Harley was taking care of the girls until a week from Friday, when Delaney should be well enough to have them come home. He didn’t want her to worry about Jolie seeming withdrawn when she needed to rest and relax, so he said, “The girls are fine, they’re nice to Piper, and Piper’s taking great care of me. She’s not really a pamperer, but I’ve got no complaints. She’s perfectly Piper. We’re in good hands.”
He rested his head back. Piper had switched into work mode right before his eyes, a mode he knew she found much more comfortable than hovering over children and a man with a bum ankle. She’d helped the girls with homework and then made sure they had everything they needed for school tomorrow. Then she’d gotten them to take showers and made a grocery list of all the things they liked to eat. He had no idea what she’d do with those things once she bought them, since according to just about everyone who knew Piper, she could burn water, but she got an A for effort in his book.
“Oh boy,” Delaney said. “I’m getting the feeling you’re high on Piper more than the pain meds.”
“Yeah,” he said sleepily, and then he processed what she’d said and backpedaled. “High on meds, sis. Sorry. I’m loopy as shit.” He heard Piper coming down the stairs and said, “I’d better go. I’m glad you’re doing okay. Tell Mom thanks for asking Piper to pick me up today.”
Piper walked into the room as he ended the call. She’d let her hair down, and it fell straight and shiny to her shoulders, with a little wave from being in a ponytail all day. His nieces’ hair did the same thing.
“The girls are in bed,” she said softly. “Sophie fell asleep reading on her iPad when I was with Jolie, and Jolie is probably texting, but she looked pretty tired. I’m worried about her, Harley, but I can’t even think straight without some sugar.”
He couldn’t help puckering up.
She laughed. “Does that ever work for you?”
“Apparently not.”
“What do you have that’s sweet? And don’t say apples. Seriously, Harley. Little girls need ice cream and cookies sometimes.”
“I’ve got a banana,” he said in a way he hoped was coy, but his head was swimming, and he had no idea how it came out.
“I don’t remember seeing any bana—” She groaned, finally catching his meaning, and stalked off toward the kitchen.
“Hey, Trig,” he called after her.
She stopped and cast a deadpan look over her shoulder. Most women would jump at the chance to make out with him, and he loved that Piper wasn’t a pushover. But he wasn’t giving up.
“I’m really glad you’re here for me—us, me and the girls. I appreciate it. I know it’s an imposition.”
“It’s not an imposition. It’s fine,” she said.
“Good, then turn around and get your sweets so I can watch your hot little ass.”
Her eyes warmed, softening the tension in her beautiful face, and his heart beat faster. Maybe he’d finally gotten through to her.
“No more pain pills for you,” she said in a singsong voice, then sauntered into the kitchen.
She returned with a half gallon of pralines and cream ice cream and two spoons and plunked down on the couch beside him, handing him a spoon. When Jiggs lifted his head, she said, “Sorry, Jiggsy, but you’ll have to share with your daddy.”
Harley petted Jiggs’s head, and his pooch settled back down with his chin on his lap.
“The girls are pretty great,” Piper said as she dug into the ice cream. She filled her spoon and tilted the container toward him.
“Yeah, they are.” He scooped out some ice cream.
She sucked her spoon clean, and his foggy mind went straight to a darker place, one he’d thought about an embarrassing number of times even when he wasn’t on pain medication.
“I’m worried about Jolie,” she said, snapping him from his fantasy.
“That makes two of us. I’ve been trying to get her to open up, but she won’t.”
“Do you know what’s going on with her?”
“I think she’s worried about Delaney.” He filled his spoon and held it out to Piper. She held up her spoon as if he might have forgotten she had her own. He shook his head and ate the ice cream.
“I know she’s worried about her mom. That was obvious by how quickly she left the room when I asked about seeing her. But is there anything else going on? Is everything okay at school? Is she having trouble with boys? Friends?”
“Got me. She hasn’t said anything.”
Piper’s brows knitted as she dug out another spoonful of ice cream and ate it. “When your dad first got sick, you must have been scared, right?”
A chill flared in his chest. His father had run Dutch’s Pub for as long as Harley could remember. Frank Dutch was big and beefy like Harley, and stable as the day was long. He’d been Harley’s rock, and he’d supported Harley’s choice to move to the city and work on Wall Street the same way he’d supported Delaney’s desire to go to law school and Marshall’s dream of becoming a smoke jumper. When they were growing up, their father had been strict about grades and responsibilities, more so for Delaney and Harley than Marshall, but he was loving and kind to all of them. Harley couldn’t remember a day going by that his parents hadn’t told them they loved them. That was just one of the many reasons he had a hard time with Marshall turning his back on their family the way he had.
But that was a thought for another day, when his brain wasn’t foggy and Piper wasn’t sitting beside him waiting for an answer. It would be easy to minimize how he’d felt when he’d gotten the call about his father having cancer since he hadn’t talked about it with anyone but Delaney. But he wanted to be honest with Piper.
“I was pretty terrified,” he admitted. “One online search told me how aggressive pancreatic cancer was, and they’d caught it late. I remember thinking about how unfair it was to him, to my mom, my siblings, his grandkids. I went numb, I think, going through the motions to make sure everyone was holding up okay, which they weren’t, of course. And after he died, I went from numb to sad, and then I got angry, but you remember how awful I was then.”
“You weren’t awful. You were a son grieving his father.” Piper put her hand over his, lacing their fingers together, and said, “It was unfair to you, too.”
“What?” He met her gaze, and the empathy in her eyes was inescapable.
“You mentioned everyone else, but not yourself. I’m just saying it was unfair to you, too.”
“I guess . . .” He gritted his teeth against the pain burning in his chest.
“You must miss him so much. When I was little, I used to love seeing your dad at the Strawberry Festival or some other event. He’d swoop me off my feet, hold me over his head, and say something like, ‘Put some meat on those bones, Builder Girl, or a bird’s going to pick you up and carry you away.’”
Harley laughed. “I forgot how he used to call you that. And he’d call your sister Talia Bookie. He loved his nicknames.” He turned his hand over to hold Piper’s, but she pulled away and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.