Hometown Hope: A Small Town Romance Anthology

by Zoe York

  “Then what the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s not answering her phone.”

  “Okay, sit down. Let me call and we’ll at least establish whether she’s avoiding you or if she’s avoiding everyone.”

  Which of those options was supposed to be better?

  Myles was far too agitated to sit. He paced the living room while Miranda made her attempt and got voicemail.

  “Hey, sweetie. I was just calling to check on you. Call me back, okay?” She hung up. “Not just you.”

  “Now what?”

  “Honestly? The only thing you can do is wait. There’s no reason to believe she’s in any danger and not enough time has passed to file a missing persons report. You can check with her parents or Leah, but I doubt she’d go to them if she were upset.”

  Myles jerked toward her. “Upset? Why is she upset?”

  Miranda spread her hands. “I’m making an assumption here. She wouldn’t pack if she wasn’t upset. It’s the kind of impulsive thing she does. Did you two have a fight?”

  “No. We’ve barely seen each other to fight. I was around more the last week while she was sick than I have been the entire time since we got back from our honeymoon. Work’s been keeping me busy. I’ve been trying to move some things around and get things in place so that’s not the case all the time.”

  And what the hell good was any of it if she’d left him?

  “At this point, I think you should just go home and wait. Text her that you’re worried. I’ll get up with everyone else. If anybody hears from her, you’ll be the first we notify, okay?”

  “Okay.” He let her shuffle him out of the house, climbed back into his car. But it wasn’t okay. If she’d really left him, he wasn’t sure it would ever be okay again.

  He pulled out his phone and texted her. Piper, I’m worried to death. Please just let me know you’re safe.

  Myles stared at the screen, but there was no notice that the message had been read. No dancing bubbles to indicate a reply. Just silence. Terrifying silence.

  He put the car into gear and began to drive. There was no way in hell he could just go home.

  “I need your guest room.”

  Tucker took her overnight bag without question, and Piper was grateful. She needed all her flagging energy to make it up the stairs to his apartment. Her house would’ve been more practical, but that’s the first place Myles would look, and she simply couldn’t face him yet.

  “You get your paperwork delivered?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to actually talk to me now?”

  She didn’t really want to talk to anybody. She wanted to go back to bed and wake up to find this was all a bad dream. But it wasn’t a dream and, like it or not, she had to figure out what came next. And at least Tucker knew the truth about why she and Myles had married in the first place.

  “Let me change first.”

  By the time she’d shed her suit in the name of pajamas, he’d put together a tray of cheese and crackers and poured a glass of wine.

  “I figured you hadn’t eaten.”

  “Food and I haven’t exactly been on speaking terms for the last week.” She picked up a cracker and nibbled. It immediately turned to ash on her tongue. Ignoring the wine, she moved into his galley style kitchen herself and poured a glass of water. She swallowed it down and filled the glass again, taking it back to the sofa. Tucker waited, expectant, a deceptively lazy slouch to his posture where he leaned against the bar.

  “Oh, sit down. You’re looming. Those courtroom intimidation tactics aren’t going to work on me.”

  He crossed to a chair and sat, reaching for her hand. “What’s going on, Pip?”

  She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. The tears had been threatening all day, but she’d forced them down. Now, in the face of Tucker’s support, she couldn’t hold back the tide. “There is a distinct possibility I’ve completely fucked up my life.” Her voice broke.

  Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do?”

  “Don’t. Don’t go all brute squad on him. This is my fault. My idea, my plan, my stupid, stupid heart.”

  “Tell me.”

  So she did. Letting the whole, horrible story spill out, including Suzanne’s accusation of pregnancy on the news of their engagement and what Myles had said about why he wanted to marry her. The sympathy in his expression undid her, adding a soundtrack of tears as an underscore to the tale.

  When she’d finished, he handed her a box of tissues. “I was afraid of something like this. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry it didn’t work out the way you wanted. But divorce—if that’s actually what he meant by what he said—isn’t the end of the world. It hurts, but you’d survive it. It’s not going to ruin your life.”

  “Tucker, I’m pregnant.”

  His mouth fell open.

  “I shouldn’t be. I’m on birth control, and I used it exactly as intended. But there’s always that one percent,” she said bitterly. “When I came up with this whole crazy plan, it was supposed to be no big deal. No one was supposed to know we were married and we were just supposed to date like normal people. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him, and I sure as hell wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. Apparently, the Universe really wants to kick me in the ass to make sure I don’t engage in any other crazy plans ever again.”

  “What did Myles say?”

  “He doesn’t know. That’s why I went to his office this morning. To tell him. And after I overheard what he said, I didn’t stick around.”

  “Piper, you have to tell him.”

  “How can I? Knowing he wants out, how can I tell him we’ve managed to complicate the hell out of that, too?”

  “Better if he hears it first from you than in the middle of divorce proceedings.” Tucker paused, his face going carefully blank. “Unless you don’t intend to keep the pregnancy.”

  Piper’s hand instinctively went to her still flat stomach. “I could never abort. It may not stick. Almost fifty percent of pregnancies don’t before the end of the first trimester. But I’d never end it deliberately.”

