That First Kiss

  “What if Piper doesn’t want to work anything out?” Tate asked, surprised by the insecurity in his voice. The truth was that he was absolutely terrified that once he got there, Piper would turn him away.

  “Listen to you! I did not raise quitters, young man,” his mother scolded him. “Do you remember what I told you when you were little, after you came home from baseball practice with a bloody nose?”

  “As if I’d ever forget?” He had asked May Alderman, a pretty brown-skinned Mexican girl to be his girlfriend, and on the way home, a couple of boys from the neighborhood decided to teach him a lesson on how races shouldn’t mix.

  It seemed his mother was apt to remind him. “I told you what I told your brother and sisters: You can’t choose who your heart loves.”

  The simple truth of that statement hit Tate hard. He’d never asked to fall for Casey, just like he’d never asked to fall for Piper. Once scorned, he thought he’d closed off that particular organ from the outside world. Turns out, despite all his best efforts, his heart had other plans.

  “I hear you,” he said quietly, trying to organize his thoughts. He checked the time again, noting how much he had left. Only fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes to go.

  “I hope so, because come Sunday, I expect you two here at my table. Bring my future daughter-in-law home,” she said solemnly.

  Tate couldn’t help laughing a little. “So you’ve already got us hitched, huh?”

  “A mother can dream,” she said wistfully. “Everything will work out just fine. You wait and see. I love you, son.”

  “Love you too, Ma.”

  When Tate hung up, he felt lighter. Talking to his mother always had that effect on him. It was as if she could sense when he was troubled and she knew just the right words to say to alleviate his stress. It didn’t eliminate them entirely, but that was something he had to work out for himself, and he was prepared to do some heavy lifting.

  33

  Taking the bus saved Piper a ton of money and a ton of headache. She didn’t have to worry about finding missing signs, getting off on the wrong exit, or risking her life at the tolls. She didn’t have to deal with crazy drivers or road rage. Letting someone else do all the work meant that she was able to kick back and relax, let her eyes drift closed when she got too tired to keep them open. There were just so many perks to taking the bus.

  There were also drawbacks.

  She felt someone touch her thigh and cracked open her eyes to find a small child staring up at her. “Um, hey, little guy,” Piper said hesitantly. Sitting up straight, she darted a look around, searching for the kid’s parents.

  Of which she found none.

  Okay then.

  “You’re pretty,” the little boy said. His head canted to the side, his look blank.

  “Oh, well, thanks. You’re handsome.” Piper smiled. Okay, so the kid was actually kind of homely. His eyes were tilted wrong, his lips too thin and chapped, and he had some serious dental issues going on. But hailing from Alabama, well, she was used to that sort of thing. It was kind of normal, really.

  “I farted.”

  Well, how pleasant. Piper’s lips thinned. “How nice of you to share. Where’s your mommy?”

  “She’s sleeping.” He pointed toward the front of the bus.

  Piper glanced ahead, wishing his mother would come get her little rug rat. She liked kids, generally. Sometimes, though, when the apple fell from the tree, it was rotten. This kid she wanted as far away from her as possible, and fast. “Maybe you should go back to your seat in case she wakes up and can’t find you.” She raised her eyebrows and lowered her voice, hoping that she was convincing.

  Dark, dark eyes stared back at her. She waited while the boy slowly shoved his finger up his left nostril. She couldn’t tell if he was contemplating an answer or what, so she waited him out. Eventually, he seemed to come to a conclusion.

  “Bye!”

  Piper shook her head, watching as he skipped up the center aisle and found another unlucky passenger to focus his attention on. Better them than her.

  Checking her watch, she found that there was less than thirty minutes left of the trip. When she peered out the window, she was met with the familiar scenery of distant farmland and small, weather roughened buildings mixed in with newer, more modern structures.

  She’d finally made it to Camden, which meant that she was just a few short miles from her hometown of Wilcox County.

  Well, she couldn’t say it was good to be home, but it was good to be anywhere that Tate Larson was not.

