Chasing the Runaway Bride (12 page)

“Hey, Piper. What’s up?”

She unlocked her door. “Nothing. I just wanted to chat.”

“Working the afternoon shift today?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. She was scheduled for the afternoon shift. And maybe she should just stay home until it really was her turn to go into work. Maybe that would solve her thinking-about-him problem…

Except it wouldn’t nudge him out of the store. And that really was the long-term goal.

“Bored?”

“More like confused.”

Oh, yikes! Had she said that out loud?

“Working with Cade getting to you?”

“Actually, I kind of have a confession…” Now that she’d opened the door, she might as well use it. “Or maybe something I need to talk out with you.”

“Confession?”

“Two nights ago, my mom suggested that maybe I should try to nudge Cade out.”

“Nudge Cade out?”

“Of the store. If he leaves, the whole business becomes mine.”

“Oh. Well…I mean, if your mom thinks that’s okay—”

“Of course my mom thinks that’s okay! All she sees is that the store would be ours again. And justice would be served.”

“If Richard Hyatt cheated your father, then maybe she’s right.”

“But it doesn’t feel right.”

“Because?”

“Because technically we’re not taking the store from Richard. We’re taking it from Cade.”

There. She’d said it. The elephant in the room—the thing that kept her up at night—wasn’t that the store belonged back in O’Riley hands. It was that they were punishing Cade for something Richard had done. And Lonnie would tell her that was okay. If only because Cade wasn’t an innocent.

Walking to her bedroom, Piper put her phone on speaker and set it on the bed as she whipped off her wet shirt and bra. Silence followed her around the room as she grabbed another bra and shirt. After a full minute, she realized Lonnie probably wasn’t going to say anything.

Since when did Lonnie let a chance go by to Cade-bash? “You’re awfully quiet about this.”

“If you and your mom think this is the right thing to do, then do it.”

“It’s just not as easy as I thought it would be.”

Lonnie laughed. “Nothing ever is.”

“No thoughts on how I could do it?”

“Nope.”

Piper sniffed a laugh as she pulled a clean T-shirt over her head. “Here I thought you’d be a big cheerleader for the let’s-ruin-Cade camp.”

“You’re the one who’s there. I’m all the way over in Cincinnati. Besides, I don’t know how to run a grocery store. I don’t know what you can do.”

“Well, I made him stock veggies and salad dressing and clean the cooler.” She frowned. “He wasn’t too thrilled to be out on the sales floor.” Her frown deepened. “But the customers loved him.”

“Thought you weren’t getting customers.”

“We had a day of no one, but the little old ladies are now coming in in droves in the hope that he’ll bend over when he shelves.”

“People are starting to like him?”

Thinking it through, Piper frowned. “Not like him like him…just maybe accept him is a better way to put it.”

“They’re not talking about me, are they?”

“No.” She winced at the lie. Bunny Farmer had indeed talked about her.

“So maybe people no longer connect us.”

“Oh, honey. That might be stretching it.”

“We shouldn’t matter anymore! It’s been twelve years! Will that town never stop gossiping?”

“Hey, Lonnie. It’s okay. People aren’t talking as much as you think.”

“Piper, you are the one person in the world who cannot possibly defend the gossip in that town. They crucify you regularly!”

She stared at the phone. When had the discussion gone from Cade to Lonnie fighting Harmony Hills’s gossip? “I’m not. I just don’t want you worried over something that’s not really happening. Bunny Farmer and Alice Lenosky said something about Hunter, but everybody else seems to be leaving it alone. You’re fine.”

“I just don’t want to screw this up for you.”

“You’re not.”

No one was. People were accepting Cade. Shoppers were coming in. Work was getting done.

The only thing that was off—wrong—was her feelings for Cade.

And Lonnie. The woman who should be waving pom-poms of support for nudging Cade back to Montana barely mentioned Cade and only worried that people were talking about her.

