He nodded as if he totally understood. Maybe he did. After all, there’d probably been talk and gossip after that accident where his friend had been hurt.
“What does Piper want?” he asked, and there wasn’t a hint of judgment or admonishment in his voice.
Rayelle had to swallow hard before she answered. “She wants to live in Coldwater so she can be near Nico.” And darn it, the blasted tears threatened again. “If that happens, I’ll lose her. She doesn’t like me, and there’ll be no reason for her even to want to see me.”
Wally calmly lifted one of his bulky shoulders. “I think you could be wrong about that, but even if you’re right, there’s a fix for this. You could all live in Coldwater. That way, she gets to be near Nico, and you get to be with her.”
That sounded so simple. So scary, too, because Rayelle wasn’t sure she could keep this secret locked away much longer. It was burning a hole in her, and how much hotter and bigger would that get when she saw her own daughter following in her footsteps?
Pregnant and unmarried.
Of course, Rayelle had been older than Piper. An adult. And yet she’d still caved to pressure. Unlike Piper. As soon as Nico could get custody of her, Piper would leave. She would carry this baby and keep it. She would do everything that Rayelle had failed to do, and if Piper learned the truth, that would make the girl hate her even more.
“Piper’s your daughter, isn’t she?” Wally said, his voice as soft as a whisper.
Stunned, Rayelle pulled back her shoulders and shook her head. It was on the tip of her tongue to deny it, to lie, but she saw that wouldn’t do any good.
“How did you know?” Rayelle asked.
Another lift of his shoulder. “I can see you in her.”
Well, other than Rayelle, he was the only one. Nico certainly hadn’t and neither had any of Brenda’s friends.
“Did you ask your sister to foster Piper?” he added.
Rayelle nodded. “I’d kept tabs on Piper. Tabs,” she repeated with some disgust. “I spied on her, to make sure she was okay. Things were going well until her adoptive parents were killed in a car accident. They didn’t have any family willing to take her so she was going into the system. I told Brenda the truth, and since she was already a foster mother at the time, I talked her into taking Piper.”
She steeled herself up for him to ask why she hadn’t taken the girl herself. Rayelle had been twenty-five then. She’d already finished college and had a decent job. But to take her and to stake a claim on her would have meant coming clean. She hadn’t been ready to do that.
She still wasn’t.
“Maybe you should consider what Nico and Piper want,” he said. “I mean, Piper and you could go back to the cabin for these last few weeks of the summer. That’ll give everyone a chance to think things through.”
“But the gossip—”
“There’s nothing you can do to stop that. People with small minds talk. I figure it’s a way of spicing up their own boring lives. But talk will die down, and soon folks will go on to something else. Maybe like Nico and Eden, for instance.”
Yes, something was brewing between those two, and Rayelle wasn’t sure it was all good. Well, not all good for Eden anyway. She didn’t have Nico’s history of hopping from one relationship to the other. Even though Eden and she weren’t close, Rayelle could feel for her. After all, Rayelle knew what it was to have a man stop wanting you.
Setting his hat beside him, Wally leaned closer, narrowing the already-short distance between them. He reached out and gently took hold of her hands. The gesture surprised her, and she nearly pulled back. Nearly. But then she saw the warm smile in his eyes.
“Just talk to Piper,” he suggested. “I think it’ll do everybody some good. Even me. Nico can get downright moody when things are unsettled with him. He’ll definitely see this as unsettled.”
Yes, he would. And it was. Because as much as Rayelle wanted to hang on to Piper, to keep her close, she knew that couldn’t happen. Not unless Rayelle changed the course of the path she’d put herself on. Strange that it would take hearing that from Wally to make it sink in.
“Thank you,” she told him.
He nodded, smiled and stood. When she stood, too, he brushed a kiss on her cheek. “One day soon I’d like to take you for tea.”
She returned the smile because one day soon, she just might let him do that.
Rayelle led Wally to the door, thanking him again and telling him goodbye before she locked up and went back into the living room. She stared at the rug a moment.
“Screw this,” she muttered, and she stooped down, caught on to the rug and gave it a hard yank, turning it at that same awkward angle that it’d been when Brenda had been alive.
With that done, she headed straight to Piper’s room. She knocked but didn’t wait for an invitation to invite her in since such an invitation might not happen.
Piper was on her bed, using her laptop, but she immediately looked up at Rayelle. Rayelle saw her go on the defensive, preparing herself for a battle.
“So, let’s talk,” Rayelle said, and she made sure that didn’t sound like an order. “Just how are we going to deal with all of this?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NICO DIDN’T KICK anything when he walked into his house, but he considered it. Of course, with the way his day had gone, he could just end up breaking a toe or something. Instead, he got himself a beer and dropped down on the sofa to try to figure out if there was a bright light or even a tunnel in this.
Nope.
He couldn’t see it.
His pregnant sister was an hour away in San Antonio. Not far, but she was basically being held there—legally—against her will. He had no doubts that he could wrangle custody away from Rayelle, but that wasn’t going to happen tonight. Nope, that fun journey would start first thing in the morning in Roy’s office, where he’d begin the paperwork that Rayelle would likely fight every step of the way.
