Authors: Casey Griffin
And if he was? Then what? She’d call the cops, of course. Testify against him in court. But that was the easy part. No big deal. It was the resulting misery that she pondered as she waited, dreading her heart being crushed like possum roadkill on the side of Highway Sixty-Six. Then there would be the accompanying emotional baggage that an African elephant couldn’t lift. Not to mention, a very likely future filled with too many cats that would eat her face after she died alone in her apartment.
No biggie. She’d be fine. Fine. Fine. Fine…?
Unable to suppress the growing anxiety, she took out her phone and texted Aiden four little words that no one liked to hear. But how else could she put it? There was nothing else to say.
We need to talk.
Hoping he would respond, she paced around the room, growing more uncertain of her plan by the moment. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe she was taking things too far. She should force him to sit down and explain everything, business or not, like she should have done a long time ago. But she knew that wouldn’t work. He’d been keeping secrets from her all this time, and not just because it was business. Why would he be honest with her now?
But why would he lie? This was Aiden, after all.
Aiden.
She hated to even think these things about him.
Colin sniffed about like Sherlock seeking clues, but after uncovering nothing more than a dust bunny under the desk, which he took a moment to chew on, he curled up next to the chair.
Piper wanted to take this to be a good sign, an undeniable affirmation of Aiden’s innocence. Animals had a way of knowing these things, of sensing danger and evil. Right? Colin’s danger radar was off the charts. And Colin had taken to Aiden right away. Whereas Holly Hart loved to stir up trouble. She was only toying with Piper’s emotions again.
Feeling ridiculously gullible, Piper grabbed her bag and tried to coax Colin back inside.
He stared up at her like,
Do I look stupid to you?
“Come on, we gotta go.”
She reached out for him, but he took a couple of steps back, stubbornly digging his paws in. Pulling out a treat from the front pocket, she tossed it into the bottom of the backpack.
And with that, Colin leapt in without another complaint, munching away happily.
Plopping the bag on Aiden’s desk to zip it up partway, she knocked a folder off. The papers scattered across the floor and under the desk.
“Crap. Way to go, Watson,” she mumbled to herself.
Desperate to leave before anyone knew she was there, she scrambled to pick the papers up. She arranged them into some semblance of order, tapping them to align their edges, and slid them back into their file. Once the folder rested on his desk, lined back up with the corner, the label at the top caught her eye. It was an address. One that was all too familiar. The rescue center’s address.
Her hand hovered over the paperwork for a second as she battled with her conscience. It was wrong to snoop. Piper knew that. Especially since it was important to Aiden to keep his business separate from his personal life. But hadn’t she come there to find out the truth? And if Holly was telling the truth, Aiden might not be forthright about it.
She cared for Aiden, and wanted to trust him. But trust went both ways, and she found out that afternoon there were already things—major things—he’d kept from her. She’d vowed to protect the rescue dogs, she’d promised Marilyn, and that was what she was going to do.
Flipping the folder open, she riffled through the forms. There were property assessments, graphs, contracts from builders. Finally, she came across conceptual drawings. Condos. Multi-level, sky-rise condos right where the Dachshund Rescue Center was. Just like Holly said.
Piper’s legs gave out and she fell into the desk chair. Her stomach shriveled up like a raisin and she wanted to throw up. She’d trusted Aiden. She’d put her faith in him, relied on him, opened up, and let him into her life, and he took advantage of her. She felt a complete fool for it.
That wasn’t the worst of it. If that was all, she could walk away angry, swearing and calling him every name in the book. But it wouldn’t be so easy, because deep down she knew how she really felt about him. To avoid the looks of pity in their eyes, she’d deny it to Addison, to Zoe, even to Colin, but every time she would call Aiden an asshole inside it would cut her, because underneath the nasty name-calling what she’d really mean was that she’d loved Aiden.
She paused on a concept sketch of the front entrance of this new grand dwelling. A designer sign above the entrance doors displayed the name of the apartment building. It stung like a final slap in the face. It was the fake name she made up when he’d tried to convince her to move to one of his properties.
Nottingham Lakeview Estates.
