Page 7 of Deserving Cora
Everyone except for Cora, apparently.
Pipe looked down and caught her eye, before she turned her attention to the sidewalk in front of her again. He had a feeling she was working herself up to say something to him, and he wasn’t wrong. She began to speak moments later. Fast and staccato, like if she didn’t get out what she wanted to say right that second, she’d chicken out and not say anything at all.
“I came tonight to bid on you andonlyyou. I looked you up online. You and your friends. I know you co-own The Refuge out in New Mexico. That you guys were special forces. I know you were in the SAS, and I even saw the news articles about Alaska Stein, Jasna McClure, and Reese Woodall, about what each of them went through. I saved up every penny I could to win that bid.”
“Then bitch-face won,” Pipe said in a flat tone, a little leery that she seemed to know so much about him and his friends.
A snort escaped Cora. “Yeah. She’s hated me since high school. Would do anything to make my life miserable.”
“Why?”
“Why does she hate me? Um…because she’s a bitch?” Cora said with a shrug.
“No, don’t give a fuck about her. Whyme?”
Cora stopped walking, and Pipe turned to look at her. She took a deep breath and said, “I need your help.”
“With what?” Pipe asked.
Instead of answering, Cora sighed and looked past him. “Shoot. This isn’t going how I thought it would.”
His lips twitched. “How’d you think it would go?”
“You’re full of questions,” she accused.
Pipe shrugged and realized he was actually enjoying himself. He hadn’t thought anything about this trip would be fun, but meeting this woman was more enjoyable than anything else had been in a long time. She was so unusual, and with every word, he was more and more intrigued. “Yup. I am. But I’m not the one who was willing to spend five thousand bucks to go to dinner with me just to ask for help.”
“Six,” she muttered.
“Pardon?”
“I had six thousand dollars,” she admitted, looking him in the eye. “And if I could’ve come up with more, I would’ve spent that too.”
“What’s so important that you were willing to spend so much?” Pipe asked.
“Not what. Who,” Cora corrected.
Surprisingly, disappointment hit Pipe. The only person he could imagine Cora spending that much money on was someone she loved. “Right,” he said. “I’m thinking we need to have this conversation somewhere else, not in the middle of the sidewalk in the dark.”
As if she could read his mind, tell that he’d mentally taken a step back from her, Cora reached out and put her hand on his arm. “It’s not like that,” she insisted.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Her name is Lara Osler. She’s my best friend. The only person in the world I trust with my whole heart. She’s in trouble and no one will listen to me. No one believes me. Not her parents, not the cops. They all think I’m crazy, that I’m just upset because she’s left town and I don’t have her around to mooch off anymore. Not that I would do that. Mooch off her, I mean. She’s helped me in the past, I won’t deny that, but she’s literally the only person in the world who gives a damn about me, and I refuse to believe she up and left without a word.”
The desperation and honesty in her tone made Pipe tense. She was genuinely worried about her friend and believed she was in danger. Anxious enough to go out of her comfort zone to attend a fancy bachelor auction, just to talk to him. The least he could do was give her a moment of his time. But not here. He didn’t like the dark, especially in a city he didn’t know.
“Come on,” he said, putting his hand at the small of her back and urging her to start walking again.
She did so without complaint, even though her brow was furrowed.
They walked for a few blocks until Pipe saw what he was looking for. When she tried to head toward the entrance to the Metro, he steered her to the left instead.
“Pipe?”
He couldn’t help but smile. He liked that she called him that. Brick and the others might prefer their women to use their given names, but he’d never felt like a “Bryson.” He’d been Pipe for as long as he could remember; it felt right for her to call him by his nickname.
“It’s not The Inn at Little Washington, but with the way we’re dressed, it’s probably a bit more appropriate,” he said, while nodding at the twenty-four-hour diner on the corner.
