10. Cooper
CHAPTER TEN
cooper
When she opens the door, he’s standing right outside of it like a fucking creeper.
Smooth, man. Real smooth.
“Done working?” he asks casually, grasping for something, anything to say.
She shrugs. “I thought I heard you pacing out here.”
“I wasn’t pacing.”
She arches her brow.
Shit. Was I pacing? “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You didn’t.” She licks her lips and glances furtively up from beneath hooded brows. It’s a more vulnerable glance than he’s used to getting from her. “So, um, what were you pacing about?”
“Oh, just…”
He’s got nothing. Unless of course he tells her the truth, which is that he can still feel her ass cheeks pressed up against him. Can still sense her auburn hair tickling at his cheeks. Can still hear her intoxicating laughter on the breeze. That every time he closes his eyes, he sees her sitting across from him in that bikini with her lips wrapped tight around her straw. Actually, he could really use a straw to grasp at right about now. Anything except the confession hovering at the tip of his tongue—that he was drawn to this spot like a moth to a flame, ready to get burned.
He clears his throat.
“Dinner.”
“Dinner?” She wrinkles her nose. “It’s only four thirty.”
Damn. Is it really? He feels as if he’s been trapped in this bungalow for hours. “I’m starving. Do you mind eating early?”
“No.”
She glances to the side and stares at something deep within her room. The way she casually bites her lower lip leaves him lightheaded from the blood rush.
“I guess I could—”
“I was going to call—”
They both stop.
A slightly horrified expression takes over her face as she rushes to say, “You go. And don’t give me any crap about ladies first. If I wanted to go first, I would, and I wouldn’t need your permission to do it.”
“I wouldn’t dare, Cuj.” A smile tugs at his lips. “All I was going to ask is if you wanted me to order you some room service. I’m about to call something in.”
“Room service.”
He eyes her uncertainly. “Yes…?”
“ Room service ,” she repeats, louder this time, her eyes bugging just a little before she shakes it off. “Right. Of course. Sure, get me the shrimp salad I had the other day. Thanks.”
The door slams in his face.
He recoils as if she slapped him. The hell?
And then her fractured sentence registers. I guess I could—
Could what?
I guess I could eat. I guess I could have dinner. I guess I could stand here and look at you and talk as if I’m not affected at all.
That makes one of them.
Except he thinks about the way she briefly studied her room, the way her teeth worried over her lower lip, the way her cheeks turned a slight shade of pink. He assumed she was annoyed, but could she have actually been…embarrassed?
Shit.
He’s suddenly positive about what she was going to say. I guess I could go get dinner.
As in go somewhere.
As in leave this room.
Together.
Shiiiit.
Well, he dropped that fucking ball, didn’t he?
Cooper lifts his hand as if to knock, then lets it fall. He knows her well enough to know that the opportunity has passed. Whatever momentary breach in her defenses occurred, it’s done now. The mortar’s patched. The crack is filled. That ten-foot-thick stone wall stands solid once again.
An hour later, he calls out to let her know the food is there, then he returns to the deck where he left his camera perched on a mini-tripod. The sky is just beginning to pinken, and he’s itching to capture a sunset before he leaves. Dusk was always his mother’s favorite time of day because it was when the ranch finally loosened its hold on her husband. Cooper spent many an evening with her on that back porch, curled against her side in the swing his father had built, watching the sky turn gold, looking for a figure on the horizon while the scent of a hearty dinner wafted on the breeze like a lure. He spent even more evenings on the back of his horse, the glow from the kitchen spilling like a beacon into an ever-darkening night, riding toward home with an ache in his gut, following his nose.
But that was before she passed.
Before the house went dark.
“Can I join you?”
He fumbles with his camera, practically jumping out of his skin as he spins. His heart is a racehorse thundering around a track. “Yeah, yeah. Of course. Yeah.”
An amused smile overtakes her face. “You all right there, cowboy?”
Honestly, he’s not sure. The sight of her has struck him stupid. If he thought she was sexy in that ivory gown on the beach, or in his hat and little else, or in that barely-there bikini, he wasn’t prepared for this. Her face is freshly washed and clear of any makeup. Her hair is a mess bundled high atop her head in some sort of gravity-defying bun he has no idea how she secured. Glasses he had no clue she needed rest on her nose. Black leggings cover her down to her ankles and a downy pink sweatshirt hangs off her frame, two sizes too big. He can’t stop looking at the spot where it falls tantalizingly off her shoulder. He’s never been so turned on by six bare inches of skin. Freckles dance along her collarbone and all he wants to do is lick them.
This is Sam.
Not the vixen or the analyst or the actress.
It’s a glimpse at the real woman hiding underneath. A tease. And all it does is make him want to see how beautiful she looks when she comes completely undone.
“I’m good.” Cooper forces the words up his dry throat. They come out as little more than a deep, rough rumble. Sam’s eyes flutter for a moment. “I just didn’t expect you. I thought you had to work.”
“I’m taking a break.” She shrugs and settles down on a lounger with her dinner plate. “So, Cooper. Tell me. What’s the most unattractive thing about you?”
