by Ali Parker
By five in the morning, I was fully rested. Piper was still in a deep slumber beside me, so I stayed where I was, letting the time pass in a haze of coconut and contentment, until my stomach growled so obnoxiously with hunger that I feared it would wake her up.
At six-thirty, I slipped out from under her arm and rolled to my side of the bed. I swung my legs over the edge and rose slowly. The mattress creaked beneath me. Piper let out a soft moan before rolling onto her other side. The covers slid down her back, exposing taut flesh and back dimples worthy of worship. I wanted to sit there and watch her, but my stomach growled again.
I tiptoed across my hardwood floors, minding the two boards that creaked under any form of pressure, and slipped into a pair of sweats. Then I made for the kitchen, where I stood lost for a good couple minutes.
I had never prepared breakfast for a woman before.
What an embarrassing realization.
I was a thirty-five-year-old man who’d never had the opportunity to cook breakfast for a woman he truly cared about. Sure, I’d had girlfriends in the past, but none that inspired an urge like this. It was eye-opening. A realization that feelings I used to think might have been love were likely not and were rather periods of infatuation. Lust.
There was lust with Piper. Plenty of it. But there was something deeper too. She was mine to protect, mine to love, and mine to heal.
And I was going to start the healing with eggs. Because what grown man could fuck up eggs?
I made coffee and used specialty cinnamon creamer. I diced peppers, onions, and mushrooms and threw them into a pan to caramelize. Then I prepared bacon in the oven. When it was done, I cracked some eggs in a bowl, whisked them up, and tossed them into the pan. They sizzled and bubbled furiously until I gave it a good stir. When the eggs were three-quarters of the way cooked, I crushed the bacon with my fist under a paper towel and sprinkled it into the pan. Lastly, I shredded some cheese into the mix.
The result was better than I expected, and I loaded our plates and coffees onto a tray, along with two glasses of water. I carried it upstairs to the bedroom just after seven o’clock. If Piper wanted to sleep the day away, she could. But she needed food. And it was my job to make sure she was taken care of.
When I entered the bedroom, I set the tray down on her nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed. I watched her sleep for a minute before catching myself. I could stare at her for hours. And by then, our food would be cold.
Not wanting to spoil the meal, I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. Then I pressed my lips to her skin. “Piper, wake up.”
She stirred. A soft moan passed through her lips that made my insides squirm with desire. Then she sniffed at the air, and her eyes fluttered open. “It smells good,” she said sleepily.
“I made breakfast.” I tipped my chin toward the tray.
She looked at the nightstand. She licked her lips and propped herself up on one elbow. “That smells amazing.”
“Sit yourself up.”
She propped pillows behind her back and got comfortable, sitting cross-legged. I set the tray between us and handed her some cutlery, and we dug in together. Piper’s first few bites were tentative. Maybe she had an uneasy stomach. Worry would do that to a person. But after a couple of minutes, she ate with more gusto, and before long, her plate was clean, and she was leaning back, sipping her coffee.
“Thank you, Christian. You’ve taken such good care of me. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“Repay me?” I arched an eyebrow and laughed. “Piper, you don’t owe me anything. I want to be here.” I want to be the man in your corner.
“I don’t deserve it.”
“You do,” I insisted.
She stared down into her coffee cup. “Even after what I told you? About… you know… why I started this in the first place?”
“Piper, I only ever had a month with you in the first place. And I care about you. That isn’t going to change. Not because of this.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Where did you come from?”
I grinned. “I’ve been wondering the same thing about you.”
Chapter 15
Piper
Christian was in the shower, and I was where I’d been the last two mornings: in his bed.
It was a nice bed.
But that wasn’t the only reason I’d hardly been able to leave it.
I needed the comfort of his company more than I’d needed anything in a long time. Being alone stirred up a torrent of guilt and pain and panic, and if left to my own devices, I was sure I’d shrivel up into a ball and fade away into nothing.
There was a chance, of course, that I was being overly dramatic. But it was real. The feeling in my chest was like a cold flame that billowed and burned brighter and colder anytime I was left alone. It licked at my insides like some wicked thing hellbent on reminding me how the blame of all of this lay on my head.
The flame wasn’t a liar. There were a lot of what ifs living in my head and heart.
What if I’d never joined the Casanova Club?
What if I’d stayed home and continued helping with the restaurant?
What if Dad had the help he’d needed this year?
What if another woman who was looking for her husband had the chance to stand in my place instead of me?
What if?
Some of these men thought they loved me. Men like Christian.
But they only loved the idea of me, the me they thought they knew.
I listened to the shower water hitting the floor in the bathroom as Christian hummed a tune I didn’t recognize. The bathroom door was open a crack, and the smell of his body wash, pine and citrus, wafted into the bedroom.
I wanted to join him.
But I’d been hanging off him since New York, and he deserved some time to himself. I rolled over, snatched my phone off his nightstand, and called my brother.
Phillip answered with a voice thick with sleep. “Hey, Pipes.”