She wanted to laugh. Or cry. But before she could make any sound, the rhythmic beat of footsteps sounded in the hall. Slow, purposeful, approaching.
Piper dropped the file onto the desk and stared at the office door, willing it to remain closed.
Don’t come in here,
she thought.
Don’t come in here.
Aiden’s muffled voice filtered through the door and her heart lurched painfully in her chest.
Colin recognized it too, because his tail began to wag inside the backpack. Swiping her bag off the desk, she ran, but as she was trapped in an office, her journey took her in a full circle. She was a trapped rat. One way in, and one way out.
For a second, she lunged to hide under the desk, but all the sleek lines offered little cover. The same went for the rest of Aiden’s office. Damned modern furniture, she cursed in her head. Her darting eyes fell on a tiny notch in the wall and she remembered the hidden closet in the reception area.
Aiden’s voice drew closer. She dashed across the room, fiddling with the door latch until the door popped open. With shaking hands she pushed coats and spare suits aside and crammed herself into the space. Aiden’s voice became clearer. He was inside the room.
Colin’s tail still wagged frantically, swishing inside the canvas bag. His head snaked out of the opening in the zipper and he searched for Aiden. Piper lowered herself to the floor, shifting as far back as the tiny space would allow. She drew Colin close to her chest and placed a hand on his snout.
“Shh,” she hushed next to his ear, hoping that despite his lack of training, or obedience, or any sort of judgment at all, this one time he might actually listen to her. What the hell had she been thinking? Hiding in Aiden’s office? It was too late to leave now.
“—don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Aiden was saying.
“I just wish you wouldn’t run off and make your own plans without involving me.” Piper recognized Larry Williams’s voice, snide and condescending, even to the man who was supposed to be his boss.
“I wanted to keep the company out of it. This was a personal undertaking.”
“Personal. Right. A little too personal, if you ask me. You’ve let your attachment to that telegram girl cloud your judgment.”
“Keep Piper out of this. I feel bad enough hiding all this from her as it is.”
At the mention of her name, Piper inched closer to the door. It occurred to her that if Holly was right, and Aiden’s company was up to no good, they’d hidden it well up until now. She’d need proof of some sort. Taking out her cell phone again, she opened the old app she used for recording classes the year before and hit
start
. She placed it on the floor, sliding it closer to the crack beneath the door.
“The secretary says she’s already come sniffing around,” Larry said. “Hopefully they find her before she discovers anything she shouldn’t.”
“Look, I’m a good businessman,” Aiden said. “I haven’t lost sight of what’s important.”
Larry snorted. “You’ve completely lost your objectivity. What’s important is getting rid of those damn dogs.”
There was a bang, and Piper imagined Aiden bringing a fist down on his desk. “And I’ve done just that, haven’t I? With them out of the way, we can move forward with the condos.”
Piper jolted at that. What was he saying? He didn’t mean … She wished she could see his face, his expression. He sounded angry at Larry, but did he look regretful? Was he admitting to the fire? To getting rid of them so he could tear down the center? Her arms slackened around Colin and he stretched his snout toward the door, his chest quivering as he sniffed in and out rapidly. She strained to listen, barely daring to breathe, sure that she must be hearing wrong.
“Yes, but if you’d just left it to me–”
“I’m perfectly capable of making decisions for my own company,” Aiden said.
“But was it the right one?” Larry’s voice was loud, like he was standing in front of the closet or pacing the room. “Without the right planning, the right countermeasures in place … Once the media gets wind of this, they’ll start putting things together. All the evidence will point to us. Your timing couldn’t be worse.”
“They’ve got no proof,” Aiden stated. Piper cringed at the lack of emotion in his voice.
“That doesn’t matter. You know better than anyone the damage this could do to our reputation even if we somehow don’t get indicted for the crimes. A bad rep equals a huge downturn in profits. Look at the year one of our contractors had that accident on Market Street. The newspapers had a heyday with that.”
Aiden sighed. “You’re right about that. Holly Hart has been breathing down my neck. We’ll get PR involved. Head off any stories before they start.”
