“Is there something wrong with being a housewife?” Mrs. Jamieson asked her oldest daughter pointedly.
“I love kids, myself.” Charlie spoke up, despite the fact that no one had solicited his opinion on the matter. “How do you feel about children, Josh? See yourself as father material?”
Even though he’d expected this exact type of ambush, Josh faltered. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of a real family in years, not since Dana and the realization that he just wasn’t cut out for anything permanent. But now, the unbidden image of a child flashed through his mind…a child with aquamarine eyes that looked dangerously familiar. Josh’s gaze swung to Piper, almost as though she were responsible for the mental picture and could make it go away.
Instead, his mind simply shifted to different, equally troubling territory. The way she was glaring across the table at Charlie shouldn’t be a turn-on, but it was. Her turquoise eyes were brilliant, and her cheeks were stained with color. Josh couldn’t help noticing the way her chest rose and fell with each angry breath, either. Did she even know how gorgeous she was, or how much he wanted her in unexpected, undisciplined moments like these?
Piper’s laugh was forced. “Charlie, I thought it was Dad’s job to interrogate the man in my life, not yours.” She stressed the man in my life, but in Josh’s opinion, Charlie needed a stronger reminder that Piper was spoken for. At least, spoken for as far as everyone here knew.
Charlie’s mouth fell open in a satisfyingly undignified expression, and he didn’t seem to know how to respond.
Mr. Jamieson redirected the conversation. “So, Josh, you follow football?”
Josh was more of a baseball fan, but he contributed a remark here and there as Mr. Jamieson and Blaine discussed the Cowboys and the Texans. At least no one was debating a woman’s proper role in society or making veiled innuendos about Piper belonging back with Charlie. Finally, the meal ended.
Mrs. Jamieson’s attempts to talk everyone into second helpings were met with moans of protest. “Daphne? You’re eating for three now. Piper, you could use a little filling out. Josh? More potatoes?”
Piper cut her eyes in Josh’s direction and said sotto voce, “Think I’ll clear the table before she starts her Young People Today Are Too Thin Speech.”
“I’ll help.”
Charlie stood immediately. “I can lend a hand cleaning up, help show you where everything goes, Josh. This place is practically my second home.”
He might as well have painted the word outsider on Josh’s forehead in large red letters.
Bitterness burned Josh’s tongue. When hadn’t he been the outsider? Although surrounded by a roomful of people, for one terrible second he felt completely alone.
As though she understood, Piper rose and touched his arm. The contact sparked through him, melting the sharp loneliness into something warm and full. And risky.
“Just help me get through this weekend,” she murmured as they carried dishes to the kitchen, “and I promise you never have to come back.”
She rinsed plates, and he stacked them in the dishwasher. Charlie carried dishes in from the adjoining dining room and found frequent excuses to reach between the two of them.
Annoyance simmered inside Josh. “I can’t say I’m all that fond of your ex-boyfriend,” he said in a low voice.
Piper’s expression was bemused as she whispered, “Yeah, I think we all got that. I appreciate the jealous boyfriend act, but you don’t have to put quite so much into it.”
Though he knew it was irrational, he felt as though she were criticizing him, and thereby siding with Charlie. “If you want, I can drop the boyfriend act all together.…”
He trailed off as Charlie carried in a vegetable platter. The man just happened to brush against Piper before finally leaving the kitchen for more dishes.
Josh ground his teeth together. “As I was saying, if there’s still something between the two of you that you want to explore, I can—”
“Are you kidding?” Her grimace, complete with eyes rounded in horror, did Josh’s heart good. “That’s not what I meant at all! As long as you’re stuck here, I want you to be able to try to enjoy this weekend and not feel like you had to spend the whole time responding to his barbs, but he is one of the reasons I needed boyfriend camouflage. A big reason.”
“Oh.” Josh glanced at the doorway, noting that where he and Piper stood was visible to anyone in the dining room. “And your grandmother’s fondest dream is to see you in the arms of a good man, right?” Even as he spoke, an internal voice cautioned, Don’t do it.
