by Leah Vale
He almost reached the main road before he remembered he’d left his briefcase in his suite of rooms. He needed the financial papers in it that he’d been poring over, trying to find a corporate Achilles’ heel he could slice. Plus, he needed the reminder the papers gave him of what his purpose here was. And it didn’t involve supportive families or wonderful women with misguided loyalties.
He used the swath of impeccably maintained grass on the sides of the drive to turn his truck around and go to The Big House, instead. He’d take advantage of the caterer’s preparty disruption to slip up to his room the back way, grab his briefcase and some clothes, then head for his old, mostly empty apartment, instead of the place filled with far too many people who tempted him to call it home.
SARA WAS MAD ENOUGH to spit. And mad enough to charge down the stairs with the intent of cutting through the trees and across the lawn to The Big House. She’d accost Cooper in the hall in front of the party-setup crew if necessary, to get it through his head that she knew what she wanted and she wanted him.
Despite what he thought, she did understand. She understood the pain he carried from what he’d been denied in his youth, and she desperately wanted him to understand that she was here for him now, that she’d support him.
If he’d let her, the big stupid jerk.
Watching the red glow of his taillights through the red haze of her anger, she used the bottom handrail post to swing herself from the last stair in the right direction. But his truck turned left, not right. She skidded to a halt. Cooper was traveling toward the main road, not The Big House. He wasn’t going home.
Or was he?
The thought that she might have driven Cooper from the McCoys with her foolish needs made her quake. He was probably going to where he used to live in town. That he hadn’t given his apartment up had always been proof to her that he’d never intended to stay with the McCoys, that he planned to take his revenge, then return to his own life.
Leaving her alone again in hers.
No. She’d change Cooper’s mind tonight even if she had to chase him all over town.
She spun, the leather sole of her sandal grinding on the rough fake cobblestone, and ran back up the stairs to get the purse she’d dropped when he’d kissed her.
How could he kiss her like that and leave'? She’d considered it a good sign before in St. Louis. His honor had won out, and she’d believed it would keep him from exacting his revenge. Now she wasn’t so sure. Plus, it was costing her any chance of healing him.
But when he’d left earlier in the evening, he’d come back. She paused, her hand hovering over her purse. Could she trust him to come back?
Trust.
Ha.
What was it with her, falling for men with agendas and the willingness to use her to achieve them? But she had an agenda, too. Only, hers would benefit them all.
She grabbed her purse and straightened. The rumble of Cooper’s truck’s big engine reached her and she froze. She took just a second to process that the rumble was growing louder and less time than that for her heart rate to match the pulsing pistons. He was coming back. She turned toward the lane and spotted his headlights.
They passed her lane by, heading, instead, for The Big House. The crushing weight of disappointment made her gasp. She straightened her spine against it as she watched him turn off on the driveway leading to the garages on the opposite side of the house. So he wasn’t coming back to her, but at least he wasn’t leaving the McCoys.
Yet.
She still had a chance to at least get him to see reason regarding Joseph and the company that meant everything to him. A hope that was seeded far too deeply sent her blood pumping harder.
Dropping her purse again on the porch because she wouldn’t need it, Sara bolted down the stairs one more time and took off toward The Big House. Cooper would undoubtedly try to avoid everyone, sticking to the rear of the house and using the back staircase to get to his suite of rooms, but it was quicker for her to run for the front door.
But she didn’t particularly want to be seen, at least not by Helen or Joseph, despite her earlier bravado. The exterior lights, turned high to aid the delivery crew, would make slipping in more difficult, so she waited to dart out until a big man in pristine white coveralls hoisted a large round tabletop from a box truck. The man carried the tabletop to the side like a giant shield, and Sara kept pace with him on the table side, presumably unseen by the deliveryman and hopefully anyone else.
She could always say she’d come to help with the preparations, but she feared she wouldn’t be able to slip away to find Cooper if Helen or Joseph saw her there. They’d want to put her to work. Normally, she’d be glad for it, but not tonight.
The tall, double front doors had been thrown wide to make bringing larger items in easier, so she had no trouble accompanying the man into the high, domed foyer. The protective runners placed on the floor muffled her footsteps. As soon as she reached one of the two staircases that framed the curved foyer on opposite walls, she peeled off and started up, taking the steps two at a time.
She felt like a ridiculous thief. sneaking into a house she had always had free mn of whether she’d had the right or not, but at least her intentions were for the good of the family. How did Cooper feel walking through here every day? He couldn’t possibly hold on to his bitterness in a place so welcoming. His determination to in some way ruin the McCoys had to be faltering. It just had to be.
Because her resistance to him was sunk.
