The Cottage

by Danielle Steel

  And whatever Taryn had brought to him, it was obviously meant to be. She had never seen Coop like that in the few months she'd known him. He seemed remarkably quiet, and totally at peace.

  Chapter 18

  Taryn moved in to The Cottage with very little luggage, and even less fuss. She was discreet, polite, pleasant, and easy to have around. She asked Paloma for nothing, and was careful not to intrude on Coop. And when Alex met her, the two women hit it off immediately. They were both solid, strong, honest women, who had a penchant for being kind. And Alex could see the resemblance to Coop. Not only physically, but they had the same naturally aristocratic look. It was remarkable. The two things she didn't have in common with him were that she traveled with very little luggage, and she was financially sound. Other than that, they were two peas in a pod. And Coop loved having her around.

  They spent days getting to know each other, filling each other in on their pasts, and sharing their views and opinions on everything imaginable. There were differences and similarities that intrigued them both, and Taryn thought him a nice man. After they'd gotten to know each other, she asked him if he was serious about Alex, and he told her he wasn't sure. It was the most honest thing he'd ever said. Even in the short time he'd known her, Taryn brought the best out in him, even more than Alex. It was as though she had come to make him whole. And he brought her something too. Now that she knew he existed, she wanted to know who he was, and she liked what she saw, although she saw his weaknesses too.

  “I have a dilemma about Alex,” he confessed.

  “Because she's so young?” Taryn asked, as they lay in the shade at the pool, while everyone else was at work. She had the same fair skin as he, and like her father, she instinctively avoided the sun, and had the same flawless alabaster complexion as he. Coop always said it was thanks to his distant British ancestry. He had “English” skin, and clearly Taryn did too.

  “No, I'm used to that, young doesn't bother me,” he grinned. “She's almost too old for me.” They both laughed at that. He had told her about Charlene too. “Her father is Arthur Madison. You know what that means. I constantly question my motives about her. I'm up to my ass in debt.” His honesty seemed charming to her. He had never even told Alex that. “Sometimes I worry that I'm after her money. At other times, I'm sure I'm not. It would be so damn easy and convenient for me. Too easy maybe. The question is, would I love her if she didn't have a cent? I'm not sure. And until I am, I'm stuck. It's a hell of a question to ask yourself.”

  “Maybe it doesn't matter,” Taryn said practically.

  “But maybe it does,” he said, suddenly honest, which was an immense relief. She was the one person he could be totally candid with, because she had no axe to grind, and he wanted nothing from her. Not her love or her body or her money. He just wanted her in his life. It was the closest he'd ever been to unconditional love. And it seemed to have happened overnight, almost as though he had known she was out there somewhere, and he was waiting for her to arrive in his life. He needed her. And maybe, in some odd and unexpected way, Taryn needed him. “The minute sex and money get into it, Taryn, it's a mess. It has been in my life anyway.” He loved sharing his secrets with her, and was surprised about it himself.

  “Maybe you're right. I had a problem with that with my husband too. We built the business together, and in the end, it brought us down. He wanted to take more money out of it than I did. I did the designing so I got the recognition, and he was jealous of that. In the end, he tried to take the business away in the divorce. It was easier to just sell it and move on. And he slept with my assistant, and moved in with her when he left, which damn near broke my heart.”

  “See what I mean,” Coop said, nodding, “money and sex. It screws things up every time. We've got neither one between us, and everything's so simple.” And it felt so right. His relationship with her had become precious to him overnight.

  “How bad are your debts?” she asked with a look of concern.

  “Bad enough. Alex doesn't know. I never told her. I didn't want her to think I was after her money to pay my debts.”

  “Are you?”

  “I'm not sure,” he said honestly. “It would certainly be simpler than working my ass off, hustling commercials and God knows what else. But she's so decent, I don't want to take money from her. If she were different, I might. And I don't want money from you,” he said pointedly. He didn't want to add that to the mix, or corrupt what they had. He liked things just the way they were. It was clean between them, and he intended to keep it that way. “All I need is a part in a decent movie, a good part, and I'd be back on my feet. But God knows when that will happen, or if. Maybe never again. Hard to say.” He seemed philosophical about it.

