Back To Us (Shore Secrets 3)

by Christi Barth

  Piper felt like she was poised on one end of a teeter-totter. Right now, everything could change. Everything had to change. Ward’s offer was out there now, flaring bright in her consciousness. She couldn’t ignore what he’d said. Couldn’t forget it. But was she ready to fall again? Either head over heels...or out of love with him forever? Either way, it would still be a fall.

  “I can’t decide right now. You have to give me time. Every business decision should be carefully mulled over for at least twenty-four hours before proceeding.”

  Ward snickered. Reached out one long arm to tap the row of business books on her shelf. “Did you read that in one of these textbooks?”

  “Maybe.” Absolutely. Quite a few things in Piper had changed since high school. Her utter devotion to research, however, had not lessened one bit. And Ward had always teased her about her fanatical studying. How was this rapport between them suddenly so familiar and easy? “It doesn’t make it any less true.”

  “Don’t you ever go with your gut?” He sauntered closer.

  “That’s risky.”

  A devilish smile flashed across his face. “That’s the fun part.”

  “We can argue over business strategies—or lack thereof—later,” she said archly, giving him a disapproving glare down her nose. “I’m going to have to insist on time to weigh the pros and cons.”

  “It’s Wednesday. I’ll give you until this time on Friday.” He closed the distance between them in one long stride. “I’ll give you something to start off that pro/con list with too.”

  Ward bent, putting his lips on hers before Piper could decide whether to scoot out of reach or not. Probably because a part of her couldn’t believe it was actually happening. There was a very strong possibility she’d passed out from exhaustion and this whole thing was a dream. It was the likeliest explanation for the morning’s strange turn of events.

  But the warm slide of his lips pulled her straight out of her head and rooted her firmly in the moment. This moment. What she’d dreamed about and hoped for didn’t hold a candle to the reality of Ward, her Ward, finally claiming her again with a kiss that seared her down to her core.

  He planted his hands at her waist and lifted, lips never breaking contact. Lips, heck—tongue never breaking contact. Even as he raised her high enough that her feet left the floor, Ward’s tongue swept around every inch of her mouth. Every nerve-laden inch. Every sensitive, tingling inch.

  Piper needed to touch. Needed to greedily take him with the same heat he was lavishing upon her. Her hands fisted in his hair. Ward nipped at her bottom lip in response. So she wrapped her legs around his waist. That elicited a growl, and Ward braced her back against the wall. Then he pushed close. Pushed that muscled chest and those ripped abs against her body. Canted his hips to push something else even harder against the vee where her legs met. At that, they both moaned.

  The rasping brush of his stubble burned in an oh-so-sexy way as Ward angled down her neck. At her indrawn breath, he paused to suck and lick at the spot right on top of where her pulse fluttered rapidly. Because, oh, the things he did to her. The shivers that raced through her just from the strong, wide span of his hands at her waist. The way he crowded out all thought as he crowded his body against hers.

  Even the roughness, the harsh press of his jeans inseam and the scrape of the hair on his chin and the hard grind of hip against hip surged a sexy thrill from her head to her toes. Piper couldn’t squeeze her legs tight enough, couldn’t rake her nails down the back of his shirt hard enough, couldn’t recapture his mouth fast enough. Nothing was enough.

  On a gasp, Ward pulled away. His eyes had darkened to midnight and a satisfied smile played at the edges of his mouth. And when had his hands shifted down to support her ass?

  “That’s my pitch.”

  She tried—and probably failed—to sound aggrieved. “That? A kiss was your pitch?” Best. Marketing. Ever.

  “No. The pitch was my carefully laid-out reasons why a month of your time is more than reasonable to secure the land you need.” Another flash of that wicked grin that would’ve turned her knees to jelly if she’d been standing. “The kiss was my closer.”

  “It didn’t change my mind. I still need time to consider.” Piper was quite sure neither of them was fooled by her assertion. And miraculously her headache was gone—or relocated. Because now she had a distinct ache at the center of her body.

