Chapter Three
Matt gunned his truck down Headland Drive. Standing in the kitchen flirting with Pippa Turner had made him late. Correction, she called herself Pippa St. Amor now. Damn, the girl got more and more smoking with each year. She’d blown out of town two days after her eighteenth birthday and taken all that heat with her—about the same time he’d decided twenty-two wasn’t too old to ask eighteen out on a date. Like he’d had time to date back then anyway.
Her tears had rocked him. The Pippa he remembered never cried. Not even when she was a freshman and that little prick Declan Sherman tripped her up in the hallway in front of the entire football team. Pippa had gotten up, picked up her books, and calmly kneed Declan in the balls. Declan minced around school for three days after that, and nobody ever messed with Pippa again.
Yet, today in Phi’s kitchen, she’d gone to pieces.
He checked the clock on his console. Damn, late. Late didn’t get the job done, and late meant people waiting for him. Not that Jo had ever managed to get anywhere on time, but that wasn’t the point, as he often told her. He resisted the urge to call and check on Isaac. All his brother had to do was go and see Hank at Builder’s Warehouse and pick up some quarter-inch piping. So why did his gut still burn?
Jo’s teeth-ache orange VW Beetle was parked outside Bella’s. Figured she’d be on time for this. Bella’s was pretty much the only show in town for wedding and prom dresses. He’d come with his sister to choose a prom dress, too, and felt about as useful as he did right now. Bella senior had retired three months ago and left the shop to her granddaughter. Conveniently also named Bella and a classmate of Nate’s.
Maybe he should go and get the quarter-inch pipe and send Isaac dress shopping. He didn’t quite get why Jo didn’t bring Mom with her, but every time he asked, Jo chewed his ear off about how Mom always tried to take over. Always. Women used that word a lot, and he generally took it as a sign to stop listening.
Parked right in front of Bella’s, Bets Schumaker climbed into her car. He waited for her to check her lipstick, finger-comb her hair, and adjust her blouse before she finally got her seatbelt over her and backed out. Slow enough for Matt to hear death breathing in his ear.
Bets smiled and waggled her fingers at him before burning rubber down the road, as if she’d seen the specter of death waiting to take Matt and wanted no part of that. He put five bucks on Bets calling his mom before the day was over.
God, this town! Not even charming enough to make a nostalgic Americana catalog. Of course, the only people who got nostalgic about small towns didn’t spend their lives slowly rusting away in one.
Jo looked up from her phone as he opened the door. Chimes tinkled above his head as he stepped into Bella’s. Just walking in made his balls shrivel. Bella Erikson had a thing for pink and she went wild with it all over her salon— pink and those chandeliers with little dangly crystals on them.
Jo looked about as out of place as he felt, with her heavy biker boots and ragged tee.
Ah hell, she’d added to the tats running down her arms from shoulder to wrist. Not that he had anything against ink, but he would rather it didn’t decorate his baby sister. He could hear Mom’s meltdown already and she wasn’t even here.
Bella bustled over to him with a big, candy-sweet grin on her face. “Matt.”
A tiny blonde, Bella reminded him of a voluptuous Disney fairy with her big blue eyes and perky attitude. Bella always wore the same expression, like he’d handed her a winning lottery ticket just by being here. “So nice to see you again. How is your mother?”
“She’s good.”
He settled his weight on one leg and waded through her usual hi-how-are-ya ritual. Bella stuck to it with a sort of religious reverence. One by one she would go through each member of the family and ask. Wherever and whenever they met up. It was a little annoying, but kindly meant. It actually seemed as if she cared, because she certainly listened closely enough to the answer. Thank God, there weren’t as many Evans kids as the Barrowses. Nine of them, at last count, and it looked like Mrs. Barrows had number ten beneath the hood.
“And Nate?” Bella went a little pinker around the cheeks at the mention of his middle brother. Nate had his pick of women, was knee-deep in them with his position as sheriff. It didn’t hurt that he was the family pretty boy, either.
“Actually, he sends his regards.” It was wrong on so many levels, but he could never resist. Nate would find himself facing one of Bella’s pink casserole dishes before the end of the day. Honey sweet as she was, Bella needed to hang up her apron, for the safety of stomach linings everywhere.
“And Isaac?”
“He’s good.” Telling Bella that Isaac was still thick as pig shit wouldn’t go down well. Actually, Isaac was far from dumb. Isaac was . . . apathetic. It was as close as he could get to his youngest brother’s issue.
Bella’s face creased in a concerned frown. “Have you heard from Eric?”
“Nope, not lately.”
