by AS Teague
Hampton shrugged. “Guess he felt bad about breaking your laptop and then being an asshole. Although, he’s always an asshole, so he probably doesn’t really feel bad about that.” He shoveled another forkful of noodles in and went back to whatever he was doing on his phone while I sat there dumbfounded.
His phone dinged, and he smiled. “Smith’s done. Gotta go.” Dropping his fork on his now empty plate, he pushed from his chair and came around the table. He wrapped his arms around me and the electronics I was still holding and squeezed. “Thanks for dinner, Pip. I’ll call ya later.”
He waltzed out the door, slamming it behind himself, and left me staring at the remnants of Thai food all over the table. I was beginning to realize why Lawson was always irritated at me for leaving dishes on the stove.
An hour later, I heard the front door open and then shut.
Lawson came around the corner and his eyebrows shot up. “What are you doin’?”
I smiled at him over my shoulder. “Washing the dishes.”
His eyes were still wide as he sauntered over to the counter and propped a hip against it. “Piper Kelley, you’ve been holding out on me. When did you learn to wash dishes?”
The way my name sounded rolling off his tongue sent a shiver down my spine. It shouldn’t have. I was still mad at him for the last few weeks he spent being a jerk. But he’d gotten my favorite dishes. And he’d replaced my laptop. So, the anger I’d been holding onto had begun to dissipate and in its place, a new, stranger feeling had started to creep in. A feeling I didn’t want to think about while I was elbow deep in soapy water. I pushed the thoughts away and rolled my eyes in his direction. “I’ll have you know, I got an A in home-ec in high school.” I boasted, puffing my chest out in mock pride.
He didn’t miss a beat, his voice dry. “You failed home-ec.”
“I did not,” I sputtered.
He chuckled, and the deep sound made my stomach flip. When was the last time I’d heard that? Who knew. “Yes, you did. Mrs. Winslow hated you. You’re lucky she didn’t get you expelled for setting her kitchen on fire.”
“How the hell do you know about that?” I asked. I dried my hands with the dish towel and made a show of hanging it back on the stove before sliding past him to grab the paper containers from the table. I dropped the empty ones in the trash and shoved the ones with leftovers into the fridge, already excited about having it for lunch again tomorrow.
“I also know that the fire was intentional, and not because you accidentally left the water boiling too long.” He winked, and I stared at him open-mouthed. “You hated that old bat as much as she hated you.”
He was right. That teacher should have retired ten years earlier but refused to stop torturing kids with her insistence that a good woman knew how to cook for her man. “How do you know that?” I asked again, this time more urgently.
“I know a lot of things about you,” he murmured, his eyes warm.
I nodded. “Yeah, like my favorite Thai dishes.”
He just lifted a shoulder. “Lucky guess.”
I shook my head. “Whatever. Why didn’t you stick around and have some?”
“Had something come up at the office that I had to take care of right away.”
I grabbed the laptop from the table. “And this?”
He glanced at his gift and then pulled the fridge door open, snagging a beer. It was the first time I’d seen him drink since I moved in. He popped the top and took a long pull from the bottle. When he noticed me watching, he asked, “Want one?”
I did. God, I wanted a whole case. But it was getting late and I had yet another shift in the ER in the morning, so I shook my head. “No, but thanks.”
He lifted his chin and slid around me, heading down the hall.
“Hey, you didn’t answer me!” I shouted to his back.
He paused, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I owed you a laptop.”
He resumed his stride and disappeared before I had a chance to say anything more.
With a heavy sigh, I grabbed my water bottle and new computer and trudged to my bedroom.
I didn’t know who this Lawson was, but I wasn’t too dumb to not appreciate what he’d done. And I’d figure out his deal eventually.
In the meantime, I needed to figure out my own deal.
Like why I was suddenly thinking about the way his voice sounded when he was teasing me. Or how his eyes lit when I said his name. Or how I wondered if he’d had a serious relationship while he was in Vegas.
And worse yet, why the thought caused my chest to squeeze, in a way it never did when I thought about Hampton and his boyfriends.
16
Lawson
“Yessir.”
I can see you! Your brown…
“Mmhmm.”
Sunglasses baby!
“Right.”
My love for you will…
“No, sir.”
After the poison summer has gone…
“I’ll get it taken care of, sir.”
But first, I had something else to take care of.
I put my phone on the desk and roared, “Piper!”
The music cut off abruptly and I could hear her footsteps as she padded down the hall.
“What’s up?” she asked when she stuck her head inside my office door.
Her hair was piled on top of her head, sticking out everywhere. Her face was red, and sweat beads were rolling down her cheeks.
“Why the hell do you look like that?” I asked, waving my hand at her head.
She glanced down and then turned her attention back to me, her brows drawn together. “You know, for a certified genius, you’re kinda dumb sometimes,” she quipped, not answering my question.
I just stared at her.
With a huff, she finally responded. “Sports bra, shorts, tennis shoes. Doesn’t give it away?” When I just continued to glare, she rolled her eyes. “I’m working out!”