He wasn’t sure why Rayelle was being so stubborn about this. He got that whole small town gossip thing, but this was where Piper wanted to be. That was saying something considering her baby’s father was in San Antonio. Piper would rather be away from Jax than be under Rayelle’s roof. Nico couldn’t blame her for that, either, but that left him with a massive problem.
How was he going to handle a pregnant teenager living with him?
He’d manage, of course. No way around it. But it would mean a whole lifestyle change. There certainly wouldn’t be impromptu rounds of dirty sex at any hour of the night or day. He’d have to limit the sex, dirty or otherwise, to the bedroom and behind closed doors.
Of course, thinking about sex brought Eden to mind. Considering she’d been part of this hellish day, she might not be having romantic thoughts, but he wanted to call her. Not only so he could hear her voice, but also so he could give her an update on Piper.
Which really wasn’t an update at all since she was still with Rayelle.
Still, Nico thought it might soothe his raw nerves just to talk to Eden. If he got lucky, she might even need help with a blog post that he could use to distract himself.
He had a long pull on his beer, then took out his phone, but before he could even make that call to her, he heard the vehicle pull up in front of his house. Dreading a visitor, he went to the window and smiled when he saw that it was the only visitor he wanted and the woman that was hot and heavy on his mind.
Eden got out, but his smile went south when he saw her face. Hell. Something was wrong, and whatever it was, he could add it to the shit pile of other things that’d gone wrong today.
“I figured you’d be back by now so I drove by your office,” Eden said, “but your truck wasn’t there so I came here.”
That one sentence told him loads. She was looking for him and whatever was wrong, it wasn’t something she wanted to get into ove
r the phone. Something that couldn’t wait until morning.
Something that had put a very sour look on her face.
He doubted this was something as simple as indigestion. Nope. So, Nico just stepped back to let her in.
“Damien came to see me,” she said as she breezed right past him. No kiss. No warm flirty smile.
Nico gave a weary sigh. “Let me guess. He broke up with Mimi, he loves you and he wants you back.”
She nodded. Just nodded. And that caused everything inside him to go still. Damn. This could top his shit pile list.
“You’re going back to him?” Nico asked.
Some of the sourness left her face, replaced by confusion. Then, what he could only interpret as disgust. “No. He’s a cheating sack of dung.”
The relief came, damn near an avalanche of it, because he completely agreed. Better yet, because she felt that way about her ex, it meant no reconciliation. But something was obviously still bothering her.
She huffed and glanced around the room a couple of times before her narrowed gaze settled on him. “Did you know that Damien was cheating with Mimi when he was still married to me?”
Oh. That.
Yeah, this was going to stink and blow up in his face.
Nico nodded. No way would he lie to her, but man, oh man, he was dreading the consequences. “I knew about it,” he admitted.
Eden made a sound of outrage and, groaning, she put her hands in her hair and pulled. Hard. Nico moved toward her, but she stopped the hair pulling long enough to motion for him to stay back. Then, she made a circling motion with her finger for him to continue.
He did. But first Nico took another deep breath. “I was at a bar in San Antonio one Saturday night when I saw Damien come in, and Mimi was with him. She was hanging all over him, and he wasn’t doing anything to stop it, so I figured things had gone past the innocent flirting stage.”
Eden didn’t say a word, but he saw the hurt creep into her eyes. Hurt that made him want to hit his head with a rock. Despite the misery this was causing her, she obviously wanted to hear more because she made another of those circling motions with her finger.
“I didn’t say anything to Damien about it that night, but I asked him to meet me the following day,” he went on. “You were busy with the blog so I think he lied to you and said he was going in to get some work done. I told him it wasn’t right what he was doing to you and that I wanted it to stop. I even gave him an or else.”
He could see from her slightly raised eyebrow that he would need to clarify that. Too bad the clarification might just piss her off more than she already was.
“That’s what I said to Damien,” he went on. “To stop the affair or else. I didn’t spell out the consequences, but I’m sure he believed I would go to you and tell you the truth.”
“But you didn’t,” Eden quickly pointed out.
Nico shook his head. “Damien took the or else in a different direction. He went home, told you he wanted a divorce, and he left you.”
He waited for Eden to groan or curse him, but she just stood there and stared at him. She didn’t need for him to finish spelling this out for her, but Nico did anyway.
“It was my ultimatum that caused Damien to walk out on you,” he said. “If I’d just stayed out of it, you two would probably still be together. He’d be living a lie, but you’d be together.”
There. It was all out on the table now, and Eden might be angry enough with him to want to hit his head for him.
Eden groaned, took his beer from him and downed the rest of it. Even after she’d finished it, she looked as if she could use another one. Then, she began to pace, occasionally mumbling something that he couldn’t catch. Occasionally shooting glances at him, as well. That went on for a couple of minutes before she stopped dead center in front of him.
“Exactly how mad are you at me?” he asked when she didn’t say anything.
