“Reckless behavior. A night in jail . . .”
“Rude.” Piper sniffed.
“You know I love you.” Hannah peeled off her gloves. “Want to break for lunch?”
“Yes.” They took two steps and slumped onto side-by-side stools. As exhausting and difficult as this bar makeover was shaping up to be, with a little distance, the amount of work they’d done in just a few hours was kind of . . . satisfying. “I wonder if we could paint the floor. Like a really deep ocean blue. Do they make paint for floors?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m just the DJ.”
Now that the idea was in Piper’s head, she was interested in getting the answers. “Maybe I’ll go with you to the hardware store next time. Sniff around.”
Hannah smiled but didn’t look over. “Okay.”
A minute of silence passed. “Did I tell you I crashed a memorial party for Brendan’s wife last night? Walked in with a tray of shots like it was spring break in Miami.”
Her sister turned her head slowly. “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope.” She pulled an imaginary conductor’s wire. “The Piper train rolls on.”
To Hannah’s credit, it took her a full fifteen seconds to start laughing. “Oh my God, I’m not laughing at . . . I mean, it’s a sad thing, the memorial. But, oh, Piper. Just, oh my God.”
“Yeah.” She smacked some dust off her yoga pants. “Do you think my lipstick purse is ugly?”
“Uhhh . . .”
Hannah was saved from having to answer when the front door of No Name opened. In walked Brendan with a tray of coffees in his hand, a white, rolled-up bakery bag in the other. There was something different about him this morning, but Piper couldn’t figure it out. Not right away. He was wearing his signature sweatshirt, beanie, and jeans trifecta as usual, looking worn in and earthy and in charge, carrying in with him the scent of the ocean and coffee and sugar. His silver-green eyes found Piper’s and held long enough to cause a disturbing flutter in her belly, before he scanned the room and their progress.
“Hey,” he said, in that raspy baritone.
“Hey back,” Piper murmured.
Piper, I don’t just go putting my arms around girls.
She’d lain awake half the night dissecting that statement. Pulling it apart and coming at it from different angles, all of which had led to roughly the same conclusion. Brendan didn’t put his arms around girls, so it meant something that he’d put them around her. Probably just that he wanted to have sex with her, right? And she was . . . interested in that, it seemed, based on how her nipples had turned to painful little points the second he ducked into No Name with his big gladiator thighs and thick black beard. Oh yeah. She was interested, all right. But not in the usual way she was interested in men.
Because Brendan came with a whole roll of caution tape around him.
He wasn’t a casual-hookup guy. So what did that make him? What else even was there? Apart from her stepfather, she’d come across very few serious-relationship types. Was he one of them? What did he want with her?
There was a good chance she was reading him wrong, too. This could very well just be a friendship, and since she’d never had a genuine friendship with a man, platonic intentions might be unrecognizable to her. This was a small town. People were kind. They tipped hats.
She’d probably been in LA too long, and it had turned her cynical. He’d just put his arms around her last night to be decent. Relax, Piper.
“Is that coffee for us?” Hannah asked hopefully.
“Yeah.” He crossed the scant distance and set the tray down on the barrel in front of the sisters. “There’s some sugar and whatnot in the bag.” He tossed the white sack down, rubbed at the back of his neck. “Didn’t know how you took it.”
“Our hero,” Piper said, opening the bag and giving a dreamy sigh at the donuts inside. But first, caffeine. She plucked out a Splenda and one of the non-dairy creamers, doctoring the coffee. When she glanced up at Brendan, he was following her actions closely, a line between his brows. Memorizing how she took her coffee? No way.
She swallowed hard.
“Thank you. This was really thoughtful.”
“Yes, thank you,” Hannah chimed in after taking a sip of hers, black, then riffling through the white bag for a donut. “It’s not even made out of cauliflower. We really aren’t in LA anymore, Pipes.”
“Cauliflower? Jesus Christ.” Brendan pulled his own coffee out of the tray—and that’s when Piper realized what was actually different about him this morning.
He’d taken off his wedding ring.
After seven years.
Piper’s gaze traveled to Brendan’s. He knew she’d seen. And there was some silent communication happening between them, but she didn’t understand the language. Had never spoken it or been around a man who could convey so much without saying a single word. She couldn’t translate what passed between them, or maybe she just wasn’t ready to decipher his meaning.