Meant to Be

by Maggie McGinnis

  “White noise—sure. You and I both know you’ve been playing my Tara Gibson playlist nonstop since you got back.”

  Cooper grimaced. Busted.

  “And how can you even watch TV right now?” Phoebe continued. “It makes me sick.”

  “You and me both, squirt. But since it’s pretty much my only contact with the outside world, what’s a guy to do?”

  “Switch to a cooking channel?” Phoebe winked, but then her eyes widened as she looked over his shoulder at the television. “Holy shit, Cooper.”

  “What?”

  She pointed with her chopsticks. “Look! It’s her. It’s Tara!”

  Cooper spun so quickly that he bashed his knee on the bed. He felt his mouth fall open as he grabbed for the remote to turn up the volume.

  “It’s her, right? Isn’t it?” Phoebe crowded closer.

  “Shh.” He put up a hand, cranking the volume higher. The woman on the screen barely resembled the person he’d spent the past few weeks with, what with the jet-black hair and hot-pink lipstick. She had on sky-high heels and—for Tara Gibson—what probably would be considered a demure outfit.

  Cooper felt himself leaning closer to the screen, desperate to find Shelby under all the makeup, and when the camera panned closer, he felt his gut squeeze. Her eyes weren’t that color, dammit.

  Headlines scrolled across the bottom of the screen, and he forced himself to rip his eyes away from Shelby to read them. Obviously this was a hastily called press conference, and it looked like she was back in L.A. already.

  He nodded painfully. Could have predicted as much, given what had hit the news this morning. He’d tried to call her ten times today, but she wasn’t picking up, and who the hell could blame her? This was exactly what he’d feared—that the media would grab one tiny morsel of a non-story and blow it up into a scandal—and this was why he’d left when he had.

  But clearly, he hadn’t gone soon enough. He’d been so wrapped up in Shelby that he hadn’t even noticed somebody taking pictures that night. He’d had his eyes so glued to her on that little stage in the corner that he hadn’t even clued into the fact that somebody in that café had been filming the entire set, prepping to release it online in some sort of sick attempt to bring her down by connecting her to him.

  The whole thing made his skin crawl, and he couldn’t imagine what was going through her head as she stood nervously behind a bank of microphones, the breeze catching her hair.

  Her wig, he corrected.

  “She doesn’t look so good, Coop.” Phoebe grimaced carefully. “Hope she doesn’t throw up.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” So he wasn’t imagining the green pallor under the makeup, maybe.

  Then she cleared her throat and spoke, and though Cooper could have predicted the exact words that would come out of her mouth—could have practically spoken them before she did—every syllable of her denial still cut jagged holes in his heart.

  She hadn’t written the speech. He knew that. They weren’t her words, and she wasn’t a good enough actor to make him believe they were true.

  But the world would, and that’s what counted.

  He should be happy for her. She was separating herself from him, just like he’d advised. She was denying she’d even known him, really, when in truth, he knew very well that she knew every inch of his body. Knew it with her hands, with her lips, with her tongue.

  But right now, up on that stage, she delivered her shock and confusion like she’d been practicing it all the way from Montana to L.A. She even threw in her dad for good measure, with a perfectly timed tear that pulled the cameras into her cheek.

  Damn. Actually, she was good. If he didn’t know better, he’d be one hundred percent sure they’d hardly met.

  He should be happy for her, he repeated to himself. Relieved. Grateful she’d followed his advice without arguing further. Now she could move on, revive her career, live her life. And this would be a tiny blip—the cost of celebrity—on the radar of her past.

  “That bit—”

  “Phoebe.” He spoke her name harshly, unable to bear hearing the word come out of her mouth.

  “Did you hear that?” Phoebe’s eyes were wide. “Seriously? She just denied even knowing you!”

  “She doesn’t have a choice, Phoebs.”

  “Oh, yes, she does. Everybody has a choice.”

