Manhunting in Mississippi (12 page)

“What time wil the movers be here on Saturday?”

“Around noon.”

“I’l be here.”

Her grandmother gave her a kiss on the temple. “Maybe by then some of our problems wil be solved.”

Piper smiled for the other woman’s sake. For herself, she’d settle for things not getting any worse.

Later, as Piper pul ed out of her grandmother’s driveway in her loaded-down van, she adjusted the side mirror and glanced at the house that symbolized everything good in her life. It wasn’t lost to her yet, but she needed that bonus in her red, itchy little hands.

After Ian had left the office, she’d spent the rest of the day experimenting with chocolate, drafting Rich to be her taster when she began to feel worse. And despite her effort, she stil wasn’t satisfied. Her creative juices had dried up—what hadn’t been done with chocolate?

“Not your best,” Rich had agreed, but helped her narrow down the selection to three choices: cocoa raspberry mousse, transparent chocolate tart and an uninspired chocolate

cake.

A seemingly al -over itch shivered across her skin and she scratched as hard as she dared across her chest, stomach and as much of her back as she could reach while

wearing a seat belt. She hoped she’d at least be back to normal before her date tomorrow night, but since she didn’t plan on al owing Henry to examine her torso, she wasn’t overly concerned. If and when she did decide to become intimate with anybody, Ian Bentley and her rash would be long gone.

With that disquieting thought, she channeled her concentration toward coming up with a dessert Ian Bentley couldn’t resist. Early dusk had begun to settle when Piper arrived at her rented house. The phone was ringing insistently as she reached the back door. She dropped a smal box of kitchen supplies onto the counter and grabbed the phone.

“Hel o?”

“Piper, I need your measurements,” Justine declared in her typical, no smal -talk intro.

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now. My seamstress is on the other line, holding for them.”

Piper rol ed her eyes. “Can you give me a minute to find a tape measure?”

“Hurry, would you? Al this long distance is costing me a fortune.”

“And the wedding isn’t,” Piper muttered to herself as she laid the old handset on the counter.

She trotted to the hal closet and grabbed a tape measure from her dust-covered sewing basket, then hurried back to snatch up the phone. With a swipe at the wal beside the

back door, she flipped on the tiny kitchen light. “Are you ready?” she asked, smoothing out the wrinkled tape.

“Yeah, I’m ready already.”

Piper twisted and wrapped the tape around her back until it met over her breasts on top of her thin tank. Since she wasn’t wearing a bra, it would be close enough, she decided. “Thirty-four.”

After yanking up her shirt, she lowered the tape to her calamine lotion-covered waist. “Twenty-six.”

“That’s disgusting,” Justine declared.

Fumbling, she unbuttoned her faded cutoffs and wiggled them down to her knees, holding the phone in the crook of her neck. With a lot of twisting and arching, she moved the

tape lower over her skimpy cotton panties. “Thirty-five.”

“I hate you,” Justine insisted.

“Wil that be al ?” Piper asked, dropping the tape and tugging at her shorts.

“Just a reminder that you’l have to come early the day of the rehearsal dinner for a last-minute fitting.”

“No problem. Did the salmon thing work out?”

“Yeah, the bridesmaids’ gowns are adorable—yards and yards of fabric, and matching hair bows.

“Wow, no kidding—hair bows.” Piper picked up a steak knife and pretended to plunge it into her heart. What was it about weddings that sent otherwise tasteful women back to

their childhood costume fantasies?

“Wel , I have to run. Oh, by the way, have you met your hero yet?”

Juggling the phone, Piper dropped the knife, turned to refasten her shorts and froze. Ian Bentley stood at her front screen door in the fading daylight, holding a box he’d taken from her van. His gray eyes were riveted on her, his lips parted. Instantly she knew he had witnessed her entire performance, perfectly outlined by the kitchen light. The blood drained from her face so quickly, she felt faint.

“Goodbye, Justine, I have to kil myself.” Piper slammed down the phone and briefly reconsidered the effectiveness of the steak knife. “Oh God, oh God,” she mumbled, wrestling with the button at her navel. She gave up and simply stretched her pink tank down as far as the fabric would al ow. After a few deep breaths, she lifted her gaze, praying he’d disappeared. He hadn’t.