“Unattractive?” He sits across from her with a sly smile and grabs his own plate. “Why? Need a deterrent?”
She forks a cherry tomato and lobs it at his face. He catches it smoothly and pops it into his mouth with a wink. She rolls her eyes.
“Come on, just give me something. You pick your nose and eat it. You had an STD. You have explosive diarrhea every time you drunk order a three-bean burrito from the bodega down the block, but they taste so good and the alcohol strips away every ounce of your self-preservation that you keep doing it anyway.”
He arches a brow. “No to all of the above, though that last one sounded oddly specific, Cuj.”
“I’m talking hypothetically.”
Hypothetical my ass. “Sure you are.”
“There has to be something. Anything.”
“I…” He pauses to think and takes a bite of his fish. It’s good, but he can’t wait for a nice, juicy steak when he goes home. He was born and raised in cattle country. This seafood thing isn’t for him. “Oh, here’s something. I can’t sing for shit.”
She scrunches her face while she chews, then rocks her head from side to side as if weighing the offering. “It’s not quite explosive diarrhea level, but it’s a start. So, let’s go. Have at it.”
“I never said I’d demonstrate.”
“Seriously?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Come on. Turn me off, Cooper Kelley. I dare you.”
He offers her a flat stare. She pouts her lips in an innocent, pleading expression that’s annoyingly adorable. Those doe eyes blink up at him, once, twice. And, dammit. That’s all it takes. The Devil himself would sell his soul if she asked with that face.
He clears his throat.
The opening lines of “Friends in Low Places,” a classic and the first song that comes to mind, force their way up his throat. He cringes internally but keeps going at the sight of her widening smile. A twinkle lights her eyes. As soon as he makes it through the chorus, he stops and she launches into a slow clap.
He palms his face with a groan. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
“Fuck you,” she charges with a laugh. “That was endearing.”
“You need your ears checked.”
“Oh, I heard it. Very…dying mountain lion.”
“Shut up.”
“Beyoncé ain’t got nothing on you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waves her off. “Your turn.”
“No way. That didn’t count.”
“Like hell it didn’t count.”
“I want something embarrassing, like really, truly, down-to-your-core embarrassing. Yours was…eh. I’ve been to too many Korean Karaoke bars at two a.m. Half the people I know sound worse than you.”
A thought pops in.
He mentally shakes it off, but not quickly enough. She notices. Hunger fills her eyes like a wolf’s on the hunt.
“Spill.”
“Nah.”
“Come on.” She leans forward, holding his gaze. “You thought of something, I know you did. Lay it on me. It’s good. I can tell.”
“This will cost you.”
“How much?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“I’m a betting woman, Coop.”
“All right. I tell you this, and you’ll owe me one honest answer to whatever question I want to ask.”
“Done.”
Dammit. He was hoping it would take her longer to agree. This one is…bad. This one might actually turn her off for real.
Too late now.
“When I was a kid, I had a huge thing for Shania Twain.”
“Who didn’t? The woman is a goddess.”
“No, I mean a huge thing. Listened to her music. Saw all her videos. Probably would’ve died on the spot if I ever met her in person.” He lowers his voice and stares at Sam meaningfully. “Had a box of magazine cutouts under my bed, if you catch my drift.”
“I got you.” She snorts. “How is this embarrassing?”
“It’s not, except that, after spending the entirety of my teenage years fantasizing about the woman, I noticed a slight problem.”
“Problem?”
“ Problem. ” He swallows. I can’t believe I’m admitting this out loud. “Every time I hear her music I still, you know, down there…”
She furrows her brows, not understanding. Then her eyes widen. Her jaw drops elatedly. “You pop a woody?”
He winces and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I can’t hear ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ without getting a very slight but definitely still existent hard-on.”
“HA!”
He presses on, trying to explain. “It’s like Pavlov’s dogs. I’ve been conditioned. I can’t stop it.”
She falls back on the lounger giggling and kicks her feet up into the air. “Oh my god.”
“I know.”
“Oh my god.”
“I know.”
She whirls back up to a seated position with an evil gleam in her eye. “You do know you just handed me the key to your undoing, don’t you?”
“Great power comes with great responsibility.”
She hums the opening refrain of the song.
He glares at her. “Stop that.”
She keeps humming.
“Don’t start something you’re not prepared to finish, Cuj.”
That shuts her up, though the smile on her lips could still give the Cheshire cat a run for his money.
“Okay, okay. But that was so worth it. You definitely earned your one question. Shoot.”
“Eh, I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I’m going to hold on to that baby for a little while, dangle it over your head for a bit, hit you with it when you least expect it.”
“Don’t make me start singing again, cowboy.”
“You won’t.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because, Sam,” he answers honestly. She swallows at the sound of her name. “You do a good job of hiding it, but I know you well enough to know that you’re afraid of going there, a helluva lot more afraid than I am, which begs the question, what’s got you so interested in spilling secrets all of a sudden?”
She looks away.
Her jaw tightens.
He tilts his head to study her, aware he’s drawing close to the line and unable to stop himself from testing the limits. “What happened to rule four?”
