She let out a noise of disbelief. “And have Emily kick my ass? You’re on your own.”
I moved away from both of them, only realizing when I was halfway across the bar moving toward Rose, I had no idea what I was doing. Carla had spotted me and waved me over, making it too late to change direction.
When I reached the pair, Rose looked away, so I took the opportunity to check her out with a sidelong glance as I greeted Carla.
Rose’s dark blond hair was carefully twisted back with the right amount of loose hairs framing her face. Her slip of a dress was pale pink and shiny, somewhat vamped up with black heels, a black choker, and dark red lipstick. When she finally looked at me, her blue eyes didn’t show the warmth I’d seen in them only a few nights prior.
“Hi,” she murmured before looking away.
“When did you get here?” I asked. “You seem to be pretty fashionably late.”
Carla laughed. “Rose would hang her head in shame if she were on time to an event.” She glanced at me curiously, as if wondering why I seemed to be talking to Rose but knowing better than to ask. With a not-so-subtle searching look over my shoulder, she excused herself by saying, “It looks like Owen wants me over by the bar.”
Her exit left me standing awkwardly at the back of the room with a woman who, for whatever reason, seemed annoyed with me. This only infuriated me in turn, since I hadn’t done anything for her to get pissed off about.
“I’m going to—” she searched for an escape, an excuse, anything to save her, but I held out my arm to stop her.
“Are you mad because you saw me laughing with Ruthie at the bar?”
She looked at me, her face blushing underneath her perfectly applied makeup as her eyes widened in horror.
“Who told you that lie?”
I inclined my head in the general direction of Eli, who was currently engaged with a large group of people hanging on his every word. “Eli saw you come in and said you didn’t look happy.”
She took a long swig from the champagne flute she held. “You were checking her out, and I was …”
“Jealous?”
“No, it’s that I’ve never seen you like that with anyone. It threw me off.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I think you believe I’m a virgin, Rose.”
“I—of course I don’t think that,” she spluttered, which only made her cheeks flush more scarlet. “It’s—I’ve never seen you flirt. And I wasn’t mad. I simply didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“Sure thing,” I said, taking her now empty glass before turning to walk toward the bar. She tried to follow me, but I stopped her.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you a refill.” I lifted her empty glass to emphasize my point. “You keep our spot by the wall. God knows it’s the only free space of breathable air in this packed room.”
Her red lips lifted at the comment as I went about ordering more drinks. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed both Eli and Owen, along with Carla and a curious Emily, trying to hide the fact that they were watching Rose and me. I rolled my eyes and gave them the finger, getting my drinks from the bartender before heading back to Rose.
When I handed her the glass of champagne, she held it out in a toast.
“What are we celebrating?” I lifted my glass.
“What, you mean other than your big brother and my high school bestie’s marriage?” Rose joked. “I don’t know … maybe we’re toasting being a little more grownup than we were fifteen years ago?”
I clinked my tumbler against her flute. “I guess I could toast to that.”
The lighting of the cocktail bar lit up Rose’s little dress with all sorts of colors. It made her look ethereal—like she was made of the lights themselves. When she caught me staring, she lifted a perfectly shaped brow.
“It looks like you are checking me out now, Cooper.”
“What can I say?” I swallowed down half of my drink before continuing. “You look damn good, Rogers. Though it pains me to admit it.”
She smiled devilishly and reached up to tug on the pointed collar of my shirt. “Black’s a good color on you.”
“Are you sure? That’s not what you would have said back in high school.”
“Obviously, I didn’t know anything back then.”
“You would have said it matched my dark soul.”
“You were quiet, Paxton, but never mean.” She sipped her drink and lowered her head, looking at me from beneath full lashes. “That was my job.”
The two of us were startled when someone tripped and fell against my back, pushing me heavily against Rose. With her pinned between my body and the wall, I became acutely and painfully aware of the feeling of having her close to me. How every curve seemed to fit seamlessly against me. Something impossible not to physically react to.
A lurching sensation in my stomach reminded me this situation was the “something stupid” I’d been concerned about earlier.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t planned. I had, quite literally, fallen into it.
Chapter Twelve
Rose
Was it the alcohol? The music? The low lighting? Maybe all of them combined, but having him talk in a low murmur into my ear while the two of us were pressed into the dark corner of the bar caused my stomach to somersault. Back-twisting, double-rolling flips that made me tingly all over.
Without warning, someone bumped into us again, pushing him closer. His stubble grazed the side of my cheek. One of his legs pushed between mine. I didn’t know whether I had it in me to look him in the eyes. What was it I wanted to see there?
“You okay?”
I blinked. “What did you say?” My voice was barely audible over the sound of rushing blood in my ears and the pounding music of the bar.
His lips moved closer. “I asked if you were okay. It’s busier in here. Seems like half the town is present.”
I let out a nervous laugh, which only wavered more when he placed a hand against the wall beside my hip in order to push himself back. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, though I certainly didn’t feel it.
