by Grant, Pippa
“Rawk! Don’t number two on the poop deck, asshole! Rawk!”
There’s a flutter of wings.
Tillie Jean grunts, and the shadow of her legs flails as the beam off her flashlight flickers and turns wildly. “I swear to the pirate gods, you mangy aaaaaah!”
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I don’t think, I just move, because she’s falling off the roof.
She’s falling off the roof.
I shove the ladder and leap to grab her, heart in my throat, lungs shrinking.
Have to cushion her fall.
Stop her neck from snapping.
Stop her head from hitting the ground.
Stop Cooper from killing me for letting his sister dive off the roof on my watch.
I don’t know what part of her body connects with me first, but my grand plan to catch her in my arms immediately fails. I’m stumbling backwards, propelled by the weight of a full-grown woman colliding wrong with my shoulder.
Fuck.
My shoulder.
It— “Oof,” I grunt.
My ass hits the dirt under a rock.
Specifically, a Tillie Jean Rock, who’s sprawled across me and oof-ing herself while my palms go clammy and my throat tightens and my heart tries to run a marathon in four-point-two seconds.
Reason number seventy-two million that I hate this woman…
“What are you doing?” she gasps. “You could’ve hurt yourself, and then what would the Fireballs do? Oh, shit. Are you hurt? Tell me you’re not hurt. Max? Max!”
There’s light in my eyeballs again, and I can’t shield my face. She’s still on top of my arms, and even if she wasn’t, I’m not sure I could breathe.
Dammit.
Fuck.
I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.
“Put that fucking light away.” The order comes out on a gasp, but I’m breathing.
Not having an episode.
I’m breathing.
I’m okay. Not dead.
She’s not dead.
She’s annoying. She can’t be annoying if she’s dead.
Except it’s Tillie Jean. She probably could be annoying if she was dead, and thank fuck, that does it.
Thinking of TJ as a cranky old ghost yelling at parrots outside of Cooper’s window almost has me smiling, which is the weirdest sensation ever, and almost smiling has my pulse evening out and my breath coming steadier.
My back is cold and wet. I’m in the grass. Better than concrete. I test my shoulder, then glare at the light. “Are you okay?”
“Totally fine. I do this all the time.”
Hell.
I think she’s telling the truth.
Not gonna help the anxiety here. “You fall off roofs all the time.”
“I live with Long Beak Silver. And I re-roofed my house myself last summer. It’s a short house. I can handle this. Back to you, please. Where does it hurt? Can you move? Can you stand? Can you walk? Cooper’s gonna kill me. And not like let Grady’s goat into my house to eat my garbage kind of kill me either.”
Her fingers are probing me everywhere. My shoulders. My neck. My chest.
And it’s causing one very unfortunate reaction south of my belt.
Tillie Jean Rock is not supposed to make my body react like this.
I grunt and sit up, shoving her aside. “Stay off roofs.”
She makes a low growl.
My dick leaps to full attention.
So I leap too. Right to my feet, carrying me across the yard to my house, where I will go inside, make sure my shoulder’s just twinged and not injured, meditate, drink water, and then, if necessary, whack off in the shower while I think about anyone besides Tillie Jean.
Reason number eleven thousand that I hate this woman: I can’t jerk off while thinking about her if I don’t want to lose the best friend I’ve ever had.
Not how I wanted to start my day.
But I’m pretty sure this is life in Shipwreck.
Which means I can fight it, I can leave, or I can figure out how to live with it.
6
Tillie Jean
By noon, it’s pretty obvious I twisted my ankle falling off my roof this morning.
Not that I’ll admit that to anyone.
Nor will I admit what my heart was doing the whole time I was lying on Max in the dirt.
Let’s just say I wish I could double-wrap it in addition to my ankle. But I can’t, and I have to work, so I text my friends Mackenzie and Marisol back in Copper Valley and ask if they know of any single guys who need a winter fling, and then I get on with my day, which is basically a double shift at Crusty Nut.
