The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River)

by London, Julia

  “Help me?”

  “Help you sort things out.”

  Her heart leapt painfully, and so did Emma, jerking out of his arms, putting some space between them. He thought he could help her? The moment Cooper saw her, the moment he understood how bad she was, he would leave her. How could he not? And this time, Emma wouldn’t be able to bear it. “Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t want help?”

  He stared at her, surprised. “What’s the matter? Didn’t this,” he asked, gesturing between the two of them, “mean anything to you?”

  Everything. It meant everything. But Emma, the girl who had been told all her life she was nothing special, who had been rejected by her father more than once, who led men on and then stole their trinkets, couldn’t even fathom the possibilities of it. So she said the only safe thing she could say. “Not really.”

  Cooper looked as if she’d slapped him. Stunned. Hurt. Confused.

  “Cooper, listen,” she said, and pressed her hands against her heart, one on top of the other. To hold it in, to protect it. “I told you, I can’t do ordinary things. I can’t be in an ordinary relationship. I can’t do ordinary love. What you think I am? What you think you see? It’s not real. It’s just your idea of real. Think about what I do. Think about all the things you’ve heard me say.”

  “My God, you are messed up,” he said, his voice full of awe.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said, nodding. “That’s what I’m saying. I’m also honest, and I’m being totally honest with you right now. That’s why I said you are my kryptonite. It’s sick and weird, and you should do yourself a favor and go back to LA before it gets really weird.”

  “Goddammit, Emma!” Cooper exclaimed angrily. She tried to shush him, but he ignored her. “Why are you so down on yourself? Why do you reject something before you’ve even had a chance to think about it? Do you like to hate yourself? Do you like being a slut? Do you like having no one to rely on?”

  Daggers, one by one, he shoved daggers into her. But Emma knew herself too well. “I just know who I am.”

  “Bullshit. There’s no room for personal growth? For a different interpretation of who you are? Of exploring another facet of you?”

  Was there room for that? Emma thought of the kisses they’d shared, of the lovemaking on the couch, and how explosive it had been. She thought of how she wanted to do that again and again, feel that heat in her blood, feel that connection to another human being. Of how devastated she would be when he left. No, there was no room.

  Cooper slipped two fingers under her chin, forcing her to look up. “You don’t have to do this with me. Not me. I know who you are—I saw you that night in Beverly Hills. I saw you today. I have seen you with Leo. Yes, you’ve got some really strange shit going on, but there is more to you than that. Whatever it is that makes you do what you do, I don’t know, but you don’t have to hide from me. I’m trying to tell you I will help you deal.”

  “I’m not hiding—”

  “The hell you aren’t,” he said. “You hide behind sarcasm; you put distance between you and everyone who tries to get close. I get that you’ve had some rough things happen in life, that maybe the world isn’t as easy for you as it is for someone else. But there is a lot of life stretching in front of you, Emma, and you don’t have to keep living this way.”

  She wished she could believe that, or even just hope for it. But she’d lived too many years in her skin to dismiss it just because they’d had great sex. “Do you know how crazy you sound right now?” she said, exasperated. “A guy like you? A guy who could be with anyone he wanted to be with? And you’re going to choose someone like me? You’re crazy! Maybe you’re the one with issues!”

  “I’m not crazy; I’m into you. What’s wrong with that? Why can’t you believe it?”

  He was scaring her now. He wasn’t thinking, he wasn’t understanding how bizarre her life had become. “Cooper, we had a thing! Don’t read so much into it, okay? I’m not a nice person. I’m not going to magically turn into someone you’ll want to be with. This isn’t Pygmalion. You can’t remake me!”

  His face darkened. “Thanks for telling me what I want,” he said. “Maybe you should think a little more about what you want. You keep telling yourself that you’re no good, and baby, it will become the truth.”

  She stared at him, her mind whirling. “I’m not going back to LA.”

