In Too Deep (41 page)

Ben winced and shook his head. “I
really didn’t need to know that. But still, you believed
him?”

“
Yeah I believed him—he was very
believable
.”

“
Maybe I should step outside and
kick his sorry ass for treating you like that.”

“
Yeah, that’ll help.”

Ben leveled a piercing Harland
stare at her. “What’ll help is if the two of you stop dancing
around the flaming obvious.”

Piper snorted.

“
You’re in love with him,” said
Ben. “And he’s in love with you. If you both weren’t so bloody
proud and tied up in knots, you’d tell each other and be done with
it.”

She jerked upright. God, were her
feelings for West so transparent that even her
I don’t talk
about girly emotions
brother felt compelled to point them
out?

“
I’m not in love—” Realizing how
loud her voice had become, Piper stopped and sucked in a breath
before continuing in an octave lower. “We both knew our
relationship was casual, temporary at best. And this is so not a
topic I’m discussing with you.”

She stood, and her chair screeched
on the wooden floor. “I’ve got kitchen duty with Bill.”

Ben grinned up at her, all smirky
and smug, flapping his elbows and making a clucking sound. “Running
away, my little feathered sister?”

Piper bared her teeth. “Well, I
could spare another five minutes to grill you about
your
sex
life.”

Ben’s smile faded and he folded
his arms. “Not going there.”

“
And you call me chicken,” Piper
threw over her shoulder as she walked away from him and stepped
outside into a brisk sea breeze.

Piper hustled her butt off the
wharf and along the road to Due South. In the distance West drew
closer to shore in the dinghy. She walked faster. Coming face to
face with him right now?
Such
a bad idea. Not when she felt
so vulnerable, her heart having finally rolled over to expose its
soft underbelly.

Was Ben right? Was she really in
love with him—a forever-kind of in love with him? And if so, did
she dare deliver her heart into West’s hands again?

***

West opened sleepy eyes to find an
empty bed. Normally he woke before Piper, wrapped around her like a
pretzel. Last night they’d worn each other out, the intensity of
their lovemaking a silent illustration of time slipping away. West
kicked off the sheets and pulled on discarded jeans and a
shirt.

He padded through the house, the
first burnished rays breaking over the harbor and spilling through
the windows. Piper wasn’t in the office surfing the net or in the
kitchen brewing their morning coffee. He glanced outside. Donny’s
tail and half of his body wagged as he ambled down the
driveway.

West slipped on a pair of battered
sneakers and followed his dog, finding Piper picking flowers at the
property edge. Nothing too odd, except dawn was way too early for
flower arranging, and today was their last morning to cuddle, aka
fool around. Tomorrow Piper would hop on the Stewart Island ferry
and out of his life.

Piper turned, clutching a fist of
battered-looking daisies.

“
Oh. You’re up.” She tucked in her
lips and kept her eyes downcast. Like that would hide her tear-wet
cheeks and reddened lids.

Donny scooted over and plopped
down on her feet, leaning his head against her knee and whining.
Piper was a total sucker for his mutt’s woe-is-me act, but this
morning she didn’t even glance at him. Something was
wrong.

“
So you’re…trimming the
shrubbery?” he said.

“
I’m going up to Dad’s memorial
and I wanted to take something.” She gave a half shrug and waggled
the makeshift bouquet. “Pretty sad specimens, aren’t
they?”

“
He wouldn’t have
minded.”

“
No. I don’t suppose he
would’ve.”

West canted his head. Piper had
grown from mischievous kid, to awkward teenager, into an amazing,
courageous, and beautiful woman. More than anything he wanted to
watch her grow into a feisty old lady who’d continue to stick her
freezing cold feet on him every night of their long, long lives
together.

He wanted to tell her that, but he
wouldn’t use her emotions and vulnerability to convince her to give
up the career she’d fought so hard for in Wellington. How could he
ask her to give up something she loved? Something that gave her an
identity and purpose?

He shoved his fists into the front
pockets of his jeans, bracing his spine for an argument. “I’d like
to come with you.”

She gently nudged Donny off her
feet. “Okay.”

That was it? No thunder and
lighting and barbed comebacks? West upgraded something wrong, to
something very, very wrong.

They walked the winding road to
the cemetery with Donny trotting at their feet, the trill of a tui
fluttering from flax bush to tree ringing through the still morning
air. Michael Harland’s memorial stood away from the other graves,
in a section Glenna had purchased after he died. Glenna intended to
be buried beside the memorial she told West once, even though the
sea had stolen her soul-mate and never returned his
body.

And as far as he knew, Piper
hadn’t returned to this spot since the day she left
Oban.

Piper stood in front of the
memorial, a pyramid shaped stack of river rocks, Michael’s name and
dates inscribed on a plaque at the base. To one side lay a browning
rose stalk, the petals long blown away by the sea wind rippling
across the grass.

A rose from Glenna’s
garden.

Every Sunday morning Glenna walked
past his road to the cemetery. Would he ever feel that same
dedication, that unswerving love and loyalty for a woman? Piper
dipped into his line of vision as she laid her daisies on the other
side of the cairn. Yeah, he felt it all right. The real
question—would he ever feel it for anyone but her? A resounding
no
.

She straightened, crossed one arm
over her belly and used the other hand to cover her mouth as she
stared at the stones. He stood at her side, his hands forming fists
in his jean pockets while he debated hauling her in for a hug.
Muscles bunched in her jaw and then released as she huffed out a
sigh.

“
You heard what happened that
morning, at the inquest.” They were alone, but her voice only just
rose above the twittering birds hopping around the headstones. “How
I found my dad on the seabed and dragged him up. How I tried to
resuscitate him, how I knew he’d gone. And then how I couldn’t get
his body onboard the boat by myself, so I had to let him go.” Piper
smeared a runaway tear off her cheek.