“I have.” Jo unfolded from a pink, round couch thing. All legs and arms, tall for a girl and graceful. Not that you would notice with the whole gothic grunge thing she had going on.
“You’ve heard from Eric?” The world must be heading straight into the sun.
Jo shrugged. “He called me this morning. He’s coming home for the wedding.”
“Really?” Matt stared at Jo, waiting for her to tell him he was being punked. “We’re talking about the same Eric here? Our brother, Eric. About my height, darker hair, a whole helluva lot uglier.”
A smile lit Jo’s face, and Bella giggled her twinkly, fairy laugh.
Damn, his sister was pretty when she smiled. She didn’t do it enough. Not even when her dickwad fiancé was around. A girl ought to smile a lot around the guy she was about to marry. Okay, he wasn’t a woman and most of the time barely understood what they were jawing about, but it seemed to him brides smiled a lot. They got this sort of glow thing. Jo didn’t glow. She seemed . . . resigned. Grim, even. He’d tried talking to her, but she stonewalled him the entire way. He was her brother, for God’s sake. How much help did she expect from her single brother who had barely enough sensitivity to walk into a dress shop without wanting to run for his life?
Maybe he should try and get Mom to see if she could figure out what was going on with Jo.
Phenomenally stupid idea. So stupid it made the skin of his nape crawl. His mother and Jo in the same room, unsupervised, and talking about feelings? Sweet Jesus!
“Okay.” He smacked a grin onto his face. Jo was getting married. Happiest day of her life and all that. She deserved somebody here looking enthusiastic and he was all she had. Poor kid. “Let’s get you a dress. How do we do this?”
Bella giggled and slapped him on the arm. “Jo has already picked out her favorites. All you have to do is sit over there and tell her what you think.”
His gut went ice cold. Puke your lunch up cold. Tell her what you think. Oh God, no. He might be a caveman but even he knew better than that. “Great.”
He let Bella shove him into a baby armchair with gold tassels all around the fringe. His knees ended up somewhere around his ears. If anyone asked him if their ass looked fat, he was out of here.
“You were late.” Jo raised her eyebrow at him. Her piercing caught the light and winked. “So, I went ahead and made a selection.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I was fixing Phi’s sink. And Pippa is home.”
Jo and Bella swung to look at him, like he’d whipped his dick out or something.
“What?” they both yelled at once.
“Pippa. Her granddaughter. The one who does that TV show. She’s home.”
Bella sucked in a deep breath and her normally pink cheeks went an even deeper shade. “I can’t believe she would dare show her face here after what she did.”
Okay, a picture was forming here. Pippa’s tears, some of the things she’d said, and now this reaction from Bella. Bella saved butterflies and put bows on puppies. Bella did not look like she was inches away from grabbing up her tar and feathers and running a trollop out of town.
“Where else could she go?” Jo shrugged.
Bella bristled a bit more before settling down like a hen to roost. “Still, what she did was awful.”
“What did she do?”
With twin looks of exasperation, they both swung his way again.
“You don’t know?” Jo rolled her eyes. “Where do you live? Under a rock or something?”
“I’ve been working, Jo.” The same thing he’d been doing every day of his life since he took over the business at nineteen.
“Here.” Jo fiddled around with her phone and handed it to him. “It’s had over two million views on You Tube. The thing went viral about five minutes after they yanked the TV show off the air.”
Matt eyed the small screen in front of him. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to see this.
“Oh, yes.” Bella breathed out on an ecstatic little whisper and took the tasseled armchair next to him. “They stopped the show right in the middle and went to commercial break. And when they came back, all they showed was old reruns.”
“What did she do?” Nothing could be worse than his imagination. Sick bastard that he was, he wouldn’t be totally opposed to a Pippa strip show. Him and two million other horny bastards. The idea suddenly lost its appeal.
Bella leaned forward and put one slim hand on his knee. “She destroyed that woman.”
“What woman?”
“He’s never seen the show.” Jo gave Bella a look that poured scorn on his unworthy head. “Well, you know it’s like a makeover show.”
“No.” Sue him. He didn’t watch television. He worked, he read, and he tried to get laid often enough not to get cobwebs between his dick and his balls.
“Okay, well, it’s a makeover show. They find some woman—”
“Nominated by her family.” Bella squeezed, her grip strong for such a tiny woman.
“Anyway,” Jo said. “So, Pippa will feature this woman, take her shopping, get her hair and makeup done, and by the end of the show she’s looking great.”
“A bit like Pimp My Ride?”
Jo swelled indignantly before she caught on with a bark of laughter. “So, the last show, the one they yanked, Pippa had this woman called Annie on.”
“Alice,” Bella said.