  “Then what?” She was worried about him. He seemed a little vague about his financial affairs.

  “Something always turns up.” And if not, there was Alex, but that seemed wrong to him. That was what he'd been explaining to Taryn, and as they were talking, he suddenly pointed to her feet.

  “Is something wrong?” Taryn asked. She'd just had a pedicure, and her nails were painted pink. She thought maybe he preferred red. But she always wore pink. Red polish looked like blood to her.

  “You've got my feet.” He stuck his own next to hers and they both laughed. They looked like twins. They had the same long, elegant feet. She stuck her hands out. “And the same hands.” There was no denying her, not that he wanted to. He had been thinking of introducing her as his niece. But as time wore on and he got to know her better, he wanted to introduce her as his daughter, and he asked her what she thought.

  “Sounds good to me, but not if it's going to screw things up for you.”

  “I don't see why. We can just say you're big for fourteen.”

  “I won't tell anyone how old I am,” she laughed, and they had almost the same laugh as well, “that works for me too. It's a bitch suddenly being single again at my age. I'm nearly forty, and suddenly I'm back out in the world. I've been married since I was twenty-two.”

  “How boring,” he scolded her and she laughed again. He was fun to be with, and great to talk to. She loved spending time with him, and he with her. They had done nothing else for days, like catching up on an entire lifetime in one gulp. She brought the best out in him, and he in her. “It was time for a change. We'll have to find someone for you out here.”

  “Not yet,” she said calmly. “I'm not ready. I need to catch my breath. I've lost my husband, my business, and my mother, and acquired a father all in the last few months. I need to move slowly for a little while. It's a lot to absorb.”

  “What about work? Are you going to look for something out here?” He was protective of her now.

  “I don't know. I've always wanted to try my hand at costume design, but that's probably a crazy idea. I don't really have to work. We sold the business very well, and Mom left me what she had. My father… my other father,” she said with a smile, “provided for me very well. I can take my time figuring it out. Maybe I can help you figure out yours. I'm pretty good at sorting things out and making sense of a mess.”

  “That must have been in your mother's genes. I work it the other way round. I take ‘sense’ and turn it into a mess. It works for me. Financial chaos is familiar to me.” He said it with good humor and humility, which she found endearing too.

  “Let me know if you want me to take a look and tell you what I think.”

  “Maybe you can interpret what my accountant says, although it's pretty plain. He's a one-man band. Essentially he says don't buy anything and sell the house. He's an incredibly boring little man.”

  “It's the nature of the beast,” she said sympathetically.

  And when Alex was around, they had fun too. The three of them cooked dinner together, went to movies, and talked endlessly. But when the time was right, Taryn always discreetly disappeared. She didn't want to intrude on them. But she enjoyed Alex immensely and had great respect for the work she did.

  Ta
ryn and Alex were lying at the pool talking about it one Saturday morning when Mark and his children came out of the guest wing. Coop was up at the main house on the terrace, reading a book. He had a cold and didn't want to swim.

  Alex introduced Taryn to the Friedmans, but didn't say who she was. She didn't have to. Mark asked if she and Coop were related. He said there was an uncanny resemblance between them, and asked if Alex had noticed it. Both women laughed.

  “Actually,” Taryn said calmly, “he's my father. We haven't seen each other in a long time.” It was the understatement of the century and Alex chuckled. She had handled it very well.

  “I didn't know Coop had a daughter,” Mark said, looking blank.

  “Neither did he,” Taryn said with a smile, and dove into the pool.

  “What did she say?” Mark asked Alex, looking confused.

  “It's a long story. They'll tell you about it sometime.”

