Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Cooper emerged from beneath the water to hear Cara’s cell phone blaring the death march for the fifth time in the last two hours.
Weird was an understatement. The sound of the ringing stirred Cara awake, so Cooper continued swimming.
He’d finished two more laps when he re-emerged into the shallow end to find her standing at the foot of the pool with the phone pressed against her ear.
“Did you know you talk in your sleep?”
She clicked the phone off and tossed her head back to look up at the moon. “Get used to it. It seems we’re stuck here,” she said with a sigh. “My mother left five messages. My dad had an emergency and needed the jet, so he called it back.”
“There’s more than one way off the island,” Coop said, hoisting himself out of the pool. He grabbed a towel, ran it over his body and watched as her eyes followed the movement.
“You can go back. I’m going to stay and wait for Becca and Angela to return. I’ll call you when they show.” Cara spun in place and walked back into the cabana.
“That’s ridiculous. We’ll go back together and figure out another way to track them down. I’ve already got my FBI partner, Howard, trying to find a way to track their movements.” Howard had started to gather both of their sisters’ phone and credit card records. Maybe he’d found a lead.
Cara started digging through her suitcase and pulled out some clothes.
“Becca’s visions are never wrong.” Cara clutched the clothes to her chest. “If she said she’ll be back Sunday, then she will.
I know you don’t believe in her or me, and that’s fine, but I believe in her, so I’m staying.
I hope Howard and you enjoy your search, and I really do wish you luck. ”
She might as well have just asked him to believe in the tooth fairy. At least that would have been more believable. Cara headed toward the bathroom.
The room turned cool from the ice in her voice. Coop crossed his arms over his chest. “Why should I believe your sister?”
His question stopped her in her tracks. She slowly turned around and pegged him with her glare. She was getting pissed. Had no one ever questioned her judgment before? He’d seen that look a dozen times before. He knew what was coming next, and he braced for her words.
“Listen, I don’t care what you believe. You came to me for help. Not the other way around. Our sisters are in danger, and I’m not stranding them to fend for themselves. If Becca said she’ll be back, then she’ll be back. I trust her visions, and I trust her. That’s more than I can say about you.”
“I’m not my brother, princess. So you can lose the bitchiness.”
“Yeah, and I’m not your princess. I have a name, so use it.”
“And come Sunday, when she doesn’t show? We’ll have wasted a week when we could have been searching for them.”
“It’s my week to waste. No one is keeping you here, Coop.” Cara’s lips pinched together as fire flickered in her eyes. He was one argument away from having to sleep in one of the patio chairs. He’d slept in worse.
Cara closed the bathroom door, and within minutes, he could hear the water running as she took a shower. It was going to be one hell of a long week.
Cara expected Coop to be long gone when she finished her shower, but she wasn’t that lucky.
She’d taken her time washing away the stress from the day, only to emerge fresh and clean to find Coop sitting outside under the moonlight, drinking a beer with the phone pressed to his ear.
The smell of tomatoes drifted on the air, teasing her nose as she tossed her clothes back in her suitcase. Her stomach grumbled.
“Something smells good.”
“Howard, I’ll call you back. Keep searching.”
Cara held her grin in check. It appeared Mr. FBI was having about as much luck as Coop and her. Becca was staying off the government radar? Maybe those conspiracy books she read had come in handy. Thank goodness, Cara hadn’t given her Silence of the Lambs.
“I figured you’d be hungry, so I ordered us room service.”
Ten minutes ago, she would have argued he was an insensitive jerk. Now he was offering her food. Had there been dessert, she might have apologized too. Cara slid into one of the chairs opposite him and lifted the cover from her plate to find a huge portion of lasagna with breadsticks.
“Italian is my favorite.” And it showed on her thighs.
His lips twitched as he reached for the bottle of wine and poured her a glass. “Consider it my apology for being an ass.”
“Trying to get me drunk, Coop?”
“Nope, just trying to help you relax.”
She took a bite and moaned in satisfaction as a mixture of flavors burst in her mouth.
With every savory bite, the tension in her shoulders dwindled a little more.
As the herbs and garlic mellowed her, she tried to see Coop in a new light.
A guy who ordered her favorite meal couldn’t be all bad, right?
“You’re very…” he started to say.
