In Too Deep (6 page)

Piper. The metaphorical swarm of
mosquitoes in his paradise.

She’d raided the dryer, dressed in
her own clothes of cargo pants and a loose plaid shirt that skimmed
over a breast-hugging tank top. And he tried, really tried, to
ignore those breasts. It was far too early and he was far past his
juvenile years of ogling a woman’s rack at any opportunity. He
nodded curtly and strolled into the living room.

Besides, he’d been there, done
that.
Done her.

Ben turned from the kitchen
counter, his free hand clenched around the handles of two coffee
mugs. With a graceless balletic spin on his good foot he placed
them on the dining table. “Coffee’s up—” His smile slipped as his
glance slid from West to something a short distance behind. Ben
straightened to his full height. “What’s
she
doing
here?”

Ben’s suspicions as to where
exactly Piper spent the night were etched on his wrinkled brow and
stick-up-the-ass stiffness. West faked a yawn and slumped into a
dining chair, his mind kicking into action. Did Ben honestly think
he’d make a move on his sister on her first night back on the
island? Because the idea of Ben figuring out he had a sexual
history with Piper made him shudder.

Unwritten guy rule: You didn’t
screw your best mate’s sister soon after her eighteenth birthday
and then dump her like yesterday’s leftovers.

West took a sip of his coffee,
keeping his gaze on the steaming mug. “Sod off, Ben. Go bitch to
your mother if you’ve a problem with Piper staying
in my
office
—it was her idea.”

Ben relaxed as he retrieved his
crutches from their position against the kitchen counter and swung
himself over to a chair. He picked up his cup and blew on it.
“Touchy this morning, aren’t you?”

“
Now, now, boys.” Piper swept into
the kitchen heading straight for the coffee pot. “Let’s get some
caffeine in us before we have to face the Inquisitioner, aka
Mum.”

“
What?” Ben said.

Piper scanned the row of cabinets
above the counter and randomly opened one after another until she
spotted the mugs. “You’d scurried away by the time Mum ordered us
up to her place this morning.” She snagged a cup and filled
it.

Ben groaned. “All of
us?”

“
Yep.”

“
A family reunion at seven o’clock
in the morning. Just great.” Ben swirled the contents of his coffee
cup as if the grounds might reveal a plausible excuse his mother
would buy.

West flexed his fingers and bit
back a groan. Sounded like a fun meal. Not.

Bad enough having his house
invaded by Harlands, screw being trapped with four of them in a
room at the same time. Not even Glenna’s legendary cooked breakfast
could tempt him. “Think I’ll give it a miss. Family dramas are not
my scene.”

Piper leaned against the counter
and slowly crossed one ankle over the other. Her steady, flat
scrutiny made him wonder if this was the woman that apprehended
criminals saw.

Cool. Centered. In
control.

She snatched up the phone handset
beside her and slid it across the table. It bumped against his
coffee cup with a soft rattle. “Mum included you in that order
disguised as an invitation. It’s your call.” Her voice was
deceptively calm but beneath her even tone, flashes of temper
sharpened the words. “You can ring to explain why you’re not coming
because I’m not making excuses for you.”

Bugger. He could never say no to
Glenna Harland. For that matter, he could never say no to
Piper.

“
Call it a miracle, but for once I
agree with Piper.”

West dragged his gaze from her and
refocused on Ben.

“
Since you’re now part of the
Save-Poor-Ben team, you should be there.” Ben shoved his cup away
and stood. “Just keep you head down, eat your breakfast, and agree
with everything Mum says.”

A dry chuckle escaped West. “You
can tell you’ve been raised in a household of women.
Jeez.”

“
Well, you and your bro hung
around us long enough to know what it’s like when you’re
outnumbered. You smile and wave to keep the women happy and then do
whatever you need to do.”

Piper threw up her hands. “Uh,
hello? Female person right here.”

Ben tucked the crutches under his
arms. “Though in Piper’s case you may want to cover your nuts if
she catches you. I’ll wait downstairs.”