…

By the time Piper returned in clean clothes, Cade was done wiping out the coolers. As the doors swished open, he stood by the coffee and doughnut stand, sipping coffee, eating a cruller. Just looking at her brought back all the emotions of watching her in a wet T-shirt and took his thoughts down tempting paths they had no right to travel.

He shoved away from the stand. “I think I earned an hour in the office.”

“Sure.”

But she followed him to the cashier’s cage and through the office door. The little hairs on the back of his neck prickled. After just having had a fun water battle, and seeing how upset she was to be the runaway bride, he was experiencing feelings he didn’t want. This was not the time to be alone with her. Pretending he didn’t know she was behind him, he walked to the desk, sat at the chair, and got busy.

She cleared her throat.

He pasted a smiled on his face and glanced up at her. “Something I can help you with?”

“I was just thinking about when you told me you wanted to buy the ranch where you worked.”

He leaned back. “I still work there.”

“But you’re here.”

“They’re keeping my seat warm.”

She chuckled.

That weird feeling surged in his blood again. This time he recognized it. Maybe because they’d laughed together that morning, maybe because she was being civil now…whatever the reason, he didn’t just “like” her. They were becoming friends.

“Do you really want to buy that ranch?”

He lounged back in the tall-back chair. “That ranch is my home.”

“So why are you here? Why’re you staying?”

“Same reason you are. My grandfather’s will.” When she said nothing, he sighed. “You really want me to go, don’t you?”

“It would make my life easier.”

“Trust me. It would make my life easier too.”

“But even though you know you don’t belong here, you’re still staying.”

“I have to.” That he could say with absolute certainty, if only because he did not want his dad getting one cent of his grandfather’s money. “But trust me, I won’t stay a minute longer than I have to.”

She pondered that, but he didn’t add one word to what he’d already said. If she was digging for information, he wasn’t providing it. Eventually, she glanced at the door. “I guess I’ll go take a peek at our personal hygiene section. Seeing how it compares to Health Aid. Maybe we can give them a run for their money.”

“Whatever you want, darlin’.”

He heard her leave as he flicked on the computer monitor and watched the programs magically appear on the screen. But he couldn’t get to work. Things were not turning out the way he’d expected them to here in Harmony Hills. Not only were people obviously giving him the benefit of the doubt about Lonnie, but now he and Piper were talking like friends. Sort of. She’d admitted she didn’t like being a laughingstock and he’d admitted he didn’t want to stay here. She hadn’t poked or prodded for more info, just accepted what he gave.

He smacked his hands on the desk. Damn it. She was not supposed to be nice to him.

Oh, sure, she’d made him clean coolers. But they were partners, and he hadn’t been keeping up his end of the job. Now that he’d stocked shelves and cleaned a cooler, he actually felt like a grocery store employee again. He felt like they were partners.

Like he belonged here.

Oh. No! He shook his head trying to clear that thought. His grandfather could
not
have set him up in this store thinking he’d stay…

He was not staying. No matter how much he wanted to sleep with Piper, he did not want to run a grocery store with her, especially not forever.

Forever?

Oh, shit no. Just as he’d told Piper, he had no intention of staying here a minute longer than he had to.

If this was his grandfather’s plan, he would not fall victim. He focused on the computer screen, forcing his thoughts on finding his grandfather’s proof so he could get the hell out of here. But a mental picture of trapping Piper against the filing cabinets sprang to his mind and had his eyes raising to look at the tall four-drawer metal containers.

That little episode had been ridiculously hot, and, in fact, if that was part of the running-the-grocery-store deal, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

He groaned at his own stupidity, but staring at the cabinets, he suddenly realized something.

He looked at the drawers, then at the computer screen and back to the drawers.

His grandfather had said there was proof in the office. Born and raised with technology, Cade had automatically assumed it was a computer file. But his grandfather was an old man who’d barely consented to using a computer, and had only done so because it saved him the cost of a bookkeeper and made doing his taxes easier.

What if his proof that he was innocent was something in one of those cabinets?

Cade scrambled off the chair and over to the file drawers. Whipping open the first one, he scanned the file names and saw they were actually the same names as the files in the computer. His grandfather had made hard copy duplicates of everything.

