In Too Deep (12 page)

Piper shook her head. Either way,
this energy between them? Not good.

Shaye went to the fridge and
pulled out a jug of orange juice, which shook briefly in her hands.
“You’re both grown-ups and you used to be friends. You’ll just have
to control your temper.”

Right. Control. Because control
was something she had in spades around West. It would be a lot
easier controlling herself if Shaye came to smooth things over. “I
really wouldn’t ask unless—”

The jug clattered as Shaye almost
dropped it on the table. “No, Pipe. I won’t do it. I won’t get on
Ben’s boat.”

Whoa. Where had that come from?
“You won’t get on Ben’s boat? Huh? Have I missed something
here?”

Shaye steadied the jug with both
hands and poured herself a glass of juice. “You missed the last
nine years of my life.”

Oookay. So there lay the truth,
bald and ugly on the table.

And she deserved it.

Sure, she knew Shaye favored
vintage clothes and that she probably still had a collection of
Barbie dolls in her closet, because Shaye didn’t like to let go of
the things she loved. But, if asked, Piper wouldn’t know how Shaye
had coped living in Invercargill for two years while she got her
hospitality diploma, or if the three dates that didn’t turn into
four with the real estate agent in Bluff were a disappointment or a
relief. She didn’t share Shaye’s secret heart like she used to,
when her sister would crawl into bed next to her and whisper the
things that made her sad.

Piper edged over to the table and
took a seat. “Sorry.”

Shaye gave her a one shoulder
shrug and sat sideways on her chair, keeping her body angled away.
“I got used to not relying on you. I was old enough to understand
the reasons why you left.”

Piper winced, remembering the look
on her sister’s face two days after their father’s memorial service
when Piper loaded up a backpack and left Shaye and Glenna on the
deck of their family home without a backward glance. “You were
fifteen. A kid.”

“
I stopped being a kid the day Dad
died.”

“
We all stopped being kids that
day.”

They sat quietly, listening
through the open window to the whistles and squawks of a hungry
kaka and the distant drone of a lawnmower. The coffee mug warmed
her icy hands as she replayed her father’s voice. “C’mon Pipe,
don’t be the Incredible Sulk. A dive’ll do you good. Everything
looks better underwater.”

But that fateful morning was the
exception. Nothing looked better. West had just dumped her and she
was so in love with him she could barely construct a coherent
sentence. Not a great candidate for a safety diver. She’d paid the
ultimate price for that lack of concentration.

“
I understood why you
left.”

Piper looked up from her mug.
No little sis, you have no idea what really happened that
morning and why I left
. “Oh?”

“
Staying in Oban was too hard with
all the memories of Dad and some people weren’t very kind. Plus,
you knew you had to leave to join the police.”

She found herself nodding. Job
opportunities in Oban were scarce and the National Police College
was located in Wellington. They were the standard party-lines she
trotted out when questioned about her reasons for leaving Oban for
the city.

“
But that doesn’t explain why you
cut us out of your life like we were a bunch of inbred yokels you
couldn’t wait to get rid of.”

“
I didn’t—”

Shaye whipped around, snatched a
mandarin from the fruit bowl and fired it across the
table.

Piper ducked to the side, the
mandarin grazing her shoulder before it hit the counter and rolled
into the sink. Dammit—her sister had a killer aim.

“
Stuff you, Piper, you did. The
odd phone call and weekend shopping trips with you in the city once
a year doesn’t count for much of a relationship.”

“
I didn’t mean to cut you
out.”

“
But you did. You weren’t there
for us when we needed you most.” Shaye’s eyes glistened. Crap, now
look what she’d done. “I was fifteen—a kid, as you pointed out.
Fifteen and forced to glue the pieces of Mum’s life back together
when she fucking fell apart.”

Piper dropped her head into the
palm of her hand. Tried to think of something that wouldn’t make
her sound any more like the selfish bitch she so obviously was. At
eighteen she hadn’t thought about what she’d dumped in Shaye’s lap
by taking off to live with her dad’s aunt in Wellington. She’d just
needed to get away from all the murmured accusations—and West. If
it weren’t for that knife aimed between her ribs, the decision to
leave may have been different.

“
I’m sorry, Shaye. Jesus. You
never told me.”

“
Would it have made you come
home?”

The Hello Kitty clock on the wall
ticked off the seconds as Shaye swiped a finger beneath her eyes,
smudging her mascara. She smoothed her ponytail and adjusted the
collar of her pretty apple-green blouse. “Sorry about the
mandarin.”

“
You missed my head, at
least.”

“
If I’d been aiming for your head,
I wouldn’t have missed.”

Piper barked out a laugh. “And the
boat thing?”

“
Getting on a boat stresses me
out—big time. I avoid them when I can.”

“
Hon, you live on an
island.”

Shaye sent her a
duh
glare.
“I cope with it, okay? I use the ferry all the time. Just so long
as the boat ride doesn’t involve going anywhere near divers or
snorkelers or Paterson Inlet.”

Paterson Inlet, where their father
drowned. How could she continue to push Shaye in light of that
revelation?

“
Is there anything I can say,
anything I can do, to show you how sorry I am?”

Shaye returned the jug to the
fridge. She paused with the door open, turning her
three-quarter-profile toward Piper. Even with raccoon circles under
her eyes and her hair caught in a casual ponytail, Shaye epitomized
the graceful beauty of a 1950s movie star. Piper’s breath hitched,
and for the first time in many years she ached for the sisters they
used to be.

“
Saying sorry is the easy part,”
Shaye said. “It’s what you do now that’s important, and you’ve come
back to help. It’s a start.”