“Hey,” I said, frowning as I pulled the phone from my ear to peer at the time. It was eight-thirty. Unusually late for him to be just waking up. “Are you sleeping?”
He groaned. I heard blankets rustle as he shifted in bed. “I was sleeping.”
“It’s eight-thirty.”
“Studious observation, big sister.”
I gnawed at the inside of my cheek. “It’s eight-thirty, and you’re not at the restaurant.”
He sighed. “Nope, I’m not.”
“Are you sick?”
“Nope.”
“Did something happen?”
Phillip chuckled. “No, Piper. Nothing happened. Relax.”
“Then why—”
“I put a closed sign up on the door last night.”
I blinked up at the ceiling. “You did what?”
He laughed in earnest this time. “You heard me. I closed it down. Temporarily, of course.”
“Why? How? What about Mom and Dad?”
“Well, Dad is pissed, to say the least. And Mom is—well, actually, I think she’s come around and is on our side now. Dad’s heart attack scared the living hell out of her, Pipes. She was there. She saw it happen. She called the ambulance. And she was alone with him while he was unconscious, and I think she finally realized how intense this situation actually is. And how much worse they were making it by continuing to push themselves too hard.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Dead serious. When I came home after closing up last night, I told them we weren’t going back this morning. Dad nearly blew his top. Mom didn’t say anything for a while. Dad yelled at me. It was pretty rough. I thought he was going to keel over and have another—”
“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t.”
Phillip cleared his throat. “Sorry. Anyway, you get the idea. It was tense. He turned red as a tomato. And then I told him he was being a selfish asshole.”
I sat up. The blankets fell and gathered around my wais
t. “You did what?”
“Yeah, I know. I surprised myself too. Never thought I’d say something like that to him. But I’ve had enough, Pipes. I mean, this is bullshit. All of it. It’s fucking bullshit. And I told him so. I told him if he had another heart attack and it was a bad one, that we’d be the ones left behind picking up the pieces of this mess without him. I told him we’d be lost and grieving, and he’d be gone. Poof. He won’t have to deal with the aftermath of everything blowing up in our faces.”
I swallowed. “What did he say?”
“He told me to get my head out of my ass.”
I laughed. It felt good. “Sounds like Dad.”
“Yeah. Well, we exchanged more words after that that weren’t like Dad at all. And then Mom intervened.”
In all our years of being brother and sister, Phillip and I had never known our mother to be the one to step in and diffuse a situation. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. One year on Christmas Eve, Phillip and my father got into a yelling match over him not being allowed to have his high-school girlfriend spend Christmas Eve night with him. There was a good couple of minutes during that fight where I thought Phillip might find himself hanging from the hook on the back of the bathroom door.
Then Mom, who was busy prepping everything for Christmas dinner the next day, unleashed her wrath and set them both straight. She wielded her spatula like a sword and screamed bloody murder at the two of them about how completely disgusted she was that they were ruining her favorite night of the year.
They’d shut up pretty quickly after that.
Mom’s temper was frightening. It was raw and gutsy, and the fact that it shut my father up so efficiently proved the point that at the end of the day, her word was law.
Since then, she’d never had to intervene like that. Until last night, apparently.
“What did she say?” I asked, unable to help my own curiosity.
Phillip blew out a weary breath into the line. “She told Dad that I was right. She told him he had one job, which was to get better because there was no way he was checking out on this family. She told him she wouldn’t let him. And she told him he’d lost his way.”
“Lost his way?”
“Yep. It got real quiet after that. I had the feeling I was privy to a conversation they’ve had several times over and never agreed on, you know? Like Mom had been saying this to him for ages, and she’d finally reached the end of her rope last night.”
“It’s about time.”
“You can say that again. Anyway. No restaurant this morning. Or tomorrow. Or ever, if I can have my way,” Phillip added under his breath.
“Good luck.”
“With Mom on our side, I think we stand a chance of it sticking this time, Pipes. I really do.”
My heart swelled with hope. “Really?”
“Really. I’ll keep working on straightening Dad out on my end. You keep doing what you’re doing. I actually think we might get a happy ending out of all this, Pipes. I really do. And two and a half more months isn’t very long. By then, Mom might even have Dad turned around into forgiving you. Then we pay off the debt and move on. Sounds great, don’t you think?”
There was a lump in my throat. I forced it down and nodded as I curled my free hand into a fist. “Yeah. Great.”
“You got this.”
I nodded. “I got this.”
“I gotta go eat something. I’m fucking starving. But enjoy the rest of your month, yeah? Try not to worry too much about things at home. I’ve got it handled. And hey, Pipes?”
“Yes?”
“Christian seems cool.”
The lump in my throat climbed higher. “He is.”
Phillip ended the call. I sat staring at the screen as the shower continued to run in the bathroom, and the lump in my throat threatened to get away from me in a sob. I held on to it, desperate to keep it together. I’d done enough crying over the last couple of days to last me a lifetime.
