In Too Deep (20 page)

“
Erin’ll disembowel you if she
hears you talk about her food like that.” Ben swallowed a forkful
of eggs. “And what’s your problem, anyway?”

“
Nothing.” He picked up a menu and
snapped it open. “I just need a caffeine hit and not that instant
swill, either.”

Real coffee made from
honest-to-God caffeine-rich beans that would psych him up—while the
cause of him staying awake half the night sat across from him,
examining her fingernails.

“
You just missed your dad,” Ben
said. “Caught the early ferry with my mum. Off to Invercargill
Hospital, aren’t they?”

“
Yep. Dad didn’t want anyone going
with him but once Glenna puts her mind to something…” West
shrugged.

“
She’s worried about him, too.”
Piper straightened and picked up a menu. “And if he needs to go for
more tests, Glenna will make sure he doesn’t weasel out of
them.”

West scrubbed the heel of his palm
along his thigh, remembering his father trying to be jovial as he
told him about his blood test results—something was up with his
kidneys and Doc Whelan was sending him to a renal specialist in
Invercargill. “He’s a tough old coot. He’ll be fine.”

“
He will.” Piper’s cool stare
melted. “There’s nobody in Oban tougher than your dad.”

The shard of ice, lodged in his
gut from when Bill first confessed he’d been unwell for months,
softened at her reaction.

Erin appeared at West’s side,
sliding a cup and saucer on the table in front of him. “Saw you
coming and had Annie make your regular.”

Piper lifted the menu in front of
her face and their moment shattered.

West raised the cup and sniffed
the intoxicating scent of his flat white. “This smells gooood.
Marry me, Erin, and you can bring me coffee in bed every
morning.”

Erin laughed, flicking her plait
over her shoulder. “I’m tempted to say yes just to see you squirm
when I started shoving bridal magazines under your
nose.”

He glanced across to where Piper
studied every option on the menu like she was cramming for an exam.
A twitch in the corner of her lips was the only indication she
listened to him pretend-flirt.

Erin moved to the end of the table
and removed the order pad from her apron pocket. “Want
anything?”

Piper lowered the menu and pinned
Erin with her flat gaze. Fire kindled low in his belly. God, she
was even hotter when she switched to Bad Cop mode.

“
How about the same friendly
service you offer your other paying customers instead of looking at
me like week-old dog shit scraped off your size six ballet
flats?”

The pen in Erin’s hand clicked
half a dozen times before she spoke, this time with a small shot of
warmth in her tone. “I can’t believe you still remember what shoe
size I am.”

“
We stopped sharing shoes at
twelve. You kept your little Chinese-lady bound feet while mine
grew with the rest of me.”

“
Into a tall, skinny
bitch.”

Piper’s mouth curved. “While you
remained Hobbit sized.”

“
We’ve been friends since
kindergarten.”

“
Yeah.”

“
You never called, never wrote.”
Erin’s lip trembled once as she shoved her order pad back into her
apron. “And you never said goodbye.”

Join the club, honeybunch.
West sipped his coffee and watched the women’s byplay.

“
I’m sorry, Erin,” Piper
said.

Ben dropped his head back toward
the ceiling and clapped a hand to his forehead. “Look, can we
bypass the
Thelma & Louise
reunion and fast-forward to
the bit where you both realize you’ll never be as hot as Geena
Davis so you shut up and be friends again?”

Suddenly Ben ducked half under the
table to clutch his shin.

“
Hey! That hurt, Stubby,” he
grumbled, but West caught the hint of affection in the use of his
sister’s old nickname—and the sly trick he’d initiated by uniting
the women against him instead of each other. “Lucky you missed my
bad ankle.”

“
Did I?” Piper said. “Damn. I was
aiming for it.”

Erin tweaked Ben’s ear. “That’s
for the Geena Davis comment.” She glanced at Piper. “Americano with
hot milk on the side?”

“
Lovely.”

