Back To Us (Shore Secrets 3) (4 page)

To cut Zane off from launching into an even longer professor-y spiel, Ward asked, “What happened?”

“He died. They all died,” Zane said solemnly.

“For fuck’s sake. I can’t believe I have to point this out. Piper isn’t a pharaoh or a mummy. We’ve had some epic rough patches, and she’s never done more than give me a noogie. She is not going to curse me or kill me. But if this works, she might—” What was his end game? Have her forgive him? Forget how much she’d hated him? Remember how good they’d been together? Fall in love all over again? “—give me a second chance.”

“This will never work.”

“On the other hand, it just might.” Clearly Joel was still riding the bubble of Dawn agreeing to go out on a date with him. His opinion couldn’t be trusted.

Zane wasn’t done with his curses-and-doom forecast. “She’ll laugh in your face.”

“Definitely. But after she gets done with that, Piper might just be desperate enough to agree to my terms.”

“And you want her on those terms?” Gray’s path to asking Ella to marry him hadn’t exactly been straight—or straightforward. Guess he was projecting his recent personal experience too. “Coercion? Blatant bribery?”

He wanted her. He just plain wanted her. Ward had wanted her since the first day he’d seen that blazing red hair across the choir room. He wanted the guardedness and the shadows erased from her eyes. He wanted the warmth back. He wanted Piper back.

“Yeah.” Because at this point, he was desperate enough to take the long shot. To risk her laughing at him. To risk her hating him again. “I do. I’ll take her however I can get her.”

“Dangerous ground.”

Eager to get back and think through the specifics, Ward grabbed his oar and shoved it into place. “Break’s over. I’m telling you, once she spends all that time with me, I’ll crack through all the shields she’s thrown up. It’ll fix everything.”

It had to.

Chapter Three

With a smooth
pop
, Piper twisted the measured pour spout out of the empty bottle. “Well, ladies? How about a show of hands? Do you prefer our semi-dry Riesling, or the award-winning Viognier?”

“Any chance we could get another round of samples? A second taste might help me decide.”

Piper ran a practiced eye down the line of women. Midforties. Tasteful clothes with understated jewelry. Hair that looked like they all went to the same salon, and noses that looked like they all went to the same plastic surgeon. Her guess put them as a bachelorette party out from Manhattan for a bride’s second—or possibly third—trip down the aisle. Women who held it together at home, but were letting it all hang loose out here in the relative wilderness of the Finger Lakes. From the brightness of their eyes and their too-loud laughter when they entered, it was evident that Morrissey Vineyards was far from their first stop of the day.

From a cash-grab standpoint, Piper could say yes. They charged for each tasting in the pretty glasses etched with the Morrissey Vineyards logo that curled grapevines around the
M
and the
V
. Occasionally Piper did relent, albeit while still collecting the tasting fee, and pour a second round. In her capacity as tasting room manager, she could decide when to bend the rules.

But she never forgot that everyone who sampled her wine would go back outside and very possibly get behind the wheel of a car. Many of the Seneca Lake hotels provided shuttle buses for the guests. Hired sedans did a brisk business in the loop around the lake and its sixty-four wineries.

The atmosphere in their sun-drenched tasting room was light and festive. Jazz played from the overhead speakers. Instead of just crackers, taste-appropriate nibbles such as locally farmed goat cheese and chocolates were served with each wine. Their visitors were supposed to feel like they were at a cocktail party. Still, she always went with her gut. Better to be safe than an unwitting foundation to a tragic accident.

“Sorry, ladies. Only one round allowed. On the bright side, you don’t have to decide on a favorite. You can buy a bottle of each to take home with you. Or perhaps to open at your hotel tonight while you watch the sunset?”

“Ooh, that’s a good idea.” The woman in the middle threw her arms out to the sides to pull her friends in to a group hug. Hard. Hard enough the sunglasses on top of the shortest woman’s head slid down to her nose. Cutting them off was definitely the right decision. “We should each get a bottle.”

Piper pushed their marked-up tasting sheets back across the wide counter. “If you head to the opposite side of the room, Amy can help you locate all your favorites.” She caught the eye of the lithe blonde patiently stationed in front of the wall of wine bottles, and gave a discreet wave toward the group. Clutching their souvenir glasses, they all made a beeline for Amy.

They were the last to be served. At least until the lunch slump ended. There was always a big rush right when they opened at ten. Crowds picked up as noon approached, and then the place emptied out as tourists realized they needed to line their bellies with something more substantial than wine.

