She’d almost said it. Almost let him know exactly how much she liked him. How attracted she was. She was one breath from revealing her perfect idiocy. Piper Walsh had a crush on the town sheriff.
It was so sad it was almost funny. He wasn’t for her. She didn’t get nice things. Men like him went for the good girls of the world who went to college and took yoga classes and were raised by loving parents. Not girls who woke in the middle of the night from nightmares because the past could never release its grip.
“What?” he demanded, his gray eyes oddly intense.
She shook her head and took a step back.
He opened the door to his Bronco abruptly and hopped out, towering over her. She retreated several more steps, her feet shuffling hastily over the asphalt.
“Piper,” he growled, his voice all gravel and grit. “Finish your words. Anyone that you didn’t feel . . . what? What do you feel about me?”
Her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. Turning, she fled.
She dug her hand in her purse, fishing out her keys. She didn’t look back.
Keys in hand, she unlocked her car and dove into the driver’s seat. With air crashing from her lips, she stared out her dirty windshield.
He remained motionless beside his Bronco, staring across the distance at her. She started the car and pulled out of her parking slot, turning her gaze away from him. She pulled out of the lot and didn’t look back.
She’d be back in this place tomorrow. Because her life was a never-ending cycle of “have to.” She’d be back in this place, but he wouldn’t be. He wouldn’t be here because his life was better than this place. Because he was better than her.
Thirteen
Hale threw his fishing gear in the back of the Bronco and headed to his place for a shower. He smelled of the outdoors and he knew he couldn’t show up on Annabelle’s doorstep like this. She always smelled like lilacs. She wouldn’t want him near her until he smelled of soap.
He walked through his house, yanking his shirt over his head as he moved. He showered, hands splayed on the tiled wall as he let the water beat down on him. He only took off the last Saturday and Sunday of every month. Saturdays were busy nights. Nights when people drank and partied and generally got into trouble.
He had a good deputy and could probably trust him with more than one weekend a month, but he liked to be on duty. Doris claimed it was because he was a control freak. She also claimed he needed a woman to come home to and then maybe he wouldn’t work so many hours.
Immediately Piper filled his mind. She hadn’t been far from his thoughts. Last night he’d dreamed of her and woke humping a pillow. She’d gotten under his skin. Had she meant what she said? Was he really her first lap dance?
He wanted to believe her with a desperation that annoyed him.
He thought about how she’d danced for him, how she rubbed her pert tits over him and took his cock out so she could ride him in her barely-there panties. How she’d let him play with her pussy and finger-fuck her. She’d been so responsive . . . wild for him. No way had she faked that. And he knew. Not just because he wanted to believe her either. She was telling the truth. She’d never taken a man into that back room before. He was the first.
He told himself it didn’t matter either way. What happened between them was wrong. It could be considered an abuse of power. He expected better of himself. It couldn’t happen again or anything remotely close to it.
Despite his stern thoughts, his hand moved to his dick. Head bowed, one hand braced on the slick tile wall, he masturbated to thoughts of Piper in that white thong. That hallelujah ass and those sinful lips and that hot pussy. He came hard and swift, spilling his seed in the shower. Gasping, he lifted his face to the spray of water.
He needed to get laid. Something that he would rectify tonight. Then he wouldn’t get so fucking hard every time he thought about Piper.
It was almost six when he climbed back into his Bronco.
Two hours later he pulled in front of Annabelle’s house in her upscale subdivision in Alpine. He plucked the bottle of wine off the passenger floorboard. He was by no means a wine connoisseur but his mother always insisted you never go empty-handed to someone’s house.
Annabelle greeted him in a cloud of perfume, her white-blonde hair falling in sleek, straight lines around her, angled perfectly with her jawline. She pressed a kiss near his mouth in a clear attempt not to muss her lipstick. “Hale. I’ve missed you.” She took the wine from him with a murmured thank-you, although her nose wrinkled as she read the label.
“You look beautiful.” And she did. She was stunning in a black figure-hugging dress. She was his age. Professional. Sophisticated. With her own money. He should count himself lucky.
She led him into the living room where a tray waited with carefully arranged cheese and fruit. “Chardonnay?” She offered him a glass.
He took it and sipped, looking around her immaculate house. She sank down on the leather sofa and patted beside her. “Notice anything different?” She smiled and tipped her head coyly.
He sank down beside her. “Um. Did you change your hair?”
“Well, yes, of course, but that’s not what I meant.” She slapped him playfully. “With the house.”
He looked around. “Uhh.”
“I got new floors.”
He glanced down at the hardwood. “Oh. Was something wrong with the previous flooring?”
“I just got bored with it. It was so dark. It cost fifteen grand, but it was worth it. I wanted to lighten the place up so I thought this blond wood would look so much cleaner . . .” Her voice continued in his ear, but he zoned out, nodding as though he were listening, but wondering if she had always been this boring.
He stood suddenly. The movement caught her off guard, upsetting her wine glass and sloshing it over her fingers. “Hale!” she cried out.
“Sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair and set his wine down on the coffee table. “I have to go.”
