by Susan Meier
Holding onto her emotions by the barest thread, Piper said, “I suppose you heard that Cade left town.”
“We did.” That came from Finn, who ambled into the foyer from the kitchen of the open-floor-plan house. “I am sorry, Piper.”
“Hey, I’m fine.” Big lie. But necessary. “I’m more worried about Cade.”
Ellie led her through the kitchen and directed her to sit on one of the two sofas that flanked a beautiful fireplace. “We weren’t exactly thrilled that he left.” She glanced back at Finn as if seeking moral support for what she was about to say. “He was too calm, too quiet when he left.” She caught Piper’s gaze. “He’d never been as happy as when he’d talked about you. And he wants your baby. He wants to be a dad. To tell you the truth, we’re not even sure why he left.”
“He’s afraid he’s like his dad.”
Finn swore. “That’s ridiculous.”
But something about the house got to her. Warm and calm, it spoke of people truly settled in. People who loved each other. Easily. Casually. Naturally.
What was she doing? Begging a man to love her?
Because technically, that’s what she was doing. She wanted big, huge, I-will-love-seeing-you-disheveled-in-the-morning love. And Cade didn’t feel that.
Hell, he didn’t even feel normal love. He’d never panted an I-love-you during sex. He’d never tossed an I-love-you when he said good night.
He’d never said I love you.
The pain of it nearly paralyzed her. But she shook her head and smiled at Ellie. “I’m okay.” She rose. “I guess I’m sorting through things. I’m sorry I bothered you. Eventually it will all make sense.”
Ellie rose, too, and grabbed her hand. “If you need anything, Finn and I are here for you.”
“Because of the baby?” She batted her hand in dismissal. “I’m fine.” She pressed her hand to her stomach. “We’re fine.”
With that she headed for the front door. Finn caught up to her before she could leave. “We’re serious. Cade’s all over the board right now. He didn’t talk much when he came by before he left. He basically told us he’d left his gear in the house and we should just toss it.”
Piper smiled weakly. At least that explained how he’d gotten away before she reached his house to stop him.
“But your baby is a Donovan. Anything you need, you’ll have.”
She sniffed a laugh and turned to open the door. “I have what I need. The store. A way to support us.” She straightened her shoulders. “A place in the community.” She shook her head. She now had everything she wanted except the man she loved. She supposed it was poetic justice, payback, Karma for leaving her two fiancés.
And maybe she deserved the pain burning a hole in her heart.
That morning she assembled her staff and told them Cade had gone back to Montana. She didn’t beat around the bush or even look sad when she made the announcement. She held a clipboard, talked a bit about profits, gave them the schedule for the following week, and headed back to the office.
But at night, alone in the bed she’d shared with Cade, the woman in her wept on the pillow that still had his scent. In the shower, she put a bit of his body wash on her fingers and closed her eyes to remember the fun they’d had. The way they fit. She cried in her orange juice. Wept on the drive to the store.
Then wiped her eyes, sucked in a breath, and got down to business. Because she had a child to support.
Billionaires or not, the Donovans didn’t have to take care of her. She could now do it herself.
She entered the store and did what needed to be done for seven days. An entire week. She glanced at the calendar, realizing that her wedding should be taking place next Saturday, and her lungs froze. This time she could actually cancel her wedding before she made a fool of herself.
She swallowed. All she had to do was call the church, the florist, the Dinner Belles, and tell April they didn’t need a wedding cake.
Sadness churned in her gut. Tears filled her eyes.
This really was it. The end of their relationship. Her chin quivered. Though she knew she needed to make all those calls, she suddenly couldn’t do it. She would—eventually—but right now it just hurt too much to even think about it.
She also couldn’t go out on the store floor feeling like this, so she glanced around for a distraction. The room had always been disorganized, but today she looked at the wall of filing cabinets and the boxes of old files currently stacked beside them—the ones she’d filled the night before her pregnancy test—and she decided it was time to finish what she’d started.
She walked to the first cabinet and began pulling out file folders. Even though everything dated so far back the records weren’t even needed for income taxes anymore, she still felt odd about tossing them in the trash or burning them. She decided to rent a storage unit and keep them there for another year or so. But right now, she was getting them out of her office. That would leave space for a play yard so she could bring her baby to work with her. That was, after all, the big advantage of being your own boss.
She got on the phone and paged Bunny. When she stepped into the office, Piper said, “Go to the back and get me as many big boxes as you can.”
Bunny’s eyes widened. “All in one trip?”
Piper shook her head. “No. Make as many trips as you need to get me enough boxes and pack all this stuff away.”
Bunny nodded. “Oh, okay.”
By the time Bunny returned with the first two boxes—one for each hand—Piper had a stack of junk that could be packed away.
“Put that stuff into one of the boxes.”
“You don’t want me to go get more boxes?”
“Let’s do this one or two at a time.” She paused, then walked to the phone again. She found the list of employee phone numbers and called Chuck Murray. “Hey, Chuck. This is Piper O’Riley. How are you?”
Slowly, hesitantly, he replied, “Fine.”
“I’m sure gossip about Cade has reached you, so you probably realize I need to hire you back.”
