In Too Deep (3 page)

She slapped him with a deadpan
stare. “I’ll handle it fine. I know how to deal with pushy,
arrogant men.”

Score one for her. “Good for you,
but Ben needs a qualified diver on his tours, not a
hobbyist—”

“
I’m a certified rescue diver
and
dive instructor. Probably more
qualified
for this
than both of you combined,” she snapped.

West pulled a fast grin before
smothering it. Was she now? Color crept up underneath the collar of
her jacket, an old telltale sign he’d done a great job of either
unsettling her or pissing her off.

“
A lot of qualifications for a
simple officer of the law. You’ve been busy.”

“
Very busy.” She turned to Ben,
who had wrestled himself to his feet. “So who was your dive guide
before?”

At his sister’s words Ben’s face
hardened into a stone mask. He could’ve warned her not to go
there.

“
No one you know.” Ben’s tone
snipped the words into staccato bites. “And they left unexpectedly
at the beginning of the season which is why I’m in this
mess.”

“
Why did—” She paused, eyebrows
drawn in a sharp “v” as she stared down a nearby table of
snickering girls. Once they’d returned nervously to their drinks
she switched her intense gut-clenching gaze back to West. “Can the
three of us go to your dad’s office and talk privately?”

“
It’s my office now, but sure.
After you.” West made a grand sweeping motion toward the bar.
“We’ve also a small matter of reimbursement to discuss.”

The idea had popped into his head
on a flash of devilish inspiration. If Piper was determined to stay
here and make him suffer with her close proximity, he could damn
well ensure she was miserable too.

Her jaw dropped.
“Reimbursement?”

“
Everything has a price, including
me.”

Her gaze contained the lash of a
stingray’s barb, full of venom and almost as painful. Luckily she
didn’t have the ability to hurt him anymore with those beautiful
hazel eyes.

Score one for him.

Ben made it across the pub to the
polished wood bar before he stopped, leaning heavily on his
crutches. “I’m exhausted and my ankle’s throbbing like a bitch.
Can’t we hash the details out tomorrow?”

Piper shoved her fists into her
leather jacket and sighed. “Go home then. We’ll talk in the
morning.”

Ben crutch-hopped to the pub’s
front doors. The cunning bastard, playing on Piper’s obvious
concern. Pissed as a wet cat at her brother, she still knew when to
push and when to leave him the hell alone. Pity that same savvy
didn’t apply to him.

West walked ahead down the hallway
that led to the restrooms and also connected the pub and restaurant
to the kitchen at the building’s rear, not waiting to see if she
followed. Flicking open his office door, which was just beyond the
restrooms, he strode inside to sit behind his desk. Piper stalked
in after him and slammed the door.

She ignored his gesture to sit and
leaned against a file cabinet, a relic from when his dad, Bill,
worked as Due South’s manager. Probably just as well she didn’t get
comfy. He wanted her out before the crazy-good scent and sight of
her made him say something stupid. Again.

“
You’ve been running tours for Ben
since he broke his ankle last week?” She tucked a strand of hair
behind her ear.

“
Only fishing charters and
sightseeing.” He shrugged, picking up a pen and clicking the nib
down. “We can’t run the cage dives without at least one qualified
diver and a skipper aboard.”

“
Well, thank you for helping
him.”

“
You don’t need to thank me, we’re
a community here. We have each other’s backs.” He couldn’t keep the
bite of acid from searing through his voice.

“
I’m sure Mum and Shaye have
already thanked you enough.”

“
They have.” He consciously
relaxed his hands, replacing the pen on his desk. “But the problem
is we’re short staffed and there’s only so much Ben can do to take
up the slack for me when I’m out on his boat.”

She cocked her head, but remained
silent.

“
He’s not a manager, I know he
hates sitting behind my desk,” West said. “But Shaye moves well
between sous chef and the day to day running of the
hotel.”

“
Shaye’s a smart
cookie.”