Her intentions weren’t just for the good of the family.
She was winded by the time she made it to the top of the stairs, but she turned down the left hall and hurried toward Cooper’s suite. She only knew which one he’d been given because she’d asked Helen that first day. She snorted. As if knowing where he slept would have helped her guard Joseph and Alexander from him. More likely, some subconscious part of her had anticipated wanting to seek him out.
She got to his door and, without bothering to knock, burst in. Then she quickly closed the door behind her. The sitting room was dark except where the bright exterior lights made the sheer curtains glow, since the heavier drapes had yet to be closed. No light eked from beneath the bedroom door. He hadn’t arrived at his rooms yet, if he actually planned to come up here.
He had to eventually.
Not certain what to do, Sara moved to the center of the room.
The door opened behind her.
She whirled, and the light from the hall blinded her for a second, but she recognized in an instant that it was Cooper’s big frame silhouetted in the door.
He stood still for what seemed an eternity before he reached toward the wall and the lamps flicked on. "Sara."
Though it wasn’t a question, she’d clearly surprised him. His broad chest rose and fell noticeably beneath his dark blue T-shirt. Either he’d taken the backstairs the same way she’d taken the front, or he was more
than a little upset about finding her in his rooms.
Tough tooties if he was. She wasn’t leaving until they had it out.
He hesitated, then closed the door behind him.
She gripped her hands in front of her to keep from wringing them. "Thank you for not throwing me out."
He moved toward her. "Yet."
Her anger flared again. "Just you try." She darted past him and planted herself in front of the door he’d just shut. "And I’m not going to let you leave, either. Not until we settle this."
He went to a desk that made his sitting room look more like an office despite the man-size burgundy furniture and television armoire on the other side of the room. Not looking at her, he tossed his keys down.
"What exactly is it that we have to settle?"
"You. The McCoys." She inhaled an inadequate breath and dived in. "Me."
He crossed his arms and leaned his jeans-clad backside against the desk before finally looking at her. "I thought I’d been pretty clear about that particular this."
"No. Y
ou weren’t." She stalked toward him. "You said you couldn’t--" she suddenly wished she hadn’t moved so close to him "--couldn’t be with me because l still didn’t understand. Well, I’m not leaving until you help me understand whatever it is you think I don’t."
He dropped his arms. "Sara." He made her sound like a child demanding something she already knew she couldn’t have.
The patronizing was just what her confidence needed. "You can’t make decisions that affect me so much without explaining, Cooper."
He ran a hand gently down her upper arm. "It’s because of how much they affect you that I’m making them."
His warm touch tempted her to crumple against his chest and beg. "Please, Cooper."
He pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her. "Ah. Sara. Why do you give a rat’s ass about me?"
She buried her face in the crook of his neck. "Because you made me care. You and your sexy teasing, your honor and stinking nobility..."
"Stinking nobility?" He chuckled. "Interesting attributes to hang on a guy you haven’t wanted to trust out of your sight."
She drew back to look him in the face. "Why, Cooper? Why can’t I trust you?"
Cooper’s heart shuddered at the anguish in her voice. She really did care.
Deeply.
Damn it.
Because so did he.
The acknowledgment started a roaring in his ears, a blasting of wants. needs and regrets. All out of his control and realm of experience.
He owed her an explanation. He ran a hand over her silky hair, his calluses catching along the way, as he tried to figure out where to start. Probably best if he went straight to the heart of the matter, to the bullet still lodged deep inside him. "He called my mother a liar to my face."
She frowned. "Who did?"
"None other than Marcus McCoy, heir to, and supposedly shining example of. the famous McCoy morality."
"Marcus? You spoke to Marcus? When?" .
He tried to smooth the furrows in her forehead with his thumb, to distance himself from what he was saying by doing something. anything. "When I went to him. After the cancer finally beat my mom." He took a deep breath. "l honored her dying wish and went to him. But honoring her wish was mostly an excuse. I went to him for comfort and because I was scared. It had always been just my mom and me."
His attempt at distance failed miserably and he found himself once again in that place, a place no kid should ever have to find himself in, filled with loneliness, desperation and fear. The ghost of the tightness that had had a constant grip on his stomach then got hold of him again. Time and maturity hadn’t done much to lessen its power or effect on him.
"I walked all the way from town to this house and waited for him out by the garages. There were only four at the time, not eight. Either they expanded for Alexander’s cars or Marcus finally settled on a different type of toy."
Sara grimaced.
