Completely Smitten

by Susan Mallery

“What? Oh, no. I was just…making a mental list of the stuff I should pack.”

  “What about work?” she asked doubtfully.

  “I’ll call in sick tomorrow and Friday. Don’t feel guilty, I haven’t taken a sick day all year and I’ll lose them if I don’t take them in the next two months.” And it wasn’t as though anyone from the office would guess he was with Piper. Though people knew they were friends, Josh’s active dating life was common knowledge.

  “You’ll really do this?”

  “You can count on me.” Words that were as ironic as they were true. He’d never encouraged a woman to depend on him because the last thing he wanted was to lead one on. Why pretend he might stick around when goodbye was inevitable?

  He’d been left too many times, and it was safer if he did the leaving, early enough that no one truly got hurt.

  “I know I can count on you. Thanks, Josh.” The poignant expression in her aquamarine gaze made him look away.

  He stood. “If I’m going to pack, I should do laundry.”

  “Need any quarters?” She sounded uncharacteristically shy. “I did mine last night and still have some change.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  She rose then, hesitating briefly before throwing her arms around his shoulders. “Thank you.”

  Awkwardly, he returned the embrace, immediately recalling the last time she’d been this close to him. A few months ago, at a baseball game. They’d both jumped up, cheering as the Astros battled their way from a tie to a win. At the end of the game, Piper had turned to impulsively hug him.

  The clean citrusy fragrance of her shampoo was exactly as he remembered. And the underlying womanly scent of her was the same, too.

  He released her abruptly.

  Piper shuffled back, her expression apologetic. “I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate this. I owe you.”

  “How about a lifetime supply of those chocolate chip pancakes you make?” He shrugged off her gratitude with a smile. “It’s not that big a deal, really. How bad can one family reunion be?”

  “You don’t know my family.”

  “I’m not worried,” he said. “And now you don’t have to worry about this anymore. This weekend, I’m all yours.”

  Since all the treadmills were taken Thursday morning, Piper began a brisk lap around the indoor track surrounding the mirrored free-weight area. She supposed it was silly to be here so bright and early—okay, pitch-dark and early—on a vacation day, but she hadn’t been able to sleep much after Josh’s visit last night. Even after hours to get used to the idea, she was still surprised by his generosity.

  On the surface, his favor might seem like a fairly simple thing. It was only a few days, after all, and a few harmless white lies to people who would never see him again. But Piper knew Josh better than that, realized what this would cost him. He’d heard her talk about her relatives enough to know what to expect—a convergence of people demanding to know his intentions and dragging out the details of the life story he hated discussing.

  Knowing that she’d apparently underestimated him left her feeling both guilty and curious. If he was more capable of opening himself up to others than she’d given him credit for, was it possible that—

  You’re getting way ahead of yourself.

  This was one weekend, nothing more. And Josh’s relationship potential was none of her business, anyway, especially considering she didn’t want a relationship. What she wanted was to prove to the people of her hometown that there was more than one type of success in life. Not having a ring on your finger or a significant other to fill your Friday nights didn’t mean you were a failure.

  As she finished her first quarter-mile, Piper spotted Gina Sanchez off to the side, stretching. A pretty woman with long black hair, a habitually wry smile and a collection of colorful T-shirts—including the one she currently wore that said Lawyers Do It Pro Bono—Gina was Piper’s closest female friend. They frequently worked out together and sometimes caught a movie or dinner, but Piper generally turned down her friend’s clubbing invitations to popular Houston hot spots.

  Piper slowed her pace. “Morning.”

  “What are you doing here?” Gina stepped onto the track. “I thought you were leaving to go see your folks today.”

  “Not for another few hours.”

  Her friend shook her head, sending her dark ponytail swinging. “Ever heard of the concept of sleeping in?”

  “Well, in the town I’ll be visiting, the closest thing they have to a gym are the three machines in the high school weight room, only two of which ever work at the same time. And eating my mother’s cooking for the next few days, I’m sure to come back ten pounds heavier. I figured one last workout would be good for me.”

  “You’re so disciplined.”

  Piper raised her eyebrows. How was she any more disciplined than her friend, who attended the gym with the same regularity? “You’re here most mornings at six, too.”

  “Yeah, but that’s because I want to look good so I can find Mr. Right.”

  Piper just didn’t get it. Her cousins she could maybe understand, since they’d been raised in such an old-fashioned setting where their peers aspired to good marriages shortly after high school. Gina’s life was more contemporary than that. An attractive, self-reliant attorney, she nonetheless spent a lot of weekend nights with dates who didn’t deserve her, only to agonize the following week over why they hadn’t called and whether she would ever meet someone.

  Piper knew that with her friend, it was more a case of wanting a relationship, not buying into the myth that women needed a man to take care of them. But honestly, why did Gina want something so much when it was usually a one-sided effort that left her grumbling about how there were no good men available?

  Friends who’d known Piper post-Charlie had teased her, only half kiddingly, about her militant feminist streak. Maybe she was being too cynical, she thought as she pumped her arms in rhythm with her stride. After all, what was wrong with healthy equal partnerships?