No mistaking the pride in Piper’s
tone over her younger sister.

“
We need you to help
out.”

“
Ah. Kind of a ‘you scratch my
back, I scratch yours’ scenario?”

“
You always were a smart
cookie.”

Her nose crinkled like she’d smelt
something bad. “You want me to wait tables like I did as a
teenager?”

“
No. We’re trying to keep what
customers we have, not scare them away by dumping water jugs over
their heads.”

Her eyes widened then narrowed to
hard slits. “Hey, that was one time when a revolting old man shoved
his hand up my skirt.”

“
I didn’t say your reaction wasn’t
justified.” He laced his fingers behind his neck and tilted his
chair back. “But no. I don’t want you as wait staff. You’re needed
in the kitchen—”

“
Are you serious? You’ve choked
down my attempts at cooking, right?” She pushed off from the file
cabinet and paced the short distance to the opposite
wall.

For a moment he just watched her,
all long legs, stiff spine and bucket-loads of attitude. Gone was
the pretty hazel-eyed girl who looked at him like he was every
superhero rolled into one. Now she was fifty percent cop, fifty
percent stranger.

“
I thought you were here for
Ben?”

“
I am,” she ground out between
clenched teeth.

“
Then if I’m prepared to
reorganize my life to help out, don’t you think scrubbing pots and
stacking dishes is a small price to pay?”

She froze halfway back to the file
cabinet. “What? I thought you wanted me to help Bill—with prep or
something.”

West barked out a laugh and
smacked a hand on his desk. “You really think Dad will let you
touch anything in his kitchen?”

The tiny darts of her gaze speared
him from across the room.

“
No. You’re on kitchen-hand duty.”
He couldn’t resist adding a tight grin. “Starting tonight since
your sister’s already done a full day’s work and is out there now
clearing tables.”

“
I’ll happily do my
share.”

Happier if she could reach across
the desk, rip off his arm and beat him to death with it judging by
the razor edge in her voice.

“
I’ll ring through to the kitchen
and let Dad know you’re coming on board. Think you remember the
way?”

“
I remember.” She spun one-eighty
and headed for the door, bristly as a porcupine. He caught a
glimpse of her flushed cheek as she stalked from the room and
yanked the door shut.

Well, well. Looked like she
remembered more than just the layout of Due South after
all.

***

Piper studied the restaurant’s
double kitchen doors as if they led to the bowels of hell. And they
may well, since she’d agreed to work for the devil himself. She
blasted another glare down the short corridor to West’s office and
showed heroic restraint by not marching back to lodge her boot
right where it would do permanent damage.

“
Piper?”

She turned to see her sister
coming out of the restaurant’s staff entrance, sagging under a huge
tray of dirty dishes, with wisps of long brown hair floating around
her face.

“
Ohmigod, it really is you. You
came!”

“
I told you I’d sort something
out.” Piper hurried toward her.

“
I didn’t think you’d ever come
back after, well—” Shaye’s voice trailed off to a whisper and her
flush deepened. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“
Let me get those.” She avoided
her sister’s earnest green eyes and hauled the heavy tray out of
Shaye’s hands. “I’m gonna be stacking them from now on.”

“
What? Why? Ford said you were
taking over the dive tours for Ben.”

“
Still faster than the speed of
light, huh?”

“
What is?”

“
Gossip.” Piper chuckled and shook
her head. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’m the new kitchen-hand. It’s
one of West’s conditions for skippering Ben’s boat.” She cocked her
hip and prepared to bump the swing doors.

The door jerked open before she
made contact. Bill Westlake scowled, his striped chef’s cap askew
and a spatula tucked into the band of his apron like a gunslinger’s
.44. “Listen you two, the hallway ain’t a place for chit-chat when
my meals are getting cold. Shaye, run to table five. Piper, get
your skinny backside in here, the pots won’t scrub themselves.” He
disappeared back into the kitchen.

