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I looked at the table filled with the people I held closest to my heart. “Have I told you guys how much I love you all? Because I totally do.” And with those words, I was off, smiling and laughing and chatting with every person who stepped through the Dark Horse doors.
By the time I locked those doors, my cheeks ached from smiling, my throat was scratchy and my feet were so sore I could no longer feel my toes.
It was a great night.
Chapter 9
Ryan
I should have left well enough alone. I should have taken one look at Pippa relaxing in her backyard, low bluesy rock music playing from somewhere I couldn’t see, ass wrapped in fringed denim with miles upon miles of long legs on display. Her feet were bare and propped up on a glass table, crossed at the ankles, beside them a distinctive bottle of Tennessee Whiskey and a crystal glass that was too small to be a tumbler and too big to be a shot glass. One of those colorful flowing tops hung off one shoulder, giving her a sexy, breezy bohemian appeal that made a man act contrary to his own best advice.
Don’t do it!
That’s what my brain shouted at me, what it urged me to do. Stay on my side of the fence and let Pippa enjoy her evening and her whiskey without intrusion. But my heart told me that she looked lonely, that the soft music and her closed eyes were a sign that she was hurting, that she was in need of a friend.
So what did I do? I ignored good sense and trotted down my back steps and hopped the fence separating us with ease, strolling across her expansive green yard with a calm smile, never mind the way my heart pitter-pattered in my chest. Pippa didn’t hear me approaching, and I took advantage of her lack of awareness by taking in the vision she made, relaxed and seemingly happy, her lips curved into the barest hint of a smile.
“Want some company?”
She didn’t gasp, didn’t startle, didn’t even open her eyes. The only thing that moved was her lush pink lips. “Nope.”
“Really? ’Cause that looks like entirely too much whiskey for an itty bitty thing like you.” Goading Pippa wasn’t smart. I knew that from past experience, but she couldn’t possibly hate me any more than she already did, so I figured it was worth the risk.
She opened her blue eyes. “I’m not a rock star, which means I drink in moderation. Just because the bottle is full doesn’t mean I need to empty it tonight.”
“Ouch.” I rubbed circles in my chest for emphasis. “Your tongue is sharp.”
“And my memory long.” She tapped her head with a small quirk of her eyebrow, the one with the tiny scar in it from a drunken mishap down at Starlight Lake. “Take your swagger, your smile and your charm back over that fence, and enjoy a night of solitude. Or not. Just remove yourself from my property.”
“I will. I promise.” But there was no way in hell I could leave now, with her smelling like vanilla and flowers, and her smooth skin on wicked display. “But first, let’s have a drink. For old time’s sake.”
“No thanks. How about we go our separate ways, for old time’s sake? That seems to be more your speed.”
“Damn woman, put those claws away.”
“Can’t,” she cooed. “They’re for self-protection.”
I dropped down in the seat closest to her and let out a long, exhausted sigh. “You don’t need to protect yourself from me, Pip.”
She winced at my use of her old nickname and pushed herself upright on the cushion covered metal chair. “Yeah, I thought that once too. Turns out, I was wrong.”
“So you’re ready to talk about this? Us and our past?”
“No. Hell no.” She shook her head and kept shaking it as she poured another glass of whiskey and knocked it back in one shot. “There’s nothing to talk about. The past is the past. I’ve learned from it, from you, and I have moved on, Ryan.”
“Back to Ryan now, are we?”
“I’m off the clock and you’re not my boss at the moment, you’re a trespasser.” Her big blue eyes weren’t wary or weary, they were crystal clear and sober as a priest. “There’s nothing for us to talk about.”
“I disagree.”
Pippa nodded, a smile that wasn’t really a smile spread across her face. “Disagree all you want, just have this damn conversation with yourself.”
“I have, at least a million times. Never goes the way I want it to.”
She huffed, and it could have been a laugh or a snort. “Then maybe it’s a conversation you should stop having. There are no answers, no do overs. Nothing said now can change what happened back then.”
“It can if we decide it could be.” Who in the hell was this stubborn woman who looked and sounded like the reasonable Pippa Carson, always willing to hear someone out, to give them the benefit of the doubt?
