by Julie Archer
“I’ll see what I can sort out.” She cast one final lingering look at him and left the room.
Once she’d gone, Mal let out a low whistle. What on earth was going on?
Not half an hour later, he asked himself the same question as he rounded the top of Highview Hill. Puffing heavily, he noted that his ambitions for running far outweighed his actual ability. It had been such a long time since he’d done more than charge about a stage or jog on a hotel treadmill that he’d forgotten how tough it was. The Florida heat beat down on him, his running outfit a definite mistake. Aiming to hide himself from the locals, he’d found a pair of dark jogging pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. He’d added a baseball cap and dark glasses to his disguise and now the cap was sticking to his head. The sweat was streaming over his body as he pounded the sidewalks, and his head whirled with a hundred thoughts at the same time.
He knew calling the tour off had been the right thing to do. If he’d kept going with his current mindset, he would have ended up in therapy or hospital—or both.
Piper’s face came unbidden into his head. Her reaction at finding him practically naked that morning surprised him. He was sure Therese said she wasn’t a fan or a mad stalker or anything. What was it he’d thought at the time? The best of the crazy? The more he thought, the more the germs of an idea for a song came to him. He came to a halt on the sidewalk, near the games arcade and tattoo shop. The food truck, Batten Down The Hashes, was doing a roaring trade as usual, and it took all of his willpower not to stop and get something. He didn’t want to ruin Piper’s lunch. His eyes darted around, looking to see if anyone had recognized him. He thought it unlikely, given his current attire. More lyrics came into his head and he knew that if he didn’t head home, he’d forget them.
I hadn’t met you before…you didn’t know me and I didn’t know you…we could be together, ignore what they think…you’re the best of the crazy…
Could he make that work? He did a couple of stretches and hoped that his body would at least get him home before breaking. The thought of the new song, and of Piper waiting for him at home, spurred him on. He ignored the aching in his legs and started to run again.
Chapter 9
Piper threw Mal’s dirty clothes into the washer. On autopilot, she grabbed the detergent and softener and poured them into the drawer, before turning the dial to the setting she needed. She stabbed the button to start the cycle and leaned back against the machine. She put a hand to her face, checking that it was indeed as hot as it felt. She wasn’t wrong—she was burning. It was partly from embarrassment at catching Mal semi-naked, but mostly it was to do with the realization that she had a crush on him. Not just a ‘fan with a crush on their favorite singer’ kind of thing. Something more than that. She needed to talk to someone about it.
She ran up to her room and unearthed her phone from the bedside table. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she texted Bronte to see if her friend was available for lunch. After a quick-fire text conversation, they arranged to meet shortly after five when Bronte finished work. Knowing that she couldn’t face Mal, at least until she’d spoken through her feelings with someone, she decided that the best course of action would be to hide out somewhere for the rest of the day. She left a note on the kitchen table for Mal, saying that she had gone out and would be back later, but she’d left something for lunch in the refrigerator. It took her three attempts at the note. Her original missive had a kiss at the end next to her name. The second one had crossings out and spelling mistakes. She almost felt like writing ‘Gone out, lunch in refrigerator, back for dinner’, although that felt like something she would have said to her mother when she was in high school. She explained herself as best she could, gathered her bag and sunglasses, and left the house.
The walk into the town centre did a lot to calm her. Piper breathed in the clean air and enjoyed her surroundings. As she headed along the seafront, she thought she caught sight of Mal, bent over and breathing heavily near Batten Down The Hashes. Worried that he might spot her, she dashed into the closest shop, not knowing where she had ended up until a skinny woman with her arms covered in tattoos approached her.
“Can I help you?”
Piper turned and came face to face with a tall, skinny woman with short cropped peroxide hair. As their eyes met, Piper heard a distant drone—a tattoo gun—and a couple of heavily inked guys were also staring at her.
“Um, gosh, I…” Piper’s eyes darted outside again. It seemed that Mal had gone. She could only hope that he was on the way home and wasn’t waiting a little way along the sidewalk.
“Did you want to schedule some work?” the woman asked. Her eyes skimmed over Piper’s shorts and T-shirt and clearly unadorned limbs.
Piper had never been brave enough to brand herself. She did like tattoos, but considered herself too straight to ever have one. “Sorry, no, I just came in here to avoid someone.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Sorry,” Piper said again. When she was sure the coast was clear, she headed back out into the street.
It was still a little while before she was due to meet Bronte, and Piper decided that she’d pretend to be a tourist. She spent several hours pottering about the Bay, looking around the pirate museum and art gallery before checking out the souvenir shop. As she browsed, she imagined that one day they would be selling her jewelry, and she envisaged the display case it would be in, the way she would have it laid out to show it off best, the prices she could charge…
“Is there anything I can specifically help you with?”
For the second time that afternoon, Piper was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The gentleman that owned the shop had completely dismissed her when she had been looking for a job, and now he was approaching her as a customer. She remembered he hadn’t been looking for staff, but maybe he was open to new products to sell.
