by Liz Kelly
It was also obvious Brooks just wanted it to end.
And when it did, Brooks breathed a noticeable sigh of relief as Vance gave Lolly a quick hug before shaking hands with their opponents and coming off the green victorious. Lolly, exuberant, raced to Brooks and jumped into his arms. Vance,with a big satisfied grin on his face, eyed Piper as he paid and tipped the caddies. Then he came over, shook hands with his father, kissed Genevra’s cheek, and then took hold of Piper’s hand, rubbing his thumb over the top.
He gazed at her intently, conveying his immense satisfaction not only with the victory, but that she was there to witness it.
“You’re the champion,” Piper said softly.
“And you’re my trophy,” he said back.
Mmm, yeah.
Lord, Piper thought with a sigh. I truly am a ridiculous woman.
Annabelle and Duncan drove over in the golf cart. “Celebration on the upper patio?” Annabelle suggested.
“Sounds like a plan,” Vance said without taking his eyes off Piper.
“Piper, can you stay?” Annabelle asked.
“She can,” Vance answered.
“We’ll get a table,” Annabelle said.
Vance pulled his eyes from Piper. “Order champagne,” he told Annabelle. “Have them put it on my account.”
“Tequila for the men.” Duncan’s voice carried behind him as the golf cart sped off.
“Champagne and tequila,” Piper said, lifting a brow. “Sounds like quite the celebration.”
“It did take us seven victories,” Vance said. “How did lunch go with Genevra?”
“I really like her,” Piper admitted. “She’s like this perfect mix of a friend and a mom. Both of which I’m grateful to add to my life.” They began a slow stroll toward the clubhouse. “And she had some ingenious ideas for the groom’s cake. I think the two of us are going to have great fun working together to pull it off.”
“So does that mean you’ll be at the house baking during your two-week vacation?”
Piper threw him a dubious look. “It means, at the very least, I will be in that magnificent kitchen all day next Saturday.”
Vance pulled her arm to slow her progress. Then he spun her in front of him and placed his hands on her hips. “I want you to come to Henderson.”
“I’m already here.”
“I want you to stay.”
That made her smile. “Vance, I’m not averse to spending time in Henderson, you have to know that. But I’m not shacking up with you in the pool house for two weeks. That would just be…embarrassing.”
“You’re kidding, right? Genevra hasn’t spent a night at her place in months.”
“They’re engaged. They’re getting married in a matter of weeks.”
“Yes, but what’s going to be truly embarrassing is when everybody realizes it’s a shotgun wedding. Genevra’s second shotgun wedding.”
Piper quirked a brow. “Lolly and Genevra shared that with me the night your grandmother treated us to dinner. I have to admit I saw Lolly’s point. It’s kinda crazy to wind up with an unexpected pregnancy in this day and age.”
Vance shrugged. “I’m getting a baby brother out of it.”
“They know it’s a boy?”
“I know it’s a boy,” he insisted. They started walking toward the clubhouse again. “How do you like the name Brody?”
***
It wasn't just five o'clock somewhere. It was five o'clock at Henderson Country Club during the heat of July, and the bartenders were busy. Harry appeared as he usually did—out of nowhere—with his tequila shots beautifully presented and placed before everyone around the table. Vance noticed Harry set a shot in front of Genevra with a wink, as if he knew her secret but didn't want to create cause for suspicion.
Lolly downed her shot and immediately reached for her mother’s, which made Brooks flash a glance at Vance. Vance simply grinned back. Brooks was in for a hell of a night.
A tall ice bucket arrived, dripping with condensation and filled with Vance’s bottle of champagne. And, as Harry popped the cork on that, another waiter arrived with what the men really wanted: ice cold beer. Eventually, an iced tea in a cocktail glass was set before Genevra, and when Emelina arrived, Harry had her Long Island Iced Tea ready as she sat.
There were toasts to Lolly and Vance, the champions. There were toasts to Lolly for her efforts in civilizing Vance. There were toasts to the newest Henderson businesses, House of DuVal and E&E Investments, and toasts to the S.H.I.T.s and their top-secret event at The Situation.
