"It's not, but that doesn't stop people from trying to make it their business."
No, it certainly didn't. Hannah Frye for one. Suddenly restless, Piper grabbed a bolt of blue calico cloth from the shelf behind her. She would cut swatches for simple potpourri sachets. "I'm not so desperate for a man that Hannah would need to conjure one up for me." Not, of course, that Hannah had acted out of a sense of Piper's desperation. She maintained it was all because of a dream, the universe urging her to provide Piper and the love of her life the little push they needed to get together.
Clate held his ground. "This isn't about you or me. It's about your aunt and whether she thinks she got me up here through some kind of spell."
"Not a spell," Piper blurted. She set the bolt on her worktable with a loud thump. Clate didn't move. She caught her breath, raked a hand through her hair even as she knew she'd already said too much. "It was more like...I don't know, a prayer. A wish. A dream of what life could be like for me but never was for her. She threw salt in the fire every night over the winter and asked the universe to send me—well, a man, I guess."
"How does she know I'm that man?"
"She doesn't, and you're not. It's all just some bizarre notion of hers." Piper groaned, exasperated. How could she explain Hannah, their relationship, to a man as concrete in his thinking, as obviously jaded, as Clate Jackson? "Just because Hannah says she summoned you up here doesn't mean she did summon you up here. It's all in her head."
"She didn't even meet me until today. For all she knew, I could have been old, married, decrepit."
"I was hoping you would be."
Amusement flared in his eyes, and Piper immediately realized the impolitic nature of her words. She'd as much as admitted that she was attracted to him, a complication none of them needed right now.
"I only meant," she added quickly, "that Hannah doesn't need any encouragement. Just because you're not a geezer or unavailable or—or whatever doesn't mean I have any designs on you. I mean, I don't think you're the love of my life."
Clate slid off the stool and came around the worktable toward her. She was shaking, she realized. Not with trepidation or nervousness, just sheer mortification and anticipation. She was attracted to him. She did think he was good-looking, sexy, earthy, appealing on a basic, elemental, biological level. His eyes, his scars, his stubble of beard, his flat stomach, the way his frayed khakis hung low on his hips.
But she wasn't the type to let her attraction to a man ease out into the open. She was accustomed to playing her feelings close to her chest. It wasn't just her brothers, her shaky romantic past, it was her personality, the emotional reserve that was natural to her. Long ago, she had accepted that her life could well end up being more like Hannah's than like either of her brothers' or, certainly, her parents'—her mother who'd died too young, her father who'd learned to go on without the love of his life.
Of course, the physical sensations coursing through her as Clate came closer didn't necessarily have anything to do with romance.
For the first time in her life, one of Hannah's schemes had succeeded in throwing Piper for a loop.
"Don't be embarrassed," Clate said, and that soft, rasping drawl only made her knees go liquid under her.
"I'm not embarrassed."
"Of course you are. Anyone would be. Who would want their eighty-seven-year-old aunt conjuring up romantic prospects for them?"
"Hannah never meant for me to feel...inadequate. If you and I could have met some other way, then—" Piper stopped herself, grimacing. "Not that there's anything between us or ever will be. I'm not saying that."
"It's complicated," he said, deadpan.
"Yes! She really believes she had to sell her house to you in order for me to fulfill my destiny. Or something like that. Look, Clate, I love my aunt. I want her to be happy. She doesn't mean any harm to either of us. She's convinced she's right about us. I know it's crazy, and it puts you in an awkward position."
He shook his head. "Not me. If people want to think your aunt put some spell on me, it makes no difference to me." He leaned against the worktable, studying her with half-closed eyes. "But it does to you."
Piper found his certainty both irritating and intriguing. She grabbed a pair of scissors from a cracked, misshapen urn, one of her early works of crockery. "If it does, it's because I care about the people who're doing the talking. They're my friends, people I've known all my life."
"My point exactly. Provided it doesn't interfere with my privacy, your aunt and the rest of Frye's Cove can think I'm the devil incarnate or the man for you." He grinned, the gray light catching the scar under his left eye. "Or both."
"In other words, so long as she and everyone else in town leaves you alone, you don't care what they think."
"That's a bit harsh."
"But it's true."
He sighed. "Basically, yes, it's true. I came here to get away from the complications in my life, not add more."