  And a few minutes later, Jimmy appeared. It was a hot day, and they all wanted to swim. Mark was talking to Taryn about her business and New York, and the kids were hanging out with friends who had just arrived. Alex asked them not to play their music, since Coop wasn't feeling well, and they hung out at the far end of the pool, talking and laughing. It gave her a chance to talk to Jimmy quietly for a change. There were always other people around.

  “How are things?” Alex asked easily, stretched out on a lounge chair as he put sunblock on his arms. Despite his dark hair, he had fair skin. She volunteered to put some on his back, and he hesitated and then thanked her as he turned around. No one had done that for him since Maggie died, and Alex didn't give it a second thought as she handed the tube back to him.

  “Okay, I guess. How about you? How's work?” Jimmy asked.

  “Busy. Sometimes I think the whole world has preemies, or babies with problems. I never get to see healthy babies anymore.”

  “It must be depressing work,” Jimmy said sympathetically.

  “Not really. Most of them get healthy eventually. Some don't. I'm not used to that part yet.” She hated it when they lost them. It was so sad for everyone. But the victories were sweet. “The kids you work with don't have an easy road either. It's hard to think about the things some people do to their kids.”

  “I'll never get used to that either,” he admitted. They had both seen a lot in their respective lines of work. And in their own way, they were each saving lives.

  “What made you want to become a doctor?” he asked, curious for the first time.

  “My mother,” she said simply, and he smiled.

  “Is she a doctor too?”

  “No,” Alex grinned, “she leads a totally useless life. She goes shopping and goes to dinner parties and gets her nails done. And that's about it. So does my sister. I wanted to do anything but that, no matter what it took.” It had been a little bit more complicated than that, but not much. She had been exceptionally good at science too. “I used to want to be an airline pilot, when I was a kid. But that seemed pretty boring too. It's kind of like being a glorified bus driver after a while. What I do is more fun, and it's different every day.”

  “Me too,” he smiled. “When I was at Harvard, I wanted to play professional ice hockey for the Bruins. But my girlfriend convinced me I'd look like shit with no teeth. I decided she was right. But I still like to skate.” He and Maggie used to skate a lot, but he tried not to think about that. “Who's the woman talking to Mark?” he asked with interest, and Alex smiled.

  “Coop's daughter. She's staying with him for a while. She just came out from New York.”

  “I didn't know he had a daughter.” Jimmy looked surprised.

  “It came as something of a surprise to him too.”

  “He seems to have a lot of those.”

  “This was a good surprise. She's really nice.” Mark seemed to think so. They had been talking for an hour, and Alex could see Jessica checking her out. Jason was busy trying to drown his friends. “They're good kids,” she said about the Friedman children, and Jimmy agreed.

  “Yes, they are. He's a lucky guy, with his kids at least. I guess they'll be going back to their mom soon. He's going to miss them a lot.” That seemed sad to Alex. He was so happy with them.

  “Maybe he'll go back too. What about you? Are you going to stay out here, or go back East eventually?” She knew he was from Boston, and it suddenly occurred to her that he might know her cousin who had gone to Harvard at about the same time.

  “I'd like to stay out here,” Jimmy said, looking pensive. “Although I feel kind of sorry for my mom. My dad died, and she's alone. And I'm all she's got.” Alex nodded, and asked him about her cousin then and he grinned. “Luke Madison was one of my best friends in school. We lived in the same dorm. We used to get drunk together every weekend senior year.”

  “That sounds like Luke.” She laughed.

  “I'm ashamed to admit I probably haven't seen him in ten years. I think he went to London when we graduated, and I lost track of him then.”

  “He's still there. And he has six kids. All boys, I think. I don't see him much either, except at weddings, and I don't go to those a lot.”

  “Any particular reason?” He was intrigued by her, and her attachment to Coop. It didn't make sense to him, but he didn't mention it. He wasn't particularly fond of Coop. He wasn't even sure why. It was a kind of instinctive dislike. Jealousy maybe. He was such an obvious ladies' man, and all he seemed to do was indulge himself. It went totally against Jimmy's grain.