Squaring her shoulders, Piper pasted a smile on her face and walked to the front door. “Hel o,” she said through the screen, her tone even, as if nothing had happened.

Ian stared at her and swal owed painful y, unable to erase the image of her standing half-naked in the light at the far end of the house. Since the box was concealing a raging erection, he held on to it as if it were a lifeline. “I can see why your neighbor is always hanging around,” he ventured with a smal laugh.

“Did you want something, Ian?” she asked.

With sudden clarity, he decided that yes, he did want something—her. He averted his gaze to the box in his hands. “I was driving by and saw your van. It looked like you could use a hand.”

She crossed her arms. “Driving by?”

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

“You’re used to having things come to you easily, aren’t you, Mr. Bentley?”

“Not always, but perhaps lately,” he admitted honestly. “I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to apologize. My comment this afternoon about Mr. Enderling was out of line. You’re right—it’s none of my business.”

She lifted a corner of her mouth and leaned against the door frame. “Final y we agree on something.”

“If you’d rather I not come in, I can unload the boxes and set them on your porch,” he offered, almost hoping she would keep the door between them, since he was precariously close to ripping through the flimsy screen and crushing her against him.

“No,” she said, unfolding her arms slowly and reaching for the door latch. “Actual y, I would appreciate you bringing them inside. I have a space cleared for the boxes in the spare bedroom.”

He stepped back as she pushed open the door and adjusted the spring to hold it wide. Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades as he shifted the weight of the box and

stepped inside. He fol owed her through the smal house that reminded him of one he’d lived in as a boy—the same house his parents had mortgaged to give him his start more than fifteen years ago.

Decorated in refreshing blues and white, her tiny living room looked cool and inviting. Two striped couches sat in an L shape, a pale floral rug on the honey-colored wooden

floor. Bright botanical prints in simple frames adorned the unpapered wal s. A light-hued curio cabinet sat against the opposite wal , housing an extensive col ection of salt-and-pepper shakers. And it seemed she was quite the movie buff, considering the titles stacked up on a bookcase. In the corner, a quiet fan worked furiously, circulating air in a house obviously devoid of an air conditioner.

Ian picked his way across the room careful y, then turned down a hal way not much wider than his shoulders. She walked past a bedroom bursting with sun-yel ow linens, which

he guessed was hers, and led him into a nearly empty bedroom in the corner of the house.

“Anywhere against the wal would be fine,” she said, pointing to three other boxes sitting beneath a green-curtained window.

He lowered the box to the floor careful y, then stood and removed a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his neck. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he said as they walked to the front of the house, “what is al this stuff?”

“It belongs to my grandmother.” She smiled and accompanied him to the van. “She’s cleaning out her closets and giving me al the things she can’t bear to throw away.”

He stood back while she rooted through the remaining boxes, trying to discern the contents before dragging them inside. “Gramps carved these,” she said, holding up a pair of sleek wooden candlesticks. “And here’s his favorite bank!” Her eyes shone as she caressed the side of a miniature Model-T. “He used to keep only wheat pennies inside.” She shook it, grinning wide at the
chink, chink
of coins sliding around.

Ian felt a pang of longing for his own family as he watched her. He’d always been close to his parents while he was at home, but once he moved out on his own, their time

together had dwindled more and more as his company had grown larger and larger. He hadn’t seen them in months. They would love Piper, he thought. Suddenly, he stopped and shook the stray notion from his head. Meredith knew him, she understood him, she loved him. He hardly knew the slip of a woman before him.

Yet she
was
engaging, he had to admit. He bit back a groan as she leaned over a box, pul ing the cutoff shorts high and tight across her tanned thighs.

They made three more trips, she carrying the lighter boxes, he carrying the heavier ones—she limping slightly due to her ankle, he limping slightly due to an almost constant state of arousal he managed to keep hidden.

Most of the cartons went to the bedroom, but the last one she directed him to deposit in the kitchen, a cracker-box room neatly decorated with framed, hand-written recipes.

Most of the floor space was taken up with a beautiful y scarred rectangular butcher-block table at least six inches thick, with a surface almost as large as a twin bed. “Nice,” he said, stroking the surface.

“Thanks,” she said, opening the refrigerator door and peering inside. “Old man Richardson gave me the table when he closed his meat shop a while back. I must have sanded

a half inch off the surface to get down to the good wood again. Iced tea?”

