Because, whether she liked to admit it or not—and she didn’t—Dawn was having fun with Cooper. Which had seemed an absolute impossibility at the start of the trip. Somehow, he was a different person out on the road.
Maybe it was Claudia’s influence.
Or maybe it was hers.
Dawn shook the thought away and followed Cooper into the truck stop in search of lunch. She had a feeling they’d be trawling around every inch of the truck museum afterwards, so she wanted to be well fortified. Bypassing the chain restaurants in the food court, she headed to the Iowa 80 Kitchen, her mouth salivating at the menu. It might not be a British fish-and-chip shop, but she’d take anything that wasn’t caked in sugar at the moment. One of the many things Justin had never mentioned about his brother was his sweet tooth.
As she tucked into her creamy chicken pasta al fredo a short while later, Dawn reflected that, while it might not be the healthiest meal ever, at least it included vegetables. She’d never before been so glad of some broccoli and mushrooms.
She surveyed Cooper over his giant burger—his third in a week, on top of the doughnuts, the pancakes, the room service and the breakfast muffins. He ate like a teenage boy, but had the body of an athletic, thirty-year-old health nut. It really wasn’t fair.
‘How does a workaholic like you stay in such great shape living on this sort of food?’ she asked.
Cooper took an enormous bite, chewing for a long moment as he wiped ketchup from his fingers.
‘I know you said you exercise,’ Dawn went on, impatient at waiting for him to finish eating. ‘But seriously, you’d need to be cross training for hours and hours every day to work off this stuff, and I know for a fact you’d never leave your office for that long. According to Justin, anyway.’ She frowned. ‘Then again, I haven’t seen you working much this week either. Are you spending all night dealing with your emails?’
Cooper finally swallowed before her babbling got too much further out of hand, for which she was thankful.
‘I don’t normally eat like this,’ he admitted, dipping one of his French fries in the sauce. ‘And I haven’t been working. I’m on vacation.’
Dawn blinked. ‘Justin always said you didn’t take holidays. Ever.’
‘Well, then, this is my first one. My first since—Well, since my honeymoon.’
‘Ah.’ Wincing, Dawn looked back down at her pasta. Then across at his fries. Possibly the appeal of vegetables was wearing off.
Rolling his eyes, Cooper pushed his plate a little way across the table so she could help herself to the fries. She smiled her thanks before digging in.
‘So this is your idea of a holiday, then—travelling across the country with me?’ Dawn asked. ‘I’d have pegged you for more of a “luxury private island in the Maldives” kind of guy.’
‘That was my honeymoon,’ Cooper admitted. ‘Not something I’m particularly looking to relive.’
‘I suppose I can understand that.’ Although, given the chance, Dawn had to admit that the island sounded pretty damned good regardless. Except she’d probably get bored. She never had been very good at sunbathing holidays. ‘Besides, there’s lots more to see this way. Plenty to keep us entertained.’
‘Absolutely.’ The amused smile he gave her as she stole another chip suggested that she might be one of the more entertaining things on their trip. Well, whatever kept him paying for the hotel rooms was fine by her. They’d be sleeping in Claudia if they had to rely on her credit card for much longer.
‘I was checking ahead on the route, actually,’ Cooper went on. ‘There’s a lighthouse we could stop at tomorrow. And maybe a ghost town the next day? They’re both a bit of a detour, but not too much...’
‘Sounds good,’ Dawn said, surprised. At the start of the trip, he’d been so desperate to get there as quickly as possible. Now he was suggesting detours? ‘So, not hurrying to the Hamptons quite so much any more?’
Cooper shrugged and took another bite of his burger. ‘Insert your cliché about enjoying the journey here,’ he said between chews. Then he swallowed. ‘Besides, if this is the only vacation I’m likely to get for a while, I might as well make the most of it, right?’
‘I guess so.’ Dawn smiled. ‘In which case, we should totally hit the gift shop before the museum!’
That earned her a groan, but somehow Dawn sensed he wasn’t quite as annoyed as he would have been four days ago.
Who would have thought it? She seemed to be growing on Cooper Edwards after all.
* * *
The truck museum, as Cooper had predicted, was wonderfully full of vintage trucks dating back to the start of the twentieth century. But, after checking them into the hotel in Chicago that night and heading to his room, he had to admit that his favourite part of their stop at Iowa 80 was watching Dawn steal his fries as they’d talked over lunch. Okay, it might also have been the very tight, bright-pink ‘World’s Largest Truck Stop’ tee shirt she bought and insisted on wearing while she’d driven the rest of the way to Chicago.
But talking with Dawn...just talking, about vacations and lifestyle choices...reminded him how rarely he did that. Until this week.
He and Dawn had been chatting about everything and nothing since they’d made the pact to drive Claudia across the country together. But today it felt different. The conversation hadn’t been as intense as the one at the time capsule, and for once she hadn’t pressed with any difficult questions about his marriage or his personal life.
They’d just talked. Like friends. Like people who cared about each other.
How long had it been since he’d had someone like that in his life? Someone just to...talk to?