His voice brightened. “You do?”
“Yes. And I’d like you to start today. Bunny and I are cleaning out the office. I’d like to get everything from here into a storage unit.”
“You’re starting over.”
She glanced around. “I guess I am.”
“I’ll be right there.”
True to his word, Chuck arrived in a few minutes. Bunny and Piper were knee-deep in older records. They’d even found ledgers from the years before the accounting was done on a computer.
Piper called and arranged for a storage unit, and Chuck and Bunny loaded his SUV with boxes and left Piper behind to keep packing.
She packed for an hour and her back began to hurt, so she sat on the floor and pulled a huge black ledger from the bottom drawer.
It was so old and so quaint that she ran her fingers over the cover. The year was inscribed in gold on the front. Thinking it sort of pretty, she flipped it open and gasped when she saw her dad’s name on the inside cover. This was the last year he’d run the store.
Her heart stuttered and she couldn’t resist reading the entries, studying the beautiful script written in blue ink. The amounts he paid local farmers for fruit and vegetables made her laugh.
She read and read until she came to the pages that tallied income. The third entry down almost stopped her heart. Check number 489—a loan from Richard Hyatt for five thousand dollars.
She frowned. Had her dad been borrowing money from Richard Hyatt?
She flipped the page and found another entry for a check from Richard Hyatt. This one for ten thousand. The more pages she flipped, the more entries of checks from Richard she found. She flipped back to the accounts payable side of the ledger, searching for checks to pay back the loans, but there were none. Her dad had borrowed close to two hundred thousand dollars from Richard Hyatt, and there was no sign that he’d paid back the money.
Her heart sank.
He
r dad had literally sold the store to Richard Hyatt one five- or ten-thousand-dollar loan at a time.
There might not have even been a poker game.
Hell, there didn’t need to be a poker game. Her father had lost the store by borrowing money.
She scrambled to her knees and then off the floor. The last filing cabinet contained the records for Richard Hyatt’s other business dealings. He had, at one time or another, owned everything in town from the gas station to the florist shop. She opened the drawers, frantically searching for the books that contained the records for the year he began loaning her dad money. Finding it, she raced to the desk, plopped down on the seat, and began reading.
At a certain point, tears filled her eyes. Entry after entry documented his loans to her dad, but so did notes in the margin of his ledger. Fears that her dad was over his head, especially with a certain loan shark. And then came one big check, written to the loan shark, with Sean O’Riley loan paid in full in the reference line.
Richard Hyatt had saved her dad.
…
Dusk had fallen on the Double K when Cade drove his truck in from the range, past the row of one-story steel buildings that individually housed cattle, hay, and equipment. His inspection had gone exactly as he had expected. The Double K was a thriving, money-making ranch. And once the paperwork was recorded, it would belong to his family.
“So, I’m guessing you want to celebrate.”
Cade glanced at Tim Tucker, soon-to-be former owner of the Double K. He didn’t feel much like celebrating. He and his brothers had decided to buy the Double K as an investment. But finally getting the ranch didn’t feel good, as he’d expected it would. It felt wrong.
“I think I’m just going to head back to my quarters.”
Tim slapped him on the shoulder. “At least have a drink with me for my last night in the house.”
Not wanting to upset the old man, or worse, clue him in that something other than getting the ranch occupied his mind, Cade shoved open his truck door. “Sure. But you’ve gotta pull out the good stuff. No shoving the rotgut on me.”
Tim laughed and led the way up the two steps to the porch and the front door. “I’ve got some twelve-year-old Scotch that will make you weep and thank your maker.”
Cade laughed as they stepped into the entry of the rustic house. A bachelor’s home, the living room had a brown leather sofa and chair, with thick, heavy end tables and coffee table. Area rugs on solid hardwood floors were dark, so they wouldn’t show the dirt. There were no pictures. Tim had made this ranch an investment, not a home. So the scent of baking cookies surprised them both.
Tim turned to Cade. “What the hell is that?”
He sniffed again and his heart turned over in his chest. “Snickerdoodles.”
“What the hell is a snickerdoodle?”
“It’s a cookie. Kind of a plain sugar cookie rolled in cinnamon.”
“They teach you to bake in Pennsylvania?”
“No. I had a friend who made them for me.”
Even as he said the words, Piper walked through the swinging door that led to the kitchen, holding a plate of cookies.
Tim’s eyes widened.
Cade’s eyes drank in the sight of her. His heart flipped. His veins and arteries filled with blood, as if he only really came alive when she was around. His lungs drank in air. His head cleared. All he wanted to do was step forward and hold her.
That’s what he wanted.
What she needed was to be away from him. He was trouble, the son of a man who used people. Dressed in her cute jeans and a warm sweater, with an apron covering her, she was the vision of a perfect mom, a perfect homemaker, and someday she’d find a man who deserved that.
“I made your favorites.”
Her soft voice tiptoed into the space between them. Their gazes clung so hard his eyes began to ache from the strain.
“Whose favorites?”
Tim’s confused comment brought Cade back to reality.
“Mine.” He faced Tim. “Tim, this is my friend Piper.”
