Page 14 of Tyler

She sighed. “Yes, but never in front of him, and only the first few times. After that, it got easier, and we had several nice months together.”

Abby frowned. “What happened? Why aren’t you still together? Was he a jerk?”

“No.” Piper shook her head. “I was the jerk. He wanted to come to my place in the Poconos and meet my family.”

Up until then, she’d always traveled into the city to see him.

“You weren’t ready,” Stef said.

Piper nodded. “I wasn’t ready, so I broke it off. That was a year ago.”

“And there’s been no one since?”

“No. I felt it was time to concentrate on me and getting my life on track. Follow my dream to own my own gallery, so I put my focus there and it led me here.”

“Well, I’m glad.” Abby squeezed her hand. “You’re going to love it here.”

Christa nodded. “Yes, it’s a great place to heal.”

“And a great place to find the best coffee.” Rylee winked.

Abby pointed to the empty box on the table. “And the best donuts.”

“And the best friends,” Stef said with a smile.

Piper smiled back. “Then lucky for me, because I could sure use all that.”

“And who knows, maybe one of the handsome cowboys around here will mess with your pulse and persuade you to save a horse,” Mel said with a grin.

She laughed and joined them for a chorus of a popular song with similar wording. Over the past two weeks, she’d met a lot of cowboys and men in town, but only one had managed to affect her pulse, and he didn’t ride a horse.

He flew jets.

The smart move would be to keep her distance. He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel…or things she did want to feel. Either way, he was trouble with a capital T, and she needed to avoid him.

Too bad she was supposed to meet him tomorrow to see his photos. The fact that her heart hiccupped just thinking about it spoke of trouble. But she was worrying over nothing. It wasn’t like Piper made Ty feel things he didn’t want to feel, right?

But if he did, then she was in trouble.

Chapter Four

Ty was in trouble.

Yesterday, he discovered his neighbor made him feel things he didn’t want to feel…blood rushing through his veins, alive, aware, confused, troubled.

Until then, it had been easy to just acknowledge Piper was pretty whenever he happened to see her in passing. But since talking to her, learning her name, unavoidably touching her—thanks to her slamming him to the ground—he could no longerjust acknowledgeanything about the woman.

Up close, she was beautiful. Her eyes were amazing. Her touch was soft and warm, and caused movement in his chest, raced his pulse, and heated his body. Piper was an unexpected force of nature, and Ty needed to devise a counter maneuver, or he was in jeopardy of freefalling.

Since he was meeting her tonight to look over some of the photos he rarely shared with anyone, he needed a quick countermeasure. Some kind of safeguard.

How the hell had he let himself get talked into this?

Oh, right, his sister…and then he’d met Piper’s stunning gray gaze from across the breakroom, and he was toast.

A strange warmth engulfed him whenever he stared into her eyes, and he liked it.

Too much.

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