“Right.”
He took a step toward her and removed the bowl she was holding from her hand. Maybe he shouldn’t do this, but how could just once hurt? Only to satisfy his curiosity and help him move on.
Bracing an arm on the counter behind her, he leaned forward, keeping his voice low. “I have an idea that should make your grandmother ecstatic.” And Charlie considerably less so.
Piper’s oceanic-colored eyes grew so wide he could drown in them. But her lashes fluttered, and her eyes closed as she stood on tiptoe to meet him. Then his lips were on hers.
Fire raced in his blood. As much as he’d tried not to, he had imagined holding her in his arms and kissing her just like this. Now, too late, he realized that the reality was far more devastating to his senses than the fantasy, and his assumption that he could walk away from “just one” kiss unaffected had been a foolish one.
Still, as long as he was making the mistake of kissing her, he should make the most of it.
Chapter Six
Shock zapped through Piper but was quickly replaced by a slow-throbbing desire. Wait, this is not a good idea, she tried to tell herself.
What else but desire could she feel when Josh nipped at her lower lip and teased the corner of her mouth with his tongue? She melted against him, parting her lips, and he deepened the kiss. There was no awkwardness, no bumping of noses, only wanting and a piercing sense of rightness.
Why hadn’t they kissed like this months ago?
Some part of her seemed to recall that there were important answers to that question, but all she could focus on was the taste of him, the heat of his body against hers. Instead of satisfying any of the sensual hunger growing inside her, his addictive kiss only left her wanting more.
Her fingers went to the top of his shirt, to the button below his collar. She recalled his tight muscles and the sprinkling of dark hair she’d glimpsed a few times when they’d used the apartment pool. Boy, did she miss those summer months…. But she didn’t just want to get his shirt off, she wanted—
“Heh-hm.” From the dining room, Piper’s father cleared his throat. Loudly.
She blinked at the reminder that there were witnesses, and slowly stepped away from Josh. Except that she couldn’t get very far away, trapped as she was between him and the counter. A few more seconds of that potent kiss and she might have hopped up on the counter and invited Josh to end her self-imposed spell of celibacy.
What in the world had possessed her? Now that his mouth was no longer seducing hers, she could think more clearly. She wouldn’t be doing anything with Josh on kitchen counters or anywhere else. Despite the liquid need pooling inside her and the sweet ache that had settled between her thighs.
“Piper, I—”
“We’ll talk later.” She averted her gaze, afraid of what she’d see in his eyes and what might still be visible in hers.
She harbored hope that they wouldn’t discuss this later. What was there to say? He was only a friend. The kiss had been a pretense for her family, part of his favor to her this weekend.
Just because it had been the hottest kiss she’d experienced since…ever, that didn’t mean anything. After all, he’d had lots of practice kissing women. Stood to reason he’d be good at it.
She focused on the dishes in the sink, determined to put the incident completely behind her.
Daphne maneuvered her way into the kitchen and set a couple of pans
down. She nudged her sister and whispered, not quietly enough, in Piper’s opinion, “Not that serious, huh? Looked pretty serious to me.”
“It was only a kiss,” Piper replied, irrationally riled by her sister’s grin.
Daphne hooked one finger through the neckline of her daisy-print maternity dress and fanned the fabric back and forth. “Last time I saw a kiss that hot, it was in a movie.” She winked at Josh, and he winked back, looking entirely too pleased with himself. Somehow the cheer the people around her were feeling made Piper’s mood even darker.
She actually welcomed Charlie’s scowl as he came through the doorway with a stack of plates, which he slammed down on the counter.
“Careful with those,” Daphne chided. “They’ve been in the family forever.”
Charlie apologized but still glowered, and Josh muttered, “My work here is done.”
Aha! All the proof Piper needed that he’d only kissed her to help convince Charlie she wasn’t interested in re-kindling the old flame. But the confirmation left her feeling oddly hollow. Dissuading her ex, or any other eligible bachelors her family might try to foist on her, was one of the reasons she’d brought Josh with her. So why did she feel almost angry that it was the motivation behind Josh’s kiss?
