“I think she wants to adopt me and Elijah,” Jed teased her. “She likes us.”
“Not after Brogan took Eve out of the house,” she informed him. “She’s still not happy over that one.”
Neither were Dawg and their cousins, Piper thought. As a matter of fact, “irate” was a mild description of how they felt about it.
Mercedes Mackay was taking it particularly hard, though. Letting her daughter go hadn’t been easy for Mercedes, despite the fact that she dearly loved the man Eve was currently living with.
“We’re not related to the bastard,” he said with a grunt.
“Aren’t you?” she questioned him lightly. “You could have fooled me. You, Elijah, and Brogan play a good game, Jed, but I’m starting to wonder if you’re not brothers or something. The three of you are definitely cut from the same cloth.”
“Meaning?” Now, wasn’t that tone just slightly arrogant?
“Dominant, domineering, stubborn, intractable, opinionated—shall I go on?”
“Hell,” he muttered, though she caught the slight vein of amusement in his tone. “I was just hoping for a little sex, Piper, not a complete assassination of my character here.”
“Phone sex? Why, Jed, I’m a good girl,” she exclaimed as though scandalized. “I can’t believe you’d call me for such a thing.” Her voice dropped. Piper let it become breathy as she allowed herself to remember his kiss, his touch. “It’s none of your business if I’m lying here playing with just the most amazing little toy.”
/> “Huh?”
His surprised little exclamation had satisfaction curling her lips.
“Shame on you, Jedediah Booker,” she chastised him, barely holding back her laughter. “My momma would be heartbroken to know what a dirty dog you are. Just simply heartbroken.”
“What kind of toy?” The growl in his voice had her stomach tightening. “Come on, Piper; just tell me what it is. What are you doing with it?”
The wicked, sensual, sexual pitch of his voice made her wish she were playing with a toy.
“Why, that’s just none of your business, Mr. Booker,” she informed him with all the sweet Southern-belle charm she could inject into her tone. “I guess you’ll just have to find some other way of satisfying your curiosity.”
“I can pick the lock on your door,” he told her then. “I’ll steal the damned thing.”
“Even if it’s you I’m thinking of when I use it?”
She disconnected the call.
Tightening her thighs as her clit pulsed in time with the throb of need in her vagina, Piper covered her face and fought back the highly unwise action of answering the phone again as it buzzed repeatedly.
This was dangerous.
Jed was far too dangerous.
She might be as bold and just as damned adventurous as any Mackay, but Piper liked to think that unlike her older sister, she also had enough common sense to keep from jumping into the fire.
Nope, the frying pan suited her just fine.
Pulling in a deep breath, she finished packing the suitcase and garment bag she’d chosen to take to New York with her.
She would catch the train in Louisville, and once she got to New York City she’d rent a car.
She didn’t much care for driving in Manhattan, but sometimes a girl just had to do what a girl had to do. If she dared to rent a car in Somerset or in Louisville, then the chances were far too great that Dawg would find out. He had too many friends in far too many places. And she knew firsthand that he was on a first-name basis with every reputable car-rental agency in a five-county radius.
That meant just getting to New York City without her brother or her family learning she’d left would be chancy enough.
Luckily, there was one friend she could depend on.
She couldn’t tell her mother, her sisters, Tim, her brother or cousins, or her nearby friends or neighbors—she sighed at the thought of it—but she’d managed to make a few friends among the tourists who traveled through Somerset each summer and stopped at the small boutique her designs sold in. Once they sold, it wasn’t unusual for the buyers to contact her, interested in other unique wardrobe items. From those buyers, she had made several friends.