Seeing is Believing (16 page)

But given that he was pulling a beer from a Kegerator hidden behind a cabinet door, he didn’t look too worried about it.

Two boys—one lanky and white-blond the other stocky and dirty blond—were lounging on the sofa watching TV. “Hey,” Brady said to them when they glanced his way.

“Wassup?” the older one said, reminding Brady a lot of Amanda, with his carefully cultivated expression of boredom.

Amanda, who was holding a glass of wine, made a face. “Boys, this is Brady Stritmeyer, Shelby’s cousin.”

The younger one sat up and stuck his hand out over the back of the couch. “I’m Jack Tucker.”

Brady grinned. This one was the spitting image of Danny. “Nice to meet you, Jack. Brady.” He shook the kid’s hand.

“You, too. This is my brother, Daniel Logan.” Jack shot a thumb at the teen lounging next to him. Then to the three dogs cuddled up between the two of them. “This is Daisy, and that’s Duke, and the black one with the white ear is Prada. And my sister, Piper, is in the kitchen.”

“Wow, full house. I’ve actually met Piper before. I even babysat her when she was a kid.”

“Oh, really?” Jack seemed to find this intriguing. “Hmm.”

Brady waited in amusement for an explanation but none seemed forthcoming.

Piper came over and ruffled Jack’s hair. “Brady and I are going for a walk, Jack-Jack. Good night. Night, Logan.”

Jack’s eyes were shining at her words. Even Logan seemed to find this information curious, and for the first time he really studied Brady. Feeling as vulnerable as a stripper on her first night on the job, Brady refused to show it. He stared the kid down with a smile. Logan looked away first.

“You’re going for a walk?” Amanda asked, like this was the most insane idea she’d ever heard in her life. “Why?”

Danny said, “Amanda.”

She looked at her husband. “What?”

He gave her a slight shake of his head. Instantly she seemed to understand what he was trying to say. Brady found the silent communication between married couples fascinating. What would it be like to know someone so well that you could anticipate their actions and know what they were thinking without using words? He’d never even come close to that kind of connection with a woman.

“Take a sweater,” Amanda said instead to Piper. “It’s getting cold out there.”

Piper laughed. “Since you’re the second person to suggest that, maybe I’ll get a sweater and make you and Brady happy.”

She ran up the stairs, her gait light and graceful. He imagined she got mothered a lot. There was just something about Piper’s eyes that made you want to take care of her. But she seemed to understand and appreciate the sentiment behind it, and didn’t reject it. Not that Brady wanted to mother her. There were a whole lot of things he wanted to do to her, and none of them should be considered standing in her parents’ kitchen.

“You’re freaking me out,” Amanda told him.

“Why? What did I do?”

“You know why,” she said cryptically, draining her wineglass.

“Actually, I really don’t.”

“Ready,” Piper said breathlessly, tumbling off the stairs and into the kitchen. She grabbed her keys off a hook by the back door. “We’re going for a drive, technically, then a walk. We’ll see you later.”

With that, Piper opened the door and rushed out into the driveway, clearly in a hurry. Whether he could flatter himself that she wanted to be with him, he wasn’t sure. It was just as likely she wanted to get away from her parents as any burning desire for his company.

He kind of wanted to get away from her parents, too. The whole situation was a tad awkward.

She paused next to her truck and held her keys up for him.

“What—you want me to drive?”

“I know enough about men to know they prefer to be the one behind the wheel. My mother hasn’t ever driven my father, to my knowledge. My dad is afraid he will lose a testicle and all his chest hair if he lets her chauffeur him.”

Brady gave Piper a long, assessing look. “My masculinity isn’t threatened by anything. Certainly not by having a woman drive her own car. You’re welcome to drive. Unless you prefer to have a big strong man handle your truck.”

The truth was, he wanted to see her driving that big old four-wheel-drive pickup. It was just one more curious facet of Piper’s personality. She was something of an enigma that he wanted to solve.

“Then I’ll drive.” She didn’t hesitate. Going around the driver’s side, she hopped into her truck in one smooth motion.