“I don’t want your secrets, Cooper.” She meets his gaze head-on, not backing down. A stubborn curl purses her lips as she leans forward. “I want your red flags.”
Behind her, the sun starts to sink into the ocean, casting the sky in brilliant shades of orange and red. But it’s not romantic. It’s apocalyptic as the air between them turns taut, the conversation switching to dangerous territory as the oxygen is sucked from the sky. Tension radiates between them, a buildup they’ve both been trying to ignore.
He’s not so sure he wants to any longer.
“For a city girl like you? That’s easy. I live on a ranch in what you would call the middle of nowhere. The closest grocery store is an hour’s drive and if you want to eat at any restaurant other than a steak house you’ll practically need an airplane to do it. My idea of a fun night out is line dancing at the local dive, and come hell or high water I will spend every Saturday afternoon in the fall watching the Huskers kick some ass. I’ve broken girls’ hearts. I’ve broken some beds too. And I’ve never met a rule I didn’t know how to bend. But if none of that scares you, here’s the real kicker.”
He folds his hands between his legs and leans forward with his elbows on his knees so they’re nose to nose. She doesn’t back off. And damn if he doesn’t like that fire.
“Over the next three months, my love story with your sister is going to play out on national television. None of it’s real, but when has that ever mattered? And thanks to us both, it’s going to end with a proposal. So if we don’t want the entire country coming down on our heads, we’d best stick to the plan and keep our distance.”
He’s starting to wonder if he’s talking to her, or to himself, especially as his focus drops to her lips, his eyes zeroing in on those plush pink petals. They’re slightly parted and glistening with the barest hint of moisture, utterly ripe for the picking.
The ranch. Think about the ranch.
He swallows.
Think about the followers, and the money, and everything a season as the lead could bring.
But he can’t.
All he can think about are those lips and where exactly he wants them.
“But like I said,” Cooper murmurs, still transfixed. “Good decisions have never been my strong suit.”
“This is a bad idea,” she whispers, even as she leans the slightest bit closer.
“The best ones always are.”
Her golden eyes flare like the flash of fire on a cold, dry night, whispering of imminent danger. Too bad for him, his innate response has always been to find his truck and drive into the flames. The risk only makes the reward that much sweeter.
“Cooper.” Her gaze darts over his features as if searching for an escape hatch, a reason to turn away. Like an afterthought, she adds, “This makes no sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he agrees as a new thought enters his mind, a loophole in the plan. “But just because something’s fleeting doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Forever isn’t in the cards for us, but we still have right now. And I, for one, have never let worries about the rest of a cake keep me from enjoying my slice.”
“There’s just one problem with your analogy, cowboy.”
“What’s that?”
“This attraction between us doesn’t feel like a cake. It feels like a drug.” Her gaze drops to his shoulders, his arms, his legs. She looks at him the way he imagines a drunk at a bar looks at a beer growing warm on the counter, the mere act of being this close a battle of wills. “One hit might be all it takes.”
“Is that what you’re really afraid of, Cuj?” Is that how she sees love, like an all-consuming spiral to the bottom, a death trap? “Getting addicted?”
Her gaze flies back to meet his, lust and panic a heady mix. “Is that your question, Coop?”
“No.”
She sucks in a breath and lurches away, breaking the spell. “Then I guess we’ll never know.”
But he doesn’t need to hear it.
The answer is obvious. It’s the why that’s bugging him—and the what , and the who , and the how come . She’s too strong, too beautiful, and too young to be so jaded.
Slow and steady , he reminds himself as he watches her gather up the rest of her dinner. Slow and steady.
That’s how it goes with horses, and that’s how it goes with women too. Don’t push past their comfort levels. Don’t force it. Just take what they offer when they offer it and keep plowing ahead one little step at a time.
When she retreats back inside, he returns to his camera. The sun has almost disappeared beneath the horizon but it’s not gone yet, so he tests the light and snaps a couple of photographs. His mom would have loved it here, the vast, unimpeded sky so similar to the one at home, but the never-ending stretch of water reflecting it back so different from the silhouetted plains he’s used to.
She would have loved Sam, too.
The thought hits him like a punch, sucking the breath from his lungs. As soon as it lands, he knows it’s true. She would’ve loved Sam’s strength…would’ve especially loved her ability to get him by the balls. If there was one thing his mother always bemoaned, it was the sweet, eager-to-please girls he used to bring home.
This ranch will eat you alive if you let it , she used to tell him. Find someone who’ll give you a kick in the ass when you need it, not a cavity.
Remembering the way she gave his dad a good ass-kicking whenever he needed it brings a small smile to his lips. There were days when the man would rather face a bucking bronco than his own wife, but at the end of the night, they always found their way back to each other. He took it for granted as a boy. But now? Now he’d give anything for just one more day, one more hour, one more moment of rolling his eyes at their antics.
Maybe that’s why he’s still smiling when he wakes up the next day, why he keeps his boxers on for his morning swim, why he’s so eager to push Sam’s buttons.
He knows, without a doubt, she’ll push back.