Page 34 of Wrecked
She twisted to face her sister. “No. And would you back the hell up?”
Rusty moved fast, grabbing the collar of Piper’s shirt, and yanked it down past her shoulder. “Then what the hell’s this, Miss Innocent.” She stabbed a pointy finger into the side of her neck.
“Ouch!” She tried to slap Rusty’s hand away, but the redheaded she-devil jumped her, wrestling her hands behind her back.
Alex moved in, brushing her hair out of the way, and while Rusty held her down they both inspected her neck. It was like the last fifteen years hadn’t happened at all. She almost expected to hear her father’s voice booming from the other room, telling the pair of them to stop picking on Piper.
“You’ve got a hickey,” Alex said, giving it a poke as well.
“No. I can’t have.” How had she missed it?
“I know a hickey when I see one. Seems you’ve been holding out on us, girl.”
Sweet girl.
God, the way he’d said it in that deep, coarse voice filled with longing, with heat. She’d loved it.
Alex’s eyes narrowed on her.
Crap.
She tried to think fast. A successful lie usually held a thread of truth, that’s what everyone said. “Let me go, and I’ll tell you.”
“We want all the details,” Alex said.
“Fine.” Like hell.
Rusty let her go, and they both took their seats again, neither one taking their eyes off her the whole time, like they expected her to make a break for it. The idea held definite appeal.
She straightened her shirt and sat back, out of Rusty’s reach. “Okay, so I…I went on a date. Well, two actually, this week, and this”—she pointed to her neck—“is what happened after I was dropped home.” Ha! All true. She’d just omitted a few teeny tiny facts.
They both stared at her like she was nuts. “Two dates?” Alex repeated.
“Yep.”
Her friend’s eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t think to tell us?”
Here we go. “Did you tell us when you were secretly humping our brother?” Piper fired back. Alex’s mouth opened, then snapped closed. “No, no you did not.” Piper spun to Rusty. “And you can’t talk. You snuck off to see Reid without letting either of us know. So don’t go lecturing me.”
Rusty sat forward. “But that’s different.”
Piper scowled at her sister. “How? Please enlighten me.”
“Piper.” Alex was using The Voice, the wake-the-hell-up-Piper voice. She hated that voice. “You took some random guy home to your place? Anything could have happened. That’s not smart.”
Piper shot to her feet, shoving back her chair, the scrape of metal on tiles loud enough to make her wince. “You two are unbelievable.” As usual, everyone assumed she was some idiot, incapable of taking care of herself. The last thing she wanted was to sit through another lecture, not from these two. “And for your information, I went through a dating site. Everyone’s vetted thoroughly. If the guy was a psycho, he wouldn’t be allowed a profile on Perfect Match.”
“Online dating?” Alex said incredulous.
Piper stiffened. “Everyone does it.”
Alex frowned. “There’s no safeguard for online dating, no matter what the site says. Wise up, Piper.”
“The guy is an assistant at a shoe store, for crying out loud. He lives with his mother. I think I was pretty safe.” She turned to Rusty. “And the one before him was a vet. He had a laugh like a chipmunk on acid and was at least four inches shorter than me. I probably outweighed him by fifty pounds. If he got frisky, all I had to do was sit on him.” She crossed her arms and scowled. “Happy?”
Rusty shook her head. “Well, no, actually.”
Piper threw up her hands. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