  “She has a job. And her job is dependent on her image. Her contract is dependent upon her image. And when you’re an entertainer with a teenaged audience, you obviously can’t let yourself be connected with—me…with what’s going on here.”

  “This is all bullshit.”

  “Language.”

  Phoebe stopped pacing. “Really? We’re going to talk about my language?”

  “Only if you continue to speak like you were raised by animals.”

  “Shut up, Coop. Just—shut up.”

  Cooper felt his chest compress as tears poked their way out of Phoebe’s eyes, and he reached out for her. Aw, damn it all.

  “Hey, squirt. Come here. It’s going to be all right.”

  Phoebe crossed her arms, refusing to be comforted. “How do you know it’s going to be all right?” She pointed at the television. “They’re saying some really scary stuff. What if it doesn’t turn out all right?”

  He closed his eyes, pulling her into his chest, then squeezing as her shoulders shook. “I have a good lawyer, Phoebe. He’s doing everything he can.”

  “And if that’s not good enough?”

  “It has to be.”

  “You can’t go to jail, Cooper.” She sniffed. “Oh, my God. What if that’s what h-h-happens?”

  “Then I’ll get some bad-ass tattoos and a really bad-ass attitude to keep me safe. And I’ll do my time, get paroled, and come back home.”

  Yeah. Sounded simple, right? Because a cop with a bad-ass attitude lasted longer than a whole minute and a half in prison, right? Hell if he knew what his chances of survival were, let alone his chances of probation someday.

  He sighed, hugging her tightly, settling his chin on her head so she couldn’t see the fear in his own eyes as he watched Shelby—check that—as he watched Tara Gibson leave the microphone bank and step into her limo.

  And out of his life.

  Chapter 27

  Four weeks later, Shelby sat on the floor of her hotel suite, her back against the couch, her new guitar in her lap. A pile of papers littered the coffee table next to her, along with six coffee cups and more take-out boxes than she wanted to count.

  Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, she had a clear view of Central Park, and even this many stories up, she could still hear the muted traffic from below. A month ago, all she’d heard from her open windows was birdsong, horses, and laughter. Today, she was locked in a hotel, food was being delivered to her so she didn’t venture out, and claustrophobia was setting in.

  Nic had come by earlier with a quick update on tour numbers, and had barely been able to contain her glee. Ticket sales were up, and Tara had even sold out in Oklahoma. Apparently the American public was more forgiving—or more gullible—than even Shelby had believed.

  In a strange nod to no-publicity-is-bad-publicity, her album sales were trending upward again, and a series of well-timed press releases by Nicola over the past few weeks had the public sympathizing with poor Tara, who at twenty-eight was essentially an orphan heading out on the road alone for the first time. Nic had conveniently left out the part about how Shelby’d been alone on that road for twelve years, but that piece apparently wasn’t part of Nic’s patented rescue package.

  Shelby wished all of that good news actually made her feel better, but instead, it made her feel like more of a fraud than ever. She’d stood in front of those microphones in L.A., she’d spoken her rehearsed denials, and then she’d gone back to the hotel for three hot showers that still hadn’t cleansed the stench of lies from her body.

  From that same hotel room, wrapped in a robe, she’d watched her face splashed ag
ainst the same network backdrops as it had been on the morning news, and she’d held back tears as she pictured Cooper watching his own television, hearing her deny she’d ever known him. Even if he’d understood exactly why she’d had to do it—even if he would have urged her to do exactly what she was doing—it couldn’t have been easy for him to watch.

  Because deep down, he wouldn’t know for sure. He wouldn’t know how much of her act was just that—an act. He might assume she really was trying to cut all ties, to distance herself from the weeks they’d spent healing each other at Whisper Creek.

  He might assume she’d decided she meant every word, and that was killing her.

  It had been four long weeks since that final morning in her cabin, and to her knowledge, he’d made no attempt to get in touch with her. Nicola had handed her a new phone when she’d arrived in L.A., telling her that her old number had been breached, and Shelby had flipped out, knowing Cooper would have no way of getting her new number, even if he wanted to.

