by Susan Meier
“Whatever you want, darlin’.”
He heard her leave as he flicked on the computer monitor and watched the programs magically appear on the screen. But he couldn’t get to work. Things were not turning out the way he’d expected them to here in Harmony Hills. Not only were people obviously giving him the benefit of the doubt about Lonnie, but now he and Piper were talking like friends. Sort of. She’d admitted she didn’t like being a laughingstock and he’d admitted he didn’t want to stay here. She hadn’t poked or prodded for more info, just accepted what he gave.
He smacked his hands on the desk. Damn it. She was not supposed to be nice to him.
Oh, sure, she’d made him clean coolers. But they were partners, and he hadn’t been keeping up his end of the job. Now that he’d stocked shelves and cleaned a cooler, he actually felt like a grocery store employee again. He felt like they were partners.
Like he belonged here.
Oh. No! He shook his head trying to clear that thought. His grandfather could not have set him up in this store thinking he’d stay…
He was not staying. No matter how much he wanted to sleep with Piper, he did not want to run a grocery store with her, especially not forever.
Forever?
Oh, shit no. Just as he’d told Piper, he had no intention of staying here a minute longer than he had to.
If this was his grandfather’s plan, he would not fall victim. He focused on the computer screen, forcing his thoughts on finding his grandfather’s proof so he could get the hell out of here. But a mental picture of trapping Piper against the filing cabinets sprang to his mind and had his eyes raising to look at the tall four-drawer metal containers.
That little episode had been ridiculously hot, and, in fact, if that was part of the running-the-grocery-store deal, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
He groaned at his own stupidity, but staring at the cabinets, he suddenly realized something.
He looked at the drawers, then at the computer screen and back to the drawers.
His grandfather had said there was proof in the office. Born and raised with technology, Cade had automatically assumed it was a computer file. But his grandfather was an old man who’d barely consented to using a computer, and had only done so because it saved him the cost of a bookkeeper and made doing his taxes easier.
What if his proof that he was innocent was something in one of those cabinets?
Cade scrambled off the chair and over to the file drawers. Whipping open the first one, he scanned the file names and saw they were actually the same names as the files in the computer. His grandfather had made hard copy duplicates of everything.
He groaned again. There were hundreds of thin manila files. Still, the more he stared at them, the more he realized this was the most likely place to find his proof. All he had to do was search four filing cabinets, each with four drawers. Even if he only did one drawer a day, he had—at most—sixteen days before he’d find whatever his grandfather had hidden.
Devon was fairly confident their dad would be signing the agreement within the next two weeks.
He was fairly certain he’d find his grandfather’s proof in about two weeks…
And then what?
Would his family have a big party announcing they were rich?
Would he drop everything and go to Montana?
He would be a rich man who could be, have, or do anything he wanted. Hell, he could spend the rest of his life drunk if he wanted to.
The change in his life suddenly began to feel very, very real.
The door opened and Piper walked inside. “Hey, Cade. Mrs. Thompson’s check bounced.” She glanced over at the filing cabinets and caught his gaze. “But she gets paid tomorrow. I think we should just hold onto it. We can let her know we’ll be running it again…”
Cade could only stare at her. She was the prettiest woman he’d ever met, but even as a rich man—a man who could be, have, or do anything he wanted—he couldn’t kiss her? That just didn’t seem right.
She laughed. “What? Why are you looking at me so funny?”
“I just…” He shook his head, drew in a breath. He had the sudden, ridiculous sense that if he didn’t kiss her now—before word got out that his family was rich, before he found the proof that exonerated his grandfather but condemned her dad—he’d never get to kiss her.
He swallowed hard, telling himself that didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. They were enemies, and when he found that proof they’d be bitter enemies. He should not be sad over not getting to kiss her.
“I just realized that I’ve never looked at what’s in these cabinets.”
She walked over. “I haven’t either.”
Standing a mere six inches away from him, she peeked up at him. When her pretty green eyes met his gaze, all his senses rolled to hyper-aware. He could smell her. He could feel the energy she brought into the room. Enemies or not, he could not deny this attraction or the unholy desire to kiss every time they got within two feet of each other.
“Should we?”
He definitely thought they should. To hell with being enemies. To hell with what might happen two days from now. In this moment, right now, he ached to kiss her.
Of course, she wasn’t talking about kissing. She was asking about looking at what was in the filing cabinets.
She stepped around him and reached for the handle of one of the drawers in the second cabinet. Yanking it open, she displayed another long row of manila folders, each one labeled in black marker, just like the row he’d found in the drawer he’d opened.
“They seem to have the same file names as the ones in the computer.”
“Duplicate files. Hard copies. Probably for the last thirty years. Pap got a computer to help with his taxes, but he didn’t trust technology. So I’ll bet he’s been making hard copies the same way he did before he got a computer.”
…
A weird sense of normalcy rolled through Piper. As much as she and Cade had tried to fight it, here they were, talking like real partners.
There’d be no nudging him out. Even Lonnie knew he didn’t deserve to be nudged. Otherwise, she’d have laughed with glee and helped Piper plan. Instead, she’d been weirdly quiet.