  Nothing, if they exist.

  At first, Piper had thought that’s what she had with Charlie, until his little manipulations had added up to one big picture. Never complaining that she preferred jeans to a more traditional feminine look, but buying her skirts for her birthday; insisting that children could wait while she built her career, yet managing to make sure she was holding some cute baby at every possible opportunity, hinting that she’d make a wonderful mother.

  Charlie was just one example, true, but she didn’t see a lot of counterexamples in the people around her. Gina’s attempts to find a fulfilling partnership had yet to yield any convincing successes, and Piper’s other closest friend, Josh, actively shunned emotional involvement.

  Then there were Piper’s relatives, the people she’d grown up watching. One could argue that her mother was happily married, but how happy could a woman really be while doing her husband’s laundry and fixing his dinner and voting the way he voted? Personally, Piper would probably gnaw off her own arm to escape that kind of relationship. Her cousin Stella, divorced three times, obviously hadn’t found the magic formula for true happiness, either.

  Even Daphne, who in the past had echoed Piper’s resolve not to end up like their mother, was now married and living in Rebecca, pregnant with twins. True, Daphne taught school instead of following their mom’s homemaker path, but what had happened to Daphne’s plans to travel and see the world? Her husband, Blaine, had apparently convinced her that staying in town so he could run his family’s ranch was more important.

  Frustration fueled Piper’s gait, and neither she nor Gina spoke as they concentrated on their workout. It was only as they slowed to do one final cooldown lap that Piper caught her breath enough to relay the story of her mother’s phone call and the resulting situation.

  “You can imagine how shocked I was when Josh volunteered to go with me,” she concluded.

  Gina regarded her strangely. “Why is it shocking? You spend alm
ost all your free time with the guy already. Is it even stretching the truth that much to hint you’re a couple?”

  Piper stopped so suddenly she almost tripped over her own sneakers. “Of course it is! You know our relationship is nothing like that.”

  Stepping off the track toward the free weights, Gina teased, “What I know is that you’re close to a gorgeous straight man who has steady employment, yet you refuse to set me up with him.”

  Gina and Josh? They were all wrong for each other. They…they…actually, they were two attractive, intelligent people with a compatible sense of humor and similar career drives. Nonetheless, Piper had to restrain herself from snapping a warning that Josh was off-limits.

  But she couldn’t resist a quick reminder. “I’ve told you, we promised not to date each other’s friends.”

  “From the way you make him sound and from the glimpses I’ve caught of him, I might be willing to ditch you as a friend.” Gina grinned.

  Piper halfheartedly returned the smile. Trying to atone for her inner snarkiness, she said, “It may not seem like it, but I’m doing you a favor by not setting you up with him. Josh is a lot of fun, but he’s hell on female hearts. You know how many women I’ve seen him break up with?”

  “Maybe because he hasn’t met the right one.”

  “Won’t matter. Josh isn’t going to let himself find the right one.”

  If the right woman dropped into his lap, he’d be too busy running the other way to notice. Not that Piper entirely blamed him for his behavior. With her close-knit—sometimes suffocatingly so—family, she didn’t pretend to understand what it must have been like to grow up being bounced between foster homes. People coming and going through Josh’s life as if it had some sort of invisible revolving door had probably become the norm for him. His dating habits now simply reflected the pattern.

  “So this string of broken hearts, is that the reason you’ve never gone for him yourself?” Gina asked, surprisingly stubborn this morning. Normally all it took was one of Piper’s we’re-just-friends pronouncements to change the subject.

  “I don’t need a reason not to go for him. I’m not looking for romance, remember?”

  Gina sighed. “And yet you’re the one going away for the weekend with the sexy guy.”

  Yeah. Piper would love to laugh off her friend’s comment—except the fact that she was going away for the weekend with a sexy guy was what had kept her awake all last night. How far would she and Josh need to go to convince others they were a couple? The man stiffened whenever she casually hugged him, and lately, she was no better. Yesterday, her entire body had tensed whenever he got close to her. So what would happen if he actually had to, say, kiss her?

  And why didn’t she believe her own self-assurances that she wasn’t secretly dying to find out?

  Chapter Four

  Josh found Piper in the parking garage. She was loading the trunk of her car and glanced up with a smile when he called out a hello.

  “Hi.” She took his duffel from him, then unlocked the back door of the car to hang up his garment bag. Shutting the car door, she turned expectantly toward him. “Didn’t you bring anything else?”

  “Nope. I have everything I need.”

  “In a garment bag and one small duffel?”

  Nodding, he peered through the car window at Piper’s luggage. It appeared she’d packed the entire contents of her apartment. Maybe to avoid being robbed while she was out of town.

  “I noticed the car was sagging,” he kidded her, “but I thought we just needed to fill up the tires before we hit the freeway.”

  “I have presents to take home for the kids in the family, plus a gift for my sister, who’s pregnant, another for my cousin who got engaged, one—”

  His laugh cut her off. “It’s your car. Bring as much as you want.”

  She slid in the driver’s side and reached across to unlock his door.