When he was more than a few inches away from my face, I risked a glance at him. He looked embarrassed, and it was shockingly charming.
“What’s wrong?” I wanted nothing more than for his embarrassment to have something to do with me.
He looked away, laughing awkwardly. “It’s nothing. It’s all the physical proximity and—”
One quick glance below his belt was all I needed to catch his meaning.
“Oh. Oh.”
Now, if that wasn’t deeply satisfying, then I didn’t know what was.
“Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with you being you, Rose,” he said, though to my relief, I realized he didn’t mean what he said at all.
I quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? Even though you said how great I looked?”
“Anyone can scrub up pretty well if they try hard enough.”
“Sure thing. I’m taking your reaction as a compliment, so let’s leave it at that.”
He blessed me with a goofy grin. Even I could tell he was bordering on tipsy, and I’d never seen the guy drunk in my life.
I felt the same. The champagne made me feel bubbly and bold and forward.
“I didn’t mind being pressed against the wall, you know,” I said as I closed the gap between us. “I never imagined I’d think of you that way, but there you go.”
“Such a charmer.”
My fingers danced up his silver tie to tap him on his scruffy chin. “You clearly didn’t mind it all that much, either.”
There was a moment or two of awkward, charged silence as we stared at each other, daring the other to make the next move.
Carla appeared at my side, and the moment was gone.
“Is it okay if I steal her for a second, Paxton?” she asked innocently. “I’d like a photo with my bridesmaids.”
He smiled easily at her as if we hadn’t been engaged in a flustered, adult version of chic
ken. “Of course not. I never meant to have kept her away from you for so long.”
I raised an eyebrow at the comment and walked away. He gave me a half-salute, a devilish smile playing across his lips that made me want to turn around and kiss it off his face.
Guess I was well past the point of pretending I wasn’t attracted to him. As Carla handed me another glass of champagne for the photo, Eli’s girlfriend, Emily, took the shot. She had a critical eye I appreciated.
“You—the one on the far right—no, I don’t remember your name—you’re slightly too far away from everyone else. Bloody hell, why are you so rigid? You’re not made of wood. Loosen up a little.”
I almost broke my perfect photo composure with the need to burst out laughing at her Irish-accented, hilariously blunt comments, but I held it back until the impromptu photo op was finished.
I marched straight over to her afterward. “So, you’re Eli’s girlfriend?”
She smiled. “I suppose I am. I’m Emily Flanagan.”
“Are you related to Judy—the woman my mom’s friends with?”
“That would be my ma.”
My eyes widened slightly. “But isn’t she over seventy?”
Emily nodded. “She had me late. I don’t think she ever thought she’d be a mother. I take it Lucy Rogers is your ma? Which would make you—”
“Rose. Yeah, that would be me. Lovely to meet you.”
Carla joined us. Her expression was bright and happy and definitely drunk. “I’m so glad the two of you have finally met. All the Coopers are now taken.”
Emily looked at me, confused. “Are you with Paxton? I didn’t think he had a—”
“Oh, God, no,” I exclaimed, glaring at Carla. “Carl’s drunk and making fun of me.”
“Oh, come on, Rose, you’re not that blind,” Carla complained. “The guy hasn’t stopped eating you with his eyes since I took you away for photos. Whether he wants to admit it or not, he has it bad for you, and I know you feel the same.”
“Are you sure it’s not the booze speaking?” I joked, avoiding having to respond to her accurate observations. “Say all this again when you’re sober and see how well it holds up.”
“Challenge accepted.” She grabbed a martini from the bar and raised it.
Owen appeared behind her, snaking his arms around her waist as he propped his head on her shoulder. He smiled brilliantly at us.
“May I steal my fiancée, ladies?” he asked sweetly.
“I’d like to steal Emily, too,” Eli added as he showed up on Owen’s left. Seeing the two of them side by side was strange—they looked so much alike, even taking into account that they were brothers.
Paxton looked like them in many ways, and yet he didn’t. He was the fair-haired sexier version.
“I’m sure Pax can keep you company,” Carla teased as she was led away. I scowled after her as I downed my champagne.
A couple of hours whiled away as I made idle chat with people I hadn’t seen since high school, though my focus was on Paxton the entire time. I instinctively knew where he was in the room at any given moment. I felt him around me.
Considering how many times I caught him looking in my direction, I was certain he knew exactly where I was at all times, too. We were like two storms rotating around each other.
Eventually, we came face to face once more, and I decided to throw all caution to the wind. We were both equally tipsy, and I was only going to be in Frazier Falls for another couple of weeks. He was a perfect distraction from my current disastrous romantic life back in New York.
“Do you want to get out of here?” we said in unison and grinned at each other like the drunk idiots we were.
“Your place?” I suggested.
He nodded, then silently led the way through the throng of people and out onto the street without so much as a goodbye to anyone. The swift exit was much appreciated.
His house was less than ten minutes from the cocktail bar, situated right where the creek began to bend southwards. It was modest in size, but considering I’d spent much of my adult life living in tiny, overly expensive New York apartments, it felt spacious.
