He stared back at the windshield, his neck and jaw rigid. “You should go.”
“Because you say so?” She laughed bitterly. “You should have said that to your father before he left you. It might have made you feel better about yourself in the long run.”
“Get out, Piper.”
That last remark was out of order, but she’d wanted it to hurt, to make him feel some of the wretchedness she was feeling, to provoke him into doing something that would kill the love she felt. “But you’re still a kid under all those tattoos and designer clothes, aren’t you, Matt?” He leaned across her and thrust open the car door. “A scared little boy who’s grown so used to being unwanted that he’s forgotten how to love.”
He purse landed with a clatter on the sidewalk. “Get. The fuck. Out.”
So that was that.
Over.
Finished.
The end.
Chapter Eighteen
He was surrounded by fragrance. And sensation.
Matt ran the palm of his hand over bed sheets that were soft and worn from being used and washed in a home instead of a commercial laundry. How long had he considered cool and crisp the best way for things to be? The answer was a very long time, ever since he had become cool and crisp and detached from all things sentimental himself. And the smell of the linen was new to him, nothing like anything he’d encountered at the Holiday Inn. Jasmine? Lavender? Whatever it was, it was feminine and felt like…felt like being cherished and cared for.
The lingering aroma of a roast chicken dinner followed by apple pie clung to the bedroom upholstery, along with a thousand other homemade meals and laundry loads. Furniture polish, old dried flowers, and the slightest hint of rose air freshener. It should repulse him, but it didn’t. It made him want to curl up under the old feather quilt and cry. Cry for his little dog. Cry for the father that never wanted him. Cry for all the things he never had and never would however much money he made.
He blinked away the fuzz that had suddenly blurred his vision and gazed at the things around him in that tiny attic bedroom. Photographs, school projects made from cereal boxes, and bits of other crap, a Rubik’s cube… All that shit, she’d kept it, things that trapped dust and memories and stopped you moving on with your life. Things that should be in the garbage dumpster like Stanley fucking Saunders.
But this stuff wasn’t like Stanley Saunders. It had no meaning when it was all new and raw, but now…it made him feel…he wasn’t sure how it made him feel, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. And now that it had been kept for so long, there was no way he would see it trashed. Its age and the fact that somebody had cared enough to dust it every now and then gave it meaning. Hell, it added layers to his life that made him feel three-dimensional again. Maybe moving around all the time and having no place to call home wasn’t a solution, but he’d been so bitter that he hadn’t been able to see it. And comparing himself with his biological father was the next logical step as far as his subconscious was concerned. The shit he’d been dealt by that jerk wasn’t a hell of a long way off how he’d treated Piper.
Fuck.
He’d bet his life that Piper’s bed was soft and sweet smelling, the bed in her sanctuary that she’d never let him share. And she had been so right not to give him that. He didn’t deserve to take everything from her. He’d been such a jerk. Piper was his last chance and he’d really blown it.
There was a light tap on the white-painted wooden door, and his mother’s face appeared around it. “Morning, honey, what can I fix you for breakfast?”
“Mom?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“I can’t believe I’m lying here after all these years.”
“Neither can I, but I’m so glad you are.” She swallowed hard and leaned against the doorframe as if she was afraid to get any closer. “You know there are so many things I need to tell you—”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure we can.”
“I love you, Mom.”
His throat constricted painfully as he saw the glimmer of unshed tears in his mother’s eyes. “I love you too, Matt. Never stopped, not even for a second. Just never got to say it to your grown-up, handsome face.”
Chapter Nineteen
Piper wiped the last little silver nametag and set it in a sky blue gift box. Five little boxes lined up in a row for each of Aspen’s two-week-old kittens, who had ironically decided to come into the world within hours of her being dumped on the sidewalk on the fifteenth. Good old Aspen had provided a perfect distraction all that day. There was an excuse to turn all noisy media off and be an emotional mess in complete privacy.
Piper had made nametags for each kitten, hoping it would help find them new homes, but she shouldn’t have worried. A sweet-sounding lady had asked to see the kittens after she’d put an ad in the local website. The woman had said she was interested in taking all five kittens if they were available, which seemed like a lot of cats for one person, but she could ask more about her circumstances when they met. Piper was smitten with all five of the cute little balls of fur, but knew it wasn’t sensible to even consider keeping them in her tiny apartment.
Her sister was ten days overdue and was currently in the hospital about to be induced. Piper was excited and a little scared for her—she had no experience to pass on in this instance as the sensible big sister, but that was where Mom would excel, she just knew it. The errant father had insisted that he be there and supportive at the birth of his child. Mom and Alessandro in the delivery room was more than enough. Piper would be the doting aunt if and when she was invited.
And Matt had left Passion Creek. He really had, just like he’d said he would, and nobody had heard anything from him since. She knew this because her mom had gone berserk after seeing the magazine pictures of them together and searched high and low for him in order to give him a piece of her mind. At least that was her mom’s story—Sophie had quietly told her that she’d gone armed with apple pie and homemade jelly on each mission. Sophie was a fount of top-secret information when there was a donut bribe in the building.