The break would be nice. Actually,
nice
didn’t begin to cover it. After being up half the night on the phone with Ella, Piper was dragging. It was already a double-shot, two-latte day. In hopes that the sugar rush would perk her up, she’d also turned it into a two-donut day. Neither had helped. She had the jitters from the extra caffeine, a slightly queasy feeling from the donuts, and a headache from exhaustion and stress that would probably morph into a migraine by the end of the day.

Not that she’d let a single visitor to the winery know. Piper had shown up fifteen minutes before the rest of her staff, just as she did every morning. She’d paired her crisp white shirt and shamrock-green cardigan with wide-legged pants and platform pumps. If only she felt as good as she hoped she looked.

She wiped her hands on a towel and tossed it to the skinny man retying the half apron at his waist. “Jeffrey, I’m going to head back into my office for a few minutes. You’ll hold down the fort out here?”

“No problem, boss.” His eyes twinkled as he slid a folded paper out from beneath the stack of tasting slips. “I’ve got a sudoku to fill the time until the next tour bus comes.”

“As long as no one sees—”

“Sees me working on it. I know. My job is to give all my attention to our guests. I
know.
”

“Guess I trained you well,” she teased.

The door swung open, and Piper bit back a sigh. If it was more than just two people, she should really stay out here and help Jeffrey. But oh, it’d be wonderful to sit in her wing chair and close her eyes for exactly ten minutes. She let her lids flutter shut, in the faint hope that when she opened them her luck would’ve turned around.

“Hey, Piper.”

That voice. Raspy and dark, like the constant
two days past scruff
he kept on his chin. Two words were all it took to recognize him without so much as opening her eyes. But she couldn’t hide from his hotness forever. Piper sighed and blinked. There he stood, looking as bad-boy sexy as ever. Black jeans. Black tee. Thick hair that always looked like some woman had just tousled it in bed. Or so she imagined, never having gotten to experience that particular fantasy when they’d dated.

“Hello, Ward.”

“You busy?”

Piper gestured with both hands at the empty tasting counter. “Lunchtime lull,” she said with a laugh.

“Right. We’ve got the same thing going on over at the distillery.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Officially, they provided a view of a portion of Morrissey Vineyard’s prized grapevines, with the blue expanse of Seneca Lake beyond. But Piper knew it was possible to see the tall white tower of Lakeside Distillery. If you stood exactly six paces from the end of the counter and looked left.

“What brings you here in the middle of the day? Did you come to grab a bottle of our pinot noir for a hot date tonight?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

That was...unusual. The two of them didn’t chat alone. Not anymore. Not in years. “Just me?”

“Yeah.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, as though his face was thinking about pulling itself into a smile. “No blood was spilled the other night when it was just the two of us. Figured I’d press my luck.”

He could press anything he wanted against her. On her. Whatever. Piper untied her own apron and tucked it on the shelf beneath the counter. “Okay. I’ll live dangerously. What’s up?”

Ward’s gaze shifted to Jeffrey, then back. “Not here. Is there someplace else we can talk? Someplace private?”

“Oh. Sure. Follow me.” Piper led him down the hallway lined with framed medals. Gave a passing thought to how glad she was the tasting room didn’t actually connect to the winery, where her dad kept an office. Because he’d be less than thrilled to see Ward in his business. Then she remembered that it was Wednesday. Her father would be busy with golf at the club all day. Still, it felt somewhat akin to the times she’d snuck Ward into her bedroom in high school. Very illicit.

“Here we are.” Now his visit had even more of the secret boyfriend vibe. Because she was showing him her intensely personal office for the first time. The place she poured her heart and soul into. The place he’d never set foot, never asked to see even after they fell back into their tight four-way friendship with Ella and Casey.

Would he approve of the comfortable wing chair tucked into a corner? The glass-topped wine barrel she used as a desk? Would he mock the shelf that still held her viniculture and business textbooks?

Piper didn’t know whether to sit or stand. Or where to do so. All she did know was that Ward’s height and muscles and sheer maleness seemed to be taking up all the available space. And she felt out of place in the room that was supposed to be her haven. She crouched in front of the mini-fridge. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No. Thanks.”

It didn’t stop her from grabbing a bottle of water. She’d need it to pop some more painkillers the moment he left. Except that he wasn’t leaving. Or talking. Piper curled her toes in the pinching tightness of her pumps and stood. A shiver ran through her as she slid along the hard length of Ward, who’d silently moved behind her to look at the photos on her shelf. Her entire body wanted to arch backward into the hot wall of muscle. But that would be pointless. Embarrassing for both of them.

“Sorry. Didn’t know you were there.” Piper didn’t move. Because if she turned around, it would line up too many things on their bodies in far too close proximity. If she made a break for it, that’d be a dead giveaway of her...her...flusterment. Overheatedness. Nope. She couldn’t even make up a good word to candy-coat it. The only word for the interest and heat throbbing through her right now was
arousal
. And Piper was quite positive that if there was a book or a blog post or even a limerick about the top five things not to do with your ex, admitting your arousal had to be the very first thing on the list.