Tim’s face scrunched in confusion. “Your friend?”
“From Harmony Hills. She was the woman I was running the grocery store with.”
Tim’s face lit. He walked over to her. “I’d shake your hand, but instead I’ll take a cookie.”
Piper laughed.
“Piper, this is Tim Tucker, owner of the ranch my family just bought.”
Their eyes met again. He didn’t need to explain that buying a ranch as big as the Double K meant he was settling down, away from her.
“I see.”
He turned to Tim again. “Can we have a few minutes?”
Tim took six cookies from the plate Piper held. “Sure.”
Cade directed Piper to go into the living room. Carrying the cookies, she walked in before him. She set them on the coffee table, turned, and slid her arms around him so quickly, Cade didn’t see the move coming. All he could do was react. His lips met hers with the ferocity of a starving man who suddenly finds himself at a banquet.
He pushed away. “This is wrong.”
“No. This is right.”
“Don’t! Piper, look around. This is where I belong.”
“No. You belong at home, with me.”
She pulled a few sheets of paper that had been rolled into a cylinder from her back pocket. “Your grandfather didn’t cheat my dad. He loaned him the full value of the grocery store. When he took O’Riley’s, he was calling in the loan.” She nodded at the papers. “Those are the notes he made in the margins of his old ledger. He didn’t want to do this, but my dad had a gambling problem. He thought calling in the loan—losing the store—would bring him to his senses.” She caught his gaze. “It didn’t. We lived hand to mouth until he died and my mom got an insurance check. She managed that money much better than my dad handled the profits from a thriving grocery store. I always wondered why.” She shrugged. “Now, I know.”
He glanced at the papers, then up at her, his heart breaking for her. “I am so sorry.”
She smiled sadly. “Yeah, well. I’m over it. Really. I had a chat with my mom before I left.” She shrugged. “She didn’t know, either. She’s so ashamed. She asked me to ask your forgiveness.”
When her voice broke, he licked his suddenly dry lips. If ever he wanted to hold her, comfort her, love her, it was now. But that would only mean another sad good-bye. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to say anything. At least not now.” She sucked in a breath. “Our wedding is still on for Saturday.”
“Piper—”
She held out a hand to stop him. “You think you come from a bad seed?” She shook her head. “You’re wrong.” She pointed at the ledger sheets. “That’s the seed you come from. That’s who you are. While I was going through your grandfather’s records I also found the employee records. You worked for him every summer. He affected you. Not your dad. Your grandfather. A man kind enough to bail out a gambler, and keep his secrets so he wouldn’t lose his marriage…or his child.” She paused until he caught her gaze again. “That’s the stock you come from. That’s the man you are.”
She paused. “I’ll be at the church on Saturday afternoon. I’m going to marry you.”
He looked away.
“All you have to do is be at the church on Saturday.” She slipped off the apron. “If you don’t come, if you leave me standing in a gown at the church on Saturday afternoon, I’ll know for sure you don’t love me.”
She tossed the apron to the sofa then turned and kissed him. “But you do. I know you do. And I love you. All you have to do is show up on Saturday.”
With that, she walked to the front door, opened it, and disappeared.
And Cade’s heart shattered. Why had she come? He’d hurt her once. Now he’d have to hurt her again.
This time publicly.
The thought of it rendered him breathless with pain. And one thought stood out in his mind. A thought
so powerful he almost couldn’t handle it.
Chapter Twenty-One
As Ashley Lashinsky’s SUV approached Saint Mark’s church, Piper took a long breath. Her slim gown didn’t take up much space, but they’d put her satin train and veil on the seat beside her to keep them from getting wrinkled. So she sat alone.
In the front seat, her mom turned around, “Oh, honey. I wish you’d change your mind.”
“He’ll be here.”
Looking at Piper in the rear view mirror, pretty blonde Ashley caught her gaze. “Yeah, but you could wait for him at home.”
She shook her head fiercely. “I told him to be at the church.” And she had to believe he wouldn’t let her down, that she hadn’t misjudged him, that he did love her—and even if he was terrified of getting married, he wouldn’t let her stand in the back of the church waiting for him, humiliating herself even more than she had when she’d turned and bolted away from two other weddings.
If he loved her, he would be here.
Ashley pulled her SUV up to the wide cement steps that welcomed worshipers and guests into a quaint white stucco church. Even though the building was two hundred years old, it had been remodeled and updated several times. The wide steps had been added to accommodate Sunday morning parishioners who stood outside and chatted until the services began.
Today, those steps were filled with her friends and Cade’s, employees of the grocery store, customers who’d become friendly over the weeks they’d owned O’Riley’s together, Dinner Belles, food pantry board members…
And curiosity seekers.
Would Cade show up?
And if he did, would Piper herself make it the whole way down the aisle and actually get married this time?
Dressed in an autumn orange dress, Ashley slid out of the front seat and opened the back door to help Piper out.
She caught her hand and then her gaze. “There’s still time. Wait for him at home…please.”
Piper shook her head. “He loves me. He’ll be here.”
She stepped out of the SUV and Ashley gathered her long satin train and thin net veil that trailed almost as long as the train.
