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  “Just to be clear,” Brooks interjected, “I could have waited.”

  Vance smiled at his buddy. “Yeah, I think I got that.”

  “So, are you happy?” Lolly went on.

  Vance turned his head and smiled at her. “Of course, I’m happy.”

  “I mean are you happy about Piper?” she pressed.

  “I’m happy about you…and Brooks…and Dad…and Genevra…and baby brother Brody.”

  “Brody?”

  “Yeah. Brody.”

  “You know this may not be a brother.”

  “No. Let’s have a brother. You’d be okay with a brother, right?”

  “I’d be okay with a healthy anything—”

  “Great, because I want a brother. A brother named Brody. And now that that’s settled, I’m officially happy.”

  “But weren’t you even happier last night with Piper?”

  “Parts of last night made me too happy.”

  “Too happy?”

  “Right. Plain old happy works better.”

  “So you are afraid? Of being too happy?”

  “No. I’m afraid of being unhappy.”

  “Well, if Piper is so faaab-ulous, then why are you worried about being unhappy?” Lolly questioned.

  “Because as faaab-ulous as Piper is,” Vance imitated, “she doesn’t like cops.”

  “Good thing you’re not much of a cop,” Brooks said over his trademark grin.

  “You’d think that would finally be working for me, wouldn’t you?” Vance said. “Turns out, Piper brings out the cop in me. Last night I actually became the quintessential bad cop.”

  “So?” Lolly asked. “Don’t tell me Piper didn’t fall for all your innate sex appeal and completely disarming skills of seduction.”

  “I am standing right here,” Brooks claimed.

  “You know what I mean,” Lolly soothed, throwing Brooks a sultry look.

  “Okay, and now I’m the one right here,” Vance retaliated. “In my room, in my bed. So stop with the blatant ‘I’ll take care of you later’ looks, all right? That is not helping.”

  “Sorry,” Lolly said. “Now tell us all about Piper and what you mean when you say she doesn’t like cops?”

  Vance opened his mouth to speak and then remembered what he hadn’t told Lolly—which was the best part about finding Piper. He angled his head and gave her a tender smile, taking her hand in his. “She’s the one,” he told her.

  “The one?” Lolly said, her eyes going big.

  “She’s the vision—the hologram that’s been haunting me. I had no idea. Until I saw her.”

  “Piper is the blonde who has ruined you for all other blondes?” Lolly asked amazed.

  “She is,” Vance said, remembering how Piper had released his inner caveman. “She’s like this sweet, feminine, delicate little China doll that I just want to pick up and carry off and….” he finished with a growl.

  “What hologram?” Brooks said, his voice escalating as he spoke. “What vision? And why the hell does Lolly know about this and I’m just hearing about it now?”

  Torn from his potent memory, Vance looked over at Brooks as if he’d just asked the dumbest question in the world. “Lolly and I are friends,” Vance said with the “of course” insinuated.

  Brooks dropped his jaw into a what-the-fuck expression. “Really?” he asked. “And you and I are…?”

  “Well, we don’t talk about this stuff,” Vance defended.

  “Since when?” Brooks yelled. “We talk about this stuff all the time.”

  “Look. It was just this thing—this 3-D vision of a pretty little blonde that appears in my head, especially after I’ve taken some random woman to bed and woke up regretting it. I told Lolly about it when she asked me why I didn’t do blondes—and the reason I don’t do blondes is that none of them ever measured up to this hologram and the emotion that it embodied.”

  “So you’ve been carrying around a picture of Piper in your head for years and didn’t even know it,” Brooks stated.

  “Correct. And, interestingly enough, that Cinco de Mayo thing was apparently not such a coincidence. It turns out Piper knew exactly who I was. Which is sort of insane that she didn’t divulge that bit of information before she stuck her tongue down my throat.”

  “Why didn’t she?” Lolly asked.

  “I think she thought I knew her too.”

  “You mean all this time she thought you walked out on her, knowing it was her.”

  “Up until yesterday.”

  “Well, was she happy to see you or pissed you had left her hanging in the bar?”