He shook his head as he stared down at the hotel key-card in his hand. Too long, that was how long.
‘Cooper?’ Dawn called.
He looked up along the hotel corridor and saw her standing outside her own door, just as he was outside his room. Her gaze was concerned as she watched him.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
He nodded automatically. ‘Fine. I’ll see you downstairs in an hour? We’ll go find some dinner.’
‘Sure,’ Dawn said, but she still sounded uncertain. ‘I’ll see you there.’
Before she could ask anything else, Cooper pushed the key card into the slot and pulled it out again, the light thankfully turning green first time. Shoulder against the door, he made his way into the room, carrying his bag at his side.
It wasn’t as light as it had been, he realised as he hefted it onto the bed. The bare essentials he’d bought in Sacramento four days earlier had been added to at every city and truck stop they’d broken their journey at, it seemed—as had Dawn’s, he knew. In fact, her belongings were now in a cheap Des Moines-branded holdall, while his were stored in a brown leather bag he’d picked up in Salt Lake City. There hadn’t seemed to be much time for shopping, but still he had a couple more outfits than he’d started with, a new book or two to read when he wasn’t driving—something that annoyed Dawn a lot, since she got car sick when she tried to read in the car—and a new warm top that doubled as a dressing gown when the hotels were over-zealous with the air-con.
Basically, he’d started building up his belongings from zero again. And, while he had the funds to buy anything he chose without thinking about cost, he’d found himself choosing more carefully than he was used to. In fact, usually he just got his assistant to send out for clothes, shoes and so on from tailors and high-end stores he liked. On the road, his choices were more limited—yet he felt more satisfaction in choosing them himself than he ever had in the suit bags that arrived at his apartment from time to time.
Looking up from the bag on the bed, he was startled by his reflection in the mirror over the desk.
He barely looked like himself. His hair was unstyled, his stubble longer than he usually kept it and the tee shirt and jeans he wore un
familiar compared to his usual suit and tie. But it was more than that...
Cooper moved closer, peering into his own eyes in the mirror. Somehow, despite the long hours in the car, the stress of the wedding that wasn’t and his ongoing uncertainty about Dawn and her motivations, he looked more relaxed than he had in years.
In fact, he might even go as far as to say he looked...happy.
He blinked, breaking the mirror’s spell, and spun away. This road trip was only temporary—a week out of his real life. He couldn’t afford to read too much into it, not when he had responsibilities to get back to and obligations to uphold.
Starting with his brother.
Cooper tugged his phone from his jeans pocket and hit his brother’s name from his call log. He’d tried a couple of times on the wedding day but had got no answer. Since then, he’d sent a few text messages and emails asking Justin how he was, but there’d been no reply to those either.
And, for some reason, he’d never quite got round to telling his brother that he was on his way to see him. With Dawn.
Probably that was the sort of thing it would be polite to mention before they just showed up on the beach-house porch.
The phone on the other end rang and rang, and Cooper raised it to his ear just as the voicemail kicked in.
‘Hi, you’ve reached Justin Edwards. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’
Except Cooper knew he wouldn’t. If Justin wanted to talk to him, he’d have responded to one of his messages already.
Cooper pressed the end-call button. His brother was avoiding him every bit as much as he was avoiding Dawn. Which meant that leaving a message telling him they were coming was a sure-fire way to send him running off somewhere else. Somewhere Claudia might not be able to follow. Cooper—and especially Dawn—couldn’t risk that. They both needed to see Justin.
Which meant they were just going to have to surprise him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DAWN STARED AT her reflection in the mirror. Cooper had said they’d go somewhere nice for dinner, but the problem was she didn’t really have anything in the way of nice ‘going out for dinner’ clothes in the meagre wardrobe she’d managed to put together over the last few days.
Sighing, she gave up pretending that the denim skirt and white tee shirt she was wearing would ever be anything approaching a slinky cocktail dress and dropped to sit down on the bed. Honestly, those people who wrote articles about the joy of capsule wardrobes had clearly never tried to look good in the same skirt for a full week, while travelling in a vintage convertible whose seats creased everything.
Not that it seemed to bother Cooper, who looked perfectly pressed every minute of the day regardless. And he didn’t seem to care about her limited wardrobe, either. She’d assumed he just hadn’t even registered her clothes—most guys she knew wouldn’t have. But then she’d seen his expression when she’d put on her new ‘World’s Biggest Truck Stop’ tee shirt...
Justin had only ever looked at her like that when she’d worn designer dresses. Cooper appeared to have tastes that were rather easier to please.
Not that she was going to read anything into it. The top had been slightly tighter than she’d thought it would be, that was all. Most men would have stared, right? It didn’t mean anything.
Just like him letting her share his chips didn’t mean anything.
Or the fact that he’d finally opened up a little bit about his wife.
All any of it meant was that they’d been spending a lot of time together and were getting to know each other. Which seemed a bit of a waste of time, now she wasn’t going to marry his brother.
But somehow that didn’t stop her wanting to know him even better. Or wishing she had a slinky dress to wear for dinner with him tonight.