We’re in the middle of our usual lunch rush, which isn’t heavy since November’s not exactly high tourist season for a pirate town in the mountains, and the retreat center at the edge of town isn’t hosting any conferences this week. It’s just Dad and me running things, him in the kitchen, me playing hostess, server, bartender, and busser while sneaking regular coffee into my decaf cup. My local besties are all sitting at the bar sharing a basket of gold nuggets—aka fried pickle chips—while waiting for their lunch entrees.
“What’s with your dad today?” Georgia, Grady’s morning baker at Crow’s Nest down the street, asks.
Annika, Grady’s wife, chokes on her tea while Sloane, who left the city to come live the small-town life here a few years back, cackles.
She’s still waiting for her Hallmark movie romance hero to come and get her.
Me too, Sloane. Me too.
It’s the only downside to small-town living. My on-again, off-again boyfriend of five years who agreed to marry me if we were both thirty and single found himself a wife not long after Grady and Annika hooked up, and the pickings are even slimmer around here now.
Especially since the new people moving to town are mostly young married couples looking for a quiet but not boring spot to raise their kids, which is where Shipwreck totally delivers.
I know the right guy will appear when I’m ready for him—the universe works in mysterious ways like that—but some days I wish it would hurry up.
“You didn’t hear?” Sloane’s dropping her voice while still cackling. “You know how Robinson Simmons is renting that room over their garage? He heard noises in the house this morning and—”
“And we don’t need to hear the rest of this story,” I interrupt as I bend over and straighten the bottle of wine, making sure I don’t need to run back to the storeroom and get more before lunch.
Probably not.
There aren’t a lot of people who order wine with lunch here.
“Again?” Georgia asks. “That poor boy. You’d think he’d learn.”
“Grady and Cooper are having a talk with both him and Trevor Stafford later today to offer tips on the best earplugs to use and which noises don’t require the senior citizens to be checked on.” Annika’s eyes are extra twinkly today. They’ve been twinkly since she told Grady they were expecting a baby right before their wedding a few weeks ago, but this is next-level twinkle. They clearly had a good honeymoon.
“Again?” Georgia repeats.
“They think it might sink in this time. Is it wrong to hope it doesn’t?”
I glare at my sister-in-law. She might think it’s hilarious that my parents get frisky still, but I don’t want to hear about it. “Yes.”
“What about you, TJ?” Sloane asks. “Any more excitement with your temporary neighbor?”
“Mr. Growly Bear with a stick up his ass? He’s ignoring me when he’s not growling at me.” And trying to catch me while I fall off my roof.
Holy muscles, Blackbeard. There’s knowing a man is large, and there’s feeling how large a man is for yourself, again, and dammit.
There goes another hot flash, along with another memory of him kissing me outside The Grog a couple weeks ago. I gulp my coffee to scald my tongue and distract myself.
“You still flirting with him?”
I grin even thoug
h I want to fan myself, and also want to kick myself for needing to fan myself. “Incessantly,” I lie, since I’ve hardly seen him. Pretty sure he’s avoiding me. “It’s the trick in my back pocket that sets Cooper off every time.”
Annika slides her glass across the bar to me. “I am so glad I don’t have brothers.”
“You practically grew up with Cooper as your brother, and you have Bailey. She’s as much of a handful as they were at her age.”
“Or more,” Georgia mutters.
We all laugh, but Annika’s wincing at the mention of her teenage sister as I refill her water.
There’s so much truth to Georgia’s statement.
“Has Max retaliated for the glitter bombing?” Sloane asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t think he’s the prankster type.”
“Are you kidding?” Georgia asks. “He was at Crow’s Nest yesterday telling Grady about hiding stuffed turtles in Trevor’s locker and laughing about that Fiery thong Mackenzie made Brooks wear last season.”
“So he’s not the prankster type with me. He’s not the acknowledge Tillie Jean is anything other than a pest type with me either. It’s like he’s never gotten over—”
I cut myself off.
