That First Kiss (9 page)

Unease captured him as she leveled him with her steely gray eyes. “She is more than that, and you know it. I like that girl. She’s good for you. So, don’t go screwing it up!”

“Sure, Ma.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, mister.”

“What tone?” Tate backed away from her and her wooden spoon with his hands in the air.

“The one that says you need a good old fashioned lickin’.
And I hope you’re going upstairs to get some pain reliever for your girlfriend.”

He was actually heading into the living room to escape all the commotion outside. He could only take so much of his family’s particular brand of crazy. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. “That was the plan,” he lied as he
detoured and bounded up the stairs to the bathroom instead. He would just completely ignore the comment about her being his girlfriend.

“Good. Midol is in the cabinet beside the feminine napkins!” he heard her call after him. Tate shuddered. If the idea of following in his father’s and brother’s footsteps wasn’t enough of a relationship deterrent, this certainly was.

12

Piper couldn’t get comfortable. Her back hurt, her headache was rebounding and she had cramps. She fantasized about being at home, sprawled on the couch in front of the television in a pair of sweats with a gallon of ice cream and her favorite shows. Thankfully, Tate had been kind enough to bring her some much-needed pain relievers, which had shocked the hell out of her. To be frank, she hadn’t thought he cared.

             
His family was a nice bunch. They were warm and welcoming, much like Cindi. That went double for his brother, Grant. Every time she turned around he was either standing there looking to chat her up or she found him watching her from a distance. On the surface he seemed like a nice enough guy, but there was just something about him that raised her hackles. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she didn’t trust him.

             
She found herself keeping Tate within her sights and avoiding situations where she might find herself alone with the man. She was probably just being overly cautious. The city would do that to a person, but she was following her gut—it had never steered her wrong.

             
“So how long have you worked for Tate?” Marie, the oldest of Tate’s sisters asked. She sat to her left among the little circle the women that had formed around her, studying her with kind blue eyes that matched her brother’s perfectly.

             
Piper was still trying to reconcile that the woman was actually his sister and not another one of his one-night stands. The realization was a bit of a relief. It meant she could remove one of the checks from her mental list of Tate’s criminal activities. Told the truth: Check.

             
“Just about two months,” she answered.

             
“That long?” Angie, the middle daughter, asked in wonder. She was by far the most beautiful, with her long, honey blonde hair and lightly bronzed porcelain skin. The yellow, black and white patterned sun dress she wore complimented her slim frame and Piper had to make a conscious effort not to stare whenever she looked in her direction. She had always been a people watcher and it was something of a hobby to break down what about each person made them attractive or unattractive.

             
“That’s not very long,” Piper responded, knowing how long it actually was in Tate Time, but she didn’t find it necessary to clue in Tate’s family on how miserable a man he could be to work for.

             
“From what I hear, it’s an eternity,” Marie said, tipping back the last of her lemonade. She stretched her arm out, reaching for the pitcher resting on the table between them and poured another.

             
“I’ve heard the same,” Leanne, the wife of one of Tate’s brothers, said. Piper looked to her right to the woman with a mane of flaming red hair and lightly freckled skin. She was pretty too, in a way that was uniquely her own. “Collin’s told me more than once how much of a bear his brother can be when he is working.”

             
The women’s heads all turned to Piper at once for confirmation. Piper tilted her head. “He gets a little…stressed sometimes.”

             
They gave her a look that only a woman can give. One that was filled with understanding if not a touch of pity, then, as one, they located Tate and pinned him with a lethal glare. As if he felt their eyes on him, Tate, who appeared deep in conversation, glanced over and stopped mid-sentence. The slightly fearful look that crossed his eyes was comical. Piper pressed her fingers to her lips to keep from smiling. Tate looked to her questioningly. She shrugged and lifted her cup to her lips, feigning ignorance.

             
“So, have you two slept together yet?” Marie’s question caught Piper off guard and she nearly choked on her lemonade.

             
Once she got past the fitful coughing, Piper wiped the tears from her eyes and looked to the woman to see if she was serious. She was. Totally. A sister asking about her brother’s sex life? Talk about TMI.

             
“We um…uh…” A child suddenly appeared out of nowhere, scrambling into her lap and wrapping its spindly arms around her neck in a grip so tight she nearly lost her breath. But it had also saved her. That was the important thing.

             
“Save me! Save me!” The kid screamed. Piper’s eardrum cringed at the piercing wail.

             
“You kids!” Marie, Casey, and Leanne all jumped up at once as a rumble of tiny feet burst onto the deck, shaking the entire structure and screaming like lunatics. Hell, no wonder the kid in her lap was terrified. She had a mob after her. “Stay in the yard!” The women shouted, corralling the gang and ushering them away from the adults.

             
Piper was left holding the little girl whose little body had already begun to relax, but still clung to her. She felt eyes on her and looked up to see Tate watching her with an odd expression. After a moment, he looked away leaving her to wonder what it was all about.

             
“He cares for you.” The youngest sister, Georgette, who had remained curiously quiet since her arrival, was speaking to her. Piper shifted in her seat and wrapped her arms around the little girl. Using her as a shield from the shrewd, assessing gaze of what she determined was a ball busting woman before her? Of course not. Well, maybe.

             
“Excuse me?”

             
Georgette angled her head toward the house. Toward Tate. “My brother. He cares for you.”

             
“Oh.” Piper allowed herself a brief look his way. He had his back to her once again and was talking to a man slightly taller than him with hair a shade lighter. Collin? She wondered, taking a moment before she recalled that he was the brother married to Leanne. “We just work together,” she told Georgette, dismissing her claims.