“Go? Where? You just got here. We haven’t even had dinner yet—”
“Annabelle, I’m sorry I wasted your time tonight. This isn’t working out anymore. And if you were honest with yourself, you’d agree. You deserve something better than what we’ve been doing here.” He motioned between them.
She stared at him, gaping. “You’ve got to be kidding. You’re walking out on me? We haven’t even had sex yet.”
He winced, stopping just short of saying he didn’t want to have sex with her. He didn’t want to be unnecessarily cruel, but she must have read something to that degree in his face.
Her mouth dropped. “Oh. My. God. You don’t want to have sex with me?” She glanced down at herself as though verifying that her ample breasts were still present and on display.
He stared at her, unable to deny that.
She continued, charging ahead. “There’s someone else. You want to fuck someone else. Exclusively, I’m guessing.”
He didn’t know about exclusively, but Annabelle was right. He did want to fuck someone else.
She shook her head with a disgusted air. “Oh, Hale, I thought you and I were alike. I thought you were smart.”
“I guess not.”
She clucked her tongue, looking him up and down. “I’m going to miss that body. Such a shame. Who knew you could fall?”
“I haven’t fallen,” he denied.
He might have Piper on the brain and have a serious hard-on for her right now, but after last night, who wouldn’t? There was no falling involved. This was about lust . . . and sitting here with Annabelle felt about as wrong as anything ever felt.
“Yeah. Right.” She laughed harshly and reached for the bottle to add more wine to her glass. “Well, go on. No sense wasting time here, is there? Not when there is some sweet little girl in Sweet Hill waiting for the big sheriff to come and plunder her garden. Just don’t get her knocked up. You know these small-town girls . . .”
Everything in him rebelled against this entire convers
ation. Was Annabelle actually giving him relationship advice? Terrible advice, no less.
Still, her words produced an image of Piper, her belly round with child. His child. The vision didn’t make him shudder as it should have and that had him cursing under his breath. What. The. Hell.
Annabelle heard his epithet and laughed.
“I gotta go.” He shrugged awkwardly and moved for the door, wondering if Piper Walsh had cast some spell on him.
The moment he climbed into his vehicle and pulled out of the driveway, the tension eased from his chest. Instantly, he felt better and relieved.
He wasn’t going to wonder why he couldn’t shake loose thoughts of Piper Walsh anymore. He was simply going to follow his instincts and see where it took him. Because really. Was there any other choice when everything inside him demanded he find her and make her his?
Saturday nights were always rowdy at Joe’s but there was something about tonight . . . a sharp, bitter edge to the air. She felt it the instant Marcy went onstage in her new nun’s habit get-up and started to strip. Aside of the fact that it was just wrong to see a nun dancing with a rosary between her lips, a patron jumped onstage and flung her over his shoulder caveman-style to the wild cheers of the crowd. That was actually unusual behavior. It never happened. It took Marty and two other bouncers to get him down.
“Full moon,” Serena announced beside her.
Piper turned to look at her. “Is that it?”
“Yep.” The other dancer winked at her. “Be careful out there.”
Piper watched her move away, weaving between tables before she went to pick up her next tray of drinks waiting at the bar. She worked steadily for another half hour, getting the drinks out on the floor and dodging grabby hands.
A guy sitting alone at table three had requested a lap dance. He looked harmless enough. Small build. Clean-shaven. Weak-chinned but this wasn’t a prospective date, so what did she care? He just needed not to creep her out. He’d been polite all night. Never touching her unlike the other Neanderthals of the night.
If she had to do it, she might as well start with him. Because he would technically be her first. She couldn’t count last night. Last night was about free will and desire and need. She might have gotten paid for it, but what she did with Hale was something else. Something rare. A precious bit of memory she would take out at night and hold close, reflecting on it when lying in the dark of her bedroom.
She’d directed the guy to Marty to make arrangements. The place was crowded and she knew there was a line ahead of her waiting on the back room. It was almost ten o’clock before the room was available. Mr. No-Chin was already waiting in the room when she arrived—and so was Marty, his presence a comforting factor.
She inhaled and tried not to think about being in this room last night with Hale. Was that only last night? It seemed long ago already.
She positioned the chair in the middle of the lit portion, determined to use it throughout her dance and avoid the customer directly until the very end of the half hour. She danced in her dress for a few minutes, playing with the hem, giving him peeks of her upper thighs. She was about to cast all her inhibitions aside, right along with her dignity, and pull the dress over her head when the door burst open.
Everyone froze—even Marty—as a crazed woman flew into the room. The door smacked the wall as it flung open. “Anthony!” she screamed. “I knew it! I knew you were here!”
The man jumped from the couch and moved into the light. “Beth! What are you doing here?”
“Me? What am I doing here? Of all the nerve. What are you doing here? You were supposed to be working late at work! Lying pig! Is this what you want? To hang out with whores?”
Nice. Deciding this was her cue to leave before she felt inclined to defend herself against the insults of an enraged wife, she inched toward the door. But her movements only made Beth notice her.