And my friends lean in.
“Gotten over what?” Annika asks.
“I smell a story,” Sloane adds.
Georgia cackles. “Gotten over how they met.” She’s a Shipwreck native, and so naturally, she heard as much of the story as Cooper knows.
Also, I don’t care how muscly Max is, he is dead if he ever breathes a word to anyone about the other half of what happened.
And I don’t mean like the heart attack I was planning to give Grady this morning with delivery boxes of broken plates in retribution for the fake puke he planted in the Crusty Nut fridge last week, which doesn’t sound like a bad prank until you find out Grady’s been dreaming of replacing all of the plain Crow’s Nest plates with custom pottery for over a year, and it’s due to arrive any day now.
Definitely not kill Max like that.
I mean tortured for hours and then killed dead dead.
“Oooh, did you have a one-night stand?” Sloane asks.
Annika’s brown eyes light up even more when she smiles. “Or were you hiding in the locker room waiting to prank Cooper and fell out of the air duct when you saw Max n-a-k-e-d?”
I grab a stack of napkins and start rolling silverware. “One, I’m pretty sure Max is n-a-k-e-d practically all the time, so no. And two, he found out I was dating Chance Schwartz and told Cooper.”
“Oh my god, you dated Chance Schwartz? The catcher?” Sloane leans in. “Details. Details.”
“I hooked up with him for like two nights while Ben and I were in one of our off-again phases, Max found out, told Cooper, Cooper hit the roof, Chance got traded, and now it’s common knowledge among the team that I’m off-limits.”
“Oh, come on. Hello, double standard. Like Cooper isn’t just as much of a horn dog as the rest of them.” Sloane shoots a look at the kitchen door and drops her voice. “Your dad does know Cooper’s a horn dog, right?”
“We all pretend none of the rest of us have sex lives and we all get along better that way.” I gesture to Annika. “Artificial insemination and they had to knock Grady out cold to collect his swimmers. That’s what I tell myself.”
She snorts her water out of her nose.
But Sloane’s rolling her eyes. “Cooper should still stay out of your private life. What’s the big deal if you hook up with one of his teammates?”
“I could date one of Cooper’s friends. Grady’s too. They wouldn’t be friends with assholes. But a teammate? They’re stuck together. Might not pick each other if they weren’t. Seriously, how many guys on the team would want Cooper dating their sisters? So it’s not like I don’t get where he was coming from. I just think it’s dumb and it makes his teammates either go out of their way to make sure I know they’re only being nice because I’m Cooper’s sister, or it makes them act like I have cooties.”
The doorbells jingle, and the damn parrot flies into my restaurant a moment before my grandfather strolls in the door.
He’s in full pirate regalia today—Pop, I mean, not the parrot, though that’s not unheard of either—right down to the eye patch, and the sight both makes me smile and also wish my ancestors could’ve maybe been medieval knights instead of pirates.
I love my family, but knights wouldn’t have parrots for pets. They’d have horses.
The stray goats in town aren’t quite the same, though I’ll take them, considering they don’t curse out passing tourists.
“Ahoy, me lassies.” Pop flashes us a wolfish smile and lifts my car keys. “I be finding pirate treasure this morning, and I be in a mood to share. Arr!”
“Your parrot is a nuisance, Pop.” I try very hard to not limp as I walk out from behind the bar, retrieve my keys, and press a kiss to his weathered cheek. He knew they were mine because you don’t live in Shipwreck, with the damn bird around, without learning very quickly to attach a keychain with your name onto your keys. “Look at this place. Practically empty. He scared all the tourists away.”
He grunts an old man grunt, just like he does every time we have this argument. “It’s all those people heading over for sushi day at that Korean place. You on a pegleg today, girlie?”
Dammit. He’s not supposed to notice. Or worry about me. And no, I’m not worried about Crusty Nut losing business to the new restaurants in town. Slow sushi day is normal.