  “Then you have to tell him. Sooner rather than later. You never know, it might change things. He’s absolutely smitten with Preston.”

  This was the undeniable truth. Myles seemed to love children. But how could she endure a marriage where the love was for the child, not for her?

  “No. I’m not going to stay in a loveless marriage for the sake of a child. I’m not. It isn’t healthy for anybody involved.”

  “Sweetie, what if you’re wrong? I don’t think he’d have gone through everything he did with the wedding if he didn’t love you on some level. What you heard might not even have been about you.”

  Piper fixed him with a glare. “Really? What the hell other extreme thing has he done in the name of the paper besides marrying me?”

  “I don’t know,” Tucker said evenly. “And neither do you. Because you haven’t talked to him.”

  A tiny ember of hope lit inside her. Could she be wrong?

  No. He didn’t love her. Didn’t want to be with her. What was it he’d said? She wasn’t who he thought she was. Why else would he have suddenly turned into a complete workaholic, keeping hours where he barely saw her at all, the moment they returned from their honeymoon?

  Someone rang the doorbell, an insistent peal of bell.

  “That’ll be Myles.”

  “Did you call him?” Piper demanded.

  “No. But by now he’s realized you’re gone. In his shoes, I’d be going all over town to every one of your friends trying to track you down.”

  “I can’t face him yet, Tucker. Please.”

  He sighed. “Fine. I’ll give you tonight. But you have to talk to him tomorrow.”

  Tucker left the door to downstairs open as he went to answer the door.

  Piper rose to follow, pressing herself against the wall and out of sight.

  �
��You look like shit,” Tucker said.

  “Is she here?” Myles sounded...rattled.

  “Yes.”

  Myles’ breath wheezed out. “Thank God.”

  He must’ve tried to push past and come up because Tucker said, “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  “And she needs to talk to you. But it’s not happening tonight. Go home. Give her some space.”

  “You really think I can just go home and wait this out? I don’t even know what the hell is wrong. How can I fix it if she won’t talk to me?”

  What was there to fix? He was the one who wanted out.

  “Look, she’s here, she’s safe. Right now, that’s all you absolutely need to know. Just let her be.”

  “Tucker.” Frustration and pleading filled every syllable.

  “She’ll come to you when she’s ready.”

  Myles’ sigh was heavy enough that she heard it from the top of the stairs. “Okay. Just...take care of her.”

  “Always have.”

  “Thank you.”

  A minute later, the door shut and Tucker came back upstairs. His face was grave. “That was not a man who looked ready to divorce his wife. He was just about crazed with worry.”

  A trickle of guilt worked its way through the rest of her anxiety. “He’s not a bad guy. I should’ve let him know I was okay. Or at least that I wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to her to turn her phone back on.

  “Look, this is obviously your decision, but as your friend, as your legal counsel, I’m telling you to talk to your husband. Find out for sure what’s going on. I’m positive there’s more to this than you think.”

  Piper didn’t dare consider that possibility. How much worse would it be to foolishly give flight to hope, only to have everything dashed yet again when it turned out everything was exactly as she thought? But he was right. She did need to talk to Myles.

  “Fine. But tomorrow. Right now, I just want to try to sleep. I’m exhausted, and I feel like absolute crap.”

  “I’ll make up the guest bed for you.”

  Chapter 16

  “MR. BONDURANT IS HERE.”

  Myles looked up at Patty, not really seeing her. “Okay.”

  She stepped into his office. “Jesus Christ, Myles, are you really meeting with the man like that?”

  Wearing the same rumpled clothes from yesterday because he’d been up here all night replaying every moment of his relationship with Piper, trying to sort out where he’d gone wrong? Unshowered, unshaved? “Yep.”

  Bondurant ought to consider himself lucky Myles wasn’t drunker than Cooter Brown. The urge to drown his sorrows in the scotch hanging out in his bottom desk drawer had been strong. But on the off chance that Piper decided she was ready to talk, he needed to be capable of driving.

  Patty shut the door and crossed over, laying a hand on his brow in a universal maternal thermometer. “What’s wrong?”

  The woman I love has left me, and I don’t know why. I find I don’t really give a rat’s ass about anything else.

  “Did you and Piper have a fight?”

  “No.” He’d never even been given the chance to fight. Or maybe he’d been too wrapped up in the paper for her to even bother.

  Not wanting to answer any more questions, he shoved back from his desk.

  “Hold it.” Patty opened a file cabinet drawer and pulled out an emergency shirt. “At least put this on so you look a little less like a vagrant.”

  “I have the check. I don’t give a damn if I look homeless when I give it to him. I just want this over with.”

  Leaving her gaping, Myles strode down the hall to the conference room.

  Bondurant stood at the window, his briefcase at one end of the table, neatly squared with the edges. The other man turned as Myles came in. “Good Lord.”

  “Mr. Bondurant.”

  “Are you...all right?”

  “Most assuredly not. I would appreciate it if we could get this show on the road. I have more important things to deal with.”

