16. Cooper
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
cooper
“Give me the number, Nina.”
It’s been five days since the Maldives. And for five days, the producer’s answer has been the same. “It’s not mine to give.”
“Nina—”
“I’ve got an expression for you, Cooper. Perfect for a cowboy. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink. You get me?”
“Give me the number.”
“She doesn’t want you to go after her, and it won’t work anyway. Trust me. I’ve had more experience reading people than you can even imagine and I know how she works. You’ve got to let her come to you.”
“The hell I do.”
“Then call me the Devil, because you aren’t getting through me.”
“Nina—”
“Goodbye, Cooper.”
“Nina!”
Click.
“Fuck!”
He slams the satellite phone into the dirt and falls back on the grass, covering his face with his hat so the others around camp won’t see him fume. They’re settling in for another night on the open plains. But even fresh air, starry skies, and vast untapped nature isn’t enough to appease him right now.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.
It’s been five days since he woke up alone in that bungalow and he’s going out of his goddamn mind. After the night they had, after the week they shared, how could she just up and leave as if it were nothing? And he knew she would. He knew it. The second he woke up alone, he already sensed it was too late. But he still tried. He threw some pants on and tore out of the bungalow, only to be met by Nina, sitting on the edge of the dock, kicking her feet with a coffee cup in hand, patiently waiting to burst his bubble.
“She’s gone,” the producer said, her tone almost bored. “Took an airport transfer about an hour ago. Probably switched herself to an earlier flight. You’re too late.”
“The hell I am.”
She took a sip of coffee as he charged closer, not at all moved. “It won’t work, cowboy.”
“I have to try.”
“I know.” Nina shrugged. “Because you’re you. The six-pack savior. The hero. But she isn’t a damsel in distress, Cooper. You try to save her and she’ll just keep running. You already laid the groundwork. Now you need to give Sam the space to save herself.”
He stopped short. “You know?”
“I’ve known the whole time. It was plain on her face. Just like the way you feel is plain on yours.”
“Yeah? And how’s that?”
“You love her.”
He reared back. “It’s been five days, Nina.”
“So? You’ve spent more time together in those five days than most of the couples do on my show.”
“Ninety-five percent of the couples on your show break up.”
“Five percent don’t.” Nina grinned. “Which group do you think you belong to, Cooper?”
He ignored her. “I need her number, Nina. I need to speak to her.”
“It’s not mine to give. You just spent five days sharing a suite, and it looks like you might’ve shared a bit more than that. If she wanted you to have her number, she would have given it to you. But don’t worry, cowboy. I’ve got a plan.”
Unsurprisingly, her plan did little to comfort him. He wasted a few more minutes talking in circles with the producer before running to the front desk to schedule a new transfer. Then he spent the hours before his flight canvasing the airport, waiting at the gate of every outbound plane to the United States, and searching the crowds.
He found nothing.
She had straight-up disappeared.
Then he spent his entire thirty travel hours back to Nebraska trying to formulate a plan of his own.
Switch his flight to New York and hunt her down? It was a city of eight million people and he had no idea where she lived.
Fly to Georgia and confess to Emily? He knew the name of her mother’s flower shop. He could find someone in their family. But Sam would probably cut his balls off for trying, and breaking her trust didn’t seem like the right way into her stubborn heart.
Sit around and wait as Nina suggested? He’d rather take a bullet to the chest. It would hurt less.
Round and round his mind spun, until he was right back where he started. The moment his feet touched American soil, he opened his phone and called the producer.
“Give me her number, Nina.”
“Like I said before, Cooper. It’s not mine to give.”
He was ready to turn around and book a flight to New York right then and there, screw the odds, but then he called the ranch to check in. The housekeeper answered. Even before she spoke, he knew he was in deep shit. And everything she said just confirmed it. His father had started the roundup a week sooner than planned. Signs pointed toward an early winter so they needed to move the cattle to their cold-weather pastures, cull the herd, wean the calves, and prepare the ranch for snow.
Or so his father said.
A small part of Cooper couldn’t help but wonder if the man had done it as punishment, a way for him to prove he’d been right that his son never should have left on some Hollywood adventure in the first place, not when he was needed at home. And he was needed. Corralling the cattle was an all-hands-on-deck situation. No matter how much he wanted to chase after Sam, he couldn’t. The ranch came first—a lesson drilled in since birth.
So Cooper went home.
He found his horse and rode like a man possessed to meet up with his father, just to be greeted with a disappointed scowl. “You’re late.”
“You’re early.”
“I’m exactly on time, son. The ranch waits for no one. A lesson you’d do well to remember.”
And that was it. They’ve been out here together for three days, and his father hasn’t asked a single word about the show. No one has except Wesley, his best friend and the son of his father’s foreman. They grew up together, as close as brothers. On more than one occasion he wished they were brothers, if it meant Boone could have been his father too. The first time he roped a calf, the foreman was the one to offer a proud slap on the back. His own father just told him, Again . That damn word. Again. Again. Even the thought of it makes Cooper writhe.