The clock ticked off monotonous
seconds after Ben left the room.

“
So. Are you coming…or not?” Piper
crossed her arms, cleavage appearing at the motion.

Awareness clawed through his empty
belly at the peaked outline of two nipples pressing against her top
in the cool morning air.
Coming or not.
There would be no
coming
with Piper any time in his future. His dick twitched
once in rebellion and he resisted the urge to adjust
himself.

West shook his head and drained
the remains of his coffee with a grimace. “I’ll go. Give me twenty
minutes to shower and shave.”

“
Better make it thirty—what, with
you needing to fix your hair and all.” A dimple winked in her cheek
as she sashayed past.

West scraped a hand over his chin
to mask the curl of his lips. That was the Piper he remembered. He
blew out his cheeks in a harsh puff of air. Problem was, he
remembered too much.

So it’d better be a cold
shower.

Chapter 4

A typical
Harland family get-together, the peace lasted ten minutes after
they arrived in her mother’s kitchen.

Piper sat beside Shaye, who gave
their brother the stink-eye across the kitchen table. Ben refused
to contribute to the stilted conversation and continued to mainline
his breakfast. West, seated next to him, hadn’t glanced up since
Glenna placed his plate in front of him.

Rearranging a cluster of grilled
button mushrooms, Piper tried to pretend she was totally relaxed
being in her old home. Other than a new coat of paint, everything
had remained the same. Glenna’s vast array of copper bottomed pots
and pans hung from a ceiling rack, and fruit filled a carved kauri
bowl on the island counter. Her mother flitted around like a
hummingbird, refilling coffee cups and sneaking Ben and West extra
sausages and slabs of buttered toast.

If she squinted, she could return
to a time when her father sat at the head of the table, thumping
his fist for emphasis, making them all jump as the crockery
rattled. West and Ben would be outfitted in their rugby gear ready
for their Saturday morning game, Shaye bent over one of her
mother’s recipe books or catching up on homework.

But those days had
gone.

Her father was dead, her sister an
independent twenty-four-year-old woman, and her brother and West no
longer Piper’s best friends.

Piper sipped her orange juice, the
cool, familiar sweetness soothing on her tongue. “So, Ben. Tell me
what happened and what we’re up against.”

Ben’s fork stopped halfway to his
mouth and he glanced over to West, looking for back-up. West
carried on eating.

“
I haven’t been meeting my
payments for nearly four months. Since October, when Jules and Curt
took off,” Ben said.

“
The dive guides you mentioned
last night?”

Her brother nodded. “I could’ve
coped with one of them leaving, but not both. Gavin Reynolds didn’t
hesitate to take advantage of the situation by poaching my
customers.”

“
Gav’s a dickhead.” Shaye sliced
her knife across the remaining sausage on her plate with enough
venom to cause sympathetic winces from both men.

Piper cut her sister a sidelong
glance. Out of all the Harlands, Shaye was the most easy-going. She
had a temper—holy crap, she had a temper—but you very rarely saw
evidence of it and her usual sunny nature meant the locals loved
her. What had Gav Reynolds done to warrant such a
reaction?

“
Agreed,” Ben said. “He’s always
been a dickhead. But now the dickhead is a businessman who’s never
forgiven me for being blessed with the looks and charm he missed
out on.”

Shaye snorted. “More likely
because you beat the crap out of him in high school.”

“
He had it coming.”

Piper set her knife and fork down.
Enough tiptoeing around. “You’re four months behind in payments.
Exactly how much do you owe the bank?”

It wasn’t West’s movement that
caught her eye; it was the absolute absence of movement. He didn’t
look at her brother, just examined his plate with a neutral
expression frozen in place.

Ben’s knife squeaked on china as
he sawed at a bacon rasher. Finally he looked up. “Thirty
grand.”

Piper’s belly went into free fall
and her hand jerked, knocking her fork off the table. Thirty grand?
Ben owed thirty thousand dollars? “Are you screwing with
me?”