  Cooper ran his hand over his head. He took the jeans she was holding and pulled them on, then reached for his boots. “I like you,” he said angrily. “Goddammit, I don’t know why, but I like you a lot.” He yanked on his second boot and stood up, towering over her. “You don’t scare me, Emma. You don’t put me off. I’m offering you a chance at something different. Something meaningful. So I’ll be in LA if you ever wake up.” He started for the door.

  “Wait! What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  “I have a plane to catch,” he said curtly, and yanked open the door, striding out of her room and down the hall.

  “Cooper!” she cried, but he was already on the stairs.

  She didn’t go after him; she was frozen. She heard Madeline or Libby cry out with surprise or alarm, their voices rising up almost as one as they pummeled Cooper with questions. Emma heard the rumble of Cooper’s voice outside, then Libby and Madeline again. It all sounded so far away from her. Miles and miles from her.

  Emma remained standing where Cooper had left her, swaying a little, light-headed with grief and confusion. Her mind was racing as fast as her heart; she was unable to grasp any thought other than stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.

  Emma liked Cooper a lot, too. But she was terrified of disappointing him. How could she not? Eventually, he would see her in all her glory. Not that cute. Brass tacks coming out of her mouth. An inability to grasp social nuances. Issues with sex. He would recoil, he would back away. He would leave her! He would choose someone else!

  She had done the right thing, rejecting his offer. He didn’t know it, but she’d done the right thing. Hadn’t she?

  She could hear Madeline or Libby coming up the stairs, heard one of them calling her name. Emma sank down onto her bed, her gaze fixed on the floor.

  “Emma?” It was Libby beside her, pushing her hair out of her face. “Hey, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I mean is everything okay?” Libby asked, crouching down beside her. Madeline had come in, too, was hovering near the door as if she was uncertain whether to stay or go. “We saw Cooper leave. We didn’t know you guys were up here.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  Libby put her hand on Emma’s knee. “Did something happen? Do you want to talk about it?”

  Emma pushed her hair from her face and looked at Libby’s pale blue eyes. Yes, she wanted to talk about it. She wanted to tell them what had happened, to hear it all again. She wanted someone to know how much she was hurting right now. But Emma couldn’t do it. Years of conditioning would not release their hold on her, and she couldn’t make herself admit what had happened.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t really talk about it,” she said, sounding slightly apologetic.

  Libby sighed and exchanged a look with Madeline. That look! That I knew it, I told you so look.

  “Okay, Em.” Libby stood up and walked to the door.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it,” Emma tried to explain. “I just can’t.”

  “Come down,” Madeline said, and she touched Libby’s shoulder, as if Libby were the injured one, as if Libby had just sent her best hope for happiness storming out the door. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  Madeline and Libby disappeared.

  Emma looked to the ceiling and blinked back tears. She hated what she’d grown up to be, but damn if she knew how to change it.

  She took a breath and looked down. She turned her hand palm u
p and opened her fingers, stretching them. She’d held her hand in a fist for the last quarter of an hour, since the moment she picked up Cooper’s jeans and handed them to him. She stared, heartbroken, at the St. Christopher charm she’d taken from his pocket.

  NINETEEN

  Cooper called Michael from the Denver airport and asked him to pick him up at LAX when the flight arrived.

  “Perfect. Audrey is doing a show at the Wiltern tonight, and she and Jack are throwing a party afterward,” Michael said, referring to Jack’s pop-star wife, Audrey LaRue. “You can come with us.”

  “I’m not dressed for that,” Cooper said, looking down at his jeans and boots. Not to mention he wasn’t in the mood for it.

  “Dude, it’s the Wiltern. Text me when you land.”

  A few hours later, Cooper walked out of the LAX terminal. Leah, a vivacious brunette with short, bouncy hair, leapt out of a vehicle and threw her arms around Cooper as if he’d been gone for months instead of days. “I’m so glad you’re back! Braden and Brodie keep asking where Uncle Boober has gone.”

  “What have you done with those hoodlums?” Cooper asked, bending over to peer into the back of the SUV Michael now drove. Gone were the sports convertibles he’d once favored.