“That’s to be determined. Why didn’t you tell me about Damien’s cheating either before or afterward?”
That wasn’t a hard question to answer. “Because I knew it would hurt you, and I thought he’d come to his senses, stop dicking around and realize you’re the best thing he’d ever had in his life.”
Apparently, that took some wind out of her sails because her shoulders dropped, and her groan turned to a heavy sigh. “Then, no. I’m not mad at you.”
The relief that he felt was fast, strong and so very welcome. Nico reached for her again, and this time Eden let him pull her into his arms. It was like opening the best of the best presents on Christmas Day.
He didn’t push things by kissing her. Nico just stood there holding her. Not exactly holding his breath but close enough.
“How many other secrets of Damien’s are you keeping?” she asked.
Nico didn’t have to think too hard to come up with one. “He kissed that cheerleader, Sarah Beth Daniels, in high school. Frenched her beneath the bleachers, but that’s as far as it went. Trust me, Damien would have told me if he’d managed to get in her pants.”
Eden pulled back, met him eye to eye. “Anything else?”
“Three other incidents over the past two decades similar to Sarah Beth. I honestly don’t know if sex happened, but Damien mentioned making out with them.”
Damien had called them his candy on the side. Something Nico had no intention of telling Eden. She had enough details, enough truth without heaping on stuff that would make her want to neuter her ex.
“Okay,” she said after a really long pause.
But Nico wasn’t sure exactly what she was okaying. She just stood there as if trying to absorb that he’d been a dick of a friend by not telling her the truth about her dick of a husband.
“Okay,” Eden repeated. She looked up at him and moved in closer until their bodies were touching. “You so owe me make-up sex. Nothing fancy. It can be fast and still edged with some of this anger and hurt I’m feeling.”
Nico smiled. Then, he winced a little. He was probably going to lose his guy card for this, but he had to ask. “Are you sure you want to try sex to fix this?”
“Absolutely. Talking about this won’t do anything other than piss me off. Damien screwed around on me, and nothing will go back and undo that. The only thing is for me to move forward.”
Now his smile returned. “That’s awfully adult of you.”
She shrugged, ran her fingers into the small gap between his shirt buttons. “Not really. I don’t love him and don’t want him so it’s easier to be an adult when you haven’t lost something important.”
Good. Not only because Damien was no longer the big gun in her life but also because she no longer seemed hurt. Or pissed off.
“‘I thought he’d come to his senses, stop dicking around and realize you’re the best thing he’d ever had in his life,’” Eden said a moment later, and he quickly realized she was quoting him.
Yeah, he had said that all right. “I meant it,” Nico confessed. “Damien was an idiot.”
“He still is. He came to visit me when you were in San Antonio, and that’s when he gave me the useless whine of wanting to get back together with me. How’s Piper?” she asked before he could respond to that.
Because she was still playing with his chest, it took him a moment to shift gears. It took him a moment more because he wasn’t sure of the answer. “I’m going to keep an eye on her and start the paperwork to foster her. It’s possible she can have herself emancipated or something so we can cut through the red tape.”
“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
Nico knew she meant it, too. She’d given him no dire warnings about him not being suitable or how this would upset his life. Just Eden’s blanket offer to help. He wondered if she’d always been this nice and decided that she had been. Well, except for the times they’d gotten into friendly argumen
ts over sushi and some of the women he’d dated.
Eden wasn’t just nice. She was special. And because that realization made him tense a little too much, he kissed her. Nico touched his lips to hers and just lingered for a moment there. Sampling and savoring.
“I’m sorry about keeping Damien’s secret from you,” he told her. Not that he especially wanted to talk about her ex, but he did want to get that apology out in the open. For Nico, it was going to be a hard rule that he’d never break with her again.
“I know you are. Damien said because you’d kept it a secret, that I shouldn’t trust you.”
“What an asshole,” Nico growled out before he could stop himself.
“No argument from me.” She did some brushing of her lips against his, too. Then, she brushed her hips in the right area of his groin before she caught on to his chin, angling his eyes to meet hers. “I do trust you, you know.”
That sent a nice hit of heat through him. And fear. Because it was true. She did trust him, and he had such a shitty track record when it came to not letting women down. In the past that hadn’t mattered too much. Women hadn’t expected much more of him than he’d expected of them. But again, this went back to that whole notion of her being special.
“Do you trust me enough to try sushi?” he asked, needing to add some levity to this. Best not to get that hard-on she was working on giving him while there was a tennis volley of thoughts and emotions going on in his head. Hard-ons should come with some focus to carry out the task they were designed to do.
“No,” Eden quickly answered. “Do you trust me enough to cheer for the Cowboys?” she countered.
Easy answer. “Nope.”
But he was mentally on the right track now, thanks to a follow-up kiss and his running his hand down the side of her leg. He pushed up her dress and slipped his hand into her panties.
“Just checking to make sure you don’t need any touch-ups on your Brazilian. All good,” he verified after he skimmed his finger over that smooth silky spot.
Sweet Summer Sunset Page 23
