He bit the inside of his cheek and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “That’s not why I followed you out of the office that day.” His grip relaxed and the speedometer dropped a little. “Not completely, anyway,” he relented with a little dimple flash.
She smiled. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. I’ll fill out a restraining order. They’ll find him, and I’ll never have to worry about him again.”
“But that’s just him. What about all the other disgusting pigs like him?”
“It’s not like I can quit. I don’t get to start at the vet hospital until I’m licensed. I still need the telegram job.”
He pressed his lips together like he was struggling with whatever he wanted to say. Piper knew it was something along the lines of he could support her until then. Wisely, he chose to say, “Congratulations on the job offer, by the way.”
“Thanks. I’m really excited. I feel like things are finally turning around. It’s been hectic, what with the center and all.”
“It has been rough, hasn’t it?”
“Just another week in the life of Piper Summers.” She laughed humorlessly. “Been like this ever since high school. Well, maybe not quite this bad,” she admitted. “After this sneak peek, you sure you want to stick around?”
Placing her hand on the gearshift, he covered it with his own. “Definitely.”
They pulled up to the next stoplight, and she could feel his gaze shift to her. She turned to him. He was considering her carefully, a little frown line forming between his brows. “What happened in high school?”
“What?” The question caught her off guard. “Oh.” She stared down at her lap, jarred by the rapid emotional turns the conversation was taking. “That’s when my dad died.”
He nodded, his hand squeezing hers around the gearshift. The light turned green and they pulled away. “You never told me how he died.”
“It was skin cancer,” she said. “I guess all those years in the fields without sunscreen caught up to him. Now I cringe when I hear the term ‘redneck.’ Kind of has a new meaning, you know?” She laughed without really meaning to joke.
“My dad got too sick to work on the farm. My mom and I did what we could with the help of a hired hand. But all the spare money went straight to hospital bills. Eventually we ran out.”
“What about your brother? Where was he during all of this?”
She made the same sound of disgust he made earlier. “Rising in the ranks of his law firm.” She huffed, shaking her head. “You know, my parents put a second mortgage on their house to put him through college. Gave up a lot, struggled because of it. Yet as Dad was going in for his second bout of chemo and we had to sell the John Deere just to afford the treatment, my brother was buying his first BMW.”
Bitterness crept into her voice as she spoke about it, even after all these years. At least he was looking out for their mom. Maybe he’d felt guilty afterward and that’s why he asked them to move up to Washington years before. Maybe it was his way of trying to make amends. It might have been enough for her mom, but it wasn’t enough for her.
Piper was still staring at her lap, but she could sense Aiden nod. “I see,” he said as though a picture was beginning to form. “He did nothing to help your family, even though he could.”
“After my dad died, my mom had to sell the farm to break even. She got a job here in town, and we moved into my aunt’s old apartment because it was rent-controlled.” She hated talking about it, hated the sadness that threatened to choke her every time, but she felt it was time she shared it with him.
“It was a while before my brother started sending a few sparse checks in the mail. And sometimes I think he wanted to show off rather than help us out. I told Mom not to take the handouts, that we would be fine. I guess I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, you know. I mean, where was he when we needed him?”
She peeked over at Aiden. He had his eyes on the road, but he was listening intently. She shook her head, like that would clear it of the memories and resentment that still lingered.
“Anyway,” she continued. “When my mom decided to move closer to him, she wanted me to come, of course, like we could still be some big happy family. But I wanted nothing to do with him and his pathetic handouts. So I stayed here.”
Aiden was quiet for a few minutes, and Piper watched the houses shrink in size as they neared her place, the apartment buildings draining of color, becoming dingier. Their dull facades blended into the night. Instead of the streetlights making her crummy neighborhood brighter and safer, they highlighted how poor it was.
At the next stop sign, Aiden checked the mirror, moved the shifter into neutral, and put the parking brake on. Reaching across the car, he laid a hand on her cheek so she was forced to look at him, to hold his intense gaze.
“Piper,” he said. “I’m not your brother.” He said it slowly, loading each word with importance.
“That’s a relief. Because this”—she pointed between the two of them—“would be really awkward.”
“I’m serious. I’m not trying to rub my money in your face. I just want you to be happy. Or at the very least, not in danger.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I do. And I appreciate it.” She tried her best to keep any hesitation from her voice, because it was true, even if she had a tough time saying it. She knew it was something she needed to work on, especially dating a rich CEO. Baby steps, she told herself. It wouldn’t be easy, but she could do it.
“I don’t like the idea of you spending the night in your apartment with this Barney guy still out there somewhere.” He put the car in gear and continued driving. His brow creased, his eyes intense. “Would you consider sleeping at my place tonight? Please?”
How long had Piper dreamed to hear those words coming out of Aiden’s mouth? And he was practically begging her.
Of course she wanted to say yes. Hell, she wanted to race back to his house and drag him to his room. Or the foyer, if they didn’t make it that far. Okay, probably the driveway. If only it had been under normal circumstances. She didn’t want them to spend their first night together because she needed to be bailed out once again. Aiden to the rescue.
