by Sarah Hegger
“You should be out on a date,” Phi said from behind him.
“If I was out on a date, Phi, I wouldn’t be here fixing your sink.”
“Yes, you would.”
Yeah, he would. He turned off the water to the sink. “Have you got some towels or something?”
She bustled into the attached laundry and reappeared with an armload of fluffy pink towels.
Wheels crunched on the gravel outside the kitchen and Phi dropped the towels on the floor next to him. She tottered over to the window to stare. A huge smile lit her face and she gave off one of those ear-splitting trills that had made her the world’s greatest dramatic soprano. Everyone, from the mailman to a visiting conductor, got the same happy reception.
He leaned closer to get a better look at the pipes beneath the sink. Were those scratch marks on the elbow joint? Neat furrows all lined up like someone had done that on purpose. He crawled into the cabinet and wriggled onto his back. They didn’t make these spaces for men his size.
“Mathieu?” Phi craned down until her face entered his field of vision. Her painted-on eyebrows arched across her parchment-pale face. “I have a visitor.”
“Is that so?” What the hell, he always played along.
“Indeed.” Her grin was evil enough to have him stop his tinkering with the wrench in midair. “I thought you might like to know about this visitor.”
The kitchen door opened. A pair of black heels tapped into view. The sort of shoes a man wanted to see wrapped around his head, and at the end of a set of legs he hadn’t seen since her last trip to Ghost Falls—Christmas for a flyby visit. His day bloomed into one of those eye-aching blue sky and bright sunlight trips into happy.
Welcome home, Pippa Turner.
* * *
Pippa wrapped her arms around her grandmother and held on for dear life. Thank you, God, she was home. She’d made it in one piece. Missing the bits taken off her by the women at the airport, the car rental lady, and a group glare from a bunch of tourists at the baggage carousel of Salt Lake City Airport.
Phi tightened her arms around Pippa, as if she knew. Of course she knew, Phi always knew. The ache inside her chest unraveled and unlocked the tears. Not once in this whole ghastly two weeks had Pippa cried. But the smell of patchouli oil wiggled underneath her defenses and opened the floodgates. Home. Safe.
“Ma petite.” Phi stroked her back in long, soothing strokes. The jewels encrusting her bodice pressed into Pippa’s chest, like they had all through her childhood. “My poor, sweet girl.”
The tears came thicker and faster, gumming up her throat and blocking her nose until they roared out in great gasping sobs.
Phi absorbed it all, like Pippa knew she would. Quiet murmurs and calming pats that eventually calmed the storm enough for her to speak.
“Now.” Phi cupped Pippa’s face between her pampered palms. “You will tell me all the dreadful things that man did to you.”
The relief almost got her crying again, but Pippa dragged in a deep breath. She could tell Phi everything, about Ray, the vapid blond thing he was boning, her meltdown, the lies—all of it. She had a list of every last one. And Phi would believe her. Not like those sharks surrounding her in LA. “Did you see it?”
Phi’s eyes clouded and her mouth dropped. “I did, my love, and it did not look good.”
“I only watched it once, and I haven’t had the guts to watch it since then.” Pippa’s stomach clenched up so tight she thought she might puke. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to watch the footage a second time, and that one blurred nightmare viewing was enough to know it had to be bad. Plus, the angry women mobbing her everywhere she went pretty much gave the game away.
Phi’s droopy mouth confirmed how bad.
“It was Ray.” Her legs collapsed like overcooked green beans and she needed to sit. The heavy kitchen chair screeched across the stone floor as she pulled it out. “He wanted me gone and used the show to make sure it happened.”
“But why?” Phi threw her shoulders back, looking ready to do battle for Odin. It was the same pose she’d been photographed in while singing Wagner in Milan.
For the first time since Christmas, a real smile curled around the corners of Pippa’s mouth. Drama was hardwired into her grandmother. Her mother hated it, and her sister, Laura, did her best to flatten Phi’s flare. Pippa loved it. It warmed her from the inside and gave her that bit of driftwood she desperately needed. When you were with Phi, you had to go with it.
