Saving Simon (Tarnished Saints Series Book 5) (27 page)

“I used to keep a spare hidden here when I owned the boat. Glad it was still here after all these years.”

They made love on his boat, rocking it back and forth, and she heard the waves slapping against the hull in time with each of Simon’s thrusts.

She screamed out, but tried to muffle her cries of passion as she came to fulfillment along with Simon. Then they both just laughed at how silly and fun the whole experience was, and she didn’t even care she was lying there naked, having just had sex on a boat with anyone walking by able to hear or possibly even see them through the open door of the cabin which they didn’t bother to close.

“Damn, it must have been too old,” he said, looking down to the condom that had broke in their vigorous love making. “This is awful.” He grabbed the napkins from the table to help them clean up.

“What’s so awful about it?” she asked.

“I don’t want to get you pregnant, Pippa.”

“Well, what if you did? Would it be . . . a bad thing?” she asked, hoping the conversation would lead into something more serious.

“I don’t know,” was all he said. She knew this was the time she had to lay her feelings on the line. If she did, then maybe he wouldn’t be so apprehensive to do the same. Cat had told her to tell him she loved him when he wasn’t sleeping to find out if he loved her in return or not, and this would be the perfect time to do it.

“I love you,” she blurted out once again and looked at him quickly waiting for his response. This time he wasn’t sleeping. He was looking at her intensely and he seemed to be thinking about what he was going to say. Then he opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, a voice came from outside and it sounded like Thad yelling.

“Something’s wrong,” he said, getting up and slipping back into his clothes quickly. “Thad sounded like he was trying to warn me of something. I need to get out there quick.”

“Wait for me,” she said, hurriedly putting on her clothes as well, but he didn’t wait. She finished dressing and turned around to straighten the cushions on the berth, and noticed a piece of paper sticking out from underneath. “What’s this?” she asked aloud, picking up the cushion to find a ledger book and a pile of invoices as well as the bag from the lunch hidden beneath it. “That rat! He hid them from me and had them all the time.”

She opened the paper shopping bag and put all the papers as well as the ledger inside, and hurried out of the cabin, meaning to confront him. “Simon,” she called, as she walked out onto the sailboat barefoot, but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Simon standing on the pier next to the boat. His brother Judas was with him dressed in his sheriff’s uniform, and also Thad and two other men she recognized as her father’s attorney and a friend of his who was an accountant. And then her heart dropped when she saw the one person standing there that she really didn’t want to see right now – her father.

Chapter 20

“Piper, thank God you’re all right,” said her father when he saw her. “Did this boy hurt you? I saw him on the news beating on someone that they said was his own brother.”

“Don’t call me boy,” she heard Simon say in a low voice and saw him clenching his fists and knew she’d better do something fast.

“Daddy, I didn’t know you were coming to Sweet Water.” She went to climb out of the boat still holding the bag in her hand, and Simon helped her. He was bare-chested and barefoot, and she hadn’t even bothered to put her shoes on either.

“Well, if you’d answer your phone once in a while maybe you’d know,” her father grumbled. “I tried calling you several times last night and again this morning and decided when you didn’t answer that something happened to you.”

“No, I’m fine,” she said and flashed a smile at Simon.

“Then why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“Because we were in the middle of something and I wouldn’t let her,” Simon told him.

“Simon!” she tried to stop him, but it was too late. Her father had to know now that they’d made love. “Daddy, I tried calling you several times late this morning, but you didn’t pick up.”

“Probably because I was on my way here to this god-forsaken little town that doesn’t seem to get a phone signal half the time. What the hell were you two doing last night that was so important that you couldn’t answer the damned phone?” he growled.

“We were at dinner,” Piper told him quickly before Simon could intervene again. “And my phone doesn’t get a good signal at the cabin.”

“Cabin? What cabin?” he asked. “You told me you staying in a hotel. When I couldn’t find the name of any hotels listed in Sweet Water, I stopped at the police station to file a report that you were missing. That’s when this kind officer said he thought you were at the marina and brought me here.”

She saw Simon throw a daggered look at his brother Judas, and Judas just shrugged his shoulders.

“So what were you doing on that boat with this . . . this . . . madman?” he asked, nodding toward Simon.

“We were having lunch,” Simon said, his jaw already twitching.

“Yes, that’s true,” she said. “We were having lunch.”

“I don’t believe you,” spat her father, looking at Simon. “I swear if I find out you so much as laid a finger on my little girl I’ll have you arrested so fast your head will spin, boy.”

“Daddy, he’s not a boy. He’s a man,” Piper told him. She admired the way Simon was holding back his emotions, and she just hoped he wouldn’t do anything he’d regret.

“Pippa, show him the food in the bag and then maybe he’ll believe us,” said Simon.

“What?” she looked up and him and shook her head, realizing since she was holding the bag from the restaurant he must have thought she was bringing Thad the leftover food.

“Go on,” Simon coaxed her. “Show him.”

When she didn’t do as he asked, Simon reached over and grabbed the bag, shoving it quickly into her father’s hands before she could stop him.

“See for yourself,” Simon told him.

Piper cringed and bit the inside of her cheek when her father looked into the bag and saw the invoices and the ledger.

“This isn’t food,” said her father in a gruff voice.

“It isn’t?” Simon stepped forward and looked into the bag too.

Simon could have died when he realized there was not food in the bag but the invoices and ledger from the marina instead.