  “She was happy to see me. I mean, she wasn’t crazy about finding all the evidence of my overnight guests in the bathroom there. She even called me a man-whore. I told her I’ve been celibate for eons now, so I’m going to need backup on that from you two.”

  “Eons,” Lolly scoffed.

  “Hey,” Brooks countered, “it’s all relative. For him, it’s been eons.”

  Lolly rolled her eyes.

  “She had all of us eating out of her hand at dinner. But you already know that,” Vance said, nodding his head toward Lolly. “And she wasn’t very happy that I was taking her back to Raleigh last night. Seemed she was ready and willing to pick up right where we left off in The Charlie Horse.”

  “And you had a problem with that?” Brooks asked in disbelief.

  Vance spread his hands and shouted toward the ceiling. “What the hell have we all been working on these last two months if not making me a better man? Of course I had a problem with that. This is Piper we are talking about, for God’s sake. I do not want to screw this up.”

  “How could you possibly screw it up?” Brooks yelled back. “The one thing you know how to do where women are concerned is to give them an orgasm.”

  “Well, what about that friends thing Lolly and I have been working on so damn hard, uh? What about appreciating women outside of the bedroom?”

  “You’ve already been friends with Piper,” Brooks countered. “You already appreciate who she is. She’s your fucking hologram, for God’s sake. She’s the one you want to take to the next level—the one you want to take to bed and leave panting for more. Trust me. You take Piper to bed, you are not going to regret it in the morning.”

  Vance folded his arms over his chest and looked between Brooks and Lolly. “I’ll admit the evening would have ended better if I’d given the woman what she wanted. Because with me trying to be the good cop, disaster ensued. And now, being any kind of a cop is apparently a huge fucking problem.”

  “Okay, so explain to us about the cop thing? Why doesn’t she like cops?” Lolly asked, moving closer to Vance so Brooks had room to join them on the bed.

  “God, I wish I knew.” Vance tucked his arm around Lolly’s shoulders and brought her closer as Brooks’ huge body stretched out on the other side of her. “She makes her living defending high school and college kids from what she calls overzealous cops. It’s a thing with her. Apparently a big thing, because last night when we were confronted with this enormous NFL type loitering on her front step and acting like he had an axe to grind, I pulled out my badge and told him to get lost. The next thing I know, Piper—no, not Piper actually, but The Lawyer Beaumont—is in my face, calling me Officer Evans and throwing lawyer speak around like it was confetti. Then she hands the guy her card and tells him that if I arrest him, she’ll be his lawyer, pro bono, right before she flounced her pretty little ass into her condo, locking me out and telling me to go home.”

  Vance looked between Lolly and Brooks who both stared at him open-mouthed. “I know!” he said. “And get this. She literally called me a small-town cop with zero jurisdiction—in front of the goddamn linebacker I was trying to intimidate.”

  Both Brooks and Lolly dissolved into hysterical laughter. Vance couldn’t help but join them.

  “Oh, man,” Brooks sighed, wiping tears from his eyes. “Of all the times for you to pull out your badge. You never pull o
ut your badge.”

  “I know, right? I hardly ever carry the damn thing. But by some colossal twist of fate, I not only had it in my pocket, but apparently I couldn’t wait to show it off.”

  There was a knock on the door and without thinking Vance hollered, “Come in.”

  “Hey,” Pinks said as he came around the bedroom door, clipboard in hand, “since you went AWOL on me yesterday I need to go over a few things—”

  The poor guy took one look at Lolly in Vance’s bed and pulled up short, sputtering. “Perfect. Just perfect,” he said before he started yelling at all three of them. “Maybe I am nice, safe, and boring, but whatever the hell is going on here has clearly crossed the line into kinky. Jesus, I’d like to rip my eyes out.”

  “Oh, My God,” Lolly cried. “I’m completely dressed.”

  “Well, he’s not.” Davis said, pointing at Vance.

  Vance flicked a look to Lolly. “The Ninja’s got a point.”

  “And you,” Davis said, poking a finger at Brooks. “What kind of a man lets his girlfriend crawl into bed with a guy like that?”