I am not angry. She scrubbed the plate in her hand so hard that the floral pattern almost came off with the food.
Okay, so what was she, then? Confused. Aroused. Curious. Had their shared kiss affected Josh as much as it had her? She could ask him later, but knew she wouldn’t. What good would come from knowing that he’d been as turned on as she had? It wasn’t as though either of them would ever act on their attraction, and if she’d ever needed evidence that men unnecessarily complicated things, she certainly had it now. She had a career to focus on, with an employer who would dismiss either her or Josh or both if they took the unlikely step of dating.
Of course, there was always the possibility that her worries were for nothing and the kiss hadn’t shaken Josh as it had her. That prospect didn’t make her feel any better.
Once the dishes were taken care of, and Josh and Piper had refused additional offers of dessert, Piper informed her family that it had been a long day and she wanted to go check into the hotel.
“So you and Josh are getting a room there?” Charlie asked. His petulant expression rendered him much less handsome.
“We’re getting rooms,” Piper enunciated, “but that’s really none of your business.”
“I’m just trying to look out for an old friend.”
Through gritted teeth, Piper repeated what she had been trying to tell her family for years. “I can look out for myself.”
Her mother frowned. “But, dear, you have Josh for that now.”
“Actually,” Josh interjected, “Piper does great by herself. It’s me who needs a keeper. She keeps me organized and focused.”
Right then, Piper wanted to hug him more than ever. But it would probably be best if she didn’t touch him again until her nerve endings stopped tingling from that kiss. Say, in forty or fifty years.
Everyone but Nana shuffled out onto the front porch and waved goodbye as Josh started the car.
“So,” Piper began as he steered the vehicle down the driveway. “One night down. Think you can still stick it out the rest of the weekend, or do you feel a sudden emergency calling you back to Houston?”
His answering chuckle sounded weary. “I’ll stick it out. I shudder to think what you’d do to me if I left you here to face them on your own. Although…”
“What?”
“Well, they do seem crazy about you.”
She loved them, too, but it was easier from a few hundred miles away.
It wasn’t just her mother’s obsession with marriage that bothered her. Or her father’s overprotectiveness, or even the occasional feeling that Daphne had defected. It was the hurt that came from feeling they weren’t proud of her.
The only previous time she’d visited home after moving to Houston, she’d brought some rolled-up blueprints with her, wanting to show her family the work she did. Her mother never had made the time to sit down and look at the drawings, bustling off frequently to the kitchen to check on whatever was in the oven. Her dad had scanned the drawings, nodded once, then asked her if she was all set financially or needed him to write her a check. They seemed to have completely missed how important her career was to her, how determined she was to show that she could stand on her own two feet.
“Piper?” Josh interrupted her thoughts, for which she was grateful until she realized what he was saying. “About that kiss—”
“It was no big deal.”
“No big deal?”
“Right.” She wanted to dismiss the topic before he could point out the obvious, that he’d been doing it as part of their act. She knew darn well how he saw her—they were pals, chums, buddies, compadres. Until tonight, Josh had shown no sign of noticing she had two X chromosomes.
He flirted, of course, but that was just Josh being Josh. It had nothing to do with her. And thank heavens for that, because she certainly wouldn’t want him to have any feelings for her. The buddy system was working just fine…or would be again as soon as her newly awakened hormones realized that tonight had been a false alarm, and returned to their dormant state.
Determined to downplay what had happened, she summed up the subject before he could. “Suffice it to say, I appreciate the favor. It wasn’t too bad, and we might even have to do it again, but only in front of the necessary witnesses, of course.”
“Of course.” He bit out the words, and she wondered if she should have expressed more gratitude for the way he’d helped her.
Long moments later, as they drove down the dark country road, he spoke again, sounding like his normal self. “I don’t mean to disparage your hometown, Piper, but it’s creepy out here.”
