Seeing is Believing (Cuttersville #3)(26)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Brady snorted. “Yep. The kid’s a Stritmeyer despite her last name,” he murmured. She had the no-nonsense tone of Brady’s grandmother and the looks of Shelby, particularly the crazy hair.

“I’m sorry. I saw a spider.” Piper pulled Lilly into a hug.

“Who are you?” Lilly asked, eyeing him like she knew without a shadow of a doubt his intentions towards her babysitter were not pure.

“This is your cousin Brady,” Piper said in a high-pitched voice he’d never heard her use. “He’s visiting from Chicago. You remember Brady.”

Brady had to say that he wouldn’t recognize this kid on the street if she tripped him. She’d grown quite a bit since he’d seen her two, maybe three, years ago.

Lilly seemed to agree. “I don’t remember him. But my mom talks about him all the time.” Then she seemed done with the conversation and circled back to her original irritation. “I totally thought you got killed.”

Little bloodthirsty, this one.

Piper pulled Lilly into a hug, kissing the top of her tousled head. “Nobody got killed or is ever going to get killed.”

“Lots of people get killed. My mama said that the girl who lived here, like, five million years ago killed her boyfriend. She beat the crap out of him.”

Really? Brady wanted to reach out and hold Piper’s hand. He was fairly certain she was the one who needed comforting at the moment, not Shelby’s brazen offspring. Brady had a feeling he had sounded a lot like Lilly at eight, and he felt sorry for his stepmother. She’d had her hands full with him. Piper, on the other hand, had been a sweet kid. Everyone had said that. Never a cause for trouble.

She seemed to know how to handle Lilly. Instead of letting the conversation about beating the crap out of people continue, she shut it down with a few gentle but firm words.

Piper frowned at Lilly. “I happen to know for a fact that your father does not want you saying that particular word. I’ve heard him reprimand you for it, so I suggest you rethink your vocabulary.”

“What? ‘Crap’?” Lilly asked as she moved into the kitchen away from Piper, studiously checking out the open wine bottle and their two glasses on the counter. “Mommy says that all the time.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Piper gave him a pointed look. “Does she, Brady?”

He just grinned at her, unwilling to get sucked into her obvious lie. “So you’re Lilly, huh?” he asked his cousin, reaching out and ruffling her enormous and snarled hair. “Did anyone ever tell you you look just like your sister?”

Lilly giggled, pushing her loose front tooth back and forth with her tongue. “Duh. We’re twins.”

“How do you know?”

That stymied Lilly for a second. Piper rolled her eyes at Brady, but she looked amused.

“Because we have the same birthday. And Emily’s face looks just like mine.”

“Maybe Emily isn’t real. Maybe she’s just your shadow. Or your reflection. Or maybe you’re the reflection.”

“You’re nuts,” was Lilly’s opinion. “There’s pictures of us in the hospital together when we were born.”

“Photoshop.”

Lilly made a sound of delighted exasperation.

Piper looked like she was fighting a laugh, which pleased him. Seeing her scared had done terrible things to his gut. He much preferred her smile.

“I’m going upstairs to let your very real twin know that I am most certainly not dead. I’ll let you two sort this out, but when I come back down, it’s time for bed, Miss Lilly Macnamara. And you, Mr. Stritmeyer.” She gave him her best teacher’s look. “You need to stop filling this girl’s head with nonsense or she’ll never be able to sleep.”

But Brady looked unrepentant. With the corner of his mouth turning up in a slow, sexy smile, Brady scratched his nails lightly across his chest. Piper felt that deep ache pulsing between her thighs again and she crossed her ankles. He was so damn charming. Lilly had been suspicious of him initially, but five minutes later she was already warming up to him. Piper knew how the girl felt. She had been bedazzled by Brady when she was Lilly’s age.

Maybe even still was.

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”

She knew that quote. Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka had said it. For some reason, it tripped a switch inside her, one that caused her desire to burn even brighter. She had loved that movie when she was a kid, had desperately wanted to be Violet Beauregarde—well, before she blew up like a blueberry anyway. She had wanted her confidence, her smile. Her hair.

If the girls were in bed, would she and Brady have a repeat of the night before? It wasn’t appropriate. At all. She knew that. She needed to resist. Or discourage. Or not throw herself at him. But it was going to be hard given how unnerved she’d felt when something or someone had yanked her hair so hard she’d had tears spring up in her eyes. What she really wanted was to feel Brady’s arms around her again.

She took a deep breath and gathered her resolve. “When you buy a chocolate factory, let me know. Otherwise, it’s bedtime for the twins.”

Brady laughed. “She’s a tough one,” he told Lilly.

“Nah,” was Lilly’s opinion. “Piper is the best babysitter on the planet.”

Kids had always liked her. Piper smiled, genuinely touched. “Thanks.”

“I babysat Piper once when she wasn’t much older than you,” Brady told her.

“Really? You must be old.”

Too old for her. That was what Piper needed to remember. She needed to repeat to herself ten times in a row that a man like Brady, who dated sophisticated city women, was not going to be interested in a small-town girl like her, who had nothing of interest to say to the living or the dead.

But that wasn’t exactly what she was thinking as she went up the narrow wood steps to the second floor of the creaky old Victorian house.

What she was thinking was that she wanted to indulge in a little nonsense herself. The naked kind. Again and again.

Emily was standing at the top of the stairs, looking a lot more terrified than her sister had. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, honey. Everything is fine.” Piper swept her into a hug, enjoying the tight grip of Emily’s warm arms around her middle. Family meant the world to her, even convoluted relations like these girls. “Your cousin Brady is here for a visit. It was a surprise for your mom and dad, only Brady didn’t count on the surprise being that your parents aren’t home.”