Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book

by Tracey Alvarez

  “Shotgun marriage? Personal love slave?” Piper suggested.

  Ben hurled a venomous glance in her direction, which made her grin like a crazy woman.

  “Oh, dear, nothing like that.” Mrs. Taylor frowned. “No, no. The winning bidder will get a complimentary dinner at Due South with her bachelor and some charming conversation and companionship. No hanky-panky stuff at all.”

  West tipped his chair back on two legs, locking his hands behind his neck. “I think it’s a great idea, but expecting Ben to make charming conversation with a woman? Good luck with that, Mrs. T.”

  Ben Frisbee’d the coaster at him, but West continued laughing his butt off until her brother stormed into the kitchen.

  “I’m so glad you approve.” Mrs. Taylor’s sugary tone could bring on a diabetic attack.

  Piper uncrossed her ankle, leaning forward to get a closer view of the punch line.

  “And isn’t it fortunate that you’re such a smooth talker, West dear, since your name is also on the auction list.”

  That shut him right up.

  But even as she laughed alongside Shaye and Ben, a kernel of jealousy unfurled and smoldered in her stomach.

  Piper didn’t want to share West with anyone, good cause or not.

  The next day, after a queen’s wave from Mrs. Taylor in the bar, West snarled under his breath and went to check on the kitchen staff.

  Bullied into a bachelor auction by a seventy-one-year-old harridan, how pathetic was that? Jesus, he needed to grow a pair. At least Ben, Ford, Kip, Joe, and Noah suffered the same fate. And to add to his complaints Piper was avoiding him and Ben made a nuisance of himself whenever he tried to wrangle a moment alone with her.

  Plus, his training schedule was screwed up by all the erupting drama. They had another romance over-nighter with only one couple tomorrow. He intended to find—make that bloody enforce—an opportunity to dive.

  West pushed through the double kitchen doors into somebody-just-shoot-me chaos. As usual, he sought Piper out first. Her bare arms were elbow-deep in dishwater, her cheeks a pretty pink from the steamy kitchen heat. At the sound of the doors hissing open she glanced up. Sexual voltage arced between them, her gaze dissolving from bored to white-hot in seconds.

  Not the only frustrated one in the room.

  Shaye streaked out of the walk-in pantry with her arms full of vegetables. “I need that pan—like five minutes ago. Hurry the hell up!”

  “Yes, commander.” Piper pulled a saucepan from the sink, whipping the kitchen towel off her shoulder.

  West glanced to the far corner of the room by the back door where Bill had taken to sitting in a chair during the meal service, bellowing orders at Shaye when he deemed necessary. Today Bill didn’t appear to be paying any attention to his frantic protégé, choosing instead to make goo-goo eyes at his ex-wife, who stood at his side, her hand resting on his shoulder.

  How cozy.

  West flexed his fingers, the knuckles cracking. Less than three days back on the island and the widow Gatlin already wove her sticky web—and his father was jumping in it with both feet. Like a brainless blowfly.

  “West.” A wet hand clasped his forearm and he looked down at Piper’s frowning face. She tugged. “Pantry—now.”

  He followed Piper into the pantry, unable to prevent his gaze dropping to the pert twitch of her ass under snug black jeans. The sight momentarily distracted him from his annoyance at Bill’s belly-up capitulation.

  “Aren’t you hot in those jeans?” he said, as Piper ducked around him to shut the door. “It’s like a sauna in there.”

  She leaned against it, watching him. “I didn’t invite you in here to discuss my clothes.”

  Normally she wore a full length apron, but today she’d donned a chef’s half apron, knotted around her slim hips and hiding nothing of her upper torso. Fascinated with the trickle of sweat disappearing under the “v” neck of her CSI: Can’t Stand Idiots tee shirt, West braced his palms against the door on either side of her shoulders. “Perhaps we should discuss them.”

  Piper’s gaze lowered and her breathing accelerated, the rapid movement of her chest freeing a second droplet of sweat. Her nipples puckered under the soft knit fabric and West wanted to drag his mouth down to those sensitive peaks.

