Chapter Fifteen
COOPER
Iwoke to an empty bed, coming fully alert in a blink.
Alice. Where was Alice?
A glance at the clock told me it was later than either of us usually slept. Not a surprise given that we hadn't found sleep until well after midnight. Add in the champagne she’d drunk, and I had to wonder—why the hell was Alice up at all?
I caught the rustle of taffeta somewhere outside my room. The hallway? Rolling to my feet, I yanked on my discarded boxers as I strode to the door.
All I could think about was Alice. Find Alice and bring her back to bed. That was where my critical analysis began and ended.
She froze when I entered the living room, her dress on and mostly zipped, crinolines bundled under her arm in a cloud of black tulle. Her face bare of makeup, hair tangled, she looked impossibly young. And exhausted.
Dark circles marred her eyes, the usually clear blue dull, bloodshot. She should be in bed.
“Alice, what are you doing?”
She winced at the sound of my voice. “Nothing. Nothing, Cooper. Go back to bed. I'm just—I just have to go home and take a shower. Change. You know.”
No, I didn't know. I had a perfectly good shower here.
I opened my mouth to tell her that, and stopped, really seeing her.
The fragility in the set of her shoulders.
The way she squinted against the bright light flooding through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The vulnerable bend of her neck, her head tilting forward as if it weighed too much to hold up.
“What's wrong?” I asked, my voice low. “Too much champagne?”
“No. A little, maybe. I just—” She wrapped her arm tighter around her front, squeezing the mass of crinolines against her, brow furrowed. The more I watched her, the more I realized something was wrong.
She wasn’t just tired. This wasn't just too much champagne. Was she still angry?
Thinking about the way I’d punched Griffen and thrown her over my shoulder in the middle of the ballroom, I was the one who winced. It had all seemed like a great idea at the time.
That's what I got for letting the devil on my shoulder and the caveman in my gut conspire against me. I knew better. Alice asked me to keep things quiet, and I deliberately sabotaged her in the most public way possible.
Fuck. I thought she’d forgiven me. Maybe I was wrong.
Alice bent slowly and picked up one of her shoes from beneath the couch. Eyes half-closed, she tucked it into the bundle in her arms.
“I just want to go lay down. Can you help me find my other shoe?”
I joined her in the search, trying to remember what had happened to it. One shoe she'd thrown at my head, the other I’d caught. I didn't know which one she'd already found.
I needed to find that shoe before she did, needed it as leverage to keep her here long enough to find out what was going on.
This wounded, fragile Alice wasn’t the woman I'd made love to the night before, the woman who'd imperiously demanded I strip for her, who'd squeezed my ass as I carried her down the hall.
For that matter, she wasn’t the woman who'd winged her high heels at my head either. I didn't recognize this Alice, but I needed to. If I was the reason behind it, I had to know so I could fix it.
I spotted a spike heel sticking out from beneath a console table and snagged it. “Got it.”
Alice took a step, reaching for it, but I held it above her head, examining her tired, drawn face.
“Not yet,” I said. When she dropped her hand at her side without so much as a scowl, I knew something was very wrong.
Wanting to pull her into my arms, I asked softly, “Are you angry? About last night?”
Bracing, I waited. Alice started to shake her head and froze abruptly, wincing again. “I should be,” she muttered, “but I'm not. I think you fucked the mad out of me.”
A surprised laugh burst from my lips. Alice winced again at the sound. I couldn't stop the grin that spread across my face. “Good to know that works. I'll keep it in mind for the next time I piss you off.”
“I like how you assume there’ll be a next time,” she said, reaching for her shoe again. I held it behind my back.
“Just playing the odds.”
She gave a harrumph, but that was it. This was not my Alice.
Changing tactics, I handed her the shoe. Before she could step away, I was there, closing my arms around her and tucking her into my chest, the pile of fabric and shoes between us.
Now that I knew she wasn’t pissed at me, I didn't have to worry she’d drive that spike heel in my eye. Alice pushed back, and reluctantly, I loosened my hold. The shoes and crinolines fell to the floor and Alice melted into me, pressing her forehead against my chest.
