Piper must have guessed as much, or she'd have been out here at her aunt's first mention of what she'd seen that night. She wasn't one to wait. First chance he got, here he was digging a hole big enough for a dead elephant. A wonder he hadn't gone out before dawn. That Piper had been more deliberate and cautious than he had didn't sit well with him at all.
Pride compelled him to fill his hole. No need to have his neighbor slip through the hedges and discover he'd gotten caught up in her aunt's dotty ideas, too.
"Russian princesses," he muttered, stabbing at the mound of dirt. "Hell."
He'd get cleaned up, he'd do some business, and then maybe he'd wander into town and pay old Hannah Frye a visit.
Piper taught her open-hearth cooking class, picked a quart of strawberries, and was off to town on her mountain bike by four o'clock. Her life wasn't ordered, but it was endlessly stimulating.
She was not encouraged when she arrived at the Macintosh Inn and found four trucks outside belonging to her father, her brothers, and Tuck O'Rourke, and one BMW belonging to Clate Jackson.
In her experience, nothing good came of that many men conferring in one place, particularly when three were Macintoshes and one she'd kissed within the past twenty-four hours.
She ran into Sally Shepherd in the front lobby. "I suppose you're looking for your father and brothers. They're all in the tavern."
Even worse. With foreboding, Piper headed back to the tavern, a dark, wood-paneled room that called up images of revolutionaries plotting mischief against the British and sea captains telling tales of far-off lands. There was one notorious whaling captain in the Macintosh family tree. Piper sent in a donation to the New England Aquarium every year in his name.
The only customers, gathered at a round table, were the Macintosh men, Tuck, and Clate. They looked as if they'd been devising ways to purge a local witch and her cohort from their midst.
"Piper!" Her father rose, sounding delighted, as always, to see her. "Come, sit and have a drink with us."
Their work finished for the day, he and his two sons were sharing a pitcher of beer. Tuck had his own beer, Clate a tall glass of iced tea. As she leaned over and kissed her father on the cheek, Piper was aware of Clate's eyes on her, and Andrew's and Benjamin's eyes on him. She'd changed from her teaching outfit into bike shorts and her Red Sox shirt for her bike ride into town and had pulled her hair back in a hasty ponytail that was already coming undone.
"I'm on a bike ride," she said before any comments were forthcoming about her ragged appearance. "I saw all the trucks parked outside and figured I'd better stop in, make sure you boys weren't up to no good."
Andrew leaned back, his hands folded on his middle. He had on a dusty work shirt and jeans, his standard outfit for as long as Piper could remember. "Such as?"
Such as persuading Clate to repeat every word she'd told him last night and rat out her and Hannah. Such as making sure he had no designs on his new neighbor. Such as generally meddling in her life. But she manufactured a bright smile, just in case her foreboding was misplaced this once. "I never know with you guys. Hey, Tuck, how're you doing?"
"Not bad. You?"
She wondered if he or her father and brothers noticed the dark circles under her eyes that had made her scream at her own reflection when she'd rolled out of bed at nine. She'd slept fitfully, dreaming dreams her brothers would not want to hear about and Clate Jackson just might delight in. She was sure he'd noticed the dark circles.
"I'm fine," she said breezily, not too phonily. "Busy. I have a few summer students who are looking for a property manager. Can I give them your name or are you too tight right now?"
He gripped his beer bottle with a huge, stained hand. "Sure, go ahead."
He was beefier than the other men at the table, dressed in work clothes that were close enough to presentable; Clate's attire was canvas and denim and unquestionably presentable. He did nothing to call attention to his wealth or away from it. She wondered if he knew she'd dated Tuck way back when. Her brothers claimed they'd never said a word to him, which—if true— in no way exonerated them. A look, a gesture, just their mere presence in the same town were enough to scare off someone like Tuck. It never bothered her, but the men in her life just didn't like the prospect of going up against her brothers.
"Clate, nice to see you." She acknowledged him with a polite nod, knowing she had to get it over with. She felt all eyes on her, and it wasn't just her imagination.
He smiled and said in that slow, liquid drawl, "Nice to see you, too."
Andrew sat forward a fraction, just enough to alert Piper that he'd noticed the electricity between her and Clate. According to the article in the Nashville magazine and every rumor anyone in Frye's Cove had ever repeated or heard about him, Clate Jackson was exactly the sort of man her brothers had warned her about for years.
"Haven't seen you around much, Piper," Benjamin said.