He groaned again. There were hundreds of thin manila files. Still, the more he stared at them, the more he realized this was the most likely place to find his proof. All he had to do was search four filing cabinets, each with four drawers. Even if he only did one drawer a day, he had—at most—sixteen days before he’d find whatever his grandfather had hidden.

Devon was fairly confident their dad would be signing the agreement within the next two weeks.

He
was fairly certain he’d find his grandfather’s proof in about two weeks…

And then what?

Would his family have a big party announcing they were rich?

Would he drop everything and go to Montana?

He would be a rich man who could be, have, or
do
anything he wanted. Hell, he could spend the rest of his life drunk if he wanted to.

The change in his life suddenly began to feel very, very real.

The door opened and Piper walked inside. “Hey, Cade. Mrs. Thompson’s check bounced.” She glanced over at the filing cabinets and caught his gaze. “But she gets paid tomorrow. I think we should just hold onto it. We can let her know we’ll be running it again…”

Cade could only stare at her. She was the prettiest woman he’d ever met, but even as a rich man—a man who could be, have, or do anything he wanted—he couldn’t kiss her? That just didn’t seem right.

She laughed. “What? Why are you looking at me so funny?”

“I just…” He shook his head, drew in a breath. He had the sudden, ridiculous sense that if he didn’t kiss her now—before word got out that his family was rich, before he found the proof that exonerated his grandfather but condemned her dad—he’d never get to kiss her.

He swallowed hard, telling himself that didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. They were enemies, and when he found that proof they’d be bitter enemies. He should not be sad over not getting to kiss her.

“I just realized that I’ve never looked at what’s in these cabinets.”

She walked over. “I haven’t either.”

Standing a mere six inches away from him, she peeked up at him. When her pretty green eyes met his gaze, all his senses rolled to hyper-aware. He could smell her. He could feel the energy she brought into the room. Enemies or not, he could not deny this attraction or the unholy desire to kiss every time they got within two feet of each other.

“Should we?”

He definitely thought they should. To hell with being enemies. To hell with what might happen two days from now. In this moment, right now, he ached to kiss her.

Of course, she wasn’t talking about kissing. She was asking about looking at what was in the filing cabinets.

She stepped around him and reached for the handle of one of the drawers in the second cabinet. Yanking it open, she displayed another long row of manila folders, each one labeled in black marker, just like the row he’d found in the drawer he’d opened.

“They seem to have the same file names as the ones in the computer.”

“Duplicate files. Hard copies. Probably for the last thirty years. Pap got a computer to help with his taxes, but he didn’t trust technology. So I’ll bet he’s been making hard copies the same way he did before he got a computer.”

…

A weird sense of normalcy rolled through Piper. As much as she and Cade had tried to fight it, here they were, talking like real partners.

There’d be no nudging him out. Even Lonnie knew he didn’t deserve to be nudged. Otherwise, she’d have laughed with glee and helped Piper plan. Instead, she’d been weirdly quiet.

And Cade had stopped needling. When they joked now, it was as friends. This morning they’d played like two little kids. He’d even gotten the gathered spectators to look for her glasses.

No wonder Lonnie had wanted reassurances. She knew this was coming. The necessity of working together had taken them from enemies to friends.

She slammed her drawer closed. She didn’t want to be friends with a Hyatt. She didn’t want to be friends with the man who’d deserted her friend. The grandson of the man who had cheated her father.

Damn it. She didn’t want any of this, but she had to stay to get her share of the store…to clear her father’s name. And like it or not, it was happening.

Stepping away from him, she said, “I better go call Mrs. Thompson.”

“Phone’s on the desk.”

She laughed nervously. “Right.” If she displayed her personal phone and said she’d call Mrs. Thompson from her cell, he’d shake his head and think her crazy for using her personal minutes for business. If she didn’t, they’d be in the same room, working together, working like partners, instead of letting each other do his or her work separately or from a distance. They’d become two people ignoring their pasts to get along in their present.