Piper still ached for Matt, but everything had been so frantic in the last two weeks that she’d been fully occupied, and the tears she needed to shed came at night when nobody could see or hear. Today was the first day she’d turned on the radio—she should be safe from hearing about Matt DeLeo now that he’d abandoned Passion Creek and moved to greener pastures.
“Are you hungry, mom?” Aspen curled her silky body around her ankles and made a sound that sounded like “mom” back. “You don’t fool me. You just love me because I feed you.”
The doorbell rang and she tensed, which was silly of her. Mom and Dad still stopped by almost every day, and Stan had been transferred to Pittsburgh, according to Melanie. And Mel had good sources of information. He’d asked for the transfer and even took a pay cut to make it happen—filing that police report had put a rocket up his cowardly ass. She shook off her nervousness and opened the door a chink, with the security chain firmly in place. Cool night air whooshed in through the crack and made her flinch.
“Piper, it’s me.”
Matt…
“Yep, sounds like you. Go away.”
“I saw the kitten ad. You’re getting rid of them.”
“Yes. None of your business, go away.”
“You can’t give them away. I want them, let me in.”
She rubbed her middle finger up and down the doorframe nervously. “I will not let you in and you’re not a fit person to look after yourself, let alone a kitten. And you don’t do pets, so beat it.”
“I know how to get in here anyway, remember?”
“The chain is on, smartass.”
“Piper, please?”
It was raining hard outside and no place for someone standing in the wind on a rickety metal staircase. That was the only reason… “Okay. Five minutes max. No kittens.”
She released the chain, pulled the door open, and hid behind it as he stepped over
the threshold into her cell, her sanctuary. He seemed taller than she remembered. His black leather jacket glistened as he stamped heavy boots onto her doormat, scattering raindrops over the rough welcome mat. Then their eyes met for the first time in two weeks, something she had never expected to happen again. Soft brown eyes, hard black brows, broad tanned forehead and…a gray hair.
“You don’t look like you went to New York.”
“No, I didn’t. I went to Boston.”
“The truth for once, please, DeLeo. You have a very good spray tan otherwise.”
“Florida. After Boston.”
“So you’re expanding into Massachusetts now?”
“I went back home.”
“Home?”
He shucked off his wet jacket and she instinctively took it to hang up by the front door. “Mom cooked, can you believe it?”
“She did? That was nice.” He sank down into an armchair and she followed, sitting opposite each other like a couple of old people. “What did you have?”
“Roast chicken, pork ribs, burgers, meatloaf, turkey, eggs and ham, apple pie, cake…and cookies. She baked real homemade cookies.”
“Whoa, not all on the same day?” She couldn’t help but smile at him as he sat there in a wool sweater talking about food like a starving ten-year-old. “Is that why you’re wearing that sweater? To hide your fat gut?”
“Mom bought it for me to keep out the cold, even though it’s not that cold right now. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was heading down to sunny Florida. It has a label though, she didn’t knit it herself or anything.” He turned up the cuffs on the garment. “I was there a week and I think I must have had bagels with cream cheese and pastrami just about every day—I’d forgotten how much I like that.”
“Now I’m starting to feel hungry.” What was she doing? She’d given him five minutes, and she needed him to leave before he sweet-talked her into doing something stupid. He’d almost seduced her into a false sense of security already. No kittens, no more small talk, for God’s sake… “So what exactly can I do for you? I don’t cook that much, if it helps.”
His eyes closed and then opened again as if he was waking from a deep sleep. “I’m not here for food,” he said in a voice that was liquid cocoa. Then there was a chirrup, a growl, and the thump of four very heavy Bengal paws. “Well, hello there, Princess.”
The little tramp had heard his voice, abandoned her helpless young babies, and was on the total make, rubbing herself all over him. “Well, I guess I’ll just leave you two alone,” Piper muttered, but couldn’t stop her heart flipping over when he picked the cat up and rubbed his face into her fur.
“Not until you give my baby some tasty tuna.”
His baby? “She has perfectly good food as directed by the vet, stuff that has the right balance of nutrients.”
He ran Aspen’s tail through his fingers. “That European guy? He was good, I liked him.”
“You did?”
“Sure, he went over and above the call of duty seeing us that night. Look at her tail now, it’s perfect, you’d never know. What was his name again?”
“Uvi, that was his name, I think. I’ve got the vet documentation around here somewhere…” She realized he was doing it again, side-tracking her, making himself too comfortable in that armchair. “Matt, why are you here? Really? Besides the cat.”
“The cat has two names, you said to me once. You should use at least one.”
Exasperation made her voice rise a pitch. “Okay, but it’s not good for me seeing you here again like this, where I live, after everything that happened—”
“Do you love me?”
Her skin rippled all over, every inch of it. That was the most loaded, lethal sentence she’d ever heard a human being say and she was expected to answer it. Was he playing games with her, setting a cruel trap? Revenge for the mean things she’d said to him just before he slung her out of his Porsche? Her jaw quivered. “Do you love me?”
“Do you need to ask?”
“Actually, yes. You disappeared into nowhere two weeks ago after telling me to get the fuck out of your stupid car. Oh, and your life.” She gestured with her hands that she was waiting for an answer to that.