Dawn sighed. At some point, she was going to have to acknowledge that she might have developed a tiny bit of a crush on her ex-fiancé’s brother. She was just hoping it could wait until after this road trip was over. Admitting to anything now could only make the rest of the trip excruciatingly awkward.
Either Cooper would be horrified that she was thinking about him that way when she was technically still engaged to his brother—she hadn’t returned the ring yet, so she guessed it still stood—or he’d admit to feeling the same, and then what? They’d kiss, avoid each other’s eyes for the next few days, she’d go and talk to his brother about their failed relationship and then she and Cooper would part ways and never see each other again.
It would have to be some kiss to make that kind of awkwardness worthwhile.
Still. Her limited wardrobe choices and ridiculous crush aside, that didn’t mean she couldn’t make a bit of an effort. It wasn’t as if she got asked out to dinner in Chicago every day. Or ever before, actually.
There wasn’t much she could do about her clothes, but she did dig out the gauzy, hot-pink scarf she’d picked up from the bargain bin at a convenience store attached to the diner where they’d bought doughnuts one morning. Wrapped around her neck twice, with the ends hanging loose, it at least made her boring outfit look a little more interesting.
Taking her hair down from its ponytail, she brushed it out over her shoulders, fluffing it a bit so it fell in gentle waves. With the addition of some simple make-up and the bright-pink lipstick she’d bought on a whim in Sacramento—because a girl never knew when she might need a confidence-boosting lipstick—she almost looked as though she might have come prepared for a night on the town.
Cooper knocked on the door moments later, and Dawn steeled herself before opening it. What had it come to that she had to prepare herself for seeing him, knowing that if he looked too good he’d take her breath away? She felt like a teenager with a first crush, rather than a woman who’d been through the relationship mill too many times to count.
Maybe that was the appeal. She knew anything with Cooper could never be a relationship—he hated the idea of marriage and she’d already been engaged to his brother, for heaven’s sake—and that made him safe. She could lust from afar, flirt over chips, have fancy dinners out and never worry about it meaning a thing.
She grinned to herself as she pulled open the door. Maybe she’d do exactly that.
‘Wow,’ Cooper said, eyebrows raised. ‘You look...’
‘Exactly like I’ve done every other day of this trip?’ Dawn finished for him. ‘Because I still haven’t got round to buying a second skirt.’
‘I was going to say great. Or beautiful. Or something better than that.’ Cooper’s gaze seemed to be fixed on her lips.
Score one for the lipstick.
But her moment of triumph faded as she took in his appearance. He hadn’t dressed up much either, for the same obvious reason, but still the jeans that moulded so perfectly to his legs, the collared tee-shirt that highlighted his throat and those broad, broad shoulders, the stubble that made him look just that little bit more devil-may-care than she’d ever imagined he could...all added up to a truly delectable picture.
One that really made her want to smudge her lipstick.
But, no. Flirting. Dinner. Fun. That was all.
Anything else could never end well.
She just had to keep reminding herself of that.
‘Shall we go?’ she asked, smiling brightly. And hoping against hope that she could hold off kissing her fiancé’s brother until they hit the Hamptons.
* * *
Dinner was a hit. As he’d predicted, Dawn loved the steak place he’d picked for them to eat at, happily trying everything he suggested, as well as everything he’d ordered for himself.
‘I spent too long eating boring food,’ she explained after moaning around a mouthful of steak and sauce béarnaise. ‘I’m making up for it.’
Simply watching her eat, those bright-pink lips closing around her fork, was making Cooper hungry. Just not for food.
He
was hungry for her company, her conversation—the easy way they tossed thoughts and comments back and forth without needing to read too much into them.
Although he had to admit he might have missed some of what she was saying because he was too busy staring at her lips. Imagining how it would feel to kiss them. To be fair, though, Dawn had trailed off a few times mid-sentence too. Which only made things worse, because he was almost certain she was imagining the same things he was.
Which meant he was in really big trouble.
He wanted her.
He wanted his little brother’s fiancée in a way he hadn’t wanted anyone since the ex-wife who’d broken his heart and taken half his fortune.
And he knew the only reason Justin had called things off was because he thought Dawn was a gold-digger—something Cooper was almost certain wasn’t the case. In which case...he had to take Dawn back to his brother. Give them another chance at happiness together.
Except they were wrong for each other, damn it! Having spent four days talking to her, and a lifetime knowing Justin, he could tell that instantly. She wouldn’t be happy with him, and he’d want her to be things she wasn’t. Or at least, things that didn’t come naturally to her.
Justin was a caviar-and-champagne guy. He always had to have the most expensive of everything, just because it cost more.
Dawn, he’d established, appreciated the best things, whatever the cost.
No, Cooper was absolutely convinced that Dawn and Justin together would be a mistake.
The only problem with that was that he was hugely, ridiculously biased, and he knew it.
What if he only saw these problems because he wanted them to be true? Because he wanted Dawn for himself? He’d only seen them together as a couple for twenty-four hours before Justin had run out. What did he know about their life together? Maybe Justin was a different guy with Dawn.
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