She tore her gaze away from the millions of stars she could see out her window and shot him a questioning glance. “Creepy? I can’t believe a man who braves Houston’s crime rate would get spooked out here.”
“We’ve been on the road ten minutes and haven’t seen a single car. I find that disconcerting.”
“Most people around here go to bed by nine.”
“Sounds like a fascinating place to live.”
“Maybe it’s not the most exciting town, but it’s clean and friendly and—” It was probably the first time she’d said something nice about her hometown since she’d left. “Anyway, it’s not too bad. It’s just not for me, and one of the main reasons Charlie and I broke up.”
“When you say ‘broke up,’ just how mutual was that?”
“Not at all, as you probably guessed by tonight. It was my decision.” She stopped there, not wanting to get into a Charlie-bashing session, despite how pompous the man had been this evening.
How could it be fair to catalog Charlie’s faults in front of Josh? Charlie had followed in the well-worn path of generations of Rebecca mayors before him, not because he’d ever said convincingly that it was what he wanted, but because it was easier than doing something different. She couldn’t imagine Charlie ever striking out on his own or taking initiative the way Josh did with his sideline business, which he ran on the weekends. Besides, even though Charlie was regarded as the catch of the town, she couldn’t picture anyone preferring the blond, bland mayor to her wickedly handsome best friend and his lethal kisses. Telling a man with Josh’s charisma about Charlie’s shortcomings seemed as sporting as letting Babe Ruth come to bat against a Little League team.
So Piper opted to change the subject and give Josh directions instead. He turned the car to the left, and the hotel’s blue neon sign appeared up ahead.
“Did you deliberately pick a place this far from your parents?” he asked.
She laughed. “Options are a little more limited out here than in Houston. There are only two real hotels in the whole county, and this one’s the best. It won’t be the Waldorf, but rates are reasonable and it should be
clean.”
“Hey, I’m not picky about our digs. I’m just surprised your family didn’t insist we stay with them.”
“They would have, but I didn’t commit to coming for the reunion until my aunt and uncle from Louisiana had already arranged to stay with my parents. They’ll get in tomorrow.”
As Josh parked the car in front of the hotel, Piper suddenly realized how tired she was. She’d been so tense about coming home that she’d let anxiety wear her down, and she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since she’d first told her mother about her “boyfriend.” Now, with the hardest part of the weekend—the first contact—behind her, exhaustion replaced the anticipatory stress.
While they checked in at the front desk, Piper yawned repeatedly, struggling to focus her eyes on the paperwork in front of her. The trek up the staircase to their reserved rooms seemed as grueling as a workout on the StairMaster. She couldn’t remember ever being as happy to see anything as the door with her room number on it. Mumbling a good-night to Josh, she shuffled inside, hoping she could make it as far as the bed. She toyed with the idea of not brushing her teeth and just sleeping in what she was wearing.
A sudden knock startled her into dropping a suitcase on her foot. Muttering “ouch” and other words of the four-letter variety, she hobbled toward the door to the hallway, then realized that wasn’t where the knock had originated.
For the first time, she noticed another door, next to the bed. She opened it hesitantly and found Josh smiling at her.
Over his jeans, he wore a shirt that was now half-unbuttoned. Her fingers itched to finish the job for him.
“I forgot to pack toothpaste,” he said.
“There’s a door between our rooms?”
He didn’t bother answering the obvious. “So do you have toothpaste I can borrow in one of those hundreds of bags you brought?”
She kept staring. Under her gaze, he slipped the last few buttons out of their holes and shrugged off his shirt and pitched it into the room behind him. She didn’t blame him—damn, it was getting warm in here. She couldn’t tell from his facial expression if he was matter-of-factly getting ready for bed or if he was teasing her. Of course, it would be easier to gauge his expression if she actually looked up at his face. As it was, she couldn’t lift her gaze from the taut planes of his chest. Instead, her eyes trailed downward, following the fine line of hair that bisected his sculpted abs, leading past his navel to the fly of his jeans.
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