before approaching her, digging something out of his back pocket. She caught a tingle on the soft inner flesh of her thighs and knew he was checking her out, but she pretended not to notice. Mostly because she didn’t know how to feel about it. That familiar burn of a man’s regard wasn’t giving her the obligatory thrum of success. Brendan’s attention made her kind of . . . fidgety. He’d have to be dead not to look. But actual interest was something else. She wasn’t even sure what she would do if Brendan showed more than a passing notice of her hotness.
And he was still wearing his wedding ring.
Meaning, he was still hung up on his deceased wife.
So she and Brendan would be friends. Definitely only friends.
Brendan cleared his throat. “You’re a five-minute walk to the lighthouse. And it’s still warm enough for the beach. There’s a small winery in town, too. My men are always complaining about having to go there on date nights. They have something called a selfie spot. So you should love it.”
“That tracks.”
“I also brought you some takeout menus,” he said in a low voice, slapping them down on the counter, and with him standing so close, it was impossible not to register their major size difference. Or catch a whiff of his saltwater-and-no-nonsense deodorant.
Friends, she reminded herself.
A grieving widower was not fling material.
Swallowing, Piper looked down at the menus. He’d brought three of them.
She pursed her lips. “I guess it’s too early to be insulted.”
“This isn’t me telling you not to cook. These are fallbacks.” He opened the first folded menu, for a Chinese restaurant. “In each of them, I went ahead and circled what I order every time, so you’d know the best dish.”
She hip-bumped him, although thanks to him being a foot taller, her hip landed somewhere near the top of his thigh. “You mean, the only one you’ve ever tried?”
A smile threatened to appear on his face. “They’re one and the same.”