“Do you accept items from local designers?” she asked. The words came out strongly, making her sound braver than she felt. “Jewelry in particular.”
“For us to sell on your behalf?” His nose wrinkled.
Piper nodded. “Yes. There would be a commission, obviously, but we could work something out.”
“Do you have anything with you?”
As it had been a spur of the moment decision to ask about sales, Piper was unprepared. The only thing she had was a couple of photographs on her phone of some old designs. She fumbled in her bag. “I can probably find pictures, if you give me a minute.”
The man swept away on his heel. “If you were planning a pitch, you should have been more prepared. I don’t have time for this now.” He made a beeline for an elderly couple, who looked as if they were planning to spend heaps of money.
Deflated, Piper left the shop. In a way, she knew he was right—just turning up at a shop with a vague idea was no way to come across as a competent, believable businesswoman. She’d have to work on that. She made her way along the street, past the amusement park and Providence Park, past the statue of Destiny and her lover. Her thoughts turned to Mal again. She needed to talk to Bronte.
Thankfully, her friend was already waiting at a table outside the Wilde Pirate. Bronte looked up from her phone and waved.
“I was just texting you to see what you wanted to drink,” she called.
“My treat. What do you want?”
“Maybe a white wine and soda?”
Piper went to the bar and ordered. She chatted briefly with Conor Callaghan and asked how Josh was getting on. She was pleased to note that he wasn’t on shift that evening; the last thing she needed was her brother listening in on a conversation about her possible feelings for Mal Colten. She took the drinks to the table and placed the glass down in front of Bronte. Piper took a slug of her own drink—wine without the soda—and exhaled loudly.
“What’s going on?” Bronte cut straight to it.
Piper pulled her sunglasses over her eyes. “I think I might have a crush on my employer…”
>
“You have what?”
Just saying the words out loud seemed to cement the idea in Piper’s head. “Obviously you knew about the job. Well, Mal wasn’t meant to be there but apparently he cancelled the tour and came home early.”
Bronte nodded. “Yeah, I read something about that on TMZ. People certainly aren’t happy.”
“I invited Josh, Seb, and Milla over for dinner last night and all of a sudden he just turned up. He threw my brother and his friends out, but then apologized to me this morning by making breakfast.”
Bronte’s eyebrows shot up. “He made you breakfast?”
“By that, I mean he put stuff on the table; it wasn’t like a great show of culinary excellence or anything. We talked and I offered to leave, but he persuaded me to stay.” Piper took another sip of her wine. “Then I went to start on chores and went to get his laundry—”
“Oh my God, you get to do his laundry!” Bronte couldn’t help but laugh.
“But then I went into his bedroom and he was just standing there in his underwear.”
This time Bronte reached for her drink, taking a few quick sips. “Was it worth it?”
Piper sighed dreamily as she remembered Mal’s muscled chest and taut abs. “Absolutely.”
“What are you going to do? I know he split up from that blogger chick a while back.”
Describing Cora Appleby as ‘that blogger chick’ was an understatement, and Piper paled in comparison. “He’s not going to be interested in someone like me!”
“Why not? You’re gorgeous, intelligent, driven…”
Piper thought back to her encounter in the souvenir shop and silently disagreed with the third part. “I’m just his house sitter, nothing else. Maybe I shouldn’t even be that; maybe I should quit.”
Bronte shook her head. “Geez, Piper, you’ve been there a whole day and already you want to leave. Think about it, you’ve got a great place to live, you can decide what to do with your life, and you’ve got a hot rock star who will be waiting desperately for your next meal.” She pinched Piper’s arm. “What more could you ask for?”
Chapter 10
Mal got back from his run, hot, sweaty and aching in places he didn’t know he had. Although he kept relatively in shape, the majority of his fitness routine took place in hotel gyms and on machines. None of them had the terrain that Fortune’s Bay had or the balmy Florida coast temperatures. He called out to Piper as he entered the living area, but there was no response. There was a piece of paper on the table with a note explaining that she was meeting a friend that afternoon, but would be back for dinner and there was something for his lunch in the refrigerator. A smile crossed his face. Alena wouldn’t have gone to all that effort. He was capable of hunter-gathering a little something for lunch from his own kitchen. As he climbed the stairs to his room, he couldn’t help but think back to his and Piper’s encounter that morning. The thought intensified as he stripped off his running gear and threw it into the laundry basket. He stepped into the shower and turned the temperature to icy cold to stop those thoughts. Given his recent romantic involvements since splitting with Cora, it didn’t seem fair to subject Piper to something similar. She was worth more than a one-night stand. The sketchy lyrics of the song that had been going round and round in his head came back to him. He knew that he needed to be quick if he wanted to get them down and make them work. Shivering against the enforced iciness, he toweled himself off and pulled on some clothes.
Stopping off in the kitchen for a plate of the leftover pasta and an organic apple juice—totally ignoring the other food Piper had left for him—Mal headed downstairs into the studio. As he ate, he scrawled the words onto a sheet of paper, reveling in the feeling of a new song coming together. Once he’d finished, he went over to his guitar rack and selected one of his favorite acoustic guitars—a Gibson J-45 from the Antique Range. He checked the tuning and tightened a couple of the strings. He hummed a vague tune and tried to match the chords to it. Nothing sounded quite right. Putting the guitar down, he decided to take a break.
