Page 91 of Tragic (Lark Cove 3)

When my shoulders finally relaxed, I stared at the place where Kaine had been sitting. Would he explain? Would I finally understand what haunted him so deeply?

I guess we’ll see. When he came back from his cabin, I’d do my best to shove my anger and frustration aside and listen to his story. When he came back from his cabin—

My stomach plummeted.

“Oh, shit!” I leaped out of my chair, racing across the room. I reached the door just as a very large, very male, very angry fist pounded on it from the other side.

I opened it, this time expecting Kaine’s face.

He had his own fury going. “What the fuck happened to my house?”

“Yeah, about that.” I winced. “I kind of, um, accidentally . . . set it on fire.”

“Let me get this straight. The morning after I left, you came over to my house and saw I was gone. So you went to the shop, locked it up for me, then came home. You waited a week for me to come back, and when I didn’t, you came back to the cabin. And cleaned?”

Standing on the other side of the island in her kitchen, Piper shrugged. “It was dirty. And I was mad at you.”

“So you cleaned and did my laundry?”

Her cheeks got red as she muttered, “Tried to do your laundry.”

“Even though you were mad at me.”

“Yes, I was. Am,” she corrected quickly. “I decided to kill you with kindness, or whatever that saying is. And your garbage was starting to grow creatures. I didn’t want one of them to sneak over and smother me in my sleep.”

This woman. She never stopped surprising me.

While I was gone, she’d gone over to do her revenge cleaning. She unloaded my dishwasher, took out the garbage and found a load of laundry in my washer that had been sitting wet for a week. So she rewashed the clothes and put them in the dryer.

Except she didn’t know that the sensor in my dryer was broken. She didn’t know that I wasn’t great about cleaning out the lint trap.

Piper turned on the dryer, then came home, assuming it would stop on its own.

It stopped all right. After catching fire.

The fire destroyed my laundry room and about half of my living room. Luckily, she had her windows open, and when she smelled smoke, she called the fire department. They were able to save the house but there was a lot of work to be done to get it back to rights.

“I guess this makes us even for the fight,” I teased.

“Even?” she gaped. “No way.”

“You set my house on fire.”

She raised her chin. “You accused me of getting pregnant on purpose.”

Fuck. “Okay. Not even.”

Her shoulders fell. “I really am sorry about the fire.”

“It’s only a house. I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”

If she hadn’t noticed the smoke, it could have started a forest fire. Something of that magnitude would have consumed both our homes. The idea of her and our baby trapped here in a blaze made my stomach churn.

But she was okay. My house could be repaired. And to be honest, I wasn’t even that mad.

“My contractor is just finishing up a job,” she said. “Then he promised to get his crew up here to fix it. He said it could be as soon as next week.”

I nodded. “Sounds good. I’m sure the motel has a room open.”