A good sign.
“You caught me in the middle of chaos.” He flicked a hand at the sink. “Things have been crazy around here since I got back from Wellington.”
Her brow creased. “You went to Wellington?”
“I flew up to find you, but your flat was empty. The neighbors didn’t know where you’d gone, your aunt hadn’t a clue, and your boss wasn’t helpful.”
“Oh. You saw Tom?”
West nodded. What a cheery meeting that’d been, the burly cop refusing to reveal a hint of Piper’s hiding place. Doubtful that a fist in the nose would loosen the man’s tongue, he’d walked away.
“He refused to discuss you at all, so I had no choice but to return home to try and organize this mess until I could go back and have another go at trying to find you.”
Piper scratched Donny’s head, studying West from under her lashes. “I stayed with a friend and then drove to Lake Taupo for the weekend. I packed my diving gear.”
Donny licked her fingers and she laughed.
Piper. At Lake Taupo. With diving gear. West pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to slow the pulse of blood exploding into his brain. “You went to the Nationals?”
“Yep.”
“You were going to be my safety diver?”
“You needed one, and I’m the best.”
“Is that the only reason you went?” Please don’t let it be the only reason she went.
Piper closed the distance and laid a palm on his chest. The simple touch and the warm all-woman scent of her floored him.
“I went because regardless of how you feel about me, I wanted you to be safe.”
West gripped the counter with numb fingers, swallowing. Unaware of his feelings for her, she’d pushed past her own nightmare to support him.
“That must’ve cost you a great deal.” His voice came out rough.
She petted his chest and gave him a wonky smile. “Losing you would’ve cost me much more. I didn’t want you down there without me watching your back.”
Cupping her face, West brushed a thumb over Piper’s lower lip and rested his forehead on hers. Her eyelids fluttered shut and her breathing hitched.
“I shouldn’t have let you walk that day—you were right, you know. I didn’t realize I’d pushed you away because of how my mother left me.” He chuckled bitterly. “I always thought I was a bad prospect for a long-term relationship—disposable, unlovable—feelings that became a shield to stop any woman getting too close. Except you, baby. You smashed that shield to dust. I accused you of being a quitter, of running away—and all the time it was me, scared shitless, and you called me on it. But, like a fool, I let nine-year-old history repeat itself and said nothing.”
Her fingers trailed down his chest and stopped at his belly, gripping his shirt. “Why did you quit the Nationals? They were so important to you.”
Yeah, so important he’d allowed the stubborn need to prove himself turn him into a complete jerk—when he should’ve confessed he loved her heart and soul.
“I realized something, someone—” West stroked a hand over her silky hair and left his fingers buried in the soft strands at her nape “—was more important to me than collecting a tag off a two-hundred-foot guideline.”
“Is that why you came to Wellington?”
He pulled back, met her gaze. “I came to tell you that, and to look for a job. I can manage a pub anywhere, but I can’t manage without you—and I know you need to be there for your dive squad call outs.”
Piper’s hands came up to cover his. “But Due South needs you. Bill needs you.”
“I need you.” The words were wrenched from his chest. “I need you, Piper.”
She shook her head and his heart shattered, landing in a bloody heap on the floor.
“You’d hate Wellington, West. It’s windy and cold—and yes, I know, so is Stewart Island—but it’s filled with city people. The kind of people who don’t have time to stop and chat, or won’t turn up on your doorstep with homemade chicken soup when you’ve got the flu. And besides—” she rose up on tiptoe, planting a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “—I don’t live in Wellington anymore.”
“You don’t?”
“I handed in my resignation to both the dive squad and the police force.”
His brain short-circuited, his head spinning in a dizzying carousel. “You resigned? Why?”
She shrugged a shoulder, but couldn’t prevent a small, sly smile. “Something—actually, someone—was more important to me than a job I no longer had the stomach for. Plus, my brother poached me with an un-turn-down-able offer.”
“Really. What did he offer you?”
“Partnership. So, as of now, I’m the not-so-silent partner in Ben’s dive business.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m employed but homeless, so you better come up with something more enticing than needing me.”
Too much to take in, he just gaped. Use your words, West, dammit—before you foul this up a third time!
He swept a hand down to cup her sweet, denim-clad ass in one palm and dragged her flush against him. “How about a home with a man who loves you with all his heart and soul?”
She squirmed closer in his arms and burrowed her face into his neck. “Please say that man is you.”
Her lips tickling his skin made him shiver, even as his nerves spiked along his gut. “It’s me. I love you, Pipe.”
West trapped her against the counter and her hot kisses skimmed up his throat, but he caught her chin before she reached his lips.
“Will staying here make you happy?” He needed her say to it. “Tell me…” His voice cracked and he waited helplessly for her answer.
Piper drowned in the bluest of blue eyes. The eyes of the man who loved her. He dazzled her so much it took a few seconds to decipher the note of desperation in his voice. The impenetrably cool West wasn’t impenetrably cool around her. In fact, West downright vibrated with emotion. She slid her palms up the ridges of his abs she loved so much, and settled them over the wild racing of his heart.