“
He’s still a grumpy old fella but
his bark’s worse than his bite.” Shaye retied her ponytail with
deft movements. “I’d better get back to work.”

“
Yeah. Buy you a beer
later?”

“
Long as it isn’t that imported
rubbish.”

Piper choked back a laugh. “Oh,
for Pete’s sake.”

“
One more thing.” Shaye frowned.
“What were the other conditions West had for helping
us?”

Something in her sister’s tone
made Piper squirm. “He didn’t say. But I imagine cleaning the
toilets will soon be added to my list of duties.”

“
Oh. Is that all?” Shaye sent her
an astute look. “Well, thanks. I know being here isn’t
easy.”

Piper nodded and nudged the doors
open, her stomach once again tangling into snarls.

No one here knew what had happened
between her and West just days before her father drowned, did
they?

Chapter 2

Not even two
hours off the ferry and somehow Piper had ended up in Due South’s
kitchen.
Find your happy place.

She submerged her hands into the
dishwater and searched through food scraps for the pot scrub hidden
somewhere in the voluminous sink. It was a little like a fingertip
search, when a weapon or some of piece of evidence the squad needed
to retrieve lay at the bottom of a murky pond. Locating the rough
sponge under the soaking roast pan, she hauled it from the
depths.

“
Got ya, ya little booger.” She
wiped the sheen of sweat off her brow with her forearm.

“
Finished yet?” Bill bustled past.
“Some of us have plans later tonight.”

West’s father ran his domain here
the same way he once would have as a New Zealand army chef, with
rigid discipline and a lot of barked orders. Every item shone
ship-shape in Bill’s kitchen—stainless countertops, fridge doors,
and cookers. Not a speck of dust would dare land on one of his pots
or assortment of utensils, which hung on precisely spaced hooks.
Twice he’d returned a giant pot to her, wordlessly pointing at a
miniscule trace of food left on the metal.

“
Just about.” Piper injected a
cheerful tone into the words, resisting the desire to strangle him
with the kitchen towel draped over her shoulder.

She plunged her dish-glove covered
hands back into the water and dragged out the pan, attacking the
glued on scraps of meat with the pot scrub like she was, well,
scrubbing off the smirk West had worn earlier.

Bill’s reaction hadn’t been much
better. Not a conversationalist, Bill’s reticence suited her mood
perfectly because she also had little to say to him. She knew where
she stood with West’s father. The man was direct, if nothing
else.

West, on the other
hand…

Piper crinkled her nose. No more
wasted thoughts on West tonight. All she wanted right now was to be
horizontal, preferably with something soft under her aching feet.
She grabbed the pan and rinsed it under the hot tap, setting it
aside on the draining board.

The swing doors blew open and her
mother, Glenna, swept into the kitchen, towing West by one arm in
her wake. “There she is! There’s my girl!”

Glenna dismissed West with a wave
of her peach-tipped nails and floated past the countertops, a wall
of Chanel No. 5 preceding her.

“
Hello, Mum.” Piper peeled off the
dish-gloves and stepped into her embrace, watching West over her
mother’s shoulder as he paused to talk to Bill.

He bared his teeth in a savage
grin at something his father said and looked over.

“
Piper, darling? Did you hear what
I said?” Her mother pulled back, blocking West’s stare and forcing
her to refocus.

“
Ah, sorry, I missed that last
bit.”

Glenna smoothed her cap of sleek
auburn hair and sighed. “I said, ‘It’s wonderful to see you. How
long are you planning to stay?’”

Aware of West and Bill standing
across the room, Piper lowered her voice. “Mum, you know why I’m
here, don’t you?”

“
Darling, I know nothing less than
the catastrophic would bring you back to Oban.” Glenna gave her a
thin-lipped smile. “Shaye told me you’d arrived when she rang
earlier. I would’ve been down sooner, but guests—always wanting one
thing or another.”