After Erin scooted back behind the
counter, Ben said, “So, how’d it go?”

West spotted Piper’s quick glance
in his direction, her lips forming a terse line.

“
Good,” she stretched the word
out. “They all said they had a great time.”

Ben rested his elbow on the table
and propped up his chin. Piper shifted on her chair, placing the
menu folder down and then picking it up again. The interrogator
became the interrogated.

“
Really?” Ben said. “Was the
great time
had before or after you were seasick and Mrs.
Carter felt obliged to look after you? Or before or after you
incinerated everyone’s dinner?”

“
They told you about that,
huh?”

“
They did.” Ben’s fingers drummed
a short tattoo on his jaw. “Lucky for us they decided the seafood
on the beach was a highlight, otherwise you would’ve totally
screwed up the whole thing.”

Piper leaned forward, scowling.
“Like you expected me to.”

Ben raised a palm, but said
nothing.

Piper recoiled, her boots clomping
to the floor as she sat bolt upright in her chair.

Keep out of it, West told himself.
But no. It turned out where Piper was concerned he couldn’t stop
himself from riding in on his white charger. “You’ve got six
satisfied customers now, Ben—so satisfied they’re planning to tell
a friend who’s a travel writer to make a booking. Plus, they’ve
agreed for us to use their photos for free publicity on your
website— another of Piper’s ideas.”

“
You just can’t give me the
benefit of the doubt, can you?” Piper flushed a pretty rose, her
gaze never deviating from Ben’s face. The gleam in her eye told him
she wasn’t
feeling
pretty. More like homicidal. “Yeah, I
screwed up. But I have the balls to own it when I make a
mistake.”

Ouch, buddy. Direct
hit.

Ben leaned back in his chair, the
hard line of his jaw signaling his intention to freeze Piper from
the conversation. If the café had been quieter they would’ve heard
Ben’s back teeth grind together. “It’s easy to ask for forgiveness
once the damage has been done, isn’t it?”

The flush drained away from
Piper’s face, leaving the smattering of freckles on her cheekbones
stark against her blanched skin. Her knuckles were whitened bumps
as she gripped the edge of the table and stood. “Don’t mistake my
admission as asking for forgiveness.”

She stalked to the counter calling
out, “Erin? I’ll have the coffee to go, thanks.”

West waited exactly five seconds
after the café door slammed. “You’re too hard on her.”

“
If by ‘hard’ you mean I tell it
like it is when she screws up a simple re-heatable dinner and is
too proud to admit she gets seasick, then I’ll wear it.” Ben tore
off a triangle of toast, swiped it in congealing egg yolk, and
stuffed it into his mouth. “Ragging her about this will make her
work twice as hard next time to get everything right.”

“
You were still a prick and I know
you’d never come down on Shaye like that.”

Ben swallowed his mouthful and
chased it down with coffee. “Piper’s solid, she can take some heat.
And since when did you start siding with my sister? Since you
started boning her?”

West’s right hand curled into a
fist, itching to plow into Ben’s smirk. The last time the two of
them scuffled he nearly broke Ben’s nose with a solid right hook.
They’d been fourteen and fighting over the affections of an older
woman—Isabelle Collins, all of fifteen-and-a-half. West saw her
first, Ben disagreed, and so they opted to settle the flirting
rights with fists. Ben was bigger but West faster, and the matter
done and dusted with Ben’s bloody nose.

Having the gift of the gab saved
West from a few fistfights, but he’d still beat the shit out of
someone if he had to. And right now, for the first time in fifteen
years, his blood pressure crept into the danger zone.

“
Not that it’s any of your
business but I’m not sleeping with Piper.”

“
Not yet, ay?” Ben grabbed the
other half of the toast and took a bite. Chewed thoughtfully, while
meeting West’s hot gaze with apathy. “I wouldn’t if I were
you.”

“
Suddenly you’re the protective
big brother? When you’ve just finished ripping her a new one.
That’s rich.”