  Instant hard-on.

  “The Due South polo-shirt, right?” Her swallow was a dry click in the small, enclosed space. “No one sees me back here and it’s not like I’m really part of the staff—”

  West traced a slow finger from the dent in her throat to the “v” of her shirt, stopping when he met the resistance of her bra. Her heartbeat thudded under his fingertip.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of some short-shorts instead of jeans. Mix it up a little.” Removing his finger from her neckline, he brushed his hand down her ribs then gently gripped her hip. Her breathing ceased for a moment—if his other hand wasn’t holding her in place would she bolt?

  Time to find out.

  “You’ve got the hottest legs, Pipe.” He released her hip and stroked his knuckles partway down her thigh.

  Piper didn’t move but she didn’t meet his gaze either, her focus off to the right, like she opted to study the row of cans on the wall shelf.

  “I want to see more of them. Preferably when they’re bare and wrapped around my hips.”

  A soft moan escaped from her lips and her head thunked back on the door. He hardened further. He’d do her against the pantry door right now if she made another noise like that. He leaned in to kiss her—just a little kiss, maybe sneak in some tongue if he played it right—when a splayed hand, still damp with dishwater, clamped across his mouth and shoved.

  “Not the time or place,” Piper rasped. “Your parents are right outside.”

  Damn. He was all riled up and she’d nearly melted in his arms. A couple of wet and wild kisses would take the edge off. She did that lip licking thing and he nearly kissed her anyway—even though her hazel eyes sparked a warning: touch me and I’ll ensure you walk funny for the rest of the day.

  “Pipe.” He delivered his best c’mon-baby smolder.

  “Your mother is on the other side of this door, West—your mother. Do you need more of an incentive to keep your lips to yourself?” She darted under his arm and fled to the chest freezer at the end of the pantry—in case the threat of his parents catching him with his tongue down the dish-hand’s throat wasn’t enough to make him behave.

  West shoved his hands into the pockets of his business pants, pulling them away from his groin—which still hadn’t received the update that hot sex in Due South’s pantry wasn’t a go. They watched each other, wary as two cats squaring off for a backyard battle. He waited until his pulse settled back into a halfway normal rhythm before speaking.

  “So why did you drag me in here?”

  Piper folded her arms. “I saw the way you looked at Bill and Claire, like you were about to chew them both out.”

  Exactly what he’d been about to do.

  Not that he’d admit it. And thinking of the sappy look on his dad’s face—anything other than a scowl on Bill’s face was sappy—his annoyance spilled over. “I should chew them both out, her especially—taking advantage of a sick old man who’s not thinking straight.”

  Piper dismissed him with a toss of her head. “There’s nothing wrong with your father’s mind, and how is Claire uprooting herself to come look after him taking advantage?”

  “I don’t know, yet,” he said. “But she’s up to something. Fussing and fawning over him. Making him smile, for God’s sake.”

  “They still care about each other, West, and it shows.” She moved across the pantry and stood toe to toe with him, gently drilling a finger into his chest. “That’s what’s bugging you, isn’t it?”

  West wrapped his hand around hers, pressing her palm flat. “She walked out thirteen years ago. She can’t just waltz back in and act like she didn’t abandon him.”

  Abandon them both.

&
nbsp; “I know you and Bill are close, but whatever’s going on with him and Claire is not your business.”

  Piper’s fingers curled on his chest and sent shivers skittering over his skin. She stared up at him, stared until he was half convinced her intense gaze peeled back his protective layers until every secret inside him split open to her scrutiny.

  Could she see the unhealed scars of the boy he’d been? The boy who’d thought himself too old for tears, yet cried for his mother and little brother, hating every moment of his weakness. Piper’s sympathy rolled over him like a soft blanket, but it suffocated him, made him want to push her away.

  Again.

  Sympathy was a blink away from pity and he couldn’t stand the idea of her pitying him.

  “My business or not, I don’t have to like it, and I don’t want to see my father devastated when she goes back to LA.” He removed her hand from his shirt and let it drop.