I snorted. “Since when do you work out?”
Her only response was a glare.
“Uh-huh. Well, you think you could maybe do it a little quieter?”
She put her hands on her hips and stomped a foot. “I wasn’t that loud.”
“Piper. I could feel the music.”
She grinned. “Gah, me too. I love that song.” She began humming, “After the poison summer’s gone… What do you think that means? Poison summer?”
Was she punking me?
“Poison summer?” I asked, one eyebrow arched.
Her eyes were bright as she nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. What does it mean?”
I couldn’t help it. I tried. I really did. But resistance was futile. And before I knew it, I was bent at the waist, belly laughing.
“What is so funny?”
I sat back up in my chair and swiped at the moisture that was pooling in my eyes. Piper’s own eyes were narrowed on me, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Piper, they aren’t saying poison summer. It’s ‘boys of summer’.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but then clamped her jaw shut. With a tilt of her head, her eyes went to the wall behind me and I could see the gears turning in her head. Finally, she gave a little shake of her head and looked back at me.
“Yeah, I guess that makes more sense.”
Laughter escaped my lips again, coming from deep in my gut.
“Did you actually need something, or did you just call me in here to laugh at my expense?” she huffed.
I’d called her in my office to yell at her for being so damn loud all the fucking time. But now I didn’t have the heart to embarrass her any more than she already was. Besides, I’d had a shit morning, and the bit of comic relief she’d unwittingly bestowed on me was just what I needed. Not that I was going to tell her that.
Not to mention, that Piper in workout gear was pretty easy on the eyes. So easy, in fact, that it was an effort to keep my gaze trained on her face.
“Uh, yeah. You think you could turn the vo
lume down? Like, way down?” I asked, a trace of humor in my voice.
“It wasn’t that loud!” she argued again.
“My boss could hear it,” I told her, pointing to where my phone sat on top of a stack of papers.
“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Sorry.”
Her eyes left mine and she looked down at the floor. When she looked back up, her eyes were sparkling. “Remember when you decided you were going to be a rock star?”
I groaned. I remembered those embarrassing six months all too well. “Nope.”
She laughed and pushed off the doorframe, making her way into my office. She wandered over to where I was sitting and took in the panel of monitors mounted to the wall over my desk. The screens were all tuned in to various security cameras at the office. My desk held several computer monitors and keyboards.
She propped a hip on the edge of my desk and I swiveled in my chair to face her.
“You practiced on those drums every minute that summer. God, I thought we would all go crazy listening to you hit the cymbal over and over. It was so freaking loud.” She pulled her lip in between her teeth. “You were trying to impress a girl. What was her name?”
Her name was Piper.
“I don’t remember.”
She nodded. “Yes, you do. God, what was her name? I remember, she was like, the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.”
Definitely not the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.
“Oh, Shannon! That was it.” She snapped her fingers. “You remember now?”
I shook my head. “The only thing I remember is getting humiliated at the school talent show.”
Piper’s eyes lit up as she laughed. “God, you had no clue what you were doing up there. Shannon was not impressed.”
I chuckled. “Nobody was impressed with that garbage.”
Piper shook her head and I asked, “How the hell do you remember that? You were like, eight.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed off the edge of the desk. “I was ten.” She lifted her shoulder and shrugged, then patted me on my own shoulder as she passed me. “I remember a lot of things about our childhood together.”
She stopped at the doorway and turned. “I’ll turn the music down while you’re working.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
As she slipped through the door, she quipped, “But you were the one who bought the speaker. You asked for it.”
I shouted after her, “Don’t be surprised if that thing goes missing!”
Her laughter echoed down the hall straight into my chest. In the entire time she’d been living here, I don’t think I’d made her laugh once. It felt pretty fucking good actually.
I pushed out of my chair to close the door, but before shutting it, watched as she disappeared into the living room. The music came back on, blaring for a second before she turned the volume down.
Despite the song being quiet, Piper began belting out the lyrics, correctly this time, but still way off tune. I stood there for a moment and listened to her, trying to convince myself that the feelings that kept clawing their way back to the surface were just a by-product of having a woman living in my house and not because that woman just happened to be the one I’d always had feelings for.
“So, what exactly is that you do in there anyway?” Piper asked, pulling a beer from the fridge and offering it to me.
I raised a brow at her and twisted the cap off the bottle. “You really want to know?”
She opened her own beer and nodded, tossing the cap in the trash and then shuffling to the living room.
I followed and settled into the opposite end of the couch. She curled her legs under her and snagged a throw blanket from the arm, tossing it over her lap. Yet another “improvement” to my house that I’d protested. My refusal had fallen on deaf ears, though. She’d left the blue and green blanket in the exact spot she’d placed it. Along with the green pillows she’d tossed on the couch and the decorative vase on the coffee table.
I hated to admit it, and had refused to do so aloud, but the shit did look good. Even the god-awful rug didn’t look so bad with the colorful accents she’d added to the living room.
I set my beer on the table.