  “Hey,” Vance said. “I represent that.”

  Lolly snickered at the same time Brooks began to defend himself. “Dude,” he yelled back at Pinks. “You think I’m happy about this?” indicating the three of them in bed. “This is exactly what Tansy warned me about.”

  “Tansy?” Lolly said.

  “Yes, Tansy,” Brooks growled. “She said that as long as you and I planned to adopt Vance, the three of us would be very happy. But I swear to God, I did not picture this.”

  “Tansy? Tansy Langford?” Pinks asked. “Glad you brought her up, because that one is becoming a problem. Who the heck is she anyway?”

  “Brooks’ ex who ran off to some big city. Recently came crawling back with her tail between her legs,” Vance explained.

  “Well, your father has gone and hired Tansy Langford to be the office manager.”

  “What?”

  “She was there yesterday directing the furniture delivery. As if I couldn’t figure out where the hell the furniture should go,” Pinks said.

  “Christ Almighty,” Vance said. “That woman hates me.” Vance threw off the covers and dragged his legs out of bed. He tugged at his boxers to make sure he didn’t expose himself to the audience gathered in his bedroom before he stood and headed into the bath. “Why the hell would he go and hire Tansy of all people? She’s probably going to undermine me at every turn. Do we even need an office manager at this point?” Vance asked Pinks through the crack he left in the bathroom door.

  “Not while I’m around. Apparently she approached him at the pool party and told him about her resume. Told him she was detail oriented and a hard worker. That she was smart enough to run the place so that neither one of you ever had to set foot in the office if you didn’t want to.”

  “Then why the hell do we need an office?” Vance asked around a mouth full of toothpaste.

  “Marketing,” Pinks responded. “You need your name on the door in the center of town. You also need a place to meet with clients. Not that your bedroom isn’t a great gathering spot,” he went on, “it just might seem a bit casual to some.”

  Vance smiled in spite of himself. Pinks The Ninja was all right.

  “What are you going to do about Piper?” Lolly hollered from the bedroom.

  “Who’s Piper?” Pinks asked.

  “Piper’s the reason he went AWOL on you yesterday,” Brooks told Pinks.

  “Ah, the plot thickens,” Pinks said. “Not sure that bed is going to be big enough for four.”

  Vance wrapped a towel around his hips and opened the door to lean against the jamb. “So, what am I going to do about Piper?” he asked. “The truth is, the cop issue is not really a problem. I mean with Evans & Evans starting up, coaching baseball, and Brooks’ mayoral campaign on the horizon, I could drop my badge off tomorrow and never miss it.” Vance looked over his tribe and made a decision. “But Piper doesn’t know that.” He smiled. “She probably thinks I’m a full-on, full-time, twenty-four-hours-a-day cop.

  “Brooks, you said it yourself. It’s time to take this to the next level,” Vance went on, feeling more certain as he spoke. “Piper and I are already friends. In fact, she told my father she fell in love with me in fourth grade. She’s seen me at my worst—leaving her stranded five years ago and then again with Duncan just last week—and she still got in that car with me yesterday.”

  “Because you were driving a Maserati,” Pinks remarked.

  “A totally bad cop car,” Vance insisted.

  “Yes, but once you pulled out your badge, she locked you out and told you to go home,” Lolly reminded him.

  “That happened after I’d already made the mistakes of taking her back to Raleigh and refusing to kiss her goodnight. Trying to be the good cop backfired…big shocker there…because if there is one thing everybody in this room has learned, it’s that when it comes to romancing a woman, the only good cop is a bad cop. So from now on, I intend to be a very bad cop.”

  “What if she refuses to see you?” Pinks asked.

  “Now that’ll just play right into my plan, won’t it?” Vance smiled.

  ***

  Piper had only thought about Vance Evans seven times during her Saturday morning ritual. She thought that was pretty darn good since thoughts of him had kept her up half the night.