“What’s going on here?” asked Piper’s father. “And why are you both in your bare feet? Piper, are these the invoices and ledger from the marina that you kept telling me you didn’t have?”

“Yes,” she said softly and lowered her head.

“You lied to me. I don’t tolerate liars. Now I don’t know why you did it, but I’m not going to put up with this any more. I have my attorney as well as my accountant here and you are no longer going to handle this nor any of the affairs for Westbrook Enterprises. Do you understand me?”

“Daddy, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying you lied to me and because of that, I’m firing you. Now get in your car and head back to Chicago right now and we’ll talk after I give Mrs. Glover a call and close this deal.”

He grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her down the pier, and when she looked back to Simon with tears in her eyes, he knew she was trying to protect him by not telling her father the truth that he was the one to hide the papers from her. This was too much of a familiar scene and all his memories of seeing his father mistreat his mother came flooding back into his mind.

Thad looked on with helplessness in his eyes, and Judas just shook his head in a silent warning for Simon to just let it go, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to stand for this, and he was going to protect Piper no matter what the consequences were.

“Let her go, you bastard,” he ground out, and her father stopped in his tracks and turned around, still holding tightly onto Piper’s arm.

“Simon, don’t,” she warned him, but he stomped down the pier, pushing his way past Judas and Thad and the two goons the man had brought with him until he was face to face with Piper’s father.

“She didn’t lie to you, I did.”

“What are you talking about, boy?”

It was all he could do not to hit the man right now. But one more time hearing him call him boy, and he swore he was going to slug him.

“I hid those papers, and Piper just found them. She’d been trying to do what you wanted since she got here, but I hid them and lied about it because I didn’t want her to close down the marina.”

“You fool. Did you think you could get away with it?”

“Did you think you could get away with cheating Mrs. Glover out of her life savings just to line your pockets? Or how about the fact you plan on selling the marina to a company who will put up a hotel and put half the town of Sweet Water out of business?”

“That’s none of my concern.”

“Well, it should be,” Simon told him. “People in this town have worked hard their entire lives to build their family businesses, and you are going to take that all away without even a care of what happens to them.”

“Save your breath, because there’s nothing you can do. Now, Piper get your ass in the car and get away from this madman already before he hurts you.”

“Daddy, Simon would never hurt me,” she said, struggling to get out of his hold. “I don’t want to leave, I want to stay with him, because I love him.”

“What?” He looked at her quickly and then turned and looked at Simon. “What the hell is going on here? I let her out of my sight for a short time and now she’s saying she’s in love with you?”

“That’s right,” Simon said, “and the reason she didn’t answer your call last night was because we were making love.” Piper’s eyes opened wide and she shook her head frantically, but Simon was tired of lying and he was going to come clean now, he just didn’t care. He was going to let her father know that he loved her as well. “We made love again, just now on the boat, and I found out that I was actually the one to take your daughter’s virginity.”

Piper couldn’t believe her ears, and her mouth just fell open when she heard Simon telling her father all her personal business and the details of their intimacy. She half-expected him to announce step by step exactly what they’d done and how they’d done it next. She looked over to her father as well as all the other men on the dock and their mouths were hanging open too.

“You son of a bitch! I knew you were trouble the moment I laid eyes on you, boy,” said her father, with fire blazing from his eyes. “How dare you defile my daughter. You are not going to get away with this.”

“I said . . . ” Simon reached out and punched the man in the face and he fell to the ground holding his jaw, “. . . don’t call me boy!”

“Simon! How could you?” Piper cried out, and got down on her knees next to her father weeping bitterly. “Daddy, are you all right?”

“Officer, have this man arrested,” said her father getting to his feet.

“For what?” asked Judas.

“You saw him just hit me, and so did everyone here. Plus he just admitted to raping my daughter.”

“I didn’t rape her,” Simon said. “It was a mutual agreement, tell him, Pippa.”

Piper got to her feet crying, not able to believe any of this just happened. Simon had just taken the most intimate, important, magical moment of her life and aired it in front of a group of men like nothing more than dirty laundry. Then to top it off, he let his anger issues take over again and he hit her father. How could she ever forgive him for any of this? She couldn’t.

“I hate you, Simon Taylor and I never want to see you again in my entire life,” she cried and ran off the docks and jumped into her car, only too glad Simon had left the keys inside like he always did. She started up the motor and was backing out when she saw everyone arguing, and Judas slapping cuffs on Simon and hauling him toward his squad car.

“I hate you, Simon,” she cried out, and pushed the pedal down, her tires spitting gravel everywhere as she pulled out of the marina, intending to collect her things from the cabin and drive home to Chicago just as fast as she could.

Chapter 21

“He did what?” asked Cat, standing there watching Piper pack her bags. Piper had been surprised to find Cat waiting for her at the cabin when she pulled up. Judas had already told her that Simon was in jail. Damn, why did everyone in this town have to blab everyone else’s business? Piper couldn’t wait to get home to Chicago where nobody talked to anyone unless they really had to.

“You heard me,” said Piper, no longer crying because she was so mad. “The fool went and told all the men on the pier, including my father that he’d taken my virginity and made love to me twice. It was almost as if he was looking for a fight and would say anything to get it.”

“No, I’m sure that’s not true,” said Cat sitting down on the bed as Piper tried to cram the rest of her clothes inside her suitcase. “Are you sure he wasn’t going to add something to that and just never got the chance to say it?”