  “Then I’ll see you on Friday.” Ward gently lowered her back into the wing chair. At the doorway, he paused, one hand on the frame, big body filling the space as though it were a frame made to showcase him. “Think about it, Piper. Think about me.”

  That required zero consideration. At this point, it’d be impossible to think about anything but Ward for the next two days. Just like when they were first dating. And just like when she’d worked so hard to recover from the shock of not dating him any longer.

  Chapter Four

  Two days in a row up before the sunrise sure as hell didn’t put a spring in Ward’s step. He was no fan of early mornings. He just didn’t bitch about it endlessly like Gray did. But this was a stealth mission, and it was hard to be stealthy in this transparent small town when everyone was up and about their business. Which half the time was poking into someone else’s business.

  So here he was. Pre-coffee. Pre-dawn. Even the birds weren’t chirping yet. Ward parked his truck at the edge of the lot for Cosgrove’s General Store. If Dawn noticed it when she came to open the store, she’d assume he was on a run. Nothing out of the ordinary to see here.

  He slammed the door and hustled across the highway. Ward could’ve taken his own sweet time. Heck, he could’ve walked across on his hands, because he didn’t expect to see another car down this road for a good long while. But he didn’t just want to get this whole thing over with before someone saw him. Ward wanted to get it over with before he lost his nerve. Or second-guessed himself.

  The urge was strong to flip up the hood on his black jacket. Stupid. Instead, Ward shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Angling sideways through the thick line of trees that hid Seneca Lake’s worst-kept secret from the road, he made his way down the well-trodden dirt path to the tiny point of land that poked out into the lake like a grassy hangnail.

  Not for the first time, Ward felt like an idiot walking across the carpet of wildflowers. Like he was in a cartoon. The multicolored blooms that pooled around the simple metal mailbox on a wooden post came almost to his knees. He jerked open the door, pulled out the red leather-bound journal and sank onto the wrought-iron bench.

  Didn’t mean he was ready to start writing. Stalling sounded good. Ward turned to the first page. He recognized Dawn’s loopy scrawl of the same words her parents wrote, and her grandparents, all the way back to the Korean War widow Agnes Cosgrove, who first placed a journal in the mailbox in memory of her dead husband:

  For the use of everyone who comes to the shore of Seneca Lake. Please share your secrets. We’ll keep them safe.

  God, he hoped that was true. Because he was taking one hell of a risk writing his problem in this thing. A ton of people in this town still held a grudge. He thought back to May, when three idiots started a bar fight with him for no reason other than they were still pissed about the events of ten years ago. Maybe grudge was too soft a word. Okay, some people still had a stick up their collective asses about him. But the journal was supposed to be anonymous. In theory. So he’d take a shot.

  He flipped deeper in to the spot held by a pen and thumbed off the cap. That was progress. Enough so that he lifted his head to stare out at the flat grey expanse of water that gently lapped at the shore. The sky had already lightened from black to the color of pencil lead. With a sigh, Ward put pen to paper.

  I was in love with a girl. Screwed it up. Now I’ve got a chance to get her back. What do I do? What date do I take her
on to make her fall for me again?

  Pathetic. Not just his attempt at writing out the plea, but the whole damn situation he’d gotten himself into. Ward reached down, picked up a rock and winged it at the lake. The tiny sploosh didn’t do much in the way of easing his frustration. So he picked up another rock, took more careful aim and sent it spinning into the mailbox. The loud, metallic thunk as it careened off and boomeranged back toward the path was much more satisfying.

  “Hey! Cease fire!”

  Ward jumped. Well, his stomach jumped into his throat, for the nanosecond it took to recognize Zane’s voice. He swallowed hard, to push it back down where it belonged. Oh-so-casually turned over his shoulder to look at Zane, comically frozen midstep at the edge of the wildflowers. “Sorry, man. Didn’t know you were there.”