  A short time later the bus pulled to a stop. One by one, the passengers lumbered through the folding doors. As Piper stood in line, patiently waiting to claim her luggage from the bus’ underbelly, she stretched her muscles and massaged the kinks from her neck.

  Naturally, hers were the last to appear, and Piper thanked the driver as he passed her bags to her. Next stop: the bank.

  Glad to have bought luggage on wheels, Piper dragged her bags toward one of the waiting cabs who waited like vultures for the buses to unload their cargo. She was grateful. They saved her a lot of hassle trying to call for one and having to wait an eternity for it to show up.

  “Thanks,” she told the cabbie, a nice older man with a glossy, bald head that had seen far too much sun, who took her bags and began forcing them inside the trunk. She was a little concerned, for both the fate of her belongings and the health of the man. With the way he put his whole body into it, pushing and shoving with such force that the car itself swayed back and forth on its tires, sweat beginning to drip down his temples and soak through the back of his shirt, she was half afraid he might have a heart attack on the spot.

  Thankfully, he survived the ordeal.

  Sliding into the backseat, Piper asked the man to swing by the bank first. She hadn’t taken the time to plan before leaving Chicago, so all she had left was the money in her wallet, which totaled a whopping twenty-one dollars and a handful of loose change.

  Her next plan of action was to stop at a gas station so she could pick up a few essentials: shampoo, toothpaste, Twizzlers and a bottle of sweet tea. Yes, she was delaying, but could anybody really blame her? Who in their right mind could say they were eager to return to swampland and dirt roads?

  She asked the cabbie to wait for her while she went inside. She located the bathroom first. It was nestled in the darkened recesses of the building, bathed in shadows. Half restroom and half janitor’s closet, the place was about as far from clean as a person could get, but after sharing a toilet with eighteen men, women, and children over the course of a day and a half, she could honestly say that she had seen worse.

  Once she finished, Piper spent an inordinate amount of time pursuing the magazine rack. She brushed up on the latest celebrity gossip, clothing and make-up trends, dog-eared a couple of tasty looking recipes, and discovered the best way to please her non-existent man. Apparently, pink toenails were a major aphrodisiac. Who knew?

  When she felt like she’d spent enough time hiding out—because let’s face it, that’s exactly what she was doing—Piper replaced the magazine in its rack and made her way to the candy aisle.

  It was…expansive.

  Piper took in all the colorful wrappings. For a gas station, they had an impressive selection to choose from. There were the usual suspects: jawbreakers, chocolate bars, gum and suckers. But then there were the items she hadn’t seen in ages, like strawberry Tangy Taffy, Baby Ruth and Jujubes. Had she died and gone to heaven?

  She pinched herself and winced at the bite of pain.

  Nope, alive as can be.

  Piper took her time, eying each and every piece of delicious, sugary goodness. When she reached a package of Chic-O-Sticks, she palmed about twenty. At the front of the store, she noticed the cashier shift casually, bringing her into his line of sight.

  Whatever, it wasn’t like she had planned to grab and run. Was that the right term for it? Maybe it was smash and dash. God that was going to bug
her.

  She didn’t know how long she spent in that aisle, but it was long enough to have to return to the front of the store for a hand basket. A hand basket that was dangerously close to being full. She was literally carting around a basket of diabetes. Sad really, but did she give a damn? Nope. Her brain was all about “Please, sir, may I have another?”

  It was about the time that she was weighing the choice between Sour Patch Kids and Gummi Worms that she felt his presence.

  Warm and enticing, a hint of spice mixed with natural male musk. She would know that scent anywhere.

  “Personally, I would go with the Gummi Worms. The sour candies always burn my tongue.” His mouth was right next to her ear, the side of his body rubbing up against hers. A jolt shot through her, and Piper shivered.

  “I don’t know, I’ve always been partial to the burn,” she responded. Everything else in the store faded away, leaving just the two of them standing there, the sounds of their beating hearts like a drum, growing louder and more insistent with each passing moment.

  Finally, Piper gathered her courage and turned to face him.