“
What I didn’t tell the inquest
was of my own cowardice. While I was trying to get Dad onto the
boat, I glimpsed a shark—” She glanced at him, but before he could
hold her gaze it skipped to the trees encircling the cemetery. “One
of the big bastards, I think—”

Bloody hell. He and Ben had all
but forced her back into the water with them.

West called himself every foul
name he could think of. “I’m sorry—”

Piper patted his arm and he winced
at the brotherly touch. His game plan didn’t include being
relegated back to the role of her old friend, but he hadn’t a clue
how to stop her pulling more and more away from him.

“
It’s okay. I was stuck there in
the water, trying to hold onto Dad. The weather closed in and a
shark was somewhere below. I’ve never been so
terrified.”

“
God, Pipe—you weren’t a coward.
There was no way you could wrestle a man who outweighed you by over
a hundred pounds onto that boat, and only a crazy person would
remain in the water with a Great White. I don’t know how you went
through that and stayed sane. No wonder you freaked out that first
time.”

Piper swallowed. “Yeah, but it’s
strange. I’m not terrified of them anymore. The sharks are what
they are and I don’t blame them.”

“
You blame yourself,
though.”

“
Oh, yeah.” The pain emblazoned in
her words drilled him as mercilessly as her gaze when it swung back
to his. “I was moping over you, West. I’d cried myself sick the
night before, and all I could think of while I waited for my dad to
hurry up and finish his dive was what I could do to change your
mind. Maybe if I somehow transformed myself into a hot chick with
big tits and a curvy ass, you’d want me again.” She snorted out a
bitter laugh, which
just killed him
.

“
I didn’t see my dad struggle. I
didn’t see him reach the end of the guideline—” Piper’s voice rose
to fingernail-on-blackboard level. “I didn’t see him get into
difficulties, because all I could see—” she nailed him with a
finger in the center of his chest “—was you, and how much I
fucking
loved
you
.”

West recoiled. Each word, each jab
of her finger punched like a nail gun. Piper had loved him. But
what had that love turned into when she lost her father? She’d
carried the weight of her father’s death on her conscience for all
those years, linking it to her old feelings for him. How could she
bear to touch him? How could she stand making love to him? How
could she even look at him, when he shared just as much culpability
in Michael’s death?

He opened his mouth to speak,
though God knew what could fall out to make things better—but she
interrupted. “Please, don’t say you’re sorry again.”

Right. That limited his options.
So West buttoned it, his heart rending into useless shreds when
Piper sank down in the dewy grass, a sob escaping from somewhere
deep inside her.

“
Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m so, so
sorry I screwed up.” She squeezed the words out in a croak as she
traced her father’s etched name with a fingertip. “But you screwed
up too and somehow I’ve got to believe you’ve forgiven me, so I can
forgive myself.”

West dropped to his knees at
Piper’s side and tugged her into his lap, fully expecting an elbow
to the ribs or a fist in his nuts. Instead, she wrapped herself
around him and clung. He bowed his head, his arms full of warm,
weeping woman. At least she trusted him to hold her while she
grieved. Piper burrowed into him, her face pressed to his neck,
tears soaking into his collar while he smoothed his palm over her
shuddering back.

When her sobs finally tapered off
to sniffles, West brushed back her fringe and looked at her face.
Even puffy-eyed and blotchy with emotion, her loveliness still
smacked him upside the head every time. “It’s a lot to ask, but can
you ever forgive me? If you blame anyone for that day, it should be
me.”

Her brow creased and her fingers
slid into his hair, caressing his scalp until they suddenly gripped
his nape. “I realized sometime in these last six weeks that I’d
already forgiven you—that I needed to take ownership of my feelings
for you back then.”

Bittersweet relief coursed through
him. “Honey, if you can forgive me, surely you can forgive
yourself? Your father never held a grudge in his life longer than
ten minutes. How could you think he’d blame you when he broke so
many of his own fundamental rules?”

She sniffed, loud and long. “I’ve
carried this guilt with me for so long, I don’t know how to
stop.”

“
Leave it here. Leave it right
here with these stones.” His eyes stung. Must be the sea
spray.

She sighed, and laid her head back
on his shoulder. “He waved at me before he dived, you know. I
remember the whiskers on his face, the glitter of his wedding ring
in the sunlight. He’d been quiet all the way out on the boat, but
as soon as he hit the water he started to smile again.”

He stroked her hair. “He loved to
dive and he loved sharing that with the three of us.”

“
I’ll never stop missing
him.”

“
No, none of us will. But it’s
time to see his death through a different lens.”

“
Yeah.” She pulled back to look at
him, choking out a wry laugh. “I sure could’ve used some of your
wisdom while I fixated on all the ‘if onlys’ over the
years.”

“
There are so many, huh? But the
biggest is—” he grazed a thumb across her cheekbone “—if only I
hadn’t taken the easy way out and broken things off before you
could leave me.”

“
I wouldn’t have left
you.”

His forehead touched hers and he
breathed her in. “I know.”

And as unavoidable as a jab to the
throat, there lay the problem. He swallowed, though the spit in his
mouth had turned to ash. Piper would’ve stayed with him and
eventually become restless and miserable. All those years ago she
didn’t know what she’d be missing. Now, she had a whole other life
in the city. A life with different friends, a challenging job, and
men who could offer her more than being a pub owner’s
wife.

Wife?
That was outta left
field.

Wind stirred her hair, blowing
strands of it up to tickle his jaw. He cradled her face, loving her
silky skin under his fingertips—couldn’t imagine not touching her a
week from now.