LITMIR.BIZ

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a spine when it came to even the vaguest prospect of conflict.

      The only reason Caleb had felt comfortable with the wedding going ahead as planned was because Liam was completely in love with Emma. And he made Emma happy. Otherwise, Caleb might have had to step in, like his father would have, had the man still been alive...

      Piper was smiling when he looked at her again.

      ‘I’m going to get ready for the party. Please close the door on your way out.’

      * * *

      Piper dusted a hand over the olive-green dress she wore. It was simple, with thin straps, and revealed more of her breasts than she’d ever shown before. But it had pockets, ended mid-shin, and the colour popped against her skin. She couldn’t bring herself to change, despite the situation with her breasts.

      She lifted her hand to her hair, which she’d had to tie up into a ponytail since she’d worn it that way on the flight over. There had been no time to wash and blow it again. She’d tied it up, flattened the front of it with gel and straightened her ponytail until it was a sleek curtain to her mid-back. With one last look in the mirror, she grabbed her clutch and opened the door.

      Right to Caleb Martin.

      They both took a step back. Both sized each other up in the silence that followed. He wore light blue pants and a white shirt. It accentuated the brown of his skin, the broadness of his shoulders, the dark black of his hair. He’d shaved since they last saw one another, so the sharp angles of his face were even more striking than they’d been that afternoon. Or perhaps that was because he no longer wore sunglasses, and for the first time since they’d met she could see his eyes.

      When her stomach flipped at them—they crinkled at the sides as he patiently waited for her to finish her perusal, done with his own—she wished he’d brought the glasses again. His eyes were kinder than she’d thought they would be. They were also sharp, light, and the combination of that expression as well as his outfit...

      It was a good thing she’d practised her self-control. Fanning herself would have been inappropriate.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked when she was finally done staring. No, that wasn’t true. She wasn’t done. She simply knew what was proper.

      ‘Emma asked me to escort you to the party.’

      ‘Why? Is it complicated to get to the beach?’

      ‘It is not.’ Amusement shimmered across his face, a potent addition to the gorgeousness she was already distracted by.

      ‘Is she trying to set us up?’

      His eyes widened comically, the determined shake of his head following in a similar manner. ‘No. No, of course not.’

      ‘You’re denying this a lot.’

      ‘Doesn’t mean it’s not true.’

      It would probably annoy him if she disagreed—so, of course, that was what she wanted to do. She walked out of the door, closed it behind her. Primly, she folded her hands around her clutch.

      ‘I don’t know. You came to fetch me from the airport. You showed me to my room. Now you’re escorting me to a party. This must be a date of some sort.’

      ‘It’s not a date,’ he said. ‘It’s...being courteous. Which I’m deeply regretting.’

      ‘You’re the least courteous person I’ve met, Caleb. You telling me you regret being courteous proves that.’

      ‘Has anyone ever pointed out how contrary you are?’

       Why can’t you do as you’re told, Piper?

      A question she’d heard far too often in her twenty-six years, in various forms.

      ‘All the time,’ she said lightly. Fighting for that tone. ‘Though you think it an insult. It’s not. I try to be contrary whenever I can, so someone pointing it out to me is a compliment. Shall we?’

      She started walking, not bothering to check if he was following. She could almost hear his irritation with her. It thrilled her in a way it shouldn’t have.

      To be fair, some of what she’d said had been for the sake of contrariness—he was so easily riled!—but some of it had been true, too. She’d spent most of her life obeying people. Her mother had died when she was young, leaving her and her brother with a father who didn’t want to be one. Keaton Evans had never said so, but she could only assume that was the reason for his awfulness. People who wanted children didn’t force them into behaving in certain ways, did they? Surely they allowed their children to become whoever they wanted to be. They let them test the boundaries, drawing them in when the child went too far.

      But not Keaton.

      Keaton had a strict routine for them to follow. So strict, in fact, that if either of them strayed from it they were punished. No outside time. Food in their rooms. Being kept separate from one another. Since they had no friends, not really, Piper and Liam had become friends. At least they had been in those first few years. Not talking to one another was torture then, which their father knew. It was how he’d kept them in line.

      There was no testing the boundaries in the Evans house. There were only the boundaries. If they were broken, Piper or Liam would be punished. At least Keaton had been simple in his cruelty.

      As they’d got older, Liam began to rebel more, and things got bad. Eventually, Liam had got a bursary to university and moved out. Their father had forbidden him from coming back. Forbidden her from seeing him. They’d lost touch, even when she’d joined Liam at university two years later. By then she’d allowed her father to crush her spirit of rebellion. Of independence. She’d only got it back three years later, when Keaton had died.

      Then she’d welcomed another manipulator into her life.

      ‘It’s hard to insult someone who doesn’t have the decency to be insulted by things that normal people are insulted by,’ Caleb commented from beside her. She hadn’t even noticed he’d caught up. Now that she had, she could feel his presence like the light breeze caressing her skin.

      ‘That’s the point,’ she replied. ‘I don’t get insulted, and that way I take away the power from the person trying to insult me.’

      ‘Sounds like you’ve practised it.’

      ‘I have,’ she told him simply, before stopping at the top of a steep decline. She let out a breath. ‘I knew these heels were a bad idea.’

      ‘I wouldn’t say so,’ his voice rumbled.

      Her flesh shot out in goosebumps. And she remembered, for the first time, that she’d forgotten to put on the nipple covers she’d bought for the dress when she’d realised she couldn’t wear a bra with it. She resisted angling her body away so he wouldn’t know the effect his flirtatious remark had on her. It would be giving him power. On principle, she couldn’t allow that.

      ‘Well, I do,’ she said determinedly. ‘How am I supposed to make it down this path without breaking an ankle?’

      ‘Take them off.’

      She wrinkled her nose. ‘Then I’d have dirty feet when I have to wear my shoes again.’

      ‘You could wipe them off.’

      ‘That won’t help.’

      He stared at her for a moment. ‘You’re strange.’

      ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

      ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you do have another option, though I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

      ‘What is it?’

      He turned to face her, his expression so satisfied that she wanted to give him whatever answer he didn’t expect from her. Until she heard his suggestion.

      ‘I could carry you.’

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