Chapter Nineteen
Piper wiped the last little silver nametag and set it in a sky blue gift box. Five little boxes lined up in a row for each of Aspen’s two-week-old kittens, who had ironically decided to come into the world within hours of her being dumped on the sidewalk on the fifteenth. Good old Aspen had provided a perfect distraction all that day. There was an excuse to turn all noisy media off and be an emotional mess in complete privacy.
Piper had made nametags for each kitten, hoping it would help find them new homes, but she shouldn’t have worried. A sweet-sounding lady had asked to see the kittens after she’d put an ad in the local website. The woman had said she was interested in taking all five kittens if they were available, which seemed like a lot of cats for one person, but she could ask more about her circumstances when they met. Piper was smitten with all five of the cute little balls of fur, but knew it wasn’t sensible to even consider keeping them in her tiny apartment.
Her sister was ten days overdue and was currently in the hospital about to be induced. Piper was excited and a little scared for her—she had no experience to pass on in this instance as the sensible big sister, but that was where Mom would excel, she just knew it. The errant father had insisted that he be there and supportive at the birth of his child. Mom and Alessandro in the delivery room was more than enough. Piper would be the doting aunt if and when she was invited.
And Matt had left Passion Creek. He really had, just like he’d said he would, and nobody had heard anything from him since. She knew this because her mom had gone berserk after seeing the magazine pictures of them together and searched high and low for him in order to give him a piece of her mind. At least that was her mom’s story—Sophie had quietly told her that she’d gone armed with apple pie and homemade jelly on each mission. Sophie was a fount of top-secret information when there was a donut bribe in the building.
Piper still ached for Matt, but everything had been so frantic in the last two weeks that she’d been fully occupied, and the tears she needed to shed came at night when nobody could see or hear. Today was the first day she’d turned on the radio—she should be safe from hearing about Matt DeLeo now that he’d abandoned Passion Creek and moved to greener pastures.
“Are you hungry, mom?” Aspen curled her silky body around her ankles and made a sound that sounded like “mom” back. “You don’t fool me. You just love me because I feed you.”
The doorbell rang and she tensed, which was silly of her. Mom and Dad still stopped by almost every day, and Stan had been transferred to Pittsburgh, according to Melanie. And Mel had good sources of information. He’d asked for the transfer and even took a pay cut to make it happen—filing that police report had put a rocket up his cowardly ass. She shook off her nervousness and opened the door a chink, with the security chain firmly in place. Cool night air whooshed in through the crack and made her flinch.
“Piper, it’s me.”
Matt…
“Yep, sounds like you. Go away.”
“I saw the kitten ad. You’re getting rid of them.”
“Yes. None of your business, go away.”
“You can’t give them away. I want them, let me in.”
She rubbed her middle finger up and down the doorframe nervously. “I will not let you in and you’re not a fit person to look after yourself, let alone a kitten. And you don’t do pets, so beat it.”
“I know how to get in here anyway, remember?”
“The chain is on, smartass.”
“Piper, please?”
It was raining hard outside and no place for someone standing in the wind on a rickety metal staircase. That was the only reason… “Okay. Five minutes max. No kittens.”
She released the chain, pulled the door open, and hid behind it as he stepped over the threshold into her cell, her sanctuary. He seemed taller than she remembered. His black leather jacket glistened as he stamped heavy boots onto her doormat, scattering raindrops over the rough welcome mat. Then their eyes met for the first time in two weeks, something she had never expected to happen again. Soft brown eyes, hard black brows, broad tanned forehead and…a gray hair.
“You don’t look like you went to New York.”
“No, I didn’t. I went to Boston.”
“The truth for once, please, DeLeo. You have a very good spray tan otherwise.”
“Florida. After Boston.”
“So you’re expanding into Massachusetts now?”
“I went back home.”
“Home?”
He shucked off his wet jacket and she instinctively took it to hang up by the front door. “Mom cooked, can you believe it?”
“She did? That was nice.” He sank down into an armchair and she followed, sitting opposite each other like a couple of old people. “What did you have?”
“Roast chicken, pork ribs, burgers, meatloaf, turkey, eggs and ham, apple pie, cake…and cookies. She baked real homemade cookies.”
“Whoa, not all on the same day?” She couldn’t help but smile at him as he sat there in a wool sweater talking about food like a starving ten-year-old. “Is that why you’re wearing that sweater? To hide your fat gut?”
“Mom bought it for me to keep out the cold, even though it’s not that cold right now. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was heading down to sunny Florida. It has a label though, she didn’t knit it herself or anything.” He turned up the cuffs on the garment. “I was there a week and I think I must have had bagels with cream cheese and pastrami just about every day—I’d forgotten how much I like that.”
“Now I’m starting to feel hungry.” What was she doing? She’d given him five minutes, and she needed him to leave before he sweet-talked her into doing something stupid. He’d almost seduced her into a false sense of security already. No kittens, no more small talk, for God’s sake… “So what exactly can I do for you? I don’t cook that much, if it helps.”
His eyes closed and then opened again as if he was waking from a deep sleep. “I’m not here for food,” he said in a voice that was liquid cocoa. Then there was a chirrup, a growl, and the thump of four very heavy Bengal paws. “Well, hello there, Princess.”
The little tramp had heard his voice, abandoned her helpless young babies, and was on the total make, rubbing herself all over him. “Well, I guess I’ll just leave you two alone,” Piper muttered, but couldn’t stop her heart flipping over when he picked the cat up and rubbed his face into her fur.