I’d go have sushi lunch myself except one, Dad needs me here so he’s not paying for double help, and two, if there’s any chance that the guys are headed that way, there’s no way I will.
No way I’m giving Max Cole the pleasure of thinking that him calling me a priss for only ordering California rolls led to me branching out and experimenting with a broader variety of items on a sushi menu.
Plus, I really don’t want to see him.
I nod to Pops. “Yep. Getting in the spirit early for next year.”
“Ye be missing your pirate hat.” He pulls his own off and plops it on my head, where it settles so low it almost covers my eyes, smelling like wood smoke and sweat. “There. Now ye be a proper pirate lass. Arr!”
“Thanks, Pop. I feel like a real pirate now.”
“Ye be a real pirate, Matilda Jean. It’s in your blood.”
It is. And it probably explains why lately, I’ve been feeling unsettled.
It’s like I need to get out to sea and pillage and plunder or something.
Have a real vacation, since I forgot to do it last year. Sloane and Georgia and I have been talking about a girls’ weekend away in New York City forever. We should get it on the calendar, but it seems like there’s always something else more important that pops up.
Or possibly I need to crash at Cooper’s place for a weekend of playing video games and catching up for real. We haven’t had much of a chance yet this off-season between his time with the guys and the increase in endorsement deals he’s working through. He’s even taking longer to prank me back—with anything good, I mean—which is killing some of my joy in the off-season too.
The bells over the door jingle again, and speak of the devil, there he is.
Cooper walks in, makes eye contact, and starts grinning. “TJ. Long time no see. How’s my favorite sister?”
“Meek and humble and not planning any revenge at all for someone replacing my sugar with salt.” Which was super lame as far as pranks go, and makes me wonder what else he’s planning while he thinks I think that’s the worst he’ll do.
Or if he’s giving me up.
If he’s outgrown me now that he plays for a team that wins.
Is this the universe’s way of telling me I, too, need to move on? Is that why I’m feeling off lately?
Dammit. Where’s my coffee? I need more caffeine to handle thoughts like this.
He shakes his head like he has no idea what I’m talking about
. “Grady’s really giving you a hard time, isn’t he?”
He’s not. Not really. I actually wonder if the fake puke was one of my cousins. “Yep. It’s all Grady.”
Trevor, Robinson, and Max all file in behind my brother.
“Hey, Max.” I wink just to annoy him. Again. “Lookin’ good today. Take the seat by the window. It’s got the best view.”
A muscle in his cheek twitches.
Cooper growls.
And I turn and sashay back to the bar.
Or try to.
Stupid ankle.
“That be a damn good pegleg walk,” Pop says.
“It’s all that pirate in my blood.”
My three friends are wearing identical frowns, which is remarkable considering they look nothing alike.
“Order up,” Dad calls. “TJ? Where’d you hide the mustard?”
I paste on a smile and get back to work.
My ankle will heal. The guys will get food and go. And tomorrow, Max will continue to pretend he didn’t kiss me two weeks ago, that he didn’t catch me falling off a roof this morning, and he’s never seen me naked.
Just like my overprotective brother wants.
It’s what’s best for the Fireballs, right?
And that’s all that matters.
Dammit.
7
Max
Tillie Jean’s limping.
It shouldn’t piss me off. What she does isn’t my business. But she’s limping after she fell off a roof this morning, which means she probably needs to see a doctor, and instead, she’s pulling a full shift at a restaurant.
Cooper nudges me hard. “You’re not staring at TJ’s ass, are you?”
I shake my head automatically and wrench my gaze away from her to look Cooper straight in the eye. “No. Her head. Her hat’s a train wreck.”
Reason number two. Her ass. She has such a fucking fantastic ass that it was the very second thing to ever go on my list of things I hate about her.
He relaxes back into his seat, his usual grin returning. “It is, isn’t it? Pop swears it’s been passed down through the family from Thorny Rock himself. Grady’s gonna get it one day. Can you imagine? Wearing seven generations of your ancestors’ hair grease for forty years?”