There was a toast to Piper, as the returning Hendersonian, and a toast to the Richmond-bred James brothers who were now honorary citizens. There was a whispered toast to the new Mayor of Henderson and an uncharacteristically uncouth toast given by the Keeper of the Debutantes which resulted in riotous laughter and caused a good many eye to drift toward the Evans/DuVal table.
Vance clasped Piper’s hand underneath the table and knew he’d never been happier. Having her in the mix made it complete.
As Emelina left to meet friends for dinner inside and Hale took Genevra by the hand, eager to have her to himself at home, the S.H.I.T.s excused themselves and headed off to do whatever they were planning. That left the three remaining couples to order up appetizers and another round.
“Piper, I finally signed up for Pinterest,” Annabelle said. “Lolly and I can definitely use it as a marketing tool. Though when I looked through your ‘Bake Me a Cake’ Kitchen I saw how it could be sort of a personal bucket list as well. Wouldn’t it be amazing to put all that together someday?”
“Put all what together?” Vance asked, pulling on a nacho.
“Piper’s dream kitchen.”
“What’s this?” Vance asked Piper.
Piper turned all of her sunshine in his direction, causing his heart to hammer hard inside his chest. “One of my boards shows all the elements I would put into my dream kitchen,” she said.
Vance’s curiosity was piqued. He needed to know all about Piper’s dream kitchen because he planned to build it for her.
“And what exactly is Pinterest?”
“It’s a social media thing, with pictures. You sign up for a free account like Facebook, and then you create boards and fill them with pictures from the Internet.”
“Huh. And how does Annabelle get to see your dream kitchen?”
“She just follows me. I’m going to follow her back, because she and Lolly plan to pin pictures of their House of DuVal creations.”
“Thus the marketing tool,” Vance said, trying to figure out a way he could follow Piper’s boards without losing his manhood.
“It’s fun. Harmless fun, unless you get caught up in it and spend an entire morning pinning things rather than working.”
“Well, when you take your two-week vacation, you’ll be able to do all the pinning you want.” He finished his sentence with a kiss to her lips.
Chapter Twenty-six
Piper wasn't exactly tipsy when they arrived at The Situation, but she literally squealed when she saw Jesse James with an electric guitar strapped to his body and his hand strumming at the strings right where his “hoodle” would be. Never mind the microphone in front of his oh-so-sexy mouth. The kid might be eight years her junior but if Vance weren’t in her life, she would definitely do him.
And so would Lolly, apparently, because the two of them pushed and shoved their way to the front of the packed and wild crowd so they could be at the edge of the stage to watch Jesse sing. Screaming like school girls probably would have been embarrassing if they hadn’t had those shots, the champagne, and a couple of beers. As it was, they weren’t the only females crowded up close and screaming as Jesse sang Toby Keith’s “Get Drunk and Be Somebody” and then changed the words to “Should Have Been a Cowboy” to “Should Have Been an Outlaw” with some very explicit lyrics thrown in.
When Lolly got a look at the drummer, Piper thought she was going to convulse with shock. There was her nice, safe
, boring Pinks in a black T-shirt with muscles bulging, banging the drums like a freaking badass and singing backup to Jesse’s Outlaw. Piper couldn't help but look over for Brooks’ reaction, finding him and Vance at the bar. Brooks was not happy, not happy at all, but Vance was laughing his ass off.
All of a sudden, Piper was grabbed from behind and whirled around. It took her a couple seconds to recognize her old friend, Tansy Langford, and to hug her tight. They couldn’t talk over the band and the crowd so they just danced together, along with Lolly, singing and screaming and carrying on like they were preteens at a One Direction concert.
Piper hadn’t had this much fun in about five years, so she didn’t look at the clock, she didn’t turn down a shot, she didn’t think twice when Lolly whipped off her red camisole top to dance around in her red bra alone. Of course, that’s when the Killer of Fun shoved his way through the crowd on the dance floor, whisked Lolly up over his shoulder and carried her out the back door of the bar.
