Midnight Remedy (8 page)

The boys were out the door before she could blink.

“Fine, Clint. And how are your grandkids?” she asked.

“Growin’ fast.” He took their order and left, not as talkative as usual since the dining room was busy.

“Dave’s doing good things with his clinic,” Eric said, returning to the argument. “You could be a part of something that could help thousands of people.”

“Or hurt them,” she shot back. “My original point is still valid. You and Dave can’t guarantee it won’t fall into the wrong hands. Besides, I couldn’t take the publicity if it turned out to be a cure.”

He looked at her curiously. “What’s wrong with a little publicity? It wouldn’t hurt your business. In fact, it would help it a lot.”

“Not worth it,” she said, shaking her head. Would he never give up? “You’ve done your duty, Eric. Let’s drop it, okay?”

He sighed and seemed about to say something.

“Dr. Chambers, Piper. How nice to see you.”

Piper glanced up to see Virginia and Randy Johnson. Eric rose and shook hands. Virginia leaned lightly against her husband, resting her hand on her stomach in the classic pose, although she wasn’t showing yet. “Our two favorite people,” she said with a warm smile.

Piper almost groaned. She shot Eric a glance and had to bite her tongue at the “I told you so” look he gave her. “You look good, Virginia. Randy must be treating you right.”

“Oh, he is.” She glanced lovingly up at her husband before she turned to Piper. “You’ll never know what this has meant to us, Piper. Isn’t that right, honey?”

Randy shuffled his feet and looked down at them. “We’re purely grateful to you, Piper, and that’s a fact,” he mumbled. For Randy, that was a speech. Usually he spoke in sentences of five words or less.

They stayed and chatted for a few more minutes, then left to get on with their evening. Piper pinned Eric with a glare. “Did you set that up?”

“No, but I have to admit it’s the best argument I can think of. They’ve had a hard time of it.”

“You still don’t believe my remedy helped them, do you?”

He hesitated. “I’m willing to admit that it’s a possibility. Dave wants to make sure. Just think about it,” he said when she started to speak.

She wished it were possible to give Dave the formula. But she couldn’t afford to draw attention again. Not after the last time. If it had only been herself, she might have risked it, but she had Cole to consider now. Shaking her head she said, “I’m not going to change my mind.”

She didn’t look happy about it, Eric noticed. Almost as if she wanted to, but couldn’t. Again, he wondered just what was so terrible about publicity. Her reaction seemed excessive to him, but he knew when to retreat. And getting the formula had begun to take second place to his other motive in getting to know her.

How had a beautiful woman like Piper stayed hidden away on a ranch in west Texas for most of her life? Piper Stevenson didn’t seem like a down-home country girl. And though she was self-assured, at least about her business, he sensed a curious naiveté about her. An untouched quality, but with a passion that smoldered underneath.

What would it be like to unlock that passion and watch it explode into bloom? Damned good, he suspected.

“What?” she asked. “You’re staring at me like I’ve got two heads.”

A good thing she didn’t know what he’d really been thinking. “I was thinking of your mysterious past.”

She froze. “Mysterious? Why do you say that?”

He wanted to take her hand again, but she’d put it in her lap and was now sitting straight up in her chair, looking like she was facing an executioner. “You said your grandfather and Sam raised you and that you lived most of your life around here, but you’re not a typical country girl.”

The tension drained out of her and he wondered what she’d thought he was talking about. Cole probably, although he couldn’t imagine why she’d think he was insensitive enough to press her on that subject.

She smiled wryly. “My mother would be glad to hear you say that. She’s worked hard at giving me a more
 . . .
” she considered a moment “. . . cosmopolitan view of life.”

“Your mother’s alive?” he asked, surprised.

“Very much so. My father died when I was two, but mother
 . . .
” She stopped and smiled again. “Ever hear of Kimberly Loveland?”

“Loveland Models?” Kimberly Loveland owned and ran the biggest modeling agency in the state. Loveland was big business, headquartering in Dallas. “Kimberly Loveland is your mother?”

Piper inclined her head. “The one and only.”

That explained Piper’s looks. Her mother was still widely held to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. “Didn’t you tell me you’d always lived around here?”