  “With their nanny,” Leah said, and did a little dance move. “’Cuz Mommy’s got her party face on!” She grabbed Cooper’s hand and did a twirl beneath it, then opened the back door and hopped in.

  “Leah, I’ll sit there,” Cooper said.

  “Nope. I’m sure Michael is going to interrogate you about the potential to break your necks, so I’m going to check some e-mail. Go on, Cooper, get in the front and leave me alone,” she said playfully, her gaze already on her phone.

  Cooper sighed and glanced at Michael.

  Michael eyed him curiously, a Cheshire grin on his face. “I wasn’t going to interrogate you, but now I am. You looked pissed, bro,” he said, and took Cooper’s bag, tossing it in the backseat next to his wife.

  “Not pissed,” Cooper said. Pissed. So pissed. “Tired.”

  “Sure,” Michael said, and fist-bumped Cooper’s shoulder, smiling a little as he walked around to the driver’s side of the SUV.

  Michael started in on Cooper the moment they pulled away from LAX. “What happened in Colorado?”

  What happened in Colorado? An invisible rug had been jerked out from beneath him, that was what. A rug Cooper hadn’t even realized was there until he found himself flat on his ass. That was the thing that had eaten at him on the flight to Los Angeles—not, as one might expect, the way Emma had sent him on his merry way after some of the most incredible sex he’d had in his life—but that he didn’t even know he’d held this torch for Emma Tyler all these months. Had he really been so smitten that night in Beverly Hills?

  And yet, when he’d seen her at the door at Homecoming Ranch, he’d felt a familiar reverberation in his membranes. A recalled ache, a resurrected attraction.

  “Yo—Coop?”

  “Nothing happened,” Cooper said, startled back to the present. “I checked out Trace Canyon. It looks perfect for what we want.”

  “Oh yeah?” Michael said.

  That’s how you handled men—give them some sport to talk about, and they were happy to push aside the nasty business of feelings. Michael asked a lot of questions about Pine River and Trace Canyon. How sheer was the rock face, how deep the ravines? What sort of access would they have, and how would they get equipment up to the site? All business.

  But as they turned on to Wilshire Boulevard, Michael looked at him curiously and said, “Anything else happen?”

  “Like what?”

  Leah’s head suddenly popped up between the bucket seats. “What my husband wants to know, and so do I, is what about Emma Tyler? What’s the deal with her? Did she have the thing?”

  “The thing!” Michael scoffed.

  “The thing, the thing, whatever it was Carl Freeman thought she took?”

  “Yes,” Cooper said. He’d called Carl earlier to tell him he’d be personally delivering it to him tomorrow.

  “Wow,” Leah said, and looked at Michael. “Is she really as loony as they say?”

  “She’s not loony,” Cooper said instantly, and then caught himself. Unfortunately, not before Leah and Michael had noticed.

  “No?” Michael asked, a big grin spreading his face. Leah punched Michael on the shoulder. “Ouch,” he said with a laugh. “So I guess you had some time to talk to Miss Tyler, huh?”

  Cooper didn’t smile. He couldn’t banter his way out of this. “A little,” he said, and looked out the window. “Sorry guys, I’m beat.”

  He knew Leah and Michael were looking at each other again, the silent questions flowing between them. He felt Leah ease back to her seat, and they didn’t ask him more, for which Cooper was thankful.

  Audrey’s concert was already underway when they arrived, and with their backstage passes, Cooper was able to nurse a beer and enjoy her show in solitude. Without a lot of questions, without having to think. Audrey’s music could do that to him—carry him out of this world. He wasn’t the best judge of musical talent, but to his ears, Audrey had the most melodic and sultry voice of anyone on the airwaves.

  The after-show party was a typical Jack-and-Audrey event. The who’s who of Hollywood was in attendance, but so were regular folk, too. Audrey always made a point of that. Invitations to these high-wattage parties—which Cooper took for granted—were highly coveted because Audrey was a huge pop star. Yet in spite of fame, Audrey was a down-to-earth gal, and she liked to invite people who typically would never have access to this sort of event. Such as the barista at her local coffeehouse, or the middle-aged couple who owned the dry-cleaning shop she used. Tonight, Cooper recognized two girls from the Whole Foods grocery near their offices chatting with the head of Moonglow Records.