“Ray wanted a younger piece of ass.” Saying it out loud brought the slow simmer up to the boil again. She’d only turned thirty-two three months ago. How much younger ass did Ray want? The answer stuck like a phlegm ball in the back of her throat. Twentysomething and fresh out of journalism college. Probably Debbie Does Dallas U.
“Men.” Phi snorted and thrust her chin out. The Aida angle, a touch of defiance and high enough to catch the glitter of the follow spot. The expression crumpled and Phi glanced down at the floor. “It’s all about sex for them.”
A grunt sounded from under the sink. Pippa’s nape crawled as her brain sorted this new information. “Phi?” She was afraid to ask. “Is there someone here?”
Phi waved a hand toward the sink, looking way too arch to be innocent. “It is just Mathieu.”
“Thanks, Phi.” A deep, dark country-boy rumble from under the sink.
Just Mathieu! An hysterical scream of laughter gathered in Pippa’s throat. Matt Evans wasn’t just anything, and he was under Phi’s sink listening to every word of this.
“Hey, Agrippina,” said the voice from the floor.
Only one person, other than Phi, called her Agrippina and lived to tell the tale. Sonofabitch, and she’d thought her day was done messing with her. “Hey, Meat.”
“Matt is fixing my sink,” Phi said.
Useful information she might have appreciated . . . say . . . five minutes ago. She leaned back and peered around the side of the table. Sure enough, a set of jeaned legs stuck out from the cupboard. His white T-shirt rode up exposing a couple of inches of tanned, smooth stomach. Matt Evans still had a little something-something going on. A too good looking, seriously charming, hot as hell, cocksure son of a bitch. Seriously nice thighs under those jeans.
“Don’t mind me,” he said.
With Phi listening she might have launched into her men and sex theories.
“We need champagne.” Phi leaped to her feet.
“Champagne?” Pippa dragged her eyes away from the sizeable bulge at the top of those thighs. Matt Evans was packing. “I don’t think I’m in much mood for celebrating.”
“Darling.” Phi flung her hands out in front of her. “Never let them see you bleed. Tonight we drink to your homecoming, and poor, single Matt eventually getting a date. Tomorrow we plot our revenge.”
In Phi’s wake the baize door swung shut with a whisper across the stone floor. Tools clinked from under the sink.
“Are you going to come out from under there?” Pippa craned her neck and caught a glimpse of his firm chin, dotted with stubble.
“Is it safe?”
The edge of another weeping storm swept through her. “Probably not.”
“Younger piece of ass, huh?” Matt chuckled softly. Go ahead, rub it in, you smug shit.
“Dateless, huh?” Hard to believe the man who girls had ripped one another’s hair out for in high school was dateless.
Matt snorted a laugh. “Damn, it looks like someone cut this pipe.”
Phi! Pippa dropped her head to the table with a thud that reverberated all the way to the back of her aching skull. The timing was too convenient to be believed. Not to mention the super-subtle way she’d worked into the conversation how unattached Matt Evans was.
“If you’re done with the crying thing, could you hand me a wrench?”
Was she done with the crying thing? Tears stung her eyes and made her blink. Nope, she had a few tons of water left to shed.
“Wrench.” A tann
ed hand emerged from the cupboard and curled his fingers in her direction. Oh no, he didn’t. The last man to crook his fingers at her . . . had been Matt Evans. She hadn’t responded that time, either.
She was done with taking crap. Hello, Mr. Leg Man, here comes trouble, sashaying over the kitchen floor right at you. Matt and his ogling were one of the best parts of coming home to Ghost Falls. Nothing like steady appreciation to lift a girl’s spirits. Matt didn’t do subtlety, either. Hot, naughty twinkle in his eye, small smile playing on his mouth, he’d hand out that sexy attitude in bucketloads. Her heels rang against the stone floor. She parked a four-inch heel right next to his hip, pressing her ankle in to get his attention. She lifted the other over and trapped him between her legs. Her pencil skirt pulled tight across her thighs.
The man between her thighs stilled. He loaded his voice with enough warning to tell her he was onto her. “Agrippina.”
Through the opening where the sink trap had been she caught his eye, twinkle still there, daring her to do her worst. “Meat.”