“Still moping?”
He doesn’t shift his hat from where it covers his face. “Shut up, Wes.”
“You gotta find this girl, Coop.”
“I’m trying.”
“I want to thank her.”
“For making me a miserable son of a bitch?”
“Nah.”
Cooper’s hat is toed off by a familiar boot. He squints against the dying sun and looks up at the shit-eating grin beaming down at him. Wes’s brown hair is a sweaty mop on his head, his tan cheeks are caked in dirt, and he smells to high hell after twelve hours on horseback, yet his brown eyes twinkle.
Bastard.
Wes chuckles softly and lands beside him on the grass with a thud . “For finally giving me a chance to get laid.”
“Yeah?” Cooper snorts and eases to a seated position as he slides his hat back into place. “How’s that?”
“With you taken—”
Heat spikes down his sternum. “I’m not taken.”
Wes shoots him a knowing grin.
“It’s not like that,” he explains with a scowl. Wes’s grin deepens. “It’s not. We just have unfinished business.”
“Unfinished business like getting hitched and having kids?”
Cooper elbows him in the gut. Wes anticipates the move and partially blocks the blow with his arm. His laughter half shifts to a groan.
“I’m just saying—”
“Well, don’t.”
“You’ve got that look, Coop.”
“What look?”
“That look Beau Hardey had before he got down on one knee at graduation. The one Caleb Saunders had that night we all snuck down to the lake. Three months later, he and Haddie eloped. Six months after that he was a dad, if you catch my drift. It’s the look of a man with a noose around his neck, but he likes it so much he tightens the rope all by his goddamn self. I never thought I’d see that look on your face, Coop, but it’s there, plain as day, whether you want it to be or not.”
Cooper lifts his hat to scrub a hand through his hair before settling it back into place. “She lives in New York.”
“That’s not a denial.”
“It’s a dead end.”
“Maybe.”
Wes lets the word hang there. The confirmation stings, a brand digging slowly into Cooper’s skin, marking him.
“Or maybe,” his friend continues, “she just needs someone to show her a better way.”
Wes turns to where the sun sinks below the horizon, casting a golden hue across the plains. Clouds catch the glow, wispy edges burning like flames in the sky. Grasses rustle and sway in the wind. Crickets chirp. Cattle moo. In the soft indigo overhead, stars already sparkle. It’s breathtaking. Even having grown up here, Cooper feels a hitch in his pulse. Yet his gaze shifts to somewhere over the edge of the rolling hills, not quite on the land, not quite on the sky, in that almost imperceptible in-between where the view stretches into forever, and he wonders, the way he always has, what else is out there waiting for him.
Sam?
New York?
A different life with different options and different choices?
The soil beneath him was made fertile by the blood, sweat, and tears of his ancestors. He can’t be the one to let it die. He won’t be. But at what cost? Will he spend the rest of his life giving everything he has to this place, always dreaming about what lies beyond?
Wes nudges him. “Get some food, Coop, before it’s gone.”
He does.
But the question lingers. While he sets up his sleeping bag. While he stares up at the moon. While he wakes with the dawn. While he saddles his horse. While he rounds up the cattle, spinning, circling, cutting—actions even more innate than breathing. Then he settles down at the end of the day and calls Nina one more time. She answers on the first ring.
“Don’t even say it—”
“Nina.”
“I’m not giving you her number.”
“Nina—”
“I’m giving you something better. I’m giving you Sam, in the flesh.”
His heart shudders to a halt. “What do you mean?”
“Between the end of filming and the live finale, the winning couple always gets one secret visit in a remote location, away from potential paparazzi, organized by the network. I’d say your ranch is about as remote as they come. So I need dates, Cooper. I’m going to get Sam to come to you. Trust me on this.”
He does. Not because he trusts her, but because he knows their interests are currently aligned. She needs Sam to cooperate for the sake of the show. He needs one more conversation. Okay, he wants a helluva lot more than a conversation, but it’s a start. Either way, he and the producer both want the same thing—Sam back in his life.
He runs a few quick calculations. “I need six weeks to get everything sorted at the ranch.”
“Six weeks,” Nina repeats, mulling it over. “You got it, cowboy. Six weeks. Pull that glass slipper out of storage, because your runaway bride is coming home. And this time, it’ll be up to you to figure out how to keep her.”
The producer hangs up.
Cooper slowly lowers his phone and fights the smile tugging at his lips as the words Sam and home and bride all swirl together in a heady mix. Something warm bubbles in his chest, something a little too close to hope. Nina’s closing statement lingers.
It’ll be up to you to figure out how to keep her.
He likes the sound of that.
He likes it a little bit too much.