I texted Janie and asked her if she had time for a quick call. I knew at this time, she’d probably just sat down at her desk at the Casanova Club to get ready for the day. She liked to start half an hour early to review her emails and set up her tasks for the day while she couldn’t be disturbed by customers and Casanova Club clients.
She called me in less than a minute.
“Hey, girl,” she said in her usual chipper tone. “How goes? Sorry, I don’t have a ton of time. Jackson has me training one of his new girls, and she’s dumb as a post. Seriously, you’d get a kick out of it. I have to tell her everything six times over—”
“Janie.”
“Yeah, babe?”
“My dad had a heart attack.”
The line filled with silence.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat that had doubled in size. “He’s okay. I just… I needed to tell you. I flew into New York and spent the night with him. Christian took me. But now we’re back in Boston, and things are okay. The doctors say it was mild.”
“Jesus, Piper. I’m so sorry. What can I do? Tell me.”
“I just needed to hear your voice.”
“Babe, I wish I was there with you right now.”
“Me too.”
“Is Christian—”
“He’s taking care of me. He’s been really good. Too good.”
“Good thing you’re not with Easton or Cooper this month, huh?” Janie said, trying for a bit of humor.
I smiled and shook my head. “They’d have been good about it, too. All the guys would have been. But I have to give Christian credit. He swooped in like a superhero. I couldn’t have gotten through this without him.”
“Remind me to send thank you flowers to his ass from your best friend.”
I laughed softly. “Can you do me a favor, Janie?”
“Anything.”
“Can you check in on Phillip for me? He’s saying all the right things and doing all the right things. But he’s stuck in the house with my parents, and things aren’t good. Maybe you could just get him out of there for a coffee or something every now and then?”
“Easy. Consider it done. Oh, and before I forget.” Janie paused, and I heard her opening a drawer in her desk. She cleared her throat. “I have some news for you about Levi.”
The shower turned off. I dropped my voice. “Is he okay?”
“Okay? Piper, the guy is killing it. He’s still sober. He’s doing really well. And he reached out, asking for your contact information. Like an email. I told him I’d ask your permission first. Can I give it to him?”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“I, uh, is that the best idea?”
“I don’t know. Would you like to speak to him?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“But you’re afraid it will make things harder?”
“Yes.”
Janie made a knowing sound in the back of her throat. It was something between a grunt and a groan. “Well, you might be right. This isn’t the time to start looking back. You only have two and a half months to go. Keep your eyes on the prize. Whatever you decide the prize is.”
“The money,” I said forcefully.
“Sure. The money. Whatever. Just remember, it’s never too late to change your mind.”
The shower door slid open in the bathroom. “I have to go, Janie. I’m sorry. We’ll talk soon, okay? And Phillip—”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got him. Love you, babe.”
“I love you too.”
Chapter 16
Christian
“I wish you didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow.” Piper drew her plum-colored scarf tighter to her throat and tucked its edged under the collar of her black leather jacket.
“Me neither.” Despite the weight of her father’s heart attack hanging over us, the last couple of days had been pleasant. We spent the hours in the house, rolling around in the sheets, watching movies in my bed, cuddling, and fooling around. If I closed my eyes and pictured her, I could now see ev
ery inch of Piper’s body in my mind’s eye. “But it’s not all bad. You get to come to my lectures tomorrow. So technically, we still get to spend the day together.”
“True.” A smile curled her pretty lips. She was wearing a dark shade of lipstick that almost matched her scarf perfectly. Her lashes were coated in mascara that made them even more dramatically long than usual. If she’d let me, I would have been content to sit back and count them all. “It will be good for things to go back to normal, I suppose. And I can’t very well ask you to take more time off from work at my expense.”
“Say the word, and I’ll gladly do it.”
Her laugh rang out like bells across the park as we walked. I reveled in the sound as it danced in my ears, and I grinned widely as I watched her. She turned her eyes toward the sky, blatantly rolling them at me, and then shook her head at me. “Don’t tempt me, Christian Peterson. Or I just might take you up on your offer, and then you’d be stuck in your bed with me for the rest of the month.”
I stopped walking. “Is that an option?”
“No!”
“You’re sure?” I asked, cocking my head to the side innocently.
Piper rolled her eyes again and kept walking, leaving me behind. “I’m sure. You’re kind of a big deal on campus, you know, and your students need you.”
I took a few long strides to catch up with her. “Yeah but if you need me, that takes priority. You know that, right?”
“I do now.”
I straightened out my jacket before offering her my elbow. She looped her arm through mine. “Good. That’s what I want to hear.”
The park wasn’t very busy. It might have been because of the time of the day. Most people were at school or work, or they had the good sense to stay in and avoid the cold. Piper and I, however, were suckers for the crisp autumn air. It bit through our jackets and jeans and painted our cheeks and noses pink, but neither of us seemed to mind one bit.
In fact, there was a pep in both our steps as we passed under the canopies of maple trees. Their leaves shivered overhead in the wind, dazzling us with their shades of red and orange and yellow.