And Cade had stopped needling. When they joked now, it was as friends. This morning they’d played like two little kids. He’d even gotten the gathered spectators to look for her glasses.
No wonder Lonnie had wanted reassurances. She knew this was coming. The necessity of working together had taken them from enemies to friends.
She slammed her drawer closed. She didn’t want to be friends with a Hyatt. She didn’t want to be friends with the man who’d deserted her friend. The grandson of the man who had cheated her father.
Damn it. She didn’t want any of this, but she had to stay to get her share of the store…to clear her father’s name. And like it or not, it was happening.
Stepping away from him, she said, “I better go call Mrs. Thompson.”
“Phone’s on the desk.”
She laughed nervously. “Right.” If she displayed her personal phone and said she’d call Mrs. Thompson from her cell, he’d shake his head and think her crazy for using her personal minutes for business. If she didn’t, they’d be in the same room, working together, working like partners, instead of letting each other do his or her work separately or from a distance. They’d become two people ignoring their pasts to get along in their present.
Oh, Lord! What would happen with their attraction if they forgot the past? Would it skyrocket? Would he eventually realize he scared the hell out of her because what she felt for him was way beyond her sexual experience?
She walked over to the desk, lifted the receiver of the old phone, and dialed the number on Mrs. Thompson’s check, all the while watching Cade as he ran his hand over the tabs of the old manila folders as if they were spun gold.
When the answering machine for the Thompson residence clicked on, she said, “Hey, Mrs. Thompson, this is
Piper at O’Riley’s. We’re holding your check until your payday when we’ll run it again. Just wanted to let you know.”
She hung up the phone, and the office became incredibly quiet.
Finally, Cade said, “You didn’t tell her the check bounced.”
She rose from the desk. “No reason to. She knows why we have to run it again. No sense embarrassing her.”
He smiled wryly. “That’s nice of you.”
“Not really. That’s the best way to do business in a small town.”
“You’re telling me I have a lot to learn?”
She met his gaze. “I think we both have a lot to learn.”
“I’m an excellent teacher.”
“Right.” She sniffed a laugh. He just couldn’t let a chance to tease her slide by. She might become friends with him, let go of the memories of her dad being depressed over losing the store if only because Richard Hyatt had made up for that by giving her half in his will, but she could never, ever forget that Cade had left her best friend at the altar, abandoned his child. She couldn’t jump ship on Lonnie and become friends with the guy who had hurt her simply because she ran a business with him.
But how hard was it not to be friends with a guy who didn’t ruffle, didn’t yell, just did his job?
She headed for the office door. “Go back to doing whatever you were doing.”
She left the office blowing her breath out in a long, long sigh. How the hell had her life gotten so confusing?
Chapter Eleven
Mercifully, Cade didn’t stay for the afternoon shift, and Piper spent a lot of her time on the sales floor marveling at the fact that Richard Hyatt was right. It might have taken a few days, but with an O’Riley and a Hyatt running the store, business was beginning to boom.
With her plan to oust her partner now dead, there was no reason for her and Cade to work each other’s shifts, so for the next week, she saw him only for an overlap hour. Another week passed and then another. Suddenly it was the week before the Dinner Belles’ end-of-summer fund-raiser. Every clerk, including her mother, asked for that Sunday afternoon off.
As they worked out the schedule in their overlap hour the Friday before, Piper told Cade she’d manage the store alone on Sunday.
“I’ll help.”
“No. No.” She waved away his offer. “Go to the Dinner Belles’ event. It’s always a good time.”
“I’d love to. But the store needs two people and I don’t let my partners down.”
It wasn’t the first time he said or did something that proved he was a real partner, a good partner. And she always held back because, no matter how much the rest of the town let him off the hook, she was Lonnie Simmons’s best friend.
“Suit yourself. But we’re not going to have customers, so you might as well go.”
“I’m working.”
She rose from the desk. “Like I said. Suit yourself.”
Sunday morning, they sold enough bread, milk and doughnuts to feed a small third-world country, but Sunday afternoon, with everyone at the fund-raiser, O’Riley’s grew quiet.
Wanting to keep her distance from Cade, Piper decided to clean the deli case, while her partner manned the empty checkout lane.
When she was nearly done cleaning, the store was so silent she heard the swoosh when the automatic door opened. A few seconds later, ten-year-old Jakey Nelson came slogging up the aisle.
He wore an old straw cowboy hat that dripped rain from the brim. His jacket was soaked. His boots sloshed when he walked. Before she could take off her rubber gloves and get from behind the deli counter to help him, he grabbed a half gallon of milk and a loaf of bread and headed for the checkout aisle.
She rounded the tall glass deli-meat display and went after him. Jake’s mom might be one of her former fiancé’s sisters-in-law who hated her, but she was also pregnant and sick. Throwing up every day. Jakey’s dad worked odd shifts, which meant he was probably working this afternoon. And Jakey had a four-year-old sister. He only lived four blocks away—actually he lived down the street from Cade—but Chris Nelson wouldn’t have sent him to the store unless they were desperate for the staples. Piper wasn’t about to let him walk home.
