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Coop sauntered through the open door. He glanced from the women to the body on the floor. “Is he still alive?”
“No idea,” Piper said, and then, “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Did you check his pulse?”
“I don’t care enough.” Piper looked around her. There were now four uninvited adult people jammed into her tiny living room, one teenager still asleep in her bed, and a comatose pop idol on her floor. “Everybody get the hell out of here!”
“Grouchy,” Coop observed.
Berni bustled toward his side. “Cooper! Mr. Graham! I was hoping I might see you. I have a pound of homemade divinity in my car. I was going to leave it with Piper, but now I can give it to you personally.”
Logan chose that moment to roll over, look up at all of them, and gag.
Jen was the closest, but she was too late with the bucket.
Long seconds ticked by before Coop looked over at Piper. “Yeah . . .” he said slowly. “I should probably give you a raise.”
Berni pressed both hands to her cheeks in delight. “Oh, Piper! I just love your life.”
***
That afternoon, Piper tracked down a friend of Taylor’s and learned she’d left Chicago for Vegas to take a casino job. The friend didn’t know where Keith was, only that Taylor had broken up with him because “he was a loser.” Piper intended to check out the story, but it rang true, and Taylor moved toward the bottom of her list of suspects.
At the club that night, she tossed out two members of a rowdy bachelorette party snorting bumps of cocaine off a credit card in the ladies’ room. More lies about the club had shown up online, and she didn’t need Coop’s reminder that Spiral’s reputation had to be spotless. Jonah stopped her as she came back inside from tossing the women out. “Where were you last night?”
With everything that had happened, she’d forgotten all about her ill-advised challenge to meet him in the alley. “I was a little busy babysitting our visiting pop star.”
He smirked. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anybody you chickened out.”
“Amazing. I’ve time-traveled back to fifth grade recess.”
He regarded her blankly. She thought about explaining, but it was too much trouble, and she made herself take the higher path. “I concede. You’re bigger and stronger.”
“I sure as hell am.”
That smirk was more than she could take. “But I’m smarter and faster.”
“Bullshit, you are.”
“I guess we’ll have to find out then, won’t we?” She hated this about herself. Why couldn’t she walk away? No. Not her. She was incapable of turning the other cheek. “I’m not ripping another dress, so give me a few minutes to change after the club closes.”
“Take all the time you want.”
He didn’t believe she’d show up, but he was wrong. She’d be there, and knowing that depressed her. Not because she was afraid to face him. That would either go well or it wouldn’t. But because she still had this compulsion to prove she was the better man. Even to a cretin like Jonah. Thanks, Duke.
Blaming her insecurities on a father who’d loved her, even as he’d forbidden her to show any weakness and suffocated her with his overprotection, made her feel worse. When was she going to grow up enough not to regard everything in life as a test she had to pass to prove her own worth? Unfortunately, today wasn’t that day because she’d backed herself into a corner—again—and she was emotionally incapable of not seeing this through.
After the club closed, she changed into jeans and sneakers, pulled on a Bears jersey, and, full of self-disgust, headed back downstairs. She peeked into the alley to make sure Coop’s car was gone, then stepped outside.
Jonah was already there, standing next to the Dumpster, smoking a cigar with Ernie and Bryan, his best bouncer buddies. She waved at them. “Hey, Jonah. I see you brought backup.”
He hadn’t expected her to appear, and his cigar twitched at the corner of his mouth. His buddies snorted.
“I’m not surprised you didn’t want to face me alone.” She sounded exactly like the eleven-year-old who’d once fought Dugan Finke for pulling up her T-shirt. Dugan had been twice her size and beat the crap out of her, but he’d never touched her or her T-shirt again.
Jonah was in a conundrum. Because she was female, he couldn’t swing at her the way he wanted. All he could do was drop his cigar and look threatening.
She believed in fair play, and she took pity on him. She walked closer and, with a smile on her face, shoved the heels of her hands against his chest, hooked out her leg, and sent him down.
