“Let me get those.” She avoided her sister’s earnest green eyes and hauled the heavy tray out of Shaye’s hands. “I’m gonna be stacking them from now on.”
“What? Why? Ford said you were taking over the dive tours for Ben.”
“Still faster than the speed of light, huh?”
“What is?”
“Gossip.” Piper chuckled and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’m the new kitchen-hand. It’s one of West’s conditions for skippering Ben’s boat.” She cocked her hip and prepared to bump the swing doors.
The door jerked open before she made contact. Bill Westlake scowled, his striped chef’s cap askew and a spatula tucked into the band of his apron like a gunslinger’s .44. “Listen you two, the hallway ain’t a place for chit-chat when my meals are getting cold. Shaye, run to table five. Piper, get your skinny backside in here, the pots won’t scrub themselves.” He disappeared back into the kitchen.
“He’s still a grumpy old fella but his bark’s worse than his bite.” Shaye retied her ponytail with deft movements. “I’d better get back to work.”
“Yeah. Buy you a beer later?”
“Long as it isn’t that imported rubbish.”
Piper choked back a laugh. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
“One more thing.” Shaye frowned. “What were the other conditions West had for helping us?”
Something in her sister’s tone made Piper squirm. “He didn’t say. But I imagine cleaning the toilets will soon be added to my list of duties.”
“Oh. Is that all?” Shaye sent her an astute look. “Well, thanks. I know being here isn’t easy.”
Piper nodded and nudged the doors open, her stomach once again tangling into snarls.
No one here knew what had happened between her and West just days before her father drowned, did they?
Chapter Two
Not even two hours off the ferry and somehow Piper had ended up in Due South’s kitchen. Find your happy place.
She submerged her hands into the dishwater and searched through food scraps for the pot scrub hidden somewhere in the voluminous sink. It was a little like a fingertip search, when a weapon or some of piece of evidence the squad needed to retrieve lay at the bottom of a murky pond. Locating the rough sponge under the soaking roast pan, she hauled it from the depths.
“Got ya, ya little booger.” She wiped the sheen of sweat off her brow with her forearm.
“Finished yet?” Bill bustled past. “Some of us have plans later tonight.”
West’s father ran his domain here the same way he once would have as a New Zealand army chef, with rigid discipline and a lot of barked orders. Every item shone ship-shape in Bill’s kitchen—stainless countertops, fridge doors, and cookers. Not a speck of dust would dare land on one of his pots or assortment of utensils, which hung on precisely spaced hooks. Twice he’d returned a giant pot to her, wordlessly pointing at a miniscule trace of food left on the metal.
“Just about.” Piper injected a cheerful tone into the words, resisting the desire to strangle him with the kitchen towel draped over her shoulder.
She plunged her dish-glove covered hands back into the water and dragged out the pan, attacking the glued on scraps of meat with the pot scrub like she was, well, scrubbing off the smirk West had worn earlier.
Bill’s reaction hadn’t been much better. Not a conversationalist, Bill’s reticence suited her mood perfectly because she also had little to say to him. She knew where she stood with West’s father. The man was direct, if nothing else.
West, on the other hand…
Piper crinkled her nose. No more wasted thoughts on West tonight. All she wanted right now was to be horizontal, preferably with something soft under her aching feet. She grabbed the pan and rinsed it under the hot tap, setting it aside on the draining board.
The swing doors blew open and her mother, Glenna, swept into the kitchen, towing West by one arm in her wake. “There she is! There’s my girl!”
Glenna dismissed West with a wave of her peach-tipped nails and floated past the countertops, a wall of Chanel No. 5 preceding her.
“Hello, Mum.” Piper peeled off the dish-gloves and stepped into her embrace, watching West over her mother’s shoulder as he paused to talk to Bill.
He bared his teeth in a savage grin at something his father said and looked over.
“Piper, darling? Did you hear what I said?” Her mother pulled back, blocking West’s stare and forcing her to refocus.
“Ah, sorry, I missed that last bit.”