“Right, Alice. But they called her Allie.”
“That’s right.” Bella smacked her palms together in delight. “I remember because I was thinking that normally they call an Allison Allie, but in this case she was Alice and they called her Allie.”
His ass might end up grafted to a pink velveteen chair at this rate. “So, Allie has her makeover?”
“Yes.” Jo swung right back on track. “And it was going so well.”
“I loved what they did to her hair.” Bella leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. “She had all this gray—”
“And then what happened?” He only had one life to live and he’d already tossed a fair amount of it away waiting for Bets to back out of her parking space.
Jo leaned toward him. “The woman—”
“Allie.” Bella nodded.
“Allie is saying to Pippa how her life is such a mess, and how is a pair of shoes going to fix all that. And Pippa goes nuts.”
Bella’s eyes went wide enough for him to see into the back of her brain. “Completely lost her marbles.”
“I mean, loses her shit.” Jo made a bobblehead. “And starts telling Allie about how she needs to get her life in order, and how ugly she is—”
Bella snatched the phone out of his hand and pressed the Play icon on the video. “Here, watch it.”
They must be having him on. Pippa did not lose her shit, not ever. Just ask Declan. He dropped his gaze to Jo’s phone.
Pippa appeared onscreen looking that sort of effortless gorgeous that made him want to ruffle her up and get her hot and sweaty. All that red hair, so sleek and contained, begging his hands to grab fistfuls of it. Why the hell hadn’t he watched this show? Pippa smoked from the screen, wearing some dress that wrapped under her breasts and around her waist. She had the sort of body that he would bet she tried to diet skinnier, but from his perspective her curves were perfect.
He tuned in to the words coming out of her full, red mouth. “You’re right, a pair of shoes can’t change your life, or a pretty dress or even new makeup. Nothing you put on can really change you. You’re fat, ugly, unwanted, and not worth loving, a dress is not going to make any difference. But for now, put the dress on, wear the pretty shoes and see if they help you find something you can love about yourself.”
Bella sucked in a harsh breath, as if she heard it for the first time.
Matt sat there. He hit the Replay button and watched again as her beautiful face with that bad girl mouth said those things. And he didn’t believe it. Not for one second. “Pippa never said that.”
Jo stared at him as if he’d lost his grip. “Hello, Matt. It’s right there in front of you.”
“I know.” He handed her phone back to her. “I heard it, but I know Pippa. I’ve known her since Eric dated her sister and I would put my cock on a block she never said that.”
Bella leaned forward and patted his thigh. “Perhaps because you like her so much, you find it difficult to believe. But she was always a bit stuck up.”
He lifted Bella’s hand and put it on the arm of her chair. “Sure, she was stuck up, full of attitude, and totally out of place in a town like this, but she was never mean.”
“Fame changes people.” Bella did a creepy big eyes thing.
Not Pippa. Not only did she have Phi to help her keep it real, Pippa had always been the same—a ball-busting, sexy-as-hell force of nature. Bella and Jo looked set to keep ripping into Pippa, and he needed to chew this one over. Alone.
“Let’s see your dress,” he said.
“But—” Bella creased her forehead into a frown and glanced at Jo.
He folded his arms over his chest and dropped his chin to his chest. Man signal for not-gonna-go-there.
Jo raised her eyebrows and breathed, “Oh-kay.”
Four dresses and about eighty years later, he made his escape.
Three things bugged him as he drove away from Bella’s. First, and God knows how he’d done it, but Isaac had managed to buy the wrong pipe and the plumber had left site, with promises to return tomorrow. Which, Isaac the dumb fuck, had believed. The plumber wouldn’t have even tried that shit had Matt been around. But Isaac, he liked to smile at the world and was happy enough if it smiled back at him. On Matt’s dime.
Which brought him round to Jo and the dress he’d paid for. What he knew about fashion you could write on the head of a nail, but that dress was UGLY. He’d said the right things, even managed to have Bella beaming at him in approval. But that dress . . .
He stopped at the new traffic light on Eighth.
It had no shape. It hung straight down from her shoulders like a frilly feed sack. Not that he noticed, because he was her brother and that was just wrong, but Jo had curves in the right places.
And the glow thing, just not there. Jo had faced her reflection in the mirror with all the enthusiasm of a girl doing the football team’s laundry after a three-week road trip.
Thirdly, Pippa Turner bugged him, and he didn’t give a crap she called herself St. Amor now. To him, Pippa Turner was Pippa Turner with the wild red hair and big green eyes. She’d started off being a pain-in-the-ass kid at family get-togethers, and ended up blossoming into a tall, cool drink of water that made his blood thicken.
