Ava went to meet with her children about the investigation into Wingate Enterprises, and while she was gone Piper started baking pies for Thanksgiving. She wasn’t a traditional person by nature but there was something about this time of year that always made her want to have pie. Her mother had started baking them on the first of November when Piper had been a girl.
Piper started with pecan—her favorite—and there was something soothing and homey about the scents that filled the kitchen in Ava’s rented house. She baked pumpkin pie and apple and mincemeat. Then she moved on to breads—banana and pumpkin—doing everything she could to keep her mind off Brian. It had only been a few days since she’d ended things for good, but it felt like a lifetime since she’d seen him. And the more time that passed the harder it was to say to herself that they would ever make it work.
She was seeing all the obstacles again. They had always been there, but when she had been with Brian—really been with him, not in Royal where she fell back into childhood patterns and attitudes—those hurdles hadn’t seemed as big or insurmountable. It was only when she was lying alone in her big bed, missing him, that she reminded herself she’d kicked him out.
She’d broken up with him and he’d probably come to his breaking—she quickly shut that thought down. It was pointless to start feeling sorry for herself. Those thoughts and feelings inevitably followed a breakup. She knew her flaws better than anyone and loneliness just made them stand out.
The front door opened, and she heard voices as Ava, followed by her children, entered the house. “Everything smells delicious in here.”
“Thanks. I wanted to do something productive,” Piper murmured.
“I’m not waiting for Thanksgiving to partake,” Zeke said. “Unless...”
“Of course we don’t have to wait. I’m ready for a slice of pecan pie,” Piper said. “How’d the meeting go?”
“Well, better than I think we expected. Seems Brian was over at Keith’s the other night and he said some leading...” Ava broke off and turned away.
“What did he say?”
“Brian said it might have been the alcohol, so we don’t want to get too excited that this will lead to anything, but he mentioned that the embezzling and drug trafficking had to be an inside deal and that it had to be someone close to one of us at the top.” She sighed. “That pretty much only leaves Keith. When Brian pressed him, he didn’t say it out loud but winked and said he couldn’t say more.”
Brian? Why had Brian done that? Was he trying to prove he wasn’t like his uncle? Of course, he couldn’t. “That’s good, but how are they going to use it?”
“They’ve asked him to wear a wire and go back and see if Keith says anything else. Right now, it’s all hearsay, which Brian was adamant wouldn’t stand up in court,” Ava said. “So he’s going to try to see if he can get Keith to admit it again. Ironically it was breaking up with you that led to the conversation.”
“Sorry about that, Piper,” Harley said, coming over and giving her a hug.
“If it helps the family then it will be worth it,” Piper said. They sat around the dining room table in the rented house drinking coffee and eating the pies she’d baked, and Piper realized something about home. With her sister and her nieces, nephews and their partners this was home. It wasn’t the big Wingate mansion or her home in Frisco. It was these people and... Brian. She missed him at this gathering. He’d have loved it.
She had said some things to him that were going to be very difficult to retract because she had meant it when she said that family was the most important thing to her, but she had just realized that somewhere along the way Brian had become family to her, as well.
She wanted to text him but had no idea if he was with Keith or if she’d interfere with his sting operation so she kept her hands off her phone. Instead, she played canasta with some of her family, and smiled and pretended that she wasn’t worried about Brian. Keith might not be a physical danger to Brian, but he was dangerous.
If he was to blame for everything, then he had a powerful hate for their family, and anyone who helped him would be branded a traitor, especially his nephew. She couldn’t keep her mind from wandering to a worrying place, and she tried to force her thoughts to the present, but after everyone had gone home and she and Ava were alone, it was exponentially harder.
“I misjudged Brian,” Piper said to her sister as they were sitting alone in the living room. “I’m surprised he’s done this for us.”
“I’m not,” Ava said. “I saw his face when you ran upstairs the other night. He looked like you’d pulled his heart from his chest and stomped on it. We misjudged him. I’m sorry for my part in that.”
Piper nodded. But there was a huge lump in her throat, and she couldn’t speak. So she just curled up in the chair, her mind swirling with the thought that she might have been too good at letting her fears rule her mind, and as a consequence, had hurt Brian in a way that he would never forgive.
He might be helping out the Wingates just to prove to her she was wrong and then...he’d walk away leaving her with the knowledge that she’d lost the only man she should have trusted.
Piper stared into the fire, wishing she could go back but knowing she would have made the same choices as before. Because the truth was, she hadn’t changed until she’d hurt him. She hoped it wasn’t too late after everything was over with the sting that Brian was running to frame Keith and save her family.
Twelve
Brian hadn’t expected Piper to call. That was understandable, considering what was currently happening with their families. He was letting her have some space to think, but when the time was right, he was going back for her.
He loved her.
And he wasn’t letting her walk out of his life. Not again.
However, right now he had to do something else that he knew was right no matter how much he hated it. He stood in one of the rooms at the Texas Cattleman’s Club being wired by the local police. No one thought he should be seen leaving the police station, so they’d come to him instead.
He was going to try to get his uncle to talk and give up the name of the person he thought had committed the crime. That would make Keith an accessory because he hadn’t come forward with the information voluntarily, but in the end, Brian had to believe it was the right thing to do.
Except that he wouldn’t let his uncle get away with criminal activity. Obviously, it would be nice for Piper to see Brian as a hero, but morally it was wrong. So even if he hadn’t been going out with her, he would have done this. Brian still wasn’t one hundred percent sure what his uncle would say when he went back to talk to him since Brian couldn’t ask leading questions. He had to just let the conversation make its way to Ava. Let Keith take it there, the agent who’d briefed him had said.