Glenna smoothed her cap of sleek auburn hair and sighed. “I said, ‘It’s wonderful to see you. How long are you planning to stay?’”
Aware of West and Bill standing across the room, Piper lowered her voice. “Mum, you know why I’m here, don’t you?”
“Darling, I know nothing less than the catastrophic would bring you back to Oban.” Glenna gave her a thin-lipped smile. “Shaye told me you’d arrived when she rang earlier. I would’ve been down sooner, but guests—always wanting one thing or another.”
Piper glanced at her mother’s clasped hands. The gold Claddagh wedding ring mirrored the one her father always wore. She cleared her throat, swallowing the memories before they overwhelmed her. “None of us are willing to let you use the house to clear Ben’s debt—Ben’s especially adamant. So I’ve come to help for about six weeks until his ankle’s healed enough to skipper again. Dad wouldn’t have wanted you to risk your home to keep his dive business operating.”
“I’m grateful and very touched that you’d do this for your brother—stubborn as a mule though he is.” Glenna squeezed her hand, her fingers a cool, soothing balm on her flushed skin. “Have you arranged for somewhere to stay?”
“Oh. I thought I could sleep in Shaye’s old room.”
“Darling, I’m sorry. I turned it into another paying room a couple of months ago and right now it’s the busiest time of year for the B&B. I’m booked to the gills for the next two months.” Glenna shrugged a shoulder under her chiffon blouse. “If you’d rung to say you were coming...”
She hadn’t told anyone in Oban of her plans, because up until the plane had left the runway in Wellington and turned toward the southern city of Invercargill, she had half-convinced herself she’d chicken out and change her mind.
“It’s okay, Mum. I’ll bunk in Ben’s spare room, or with Shaye if she’s got space—”
Glenna shook her head before Piper finished speaking. “Ben’s rented his house out over the summer season to bring in some extra cash—he’s staying in West’s downstairs room. Shaye’s sharing a house with the new schoolteacher, Kezia, and Kezia’s little girl, and goodness, there’s barely room to swing a cat in their tiny place.”
She tapped one peach nail against her matching shade of lipstick and then clapped her hands. Piper respectfully resisted an eye roll. Her mum, ever the drama queen. “I’ve just thought of the perfect solution.”
She whirled around in a swirl of chiffon and Chanel. “West, dear? A word, please?”
Piper’s palms were damp, so she tucked them under her elbows.
Any idea, any perfect solution followed by West’s name, couldn’t turn out well.
Glenna beamed and gestured him over.
West slapped his father’s shoulder and strode across the kitchen. “What’s up?”
Behind Glenna, Piper looked like she was in the process of swallowing a lemon.
“We’ve a bit of a problem with where Piper’s going to stay, but then I remembered your spare room.” Glenna moved closer, and laid her hand on his forearm. His gaze jolted to Piper’s, even as Glenna continued speaking. “—And though Ben’s downstairs, I’m sure you could squeeze Piper in for a wee while?”
Piper. Just down the hall from his bedroom. The idea ranked up there with kicking himself in the balls or a self-inflicted root canal.
He glanced again at Piper, who if she opened that mouth any wider would start attracting insects. “I don’t thin
k—”
Piper blurted, “I’m not staying—”
West shoved his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat. “My office is in the spare room. It’s not designed for someone to—”
“Pffft.” Glenna patted his cheek, like he was still thirteen years old and offering a lazy-assed excuse of why he couldn’t stay to help Ben stack firewood. “Listen to you, Ryan Westlake. I saw your office the other day and you’ve got that futon sofa-bed tucked in the corner. Piper doesn’t need much room, do you darling?”
Piper uttered a strangled, “Mum!”
An out-of-control steamroller had nothing on Glenna Harland. “You, Ben and Piper were always thick as thieves growing up, weren’t they Bill?”
Bill grunted in acknowledgement but West caught the undercurrent of humor in the clipped sound.