“Staying here won’t make me happy, West. You make me happy.” She paused, breathing him in and relishing the security of his arms around her, the heat of his skin radiating through his shirt. “When I was little, my mum used to read me a Bible story about Ruth. In the story, Ruth says, ‘Don’t ask me to leave or go back and not follow. Wherever you go, I’ll go, and wherever you live, I’ll live, and your people will be my people.’ I’ve forgotten the rest, but not that bit.”
His gaze flared hot and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “That’s one heck of a story.”
“I’ve kinda adopted it as my motto.” Piper gently pulled his face down. “I love you, West. Always have, always will. Wherever you go, I’ll be at your side. Whether we live in Oban or Timbuktu, I’ll be happy so long as we’re together.”
Hoots and catcalls erupted from behind the kitchen’s swing doors. Thuds, bangs, and then a stream of people stumbled into the kitchen—Shaye, Ben, Glenna, Bill, Ford, and even Mrs. Taylor, who maneuvered into a better viewing position by wielding her walking sticks like martial arts staffs.
“Get on with it then, boy,” growled Bill, but he chuckled and rubbed his hands together. “Ask her to marry you, and be done with it.”
Her mother swatted Bill’s arm and pointed at West with a mock glare. “You’ll do no such thing. My eldest daughter won’t be proposed to in a pub kitchen—” She flung her hands up. “You haven’t even got a proper ring.”
Marriage?
Did Bill and her mother want West to have a coronary before he turned thirty? She slanted a glance at him, but instead of a bloodless face and goggling eyes, he grinned. As if he wouldn’t reject the idea of dragging Oban’s Presbyterian Minister into the kitchen right now.
In fact, West’s face mirrored the same expression she’d seen in the photograph on his dresser. Love. Pure, and steady. A forever kind of love. Like her mother had said, she’d been too blind to see it before.
He held up a finger. “Stay rig
ht there. Don’t move from this spot.” West slipped between the growing crowd and through the kitchen doors.
Bill chuckled. “Gone to grab a washer from the toolbox to use instead of a ring, I imagine.”
Claire nudged him in the ribs and shushed him.
The murmuring rumble of her family and friends faded into white noise, as she focused on the swinging doors until West shoved through them again. Sucked through time to her first day back on Oban, she could scarcely believe he was the same man. He still sported the same broad shoulders and bite-able butt, but there the similarities ended.
The West walking toward her had mussed hair, overdue for a trim, and about three days of stubble darkened his jaw. His eyes, when they rested on her face, glowed with sensual heat, silently promising she’d never again wake in the night alone. And when she looked at him, she no longer saw through a lens of bitterness and grief. She saw a man Michael would’ve approved of, and a man she loved enough to finally let her father’s memory rest in peace.
West dropped to one knee in front of her combat boots, holding out a small black box. Laughter, tempered with the effort of not bursting into tears, bubbled out of her. She could’ve sworn Mrs. Taylor squealed in delight from across the room. Raucous applause and whistles erupted, led by her brother.
“Oh, shut up you lot,” Shaye said, since Piper could do nothing but gaze at West in mute appeal. “Let the man speak.”
Mrs. Taylor’s walking sticks poked amongst the crowd until it quieted.
West gave Piper a crooked smile. “I didn’t think I’d have an audience when doing this.”
“Well, make it memorable, lad,” came Old Smitty’s voice from the back. “We’ll be talking about this for years to come.”
West snagged her hand. “Piper.”
The way he said her name had every other person in the room fading to oblivion.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you, but I’m guilty of being a stubborn, proud idiot by trying to deny it for so long.”
“Hear, hear,” muttered someone.
Piper didn’t take her eyes off West to identify the speaker.
“People think I’m never short of a quick comeback or a witty line, but when it comes to you, babe, you leave me speechless—so I’ll keep it simple. I want you in my arms and in my life forever. Will you marry me?”
Before she could answer he pried open the ring box, but instead of the flash of diamonds, two rings winked at her. One, a small solitaire and behind it, a gold Claddagh ring, a mirror of the one her parents wore.
“What’s with the two rings?” she blurted, looking from the box to West.
West groaned. “Answer the question before I explain the rings, Pipe—I’m dying here.”
And so was she—dying to start loving him for the rest of her life. “The answer’s yes.”
While the ensuing clamoring of celebration exploded around them, West leaped to his feet and hauled her into his arms, spinning her around, and dipping his head to brush his lips across hers. Bubbles fizzed along her nerves—the good kind of ecstatically happy bubbles—leaving her giddy, and not from the spinning.
“Is that the best you can do, West?” Ford hollered.
“Hell, no,” West replied. “But I’m not giving you lot any more of a peep show.”
“Too right. Everybody except these two out of my kitchen, now!” Bill slapped West’s back, winking at Piper over his shoulder. “Since it’s not every day my son begs a woman to marry him and she agrees, drinks on the house!”
