Piper studied the restaurant’s double kitchen doors as if they led to the bowels of hell. And they may well, since she’d agreed to work for the devil himself. She blasted another glare down the short corridor to West’s office and showed heroic restraint by not marching back to lodge her boot right where it would do permanent damage.
“Piper?”
She turned to see her sister coming out of the restaurant’s staff entrance, sagging under a huge tray of dirty dishes, with wisps of long brown hair floating around her face.
“Ohmigod, it really is you. You came!”
“I told you I’d sort something out.” Piper hurried toward her.
“I didn’t think you’d ever come back after, well—” Shaye’s voice trailed off to a whisper and her flush deepened. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Let me get those.” She avoided her sister’s earnest green eyes and hauled the heavy tray out of Shaye’s hands. “I’m gonna be stacking them from now on.”
“What? Why? Ford said you were taking over the dive tours for Ben.”
“Still faster than the speed of light, huh?”
“What is?”
“Gossip.” Piper chuckled and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’m the new kitchen hand. It’s one of West’s conditions for skippering Ben’s boat.” She cocked her hip and prepared to bump the swing doors.
The door jerked open before she made contact. Bill Westlake scowled, his striped chef’s cap askew and a spatula tucked into the band of his apron like a gunslinger’s .44. “Listen you two, the hallway ain’t a place for chit-chat when my meals are getting cold. Shaye, run to table five. Piper, get your skinny backside in here, the pots won’t scrub themselves.” He disappeared back into the kitchen.
“He’s still a grumpy old fella but his bark’s worse than his bite.” Shaye retied her ponytail with deft movements. “I’d better get back to work.”
“Yeah. Buy you a beer later?”
“Long as it isn’t that imported rubbish.”
Piper choked back a laugh. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
“One more thing.” Shaye frowned. “What were the other conditions West had for helping us?”
Something in her sister’s tone made Piper squirm. “He didn’t say. But I imagine cleaning the toilets will soon be added to my list of duties.”
“Oh. Is that all?” Shaye sent her an astute look. “Well, thanks. I know being here isn’t easy.”
Piper nodded and nudged the doors open, her stomach once again tangling into snarls.
No one here knew what had happened between her and West just days before her father drowned, did they?
YOU ARE READING
In Too Deep
RomancePiper Harland, a police diver, returns to a remote New Zealand island and must work alongside her first love, Ryan ‘West’ Westlake, the man she blames for her father’s death. Saying goodbye for the second time might just destroy them both.