Now she was back in town, and the thought made him tingle. Small towns didn’t offer a lot in the way of romantic vistas, or even straight-up sex. He’d learned to take his urges three hours away to a bigger town. Four Evans brothers, all still single and hunting—Ghost Falls did not have the range they needed. But Pippa Turner . . .
The thing with the TV show chafed like a badly fitting boot. He made a hard left onto St. Amor Crescent, his tires screeching their protest on the blacktop. If you had a question, you asked. Straight up. No bullshit and this wondering and picking at a thing in your mind—who the hell had time for that? He pulled around the house into the kitchen yard, dodging the flock of chickens Phi kept because she liked the sound of them.
The top half of the door was open and he peered over into the kitchen.
Pippa was cooking something. At least, that’s what he thought she was doing because she’d changed into a pair of jeans and her ass was in the general vicinity of the oven.
“Matt?” She turned and gave his happy eyeballs another feast. Her top draped over the generous curve of her breasts. “Did you come about the leak?”
“What leak?” He dragged his gaze up to her face. He liked it when she didn’t wear a lot of makeup. Liked the starburst of freckles across her nose.
“My room.” She motioned up the stairs, elegant, effortless. “It seems there’s a bit of a leak.”
“No.” He certainly wasn’t here about the leak. He’d told Phi to get the roof checked months ago. “I’ll come round on the weekend and repair it.”
“Okay then. So what are you doing here?” Direct and to the point, that was Pippa and she deserved a little of the same back.
“Jo showed me the thing.”
“Your sister?” Her pale brow creased in a frown. Summer or winter, Pippa’s skin stayed the same rich cream that didn’t tan. It made him think how pale that skin he couldn’t see would be. “What thing—oh.”
She folded her arms over her breasts and dropped her head. Then, she turned back to her cooking.
“Did you say it?”
She shrugged and stirred the pot in front of her. “You saw the clip, so I must have.”
Okay, he knew an evasive maneuver when he saw one, and he spent enough time with Mom and Jo to read a girl in flat-out defense. He unlatched the bottom half of the door and stepped into the kitchen. “Yeah, I saw it, but I know you and I don’t think it’s true.”
“Really.” At least he’d surprised a short laugh out of her. “And why’s that?”
She took the pot off the burner and turned to look at him. Legs braced, arms crossed, and ready to fight. It was that red hair of hers, gave her a hair-trigger temper that taunted him to light the fuse. “It’s not like you to be mean.”
“I could have changed.”
Now she was pissing him off. “So, you’re telling me you said that shit?”
Her shoulders slumped and the fight bled out of her. “No, I just wondered why you cared.”
Again, honesty was the only way he knew to break tough ground, and he had a feeling Pippa could be all kinds of rocky and unpredictable. “It didn’t sound like something you’d say.”
Her eyes widened, big, green, and beautiful. “And you know me so well?”
“Better than a load of people on the Internet.”
“You’re so full of yourself.” Her top lip curled back from her teeth.
Some days, he’d give her that, but not now. “No, I’m not, I just don’t do well with bullshit.”
“Fair enough.” She looked down at her feet and then up again. “I said it, but not the way it looked on the clip. They edited enough together to make it look pretty damning.”
“Why didn’t you tell people that?”
“I did. I released a press statement, but people believe what they want and the more noise I make, the longer this will go on.”
That plain sucked, and he believed her. Fame might change some people, but those people maybe had a little asshole hiding inside them all along. Not Pippa, though, which meant she wasn’t a total bitch. His dating calendar looked a little more cheerful. “Why did they do that? Whoever did the editing?”
She sighed and her face got that sad look. The same one Jo’s wore in the dress shop. “That’s a story for another time.”
“Like on a date?”
Her head whipped back up and he got a small smile out of her. Made his chest glow like Iron Man.
“Are you asking?”
“Are you saying yes?”
She crinkled her nose up at him. “No. I’m not dating.”
“Ever?” He moved to stand right in front of her, forcing her to look up if she wanted to maintain eye contact.
Her wide mouth almost smiled. “Not dating for now.”
Matt could back off and let it go. Be a nice guy and let her deal with the shit on her plate. Except, he’d been backing off for so many years now, it was flat-out pathetic. She was single, he was single, and okay the timing could do with some tinkering, but YOLO. “What if one friend asked another out on an . . . excursion?”
She pressed her lips together but he caught the smile gaining ground in the twinkle in her eyes. Cocking her hip, she stuck her chin out at him, all smoking attitude and classy girl put-down. “You’ll have to ask first.”
And he grinned like a schoolkid. She had that effect on him. “Good to know.”