His eyes widened as he read her intention a split second before she opened the faucet to max. Water gushed out, straight down the downpipe. His body tensed.
Pippa leaped out of the way as he uncoiled from under the sink. Damn that felt good. Absolutely childish but so good. Turns out, Matt knew some very nasty words. She sprang back as he emerged, shaking his head like a big, wet dog.
“You think that’s funny, do you?” She did. She totally did, and her grin said so. Strong hands fastened around her hips, whipped her right off her feet, and slammed her into a rock-hard, very wet chest. Her feet dangled a foot off the ground. Water spiked his eyelashes and dripped off the end of his nose. “That was not very nice.”
Her blouse clung to her in a sodden mess as he held her in place. She wriggled to get free, mashing her breasts against him. The damp cloth between them vanished against the blaze of warmth coming off his chest. “You can put me down now.” Damn, her voice got all breathy and girly.
He gave her an evil grin and lowered her to the ground, chest rubbing all the way. It felt so good, her little old toes curled in her kick-ass shoes. The smug shit knew it.
Matt stepped back and she got a good eyeful of him. Matt in his twenties had been hot, hot, hot. Today’s Matt was a supercharged version with hard angles and sinewy muscle. He fisted the back of his T-shirt and dragged it over his head.
Holy shit! Hard ridges marched up his belly from his belt to expand into the hard slabs of his pecs. Those shoulders begged to have her sink her teeth into the muscle. Her mouth dried and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
He raised one dark eyebrow at her. “Well.”
She folded her arms over her see-through blouse. “I see you’ve let yourself go.”
“Liar. You were so checking me out.” He laughed, a flash of white teeth that softened his harsh features.
The sound tugged at something buried deep inside her. It bubbled up under her chest and turned her mouth up at the corners.
The look in his topaz eyes warmed into hot, melty chocolate, and reminded her who was the girl here and who was the boy. God, it must be years since a man had looked at her like that. A look like that could make a girl’s day a whole lot better.
Chapter Three
Matt gunned his truck down Headland Drive. Standing in the kitchen flirting with Pippa Turner had made him late. Correction, she called herself Pippa St. Amor now. Damn, the girl got more and more smoking with each year. She’d blown out of town two days after her eighteenth birthday and taken all that heat with her—about the same time he’d decided twenty-two wasn’t too old to ask eighteen out on a date. Like he’d had time to date back then anyway.
Her tears had rocked him. The Pippa he remembered never cried. Not even when she was a freshman and that little prick Declan Sherman tripped her up in the hallway in front of the entire football team. Pippa had gotten up, picked up her books, and calmly kneed Declan in the balls. Declan minced around school for three days after that, and nobody ever messed with Pippa again.
Yet, today in Phi’s kitchen, she’d gone to pieces.
He checked the clock on his console. Damn, late. Late didn’t get the job done, and late meant people waiting for him. Not that Jo had ever managed to get anywhere on time, but that wasn’t the point, as he often told her. He resisted the urge to call and check on Isaac. All his brother had to do was go and see Hank at Builder’s Warehouse and pick up some quarter-inch piping. So why did his gut still burn?
Jo’s teeth-ache orange VW Beetle was parked outside Bella’s. Figured she’d be on time for this. Bella’s was pretty much the only show in town for wedding and prom dresses. He’d come with his sister to choose a prom dress, too, and felt about as useful as he did right now. Bella senior had retired three months ago and left the shop to her granddaughter. Conveniently also named Bella and a classmate of Nate’s.
Maybe he should go and get the quarter-inch pipe and send Isaac dress shopping. He didn’t quite get why Jo didn’t bring Mom with her, but every time he asked, Jo chewed his ear off about how Mom always tried to take over. Always. Women used that word a lot, and he generally took it as a sign to stop listening.
Parked right in front of Bella’s, Bets Schumaker climbed into her car. He waited for her to check her lipstick, finger-comb her hair, and adjust her blouse before she finally got her seatbelt over her and backed out. Slow enough for Matt to hear death breathing in his ear.
Bets smiled and waggled her fingers at him before burning rubber down the road, as if she’d seen the specter of death waiting to take Matt and wanted no part of that. He put five bucks on Bets calling his mom before the day was over.
