Paws off the Boss - Casey Griffin (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📗

“Just another week in the life of Piper Summers. Been like this ever since high school. Well, maybe not quite this bad.” She laughed humorlessly. “After this sneak peek, you sure you want to stick around?”

“Definitely.” Aiden placed her hand on the stick shift and covered it with his. When he stopped at the next light, he turned his gaze on her. “What happened in high school?”

“What?” The question caught her off guard. Then her brain caught up. She stared at Colin on her lap, jarred by the rapid emotional turns the conversation was taking. “That’s when my dad died.”

He nodded, his hand squeezing hers. The light turned green, and he was forced to look away. “You never told me how he died.”

“It was skin cancer,” she said. “I guess all those years in the fields without sunscreen caught up to him. Now I cringe when I hear the term ‘redneck.’ Kind of has a new meaning, you know?” She half laughed, not really meaning to joke. “My dad got too sick to work on the farm. My mom and I did what we could with the help of a hired hand. But all the spare money went straight to hospital bills. Eventually we ran out.”

“What about your brother? Where was he during all of this?”

She made the same sound of disgust he’d made earlier. “Rising in the ranks of his law firm.” She huffed, shaking her head. “You know, my parents took out a second mortgage on their house to put him through college. Gave up a lot, struggled because of it. Yet, as Dad was going in for his second bout of chemo and we had to sell the John Deere just to afford the treatment, my brother was buying his first BMW.”

Bitterness crept into her voice as she spoke about it, even after all these years. At least he was looking out for their mom now. Maybe he’d felt guilty afterward, and that’s why he’d asked Piper and their mom to move up to Seattle years before. Maybe it was his way of trying to make amends. It might have been enough for her mom, but it wasn’t enough for her.

Piper stared at Colin as he licked her arm, but she could sense Aiden nod.

“That’s rough,” he said. “He did nothing to help your family, even though he could’ve.”

“After my dad died, my mom had to sell the farm just to break even. She got a job here in San Francisco, and we moved into my aunt’s old apartment because it was rent-controlled.” Piper hated talking about it, hated the sadness that threatened to choke her every time, but she felt it was time she shared it with him.

She took a steadying breath before plowing on. “It was a while before my brother started sending a few sparse checks in the mail. Sometimes I think he just wanted to show off rather than help us out. I told Mom not to take the handouts, that we would be fine. I guess I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, you know. I mean, where was he when we needed him before?”

Piper peeked over at Aiden. His eyes remained on the road, but he was listening intently. She shook her head like that would clear it of the memories and resentment that still lingered.

“Anyway,” she continued. “When my mom moved closer to him, she wanted me to come, like we could still be a big, happy family. But I wanted nothing to do with him and his pathetic handouts. So I stayed here.”

Aiden remained quiet for a few minutes. Piper watched the houses shrink in size as they neared her place, the apartment buildings draining of color, becoming dingier. Their dull facades blended into the night. Instead of the streetlights making her crummy neighborhood brighter and safer, they highlighted how poor it was.

At the next stop sign, Aiden reached across the car and laid a hand on her cheek so she was forced to look at him, to hold his intense gaze.

“Piper. I’m not your brother.” He said it slowly, loading each word with importance.

“That’s a relief. Because this”—she pointed between the two of them—“would be really awkward.”

“I’m serious. I’m not trying to rub my money in your face. I just want you to be happy. Or at the very least, not in danger.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I do. And I appreciate it.” She tried her best to keep any hesitation from her voice because it was true, even if she had a tough time saying it. She knew it was something she needed to work on, especially while dating a rich CEO. Baby steps, she told herself. It wouldn’t be easy, but she could do it.

A line formed between his eyebrows, but he finally pulled away from the stop sign. “I don’t like the idea of you spending the night in your apartment with this Barney guy still out there somewhere. Would you consider sleeping at my place tonight? Please?”

How long had Piper dreamed to hear those words coming out of Aiden’s mouth? And he was practically begging her.