Ben’s silent gaze flipped her the
bird.

“
Piper,
please
.” Her mother
glided past to sit at the table head. The chair at the opposite end
remained empty, a constant reminder of Michael Harland’s
absence.

“
Sorry Mum, but Jesus, Ben! Why
didn’t you ask for help earlier?” She held up a hand. “No, no,
don’t tell me, I can guess—you were convinced you could crawl out
of this financial shithole by yourself?”

“
I would’ve sorted it.”

“
You’re
such
a dumb-assed
stubborn male.”

Ben’s shoulders hunched, his eyes
narrowed slits. “I am not dumb.”

Shaye, ever the peacemaker,
touched Piper’s shoulder. “We’ve had real crappy weather this
summer and the tourists aren’t coming. West has helped out when he
could, but after Ben broke his leg—”

“
What’s done is done.” Glenna
angled the spout of her teapot over a delicate porcelain cup. She
finished pouring and fixed them with a lethal stare. “We can throw
blame around like monkeys hurling excrement, which gets everybody
mucky and doesn’t solve anything—”

Piper’s mouth dropped.

“—
or, we can work together to help
extricate Ben from this
financial shithole
.”

West lifted his coffee mug in a
salute. “Well said, Mrs. H.”

“
Oh, shut up,” said
Piper.

“
You big pile of monkey
excrement,” Shaye added with a snicker.

Glenna sighed
theatrically.

Ben glared at Piper until Glenna
reached over and pinched his arm. “Don’t make me put you both in
time-out.”

“
Fine.” Ben dropped his knife onto
his plate and leaned forward. “Piper, why don’t you share one of
your
wonderful
ideas of how to save me from financial
ruin?”

“
Ideas. Right.” Piper ran damp
hands down her thighs, her gaze darting to West.

He scraped his plate clean and
leaned back in his chair, lacing his hands loosely over his flat
stomach. Suddenly her ideas—actually, her only idea—didn’t seem so
wonderful. She grabbed a fistful of her cargo pants to center
herself and blurted, “Romantic cruises.”

Ben looked as though she’d
suggested pole dancing lessons on his boat’s mast. Except not being
a sailboat, The Mollymawk didn’t have a mast.

“
For honeymooners or people
celebrating anniversaries—or even marriage proposals.” Piper
continued, ignoring West’s raised eyebrows. “We’d take them out in
the morning, let them snorkel or dive in Paterson Inlet. Serve them
a picnic lunch in one of the bays with local cuisine for
dinner—provided by Shaye. Then they spend the night in The
Mollymawk’s double stateroom, which she tells me is
lovely.”

“
Going at it like rabbits,” Ben
said.

West rocked his chair back on two
legs and grinned. “Expensive way to get laid.”

Smug bastard. “You’re a sad, sad
man, West. Some people like the idea of spoiling the person they
love. Not everyone thinks romance is dead,” Piper said.

“
Do you?” he shot back.

Heck, yeah. Flowers and candy and
whispered promises that vanished quicker than soap bubbles. Romance
and sappy puppy love had no place in her world. “What I think isn’t
important. What’s important is that for very little outlay we can
charge big bucks and it’s something no one else in Oban is
offering.”

West opened his mouth to speak,
but the clink of Glenna’s teaspoon against her teacup silenced him.
“It’s a brilliant idea. Shaye and I can do the meals, Piper and
West will run the cruises and Ben, you’ll handle the advertising
and bookings. Once we’re up and running I’m sure the whole thing
will snowball. Since you’ve got Piper helping now, you’ll pick up
more shark dives too.” Her mother turned to her. “You and West take
The Mollymawk out this morning and get some location photos while
the weather’s good, then Ben can put the best shots up on his
website.”

Alone with West on Ben’s boat? She
wasn’t ready. “Ah, Shaye, you’re not starting work until ten. You
come with us—I can never take a photo without sticking my finger in
front of the lens.”