  Propped up in bed with a cup of coffee and the laptop she used strictly for play, she’d spent a couple hours creating her latest Pinterest board—part of her Dream Home Collection. This one, entitled Bake Me a Cake, had been inspired by Vance's father's house. She'd never seen a kitchen quite like his, and while she’d dined with the Evans family, she kept wondering how odd it would sound if she offered to cook a dessert for them—in their kitchen.

  So instead, she’d spent the morning creating her own virtual kitchen. Now the new Pinterest board housed pictures of fancy cabinetry, painted lava stone countertops, unusual sinks, pretty hardware, La Cornue ranges, and every baking luxury a closet pastry chef could want. A lime green Cuisinart food processor, a turquoise blue KitchenAid mixer, pretty floral tin canisters, crystal cake plates, rustic pie plates, marble rolling pins, playful cake pans, and vintage-looking aprons all provided such delicious torture that she ended up pulling up her recipe files with the intention of baking something delicious.

  She wondered if Vance was a sweets eater, and if so, did he prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate or no chocolate in his dessert at all? Not that she should worry about it, she thought as she scrolled through her recipes. He was a cop, and a man, so she would probably never hear from him again…at least not for another five years. Ah this! She had wanted to try the Meyer Lemon and Olive Oil Chiffon Cupcakes with the Lemon Poppy Seed Curd for a long time. Poppy seeds and lemon curd, what’s not to love? Then she picked out an old favorite to go with it. Butterfinger Fudge Cookie Bars would do the trick.

  Just in case she’d have someone to serve them to—Crap! She had a date tonight. She had told Vance she was going to…what did he say? Kick them to the curb? But really, it wasn’t like Officer Evans was all that interested in her anyway. He was sweet and—she sighed—wonderful when they were on the playground together talking about old times, clearing the air about Cinco di-Saster and wanting to introduce her to his family. And he did want her right up against him in that god-awful truck of his. She laughed out loud at her thoughts. There really was something about a truck.

  But other than that, he hadn’t touched her too much during their time together. And when she threw herself at him—well, that was ego deflating for sure. She sighed loudly as she got out of bed and headed toward the shower. Breaking a date with cute-boy Danny seemed like a really dumb idea. At twenty-nine and counting, her biological clock was ticking. At the rate Vance Evans showed up in her life, her ovaries were going to be on borrowed time the next time he crossed her path. Besides, he’d already been the catalyst that caused her to toss her dre
am away with both hands once. She’d be a fool to sit around and wait for him to do it again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Right after Vance ordered Pinks to make up a pitcher of Bloody Marys and before he joined everyone poolside for breakfast, he picked up his phone to call Piper. That’s when he realized he didn’t have her number.

  How the hell is that even possible?

  He’d been with women less than five minutes and gotten their damn number. How could he have spent hours with Piper and not have asked for hers? He shook his head as he scrolled through his contacts. He was slipping, right when it started to count.

  He texted Annabelle—being as she was Piper’s “new best friend”—and kept it short and sweet.

  “Need Piper’s number.”

  He added a thanks hoping to fend off any curious phone calls. He just wanted her to text him back, plain and simple.

  Of course, he didn’t manage to get out his door before the phone rang. “Goddamn it! All I want is the woman’s—” Oh. Duncan. Vance picked up. “This better be you,” he said.

  “It’s me,” came Duncan’s voice. “Annabelle is texting the number. But I’ve got big trouble that needs handling and you're the man for the job.”

  After Vance agreed to handle Duncan’s big trouble, he looked for Annabelle’s text. Piper’s number was there, thank God. He quickly stored it and then pressed the number and waited while her phone rang and rang. Eventually her sweet voice sang in his ear asking him to leave a message and wishing him a pleasant day in the prettiest southern accent he could imagine.

  He cleared his throat. “Piper, it’s Vance. I—uh, am calling to apologize for last night and I sure wouldn't mind the opportunity to do it in person. Give me a call, please. I'll be waiting to hear from you.” He disconnected and noted the time.

  His father, Genevra, the Big Em, and the rest of the merry misfits watched him expectantly as he strode around the pool and approached the umbrella-covered breakfast table. Lolly was the one to voice the question that was so obviously on everyone's mind.