“Oh! Wait,” Piper exclaimed, jumping up from her spot, and darted down the hall to her bedroom. She returned a moment later with a bag from Bed Bath and Beyond in her hands.
I groaned, “You went shopping again.”
She nodded enthusiastically and pulled out a box. “Coasters! So we don’t mess up the table.”
I’d never used a damn coaster in my life. It showed. “The table’s already messed up.”
She frowned. “Yeah, but this just keeps it from getting any worse.” She wrestled with the packaging, unable to get it out of the box, so I gestured for her to hand it over. She tossed the bag over and then went back to digging in the bag.
“I also thought that maybe a few pictures would make the place more…cozy.” She pulled out several frames of different sizes and began to place them on the few surfaces we had in the living room.
“Jesus, Piper. Is this a damn hedgehog?” I held the coasters up to her grinning face.
“Yep! Isn’t it cute? I couldn’t resist. And really, when we aren’t using the coasters, it’s art.”
The coasters served as the hedgehog’s spines and its body held them all together. “If you think this ugly thing is art, you are definitely not allowed to buy any paintings for the walls,” I grumbled, setting the coaster holder on the coffee table and exchanging it for my beer. I took a long pull and then placed the bottle back down.
When she made a noise in the back of her throat and angled her head toward the hedgehog, I pulled one of its spines out and plunked my bottle on it.
“There. Happy?”
With a broad smile and a quick nod she put the last picture frame on the coffee table. Satisfied with her arrangement, she came and sat back on the couch, wrapping up in the blanket. “I didn’t have a chance to go through any pictures yet for the frames, so if you have any you want to put in them, go for it.”
I tilted my chin. “Yeah, I’ve got stacks of pictures in my office I’ve just been meaning to find the right frames for. Thank God, you’ve done that for me.”
She nudged me with her foot. “Don’t be a smart-ass. I was just trying to be nice.”
“Uh-huh. By allowing me to decorate my own house?”
She pursed her lips and I couldn’t stop myself from staring. It was something she’d always done, even as a little kid. She would get annoyed and her mouth would be somewhere between a pout and a smirk. “You’re cute when you do that.”
Her eyes widened a fraction of a second before they narrowed. “Quit antagonizing me, Lawson. Are you going to tell me what you do in your office sixteen hours a day or no?”
Not exactly. “Sixteen hours is a bit of a stretch. But yes, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you what I can.”
She nodded and pulled the blanket up to cover her arms.
I grabbed my beer and began peeling the label. “I’m the head of IT security. I do all the basic stuff, setting up desktops, laptops, configuring software and applications. But I’m also in charge of the security. And since we’re big on security, it’s fucking important that I keep everything as fireproof as possible. So, I spend a lot of time researching hacks, exploits, pen testing, reviewing advisories and scanning the systems for attack vectors.” I smiled as I took in the blank look on her face and continued. “I have guys who work under me too, so I don’t have to do most of the basic stuff. And I don’t usually spend a lot of time watching surveillance, although in the beginning I did.” I pulled the label completely from my bottle and balled it up, tossing it at her. “You still with me?”
She swatted the paper away, her reflexes impressive. “I don’t have a single clue what you just said to me.”
I chuckled. “Basically, I spend half my time making sure our info is secure and the other half of the time making sure everyone else�
�s isn’t.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re a hacker?”
I lifted a shoulder. “You could say that. I’d prefer not to, though.” I winked, and she smiled.
And it felt good to make her smile.
“Wanna watch a movie?” she asked, snagging the remote and aiming it at the TV. She pushed the bag she’d just pulled all of her house décor out of and a shoebox fell to the floor. A pair of nude heels fell out and she groaned as she bent to pick them up.
“New shoes too?” I asked.
She grinned. “Yeah, I needed a new pair of ‘sex-kitten heels’. I wore my last pair out.”
I choked on the swallow of beer I’d just taken.
She laughed, the musical sound full of teasing humor and waved one of the shoes in my direction. “What’s wrong, Lawson?”
Still sputtering, I shook my head and pulled the remote from her hand. Our fingers brushed and I struggled to push the image of her in nothing but those heels from my mind. “How about that new ER show?”
She shook her head. “No way.” Stuffing the shoes back in the bag, she tossed it over the arm of the couch. “I get enough emergency room in real life. Besides, those dramas are always so fake.” She snatched the remote back from my hand and aimed it at the television, pulling up the guide. She scrolled too fast for me to even be able to read half the shows that were playing but squealed when she stopped on a movie. “Look, it’s a movie about you!” she teased.
“Revenge of the Nerds? Really?” I groaned as she turned it on. “I told you that being called a nerd is not an insult.”
She nodded, patting my leg. “Keep telling yourself that, Law.”
I sighed and settled back into the couch, adjusting the deep green pillow behind my head.
She watched me, one brow arched. Her lips twitched, but stopped when I gave a quick shake of my head.
“Don’t say it,” I grumbled.
She laughed loudly, the sound washing over me.
And that felt good too.
17