“I can’t believe you can afford an actual house with a back yard and everything when I can barely afford a one-bedroom apartment in mid-town New York.”
“Maybe if you didn’t live in the most expensive city in the United States, you could afford something bigger.”
“Oh, yeah, because places like Frazier Falls are littered with job opportunities for fashion editors.”
He shrugged as he unlocked his front door, letting me in first before following closely behind. “You never know. We have a cocktail bar now. We’re very metropolitan.”
I let out a burst of laughter at the comment, but before the sound had been fully realized, he slammed me against the now-closed door and kissed me—hard. The sheer force of the action reminded me of when he’d pushed me against that car when he’d been angry. Back then, I hadn’t understood why it had excited me so much. Now I did. I pulled away, breathless.
His eyes glinted in the darkness of his hallway.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“I’ve been wanting to kiss you all night; self-respect be damned.”
“You can’t admit you’re attracted to me without blaming it on some critical lapse in judgment?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“How about I make that admission a little easier for you?”
With ease, I shrugged out of my satin dress, letting it sweep past my legs to puddle on the hardwood floor. He took in the sight of me in my underwear with hungry eyes.
“If I take off the dress, I’m all in black like you,” I murmured, resting my arms on his shoulders and lacing my fingers behind his neck. “Guess we match.”
The left side of his mouth quirked up into a half-smile at the comment.
“Maybe for the night.”
He unlaced my hands and dropped them from his shoulders, taking hold of one of them as he led me through the darkness to his bedroom.
“For the night sounds good to me, too.”
I fell back. My hands reached for his hair, desperately pulling him in close as he fumbled with his jeans. I stifled a laugh as he drunkenly struggled with his tie and the buttons of his shirt, but eventually, he was free of the tie, and his shirt hung open. I let go of his hair in order to run my hands up his chest, finally fulfilling my burning desire to feel his abs beneath my fingertips.
When he tried to shrug off his shirt, he overbalanced and fell off the bed.
“Holy hell.” I burst into a fit of giggles as he thumped to the floor. I rolled over to the edge to see him lying on the hardwood, half-naked and unconscious. He’d knocked himself out cold.
“Paxton?” I murmured, somewhat concerned. I fell off the bed and landed beside him. He was breathing and seemed fine. Running a hand across the back of his head, I felt the slightly raised bump which had likely knocked him out. Sighing heavily, I roped one of his arms around my shoulder and struggled and heaved his massive frame until I got him back on the bed. He stirred enough to say “Ouch” and fell into a deep sleep.
“I can’t believe you,” I grumbled as I undid the rest of his shirt before throwing the duvet cover over him, climbing to the other side of the bed full of disappointment and worry. “This wasn’t where I saw this going.” I turned on to my side so I could watch his sleeping face.
I’d wondered earlier about what set him apart from Owen and Eli, and now I knew. I liked the guy. I liked him a lot. It was exactly as Carla had said. I had it bad for him, and I’d had it bad for a long, long time.
Chapter Thirteen
Paxton
The quiet but incessant buzz of my cell phone brought me out of a deep sleep. Groggy and confused, I glanced at the screen—it was Sunday, so why did my alarm go off? Except it wasn’t the alarm, it was Carla calling.
Swinging myself up into a sitting position, I answered.
“What’s up?
” I mumbled, yawning in the process. My head throbbed like it had been split in two. “It’s barely eight.”
“Aww, I’m sorry, Paxton,” she replied. “Is Rose with you? I think her cell is dead, and her mom is worried because she didn’t come home last night.”
I frowned at my phone. “Why on earth would Rose be with me?”
She laughed and then groaned. “Oh, that was bad for my head. Stupid hangover. But you can’t be serious? She left with you.”
“What do you mean?” Suddenly, someone moaned softly in their sleep behind me, and I felt a body hit my back.
Oh, dear God, no!
“I’ll call you back.” I hung up before she had a chance to protest and turned to confirm the person behind me was indeed who I knew it would be—Rose.
“Kill me now,” I muttered aloud, not quite sure what I was supposed to do. Was I allowed to wake her up? Did I even want to? What exactly happened between the two of us the night before?
I tried to think, but my head hurt too damn much. Running a hand through my hair, I found a lump the size of Texas on the back of my head. That, along with the copious amount of alcohol I’d consumed the night before, explained the pain I felt.
Stumbling from my bedroom to the bathroom, I located a bottle of painkillers and a glass, which I promptly filled to the brim with water. My throat was a desert landscape complete with a prickly cactus. I sucked the water down like a man who had wandered through the fires of hell for days.
I hung around in the bathroom for longer than necessary, choosing to shower and shave even though handling a razor in my current, hungover state was probably not advisable. What else could I do? She was in my bed, and I had no memory of the night before, which meant I’d have to rely on her telling me the truth. Not her strongpoint.
Whether she chose to tell the truth or to lie, there was absolutely no escaping the fact that she had been asleep in my bed, which meant that, at the least, I’d consented to her being there.
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