Rhodes #2
"I'm not finding you one." Ridge's voice goes dry. "I'm telling you our brother works for a large company and is looking for someone in the industry. What you do with that information is your business."
Of course he can't help himself. I almost smile. He looks at me for another second, then nods once. That's it. There's no speech, no handshake.
I stand and walk toward the door.
"Rhodes," he says, softer than the voice he usually uses.
I stop and turn back around.
"You don't have to leave."
"I know."
My phone buzzes against my leg before I reach the lobby. A reminder pops up letting me know Coop's flight lands in Charleston this afternoon.
The doors open in the lobby. I walk out through the glass into the heat, and for the first time since I was old enough to realize I was being paid for a job I wasn't doing, I'm not on Stone's books.
Cooper shows up Friday night with one duffel, a garment bag, and a six-pack tucked under his arm like he still lives three streets over instead of having a job waiting for him in Charleston Monday morning.
I get the door open before he knocks twice.
"Brother."
He grins and pulls me into the same hard back-clap hug he's been giving me since we were twelve. He looks different after Spain. Darker, leaner, with his hair sun-bleached at the edges.
Still Coop.
"You look annoyingly healthy," I tell him.
"Spain does wonders when you're not living off dining hall food." He holds up the six-pack. "I brought tribute."
"Come in."
He drops the duffel by the front door and looks around the front room like he's checking whether anything changed while he was gone. His eyes pass over the couch, the coffee table, the kitchen beyond it.
"You good with me crashing here tonight?" he asks. "Nash offered his couch, but I told him I'd rather sleep in the street."
"Spare room's yours."
"Perfect. I'm out of here Sunday morning anyway. I want to be back in Charleston before I officially start the new gig Monday."
"Big corporate man now."
"Shut up." He shoulders the duffel again. "I'm still trying to figure out why they hired me."
"Because you're annoyingly competent."
"That's what my interviewer said."
"Did he use ‘annoyingly?’”
"Implied."
I follow him down the hall. He pushes open the spare-room door and tosses the duffel onto the bed.
The room is stripped back to what it was before Tallulah moved in. There's a new comforter, the desk is empty, and the dresser is bare.
Coop unzips the duffel and pulls out a wrinkled shirt.
"This is weird."
My stomach tightens. "What is?"
"Being back here." He glances around. "Feels like I was gone five years instead of three months."
"It was a long three months."
He hangs the shirt in the closet, and I look away.
"Come on," I tell him. "I've got food."
We end up on the front porch with burgers and beer, feet on the rail while the heat finally starts bleeding out of the day. Coop talks for most of the first hour.
He can't stop talking about Spain, the research program, and a professor who smoked through every field meeting.
"You would've loved the guys on the boat," he says. "They were mean as hell but like family."
"Sounds delightful."
"The captain was eighty if he was a day and could still outwork everybody on the boat."
"Probably because he didn't spend four months eating barnacles."
"Percebes are not just any barnacles. You have no culture."
"I'm related to Cain. I've had enough culture for one family."
Coop laughs and settles deeper into the chair, and it's like old times. I was dreading this visit, worried about how it would go. There are whole stretches where I forget anything is sitting between us.
Then he says, "Dad told me Tilly finally got Oak Moss straightened out."
My hand stills around the bottle.
"Yeah?"
"Sounds like it." He looks out toward the street. "Hell of a mess, though. I still can't believe she got out over her skis far enough to trip some federal review over a wetland line."
He says it like I should know what he’s talking about. Which, of course, I do. And I would have, even if I hadn't been the one who created it.
"Apparently it worked out."
"Yeah. Grandbank's putting the property under a conservation easement now." Coop shakes his head. "Which, honestly, is probably where it should've ended up years ago."
"Probably."
"Dad said she handled the whole fallout better than anybody expected."
Something hot moves under my ribs. Anybody expected is a dig at her, even though it's a compliment. I keep my eyes on the bottle.
"She's good at that."
"She is." His mouth curves a little. "Stubborn little shit."
I don't answer. He glances over.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You made a face."
"I didn't make a face."
"You absolutely made a face."
"Maybe your face is making my face react."
"There he is."
I laugh because he does, but it dies fast.
Coop takes another drink and tips his head back against the chair.
"Seriously, though. I'm glad she had you down here. Besides the Oak Moss debacle, which you couldn’t have helped, she had an uneventful semester. I’m glad I knew you were in the driver’s seat.”
My throat tightens. Luckily, he doesn't see it.