Brady climbed in the passenger side, noting that her truck was straight as a pin, no trash anywhere or miscellaneous items lying around. He barely had the door shut when she shot the truck into reverse and peeled around to head down the driveway. Whoa. Piper was a bit of a lead foot. It didn’t fit his idea of her—hesitant and unassuming. But then again, hadn’t he just thought she was multifaceted?

Gravel churned under her tires and Brady shot her a grin of appreciation. “Damn, girl, you know how to handle this truck just fine.”

She was going at least fifty, and the speed had her bouncing around on her seat, her hair flowing over her shoulders. She shot him a quick grin. “I like the power of driving a big vehicle. I think my dad underestimated how much I would enjoy it. But hey, it makes sense for a farmer’s daughter, right? I started out on a tractor and graduated to a pickup.”

Brady hit the button to let down his window and he breathed in the night air. It was clean and sharp, but with the underlying earthy scent of animal and freshly threshed crops. It wasn’t a bad way to grow up. “I’m impressed.”

After a minute or two, Piper took a turnoff and started driving down between two rows of apple trees. The orchard went on as far as Brady could see in the dark, and after a dozen trees or so, Piper put her truck in park and turned it off. “Come on.”

Where they were going he wasn’t sure, but he got out of his side and realized that Piper was climbing into the bed of her truck. Once in, she nimbly jumped onto the top of the cab, reached out her hand, and plucked a ripe apple off the tree closest to her, all in her pretty little skirt.

Brady laughed. “That’s handy.”

She winked and took a bite, a loud crunch reverberating in the still air.

It was like a punch to his gut, that wink. She was by far the sexiest thing he’d ever seen in his entire life. He’d had strippers gyrate in front of him with practiced moves, he’d had gorgeous women drop their cocktail dresses to the floor, leaving them in nothing but heels, and yet not one had ever been as flat-out hot as Piper Tucker winking at him over an apple, perched on the top of her truck, legs a tad apart in her skirt. The sweater she’d grabbed was nowhere to be seen and her hair shifted in the soft breeze, all that bare skin and swagger driving him insane. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he attempted to look up her skirt, but the angle wasn’t right.

“It’s good,” she said. “Juicy.”

He knew another thing or two that was bound to be juicy. “How good is your balance?”

Chewing, she asked, “Why?”

“I’m coming up, so brace yourself.”

Brady put his palms on the side of the truck bed and hauled himself up. The car rocked slightly but not enough to give Piper any trouble, though she had grabbed onto a tree branch for stability. He moved towards her. “Give me a bite.”

“Get your own. There’s a thousand apples.”

“I want a bite of yours.” Brady eliminated the gap between them, standing right in front of her, but enough below her that he was facing the apex of her thighs behind that cotton skirt. He couldn’t have asked for anything more tempting. Her apple dangled just below her waist, so he took her wrist and raised it to his lips. She didn’t stop him when he buried his teeth in the crunchy sweetness. “Thank you,” he said with a full mouth, the juice sliding down his throat. “Now come back down here please, before I lift your skirt.”

She laughed. “Here.” She pressed the apple into his hand, and before he could process what she was about, she was gone. A few well-placed maneuvers and Piper had put herself in a tree, one leg on either side of the branch, her nimble fingers reaching out to pluck another apple for herself.

Brady took her spot on the truck cab, sitting down with his feet dangling over the edge so he could comfortably talk to her. He reached out and stroked her bare leg. “You’re a regular monkey. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“I used to come out here as a kid to be alone. I found out I’m good at climbing trees, which was a happy discovery because there weren’t a ton of things I was good at.”

She didn’t say it with any malice or bitterness or disappointment. Just a matter of acceptance that seemed to envelope her. About everything but seeing ghosts, that was.

“I was in Boy Scouts for one year in the second grade. I got pissed that we weren’t going camping with army knives in like the first month, so I quit. That was kind of my childhood—searching for instant gratification and never getting good at anything.” He bit her apple and chewed, reflecting. He’d never realized that until now.

“Why did you want to go camping with an army knife?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I thought you were supposed to do in Scouts. And I was hot to have a knife and start fires. It seemed like that would be cool.” By sixth grade he’d been a damn good shot with a BB gun, could start a fire in thirty seconds, and had butchered a rabbit for stew, all self-taught. Because he’d been curious and had taken risks. So maybe he hadn’t stuck with anything for very long, but as a kid he’d been tenacious and spirited. He wondered what the fuck had happened to that attitude.