He switched on the TV and found a rock-music channel that would provide him with some background while he tried to work out what to do with the song. To distract himself, he picked up his phone and typed Piper’s name into a search bar. Sure enough, there were a couple of social media accounts that contained photos of her out with friends, a few inspirational quotes and a couple of posts about losing her job. Just as Therese had suggested, there was nothing contentious about her or anything to suggest that she was a mad fan of his.
Mal studied one of the pictures of Piper. Her wavy, black hair cascaded over her shoulders, her blue eyes sparkled, and her smile took over the whole of her face. She looked happy and carefree. Mal couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like that. He felt bad about the way he’d treated her when he’d first arrived home. He’d still been in tour mode and hadn’t relaxed into the laid-back Fortune’s Bay atmosphere. Throwing her brother and her friends out had been wrong and he thought he ought to make it up to her. He opened up his laptop, his fingers hovering above the keys. Flowers didn’t seem right—not to mention clichéd. Then he remembered their conversation that morning and how she’d shared her jewelry ambitions with him. Was there something he could do to help that? He started searching courses, but then realized that she probably needed tools, a workshop, and space to be able to make something tangible. There was definitely room for her in the house to have a studio or something. After a while, the words floated around the screen as he read things that he wasn’t familiar with. He guessed this is what it would be like for someone who didn’t have a clue about guitars. Just as he thought he’d found the perfect thing, his phone rang. Boyd’s name flashed up on the screen and Mal’s heart sank.
“Mal? Where are you?” snapped Boyd.
Mal bit back the sarcastic response he wanted to make and instead kept it polite. “Chilling out at home, working on some new stuff.”
“I guess you haven’t seen the response to your tour cancellation?”
“I don’t exactly Google myself every day, you know.” Mal paused. “It’s not positive though, am I right?”
Boyd snorted. “You could say that. Although I don’t think we’re going to get sued, there’s a hell of a lot of money to pay back in terms of ticket sales and cancellation fees for the venues.”
“But we can afford it?”
“Just about. You’re going to need to do something to make it up though. You need to write another bestseller.”
Mal looked at the words on the sheets of paper in front of him. If he could get them right, he could have a chance at that top spot. It wasn’t the right time to share them with Boyd though. He wanted Piper to be the first to hear them. “I can try,” he said instead.
“You’re getting some rest? Getting some inspiration for new material?”
“I’ve been home less than twenty-four hours, Boyd,” said Mal. “Although I did go for a run this morning and have a couple of new ideas that might work.”
“Good to hear. How’s your new house sitter working out?”
Just thinking about Piper made him smile. Even though he’d only known her a few hours and barely spoken to her, he was looking forward to helping her—if she’d let him. “I think she’ll be fine.”
Boyd changed the subject back to the cancelled tour and read out a few choice comments from the social media updates Therese had passed over to him. Mal cringed just hearing some of them. It wasn’t in his nature to let people down. Boyd was right: he needed to do something to make it up to his fans.
“I’ll be in touch again soon. Keep me posted on the new material.” Boyd hung up.
Mal turned his attention back to his laptop and the present he wanted to get Piper. His eyes fell on the perfect tool kit. The pack contained things like adjustable saws, tweezers, binding wire, pliers of various shapes and sizes, cutters, and a soldering block. It appeared to be everything that a budding designer would need. Without thinking any f
urther, he punched in his credit card details and delivery address. He hoped she would take the gift in the spirit it was intended. Now, he just needed to write that song and work out what to do about all the refunds.
Chapter 11
Over the next few days, Piper and Mal fell into a routine. It started with Mal making breakfast, then Piper went into town for supplies while Mal worked out. She made them a light lunch before they both worked through the afternoon in their two separate downstairs spaces: he writing new songs and she creating designs. Around six-thirty, Piper would sort out dinner and afterward they’d either watch a movie or listen to some music. It was a simple, peaceful existence and one that Piper was grateful for.
It was on a Thursday afternoon that the pile of balled-up pieces of paper was growing bigger the longer Piper worked. She was trying to work on a new design, and everything she drew was either wrong or way too ambitious for her current skill level. Frustration was getting the better of her. Plus, once she had finished the designs, she really needed to get on with making some prototypes to test out. That meant trying to sort out some tools and a space in which to work. Bronte had given her a heads-up about there being a room at the community center she might be able to use, although it would come at a cost and she didn’t know if she’d be free to use it whenever she wanted. The thought of having to lug her stuff there wasn’t appealing, and she didn’t know if it would be safe to leave it there.
There hadn’t been any sound from where Mal was working for a while. She was getting used to hearing the same chords over and over again as he tried to find the right phrasing for the song. Whatever he created sounded great to her. She often found herself humming along, usually when she was making dinner. She lifted her head, hearing a noise. Mal lurked in the doorway, his hands behind his back.