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“You tried to surround her in bubble wrap then?” she asked. “Guess you learned the hard way, huh? I wish you could teach Dawg and my cousins the fact that it simply isn’t possible to lock us away until it’s time to bury us. ”
“That’s your job, sweetheart. ” He sighed as she watched him, her gaze meeting his for the second he glanced at her, yet feeling the effects of the amused heat in his eyes for that tiny moment in time.
“How is that my job?” She couldn’t imagine teaching Dawg anything. The man gave stubborn a bad name.
“Most sisters start when they’re babies,” he admitted. “But you’re on the right track. Live, laugh, have fun, and go head-to-head with him whenever you have to. But don’t disappear on him again, Piper. Do it again, and next time I promise I’ll help him find you. ”
“And what makes you think you can find me if Dawg can’t?”
“Because Dawg doesn’t want to admit you would actually leave the state without telling him,” he pointed out as guilt flayed her once again. “I don’t have that problem. I saw you leave the inn when you snuck out. I heard the car stopping just down the road. I knew why you were doing it, though. I didn’t follow; I didn’t run a check on the car. I went back into my room and stared up at the ceiling the rest of the night, wondering who was the man you left with. ”
The man?
Piper almost smiled. She could hear the probing question he was doing nothing to hide.
“It wasn’t a man,” she admitted. “It was the sister of a friend giving me a ride to the Louisville train station. I tried to cover my tracks so Dawg wouldn’t follow me. ”
He nodded once.
“It didn’t work out so well. ” She sighed, completing the thought.
“No, but I’m going to assume the circumstances were unusual,” he stated.
“How the hell do I know?” She still didn’t understand why, who, or what. “One minute I’m waiting on a bellhop and a ride to the train station, and the next second I’m being pounded on, then waking in a hospital with a concussion and so many bruises that breathing hurts. ”
There was the faintest memory of a demand. A demand for what, she wasn’t certain. It wasn’t even a memory, not really. It was a confusing collage of something, amid a blast of pain, fear, and her own screams.
“Did you remember the people next door who rushed in to help you?”
She didn’t remember the rescue at all.
“I remember meeting them at the hospital after I woke up. ” She answered him, wishing she could hold on to whatever it was her attacker had said in those chaotic moments. She had a feeling if she could just remember . . .
“They were good boys,” he told her gently. “A lot of young men would have waited, or been too wary of poking their noses in where they weren’t wanted. ”
“Oh, they were wanted. ” She breathed out roughly.
God, what would she have done if they hadn’t poked their noses in?
Watching the landscape roll by, Piper realized they were only miles from the inn now.
“Do you think Dawg will be there?”
He was going to be so hurt, and she knew it. He wouldn’t understand her need to breathe, to have done this alone, even though it hadn’t been the chance she had believed it was.
“Why were you in New York, Piper?”
She’d wondered how long it would take him to get to the one question she knew he wanted to ask.
Forcing back tears of disappointment and humiliation, she let a bitter smile pull at her lips. “I thought I was going to get an offer for a showing of some of my designs,” she finally admitted.
“Thought you were?”
“It didn’t work out. ” Staring down at her hands, she wondered whether he would consider it no more than she had deserved for the childishness she had displayed in the deceptive way she left.
“What happened, baby?”
The gentleness in his voice and the fact that he hadn’t told Dawg when the hospital had called him had her raising her eyes as she shifted in her seat to look at him.