The skin of her back was warm and silky, her forehead cold and clammy. Bending, my lips brushed the top of her hair.
“Baby, what's wrong? If you’re not pissed at me—how many glasses of champagne did you have last night? I counted four. A lot for a pixie like you, but not enough to make you this miserable.”
“I'm not a pixie,” she argued. Her disgruntled response was heartening. I think she secretly liked it, but Alice always got annoyed when I called her a pixie. With her blunt cut bob and small frame, the name was a perfect fit.
I tightened my arms around her. “You're my pixie. Tell me what's wrong.”
Hiding her face, she mumbled something, her lips moving against my skin, her words inaudible.
“Alice, come on, just tell me what's wrong so I can fix it.”
Louder, more clearly, “You can't fix this.”
“Then tell me who I have to kill to make it better.”
I was mostly kidding. Mostly.
Alice sighed. Lifting her face, her eyes oddly shy for my brazen girl, she said, “I have cramps and a migraine, and I just want to curl up and die, okay?”
Fuck. I hate problems I can't solve.
Now that the truth was out, Alice leaned back, trying to break my hold. Fuck that. I couldn't get rid of the migraine or the cramps, but that didn't mean I couldn't do anything to help.
I kept my arms around her, rubbing a thumb up and down her spine. “Poor Alice. What do you need?”
Mulishly, she said, “I need to go home.”
Leaning back to see her face, I asked, “Do you need to go home to get stuff? Or do you need to go home because you feel like shit and you just want to curl up in bed until you feel better?”
“Both,” she said, her chin still set in that stubborn line.
“What do you take? Do you have a prescription for the migraines?”
“No. They’re not bad enough to need a prescription. I don't have to lock myself in a dark closet or anything. It just hurts like a bitch and it’s harder to handle when they come with the cramps.”
“Ibuprofen? Do you need a heating pad?”
Alice stared up at me dumbfounded. “When I get them both together I take over-the-counter migraine stuff. I have some downstairs. No heating pad.”
Stepping over the bundle of clothes on the floor, I turned her, gently shoving her back toward my bedroom. “Bath or shower?”
“Cooper, I—”
“Bath or shower?”
“Shower,” she said, finally.
Arriving in my bathroom, I turned on the shower. “What do you need from downstairs?”
Alice let out a long breath, finally realizing I wasn't giving up.
“Clothes, I guess. The migraine pills from the cabinet in my kitchen.
Next to where I keep the Band-Aids. And there's a bag under my sink with daisies on it—” An embarrassed slide of her eyes to the side. “It has all the, uh, stuff I need.”
Kissing her on the forehead, I said, “Take a shower. I'll be back before you’re out.”
I left Alice in the steamy bathroom and headed for her apartment after a quick pit stop in my bedroom to pull on something other than boxers.
I found the migraine medicine exactly where she'd said it would be.
Ditto for the cloth bag covered in daisies.
I grabbed a gym bag from her closet and threw them in, along with a bottle of lotion from her bathroom counter, her face cream, hairbrush, a stick of deodorant, and a few changes of clothes. Comfortable stuff she could curl up in.
She was still in the shower when I got back. I cracked the door, setting the bag on the counter, not at all reassured by her weak, “Thanks.”
Shit. Alice was a whirlwind, a bundle of energy. I knew she suffered from bad headaches occasionally, even knew they were related to her cycle. We’d worked together for nine years, and I'm an observant guy. Particularly where Alice is concerned. Eventually, I’d figured it out.
They weren’t usually this bad. Then again, most of the time the headache wasn’t on top of too little sleep and too much champagne.
Leaving Alice in peace for the moment, I pulled up a food delivery app on my phone. If she wasn't hungry now, she would be eventually. It would take a while, but I ordered from Annabelle's. Breakfast sandwiches, pastries, and a mocha.
I'd never noticed her avoiding caffeine when she had headaches, and chocolate seemed like a good call when she felt like shit. Eventually, she emerged from the bathroom smelling like fresh fruit, her hair combed straight, skin shining from the face cream, but still too pale.