He nodded, wiping his neck and forehead again. “It’s hot,” he said unnecessarily. He could no longer turn the ring on his finger—his skin had expanded with the humidity. If he didn’t marry Meredith, he supposed he’d have to get the thing cut off. Ian stopped—the thought had popped into his head unbidden.

Piper closed the refrigerator and laughed. “It’s summer, and you’re in Mississippi—it’s supposed to be hot.” Nodding toward the bulky table, she said, “Have a seat and I’l

pour.”

Ian pul ed out the chair at the short end of the table and lowered himself gingerly. He had a tight feeling in his chest that indicated something was going to happen between them, and a tight feeling in his pants that told him whatever it was, he welcomed it.

Piper set a sweating glass of amber-colored liquid in front of him. “Sugar?”

He shook his head and lifted the glass to his mouth, trying not to stare at the wet spots on her thin shirt where she’d held the cold pitcher of tea against her. After a long drink, he passed a hand over his face and settled back in the chair.

Stil standing, Piper leaned over and with a little grunt lifted the window to his left. Warmish air floated in, stirring the sheer white curtains. She dropped into the remaining seat on the long side of the table, close enough for their knees to brush. The movement made her breasts jiggle and made him clamp his hands around the cool glass.

She tucked her sweat-dampened hair behind her ears, and Ian’s breath caught in his throat at her glistening beauty. After adding a packet of artificial sweetener to her tea, she stirred it with her finger, then casual y licked off the liquid. Lifting the glass to her mouth, she drank as deeply as he had. He watched, mesmerized, as the slim column of her throat constricted.

“Whew.” She set down her glass and lifted a paper towel to her neck. “Thank you. It would have taken me al evening to unload the van.”

His fingers were numb from squeezing his glass. “Glad to be of service. You have a nice place here.”

“It’s okay,” she conceded. “But I’d like to have a place of my own one of these days. Do you live alo—I mean, do you live in an apartment?”

He nodded. “I live alone and I live in an apartment.”

“You probably travel a great deal.”

He thought about his family. “Probably more than I should.” He swal owed another mouthful of cold tea, then cleared his throat. “Um, Piper.”

“Yeah?”

Despite his best efforts, a smile erupted. “What exactly were you doing when I arrived?”

She sank white teeth into her lower lip and blushed furiously. “Taking my measurements. I’m going to be in a friend’s wedding in August.”

He laughed loudly, shifting his legs. Their knees bumped again. “I’ve been in a few weddings myself. Ever been the bride?”

Shaking her head, she said, “Always a bridesmaid. And after being in some of the biggest productions east of Las Vegas, my ideal wedding would be to leave town quietly

then come back married.” She smiled and wiped sweat from her glass in little up-and-down motions. “You? Ever been married, I mean?”

“No.” His heart beat erratical y and he took a shaky breath. “Not yet.”

She nodded. “It’s a big decision.”

He nodded. “Huge.”

“Life-altering,” she added, stil nodding.

“Til death do us part,” he agreed, stil nodding.

“I’m sure she’s a nice lady.”

No reason to stop nodding, he decided. “She is.”

“Beautiful?”

“Yes.”

She sipped her tea again. “Have you known her long?”

“Six years now, I think.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she said, rattling her glass to settle the ice. “Because you real y need to know someone before you, um, you know—”

“Do something that wil change the course of your life?”

“Exactly,” she said, then pointed a finger and added. “And the other person’s life, too.”

He nodded. “Right. One impetuous decision could trigger a series of disasters.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“For instance, if I were to kiss you again right now,” he said, thinking how much he liked this nodding thing.

Her nodding slowed, but didn’t stop. “Good example—yes, that could very wel trigger a series of disasters.”

Before he could talk himself out of it, he leaned forward and curled his fingers around the back of her hot, slender neck. The wet ends of her hair tickled his palm as he slowly pul ed her forward. Her darkly fringed ice-blue eyes were wide with surprise and uncertainty, and he wondered if his own eyes reflected the same emotions. Desire gripped him and lashed itself around his body like steel bands. Her breath whooshed out, cool and sweet, and he inhaled her spent air a split second before capturing her wet mouth with his.