  Soon they were zooming down the road and Josh was clenching his fists in his lap. Usually, whenever he and Piper went somewhere, he drove or he took his car and met her there. Or he walked, or did whatever else was necessary to avoid riding with her when she was behind the wheel.

  It wasn’t just her tendency to drive at warp speed that bothered him; he detested being in situations where someone else was in control. He was a lousy passenger and he knew it. People disliked “backseat drivers,” especially stubborn, independent people like Piper who hated to be told what to do.

  I am going to keep my mouth shut, he told himself. As far as he knew, Piper had never had a single accident. She didn’t need him to tell her how to drive.

  His well-intended resolution lasted for about five minutes. Piper’s head was nodding in time to the fast-paced song on the radio, her braid bobbing against the collar of her pale yellow shirt, and with each chorus, the car accelerated a little more.

  “So,” he blurted, “what’s the speed limit on this road, anyway? We shot past the sign so fast I couldn’t tell.”

  She glanced at the speedometer and immediately slowed the vehicle down.

  He couldn’t repress a sigh of relief. It was irrational to get nervous when he was in someone else’s car, but for the first eighteen years of his life, he’d had no control whatsoever. He hated not being in charge of a situation. Usually, he managed to project an easygoing image, but his heart pounded every time he had to fly on a plane or ride with another driver.

  For a while, his irrational feelings had even affected his job history, driving him to quit voluntarily before something beyond his power might force him to go. A few months ago, he’d started freelancing his services and it had started to pick up. He was regularly approached with jobs that were big enough to keep him busy, but too small for firms like C, K and M to expend energy on. Lately, he’d had to turn down as many assignments as he accepted, but he never backed too far away from his freelancing—and not because he needed the money. Life had taught him that little was permanent. Not jobs, not families, not lovers. Why get attached to people? Why give someone else the opportunity to leave him? He’d lost enough already.

  First his parents, although he’d been so young that he remembered them mostly as faces in the photographs he owned. There’d been a string of foster families he’d stayed with only long enough to start caring before being yanked away and sent elsewhere. Living with the Wakefields had been the last time he’d really dared to hope for a family. After they’d moved, he’d decided becoming close to people was just an invitation to get hurt. He’d once dated a woman, Dana, who had tempted him to try to let someone in. He’d wanted to, he really had, but he’d never been able to adjust to the level of intimacy she’d needed. So she’d become just one more person to walk out of his life without looking back.

  Piper zoomed beyond Houston’s city limits, and for a moment he silently applauded her speed. Too bad he couldn’t outrun the bitterness of his past with the same ease.

  Maybe conversation would help alleviate his tension. “Is there anything in particular I should know about you?”

  “What?” She sounded perplexed. “You know me pretty well already.”

  “Well, yeah, but is there something more personal, like you have a birthmark the shape of the state of Louisiana?”

  “I do not have any weird birthmarks.”

  No doubt her skin was as creamy and flawless as her curves were intoxicating. “Okay, then some other obscure detail. Your favorite brand of bubble bath?”

  “I’m more the hot shower type.”

  Her words erased the image he’d been conjuring up of thin, foamy bubbles barely covering her. But the shower comment only made him think of two people intertwined in a steamy tile stall—two very specific people who had no business being naked and wet together.

  “Is there any reason you’re trying to make me sound like a Playboy centerfold?” she challenged teasingly.

  “Centerfold?” Cursing his exemplary visualization skills, he battled back an image of Piper scantily clad and provoca
tively posed.

  “You know, those ridiculous interview bios.” She adopted a higher-than-normal airheaded tone. “My name’s Piper, and I enjoy champagne and bubble baths.”

  “Maybe my examples stunk. All I meant was, are there little things people might expect me to know about you? Things a lover would know?”

  Her gaze shot from the road to Josh, and the word lover hung between them like an unfulfilled promise. Or a warning.

  After a second, she shook her head. “Convincing my family we’re involved is one thing, but trying to convince them we’re having a scorching affair would be more complicated, not to mention a little creepy. These are my parents, after all. Besides, people may think I’m dating, but I never hinted that the relationship was serious. We just need to take small steps to make it look real. You might have to, um, hold my hand or put your arm around me or something.”

  “I can do that.” Despite all the times he’d deliberately avoided those exact, seemingly simple, things.

  “And…” She swallowed. “It might not hurt if they see you kiss me once.”

  “Kiss you.” Her summery citrus scent teased him, and for the second time in as many days he wondered what she’d taste like. Oranges? Sweet? Tangy?

  “Just a quick peck or something,” she said. “No need for a major kiss.”

  Showed what she knew about him. If he was going to do it, he would do it right.

  “We got off track here,” she said a bit breathlessly.

  He’d have to take her word for it. His thoughts had strayed so far afield that he didn’t even remember the original conversation.

  “You were worried about personal trivia,” she reminded him. “But no one’s gonna quiz you about me. They’ll want to know all about you.”

  His least favorite topic. “Hope I don’t disappoint them. I’m not a very interesting guy.”

  She shot him such a knowing look, he added, “But if there’s anything you think you should know to make this more believable, feel free to ask. I don’t mind.” He ignored her snort of disbelief.