  “It doesn’t sound like LA’s where she wants to be at the moment.”

  “She made her bed.”

  Piper huffed out a sigh and dragged her fingers through her hair, leaving the strands in short spikes, which he itched to smooth down. He forced the impulse away by grabbing the door handle.

  “Haven’t you ever had to make a choice where there were no good outcomes?” she said. “Where no matter what you did, someone got hurt?”

  West thought of the morning he’d broken it off with her and the night two days after Michael died when he’d tried to take it back. Piper had stared at his face for five solid seconds before quietly closing the door. He thought of her in the rain at Michael’s memorial up on the cemetery hill, standing a short distance apart from her family. Of Piper wearing her backpack and walking to the ferry. And him, hiding in the shadows, not saying a word. Making a choice to let her go.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then cut your parents some slack.”

  He nodded. Who was he to judge Bill when he stood on the precipice of making the same mistake with Piper?

  So he said, “Back to work,” and flung open the pantry door, stepping through it before Piper could see that mistake written all over his face.

  With the honeymoon couple out of the way for three hours on a deserted beach toting a picnic lunch, Piper tugged on her wetsuit and cursed a blue streak.

  Yeah, she’d kinda agreed to be West’s safety diver. Okay, she had agreed, as long as he followed her rules—but agreeing to a theoretical situation was one thing. It was another to arrive at a sheltered cove in Paterson Inlet and have him announce his intention to dive.

  And it was another matter entirely when West emerged from his cabin in a painted-on silver and black wetsuit. With a normal wetsuit, some areas, some things, were left to the imagination. Not so much with a free-diving wetsuit. Thinner and super-stretchy, the material clung to every inch of his body bar his feet and head.

  Every. Single. Inch.

  West looking so damn hot wasn’t a bad thing, though. It distracted her from the heavy slab of fear constricting her chest at the thought of him free-diving. She scuttled into her cabin to change before she did something really dumb, like offer to adjust his fancy outfit with her lips.

  She zipped up her wetsuit and faced the mirror.

  C’mon Pipe, get it together.

  She was a highly trained professional with hundreds of hours of experience under her weight belt. She wasn’t eighteen, West wasn’t her dad, everything would be fine.

  “A cakewalk,” she told her reflection.

  Her pale face stared back at her, unconvinced. A small vein pulsed in her temple and she raised a shaky hand to press a fingertip against it.

  A rap of knuckles on her cabin door. “Let’s go, daylight’s wasting.”

  Piper took a last look in the mirror before she walked out of the cabin, punched a smirking West in the bicep, and headed for the equipment locker.

  She was okay, dammit.

  Thirty minutes later and sixteen feet below the surface, West’s silhouetted legs churned lazily above her by the anchor line as he prepared to dive. He’d use the line to guide himself down to the predetermined depth of ninety-eight feet, then follow it back up to the surface. Her job was to track his ascent and react quickly if he displayed any signs of a shallow water blackout.

  The draw from her regulator rasped in her ear as she breathed and the chill of the water pressed in on all sides. But still, she remained steady—on task and in control.

  In one smooth action, West folded at the waist and glided down in a series of calculated but graceful motions, like ballet executed underwater. He didn’t acknowledge her as he dropped below her position, so focused on each precise movement of his arms and legs.

  But no more focused than she was on him. Piper’s gaze didn’t deviate off his streamlined body. West’s legs flexed again in a frog kick and then returned to complement the straight line of his torso. He held his arms relaxed at his sides, negative buoyancy now causing him to fall weightlessly into the deep. Hypnotic to watch, the power of it combined with the memories of her father training, stung her eyes.

  Visibility closed around him and he slipped from her view. Now the hard part—trusting he’d return. She checked her dive watch again. Counted off the seconds. Talked herself out of diving down another thirty feet after him. Checked her watch again.

  By now West would’ve reversed direction at the end of the line, no longer falling, but reliant on pure muscle and determination to propel him upward. But things often went wrong in the ascent. Push the body too hard and air-hungry lungs would suck the oxygen right out of a person’s blood—then buh-bye consciousness.