God, this town! Not even charming enough to make a nostalgic Americana catalog. Of course, the only people who got nostalgic about small towns didn’t spend their lives slowly rusting away in one.
Jo looked up from her phone as he opened the door. Chimes tinkled above his head as he stepped into Bella’s. Just walking in made his balls shrivel. Bella Erikson had a thing for pink and she went wild with it all over her salon— pink and those chandeliers with little dangly crystals on them.
Jo looked about as out of place as he felt, with her heavy biker boots and ragged tee.
Ah hell, she’d added to the tats running down her arms from shoulder to wrist. Not that he had anything against ink, but he would rather it didn’t decorate his baby sister. He could hear Mom’s meltdown already and she wasn’t even here.
Bella bustled over to him with a big, candy-sweet grin on her face. “Matt.”
A tiny blonde, Bella reminded him of a voluptuous Disney fairy with her big blue eyes and perky attitude. Bella always wore the same expression, like he’d handed her a winning lottery ticket just by being here. “So nice to see you again. How is your mother?”
“She’s good.”
He settled his weight on one leg and waded through her usual hi-how-are-ya ritual. Bella stuck to it with a sort of religious reverence. One by one she would go through each member of the family and ask. Wherever and whenever they met up. It was a little annoying, but kindly meant. It actually seemed as if she cared, because she certainly listened closely enough to the answer. Thank God, there weren’t as many Evans kids as the Barrowses. Nine of them, at last count, and it looked like Mrs. Barrows had number ten beneath the hood.
“And Nate?” Bella went a little pinker around the cheeks at the mention of his middle brother. Nate had his pick of women, was knee-deep in them with his position as sheriff. It didn’t hurt that he was the family pretty boy, either.
“Actually, he sends his regards.” It was wrong on so many levels, but he could never resist. Nate would find himself facing one of Bella’s pink casserole dishes before the end of the day. Honey sweet as she was, Bella needed to hang up her apron, for the safety of stomach linings everywhere.
“And Isaac?”
“He’s good.” Telling Bella that Isaac was still thick as pig shit
wouldn’t go down well. Actually, Isaac was far from dumb. Isaac was . . . apathetic. It was as close as he could get to his youngest brother’s issue.
Bella’s face creased in a concerned frown. “Have you heard from Eric?”
“Nope, not lately.”
“I have.” Jo unfolded from a pink, round couch thing. All legs and arms, tall for a girl and graceful. Not that you would notice with the whole gothic grunge thing she had going on.
“You’ve heard from Eric?” The world must be heading straight into the sun.
Jo shrugged. “He called me this morning. He’s coming home for the wedding.”
“Really?” Matt stared at Jo, waiting for her to tell him he was being punked. “We’re talking about the same Eric here? Our brother, Eric. About my height, darker hair, a whole helluva lot uglier.”
A smile lit Jo’s face, and Bella giggled her twinkly, fairy laugh.
Damn, his sister was pretty when she smiled. She didn’t do it enough. Not even when her dickwad fiancé was around. A girl ought to smile a lot around the guy she was about to marry. Okay, he wasn’t a woman and most of the time barely understood what they were jawing about, but it seemed to him brides smiled a lot. They got this sort of glow thing. Jo didn’t glow. She seemed . . . resigned. Grim, even. He’d tried talking to her, but she stonewalled him the entire way. He was her brother, for God’s sake. How much help did she expect from her single brother who had barely enough sensitivity to walk into a dress shop without wanting to run for his life?
Maybe he should try and get Mom to see if she could figure out what was going on with Jo.
Phenomenally stupid idea. So stupid it made the skin of his nape crawl. His mother and Jo in the same room, unsupervised, and talking about feelings? Sweet Jesus!
“Okay.” He smacked a grin onto his face. Jo was getting married. Happiest day of her life and all that. She deserved somebody here looking enthusiastic and he was all she had. Poor kid. “Let’s get you a dress. How do we do this?”
Bella giggled and slapped him on the arm. “Jo has already picked out her favorites. All you have to do is sit over there and tell her what you think.”