Brooks Bennett. Spoilsport.
With Lolly down, Piper turned to Tansy to continue dancing the night away, until she noticed that Tansy was licking her lips in a very suggestive manner, staring down one unlikely, prepped-out drummer. Holy Mother of God. Piper actually feared for Pinks, afraid Tansy was going to eat him up and spit him out and enjoy every last minute of it.
She noticed Pinks didn’t share that fear, staring right back at Tansy as he rocked out on the drums. Those two were headed for a showdown.
When the last note was played, Piper watched in awe as Jesse James, God of the Henderson Cover Band, took off his guitar to the roar of the crowd, jumped down from the stage, wrapped one arm around her waist, and pulled her tight against his twenty-one-year-old body.
She thought she’d die.
It took about seven seconds to realize The Outlaw was stealing a kiss and then all hell broke loose as Jesse was spun around and punched in the jaw by none other than Officer Evans.
“What the hell?” Jesse stammered, staying on his feet and reaching up to check for blood. “Dude,” he shouted at Vance but pointed at Piper. “She has got to be older than twenty-one.”
Pinks jumped from the stage in the middle of the scene and pushed at both of Jesse’s shoulders. “She’s his,” Pinks said, moving Jesse out of harm’s way and soothing him as he went. “That’s Piper. That’s Vance’s woman.”
The term “she’s his” caused a tickle to crawl up Piper’s cheeks. Piper turned her most flirtatious smile on Vance and batted her eyes. “Is that true? Am I your woman?”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t want you kissin’ anybody else,” he said, his chest pumping. Duncan and Annabelle arrived as the DJ began to spin his albums and the party continued.
“Did you know about this?” Duncan asked with a big grin on his face. “Did you know about this band?” he asked Vance.
“Did you know your outlaw of a brother just had his tongue down Piper’s throat?” Vance shouted.
“What?” Duncan said, confused.
“Okay, let’s move this to the back room,” Annabelle directed. “Come on. Let’s get out of this crowd.”
Vance grabbed on to Piper’s hand and the four of them maneuvered through the crowd, winding their way to the last room of The Situation where the atmosphere was much quieter. They found an empty table and, although there were four chairs, Piper snuggled into Vance’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. He seemed a little surprised, but she liked the way his hands were rubbing up and down her sides.
“Jesse and I have never been introduced,” she said, grinning into Vance’s handsome face. “Don’t blame the kid. I’m afraid I made rather a spectacle of myself.”
Vance groaned, obviously not eager to shift blame.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she said, “if you let him off the hook.”
“Grrrr. Fine. The Outlaw is off the hook. But you are not. This happy look all over your face is making me crazy. You like that you were the one he picked out of the crowd.”
“Yes,” she admitted without remorse. “My feminine pride adores that he picked me. I’m turning thirty, I am reveling in the fact that he picked me. So suck it up and look over at your buddy Duncan and tell him the kid is off the hook.”
Vance’s sigh seemed a bit exaggerated, and Piper could tell that he was really okay with all of it, probably after having gotten one good punch in. Vance looked across the table at Duncan and told him Jesse was forgiven.
And then Duncan, the cannonball kid who had already messed up her hair once this summer, had to go and open his big fat mouth.
“Piper, I didn’t realize you had been engaged to Scott Swanson. I actually know him from law school. Nice guy. I didn’t realize he used to be with Collins & Reese.”
“Wait-wait-wait-just a goddamn minute.” Vance slapped his hand down on the table. “What do you mean, engaged?”
When Duncan realized his mistake, it showed all over his face. His eyes immediately shifted to Piper’s and pleaded for forgiveness. It was obvious he had meant no harm. It probably hadn’t crossed his mind that she’d have kept that from Vance.
Duncan began to stutter. “I—I…God, I’m sorry.”
Annabelle reached out to stroke a soothing palm over Vance’s hand, firm and hard on the table.
“Vance, it was years ago and probably never crossed Piper’s mind to tell you.”
“You knew too?” Vance accused Annabelle.