Of course, she wanted to say yes. In fact, she wanted to race back to his house and drag him to his room. Or the foyer, if they didn’t make it that far. Okay, probably the driveway. If only it had been under normal circumstances. She didn’t want them to spend their first night together because she needed to be bailed out once again. Aiden to the rescue.

“Thank you for worrying,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.”

He flinched at her response. An unhappy grunt rumbled in his throat, but he said nothing more. His eyes, however, said it all. They were tight, narrowed, maybe at her refusal to let him help or maybe at the situation. She wasn’t sure. Unblinking, he focused his gaze out the windshield.

Colin gaped up at Piper from his perch on her lap with a What is wrong with you? stare.

It had been a long time since she’d let a guy distract her—not that she would admit it out loud to anyone. Her education had been her priority for the past eight years, and her licensing exam was coming up. She wasn’t about to lose focus now. A tiny voice in the back of Piper’s mind reminded her that something else still held her back.

Aiden cared for her. That much was clear, but too many questions lingered between them, acting as a barrier. And all of it surrounded his work and his way-outdated business practices. His number one, black-and-white rule: I don’t like mixing business with pleasure. Clearly, he’d broken that rule for her, but he was obviously struggling with the new gray area their relationship had created.

It’s not like she’d ever been a CEO of a big, important company, so she knew it was more complicated than that. But how could she fully trust someone who didn’t trust her enough to tell her whatever he was keeping from her?

As they approached her apartment complex, Piper gave Aiden instructions to drive down winding roads and one-way streets. She could tell he was distracted by whatever was going on beneath that bedhead hair of his.

“I just don’t like it,” he said. “What if this Barney guy isn’t the one who started the fire? And obviously he wasn’t the one who tried to hit us with a car in the alley. There’s someone else still out there.” The leather steering wheel squeaked as his grip tightened around it. “It might not even have anything to do with the center. They could be targeting you personally.”

Piper rubbed her fingers over her temple where a headache was forming. She recalled what Inspector Samuels had said the night of the fire. What if they were targeting her simply because she’d fought so hard to keep the center afloat? “We don’t know that for sure.”

He snorted like he didn’t believe that. Heck, neither did she. It was wishful thinking.

“Please stay at my house.”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” she said, more to convince herself than him.

She was twenty-six years old. She could sleep all by herself, no night-light or anything. Well, Mr. Wiggles, her ratty childhood teddy bear, might make an appearance, but no one but Colin had to know about that. To the rest of the world, she was just fine, fine, fine. She felt that uncertain question mark pop into her head again.

Piper pointed to the building ahead. “Here we are. Casa de Summers.”

It was an old sixties concrete block. Aluminum foil covered many of the tiny, uniform windows—the poor man’s attempt at temperature control—and tighty-whities hung from clotheslines above balconies.

Aiden pulled into a guest parking space next to the broken-down Chevy truck that had been a permanent fixture since she’d moved in. He killed the engine. In the silence that followed, Piper laid her head back against the leather seat and closed her eyes.

She was exhausted. Between her practicum shifts at the hospital, preparing for her exam, pulling more time at the center, graduation coming up, taking extra work with the telegram agency, and oh yeah, fighting for her life, the only thing that seemed safe, constant, was Aiden—despite all the uncertainties she’d yet to confront him about. When she was around him, it seemed like the only time she could relax.

Something touched Piper’s cheek. She jolted in her seat, blinking rapidly at the digital clock on the dash. It told her it was eleven o’clock at night.

“You still with me?” Aiden asked, his voice hushed. “I thought you might be more comfortable sleeping in a bed rather than in my cramped car.”

“You haven’t seen my apartment yet,” she said sarcastically.

She cracked open the car door. The air rushed in, raising goose bumps and clearing the sleepy fog from her brain. Colin hopped down to the pavement, searching for a tire to pee on.

“Can I walk you to your apartment, at least?” Aiden asked.

She thought of the crumbling stucco ceiling in the