“West.” A wet hand clasped his forearm and he looked down at Piper’s frowning face. She tugged. “Pantry—now.”
He followed Piper into the pantry, unable to prevent his gaze dropping to the pert twitch of her ass under snug black jeans. The sight momentarily distracted him from his annoyance at Bill’s belly-up capitulation.
“Aren’t you hot in those jeans?” he said, as Piper ducked around him to shut the door. “It’s like a sauna in there.”
She leaned against it, watching him. “I didn’t invite you in here to discuss my clothes.”
Normally she wore a full length apron, but today she’d donned a chef’s half apron, knotted around her slim hips and hiding nothing of her upper torso. Fascinated with the trickle of sweat disappearing under the “v” neck of her CSI: Can’t Stand Idiots tee shirt, West braced his palms against the door on either side of her shoulders. “Perhaps we should discuss them.”
Piper’s gaze lowered and her breathing accelerated, the rapid movement of her chest freeing a second droplet of sweat. Her nipples puckered under the soft knit fabric and West wanted to drag his mouth down to those sensitive peaks.
Instant hard-on.
“The Due South polo-shirt, right?” Her swallow was a dry click in the small, enclosed space. “No one sees me back here and it’s not like I’m really part of the staff—”
West traced a slow finger from the dent in her throat to the “v” of her shirt, stopping when he met the resistance of her bra. Her heartbeat thudded under his fingertip.
“I was thinking more along the lines of some short-shorts instead of jeans. Mix it up a little.” Removing his finger from her neckline, he brushed his hand down her ribs then gently gripped her hip. Her breathing ceased for a moment—if his other hand wasn’t holding her in place would she bolt?
Time to find out.
“You’ve got the hottest legs, Pipe.” He released her hip and stroked his knuckles partway down her thigh.
Piper didn’t move but she didn’t meet his gaze either, her focus off to the right, like she opted to study the row of cans on the wall shelf.
“I want to see more of them. Preferably when they’re bare and wrapped around my hips.”
A soft moan escaped from her lips and her head thunked back on the door. He hardened further. He’d do her against the pantry door right now if she made another noise like that. He leaned in to kiss her—just a little kiss, maybe sneak in some tongue if he played it right—when a splayed hand, still damp with dishwater, clamped across his mouth and shoved.
“Not the time or place,” Piper rasped. “Your parents are right outside.”
Damn. He was all riled up and she’d nearly melted in his arms. A couple of wet and wild kisses would take the edge off. She did that lip licking thing and he nearly kissed her anyway—even though her hazel eyes sparked a warning: touch me and I’ll ensure you walk funny for the rest of the day.
“Pipe.” He delivered his best c’mon-baby smolder.
“Your mother is on the other side of this door, West—your mother. Do you need more of an incentive to keep your lips to yourself?” She darted under his arm and fled to the chest freezer at the end of the pantry—in case the threat of his parents catching him with his tongue down the dish-hand’s throat wasn’t enough to make him behave.
West shoved his hands into the pockets of his business pants, pulling them away from his groin—which still hadn’t received the update that hot sex in Due South’s pantry wasn’t a go. They watched each other, wary as two cats squaring off for a backyard battle. He waited until his pulse settled back into a halfway normal rhythm before speaking.
“So why did you drag me in here?”
Piper folded her arms. “I saw the way you looked at Bill and Claire, like you were about to chew them both out.”
Exactly what he’d been about to do.
Not that he’d admit it. And thinking of the sappy look on his dad’s face—anything other than a scowl on Bill’s face was sappy—his annoyance spilled over. “I should chew them both out, her especially—taking advantage of a sick old man who’s not thinking straight.”
Piper dismissed him with a toss of her head. “There’s nothing wrong with your father’s mind, and how is Claire uprooting herself to come look after him taking advantage?”
“I don’t know, yet,” he said. “But she’s up to something. Fussing and fawning over him. Making him smile, for God’s sake.”
