But this . . .
He didn’t feel like his usual self watching Piper barrel into the street wielding fire.
His body moved for him, though. He shot from the table and shouted to the visor-wearing register girl, “Fire extinguisher. Now.”
She turned as pale as a ghost, and dammit, he’d have to apologize for scaring her later, but right then, he was moving across the street at a fast clip, pulling the pin out of the fire extinguisher. For a few hellish seconds, he watched Piper turn in circles, looking for somewhere safe to set down the enflamed pan, before she had no choice but to throw it into the street.
“Move,” Brendan ordered, aiming and dousing the flames in sodium bicarbonate. Left behind was a charred pan from the nineteenth century, by the look of it. He took a breath, realized his heart was sprinting in his chest. Without stopping to think, he dropped the extinguisher and grabbed Piper’s wrists, turning her hands over to look for burn marks. “Did you get yourself?”
“No,” she breathed, blinking up at him. “Thanks. Um . . . thanks for putting it out.”
He dropped her hands, not sure he wanted to acknowledge the free fall of relief he felt over her being unharmed. Stepping back, he whipped off his beanie, letting a welcome rush of irritation snake its way into his belly. “Really, Piper?” Brendan shouted. “I was only joking about having the fire department on speed dial.”
Until Hannah stepped between them, Brendan wasn’t even aware the little sister had followed Piper out of the building. Oh, but she was there, she was pissed, and her anger was directed squarely at him. “Don’t yell at her, you fucking bully.”
Inwardly, he flinched. Bully?
Fox made a choking sound. Brendan turned to tell his friend to keep his mouth shut and realized they were drawing a crowd. A curious one.
“Hannah, it’s fine.” Piper sighed, moving out from behind her sister. Face red from embarrassment, she used the hem of her shirt to pick up the frying pan. The move left almost her entire trim stomach exposed, and Brendan ground his molars together. If he couldn’t help noticing the little mole to the right of her belly button, nobody else could, either. She wasn’t wearing the sequined thing anymore, but in bike shorts, with loose hair and a dirt smudge on her nose, she wasn’t any less beautiful. “Ignore him,” Piper said, dismissing him with a flick of her hand. “Do you see a place I can throw this away?”
“Ignore him, the lady says,” Fox said, amused.
“What are you, his pretty-boy sidekick?” Hannah waved off a stunned Fox with a suck of her teeth and refocused her wrath on Brendan. “The last thing she needs is another dude making her feel like garbage. Leave her alone.”
“Hannah,” Piper hissed sharply, walking past. “It’s not worth getting upset over. Come help me.”
But her sister wasn’t finished. “And it was my fault. I left the cleaning rag on the kitchen counter, all soaked in chemicals. She’s the one that saved the building from burning down.” Hannah poked him in the middle of his chest. “Leave. Her. Alone.”
Brendan was feeling shittier by the second. Something funny was stuck in his throat, and the appetite he’d left the house with had deserted him. He’d still been reeling over Hannah calling him a bully when she’d said, The last thing she needs is another dude making her feel like garbage, and now something hot and dangerous was simmering in his belly.
None of this was familiar. Women, especially ones half his size, didn’t yell at him in the street. Or scare the shit out of him by nearly catching on fire. Part of him wanted to swipe a hand across the chessboard of the day and start over tomorrow, hoping and praying everything would be back to normal. But instead he found he wanted to . . . fix this situation with Piper more than he wanted to cling to the status quo. Maybe he was coming down with the goddamn flu or something, because when Piper tossed the pan into a trash can and sailed back toward her building, it was clear she intended to go home without saying another word to him. And for some reason, he just couldn’t allow that to happen.
Leave her alone, the sister had said, and his apology got stuck in his throat.
Like he was a prize asshole who went around hurting women’s feelings.
No. Just this one.
Why just this one?
Brendan cleared his throat hard. “Piper.”
The woman in question paused with her hand on the door, gave an impatient hair toss that was way too sexy for a Monday night in Westport. Her expression said, You again?
Meanwhile, Hannah frowned up at him. “I said to leave my sister—”
“Listen up,” Brendan said to the younger one. “I heard what you said. I respect you for saying it. You’ve got a nice, solid backbone for someone from Los Angeles. But I don’t follow orders, I give them.” He let that sink in. “I yelled at her because that’s what people do when there’s a close call.” Over the top of Hannah’s head, he met Piper’s gaze. “I won’t do it again.”