Piper finally found her voice. “I don’t want to impose on West. I’ve brought my sleeping bag and I’ll just find a spare bit of floor somewhere—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. My daughter is not sleeping on the floor and you wouldn’t be imposing on West, I’m sure.” She turned back to him. “Right, dear?”
Like Piper, Glenna had piercing hazel eyes and he got the full intimidating force of them from both women. One woman demanding he accept her request, the other demanding he deny it. One woman had been like a mother to him when his had taken off with another man, and the other?
His back muscles knotted into steel barbs.
Going cold turkey off the drug that was Piper nine years ago, he opted not to put into words what she once meant to him.
But she meant nothing now. So really, after he’d moved past his initial knee-jerk reaction, Piper staying at his house temporarily would only be a minor irritation. Personally, he couldn’t care less if she even warmed Smitty’s bed at night. Except he’d feel a smidgeon of sympathy for the old fella.
So West hurled the ball back into Piper’s court. “If she needs my futon, she’s welcome to it.”
He took an indulgent moment to wallow in Piper’s poleaxed expression.
Piper sent West a look that could’ve shaved stubble off his smug face.
Sanctimonious prick.
He knew—of course he knew—her mother would give her the third degree if she insisted on finding somewhere else to sleep. And no doubt he presumed that she’d overreact. The old Piper, the wiseass teenager who couldn’t control her temper, would’ve lost it. The new Piper, the seasoned police officer who’d learned to somewhat control her tendency to blurt out whatever popped into her head, would not.
So she closed her mouth with a snap and forced her lips to peel back into a smile. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“All settled then—and you’ll both come for breakfast with Ben and Shaye for a family meeting.” Glenna rubbed Piper’s arm. “I’d best be off. Bill—?” Bill turned from where he was trying to slip out the back door. “Be a dear and close up for Ryan tonight, will you?” She blew him a kiss. “West can take Piper home. My poor baby’s ready to drop.”
“Righto.” Bill gusted out a sigh and trudged back through the kitchen. “I’ll nip into the pub and turf out the hardcore hangers-on.”
Few could resist a direct request from Glenna. Except Piper, who had finally learned how after being away from her mother for so many years.
She whipped the towel off her shoulder. “I’ll wipe these counters down.”
“Don’t be too long, you’re looking decidedly peaky.” With a toodle-oo wave, Glenna swept out the way she’d come—leaving her and West alone.
Piper’s heart tapped out a little two-step routine.
West leaned against the stainless steel counter. “I’ll finish up here and take you home. My bike’s around the back.”
A vision flashed into her mind of sitting precariously balanced on a mountain bike’s handlebars while West pedaled madly behind. The bemused disbelief vanished when she remembered the old motorbike he’d slaved over as a teenager. “You still have the Suzuki 250?”
She put some distance between them by crossing the kitchen to slot the roasting pan back in its place under a countertop.
“No, I sold the Suzuki years ago. Got a BMW now.”
“Really?”
“An R100-GS.”
“Oh…nice.” This conversation was so awkward-high-school that she expected to begin her next sentence with the word “like” and giggle uncontrollably.
Why was she acting like a dumbstruck teen when men dominated her everyday working environment? Some of them hot men—and men in uniform. Yet, for all the jokes her friends made about handcuffs and batons, none of her fellow cops got under her skin with one sardonic glance like West had. “Look, give me directions to your place and I’ll make my own way.”
He raised both eyebrows but didn’t shift from his casual stance. “It’s almost eleven, and as Glenna said, ‘You’re looking peaky.’ I’ll take you home on my bike.”
Sitting behind West, snuggled up against his back with her arms around his waist? Not going to happen. She ignored the lurch in her stomach and slowly dried her hands on the kitchen towel before draping it over a rail.
Piper untied her apron and tossed it into the hamper. “I’m a cop who’s used to long hours and hard physical work whether I’m peaky or not. I’ll walk. Just give me the directions. Please.”
“Your call.” His tone mild, West rattled off a series of lefts and rights.
“And where’s the spare key? I don’t want to get Ben out of bed to answer the door.”
“It won’t be locked. You’re not in the city anymore, Piper.”