  Zane walked the rest of the way to the mailbox with exaggerated care. “I thought the whole point of this mailbox journal was that anyone could use it. Yet here you are, defending it like it’s Custer’s Last Stand.”

  It was crack of ass early. Still no coffee. And he’d written an almost laughable plea in the journal, with no better ideas scratching at his brain. Ward needed privacy. He needed not to have any witnesses to his entry in the journal. Zane’s arrival annoyed the hell out of him on several levels.

  “I said I was sorry. Do I have to suffer through an entire lecture on the Civil War as punishment for flicking a damn rock?”

  Zane sat down heavily next to him. “It was a joke, not a lecture. Although you clearly need a lecture so you learn that Custer’s Last Stand was against the Sioux, and not the Confederacy. Maybe you should go back to bed until you’re ready to interact with humans.”

  “If I wanted to interact, I wouldn’t be hunched over a journal on the edge of the lake before the sun rises.” He was being a first-class jerk. Knew it. And hoped it’d be enough for Zane to take the hint and pull a U-ey right back down the path.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” Ward snapped back, but with less heat. He didn’t have to turn his head to know that Zane’s gaze was boring a hole in him. And that his uber-curious friend wouldn’t let up until he wormed out at least an answer. Zane’s addiction to knowing things, to knowing everything possible, really bordered on a disease.

  Zane stretched out his legs in grey sweats with Hobart in its signature bright orange down the side. “Did your plan to get Piper to date you backfire?”

  Giving in to the inevitable, Ward sighed. “Worse.”

  “What could be worse?”

  “She agreed to it.” Rubbing a hand across the scruff on his jaw, he amended the statement. “Sort of. She’s thinking it over for two days, but if Piper doesn’t say no right off the bat, then it’s a done deal.”

  The hoot of Zane’s laughter echoed loudly off the still dark water. “And that’s a bad thing? That’s what’s got you biting my head off like it was a jelly donut?”

  “Yeah.” What was that old saying? Be careful what you wish for, in case you get it? Ward had never wished so hard for anything in his life as the miracle of another shot at Piper. And getting it? Brought its own horrible set of problems. “‘Cause now I have to actually date her. Now I have the second chance I always wanted.”

  Zane cocked his head to the side, considering. Then he gave a dismissive shake. “Still not hearing the downside.”

  How could a guy with more degrees than Ward had pairs of jeans be so oblivious? Fine. He’d spell it out for the professor. “I don’t have a plan for how to do it. My whole plan, the whole damn thing, was getting her to agree to go out with me again. That’s it. I took the long shot, and now I don’t have any idea what to do next.”

  Twisting sideways, Zane put his elbow on his thigh and propped his head on his palm. “I’m not going to laugh at you now, because I can tell you’re in a bad mood. So I’m going to talk you through it. But just know that by the time I get to breakfast, I’m going to be laughing my ass off over this.”

  Fair enough. He’d probably do the same. Eventually. If it worked. “Got it.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  For the love of—”Can I get you to leave me in peace to wallow any other way?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then go ahead.” Ward liked Zane, who didn’t deserve the craptastic attitude he’d fired at the professor. More important, Ward was just desperate enough to grab with both hands at any opportunity to delay trying to think up something better to write in the journal. “Shoot.”

  “I’ve got an impressive dating record. I’ve dated women in something like—” Zane paused to stare up at the canopy of trees and count on his fingers “—oh, maybe fourteen different countries.”

  Totally cheating. Zane’s work as a cult expert took him all over the world. If Ward had ever been to fourteen countries—or even four—he’d be able to make the same claim. Probably double whatever the professor notched off on his belt too. “Did you date them or just talk them into bed?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Definitely.” Ward flashed back to their kiss in Piper’s office. Flash was right. They’d gone from zero to flashpoint in a single breath. Their chemistry wasn’t just still there. It had jacked up about a thousand percent. Getting her into bed would be easy, if that was his only goal. But short-term sex wasn’t what he wanted. Wasn’t all he wanted, anyway. “I don’t want advice on how to get her to hook up. I need to date her. Continuously. Make her fall for me all over again.”