“I’m not proud of that.”
She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “Figures.”
“I was stupid, a shit, a total fuck up around you. Will that do?”
“There are some more words I could add to that list.”
“But I’m not that guy now. Not anymore.”
“No, of course you’re not.” She pushed herself up from the chair and crossed her arms over her chest—even he should be able to pick up on such blatant body language. “I’m not an idiot, Matt, I’ve been down this bad behavior/remorse, baby-I-love-you-really route before with Stan and it sucks. I won’t do it anymore, and I’m warning you now that I’ve had some martial arts training so don’t think you can outstay your welcome when I insist it’s time for you to go.”
He whistled through his teeth. “Training, huh? You have been busy in the last couple of weeks.”
“I thought it was necessary.”
“Maybe you could give me your tutor’s number. I could use some distraction. Five-mile runs are getting kind of boring every day.”
She laughed harshly, trying not to picture all six-foot-plus of Matt DeLeo pounding the streets, building up a sweat. “She works us really hard. I’m not sure you could keep up.”
“A she?”
“Yes, she.” He was sucking her in again and it had to stop. “You should go now. I’ll feed the cat, I promise. The kittens are asleep, and I don’t want them disturbed. Please go.”
He put the cat down and stood up. “Will you marry me?”
That phantom horse kicked her in the chest again. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably. So will you?”
“You don’t even know what marriage means. It goes against every aspect of how you like to live your life. To you, it’s just an empty word, a word that men throw around sometimes to get their own way. To con women into thinking that they care about more than just getting them into bed.”
He nodded awkwardly. “Okay, how about it meaning that two people realize they love each other so much that they can never replace each other. It means that they die a little every time they have to be apart. It means they suddenly want to do crazy stuff together like buy property and have babies and they want the whole world to know so they tie themselves to each other legally?”
“Until they suddenly think a divorce would be the next logical step. Or one of them just runs away?”
“And marriage is forever.”
“Forever.”
His hands fisted. “That’s what I think, anyway.”
“So what happened to the guy who burned his neck tie, has no fixed address, and freaks out if he collects as much as a handful of postcards? No commitment, no pets, no stuff: that’s who you are, Matt. You can’t do it.”
He shook his head. “Sit back down and listen.”
“I already have and your five minutes is over—”
“Please?”
There was real feeling in that one word, and her knees suddenly felt weak. She flopped back into the chair. “Five more minutes, that’s all.”
“I freaked out on our last day, you’re right. The things you said in the car cut deep, but that’s because they were true and I couldn’t handle it. I’d been fighting with myself for weeks about my feelings for you and knew I had to do something, but I always seemed to be one step behind reality. I wasn’t ready to let you go and stupidly thought that something would happen at midnight to make everything feel better, that I wouldn’t care anymore.”
“Like magic?”
He nodded. “So I ran off. I didn’t even turn up to the launch.”
“You’re kidding me?” Shock hit her between the eyes and made her feel dizzy. He’d felt that strongly? “But that launch meant so much to you, your baby—�
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“It didn’t mean nearly as much to me as what I’d just lost. What I’d thrown out of my car onto the sidewalk in a childish tantrum.” He hunched down in front of her so that their eyes were level. “I was also angry, raging with myself, hating so many things, and I decided it was time to go to Boston, to get answers from my mom and to hurt her as much as she and my dad hurt me. To show her that I made good even though they screwed up my childhood and left me with a fucked-up brain.”
“Oh…”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was just lashing out and buying a plane ticket into another dead end, another dark place that I’d have an excuse to leave and never go back to. I intended that trip to be closure, that me and Mom and Boston would be over, as if my childhood never happened.”
“More magic?”
“More magic, yes, but this time it was really there, Piper, because things got fixed. It was different. Mom was…Mom was like a mom to me. No harsh words, just open arms and…”
“Cookies?”
He laughed, but his eyes were brighter than usual and Piper could see something different in them, a new light, a softening. “We talked about the bad times, and she told me stuff I never knew about because she’d tried to protect me, to do her best against almost impossible odds, and hearing it from her like that kind of changed history. I was a difficult teenager, delinquent, selfish—I couldn’t see what was right in front of my face: she loved me, but couldn’t make my dad stay, not for her and especially not for me. And he was a worthless bum, still is, as far as either of us know, so we were better off without him. She made mistakes with men, and she regrets bringing them into my life to drive me away.”
Piper touched him lightly on the shoulder, nervous of physical contact, but not wanting him to stop talking to her like this. “I’m happy you’ve made up with your mom.”
“She’s married to a good man now. He likes dogs and washes the car every Sunday morning, like normal people do. She’s happy and the house feels warm. It’s the home I never felt I had as a boy and it was overwhelming.” He shook his head and looked at the carpet. “That first night, sleeping in sheets that hadn’t been washed in an industrial laundry, in a room with all sorts of sentimental crap in it…felt so right. I cried, Piper, I actually cried a little because I’ve made such a mess of things and I want to turn back the clock.”
Blackmailed by the Billionaire Brewer Page 17