of her, boxing her in. “Sure. But how about boyfriend Harley? Do you like that guy?”
Her eyes flamed, telling him just how much she liked that guy. She glanced over his shoulder and sat up straighter, schooling her expression just as Doris walked up to them, smiling warmly.
“Hi, Doris. Do you ladies need refills?” he asked.
“Oh no, sweetheart.” Doris had short, layered white hair, pale skin that looked soft as butter, and naturally pink cheeks—probably from smiling so often. She patted his arm and said, “I just wanted to say thank you to Piper for helping me with my roof last week.” She turned kind eyes to Piper. “I meant to make you my special raspberry brownies this past weekend, but I got a little busy.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Piper said. “It was my pleasure.”
Doris patted Harley’s arm again and said, “Isn’t she just the sweetest little thing?”
Piper arched her brow, as if she found Doris’s use of sweetest funny.
“She won’t take money from me,” Doris explained. “But she loves my raspberry brownies.”
“It’s not a big deal, really,” Piper said. “You don’t need to make me anything.”
“The way you help people is a very big deal. My Rodney used to say there weren’t enough Piper Daltons in the world. It’s a wonder you can make a living the way you help folks like me.”
Harley recognized the struggle on Piper’s face. Taking compliments was not her strong suit, but it only endeared her to him even more. Her generosity knew no limits, and he didn’t think it ever had.
“At least you didn’t fall and hurt yourself when you were working at my house,” Doris said. “Poor Harley was fixing a flooding toilet in the ladies’ room for our knitting group—you know how Martha is when she drinks iced tea—and look what happened to him. I felt so guilty the whole way to the hospital.”
“That’s funny,” Piper said. “He told me he hurt his ankle wrestling a bear.”
“Oh, goodness. Harley, I’m sorry to have outed you for embellishing,” Doris said.
Piper smirked. “Don’t worry. I’ll never let him live this down. It was nice of you to take him to the hospital.”
“Of course! I would have waited to drive him home, but when he was in with the doctor, I called Debra to let her know he’d been hurt and she insisted that you would want to pick him up.”
Piper looked curiously at Harley.
“Don’t look at me. I’m sure she just didn’t want to keep Doris from her knitting club.”
“Your mother is such a doll, Harley. Well, I’d better get back to the girls.” Doris looked at Piper and said, “Maybe you can share the brownies with your new beau.”
Piper’s mouth dropped open as Doris walked away. “I’m going to kill my mother for gossiping about us.”
“Maybe I should thank her,” he said as Jasper returned with her wings and set them on the bar.
“Who are we thanking?” Jasper asked.
“Nobody.” Piper snagged a wing and took a big bite.
Jasper looked at Harley and said, “Right. Anyway, I saw you guys on the kiss cam. It looked like you had a great time at the game, but you know you were supposed to kiss, right?”
“I’ve endured two days of harassment from the guys at work about that.” Piper pointed her wing at Jasper and said, “I don’t do nerd-reel kisses.”
“Too bad for Harley,” Jasper said as he walked away.
Harley was still stuck on Piper killing her mother. “You told your mom about us?”
She set the chicken bone on her plate and licked her fingers, her gorgeous green eyes narrowing again. “What do you think?”
That I love watching you lick your fingers. “I wish I could say I thought you told her, but I don’t. So why are you going to kill your mother?”
She chomped on another wing, then pushed the plate toward him. “Want one?”
“What I want is a straight answer.” He couldn’t hide his amusement at her eye roll that followed his comment. “Pipe, you know everyone who was watching the game saw us on the kiss cam, and maybe we weren’t kissing, but if your mom is telling people we’re going out, then the whole town probably knows. You’re going to have to pull up your sexy-as-sin big-girl thong and deal with it.”
“Let’s leave my thong out of this.” She finished the wing and sucked her fingers clean again. “Stop looking at me like that.”
Was it crazy that he loved the fact that she didn’t eat daintily? “Get used to