Halfway down the aisle, she heard Cade’s voice. “Hey, your mom never told me you were a cowboy.”
Jakey giggled. “I’m not. Not really.”
“I get it. You just play one on TV.”
Jakey laughed again.
“Okay, that’s five dollars and fifteen cents.”
Jakey said nothing as he handed Cade what must have been a ten-dollar bill. Cade bagged the half gallon of milk and loaf of bread and got Jakey’s change.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled at Jakey. “How about a candy bar to go with that milk?”
“My mom says I can’t get anything else. We don’t have the money.”
“That’s okay. The candy bar’s on me.”
Piper smiled, then grimaced, reminding herself that Cade wasn’t being nice. Technically, he was stealing a candy bar.
Jakey didn’t care. “Really?”
“Sure.” Cade handed him a chocolate bar, rang up the sale, and reached into his pocket for the appropriate cash to pay for it.
Piper winced. Damn it. Did he always have to do the right thing?
Jakey peered up. “Can I have one for my sister, too?”
Cade didn’t miss a beat. “Sure.” He paid for the second candy bar, closed the register drawer, and reached for the snaps of the O’Riley’s smock he wore.
“You know who I am, right?”
“Yeah. You’re our neighbor.”
He pulled his cell phone from his jeans pocket. “Do me a favor and dial the number for your house.”
Jakey took the phone.
“We’re going to ask your mom if it’s okay for me to take you home.”
Happy with that, Jakey nodded eagerly. He pressed the numbers into the phone and Cade took it from his hands. “Hey, Chris, this is Cade Donovan. Jakey is here at the store—” He paused, winked at Jakey. “No, he’s fine. We’ve got his bread and milk all bought and paid for. But I was just about to drive home for a short break, and I thought I’d bring him with me. I don’t want him to think it’s okay to get into anyone’s car without permission, so I thought it would be a good idea for you to tell him he can get in the car with me.”
He handed the phone to Jakey and Piper’s heart melted. Not only did he not want poor Jakey to walk home, but he was smart enough to ask permission. As much as she tried to argue it in her brain, that didn’t fit at all with a guy who’d abandon a child.
Jakey said, “Okay, Mom,” then handed the phone back to Cade. He said a few more words to Chris, then shoved the phone into his pocket. “Let’s go, partner.”
Sliding out from behind the checkout aisle, he yelled, “Hey, Piper,” not realizing she was only about halfway down the aisle behind him. “I’m taking my break now. I’ll be back in fifteen.”
He lifted the milk and bread from the counter. “Ready?”
Jakey nodded.
As they walked to the door, Cade said, “You know I work on a ranch, right?”
Jakey nodded. “My mom said you did.”
The sliding glass door opened.
“Maybe someday you could come out and visit me.”
The door swished closed behind them, and for Piper their conversation ended. But she could see the happy expression on Jakey’s face, the skip in his step as they headed for Cade’s Silverado.
Walking to the front of the store, Piper watched them drive away.
It was one thing to think of Cade as a good partner, but this went beyond doing his fair share for the job.
She ran her fingers across her eyes. She held one impression of Cade based on their shared past. But the Cade she worked with—true, this Cade was a grown up version, but he was still the same guy—behaved totally differently. She couldn’t go on liking him as a partner and hating him because of th
eir past. Something had to give.
When they closed the store just after eight that night, she said, “Good night,” but Cade paused on his way to his truck.
“Aren’t you going to the church hall?”
She batted a hand. “Fund-raiser is about over.”
“No. They decided to have a dance this year. The thing’s going to go on until after eleven.”
She laughed at the absurdity of thinking eleven o’clock was late, but sometimes in a small town it was.
“I know, but I’m tired.”
He flipped his keys in the air, then caught them. “Suit yourself. My mom and brothers are there, so I thought I’d go over and contribute a bit. After all, the Dinner Belles certainly contribute to our bottom line. And it can’t hurt business for us to be seen there.”
She smiled slightly. He made their owning O’Riley’s together seem so normal, so easy. While she suffered the torment of the damned. Pulled in two directions. Almost feeling she was living a double life. Wondering about the truth.
How could he be so accepting, so easy-going, with his sordid past? Had he made peace with leaving a child? Or, as Bunny Farmer and the town thought, was there more to this story?
“You go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With that, she marched to her car and drove to her apartment above Buzz Hanwell’s two-car garage. She climbed the rickety stairs, flicked on the light, and speed-dialed Lonnie. The only person who knew the truth.
“Hey, Piper.”
“Hey.” She drew in a quiet breath, not quite sure how to start, what to say. Eventually, she settled on, “You and I need to talk about Cade.”
“You’re starting to figure things out, aren’t you?”
The resignation in Lonnie’s voice almost did her in. Still, she wouldn’t guess. She had to hear the story, the real story, from Lonnie’s mouth. “Figure what out?”
“That Cade isn’t Hunter’s father. I thought for sure he’d tell you on day one, if only to make things easier for your partnership. But he let my little slip go on.”