“I’m sure it was cool. I was never in Scouts.” Piper nicked at the bark of the branch she was on. “So I have a sleeping bag in my truck bed, you know.”

Instant erection. That’s what he had. Like instant oatmeal. Done in sixty seconds, hot and ready to serve. “And exactly why would I need to know that piece of information?” he asked teasingly, moving his fingers higher up on her leg.

“Because I believe you had a teen fantasy about the back of a truck bed. I’m offering to help you out.”

Her boldness towards sex with him had surprised him initially, but now it just served to turn him on. There was no point in dissecting it. He’d leave that to the shrinks that neither one of them would ever go to. Therapy wasn’t a Cuttersville kind of thing. If people in this town had a problem, they usually just tried to drink it away.

But he was off track. Focus, Stritmeyer. A beautiful woman was offering to get it on in her truck in an apple orchard. With him. He glanced up. Under the stars. Check.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he told her. “Get on down here.”

Putting her apple in her teeth, she came down off the branch and lightly dropped down next to him.

Brady smiled at her, feeling sort of strange inside. “Hi,” he said.

She removed the apple from her mouth. “Hi,” she said shyly.

He wasn’t sure how she did that, navigating so easily between bold and demure, but it appealed to him in a way he didn’t really understand. “So how long do you think we have before Danny comes looking for you?”

She shrugged. “He’ll probably text me before he comes looking for me. Don’t let that worry you.”

“Okay.” Because he didn’t want to worry about anything. He just wanted to get naked in the moonlight with Piper.

He tossed his apple to the ground and reached for her. It was meant to be a slow seduction, a teasing lean that brought their lips together in a soft, enticing kiss.

But there was no slow because Piper more than met him halfway. In fact, she got to him first, her arms sliding around his neck, her teeth nipping at his bottom lip. Did she seriously just bite him? Brady almost fell off the truck from lack of oxygen in his brain.

“What was that for?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her and yanking her up against his chest. He wanted to feel her soft body against his hardness. He wanted to bite her back. He wanted to eat her.

“You bit mine, so I bit yours.”

Oh, really? Brady kissed her ferociously, with an urgency he hadn’t felt in God only knew how long. “That was an apple. I don’t think it’s the same thing. I think you’re just a dirty girl who likes to bite.”

She pulled back, panting, her eyes enormous as they floated above the pale skin of her face in the dark, her lips so tantalizingly close and moist. “I don’t know if I am or not. I never have before. It just felt right . . . like I had to bite you.”

“Do whatever feels right,” he told her, cupping her cheeks with his hands, suddenly aware that he was in by far the deepest shit he had ever fallen into. There were no waders high enough to navigate this without getting dirty.

If it was at all possible for a thirty-one-year-old cynic to fall head over ass for an unsophisticated woman altogether too young for him, Brady was fairly certain it had just happened. If anyone had told him this would occur in whole or in part, he would have snorted in derision at the ridiculousness of the possibility.

But here he was, making out with a fervor he hadn’t felt since he’d been sixteen, his fingers making inroads into her inner thigh like his very life depended on getting inside those panties. He wanted her and nothing else right now.

* * *

PIPER WASN’T EVEN SURE WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO
her. She felt insane, like someone else had stepped inside her skin and was directing her actions. After carelessly dropping her apple into the dirt, she groped, she clawed, she nipped at Brady like he was the only thing standing between her and satisfaction, which she supposed, in a way, he was. She didn’t act like this—she didn’t. She was coming at him like she would die if she didn’t have sex in the next ten minutes, and it was so not her. But it clearly was her. And she clearly was going to die if she didn’t get to have sex with Brady in the next ten minutes.

When he pushed her away, panting hard, she gave a whimper, wanting his tongue back inside her mouth, plunging firmly, wetly, rhythmically. But he kept her at arm’s length, like he needed the space. “Where’s that sleeping bag?”

She had forgotten about the sleeping bag. Heck, she had forgotten her middle name. It was a good thing he was still coherent. “In that bag in the corner.”