I also knew that Piper would knock on the door before anyone else wanting all the details of their presence and the confrontation. I was amazed it took her until Knox and Jed had made me come three times before she showed up. I was even dressed and twisting my hair back up into a bun when she not only pounded on the door, but shouted as well. I smiled to myself as I made my way down the stairs. My closest friend was a wild woman, my complete antithesis. She spoke out of turn and often without thinking first. She was bold and brash and didn’t hesitate to threaten people with her gun. Fortunately, Spur and Lane had taken it from her, but just the mention of her using it—not actually waving it about—gave the general population of Slate Springs pause.
As I came down the stairs I heard her swearing at her brothers. “Her stepsisters are in town and no one came to tell me? I had to learn from Rob at the bank. I ran out of there as if I’d robbed the place.”
“Where’s my niece? Did you leave her on the counter at the bank?”
She stood, hands on hips, facing down Knox.
“Of course not. She’s napping.”
“You can’t come here unless you bring her.” I knew how much my men loved their little niece and it thrilled me to know I’d be able to give them a baby of their own to love.
“Stop changing the topic.”
“She would have come and found you,” he advised. “However, she wasn’t feeling well.”
“Yes, I heard about how she welcomed them to town,” she said rather gleefully. “I knew she didn’t like them very much, but the sight of them made her sick?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out,” Jed said, pointing up the stairs.
I came down the rest of the way and watched my friend’s face switch from a scowl to deep study. “You look very satisfied.” She held up her hand, then glanced between her brothers, her scowl back in place. “I told you I don’t want to hear the intimate details of your marriage.”
It seemed I hadn’t tidied my hair enough to make it look as if I hadn’t just been well fucked. Maybe it was the flush to my cheeks I’d seen in the mirror. Or the smile I just couldn’t wipe away.
Knox crossed his arms over his chest. “Just as we don’t want to hear anything about yours. Remember, we can still kill your husbands.” He cracked his knuckles. “Anytime.”
The three of them could argue for hours, so I decided to end it. “What they are trying to say is that I’m pregnant.”
Piper’s mouth fell open and she stared at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“If we’d known getting you pregnant would make Piper speechless, we would have done it sooner. Does this mean you’ll be mute for the next nine months or so?” Jed asked his sister.
Piper shook her head, gave her brother a dark look, then smiled at me. “This is going to be great.”
She gave me a quick, and surprising, hug.
“You don’t need a gun when you can vomit all over the people you dislike.”
I laughed then as she grabbed my wrist and tugged me out onto the small front porch. I glanced over my shoulder at my men.
“Don’t jostle her,” Jed warned.
“She’s having a baby, not carrying a crate of TNT,” Piper countered. “Sit. Tell me everything.”
She sat on the rocking chair beside mine and leaned in, eager to hear every detail.
“Well, I was sick yesterday and then again today. I’m—”
Piper waved her hand through the air. “Not about the baby. While that’s big news, we have to wait nine months. There’s plenty of time to discuss morning sickness and swollen ankles. I want to hear about your evil stepsisters.”
At least she wasn’t coddling me. She had Lillian only a few months ago so she knew quite recently what it was like to be pregnant. I knew how Spur and Lane doted on her and could only imagine how they’d behaved.
I told her of their arrival in town, leaving out what I’d been doing with Knox and Jed in the mine office when we heard. I told her of Victoria’s death and their reason for coming to town. All of it.
“And they want you to support them?” She shook her head. “The gall. I say we threaten to shoot them if they don’t leave town.”
“Piper,” Knox warned. They might be giving us time alone on the porch, but they weren’t going far and heard it all.