  “I ate a bad one once… wedding, I mean “Alex explained and he laughed at her explanation.

  “That's too bad. The right ones can be a great thing. Mine was. Not so much the wedding as the marriage. We got married at City Hall. She was a great girl.”

  “I'm sorry about what happened,” Alex said, and meant it. She always felt so sorry for him, but he looked better these days. Not quite so anguished, or so pale. And he had gained a little weight. His evenings with the Friedmans had done him good, and at least he ate. But he particularly enjoyed the kids.

  “It's strange. Grief. Some days you think it'll kill you. And other times, it's okay. And you can never tell which when you wake up. A good day can turn to shit. And a day that starts out so badly you want to die can suddenly turn around. It's like pain, or an illness or something, you can never tell which way it's going to go. I think I'm getting used to it. It becomes a way of life after a while.”

  “I guess there's no remedy except time.” It seemed trite, but she suspected it was true. It had been nearly five months. When he'd moved in, he looked half dead himself. “A lot of things are like that, although maybe not as tough. It took me a long time to get over the marriage I nearly had. Years, in fact.”

  “I think that's different, it's about trust. This is about loss. It's cleaner. There's no one to blame. It just hurts like hell.” He was being amazingly honest about his grief, and Alex suspected it was doing him good to talk. “How much longer do you have in your residency?”

  “Another year. It seems like forever sometimes. A lot of days, a lot of nights. I'll probably stay on at UCLA even when I'm through, if they'll have me. They have a terrific neonatal ICU. It's kind of a tough specialty, there aren't a lot of jobs. I was going to be a normal pediatrician originally, but I got hooked on this. High adrenaline, it keeps me focused. I think I'd get bored otherwise.” They were still talking about it when Taryn and Mark wandered back. They had been talking about tax laws, and tax shelters, and Mark was surprised by how much she knew about it. And she'd seemed interested in what he'd said. She was almost as tall as he was, and Alex smiled as they approached. They made a handsome pair, and were close to the same age.

  “What are you two talking about?” Mark asked as they sat down.

  “Work. What else?” Alex grinned.

  “So were we.” And as they chatted, what seemed like a herd of teenagers got back in the pool. Alex was glad Coop hadn't come down. It would have driven him insane. It seemed fitting that
the only child he had had stayed away until she was thirty-nine years old. It was about the right age child for him. She had said as much to Taryn the day before and they both laughed. Coop was incredibly vocal about his dislike of kids.

  And five minutes later, the children in the pool started a lively game of Marco Polo and Mark and Jimmy got in with them.

  “He's a good man,” Taryn said of Mark. “I gather he was pretty devastated when his wife left. It's lucky for him his kids decided to come back.”

  “Coop wasn't quite as thrilled,” Alex commented and they both laughed. “They're lovely kids,” Alex vouched for them.

  “What's Jimmy like?” Taryn asked with interest.

  “Sad. He lost his wife almost five months ago. I think it's been pretty tough.”

  “Another one?” It seemed like an epidemic, but Alex shook her head.

  “No. Cancer. She was thirty-two years old,” she whispered as Jimmy moved closer to them in the pool. He had just scored a point for his team, and threw Jason the ball, who scored yet another point. It was a very loud game, and they were splashing all over the place. And as she watched them, she saw Coop wave. He wanted them to come back up. He was ready for lunch. “I think the master calls.” Alex pointed him out to Taryn, and she looked up and smiled. Even at this distance, Alex could see he was proud of her. Taryn had been a lovely addition to his life, and she was glad for him.

  “Are you happy with him, Alex?” Taryn asked her. She had been wondering what the relationship meant to her. She had heard a lot about her from Coop.

  “Yes, I am. It's a shame he hates kids so much. Otherwise, he's everything I want.”

  “You don't mind the difference in your age?”

  “I thought about it at first, but it doesn't seem to matter. He's like a kid sometimes.”

  “But he's not,” she said wisely. It would matter more in time. A lot more one day.