Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
RHETT
I followed David, Piper, and her kids down the steps, smiling at the familiar faces of the curious townspeople.
“What’s going on?” Patricia MacLeary, a PTA mom with five kids and a thirst for gossip, called out from a dense patch of people.
Her blue-framed glasses came into view, sharp eyes curious as she stared through them toward our little group.
“Just a little extra excitement for the evening,” I called back, giving her a winning smile. It was a familiar expression, one I used often at these kinds of events. Inside, I seethed.
And I wasn’t the only one.
Piper looked over her shoulder and gave me a withering glare.
Her hands moved to her sons’ backs, as if she had to protect them from me.
Her jaw was set in a hard line, and her eyes were chips of aquamarine.
She was spitting mad, and the sight of her anger made me want to answer in kind.
I was gripping that electrical fence, and it had blown the top off a vat of anger I hadn’t known existed inside me.
I didn’t need a house, but I knew she did. If I were as good a man as I pretended to be, I’d bow out of this conflict and let her move into the house on Lovers Lane.
But I wasn’t a good man.
I was a man who’d been knocked around all through his youth.
Who’d had to gauge his father’s moods by the sound of the front door slamming.
Who’d watched his mother cower in fear, then turn her anger and resentment back onto me.
Then later, with my ex, Sarah, I’d learned that people didn’t care.
Not really. She’d taken what she wanted from me and walked away, and made sure I knew it was my own fault.
I was worthless and pathetic, and I deserved everything I got.
I wouldn’t let some other woman walk all over me because she thought she deserved my generosity.
I’d learned my lesson.
I had no doubt that Piper would tear my reputation to shreds given half a chance. I wasn’t going to give it to her. I’d worked too hard to get where I was.
“Just through here, folks,” David said, giving me a sympathetic smile once Piper and her sons had passed through the door. “We’ll go down to the office and get this all figured out.” He slapped me on the shoulder, and I gave him a grateful nod.
Maya Luis came jogging down the hallway toward us. She was an attorney in town, and the way she nodded at David told me she would be sitting in on our chat.
I hoped neither of them could see the spreading anger slowly seeping into every inch of my body, or the way my gaze kept being drawn back to Piper’s straight spine, to the flush of red on the back of her neck, to the stiffness in her shoulders that went all the way down the arms that she kept protectively wrapped around her sons’ bodies.
When we reached the brown door at the end of the hall with a window that revealed a small, cluttered office, Piper continued on a few feet and dragged a couple of chairs from a stack nearby.
She positioned them in front of the door as I stepped through and took a seat in the small office, my back to the wall so I could watch her through the open doorway.
“I’m going to go talk to these people in the office, and I want you two to stay right here. Butts in chairs, got it?” Her voice was stern, and an itch formed between my shoulder blades.
I remembered my mother talking to me like that, right before she rapped me on the knuckles or told me I was dumb and I deserved everything I got.
But somehow, her insults were better than when she ignored me entirely, and sometimes I’d find myself acting up even though I knew she’d take her pain out on me.
I wondered if Piper took her aggression out on her sons when no one was looking. If she called them names and withheld affection. If she made them feel small and scared and worthless.
The boys dutifully climbed into the chairs, and the taller one asked, “Can we play games on your phone?”
Piper hesitated for a second, then pulled her phone out of her purse and handed it over. The boys’ faces lit up, and I guessed they’d just been given permission to do something that was usually off-limits. The anger melted from Piper’s face as she pressed a kiss to each boy’s head, her touch soft.
“I won’t be long,” she promised, and straightened.
Discomfort squirmed through me at the tenderness of her movements.
I found it hard to imagine her treating her sons the way I’d been treated—but why did that make me uncomfortable?
I couldn’t figure her out, and that made me feel vulnerable.
Was she the stubborn, perceptive woman who had the strength and courage to start over in a new town?
Was she a too-strict mother who took her anger out on her kids, like my mom had been?
Or was she tender and loving, the way she appeared to be?
Her gaze snapped to mine, and tension stole over her once more.
“Mom?” the younger one asked.
She turned. “Yes?”
“Did we really win the house?” His eyes were wide and hopeful, and he ignored it when his brother elbowed him in the side. Piper’s phone lay forgotten in his lap.
She stood sideways in front of me, her head turned back toward her kids. Her throat tightened as she swallowed; I could see her fist clenching and releasing against her pants. “I’m going to find out.”
“But we need to find somewhere to live, right? Mrs. White is kicking us out.”
“She’s not kicking us out,” Piper said. “Our lease is ending. You don’t have to worry, Alec. It’s all going to work out just fine.”
The dark-haired boy didn’t seem convinced. His gaze slid from his mother to me, and his eyes narrowed and hardened.
Something like guilt tried to take root inside me.
Was I really going to stop a single mother with two young boys from securing a stable place to live?
Then Piper turned, caught my eye again, and sneered.
She marched into the office and closed the door.
With her jaw set, she clamped her hand on the back of the only available chair, pulled it as far away from me as possible, and sat down on the end of it with her back as straight as a rod.
Her chin lifted, and she met my gaze with cold, hard eyes.
The challenge in her stare made me forget all about vulnerable little boys and the desire to be a better person than I was.
Here was a woman who thought she could walk all over me.
She used her looks and her bearing to twist men into knots just because she knew she could.
Like Sarah. She was ready to take everything she could get, even when it didn’t belong to her.
She’d call me an ass and make me feel bad, because she knew how to manipulate. They all did.
But it was my name they’d called in that raffle.
It was my name on that ticket stub. It was my house on Lovers Lane, waiting to be claimed.
I wouldn’t let anyone walk all over me, no matter what sob story she was prepared to tell.
I’d had my fill of emotional manipulation and unstable women.
I wasn’t going to let myself get dragged down that path again.
I turned away from Piper and looked at David, who’d taken a seat behind the old laminate wood-look desk.
It was chipped around the edges and covered in plastic bins filled with paperwork and odds and ends.
He had his hands folded on top of a stack of paperwork, and a flat, pinched smile stretched across his lips.
“All right, folks, let’s get this figured out.”