“Duncan told me. He didn’t think it was a secret, obviously, and like I said, I’m sure Piper—”
But her words were cut off by the scraping sound of a chair as Vance stood up and Piper found herself falling. Hitting the floor hard.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Ouch!”
Vance tried not to let her cry of pain affect him. Tiny little thing that she was flailing around the dirty barroom floor, her dress all wrapped up around those sweet little thighs.
His instinct was to pick her up and cradle her in his arms, protecting her against everything and everyone, but he forced all that down because his itty-bitty self-esteem in the women-who-I-love department was smarting at the news that she’d been goddamn en-fucking-gaged to some asshole lawyer who asshole Duncan knew from his supersonic asshole Carolina fucking law school.
Goddamn, he hated surprises.
Surprise! Your mother left.
Surprise! Lolly’s dating your best friend.
Surprise! Piper was the girl who kissed the shit out of you on the dance floor.
Surprise! The girl you love more than life itself wants to marry someone else.
Or maybe she didn’t, that evil villain Hope cried out to him. Maybe Piper broke her engagement because she realized there was only one man for her. Him.
Yeah, right. Sucker.
No, it could have happened, he tried to convince himself, stepping aside as Duncan and Annabelle pushed him out of the way to help Piper off the floor.
He watched as Piper came up wincing, as Annabelle glared at him, as Duncan looked around for another beer. Finally the three of them stopped fidgeting and stared at him, waiting to see how he was going to handle this.
Well, let’s see. He’d already punched one James brother tonight, so the idea of making it an even two felt kinda good. He’d like that, getting rid of a little aggression on a lawyer.
And punching Duncan would definitely take care of Annabelle, because she’d be all “oh, my sweet baby Duncan” nursing him back to health. Maybe. That one had a mouth on her and a vocabulary she wasn’t afraid to use. The last time they clashed, his ego had come out torn up and beaten near to death. No, thank you.
So, he directed his attention to the one who he’d already decided he couldn’t live without and tried to channel whatever he could from Lolly’s “How To Treat Women Outside the Bedroom” lectures.
Goddammit all to hell.
He watched as Annabelle turned and told Piper, “Come on, we’ll take you home.”
Like hell.
<
br /> “No…no…no,” he said in defeat. “I apologize. I’m sorry. I just…wasn’t…aware.” He eyed Piper, letting her know that this was all her fault. “Annabelle, you might want to cut me some slack here. Finding out Piper was engaged is a bit of a shock.” He looked over at Duncan. “Thanks for that by the way,” he said. “I’m sure Piper appreciates your interest in her love life.”
“Piper, I….” Duncan stumbled.
“I tried to tell him the other night,” Piper said to Duncan. “This is not your fault.”
“The other night when?” Vance scoffed.
“The other night when I said I had a confession to make and you told me that you weren’t my priest,” she shouted.
“I said that?” he asked, trying to remember.
“Yes. I even told you it had to do with our night at The Charlie Horse five years ago, and you said a do-over—”
“Okay. That’s it. Party’s over,” Vance said. He took hold of Piper’s hand and drew her out of the clutches of Snoopy One and Snoopy Two.
“You two,” he said to Duncan and Annabelle. “You go find some other poor couple to bother. Piper and I need to sort this out—alone.”
“Now is probably not a good time to—”
“Now,” Vance insisted cutting Annabelle off. “It’s going to happen right now.”
They all stood still for a moment, silent. Finally Vance pulled Piper after him and headed to the emergency exit at the end of the room. He slammed his palm up against the handle and pulled her into the night.
Then he shoved her up against the brick wall, leaned in, and took her mouth in a desperate kiss. He felt her hands squeeze themselves between them and push against his chest, but that was too damn bad. He had no interest in anything she had to say. Unless it was “Take me now against this wall.”
Annnd here I thought things couldn’t get worse. He pulled himself off Piper and backed up with a curse.
He watched as she panted, her back still pressed against the exterior wall of The Situation. Her eyes were shut tight, like she was trying to suppress tears—and just like that—all the fight went out of him.