  *****

  Piper sat on the park bench hiding behind a package of strawberry taffy and staring at her shoes because she lacked the courage to look into the eyes of the man who had driven hundreds of miles from home, just for her. She didn’t want to admit what that might mean. Or what it did to her.

  Tate was silent, too, but his attention, every last bit of it, was focused wholly on her. She could feel his eyes boring into the side of her face, and as she chewed the sticky candy, pausing now and then to suck bits of it from her teeth, she grew more and more self-conscious. Which really just pissed her off. Didn’t he have any damn boundaries?

  “Are you going to talk to me?”

  Piper shuffled her feet. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  When she’d looked up to find Tate standing there in the middle of a gas station in Camden freaking Alabama, Piper was, needless to say, shocked. Caught off guard by his nearness, she’d almost been sucked back in to the black hole of lust and need that seemed to orbit around Tate. Thankfully, she’d caught herself just in time.

  When Tate asked her to give him five minutes of her time and expressed his need to explain some things, she wanted to say no. Actually, she wanted to say hell no, because she had a gut feeling that whatever he wanted to tell her was going to completely change the dynamic of their relationship.

  And she couldn’t deny that the prospect of that was appealing. She just didn’t know which way it would go, and the not knowing was what was killing her. If she had to take a guess, she would say that when a man travels across states to find you, whatever he has to say is probably good.

  She really couldn’t see Tate doing all of this just to return her favorite coffee mug, which she realized no less than three hours into the drive, she had left behind. It was probably in his dish washer right now.

  “Piper, I came all this way because I need to talk to you. The least you could do is hear me out.”

  Piper huffed. “Fine, then talk,” she deadpanned.

  Tate shifted so he was facing her. When Piper looked up, she met his sober gaze. “First, tell me why you left Chicago.”

  “I think that’s pretty self-explanatory,” she remarked. “I left to get away from you.”

  Pain flashed across his face. Piper refused to feel guilty. He did not deserve her guilt. “Care to tell me why you felt the need to get away from me?” he pressed.

  “I think you already know the answer to that question, too.” Tate lifted his eyebrows indicating that he knew no such thing. Piper sucked in a bracing breath. Fine, if he wanted to play a round of beat-around-the-bush, she would play. “Does Casey ring a bell?” He didn’t answer her, and her anger ratcheted higher. “You know your ex-girlfriend? The one you stalked me with? The one you fucked after…” Her voice hitched, getting tangled in her throat, and she stopped, unable to continue.

  “After what, Piper?” Tate leaned in, bracing his forearms on his spread thighs.

  Piper shook her head, feeling the sting of tears on the horizon. The last thing she would allow herself to do was cry in front of him. “I can’t do this,” she muttered, stepping down from the bench. How did she explain to him that he had ripped her heart out of her chest? That after everything she had been through with Tyler, all the heartache and depression she had suffered, in the end, it was Tate who’d finally broken her?

  She just didn’t think she could handle it. It was time to move on with her life. Her cab was long gone, her bags tucked safely away in the trunk of Tate’s car. It wasn’t her brightest moment, allowing Tate to talk her into going with him, and now she was kicking herself for letting her getaway vehicle leave. She chewed her lip, contemplating her options.

  Screw it, she didn’t need clothes. That’s what stores were for.

  She started walking.

  Tate didn’t let her get far.

  Grabbing ahold of her arm, he forced her to turn around to face him. “After what?”

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Piper glared up at him. How could he do this to her? How could he be so cruel? She thought of the way that woman, Casey, clung to his arm, the way she reached up on her toes to hug him after coming from his room. They looked so comfortable together. So right. It killed her that she would never have that with him.

  Shit, what was she thinking? She didn’t want anything from him. Nothing. “Let go of me,” she growled.

  He didn’t. “Tell me, Piper. After what?”

  She snapped. Just completely lost it. Jerking to free herself and finding it impossible to escape, Piper resorted to physical violence. In a fit of desperation, she slammed her fist into Tate’s chest. “After you were with me, you bastard. You left my bed and jumped right into another one with her!”