  West reappeared out of the murky dark, his black swim-capped head arrowing smoothly through the water, not too slow, not too fast. She finned closer, close enough to make eye contact for those last crucial moments. His gaze fixed on hers as they swam in parallel synchronization. No emotion filtered through his steady gaze, his mind turned inward to master his lungs’ crippling need for air.

  With a short distance to go, bubbles exploded around his face, obscuring his mask and catapulting her heart into frantic overdrive. West’s body arched as his head broke the surface, but almost immediately he sank back under, and plummeted—straight into Piper’s arms.

  No time for panic. No time for accusations. Only response, action, training.

  She hauled West to the surface, supporting him under his arms and twisting him awkwardly onto his back.

  She yanked her regulator out and tugged off his nose clip. “C’mon, West. C’mon now.” Piper blew gently across his face and patted his cheek.

  Ice blue eyes popped open and he coughed, blinked, and swore. After a short pause he tore off his mask and rolled over until he trod water beside her. His brow creased and he shook his head, water flicking off his face in tiny droplets. “Pipe?”

  You blacked out. You could’ve died.

  The words crowded her throat but wouldn’t form out loud. She labored even to breathe, just gawking at him with her vocal chords frozen.

  “Pipe?” He wheezed, sucked in more air. “Shit.” Gasp. “You okay?”

  That should’ve been her line, but she couldn’t say a damn thing, transfixed by West’s face, the rise and fall of his chest as he sucked in air.

  Piper’s lungs refused to work smoothly. Her father’s face, grey and motionless with water spilling from his slack mouth, superimposed over West’s. No longer West’s fancy black and silver suit beneath her fingertips, but Dad’s. Dad’s bulk, as she battled to keep his head above water. Dad’s eyes, that didn’t blink when she tore off his mask, when she blew on his stubbled cheeks. When she sobbed his name over and over and over.

  She had to get out of the water. Now.

  She clamped her trembling lips shut and swam the short distance to the boat’s ladder. Splashes from behind and he shouted her name, a string of four-letter words chasing it. Her arm muscles had the same tensile strength as overcooked pasta as Piper hauled herself aboard. Near
ly there, nearly there.

  More water sluiced onto the deck as West climbed up the ladder after her. “Hey—”

  She kneeled on the deck and stripped off her inflatable vest and tank.

  “Talk to me, please.” He crouched beside her.

  Piper kept her head down and unclipped her weight belt, letting it fall off her waist. She still couldn’t look at him—didn’t trust herself to speak. One glance at those baby blues and she’d lose what little control she had left.

  Her cabin, that’s where she needed to go. A place where she wouldn’t use the dive knife strapped to her thigh to take West’s head off. Yeah, after a hot shower, her temper, primed by a mix of the adrenalin and terror flooding her system, would dissipate enough for her to have a rational conversation.

  Piper lurched forward on hands and knees, intending to use the short bench seat to drag herself up onto unsteady legs.

  “Piper, listen to me—” West’s hand closed around her ankle.

  She slapped out at him with a growl that choked her in its ferocity. His grip tightened, and suddenly she was screaming at him.

  Screaming like a banshee hyped up on meth.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He’d blown it. But when she tried to walk away from him again? All bets were off.

  He lunged for her ankle and suddenly it was all on—Piper shouting, punching, and snarling.

  Her elbow connected with his ribs. Goddammit, she was strong. He winced, ducked from a fist that would’ve cost him a front tooth had it landed. Her flailing hadn’t caused any major damage, as much as it would’ve enraged her if she’d any inkling of his thoughts. West didn’t want her to hurt herself, so he pulled rank and flipped her onto her back, pinning her with his additional weight and bulk.

  “Enough.” He snatched up her wrists and stretched them above her head.

  Piper continued to wriggle, inciting a predictable effect on a certain part of his anatomy.

  Impeccable timing, West. As usual.

  But with her breasts mashed against his chest and her hips bucking as she attempted to throw him off, his cock didn’t care that an erection was not only inappropriate but potentially dangerous.