“And I have. Living with my mother would have been a disaster.” She laughed. “No, Mother would have murdered me at a young age if she’d had to deal with me all the time. I was much better off living with Grandpa and visiting my mother.”

Kimberly Loveland. Eric remembered the last picture he’d seen of her, on the arm of a man who had to be twenty years her junior. Rumor held that if one laid all Kimberly’s lovers end to end, they’d stretch from New York to California. No mystery about that. Wealth and beauty were powerful magnets.

Piper sighed and settled back into her seat. “Are you up for the whole story?”

“Sure, if you are.”

She took a sip of wine and folded her hands on the table in front of her. “My father didn’t want to be a rancher. At eighteen he took off for the bright lights. For a while he rode the circuit, but his heart wasn’t in it.”

“The rodeo circuit? Your mother rode the circuit?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course not. Good-looking men did. My mother likes good-looking men. She and my father met and they fell madly in love. When my father found out he could make infinitely more money as a male model than as a bronc rider, he squelched his macho upbringing and went for the bucks.” Her cheeks dimpled. “I wish I could have seen Grandpa’s face when he heard that for the first time.”

Eric laughed. “I don’t imagine that was something your grandfather could understand very easily.”

“You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie. ‘Sissy work’ is about the least objectionable term he uses to describe modeling. Anyway, Grandpa didn’t hear from my father for about six months, and then suddenly he showed up at the ranch with my pregnant mother. They got married and tried to make a go of it here. They were both miserable. When I was about a year old, my mother left. My father lasted a week and then he followed her. They both modeled again, but I don’t think their marriage was a very happy one. About a year later, my father was killed in a car wreck.”

“They just left you with your grandfather?” He tried to imagine either of his parents doing that, but he couldn’t.

“I was happy here, and I saw them occasionally. Grandpa’s a better parent than either of them could ever have been.”

She said the last fiercely. Eric reached out and covered her hand. Progress, he thought, when she didn’t pull it away. “Do you ever see your mother now?”

“Since I’ve grown up, I see her quite a bit.” She smiled again, relaxing. “Mother doesn’t understand how I can live here. She keeps trying to get me interested in the modeling industry.”

“It does seem like you would have experimented with it. You never wanted to be a model?”

“For about thirty seconds. I’m too tall to model petites and too short to be a regular model. And I’d never be thin enough. I’m built on sturdier lines.”

“Sturdy isn’t the word I’d use,” Eric said, looking at her. Voluptuous maybe. Sinful. She made him think of satin sheets and sin. He brought her hand to his lips and gently kissed the knuckles. Her scent, as rare and delicate as one of her orchids, assaulted his senses.

“What—what are you doing?” She sounded breathless, he noticed, pleased.

Her pulse beat a wild flutter when he turned her hand over and grazed his lips across it. Hiding a smile, he answered her. “Changing the subject.”

“Well
 . . .
well
 . . .
don’t.” She tried to pull her hand loose, but he kissed her wrist again. He thought he heard her moan, a tiny, soft sound he nearly missed.

His lips traveled to her open palm. “Don’t what?”

“For heaven’s sake, we’re in a restaurant,” she hissed.

“I know. If we weren’t, I wouldn’t be kissing just your hand.” Dropping a last kiss on her wrist, he regretfully let go, gazing at her mouth and schooling his features into an innocent guise.

“Stop trying to
 . . .
to
 . . .
to seduce me,” she whispered loudly.

A slow smile spread over his face. “Now that’s an intriguing thought. We’re in a restaurant, Piper. Even though it’s a lot more
 . . .
” he paused, looked around “. . . intimate than the steakhouse, it’s still a little too public for my tastes. Assuming I was attempting to seduce you, of course.”

The waiter chose that moment to appear at their table. He wanted to talk, but Eric finally got rid of him by asking for the check.

“Now where were we, Angel?”

“Leaving. You asked for the check, remember?”

He grinned, and after paying, led her out. On the way home he kept the conversation light and general. His thoughts were anything but, and he suspected hers weren’t either.

“Grandpa forgot to leave the porch light on,” she said as they pulled up.

“The moon’s full. The night sky is so bright out here.”

“No city lights.” She shot him a provocative look. “I guess I’d better get busy.”