“They still care about each other, West, and it shows.” She moved across the pantry and stood toe to toe with him, gently drilling a finger into his chest. “That’s what’s bugging you, isn’t it?”
West wrapped his hand around hers, pressing her palm flat. “She walked out thirteen years ago. She can’t just waltz back in and act like she didn’t abandon him.”
Abandon them both.
“I know you and Bill are close, but whatever’s going on with him and Claire is not your business.”
Piper’s fingers curled on his chest and sent shivers skittering over his skin. She stared up at him, stared until he was half convinced her intense gaze peeled back his protective layers until every secret inside him split open to her scrutiny.
Could she see the unhealed scars of the boy he’d been? The boy who’d thought himself too old for tears, yet cried for his mother and little brother, hating every moment of his weakness. Piper’s sympathy rolled over him like a soft blanket, but it suffocated him, made him want to push her away.
Again.
Sympathy was a blink away from pity and he couldn’t stand the idea of her pitying him.
“My business or not, I don’t have to like it, and I don’t want to see my father devastated when she goes back to LA.” He removed her hand from his shirt and let it drop.
“It doesn’t sound like LA’s where she wants to be at the moment.”
“She made her bed.”
Piper huffed out a sigh and dragged her fingers through her hair, leaving the strands in short spikes, which he itched to smooth down. He forced the impulse away by grabbing the door handle.
“Haven’t you ever had to make a choice where there were no good outcomes?” she said. “Where no matter what you did, someone got hurt?”
West thought of the morning he’d broken it off with her and the night two days after Michael died when he’d tried to take it back. Piper had stared at his face for five solid seconds before quietly closing the door. He thought of her in the rain at Michael’s memorial up on the cemetery hill, standing a short distance apart from her family. Of Piper wearing her backpack and walking to the ferry. And him, hiding in the shadows, not saying a word. Making a choice to let her go.
“Yeah.”
“Then cut your parents some slack.”
He nodded. Who was he to judge Bill when he stood on the precipice of making the same mistake with Piper?
So he said, “Back to work,” and flung open the pantry door, stepping through it before Piper could see that mistake written all over his face.
***
With the honeymoon couple out of the way for three hours on a deserted beach toting a picnic lunch, Piper tugged on her wetsuit and cursed a blue streak.
Yeah, she’d kinda agreed to be West’s safety diver. Okay, she had agreed, as long as he followed her rules—but agreeing to a theoretical situation was one thing. It was another to arrive at a sheltered cove in Paterson Inlet and have him announce his intention to dive.
And it was another matter entirely when West emerged from his cabin in a painted-on silver and black wetsuit. With a normal wetsuit, some areas, some things, were left to the imagination. Not so much with a free-diving wetsuit. Thinner and super-stretchy, the material clung to every inch of his body bar his feet and head.
Every. Single. Inch.
West looking so damn hot wasn’t a bad thing, though. It distracted her from the heavy slab of fear constricting her chest at the thought of him free-diving. She scuttled into her cabin to change before s
he did something really dumb, like offer to adjust his fancy outfit with her lips.
She zipped up her wetsuit and faced the mirror.
C’mon Pipe, get it together.
She was a highly trained professional with hundreds of hours of experience under her weight belt. She wasn’t eighteen, West wasn’t her dad, everything would be fine.
“A cakewalk,” she told her reflection.
Her pale face stared back at her, unconvinced. A small vein pulsed in her temple and she raised a shaky hand to press a fingertip against it.
A rap of knuckles on her cabin door. “Let’s go, daylight’s wasting.”
Piper took a last look in the mirror before she walked out of the cabin, punched a smirking West in the bicep, and headed for the equipment locker.
She was okay, dammit.
Thirty minutes later and sixteen feet below the surface, West’s silhouetted legs churned lazily above her by the anchor line as he prepared to dive. He’d use the line to guide himself down to the predetermined depth of ninety-eight feet, then follow it back up to the surface. Her job was to track his ascent and react quickly if he displayed any signs of a shallow water blackout.