“Hard-headed?” she asked.
“Loyal,” he corrected. “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
Her brow rose, but she bit her tongue against starting another argument. Did he think she wouldn’t be? “You did the same for your sister. It must have been hard to come ask for my help since you’re a skeptic. Becca must have seen in a vision that you’d try.”
He took a sip of his beer, his gaze shuttered, guarded, as if he wasn’t sure how much to divulge.
His food lay forgotten as he leaned back in his chair and tilted his head, as if studying her for the first time.
Heat crept up into her cheeks, this time not from her temper but the way he watched her as she continued to eat.
“I deal in facts. I believe in what I can see. What I can explain. Everything has a logical explanation; it has to in my line of work.”
She’d heard his words a thousand times before.
It was one of the main reasons Cara and her sisters didn’t get involved in the cases unless requested by the authorities.
They didn’t understand, unless they wanted to, unless they needed too.
His lack of acceptance bothered her more than it should, a feeling she wasn’t ready to analyze just yet.
“Okay.” Cara swallowed around her bite of bread. “Explain the gut feelings you get when trying to solve a case. Explain how it is that I knew they came to the island. Explain how Adam was floating in the air. Just because you can’t see the things I can, it doesn’t make them any less true.”
Coop’s brows dipped as he rubbed his chin.
She was annoying him and picking at his resolve, but no matter what she said, or how she explained, he’d never truly understand and probably would remain a skeptic.
It was his right. She wasn’t here to change his mind.
That would be like asking him to believe in mermaids. No one was perfect.
Cara finished eating in silence as Coop excused himself to take a shower.
She took a quick walk down the beach and made a few calls to check on Ian to make sure he wasn’t having an orgy.
Then she called to check on Adam before she returned to the cabana.
Coop was lounging on the bed in all his shirtless glory, the sheet pulled to his waist, teasing her imagination as to what might lie underneath.
She couldn’t deny that she was intrigued by him and his looks, more than she should be.
The light from the lamp played across his toned, tan abs, the dips and valleys disappearing under the linen in a rather enticing display. Cara swallowed hard and fought to lick her lips.
“There’s only one bed.”
“I know. I guess my sister didn’t plan for everything.
” Cara walked into the room and grabbed a T-shirt from her bag.
She turned her back and changed into the long shirt before discarding her shorts.
She grabbed the extra pillows in the closet and stacked them down the middle to separate their bodies.
“No offense. It’s not that I don’t trust you.
” It was more like she didn’t trust herself.
When was the last time she’d slept next to such male perfection?
With her luck, she’d molest him in her sleep, and her visions would go into overdrive, much like her hormones. None of his secrets would be safe.
His lips twisted up at the corners. “How do you do it?”
“That’s a loaded question. You have to be a bit more specific,” she answered, crawling into bed.
“How can you be intimate if touching someone wears you out?”
Cara shifted the covers over her abdomen, and she turned to face him, resting her cheek in her palm.
“When I touch someone for the first time, I get flashes of their entire life: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn’t matter.
Once the initial touch is over, then the next time that person and I touch, it’s just like an update of the things that happened since the first touch, so it’s less powerful and much quicker.
It’s how I knew your brother had cheated on me. ”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat and ignored the ping in her chest. It shouldn’t still have the power to hurt her, yet every time she thought of it, the wounds broke open.
She didn’t know how much of it was because she’d thought herself in love with him, and how much was from the fact that she’d trusted the wrong man.
Her gut instinct had malfunctioned, much like that one time she’d tried to light a grill.
Her eyebrows still hadn’t grown fully back.
“Must be hard for the other person to be so exposed and unable to keep anything secret or plan surprises.”
Cara hadn’t thought what it meant for the other person. “I guess.”
“So I’m betting one-night stands are out of the question for you.”
A smile split her lips. “You’d be right.”
“Pity.” He winked.
Pity? Was he flirting with her or mocking her?
It was hard to tell. Rolling over, she stared up at the ceiling as his soft snores quickly filled the quiet, dark room.
Pity. Why did that one word hold so much power?
It had been awhile since she’d indulged in male’s interest in her, so she was going to blame her sex-starved body for the reaction that one word evoked.
She tingled in places that had lain dormant.
She closed her eyes and couldn’t help but wonder… what if.