             
“No, it’s more than that,” she insisted. Piper realized then that this woman was the kind that cut to the chase. She didn’t mince words. “For you too, I think.”

             
“Do you know how to braid hair?” The little girl asked abruptly, lifting her head and peering back at her with big brown eyes.

             
“Um, yes.”

“So, do you like him?”

“Can you braid mine?”

Piper’s
attention was splitting in two directions: Georgette’s frank assessment and the girl’s innocent question. She chose the easier of the two. “Uh, okay.”

The girl graced her with a grin that showed off a gap where two teeth had recently fallen out. She twisted in her lap and made swift work of tugging out the pony tail someone had clearly put an effort into making. She hoped she wouldn’t get into trouble for undoing all that hard work. She used her fingers to split the hair, relying on avoidance to get her through this awkward moment.

Not one to be avoided, Georgette repeated the question.

“Sure. What’s not to like,” Piper
stated noncommittally. Tate was handsome, hardworking, and a great lover if being sexed up over a sink in a public bathroom was any indication of his abilities.

Georgette shot her a look
that said ‘You know what I mean.’ She switched tactics. “He hasn’t brought any women home before. Not since Casey, anyway.”

That brought Piper’s head up, her hands stilling mid-plait. “
Casey?” she asked, trying not to sound too interested.

Georgette turned her knowing look to the pitcher of lemonade, pouring another cup and topping off Piper’s even though she hadn’t asked. “Just an old girlfriend. They broke up a couple of years ago. They were pretty serious,” she went on,
casually answering one of the questions that had popped into Piper’s head at the mention of the word ‘girlfriend.’

“What happened?” Piper kept her head down and her eyes focused on what her hands were doing, but she was on autopilot, her
thoughts completely focused on the man standing only a few feet away and the fact that he had actually, at one time, been in a serious, committed relationship. The idea seemed so incongruous with the image of the man she knew.

Georgette shrugged. “Don’t know
the details. One day they were together, the next not. He never talked about it. I think it might have had something to do with him going to school, though. Maybe the distance,” she speculated. “All I know for sure is that at some point, he just stopped coming home.”

“Just like that?” Piper was stunned. What on earth could have happened to make Tate run away from his home and his family?
Even though she’d heard that distance could tear apart relationships, she had a difficult time imagining someone throwing in the towel without a fight.

“Just like that. We didn’t see him for a while. He sent a couple of brief emails to Marie saying he was okay and not to worry, but that was it. Then one day he just pops up, says he’s been published and that was that. He wanted us to think he was happy, so we left it alone.
Sometimes people just need space to figure things out on their own, you know?”

“You don’t think he’s happy?” Piper questioned, her mind buzzing over all this new information. She didn’t know why it interested her so much, or why she even cared about the answers, but she did. Far too much.

“Maybe not yet, but he’s getting there.”

Piper locked eyes with Georgette and for one lon
g moment suspended in time, silent understanding passed between the two women. Was she saying that Tate was starting to be happy again? And that she was the cause of it?

“I swear those children
are demented. What did we miss?” The three women reclaimed their chairs, completing the circle. Piper blinked, severing eye contact. Her hands trembled slightly as she finished off the braid.

“There you go, sweetie. All done.”

The girl ran her hand down the length of it and squealed. “I love it! Thanks!” She surprised her with a kiss on the cheek, then dashed away to rejoin the others where they played a game of tag in the grass.

When Piper looked back at the women, she found them all watching her, smiling. Even Georgette. Now why did that make her so nervous?

*****

It was growing late.
The youngest of the children had been put down for bed in the upstairs guest rooms that Cindi had set up for whenever her grandchildren stayed over. She could tell by the look of pure adoration on the woman’s face that she loved them as much, if not more, than her own kids. The two oldest, May and Jake, were somewhere inside playing video games last she heard.

             
“Come on, everyone,” Cindi called out from the middle of the expansive yard. She stood in front of a crackling bonfire adding some debris to make it burn brighter. “Bring your chairs!”

             
Exhausted, Piper peeled herself from her seat. As the day wore on, her back had begun to ache more and more as fatigue began to set in. She longed for her bed. Her warm, cushy, inviting bed.

             
“I’ll take this. You grab the drinks.” Tate was suddenly there, taking her chair from her fingers before she could utter a weak protest.

             
When they found a suitable spot close to the fire, Piper handed off Tate’s drink to him. “Thank you,” he uttered, and when he plopped down in the chair, she noted the lack of one for her. Had he just scammed her chair?

             
“Uh, Tate, did you forget something?”

             
Tate looked up at her, then down at himself, patted his pockets, thought about it, then lifted one thick shoulder. “Nope, I think I’ve got everything.”

             
Piper’s eyes darted around the group. She had to take several deep breaths and remind herself that she couldn’t light into him in front of all these nice people before should could finally speak, calmly and rationally. “What about my chair?”

             
“What about it?”

             
“You’re sitting in it.” Really, did he have a death wish? With every second that passed that he acted so innocent and ignorant of what he was doing, she was growing closer to throttling him. Hopefully, he wasn’t Cindi’s favorite, because by the end of the night, she might be one child short.

             
“Hmm, so I am.”

             
Piper clenched her teeth and shouted profanities in her head. Her answering smile was brittle at best. “And where do you expect me to sit?”

             
Looking up at her, Tate smiled and patted his thigh. “There’s a perfectly good seat right here.”

             
Piper gaped. “I am not sitting in your lap.”

             
“Why not?” Amusement glittered in his eyes. Those damnable blue eyes. “There’s a shortage of chairs. Looks like we’ll have to share. Unless you want to sit in the grass,” he offered, seeing her reluctance.