He raised an arm to point at a photo in a round white frame decorated with blue and silver dots. It was from her cheerleading days, when just about everything she owned
had
to be decorated with the school colors. This particular one was the night of the state basketball championship. The night Ward had gotten the team MVP trophy. Ward had Casey and Ella hefted onto one hip, with Piper on the other. All four of them were grinning like fools at each other instead of the camera.

“I’d forgotten about this picture.” With the tip of his finger, Ward touched each face in turn. “Kind of surprised you keep it on display.”

“Good memories don’t sour because of a, um, behavioral anomaly. A status change. A schism.” A broken heart. A trampled heart. Nope, she probably shouldn’t bring that up, either. At a lack of how to describe it without making herself sound pathetic, she finished lamely, “What you did.”

“Nice to hear.”

His arm still caged her in place on one side. Piper decided to use simple politeness as an exit strategy. She pivoted away to point at the chair. “Would you like to sit down?”

“No.”

She set the water on a coaster. Still eight kinds of uncomfortable, Piper decided to sit in her wing chair. If she sat at her desk it would feel too much like a business meeting. “Ward, at this rate, we’re not going to get to why you came until after the Fall Festival. Spit it out.”

Ward kept staring at the row of photos. “The Festival’s why I was out in the boat this morning with the guys. Zane’s drafted us to help him show up some guy at Hobart in a sculling race.”

“Who got drafted?”

“Me, Joel and Gray.”

She laughed out loud. “The four of you against some wimpy college professors? You’ll beat the pants off of them.”

“That’s the plan.” He traced his fingers along the edge of another frame. This one bordered a shot of them in full costume, opening night of
Damn Yankees.
Ward got to show off his natural athletic abilities starring as a baseball player. Piper got to try to seduce him as the demoness Lola. So much fun.

“I think I’ll start an under/over pool with a few friends. Your race could help pay for my next pair of shoes.”

“Next pair? Piper, you’ve got more shoes than I have socks and underwear combined.”

Why,
why
did he have to mention his underwear? She’d seen him in shorts plenty of times over the years. Knew the basic shape of his legs, the crisp, dark hair covering the tanned skin. Her knowledge stopped there for a long time, since they never went all the way while dating. But as of June of this year, she also knew what he looked like in his underwear. And some things, once seen, couldn’t be unseen.

The sexy sighting occurred because their old drama teacher still lived in town, and the four of them made it a point to visit her a handful of times a year. He’d built an elaborate three-story green-and-yellow birdhouse for Fran Lacey’s eightieth birthday. Just thinking about that sweet gesture, and all the time it must’ve taken, melted Piper’s heart. Ward came across as all stoic and badass, but he could be so darn thoughtful it could take your breath away.

Hands shaking from Parkinson’s, Mrs. Lacey had insisted on cutting slices of birthday cake for them all. A tremble, a slip, and moments later the knife was in Ward’s thigh. Ella and Casey had stayed to calm down the distraught woman, which left Piper to drive Ward to the hospital, despite his protests. Said protests that were ignored due to the steady drip of blood down his leg.

So she’d been there, gurney-side, holding his hand for the first time in nine years. He professed not to need her to stay. But he didn’t let go. And then a nurse cut off his pants. They’d pulled off his shirt earlier to stem the blood on the drive. Which left him naked except for the thin and revealing cotton of his boxer-briefs. Black, of course. The image of his long, lean, muscled body had burned itself through her retinas deep into her memory banks.

Her dry eyes blinked involuntarily, making Piper realize she’d been both staring and completely zoned out. She blamed the exhaustion. Or the headache. “Shoes are the way to a woman’s heart, Ward. And they last longer than most relationships.”

He turned toward her, with a shake of his head that dismissed her comment. “Anyway, when we were out on the boat, Gray mentioned how upset you were last night.”

Guilt washed over her. “Oh, no. I called too late, didn’t I? Did I completely ruin their evening?”

Another brusque head shake. “Their evening was over. All you ruined was Gray’s chance at a good night’s sleep. He’ll survive.”

She’d been on the phone with Ella for almost two hours. In that entire time, she hadn’t once given a single thought to the man in the bed next to her best friend. “I’m still not used to Ella living with him. That was rude of me. I’ll have to make up for it. Maybe I’ll take him some apology brownies.”

An amused smile quirked up the corners of his lips. “Piper, the man lives in a hotel with a CIA-trained chef at his beck and call. You don’t need to take him brownies.”