  “I might be a lot of things, babe, but a cheater I am not. I never slept with Casey,” Tate implored, tugging her closer. “That I can promise you, but for argument’s sake let’s say that I had. Wouldn’t that be a little like calling the kettle black?”

  Piper narrowed her eyes on him. “What are you suggesting?”

  Tate leaned in, his blue eyes flashing dangerously. “You took that chef back to your room. Are you telling me you didn’t jump into bed with him the second the door clicked shut?”

  Before she could process what was happening, Piper’s hand snapped out. She watched with detached fascination as her palm connected with the side of his face. “How dare you.”

  Tate glared down at her, his jaw clenched tight. Already, she could see the red outline of her fingertips blooming across his cheek. “How dare I?”

  “Yes, how dare you!” Piper seethed. “Tom is my friend, which is more than I can say for you. And what about all those other women? The ones you made me take back to your place. Don’t they count?”

  “What is that supposed to mean? What are you even talking about? ” Tate demanded, his grip on her arm tightening. She glimpsed the pulse in his neck. It ticked wildly, informing her that she was treading in dangerous waters. “I haven’t been with anyone since you. No one.”

  “Oh please,” she snorted. “Give me some credit, Tate. I’m not one of your floozies. You can’t feed me your lies and expect me to eat them up with a spoon.” Pushing onto her toes, Piper put her face right into his, heedless of the consequences. “You don’t give a damn about anybody. You don’t care who you hurt, just as long as you get what you want.”

  “You’re wrong,” he insisted. “I never slept with those women. I called them a cab and sent them on their way. They never made it up to my apartment. And you’re wrong about another thing,” he continued, holding her in an unblinking stare so intense it penetrated all the way to her core. “I give a damn about you.” Tate’s entire body vibrated. Grabbing the back of her neck, he crushed his lips to hers.

  His kiss was punishing, consuming. His fingers moved into Piper’s hair, gripping the heavy length in tight fists. Tilt
ing her head back, Tate traced his tongue along the seam of her lips, and when she opened for him, he plunged inside, invading her body without censure.

  Piper could do nothing but cling to him. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, holding him to her like she might never let him go. And maybe she wouldn’t. He felt so damn good. Had he really never slept with those women? Hope soared within her and she clung to him.

  Easing away, Tate released his death grip on her hair and slid his hands around to cup her face. He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed tightly as they struggled to regain their breath.

  “God, Piper, how did this get so fucked up,” he breathed, opening his eyes to look at her. Really look at her. Piper couldn’t look away, trapped in the pool of tenderness he laid before her. His thumbs smoothed lightly across her cheeks. Taking a deep breath, he rubbed the tip of his nose against hers, and then placed a small kiss there. “I never thought I would feel like this again,” he murmured.

  His lips grazed lightly across her cheek and Piper closed her eyes as they gently touched her skin and made a slow path along her jaw to her mouth. His breathing was heavy and ragged as he held her close, breathing her in. “I love you, Piper Donovan,” he whispered.

  Piper’s breath came to a screeching halt and her heart bottomed out. Had her ears deceived her, or had Tate just told her he loved her?

  “I love you so damn much, and it scares the fucking shit out of me,” he confessed through gritted teeth, as if admitting that had cost him dearly. “I know I’m an asshole, and I’m sure as hell not worthy of you, but if you give me a chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be.”

  His hands trembled and Piper lifted hers to cover them. “Say it again,” she whispered as wetness spilled down her face. She needed to know she had heard him right. Needed to know that it wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her.

  “I love you,” Tate he repeated. Sliding his hands out from under hers, he moved them into her hair once again and held on tight. He lowered his mouth to hers. “I love you. I didn’t think it was possible to fall in love again, but then you came along and changed my mind. I can’t imagine going a single day without you in my life, and I’m sorry it took me so long to figure that out. You’re everything to me, Piper. I love you, more than you know. I don’t want to lose you.” Tightening his grip on her hair, Tate pulled her mouth to his. “I love you,” he repeated, then slammed his mouth down over hers and kissed her again and again, pushing all his love, all his affection, into those three words.