In Too Deep (42 page)

She sighed, her breath puffing
softly against his chin. “West?”

Piper, becoming his wife.
So, was he really going there? “Mmm?”

Her spine stiffened vertebrae by
vertebrae under his arm, and she leaned back, her expression
guarded. After a short hesitation she said, “Will you still dive at
Lake Taupo?”

Piper’s question derailed his
thought train, currently chugging along the one-way-track to
commitment-land. “Oh. Um, yeah. I’ve already got Ben on board as
one safety diver and I hoped you’d agree to be my
second…”

Piper’s eyes popped open wide and
her fingers hooked like cat’s claws in his shirt. “You can’t ask me
that.”

His glance skipped to the
memorial. “Well, I hadn’t planned to ask you here—”

“
No, no, no—here or anywhere, the
answer’s no. After what I just told you, after you blacked out on
me only a few weeks ago,
how can you still compete
?” She
wrenched away and nearly kneed him in the nuts as she scrambled to
her feet.

“
Whoa, hang on. You’ve seen me
still training every morning at the pool and never said a
word.”

She whirled on him. “What
word
could I have said? Is there anything I could say to
stop you competing in the Nationals?”

His stomach plummeted like he’d
descended a flight of darkened stairs, miscounted and stepped off
into the void. West stood, every nerve, sinew, and muscle thrumming
with tension. Stop him? Piper wanted to stop him from the one thing
he loved, the thing that gave him an identity and a
purpose?

“
This is important to me, Piper.
I’ve worked too hard to quit free-diving because you don’t
approve.”

Color drained from her flushed
cheeks. “I’m not asking you to quit free-diving. But competitive
apnea has a lot more risks than if you just enjoy spearfishing or
diving without a tank on your back.” She stalked over to him, her
chest heaving. “You’ll push yourself to win, I
know
you
will—and I won’t watch anyone else I care about kill themselves for
a
sport
.”

Piper shoved both palms against
his chest, which rocked him back a little on his heels. They glared
at each other, gasping like marathon runners. When she uttered a
sound suspiciously like the snarl of a small cornered animal and
went in for another shove, West grabbed her wrists.

“
This isn’t about me, it’s about
your dad.
But I’m not your father
. I’m not fifty years old
or an ex-alcoholic on a bender. I’m not going to die!”

She cringed away from him, her
eyes haunted. “Maybe not, but you’re wrong. It is about you—it’s
about you, and me, and if there can be an ‘us’ that lasts longer
than tomorrow.”

Fire broiled in his veins, taking
every lick of oxygen with it until it reached flashover point in
his mind. He threw down her wrists and jerked away. “Are you giving
me an ultimatum? Is that it? Give up your dream, West, or there is
no ‘us’?”

Talk about your frickin’
irony.

He’d worried he couldn’t ask her
to sacrifice her job and the dive squad to be with him. Yet Piper
would manipulate his feelings for her? Would use her power over him
to try and snatch something vital from his grasp, just to ease her
fears?

“
Haven’t you learned anything from
your parents’ mistakes?”

Piper blinked at him, tilting her
chin. “Oh, I learned something. And that’s why I’m not making any
demands at all. As for me walking out of your life, are you
offering me a place to stay in it? Or am I destined to become a sob
story you can tell future girlfriends, as the reason you believe a
woman wouldn’t want to stay with you forever?”

He gaped at her, his rampant
heartbeat firing so much super-charged blood into his head that any
logical thoughts got blasted into oblivion.

“
Uncomfortable when the table’s
turned, isn’t it?” She folded her arms and retreated another pace
back, the gap between them wider than Foveaux Strait. “If you’re
not my father, West, then I’m not your
goddamned mother
. I
would’ve come back to you after Police College. I would’ve loved
you, had a family with you, and made a life with you.” She flung
her arms open and a gull perched on a nearby headstone arrowed into
the sky with a flurry of wings. “If a man loved me with all his
heart and soul, nothing would make me leave his side for long—ever.
But I suspect you’re not that man.”

She stood there, palms spread wide
and tremors ravaging her slender limbs, imploring him to say
something,
anything
.

He had nothing. Zero, zip, nada.
She may as well have asked him to communicate the contents of his
heart to her in Swahili. And so he remained, as impassive as the
carved monuments surrounding him.

Piper gave him one last, silent
chance to speak, then turned and walked away.

Chapter 20

Piper waited
until she was well out of West’s sight before she allowed the tears
to come. She swiped at her face as she jogged back along the road,
Donny at her heels.

She gave him a cuddle and a belly
rub at West’s back door and ordered him into his ratty bed of
blankets. He whined and shivered. One of life’s little ironies—West
loved Donny, but he couldn’t love her.

Guess the mutt was easier to
love.

Piper blew him one last kiss and
slipped inside.

It didn’t take long to stuff her
belongings into her backpack. The whole time she moved around
West’s bedroom her bruised heart thrashed out a frantic
rhythm—wishing, hoping, yearning for him to walk in the
door.

She walked over to the bureau,
where only a few weeks ago he’d emptied the top two drawers for her
without comment. She plucked out the pair of red lace panties she’d
bought on that shopping trip with the girls. Remembered him peeling
them off her legs, of him teasing her with them the next morning
after a night of blissful lovemaking. She winced. Lovemaking, huh?
Hot and steamy, mind blowing and world altering, but if she
believed he made
love
to her, then
she
was a
moron.

Piper grabbed handfuls of panties,
bras, and socks, and carried them to her bag. Oh, sure, what West
felt for her was more than just sex. He cared about her and
probably even loved her, in a way—the way you love someone you’ve
known forever. Someone, perhaps, related to your best mate. He
wouldn’t cut her out of his life just because she was dumb enough
fall in love with him.

