Heiress for Hire (Cuttersville #2)(43)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Those big, chocolate-brown eyes stared into hers and Amanda’s heart expanded, filled, swelled to capacity, and burst into a million pieces.

"He more than likes you, sweetie, he loves you. And I love you too." It didn’t make sense, since Piper was just a scrappy little kid who had been mistreated, and Amanda was a jaded, selfish, rich girl, but she loved Piper. With everything in her.

And it was going to hurt like hell when she had to leave her.

"You do?"

Piper sounded so unsure, so disbelieving, that Amanda wrapped her arms around her and gave her a side-splitting hug. "Yep. Sure do. And I haven’t loved a lot of people in my life, so you’re sort of like in an exclusive club. Membership privileges include hugs whenever you want and the use of my makeup and jewelry."

She released Piper. "Now let’s go meet that woman in the mirror."

It was a ploy to distract Piper and prevent herself from bursting into tears in front of the kid.

But Amanda didn’t expect Piper to gasp when she looked into the mirror.

"She’s beautiful… even with the tears running down her face." Piper’s voice was soft, her finger reaching out for the mirror.

Then Piper stopped, even as a chill ran through Amanda. She hadn’t really expected Piper to see anything in the mirror. Even though she’d heard the crying, seen the pennies, it hadn’t felt real. She hadn’t been able to connect it with a person. She didn’t have to look into someone else’s eyes, see their pain.

Piper was. She tipped back her baseball hat. Then she finally just lifted it off as she studied the mirror and then turned to Amanda. Then to the mirror, then back again, eyes wide, hand trembling, mouth open.

"She looks just like you."

"What do you mean?" Amanda’s heart was pounding and she was a little freaked out, if anyone cared.

"Her hair is twisted up…" Piper’s hands spun around the crown of her own head. "And her face is rounder, but she looks like you, Amanda."

Amanda didn’t see anything but that same cloudy film that al-ways covered the mirror. Piper was too short to reflect into the mirror, and Amanda was standing to the left. Even if Piper did see her reflection, obviously she would look identical to the way she did standing there.

"Is she saying anything?" Not that Amanda believed there was really a woman in that mirror. Not much, anyway.

"She’s asking if we’ve seen him. If he’s back yet."

A shiver crawled up Amanda’s spine at the same time impatience slammed into her. Was she still whining about that man? They’d talked about this before. Surely if she just thought about it, she’d see no man was worth an entire one hundred years of tears. Her skin must be an itchy mess.

"You ladies coming down?" Danny called from the hallway. "Pizza will be here in five minutes."

"Pizza!" Piper turned and streaked past Amanda to Danny, like she hadn’t just stood as interpreter to the dead.

Danny stood in the doorway, looking big and solid and sturdy. Like a marble statue. No, not marble, because there was never anything cold about Danny. He was like a tree, a nice towering oak.

"You okay?" he asked.

Was she okay? She was broke, only two weeks from eviction from this house, estranged from her father, and she had given up her apartment in Chicago. She had no life skills, no financial acumen, no job experience, and a temporary position that was ending in three weeks.

Then there was the hawk attack, the carnal temptation she had just barely managed to resist in a chicken coop, of all places, and a dead woman with a broken heart—who looked like her—wailing in the spare bedroom.

"I’m fine." And she was. She felt real. Honest. And even if it was temporary, she felt like she mattered to Piper and Danny.

Like she was important. To someone. To herself. Even if her nails looked like hell.

"Why did you and Shelby get divorced?" Amanda asked.

Danny shifted a little in the wicker chair clustered around a table on Amanda’s front porch. He hated wicker. It stuck to his ass and his back and made creaking sounds whenever he moved.

Amanda didn’t seem to mind wicker. She was curled up in her chair, knees under her chin. She’d eaten three pieces of pizza to his six, and they had been sitting silently together, watching Piper play in the front yard with the dog.

"I know it’s none of my business, but I’m sorry. I’m nosy. I want to know."

There were no easy answers to hard questions. It couldn’t all be boiled down tidily into something like infidelity or money troubles or alcoholism. "We got married young. Sometimes these things don’t work out."

He took a swallow of his ice tea, catching an ice cube and crunching it with his teeth.

"That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me?"

"It’s complicated. I love Shelby and I always will. We’ve got a history. But that doesn’t mean we ever should have been married."

Though he’d been happy enough. It wasn’t any wild love affair or anything, but they hadn’t argued. They’d respected each other. But after Shelby’s miscarriage and a few years of growing up, they had looked at each other and seen that they were friends, not lovers. Nothing more than that.

But that hadn’t stopped him from asking her back. He wanted a family that bad.

"She was pregnant, wasn’t she?"

He just nodded, staring at Piper as she rolled in the grass, giggling when Baby jumped on her chest. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Amanda why she cared when she spoke again.

"Does it bother you that she’s with Boston now? That she might someday have his child?"

"Nope. I’d be happy for her." And he would. He wanted Shelby to have the joy he felt when he looked at Piper. He wanted the wrong he’d done to be righted.

"You’re something else, you know that?" Amanda shook her head, looking confused. "I don’t understand how she could have left you… she did leave you, didn’t she? You wouldn’t have left her."

"True enough."

"And you won’t say anything bad about her—you won’t tell me what happened between you."

He looked over at her. She looked upset, her narrow chin digging into the flesh on the back of her hand. "There are some things, between a man and his wife, that are sacred, whether we’re still married or not. I respect Shelby too much to gossip about her."

Her head tilted toward him, her full pouty lips being pushed out by her hand. "You’re a good man, Danny Tucker. Why couldn’t I have met you someplace without chickens?"

He shrugged. "Because then I wouldn’t be the same man. I’d be someone else." And if she had grown up in Cuttersville, she wouldn’t be the same woman.