Ben stabbed a finger at him. “Stay
away from her. I’m warning you.”

“
How touching. You’re worried I’ll
break your sister’s heart.”

“
You’ve got it wrong. I’m not
worried about you breaking Piper’s heart, or even you shagging her
senseless—if easy sex was the only thing you wanted.” Ben pushed
his plate out of the way and rested on his folded arms. “But I know
you. I’ve known you for a hell of a lot longer than she has and I
can tell she’s getting to you again. Mate, she’ll cut your heart
out and stomp all over it with her combat boots when she
leaves—just like she did last time.”

West’s scalp itched. “You knew?
About…last time?”

The slight lift of Ben’s eyebrow
screamed
duh
at him. He didn’t know whether to be
embarrassed or relieved. “Didn’t think it was that
obvious.”

“
When the life of the party turns
into a monk for a year after a certain female leaves town, his
mates notice.”

“
Yeah. Well, I’m not that
hormonally challenged kid now. I can handle Piper.”

“
Sure you can. But don’t kid
yourself that after you’ve
handled
her, she’ll stay.” Ben
studied him over the rim of his cup.

West lifted his gaze to the
picture windows and the view of the wharf beyond. Piper leaned on
the railing looking out into the bay, her hands cradling her
takeout coffee, the toe of one boot kicking the heel of the
other.

“
I know it.” West downed the dregs
of his coffee, leaving his tongue coated in bitterness.

***

The estrogen in the women’s
changing room before the annual Waitangi Day touch rugby game was
so rich Piper thought she’d either suffocate or start applying
copious amounts of mascara—like one of her future teammates was
doing.

“
How did you talk me into this
again?” she hissed in Shaye’s ear as they entered the small prefab
structure.

“
A large dose of sisterly guilt.”
Shaye peeled Piper’s claw-like hand off her elbow. “Come on, it’ll
be fun and the women’s team needs you.”

The team might need her for her
gender and for numbers, but the body language of some of the women
made it clear they didn’t want her there.

Kezia, dressed like the other six
women in black bike shorts and a hot pink, slim fitting tee shirt
with
Bree’s Kiwi Curios
screen printed on the front, looked
up from lacing her rugby boots. “Piper, hey!”

“
Hi, Kez.”

“
Zoe and I have hardly seen you
since you got back from your romance tour.” Kezia lifted her other
foot onto the battered wooden bench and tugged on the
laces.

Piper dropped her kitbag on the
bench next to her. “Been keeping a low profile for the last week.
We had a couple of dive tours and a fishing charter,
too.”

“
And run off her feet while Bill’s
only working part time,” Shaye said.

“
West’s a slave driver, hmm?” Erin
offered a sharp smile from her position by the shoulder-high
windows overlooking Oban’s sports field.

“
That man can order me around his
bedroom any time,” said a brunette with a set of ripped biceps, her
nose so close to the window that a patch of fog had formed. “Wow.
There’s some seriously fine man-flesh parading around out there in
the mud.”

Shaye chuckled. “Piper, that’s
Tarryn O’Dell—she’s the new Department of Conservation
worker.”

“
Heard about you, but nice to
meetcha anyway,” Tarryn said by way of greeting, softening the
statement with a grin.

Piper smiled back warily.
“Likewise.”

Shaye walked past her, further
into the room. “And you know Lani—” at the other end of the bench
Lani raised a hand and continued to bop silently to the tinny music
pumping from her earbuds—“and you’d remember Bree and Holly.”
Neither of whom bothered to look away from the sink mirrors since
she’d stepped inside.

Shaye cut her an embarrassed
glance and Piper knew her sister would be having words with Holly
later. The slender woman with the fuchsia streak in her sable
colored hair fussed with her fringe. Currently working in Oban’s
grocery store and moonlighting as a hairdresser, Holly had been
Shaye’s bestie since primary school, and was still loyal to a
fault.

Holly partially turned with a
clipped, “Hi,” before resuming her grooming.