Well, she’d wanted to understand. The tightness crept ever upward, his chest hurting with it. "When Marcus drove up in his sweet little silver Porsche Targa and got out. l went to him--" His throat succumbed to his pain, closing up on him. He matched Sara’s stubbornness and forced out the words, "I went to my father and told him who I was. He just looked at me. So I to1d him who my mom was and what had happened to her, that now she wanted me to be with him."
Cooper dragged in a breath and finished it. "He laughed."
Sara sucked in a breath, too.
He soothed both her and him by stroking her hair again as he continued. "Then Marcus McCoy--the man that I’d actually spent the day thinking of as daddy as I waited for him--told me, to my face, staring me dead in the eye, that it was all a lie. That my mother had lied to me about who my father was. He said he had that sort of thing happen to him all the time because of who he was. Because he was a McCoy."
Sara closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, he wondered at the sadness glistening in them, whereas the memory only made his burn with hate. "So that’s why you despise all things McCoy," she concluded for him, her voice thick.
His laughter came out harsh and sharp. "It’s really not smart to make a thirteen-year-old boy doubt his recently departed mother, you know."
Her chin trembled. "Oh, Cooper."
"Now do you understand, Sara?"
"I understand that you were hurt by someone who should have been there for you." She reached up and captured his hand, bringing it to her chest. He could feel the pounding of her big heart "And I’m sorry to say that I’m not surprised Marcus treated you the way he did. As good a salesman as he was, he wasn’t very good at putting himself in someone else’s shoes."
·
Cooper smiled despite himself. "What a diplomatic way to say he was a self-centered, arrogant SOB."
She sighed in resignation. "Okay, in a lot of ways he was." Then she blinked and straightened. Her expression grew tierce as something obviously occurred to her. "Don’t you think that if you stepped into the place Marcus denied you then. you’d be exercising the ultimate revenge on him? He clearly hadn’t wanted you to be a part of the family, so wouldn't taking your place give you a better sense of vengeance?"
Halfway wishing it could be so easy. Cooper shook his head. "Marcus’s will blows that argument out of the water. I’d be doing what he wanted."
She let out a frustrated breath. "I’m sorry about what he did to you, Cooper. And I understand why you feel the way you do about him. But he’s gone. And nothing you do now will change what he said or did to you then."
He pulled away and moved a step back. "No, but it will help me feel a hell of a lot better." Even to his own ears, the rationalization sounded lame, but there was a boatload of truth to it.
"Will it? Will it really make you feel good to do damage to innocent people?"
He mentally rebelled against the argument and started to pace. "I refuse to believe Joseph McCoy is completely innocent in this whole hush-money scheme. And he was the one who raised Marcus, after all."
"He also raised Alexander, who is nothing like Marcus."
Cooper shrugged off her logic, deliberately ducking behind the wall he’d put up. "I wouldn’t know."
"Because you won’t let yourself. You’re afraid you’ll see that Alex is a good, honorable man who would never turn his back on his own the way Marcus did, and you’ll have to admit you’re wrong about Joseph."
Her words tugged at him, but he held firm. He stopped and faced her. "I’m not wrong."
"You’re sure enough to threaten the livelihood of most of this town?"
"Any damage I can do would never cut that deep. It would come out of Joseph’s bank account before he’d let it affect the town."
"Ha." She pointed a finger at him. "See, you know he’s a good man, too."
Cooper blanched, but he was nothing if not as stubborn as she was. "I know l have to finish what I set out to do."
She came to him then. "Oh, Cooper. I understand what it’s like to have only one thing to cling to."
Gripping the sides of his shirt above the waist of his jeans, she lowered her gaze to a spot on his chest. "The same way I’m familiar with what it feels like to always be on the outside."
Touched deep inside but no less boggled by her insecurities, he ran a hand through her soft hair again. "I’m sorry, Sara, but that little photo gallery on your wall pretty much tells a different story."
"Maybe up until my father died." She paused, thoughtful, then looked him in the eye. "No, it started before that. My father loved me. But in many ways he must have loved his job more. He would have never put McCoy Enterprises in jeopardy the way he put me in jeopardy with all his debts. He never took risks with the company’s finances the way he did with our family’s."
"Then you should have as much an ax to grind as I do."
"No." She tugged at his shirt "Now you don’t understand. Even though the McCoys are the closest thing to a family I have, in reality I’m nothing more than an employee. Joseph has told me over and
over again how my father was more than just an employee. I want that, also, Cooper. I desperately want to feel that same sense of belonging my father had."
"You want to be a part of the family."
"I want to belong," she said in the barest of whispers.
Understanding her need too well, Cooper cupped her check. Her breath snagged and the composure she’d struggled to maintain crumbled before his eyes, taking his own with it. He caught her first tear with his thumb. The anguish in her eyes ripped at him.