  A couple of days later, she’d broken down and tried to call him, but all she’d gotten was a robotic recording letting her know that his number had been disconnected. She’d sat on her hotel-room bed for hours afterward, sure the universe was punishing her for something she’d done in a past life or something, because how could said universe let her fall so hard and fast for someone, then yank him out of reach so completely and painfully?

  A tiny part of her held out hope that somehow he’d figure out a way to get in touch with her. There had to be a way he could contact her tour—had to be a way for a message to get through to her, via Nicola. But he hadn’t.

  She sighed miserably.

  Unless he had tried. And Nicola had intercepted.

  She looked out the window, downward toward the faceless mobs of people moving along the streets, and she felt disconnected, like she was floating in a hot-air balloon above the city. Here she was in a plush suite, with tour and hotel personnel at her beck and call, and all she wanted was to be back out West, where the world felt…real.

  Her fingers felt their way along the strings of her guitar as she hummed the opening bars to the song she’d been working on all afternoon, and she felt a tiny smile turn the corners of her mouth when she realized this one wasn’t about love or lust or any of the other standards. Strangely, it wasn’t even Cooper she had in her head as she started putting lyrics to the notes.

  It was Lexi. Kyla. Jess and Hayley. Cole and Decker and Gunnar and Ma. It was Whisper Creek, Montana. It was the brightest blue skies, the coldest water, the waving grasses. It was the smell of the bonfire by the lodge, the sounds of horses settling in the stables at night, the twitter of birds in the breaking dawn.

  It was…contentment. Happiness.

  Love.

  She closed her eyes, the words floating toward her through the air, like daisy petals and wisps of webs. Verses, chorus, transitions—all just fell into place like she was putting together a puzzle of clouds, and she felt her smile break wider as she hit the soaring notes toward the end.

  She heard a harmony in her head—one that Daddy might have sung if he were here—but she heard it in another voice. Her eyes sprang open, and she raced to write down the words, though she knew she would never forget them.

  And then she got out the personal recorder Liam had given her before she’d left Carefree. For your real music, he’d said. So you don’t lose what you’ve found here. She had to record this music. Maybe nothing would ever come of it. Maybe nobody but her would ever even hear it. But she had to.

  For all the coming days when she felt unsure, or alone, or terrified…she needed these songs she’d written. She needed a concrete reminder of the journey she’d taken this summer, one that had helped her find—herself.

  Onstage tonight, as she became Tara—and sold her to a crowd of thousands—she’d know this music was in her bag, in her guitar…in her heart.

  And someday—someday—maybe it would help her figure out what to do about a man whose love she’d been aching for since he’d walked out her cabin door.

  —

  Late the next morning, a sharp rap on Cooper’s motel room door startled him as he paged through the pile of documents on the round table by the window, but he didn’t automatically reach for his hip, and this depressed him more than he wanted to admit. Was he finally adjusting to life as a civilian? Did the absence of that instinct mean his others had fled as well?

  It wasn’t one that would help behind bars, anyway.

  He put one eye to the peephole, then backed away with a sharp breath.

  No frigging way.

  He opened the door, crossing his arms, not uttering a word of welcome—half because he didn’t care to, but half because there was a sudden lump in his throat that he didn’t know quite what to make of.

  “Son.” His father stood there in his faded Red Sox hat, looking somehow older and frailer than he’d been just a year ago.

  “Sir,” Cooper answered automatically.

  “You have a minute?”

  Cooper almost laughed at the irony of the question. All he had were minutes these days. Minutes of staring at paperwork, minutes of staring at the ceiling wishing he could be anywhere but this crappy motel room, minutes of lying in the dark thinking about a certain blond-haired beauty who’d made him want to live, like no one in the world ever had before.

  He opened the door wider and motioned his father inside, where the older man stood awkwardly, unsure.

  “Everything okay at home?” Cooper asked as he closed the door. He’d been living in this seedy motel for a frigging month, and Dad had never seen fit to stop by. What else could possibly have brought him here, after all this time?