  “You need to woo the fair lady. Court her.”

  It was Ward’s turn to bark out a laugh. “There’s got to be a word for it that doesn’t sound like I’ll have to sit on a horse wielding a sword. But, yeah.”

  Zane bowed from the waist and did some flourish with his hand that proved he watched a lot of movies full of swordplay. “Here’s what I want to ask you: what the hell went wrong the first time between you two? Because you can’t blindly move forward until you fix whatever it was that you fucked up.”

  This was not news to Ward. “Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

  “Is that from the quote calendar Casey gave you?”

  “Last Thursday’s.”

  After an eye roll, Zane continued. “Look, nobody talks about why a chunk of the town looks at you like you smell worse than week-old tuna. Nobody ever mentions that when you’re hanging out with Ella and Casey and Piper, you always sit as far away from Piper as possible. You guys go to opposite sides like you’re positive and negative ions.”

  It surprised him that Zane had even asked the question. “Casey never told you the story?”

  “Not yet. We’ve had our hands full dealing with all of her stuff, with the Sunshine Seekers cult. I’m sure she planned to get around to your backstory eventually.”

  Weird. And as uncomfortable as the full-leg brace he’d worn after the accident. Ward didn’t talk about it. He’d never once needed to, because everyone in Seneca Lake already knew the story, and in the years he’d spent away, nobody knew to ask.

  But Zane wasn’t asking to be nosy. And as Casey’s fiancé, he was certainly around all of them enough to deserve an explanation for the weird vibes that kept recurring. So Ward set the journal on the bench and got up. No way was he looking at the guy while he poked at this open nerve.

  Jamming his hands back in his pockets, he strode past the mailbox to dig his boots into the loose, wet earth right at the edge of the water.

  “Piper and I were high school sweethearts. Crazy in love.” From behind him, he heard Zane suck in a surprised breath.

  “I thought all four of you had always been best friends?”

  “That’s right. Since junior high. We hit it off during a summer school musical the girls did for fun and I got roped into as an extended detention. In
high school I got into football and basketball. The girls did cheerleading. But we all still did choir and shows together.”

  “Didn’t the kids, especially when you were younger, make fun of you for having girls as best friends?”

  “Some did.” Ward turned back around to grin. “But they only did it once. Then they discovered that being friends with girls didn’t mean I couldn’t throw a fast, hard punch. Not to mention running faster, throwing a football farther and jumping higher to make a dunk shot.”

  “You’re a badass,” Zane said approvingly.

  “Down to the bone.”

  “So the four of you hang out, and one day...what...Piper got boobs and you noticed?”

  “Trust me, I noticed when all of them got training bras.” Boners were hard enough for a boy to control in junior high. Getting them around and because of your best friends was a whole different kind of torture. “It was awkward and unnerving and uncomfortable for a couple of weeks. Then we all got past it.”

  “Good.” Zane shook his head. “Have to admit, I don’t like the thought of you ogling my fiancée, even if it was years ago.”

  Now this conversation verged on awkward and uncomfortable. “I, uh, properly appreciated Casey’s assets, but it never went further than that. Remember, they were like my sisters. Nobody wants to get the hots for their sister.”

  “Then what flipped the switch with you for Piper?”

  That’s exactly what had happened. As fast and easy as flipping a switch. Ward flashed back to that hot August night when everything changed. He could hear the loud drone of crickets, smell the gathering damp in the air of the incoming storm. Most of all, he could see Piper, tears streaking down her cheeks, gleaming in the moonlight behind his family’s barn. She stood, ramrod straight, hands fisted at her sides, chest heaving as she struggled to choke back sobs. He’d been ready to find whoever put her in this state and kick their butts to the opposite side of the lake.