“Thank you for worrying. But I’ll be fine.”
He flinched at her response and an unhappy grunt rumbled in his throat, but he said nothing more. His eyes, however, said it all. They were tight, narrowed, maybe at her refusal to let him help or maybe at the situation. She wasn’t sure. Unblinking, he focused his gaze out the windshield.
Colin gaped up at Piper from his perch on her lap with a, What the hell is wrong with you? stare.
It had been a long time since she’d let a guy distract her—not that she would admit it out loud to anyone. Her education had been her priority for the past eight years, and her licensing exam was coming up. She wasn’t about to lose focus now. A tiny little voice in the back of Piper’s mind reminded her that there was something else still holding her back.
Aiden cared for her. That much was clear, but too many questions lingered between them, acting as a barrier. And all of it surrounded his work and his way-outdated business practices. His number one, black and white rule: I don’t like mixing business with pleasure. Clearly he’d broken that rule with her, but he was obviously struggling with the new grey area their relationship had created. It’s not like she’d ever been a CEO of a big, important company, so she knew it was more complicated than that. But how could she fully trust someone who didn’t trust her enough to tell her … whatever he was keeping from her?
As they approached her apartment complex, Piper started giving Aiden instructions down winding roads and one-way streets. He turned at the right places, but she could tell he was distracted by whatever was going on beneath that bedhead hair of his.
“I just don’t like it. What if this Barney guy isn’t the one who started the fire? And obviously he wasn’t the one who tried to hit us with a car in the alley. Someone else
that’s involved in this is still out there.” The heated leather steering wheel squeaked as his grip tightened around it. “It might not even have anything to do with the center. They could be targeting you personally.”
She rubbed her fingers over her temple where a headache was forming. She recalled what Inspector Samuels had said the night of the fire. What if they were targeting her simply because she fought so hard to keep the center afloat? “We don’t know that for sure.”
He snorted, like he didn’t believe that. Hell, neither did she. It was wishful thinking.
“Please stay at my house.”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” she said, more to convince herself than him. She was twenty-six years old. She could sleep all by herself, no night-light or anything. Well, Mr. Wiggles, her ratty childhood teddy bear, might make an appearance, but no one but Colin had to know about that. To the rest of the world, she was just fine, fine, fine. She felt that uncertain question mark pop into her head again.
Piper pointed to the building ahead. “Here we are. Casa de Summers.”
It was an old sixties cement block with tiny uniform windows covered in aluminum foil—the poor man’s attempt at temperature control—and people’s tighty-whities hanging above their balconies.
Aiden pulled into a guest parking space next to the broken-down Chevy truck that had been a permanent fixture since she’d moved in. He killed the engine, and in the silence that followed Piper laid her head back against the leather seat and took a deep breath.
She was exhausted. Between her practicum shifts at the hospital, preparing for her exam, pulling more time at the center, graduation, taking extra work with the telegram agency, and oh yeah, fighting for her life, the only thing that seemed safe, constant, was Aiden—despite all the uncertainties she’d yet to confront him about. When she was around him seemed like the only time she could relax.
Something touched Piper’s cheek. She jolted in her seat, blinking rapidly at the digital clock on the dash. It told her it was eleven o’clock at night.
“You still with me?” Aiden asked, his voice hushed. “I thought you might be more comfortable sleeping in a bed rather than my cramped car.”
“You haven’t seen my apartment yet,” she said sarcastically.
She cracked open the car door. The air rushed in, raising goose bumps, clearing the sleepy fog from her brain. Colin hopped down to the pavement, searching for a tire to pee on.
“Can I walk you to your apartment, at least?” Aiden asked.
She thought of the crumbling stucco ceiling in the foyer, the chipped paint on the peach walls, the stale smell of over fifty years of cigarette smoke marinated into the very bones of the building. She fidgeted with her purse. “I’m fine, really.”
He flinched again, like an annoyed twitch.
“Besides, you might get the carpets clean with your shoes.”
He exhaled in a resigned sort of way. “All right. Call me first thing in the morning?”
She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. “Definitely.”
“I’ll wait until you get into the building.”
Before she crawled out, she raised her eyes to the third floor of her building, wishing her home wasn’t such an embarrassment, and that’s when she noticed something off about it. She paused for a moment, counting a second time, just to be sure. The second apartment in, third from the bottom—yes, that was her apartment. The lights were on. She was positive she’d turned them off. Her insides melted as she began to dread what that meant.
Aiden must have seen the worry in her expression. “What’s wrong?”
“I might not be spending the night alone, after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think someone’s in my apartment.”
Grabbing her purse, Piper called for Colin and headed to the building’s back door to unlock it. Aiden’s Jaguar chirped as he set the alarm and followed her. When she whipped open the entrance door, she wrinkled her nose at the smell of boiled cabbage that permeated the stairwell.
“Home sweet home,” she muttered under her breath.