The wife spun around. “Where are you going, whore? Is this what you do? Take off your clothes for strangers?” Piper held up her hands as though to ward off the woman’s verbal onslaught.
The woman thrust her perspiring face into Piper’s. “Answer me, whore, whore, whore!”
Well, clearly the woman thought she was a whore.
Piper tried to exit the room, but the woman stepped in front of her and blocked her escape. “‘If she profanes herself by harlotry, she shall be burned with fire.’”
“Please let me pass,” she said, desperate to leave the room and escape the fanatical gleam in the woman’s eyes. She looked over her shoulder at Marty for help. He lifted both hands palms up as though he didn’t know how to deal with one irate wife. He was used to handling brawling men.
The husband approached his wife, reaching for her arm. “Beth, honey, let’s go home and talk about this.”
“Don’t touch me!” Beth twisted her arm free and, before Piper realized her intent, slapped Piper solidly across the face, sending her head snapping back.
“Hey!” Marty stepped forward and grabbed the woman’s arm.
At that point, Beth started screaming, “Take your mitts off me!”
Her husband jumped to action and hurled himself on Marty’s back.
For a moment Piper could only watch, fingering her burning cheek, awestruck as the smaller man clung to Marty’s back like a monkey, pounding on his giant shoulders with his fists.
“What are you staring at, whore?” the irate wife demanded as she came at her again.
With a yelp, Piper dodged her, putting the chair between them, but the woman kept coming at her, swinging her fists.
“Stop it,” Piper warned, but still the madwoman charged after her until she was forced to do something. Not about to be slapped again, she shot out her fist and punched her in the nose, just like her brother had taught her to do before he went to prison. The lady went down like a sack of bricks, howling like some kind of jungle animal.
Bodies crowded into the room to see the commotion. Joe pushed his big frame between them. He paused and took stock of the scene, a scowl forming on his face. A scowl, she couldn’t help noticing, that seemed directly centered on her. What was he so unhappy with her about? She was the one that just got bitch-slapped and had to defend herself against a crazed wife.
“I want her arrested! I’m going to sue this place,” she screamed, blood pouring out between her fingers.
“Piper!” Joe roared her name.
She lifted her chin and held his gaze. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
He settled his hands on the sides of his barrel waist and continued to glare at her. A bubble of unease grew in the pit of her stomach. She was used to his bluster and threats, but she saw something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before.
“The police are here!” someone shouted.
“Great,” she muttered, already seeing how this would be going down. As with all other Walshes, she was going to be held at fault for this.
Then Hale pushed through the doors.
Her chest lifted on a huge exhalation. She didn’t know why, but she felt suddenly buoyed. Elated. She had convinced herself last night was the final time she would see him and that it would be for the best. For a moment she forgot that she was in the center of all this crazy drama. She could only see him. Drink him in—so big and strong and tall. His gray eyes like a stormy sky. His face so beautiful.
His eyes immediately found hers. He looked her up and down. It was a different kind of perusal—one assessing for damage. His gaze hovered on her face where she still felt the sting from the woman’s blow. He strode across the room, ignoring everyone else. He touched her chin, lifting her face. The tips of his fingers lightly grazed where her cheek throbbed.
“Who did this?”
“The woman.” She nodded once in her direction. “She slapped me when . . .”
She stalled, for some reason reluctant to give voice to her next words even though she had no reason to be. She was doing nothing criminal and she owed him nothing. No loyalty certain
ly. So he had her first lap dance . . . and then some. That didn’t mean he had an exclusive on her lap dances—on her. She was free to shake her ass anywhere. She had to make a living and he could go to hell if he didn’t like it. Confessing to being in this room was not a betrayal to him. So why does it feel like it?
She tore her chin from his grasp and finished her words. “She slapped me when she came in here and found me with her husband.”
There. She’d said it.
From the cold shutter that fell over his eyes, he understood the situation perfectly. He sent the wailing woman another glance. Currently, her husband and Joe surrounded her. Both were arguing with each other.
“You hit her back.” It was more statement than fact.
“When she came at me again, yes. I didn’t particularly want to be slapped again.” Indignation heightened her words. He stared at her for a long moment, indifferent to the arguing still going on around them.
“Wait here.” He moved away from her and called out to the room in a booming voice. “Everyone out of here except the parties involved!”
Grumbling, everyone filed out of the room except the husband, wife, Marty and Joe.
Hale moved away from her and pulled Joe aside.
Marty moved in front of her and eyed her cheek, wincing a little. “Sorry about that. Didn’t think she would hit you.”
“It’s okay,” she mumbled, still watching Hale with Joe.
“Should ice it,” Marty offered. “Might bruise.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said hollowly, watching as Hale moved to speak to the married couple. Then Joe was in front of her.
“You’re done here, Piper.” That’s what she had seen in his eyes earlier. He was done. Truly finished with her this time. His words just made her feel . . . tired. Buried somewhere deep inside, a little sigh of relief whispered through her soul.
She wouldn’t have to do this thing she hated anymore.
But she would have to move. Leave Sweet Hill.
Joe was making the choice for her, but now she knew what needed to be done. She and Malia would be starting over somewhere else.