  “I’m afraid there’s a slight delay.”

  “Delay?” Myles growled.

  “Your investor has decided to meet with you in person to conclude the transaction.”

  That caught his wandering attention. All their dealings had been done through Bondurant’s firm as a proxy. At no point had Myles even met his investor. The name on all the contracts was the business manager of the corporation. The rigid confidentiality surrounding the deal had bothered him, but none of his digging had uncovered anything unscrupulous, so he’d let it go.

  “Why now?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not for me to say.”

  Impatience snapped through him like a dog on a chain. “This better not be some attempt to renegotiate terms. I have the full amount for the payoff. I want to be free of this debt.”

  “And you will be once we’re finished here.”

  Surprise had him swinging around. “Gram? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Is that any way to greet your grandmother?” She stalked into the room, and he wondered what she had to be pissed off about. Her life wasn’t falling apart.

  Then Myles saw his dad lingering in the hallway. When he didn’t follow her inside, Gram did an about face and actually grabbed him by the ear to drag him into the room.

  “Mother.” He pulled free, rubbing at his reddened ear.

  “Hush it. It’s your fault we’re in this mess,” Gram snapped.

  Myles glanced from one to the other, then back to Mr. Bondurant, who just seemed embarrassed by the whole proceeding. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m in the middle of a business meeting.”

  “Yes. Paying off your investor.” She swung toward Warrick, arms crossed. “Tell him.”

  “Tell me what?” Myles ground out.

  His father didn’t meet his eyes, looking at Mr. Bondurant instead. “You have the final paperwork, John?”

  “Of course, Mr. Stewart.” The briefcase opened with a decisive snick.

  Myles stared, his sleep-deprived brain refusing to accept what was obviously going on. “You? You were my investor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, did the Devil get snowed in and I missed it?”

  Warrick sighed. “Given the contention between us, it seemed simpler all around to conduct the transaction via proxies through my shell companies.”

  Myles’ world had already been off its axis since Piper left. This just broke his entire world view. His father, the man who’d done every damned thing to try to lure, bully, and drag Myles into the family business, had actually invested in his dream?

  “Why would you invest in the paper? You’ve always despised the fact that I went into journalism.”

  “I saw an opportunity to help you get this newspaper thing out of your system so you could get back on track.”

  “On track?”

  “Yes. I figured you’d have a good shot, learn that there’s no future in this business and would come home with a clear conscience.”

  Myles’ temper rose as his world tipped back into recognizable territory. “So you pulled funding early, thinking I’d just capitulate.”

  “Well, that was the original plan, but then you pulled this whole trust fund wedding stunt and that impressed me.”

  “Honestly, Warrick!” Gram snapped, disgust evident in every line of her face.

  “That impressed you?” Myles demanded.

  “Yes. I didn’t expect you to go after the trust. It was set up so long ago, I’d forgotten about it. But that kind of Hail Mary shows that this isn’t some lark or experiment you’ll drop when things get hard. It shows how dedicated you are to making this paper work. It shows grit I didn’t know you had.”

  “Grit,” Myles repeated.

  “Absolutely,” Warrick said, with more enthusiasm. “The whole thing made me really look at what you were doing here for the
first time. And I realized, you’ve really got something here, son. Against all the current trends and dire forecasts about the newspaper business, you’re turning this paper around. I even thought about calling it off, leaving my investment in place, despite the fact that you don’t need me anymore.”

  His whole life, Myles had wanted his father’s approval. The gravity of it settled over him, making him feel like his dad finally saw him as an adult for the first time. The unexpected validation of his life’s dream was sweet, and his immediate instinct was to tell Piper. She’d understand what this meant to him. But the ache at not being able to tell her, at maybe never getting that chance, left him with an aching void in his chest. If the cost of all this was losing her, he didn’t want it.

  “I went into this on good faith, thinking the investment was legitimate. I worked my ass off building this, and all this time, I was building a house of cards on a rug you were just waiting to pull out from under me.”

  Warrick’s eyes widened. “That’s not—”

  “You backed me into a corner. I was on a good trajectory with the revitalization of the paper before you sent me into a tailspin. If you hadn’t interfered, Piper and I would have dated like normal people, fallen in love like normal people, gotten married like normal people, after a normal amount of time to build a proper foundation. And instead, because of your Machiavellian scheming, we rushed things to try to save my business, and now I’ve lost my wife.”

  “Now hold it,” Gram interrupted. “That’s not all on Warrick. Yes, he was wrong and yes, it was his manipulation that prompted such a desperate act. But however much you felt backed into a corner, you still made the choice to marry for money, and Piper assured me that she was the instigator of the whole thing.”

  Myles froze.

  “Oh yes, Piper told me everything.”

  “When?” he demanded.

  “Yesterday. When she came to bring me this.” Gram removed an envelope from her purse and slid it across the table.

  Myles picked it up, dread a festering knot in his gut. Unfolding the papers, he read them over, the knot drawing tighter with every word. A post-nuptial agreement, relinquishing any and all rights to the assets he brought to the marriage via trust, family ties, or otherwise.