And it was a start discovering if
the ties binding them as sisters were strong enough to repair the
damage of neglect. They could forge a new relationship—assuming
Shaye wanted her back in her life. And assuming a relationship
could span the distance once she returned to Wellington.

Because after these six
weeks?

She was outta here.

***

A light breeze skimmed across the
ocean, and the clear water made sunglasses essential as the sun
slipped out from behind the veil of cirrostratus cloud. Other than
a case of sunburn and a temporarily misplaced contact lens, the
trip was a success, with the two Great Whites who duly appeared
both entertaining and scaring the crap out of their enthusiastic
clients.

Piper packed away the last of the
dive equipment and then kept herself busy in the galley. West could
do the last round of schmoozing with the clients as they exited The
Mollymawk onto the wharf. If she had to smile one last time for the
camera, someone would sustain a Piper-inflicted injury. Not good
for business.

Thank God the day was over. Once
they motored back to The Mollymawk’s mooring spot, escape would be
imminent. If you could call working the evening shift in Due
South’s sweltering kitchen an escape.

Footsteps sounded behind her, the
quick, purposeful tread alerting her to their owner. Heck, the
tingle across her scalp told her West had entered the room. Like he
discharged some weird static electricity and only she received a
zap.

“
Ben’s on the wharf and he wants a
rundown.”

A rundown—more like checking she
hadn’t screwed up. Piper straightened. Might as well get it over
with. “A quick one.”

“
Naturally. Dad’ll have stacks of
dishes waiting.”

“
Lucky me.”

She followed West onto the wharf.
Sitting on a bench facing the boats moored in Halfmoon Bay, Ben cut
a striking solitary figure among the tourists strolling by. Piper
rolled her eyes as they approached him. Ben probably set it up that
way: the Heathcliff of Stewart Island. He certainly had the whole
don’t approach me, I’m brooding
thing going on.

West peeled away and sat on a
nearby wharf bollard, while she slid next to Ben, nudging his
shoulder to rattle his cage a little. “So brother dearest, the
loopies seemed happy with their experience, huh?”

His arm tensed and with a subtle
shift he pulled away, instead of elbowing her back as he used to,
and as he continued to do with Shaye. The rejection smarted, but
she pulled up her big girl panties and refused to be
offended.

“
West said you handled yourself.”
Ben continued to stare at the bay.

Waiting for violins to kick in, no
doubt.

“
I did better than handled myself.
One of the guys talked of taking our romance cruise on his
honeymoon because his fiancée’s a shark nut—another possible
booking.”

Ben grunted, a sound she
identified from years spent with other testosterone drenched males
who couldn’t concede a woman may have actually
done
well
.

“
And we have a group of seven
booked for a full-day beginners scuba trip tomorrow, so it’s a
solid start.” Piper’s gaze snapped between Ben and West, both of
them appearing unimpressed at her marketing abilities.

What was it with these two?
Seriously? She still couldn’t do
anything
right?

“
You didn’t scare the clients
away, that’s a bonus,” Ben said.

Piper huffed out a sneering
breath. “I never claimed to be a people person—that would be West.”
She angled her chin at him. “And since there are three females in
the group tomorrow, why don’t you use that smarmy charm of yours to
take one of the dives?”

West stretched out his long legs,
crossing his ankles. “Can’t.”

“
Whaddya mean, can’t? Why
not?”

“
That’s your job. I wouldn’t want
to deprive the clients of all your skills that aren’t being
utilized in the backwater of Oban.”

West got a warning glare, even
though he didn’t add anything further.

Ben sat forward. “Plus diving with
scuba would interfere with West’s training.”

Training? What training? Ah—the
pool laps. Her brow furrowed—how could that affect his ability to
dive? “Swimming laps in the community pool is your
training?”

“
Nope.” West hooked his thumbs
into the edge of his shorts’ pockets, fingers flexing and
releasing. “I use the pool to practice dynamic apnea, because my
safety diver mucked up my free immersion training by breaking his
ankle.”

Dynamic apnea.

Free immersion.

Terms she’d once been intimately
familiar with when the three of them free-dived with her father.
The discipline of a one breath dive to incredible depths without
the benefit of scuba hadn’t appealed to her, but West took to it
like the proverbial duck to water. Michael’s true
prodigy.

But after all they’d been through,
West continued to free-dive?

Blood napalmed through every
artery, consuming her from the inside out. Piper lunged toward him
before rational self-restraint could overrule her legs.

Past strangled vocal chords she
gritted, “Free-diving?”

West stood, hands still hooked in
his pockets, his eyes wary. “I’m training for the Lake Taupo
Nationals.”

The words wouldn’t come. She
couldn’t verbalize the plummeting-elevator sensation in her gut at
the idea of him training for the same competition that drove her
father to his death. Her inner ear rang with an endless loop of
“How could he? How
could
he?”

“
You son of a bitch.” She slapped
both palms against his broad chest and shoved.

The plume spraying up as West hit
the water gave her some satisfaction as she stomped away from the
dock, ignoring the laughter following in her wake.

***

Piper stormed toward Due South,
using the short walk to work off the need to punch something or
someone. She refused to glance back over her shoulder to see if
West had dragged his dripping carcass onto the wharf. Likely a
cluster of sympathetic local women like Erin fussed over him,
telling him what a dreadful cow she was and always had been. And
he’d enjoy all the attention.

Piper marched faster.

Donny’s head got a brief pat at
the back door as she commiserated with him on the moronic owner
he’d been saddled with. She sailed into Bill’s kitchen, snatching
her apron off the hook. Jamming it over her head, the neck loop
caught on her ears. Tacky, ugly, Made-In-China apron.