The draw from her regulator rasped in her ear as she breathed and the chill of the water pressed in on all sides. But still, she remained steady—on task and in control.
In one smooth action, West folded at the waist and glided down in a series of calculated but graceful motions, like ballet executed underwater. He didn’t acknowledge her as he dropped below her position, so focused on each precise movement of his arms and legs.
But no more focused than she was on him. Piper’s gaze didn’t deviate off his streamlined body. West’s legs flexed again in a frog kick and then returned to complement the straight line of his torso. He held his arms relaxed at his sides, negative buoyancy now causing him to fall weightlessly into the deep. Hypnotic to watch, the power of it combined with the memories of her father training, stung her eyes.
Visibility closed around him and he slipped from her view. Now the hard part—trusting he’d return. She checked her dive watch again. Counted off the seconds. Talked herself out of diving down another thirty feet after him. Checked her watch again.
By now West would’ve reversed direction at the end of the line, no longer falling, but reliant on pure muscle and determination to propel him upward. But things often went wrong in the ascent. Push the body too hard and air-hungry lungs would suck the oxygen right out of a person’s blood—then buh-bye consciousness.
West reappeared out of the murky dark, his black swim-capped head arrowing smoothly through the water, not too slow, not too fast. She finned closer, close enough to make eye contact for those last crucial moments. His gaze fixed on hers as they swam in parallel synchronization. No emotion filtered through his steady gaze, his mind turned inward to master his lungs’ crippling need for air.
With a short distance to go, bubbles exploded around his face, obscuring his mask and catapulting her heart into frantic overdrive. West’s body arched as his head broke the surface, but almost immediately he sank back under, and plummeted—straight into Piper’s arms.
No time for panic. No time for accusations. Only response, action, training.
She hauled West to the surface, supporting him under his arms and twisting him awkwardly onto his back.
She yanked her regulator out and tugged off his nose clip. “C’mon, West. C’mon now.” Piper blew gently across his face and patted his cheek.
Ice blue eyes popped open and he coughed, blinked, and swore. After a short pause he tore off his mask and rolled over until he trod water beside her. His brow creased and he shook his head, water flicking off his face in tiny droplets. “Pipe?”
You blacked out. You could’ve died.
The words crowded her throat but wouldn’t form out loud. She labored even to breathe, just gawking at him with her vocal chords frozen.
“Pipe?” He wheezed, sucked in more air. “Shit.” Gasp. “You okay?”
That should’ve been her line, but she couldn’t say a damn thing, transfixed by West’s face, the rise and fall of his chest as he sucked in air.
Piper’s lungs refused to work smoothly. Her father’s face, grey and motionless with water spilling from his slack mouth, superimposed over West’s. No longer West’s fancy black and silver suit beneath her fingertips, but Dad’s. Dad’s bulk, as she battled to keep his head above water. Dad’s eyes, that didn’t blink when she tore off his mask, when she blew on his stubbled cheeks. When she sobbed his name over and over and over.
She had to get out of the water. Now.
She clamped her trembling lips shut and swam the short distance to the boat’s ladder. Splashes from behind and he shouted her name, a string of four-letter words chasing it. Her arm muscles had the same tensile strength as overcooked pasta as Piper hauled herself aboard. Nearly there, nearly there.
More water sluiced onto the deck as West climbed up the ladder after her. “Hey—”
She kneeled on the deck and stripped off her inflatable vest and tank.
“Talk to me, please.” He crouched beside her.
Piper kept her head down and unclipped her weight belt, letting it fall off her waist. She still couldn’t look at him—didn’t trust herself to speak. One glance at those baby blues and she’d lose what little control she had left.
Her cabin, that’s where she needed to go. A place where she wouldn’t use the dive knife strapped to her thigh to take West’s head off. Yeah, after a hot shower, her temper, primed by a mix of the adrenalin and terror flooding her system, would dissipate enough for her to have a rational conversation.