  “Yeah. Fine.” Dad took off his cap and rubbed his head in a motion he’d used since Cooper was a kid, and as he watched, something inside him softened.

  “You want to sit down?” Cooper cleared papers off from the chair he hadn’t been sitting in, and Dad perched on the edge of it, like he didn’t want to quite admit he was here.

  Or didn’t know why he’d even been let in the door.

  “Imagine you’re wondering why I came.”

  Cooper sat down opposite him. “Little bit, yeah. It’s…been a while.”

  “Your sister’s really pissed at me, you know.”

  Good. “I imagine.”

  “She’s got a right. Imagine you know that, too.”

  “I’m a little biased on the issue.” Cooper raised his eyebrows. “Not really the guy to ask.”

  Dad clasped his hands together and set them on the table in front of him, but didn’t meet Cooper’s eyes. He took a couple of long, deep breaths, but didn’t speak. Cooper eyed him carefully as he made himself sit back in his own rickety chair, not filling the silence.

  Finally, Dad spoke. “I’ve got some apologies to make.”

  “Okay?”

  “To a lot of people, it turns out.” He closed his eyes. “Your mother, your sister, and…well, mostly to you. Obviously.”

  That damn lump crawled up Cooper’s throat again, so instead of speaking, he just raised his eyebrows further. What the hell had brought on the change of heart here? Last time he’d seen his father, the front door of his family home had been slamming toward his face. But here Dad was, looking broken and sad and…afraid.

  “Coop, you have every right to kick me right the hell out of here before I say my piece—or after. Your choice. And I’ll abide by it, if you do. But I’d appreciate it if you heard me out first.”

  Cooper forced his eyebrows to settle back into place, but he motioned for his father to continue. He had to hear.

  “I’ve made some lousy decisions in my lifetime, God knows. And I’ve accounted for most of them, or they’ve caught up with me eventually. Your mother probably keeps a list.” He rolled his eyes—an attempt to lighten the moment, but Cooper wasn’t there yet. “I was an idiot, Cooper. A lousy, dumbass, unforgivable idiot, and I’m here—I’m here to apologize.”

&nb
sp; He took a shaky breath that hit Cooper right in the gut. All his life, his father had been larger than life. Nothing scared the man—nothing. So to see him sitting here at this creaky table in a run-down motel room on the crap edge of town, his shoulders caved and his face gray and lined with worry, grabbed Cooper’s stomach and gave it a good twist.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “A lot of things. Your mother, your sister, Father Michael, the five thousand reporters who’ve called the house.”

  “Damn. It took all of that?” Cooper tried to smile, but really? His own father had needed that much intervention, just to maybe believe his own son? If that was what he was even going to say right now?

  “Shouldn’t have. I know that.”

  “So what is it you’re actually apologizing for, Dad?”

  Dad looked up for the first time. “Because the list is so long that you don’t actually know?”

  “Maybe.” Cooper shrugged. “I mean, yeah. Maybe.”

  “I never should have questioned you. I should have believed you from the moment the story broke.”

  “Yeah. You should have.”

  “I know. And a part of me did. A big part, if it matters.”

  “But just a part. Not the whole.” Cooper nodded, defeated even though his father was here right now to admit he’d been wrong. What in the world had ever made him disbelieve his son in the first place?

  “When you came to me that first night, and you said you might be onto something big, I never dreamed who’d end up in your net.”

  “Neither did I, Dad. But that’s old news. You know I didn’t go after him on purpose.”

  “I know that now.”

  “How could you possibly have questioned it then?” Cooper sat forward, hands in the air. “What would have made you do that?”

  Dad sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve known that kid since he was in diapers, Coop. You two played together for years. You’re cousins. He was a good kid.”

  “Emphasis on the was.”

  “I know that now. I probably knew it then. But this case—this whole damn investigation and the hoopla that went with it—it brought me back. And it dropped me right back to 1994.”