“Right.”
His lips curled into a half smile. “I’ll probably beat you back anyway, but if not, my office is on the top floor, and the linen cupboard is in the hallway. Make yourself at home.”
The beer she’d drunk earlier curdled at the thought.
Chapter Three
“You’re off your game, boy.” Bill leaned in the doorway.
West looked up from behind his office desk, straightened, and slid the desk drawer shut. “All locked up?”
“Tighter than the Virgin Mary.”
For the first time that evening, he really looked at his dad. Purple shadows bruised the crinkled skin under his eyes, and everything about him sagged, including the two woolen jerseys he wore, even though the temperature inside the pub was warm enough to be comfortable in only a shirt. “You look like hell. Did you stop to eat tonight?”
“That girl of yours bullied me into a sandwich. Didn’t want anything else.”
West sat forward with a frown. “I’ve told Shaye before you’re meant to—”
“—not Shaye. Piper.”
“Oh.” He aligned a pen next to the desk pad and straightened his stack of invoices. “I forgot to tell Piper to make sure you take a break. And she’s not my girl.”
Bill cocked a finger at him. “Waiting for that. As I said, since she waltzed back in the door, you’ve been off your game.” He rubbed a hand through his white hair and yawned. “I am beat. Bloody old age.”
“Go to bed. I’ll look after the rest.”
“Thought Glenna told you to drop the girl home?” Bill chuckled. “Though how the bleedin’ hell she ended up staying at your place—should’ve seen your face, boy!”
“Ms. I’m-so-independent Harland declined a lift with me, saying she was quite capable of walking. She left about ten minutes ago.”
Bill’s gaze slid to the rain zigzagging down the office windows. “In this?”
“Bit of rain never killed anyone.”
“True, true. She’ll miss the turn to your road in the dark.”
“More than likely.”
Bill scratched the back of his head. “Ah well. As you say, bit of rain never hurts. Might cool that temper of hers.”
West snorted and moved around the desk to collect his helmet. “Yeah. That’ll happen. I’d better go find her.”
West shooed Bill out the kitchen door in the dire
ction of the tiny cottage he and his younger brother, Del, had grown up in on the corner of Due South’s property. He’d have fobbed Piper off at his father’s place if the cottage’s second bedroom hadn’t been stacked halfway to the ceiling with Bill’s junk.
He changed into jeans, tugged on an ancient leather jacket, and headed outside. Temperamental weather was a fact of island life, something he was sure Piper had forgotten while living in the capital city.
Rain like automatic gunfire plinked onto his helmet as he strode to his bike, tucked away under a covered car-port. His plans of a quiet beer alone were screwed. The last thing he wanted tonight was to deal with a Harland temper tantrum. Why had he caved to Glenna’s demands?
He straddled the bike and twisted the key. Revving the accelerator, West guided the bike onto the road and headed along the foreshore, tires hissing across the wet asphalt as he changed gears. He passed the wharf, where the streetlights abruptly ended. Surely a street savvy cop wouldn’t walk off into the night without a flashlight? Or maybe it was Boy Scouts that were prepared for any eventuality. He sure as hell wasn’t prepared for Piper. He swallowed thickly and concentrated on riding.
The bike’s headlight illuminated the narrow lane leading to his place, and he stopped parallel to the entrance. A gust of wind howled over the crest of the hill. Branches rattled and the rain hammered down so hard it bounced. West squinted through the trees to see whether his house lights were on. Nope. Which presumably meant she’d walked straight past. Piper was likely halfway to Horseshoe Bay, if she hadn’t fallen into a ditch.
With a sigh, he continued on. Less than a minute later, a solitary figure appeared through the curtain of rain. Shoulders hunched, thumbs hooked into the straps of her backpack, Piper trudged single-mindedly toward him. He braked slowly and rolled to a halt, dropping his feet to the ground. Piper kept walking, head down. Either the driving rain had drowned out the sound of his bike or, knowing Piper, she’d chosen to ignore his presence.
Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book Page 3