Usually the smell felt familiar, comforting even, after the last eight years, but that night it seemed unusually pungent and palpable. Conscious of Aiden there, she noticed the mystery stain on the second-landing carpet for the first time.
It wasn’t the mansion Aiden’s home was, but she wasted no time worrying about what he thought. She took the stairs as fast as her legs would let her. She hoped, wished, that her apartment was still intact, wished for it over and over as if the power of it could make it true. Like any time she bought a lottery ticket.
But it had yet to work for the lottery, and as her apartment came into view she knew her wish didn’t work that night, either.
28
Dog’s Breakfast
Piper’s apartment door was flung wide open. The wooden frame was cracked where the lock had been pried free. Scratches, maybe from a crowbar, marred the fake plastic coating. It looked so violent and wrong. Her life had been turned upside down that weekend, but this was different. This was her home, her place of solitude. It was supposed to feel safe. Now it felt violated.
Colin sensed something was amiss and struggled in her arms. Numbly, she set him down. She was also dimly aware that Aiden was on the phone with the cops, but her focus remained on the wreckage in front of her. She only had to take a couple of steps into the sixties apartment to see the kitchen and living room, or at least what once resembled them.
The mismatched Ikea table and chairs were overturned, and most of the legs had been busted off. Cupboard doors hung at angles from their hinges, dish fragments decorated the floor like mosaic artwork, and it looked like the fridge had vomited its contents on the kitchen floor—not that there’d been much more than condiments.
Piper’s gaze moved across the room, taking in the things that were hers but now felt like a stranger’s. She gaped at the living room. Stuffing spewed from several knife gashes in her secondhand floral sofa, the drapes had received a drastic trim, and an Ikea table leg had found its way through her small TV screen—not that it mattered since the cable company had probably canceled her service already. New mystery stains marred the dingy carpet, which wasn’t much of a loss since it hadn’t been great to begin with. There were shredded books, diced houseplants, and overturned furniture.
Piper turned away, unable to take stock anymore. It was pointless; nothing had gone untouched.
Aiden hung up the phone and reached out to place a comforting hand on the back of Piper’s neck. But she didn’t cry, she didn’t gasp and swear, she just exhaled and leaned against the wall resigning to it, like “That just figures.”
“The cops were already called,” Aiden said. “They’re almost here.”
“Sorry the place is such a mess,” she told him. “I gave the maid a day off.” A bubble of laughter floated up to Piper’s lips and she had to clamp them down to hold it back. She wondered if it was the stress combined with the lack of sleep. It could all be a big hallucination. Maybe she was losing her mind. One could only hope, right?
At least Aiden hadn’t seen what her place was like before, she told herself. Maybe he’d assume it looked like crap because of the ransacking. But in reality, it was a dump either way. A giggle popped out before she could stop it. She ran a hand though her hair, feeling like she could laugh and cry at the same time.
They waited in the hall in silence until the cops arrived. She answered the usual questions, the who, what, where, when, and why. If only she knew who the “who” was. Another hour passed before their identification unit started poking around her stuff, observing the state of her junk, lifting things with pens, taking photos.
Oh God, she thought, her mind racing in wild, not completely rational directions. They’ll find my stash of vibrators. But she figured they saw worse stuff than that. Besides, she had more important things to worry about besides her purple Rabbit.
“Why would someone do this?�
� she asked. “What would someone have to gain from ruining my cheap crap?” Crap it might have been, but it was her crap, selected and arranged specially to form a home, her home. And as cheap as it might have been, it’s not like she had the money to replace it.
“It could be the same person that’s targeting the rescue center. Or Barney Miller, if he’s not one and the same.”
“Or Laura.” She glanced at him sidelong. “Or your PR, Tamara.”
“Not that again. Tamara wouldn’t, couldn’t, do something like this.”
“You just haven’t seen the real her.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that it has to be connected. It’s not a coincidence.”
“Either that or I’m the unluckiest person I know.”
“I’m not kidding. I’m worried about you. Someone is out to get you.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “This is serious.”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?”
“You’re staying with me tonight,” he said firmly.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, her heart skipped a beat. That would be one way to get her mind off things.
“Oh, it’s going to be much longer than just a night,” a male voice said from the stairwell behind them.
Piper spun to find her landlord’s round beer belly poking through the entry into the hallway, like he was going to give birth to a beach ball at any minute. He scowled at the state of her apartment.
“Steve. Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll get this cleaned up.”
“You’re damn right you will. And you’ve got three days to do it.” He used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat off his face from climbing the stairs.
“Three days? Until what?”
“Until you’re out on your ass.” He jabbed a finger at her. “Consider this a notice of eviction.”
She scowled at the short man. “Eviction? Steve, you can’t mean it. This wasn’t my fault.”
Aiden straightened his tie, like a boxer would slip on his gloves, preparing for a fight. “You can’t evict her because someone broke into her apartment. If anything, your building’s poor security features led to the destruction of her property.”
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