“Yes, we need to make sure we look like the good guys. Twist it to work in our favor and decrease the risk of accusations coming our way. I wish you would have just let me take care of all this.”
A chair squeaked and she imagined Aiden falling into his desk chair. “I can see the headlines now. They’ll probably call it Puppygate.”
God! He was joking about this. He was actually joking. Piper couldn’t believe her ears, but everything they were saying … how could she deny it any longer?
Piper’s fist clenched and she bit down on a finger to stop the angry sobs that were building in her chest. Colin leaned closer to the door, straining against Piper’s hold on him, like he’d caught whiff of a badger. He pawed at the base of the door, and Piper had to grab him before he began to whine. Her own panicked and furious breaths were starting to match his rapid sniffing.
“I promised my father I would take care of this company,” Aiden said. “And that is exactly what I’ve done. Let’s just hope it works out for the best.”
“Yes. For the best. It certainly seems to be so far. God works in mysterious ways.” Larry chuckled. “And I’ve always been a godly man myself.”
So they were both in on it. All along. She closed her eyes and tried to regain some measure of calm, but with Colin struggling against her like his life depended on it, Piper could barely hold on to him. In his efforts to get free, he scratched her leg and her forearms. She flinched and he squirmed away, flopping out of her arms and onto the floor. His head bonked against the door. Before Piper could react, it popped open.
Both men whipped around, Aiden practically jumped out of his seat. Piper swore. Colin barreled into the room all barks, and teeth, and snarls. She’d never seen the doxie so wild before. Sausage legs moving in a blur, he charged at Old Spice.
The old man leapt from his chair in surprise, but not quick enough. Colin latched onto the hem of his pants, tugging and snarling. Backpedaling, Larry tried to clamber onto Aiden’s desk.
Piper grabbed her phone, still recording audio, and crawled out from her hiding place. She did nothing to stop Colin’s attack. She was too shocked, too humiliated, too furious. It was all she could do to not launch herself at one of the men and start tearing him apart herself.
Aiden’s eyes were wide with surprise at her jack-in-the-box arrival. She glared back at him, panting as though she’d completed a marathon, hands on her hips. He glanced down, and she followed his gaze to see her coat had been flung open, revealing her Supergirl costume. She refastened the belt, waiting for some explanation from him, some excuse that didn’t mean her life had turned into an episode of
Days of Our Lives
.
Old Spice flopped back onto the desk to safety with Colin dangling from his pant leg. The doxie gave one good final tug. The hem gave way. The fabric ripped up the seam of the pants. Spitting the piece of fabric out, Colin barked and growled from the floor, hopping at the base of the desk like he’d discovered a badger burrow. And when Piper stared at the man crawling on the desk, she realized why.
Larry’s ankle was exposed where his pants had torn away. From beneath his argyle sock bulged a thick white bandage.
For the first time, Piper noticed the flat wool cap on his head. Fists clenched at her sides, she stormed over and ripped it off. And there was all the proof she needed. Beneath a poor attempt at a comb-over bulged a purple goose egg in the exact spot where she’d whacked the arsonist over the head.
Instead of looking guilty or caught in the act, Larry appeared indignant, even cowering on top of the desk. “This is no place for animals. That little monster attacked me. I could call Animal Control, you know. I could have him put down for that.”
Piper’s muscles tensed with all the ways she wanted to make Larry pay. “I should have you put down!”
“Now, look here, young lady–”
“No, you look.” She threw the hat on the floor where Colin pounced on it, hungry for any piece of him. “I could have died in that fire. You could have killed all of those dogs.”
“What? Piper,” Aiden began, reaching a hand out to her. When she wheeled her furious expression around to him, he snatched it back.
“And you,” she said. “You knew. You were in on it. Did you order him to do it?”
He flinched like she’d slapped him. “No, I … What are you—”
“I trusted you. I cared for you. I … I lov—” The word stuck in her throat because that emotional baggage was getting heavier by the moment. How could he still pretend he was innocent when Larry’s wounds were like physical confessions of the dirty act? But she hadn’t told Aiden about the wounds she inflicted on the arsonist the night of the fire. He still thought he could get away with it.