Piper lurched forward on hands and knees, intending to use the short bench seat to drag herself up onto unsteady legs.
“Piper, listen to me—” West’s hand closed around her ankle.
She slapped out at him with a growl that choked her in its ferocity. His grip tightened, and suddenly she was screaming at him.
Screaming like a banshee hyped up on meth.
Chapter 15
He’d blown it. But when she tried to walk away from him again? All bets were off.
He lunged for her ankle and suddenly it was all on—Piper shouting, punching, and snarling.
Her elbow connected with his ribs. Goddammit, she was strong. He winced, ducked from a fist that would’ve cost him a front tooth had it landed. Her flailing hadn’t caused any major damage, as much as it would’ve enraged her if she’d any inkling of his thoughts. West didn’t want her to hurt herself, so he pulled rank and flipped her onto her back, pinning her with his additional weight and bulk.
“Enough.” He snatched up her wrists and stretched them above her head.
Piper continued to wriggle, inciting a predictable effect on a certain part of his anatomy.
Impeccable timing, West. As usual.
But with her breasts mashed against his chest and her hips bucking as she attempted to throw him off, his cock didn’t care that an erection was not only inappropriate but potentially dangerous.
Her hips stilled mid arch, cradling the length of him. God, terrible timing or not, it was good to be this close to her. Breathing in ragged pants, Piper kept her face turned away.
West lowered his forehead, resting it against the wet spikes of her hair. “Stop fighting for one second and listen.”
Her jaw worked as she spoke through clenched teeth. “Get. Off. Me.”
“No.” Blood rushed in his ears, his head pounding as he racked his brains for a way to apologize. But everything he came up with made him sound like a selfish prick for putting her in this situation. Of course—he was a selfish prick.
His lips brushed her temple. She tasted of salt and sun lotion. “I’m not ready to let you go yet.”
She twisted her head, the motion nudging his lips away. Hazel eyes, almost green now with bright fury, clashed with his. “I’m a cop. I know how to hurt you.”
“Yeah, I figured that.”
/>
And he’d figured that, one, he’d earned her knee in his nuts and, two, it couldn’t hurt more than the pain he’d caused by reminding her of Michael’s death. They were at a stalemate. Neither could look away. The intensity built in his chest to a living, clawing thing until he had to either kiss her or let her go.
Her breath hissed out and she rolled her head to the side, the harsh lines of her jaw relaxing. Whether it was a temporary truce, or a trick to lull him into exposing his vulnerable nuts, he didn’t know. He released her wrists, propping his weight onto his elbows so he didn’t squash her on the deck. She rotated her wrists and flexed her fingers, bringing her arms back over her head and resting her palms on his biceps, pushing against him. He didn’t budge, so her fingers stayed there, splayed on his skin like petals. The stiff tendons in her neck softened and she swallowed, but he didn’t for a second believe she wasn’t still pissed.
“You could’ve died, moron,” she said.
“You’ve downgraded me from asshole to moron. That’s something.”
Her eyelids lowered, the inky black lashes forming tiny clumps from the seawater. Nails dug into his upper arms hard enough to leave dents. “I’ll rephrase that—you’re an asshole and a moron.”
“A moron for free-diving?”
“Clever-clogs, aren’t you?”
“And an asshole for scaring you.”
She said nothing, switched to her slightly-bored game face. Except he’d seen glimpses of the Piper behind the game face. The Piper who managed to sneak lunch into his office when he wasn’t looking, because he’d forgotten to get his own. He’d seen that Piper again at the bonfire—the naked yearning on her face as he danced with Zoe. The Piper who cried while he played the piano and the Piper who held back tears when she realized the community had reclaimed her.
His chest squeezed as his heart turned a slow summersault. He used the back of his fingers to stroke the smooth skin of her jaw. “I’m sorry I scared you, baby.”
Piper’s lower lip quivered and he grappled with the need to kiss the tremor away.
In Too Deep Page 21