  Generally, Cooper was right in the thick of things because he enjoyed these events as much as anyone. Tonight, however, he was not in the mood. He wanted to go home, take a shower, find something to eat. He sighed when Eli sidled over to him and said, “Why the long face?”

  “I don’t have a long face,” Cooper said.

  “It’s so long it’s scraping the floor, Coop. Everything all right?”

  Cooper looked at his oldest friend. “Everything is fine,” he said. “I’m just tired.”

  “Sure,” Eli said, but his gaze was locked on Cooper’s.

  Cooper swallowed down the rest of his beer. “Derek’s getting out,” he said. “I’m flying out at the end of the week to help Mom.” That much was true. But it was also a lie—Derek wasn’t on his mind. Cooper had never lied to Eli that he could recall, but in all honesty, in the last two days, Derek had hardly crossed his mind.

  He hated that Eli’s expression suggested he knew that wasn’t what was bothering Cooper. But he nodded and said, “Ah. I guess it’s going to be a tough transition for him.”

  “Yep.”

  Eli’s eyes narrowed. “Tell him I said hello.”

  “I will. Thanks,” Cooper said.

  Eli looked at his beer bottle, then at Cooper again. “Need anything, Coop? Another beer? A friend?”

  Eli and Cooper had been friends for so long—more than thirty years now—that Cooper knew Eli wasn’t asking if he needed help with Derek. He couldn’t help a small chuckle. Couldn’t get anything past Eli McCain. He put his hand on Eli’s shoulder and squeezed affectionately. “I’m going to take a rain check.”

  “Whatever you say, chief.” Eli touched his bottle to Cooper’s and wandered off.

  That was it—Cooper was calling a car. He walked out into the hallway, out of the din, to call up the service. There were people there, too, groups of two and three talking away from the music. Cooper pulled out his phone and was about to make the call when someone tapped him on his shoulder. Cooper turned, and looke
d into the smiling face of Laura Franklin, Emma’s stepsister.

  “Cooper, right?”

  Unbelievable. What was she doing here? What were the odds? “Cooper, right. Hello, Laura,” he said, and stuck out his hand.

  “Wow,” she said with a laugh of surprise as she took his hand and gave it a shake. “This is weird, running into you like this. How’d you get in?”

  “Audrey’s husband and I go way back,” he said. “How about you?”

  “My boyfriend!” she said, and pointed to a man down the hall, talking to a couple. “He’s a real estate broker. He sold some property to Audrey LaRue’s lawyer.”

  And with that bit of information, Cooper knew exactly the sort of guests Laura and her boyfriend were. Leeches, Jack called them, people who sought out any angle to get into this sort of Hollywood party.

  “So, did you find Emma?” Laura asked. “We haven’t heard from her, you know. But that’s not unusual—Emma’s a flake.”

  Cooper felt a hitch in his heart; she wasn’t a flake. Laura said it casually, with a smile on her face. “I found her,” he said.

  He didn’t mean to show any emotion when he said it, but he obviously did, because Laura blinked. And then she smiled wryly. “I take it that it didn’t go quite as you hoped? Trust me, you’re not alone, Cooper. Welcome to my world.”

  “It was okay,” Cooper said. “She had what I was looking for, so . . .” He shrugged.

  “Well, that surprises me. Emma’s not very forthcoming. I mean, she’s forthcoming with her opinions, obviously. But when it comes to her? She won’t tell you anything.”

  Laura was full of information of what Emma was not, and Cooper didn’t like it. “Why do you think that is?” he asked, trying very hard to sound casual.

  Laura shrugged. “I don’t know. Mom says she’s jealous.”

  “Of . . . ?”

  Laura laughed. “Of me, silly,” she said, as if that should be obvious to him. “It’s been a problem all our lives. When we were kids, it was manageable, but when we grew up, and boys came into the picture, she got really possessive and really weird.” She wrinkled her nose.