And yep, good folks of Oban, she
was just, that, dumb.

But like hell would she hang
around to experience West waving her off from the wharf with a
casual, “See ya later.” While she tried not to sever her tongue in
an effort not to beg him to love her back.

No begging. Begging was
bad.

She glanced at one of the framed
photos on West’s bureau. In it, a much younger West, Ben, and Piper
stood in front of Due South, mugging for the camera. It’d been
West’s sixteenth birthday, a month before Claire Westlake left the
island for Los Angeles. Piper stood between the two boys and Claire
captured the photo at the same instant Piper and West snuck a
glance at each other. The expression on her face was unmistakable:
hero worship. Complete and utter devotion, even before she fell in
love with him. And on West’s face? She shook her head and replaced
the photo face down.

West never even
noticed.

Piper emptied the drawers and then
with still no sign of West, she rang her sister.

“
Shaye? You think you can clear
your bedroom floor off for one night? I need somewhere to stay
until tomorrow.”

Three long beats passed before
Shaye responded, her voice gentle with unspoken sympathy. “Sure,
Piper. My floor is your floor. Just drop your stuff in
whenever.”

Piper could’ve kissed her when
Shaye left it at that—no sly questions, no demanding explanations,
no what-the-heck-happened? “Thanks, sis. I owe you one.”

“
Yeah, yeah, what else is
new.”

Piper hung up and hauled on her
backpack, the weight of it on her shoulders bowing her spine.
Surely it hadn’t been this heavy when she first arrived? Well, it
weighed a ton now, and every ounce of it killed a little more of
her spirit as she trudged down the stairs and out of West’s
life.

***

“
I never thought I’d say this to
my own son, but, Ryan, you’re a fool.”

West looked up from his
overcrowded desk at Claire, frowning, in his doorway. When he said
nothing, his mother folded her arms and huffed down her
nose.

“
The ferry leaves in twenty
minutes and here you are, pretending not to care that Piper will be
hugging everyone goodbye right now—everyone but
you
.”

He could’ve switched his laptop
off and with a withering tone asked Claire just who was she to
judge, but instead he dropped his gaze back to his spreadsheets.
He’d blinked at the same one for the last hour, without adding
anything. Great improvement to his temperament.

“
I’m working. We’ve already said
our goodbyes.”

A big, fat lie.

Something shriveled and died in
him last night when he returned from work to find her stuff gone.
He’d gone straight to Due South after the cemetery. A mountain of
paperwork awaited him and why not an end-of-summer stock-take? So
he hadn’t seen her, hadn’t ventured into the restaurant kitchen,
and part of him hadn’t been surprised walking into a silent house.
What he hadn’t expected was that the empty dresser drawers and the
framed picture turned face down on top would hurt as much as it
did.

Piper had left him again. While
her barely disguised ultimatum still rankled, he understood the
fear driving it. He also understood that by saying nothing, he’d
once again pushed her away.

Claire entered his office and
turned to shut the door.

As her fingers rattled on the
handle he glanced up. “Don’t shut it. You’re not staying, because
you don’t get to tell me what to do.”

She stopped mid-swing. The door
squeaked as she pushed it open again and she stood beside it,
cocking her head as she studied him with the same patient look that
used to cause him and Del to confess within seconds. “I lost that
right when I walked out on you and Bill. Does that about sum up the
situation?”

West hissed out the breath he
hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Yeah.”

“
Then I won’t tell you what to
do,” she said softly. “Instead I’ll tell you how decisions can
change the course of your life. That, at the time, it never occurs
to you the repercussions of those decisions could one day come back
to haunt you. My decision helped shape who you are today, a man who
would let the woman he loves walk out of his life because he’s
convinced history will repeat. For that alone, I’ll never forgive
myself.”

West leaned back in his chair and
tried to maintain a disinterested expression. “Quite a speech,
Claire. But Piper made her choice.”

“
Before or after you told her how
you feel about her?”

He swiveled his chair around to
face the window.

“
I can see why you’ve made
comparisons between the two of us,” she said. “However, Piper loves
this place as much as you do, and more importantly, I believe she
loves you. If you’re not in love with her, then tell me to shut up.
I won’t be offended. But if you’re letting her walk away because of
fear, then you’re about to make the biggest mistake of your
life.”

“
Fuck,” West dropped his head into
his hands.

“
Precisely.”

He hated that she was
right.

“
Make a better decision than I
did, son.”

The door clicked shut behind
her.

He was losing Piper again, this
time for good. All because he refused to man up and put his
feelings out there. Surely they could work something out about the
Nationals, once they talked through it in a rational manner? And if
he told her he loved her and she walked away afterward, would it
hurt any less?

West stumbled out of his office
and was halfway through the kitchen before he answered his own
question.

Hell, no—and at least he’d know
where he stood.

The wharf, crowded with
passengers, was a nightmare to navigate when you were in a hurry.
Not a good look if he bowled one of the howling, snot-faced kids
into the water in the rush to locate his woman. His head spun from
scanning everywhere at once, trying to spot either Piper’s
distinctive hair or a flash of purple combat boots. He excused
himself past yet another dawdling duo right in his path.

“
Shaun.” He waved at the purser
standing by the ferry gangplank and jogged over. “Piper on board
yet?”

“
The hot punk chick who bought you
at the auction?” Shaun scratched his pathetic excuse for a goatee
beard.

West gritted his teeth. Also not a
good look if he clocked a ferry employee. “That’s her.”