Once the noisy crowd had dispersed, cheered no doubt by the idea of free booze, West kissed her again. This time his lips weren’t quick and gentle. This time they demanded and took, demonstrating just how much pleasure they could give each other over the next fifty-something years.
“The rings,” Piper said, when she regained her equilibrium enough to feel the corner of the box digging into her hip. “Why did you buy me two rings?”
West slid his hands to her waist and lifted her onto the countertop, moving to stand between her legs and opening the box again so she could see them. He pointed to the Claddagh ring. “I picked this up in Invercargill before I flew up to find you.”
His finger traced over the black velvet to the solitaire. “And this one I bought in Wellington.” He hesitated, the intensity of his gaze snatching the breath from her throat. “Nine years ago.”
“You bought me an engagement ring?” she squeaked.
“As I said, I’ve loved you for years—most of my life, come to think of it. I thought I’d done the right thing by driving you away, but God, I missed you so much after you left. I just wanted to take it all back and be with you. Even if it meant moving to the city so you wouldn’t get bored and leave me.” West shrugged, but the lines around his mouth deepened. “So I sold my Suzuki, flew to Wellington, and bought you this. I went to the Police College, and there you were, training on the field with the other boys in blue.”
He removed the diamond solitaire. “You looked so happy. Even being yelled at by the instructor while you did endless push-ups, you looked happy. I decided I had no right to threaten that happiness by forcing my way into your new life, so I chickened out and went home again.”
“I never saw you. No one ever told me you’d come up.”
“No one knew, except Bill. Dad loaned me a thousand bucks to buy the ring, but he never said a word about repaying it when I returned home without you.”
“So which ring do you want me to wear?” She regarded the one in his fingers, which flashed sparks of light on the stainless steel counters.
“Which one do you want, past or present?”
Piper snagged his shirt collar and dragged his face to hers for another steam-coming-out-the-ears kiss. When she pulled back, she wriggled the fingers of her left hand under his nose. “I’m greedy, West. I want it all. Past, present and future.”
“That’s my girl.” He slipped the diamond on her third finger and then the Claddagh ring. “I can’t give you back the past, but my present and future are all yours.”
West reeled her in for another kiss, running his hands over her back and lifting her into his arms. She fisted her hands in his hair and hooked her legs around him. Cupping her butt in his large, warm hands, West headed inside the pantry.
Piper nuzzled the line of stubble around his jaw, ending at an earlobe, which she sucked between her lips. His speed increased dramatically and the next moment six feet of aroused male had her plastered to the closed pantry door.
Squirming against him as he lowered her to her feet, Piper hooked her fingers over the waistband of his pants. “They say when a couple has been together long enough they can almost read each other’s minds.”
“So what am I thinking, Pipe?” He let loose a grin that caused her girly-bits to sit up and beg.
His smile widened as his fingers traced the underside of her breasts before hauling her tee shirt off and throwing it to the floor.
Breathing became difficult, she needed mouth to mouth—stat! “You’re thinking you love me.”
“Yep. And?” Her bra flew through the air and landed on the chest freezer.
“You’re thinking you’re glad I love you too and that I won’t make you wear a tuxedo on our wedding day.”
Buttons pinged all over the pantry floor as West ripped his shirt open and shrugged it off. Piper launched herself on him, sealing naked skin to naked skin with a low moan.
He squeezed her bottom. “Beyond glad. And?”
“There’s more?”
West backed her to the door again and ground his arousal into her core.
“Okay, you’re thinking the twenty bucks you slipped Bill will buy us fifteen minutes before someone comes looking—oh, God—” West’s tongue tasted her right nipple, his fingers popping the stud on her jeans.
And ohhh, by the way? She also needed CPR.
“It was a fifty, for thirty minutes.” His stare scorched her bare skin as he drew the denim down her legs, stop
ping briefly to press a hot, wet kiss below her belly button. “But baby, I’ll only need ten to have you screaming my name and scandalizing the locals out front.”
He slid aside the scrap of her red lace panties and put his mouth on her.
And as it turned out, West only needed five.
THE END
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Acknowledgements
Even though writing a novel is an experience in long-term solitude, it isn’t a solo effort. Many people helped me achieve my goals. My number one supporter and the first person I want to thank is my husband, the man who brought me my first computer all those many years ago because he knew I wanted to be a writer. Love you, babe. The next thanks goes to my two lovely critique partners, Julie-Ann and Amber—I appreciate you ladies so much. I’d be lost without you both. Then thanks are due to the fabulous Ink Ladies and the many wonderful writer friends I’ve found on Twitter and Facebook. Also a big shout-out to the RWNZ, RWAus, and RWA. Thanks to a member of the New Zealand Police National Dive Squad (who has asked to remain anonymous due to privacy issues) for his help and patience. Any and all mistakes are mine. Also thanks to my dear Po-Po friend for her insights into being a female police officer, and for teaching me about the nefarious Chicken Hold.
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