Head Over Heels

by Susan Andersen

  “That’s enough, Dess. You and Riley grab your stacks of clothes and go put them away.”

  “But I was gonna have a cookie.”

  Forcing herself to focus on her daughter, Marissa recalled the chore she’d set the children earlier this evening. “Have you finished cleaning your room?”

  “Nooo.”

  “Then you can have a cookie when you finish the job you were given. How about you, Riley?”

  “I finished mine ten minutes ago,” Riley said virtuously.

  “Lamebrain,” Dessa snapped.

  “Girly-girl.”

  Dessa flew at him. “Am not!”

  “Are s—”

  “That’s enough, both of you.” Maybe Kody had a point about not wanting to get involved with her children. “Go upstairs.” She turned to her son. “Riley, I heard you in the kitchen earlier, so you’ve had your cookie. Put away your clothes, then go entertain yourself for a while, or I’ll find something for you to do. And believe me when I tell you it won’t be Nintendo.”

  The kids left grumbling, and Marissa waited until they’d collected their clean clothing and disappeared up the stairs before she turned to Kody. Her heart was pounding so hard she actually looked down to see if it was visible, half expecting to see it thumping in and out of her chest like some Saturday morning cartoon character’s. It wasn’t, of course, and she forced coolness into her voice when she looked back up. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve missed you.” He took a step closer. “God, Marissa, I never knew it was possible to miss someone as much as I’ve missed you,” he said in a low, rough voice.

  Oh, yeah, baby, declared her body, but she took a step back. “I appreciate that. I’ve missed you, too. But if that’s all, I’ll say goodnight. I’ve got another load of laundry to put in the dryer.” She edged for the door.

  “No! Please. That’s only part of what I wanted to say. I came to invite you and your kids to my father’s house for pizza Friday night.”

  She stopped, turning back to stare at him. “What?”

  “I’ve thought about everything you said.” Kody stepped up close. “Hell, Riss, that’s all I’ve been able to think about. And maybe you were right.” He raked a hand through his hair, then gestured toward the living room. “Do you think we could talk for a minute?”

  Marissa studied him a moment, then nodded and led the way.

  She watched him look around at the furnishings, which were more formal than those in the great room, and at the fire burning in the fireplace. Then he looked back at her and smiled. “This is nice. I don’t think I’ve ever been in here before.”

  That’s because we spent most of our time in my bedroom. Marissa took a seat at the end of the couch.

  Kody sat on the opposite end. “My sister Janice sleeps around with too many men,” he said.

  She must have made a face, because he said, “That didn’t come out right. It’s not that I think her sex life is any of my business. But she’s got Jacob. I love that kid—he’s the brightest little boy in the world. But Janice brings men home, Rissa, and Jacob gets attached. Then just about the time he begins to think the current boyfriend might be daddy material, the guy’s gone, only to be replaced by someone else. Dad and I are the only constant male influences he has in his life.”

  He looked Marissa straight in the eye. “So I guess when you brought me home the first night we met, I did sort of assume you made a habit of it. And when I discovered you had kids, I was determined to stay the hell out of their lives so I’d never have to see the look on their faces I’ve seen too many times on Jacob’s.”

  Not that she couldn’t sympathize, but hadn’t they already covered this ground? Marissa was tempted to show him the door again, but remembering the look on his face when he talked about his nephew, she reined in her impatience.

  And was glad she had a moment later.

  “But that was before I got to know you, Marissa,” he said in a low, intense voice. “Not just your moves in bed, but your sense of humor, your quick mind, your loyalty to your friends. And probably more than anything else, your dedication to your kids. I knew by about day two that you were nothing like Janice, and I started to fall in love with you.” Moving closer, he reached out and touched her hand. “But I guess the habit of keeping my distance was ingrained by then, and I didn’t know how to change gears. But I want to try. I want that more than I can say.”

  It was pretty much everything she’d longed to hear from him, so why did she suddenly feel so scared? “My kids can be a handful,” she warned him.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners. “So I guessed. They’re a couple of pistols, aren’t they?”

  “They’re a couple of semiautomatics.”

  He grinned. “Like their mama. I look forward to getting to know them—though I gotta tell you, it scares me a little. What if they don’t like me?”

  “Why are you saying all the right things all of a sudden?” she demanded. “They’ll like you a lot—I know they will. But what if you and I try, the way you want, and it still doesn’t work out? At least when things went sour between us before, I had the comfort of knowing it was your fault.”

  He eased his arm along the back of the couch behind her shoulders. “I don’t ever wanna have to miss you again the way I did this past week,” he said. “So I guess we’ll both just have to work extra hard to see that things do work out.” He slid his hand onto her shoulder.

  “And you think having pizza with my kids and your father is the way to go about it?”

  “It’s a start.” He bent his head to hers and bestowed a soft kiss on her lips. Pulling back, he looked her in the eye. “Don’t you think?”

  Warmth suffused her clear out to the tips of her fingers. “Yes. It’s a very good start.”

  21

  “YOU LOOK VERY PLEASED ABOUT THIS,” VERONICA said after Marissa told her the news. She slapped her gloved hands together to keep the circulation going. “It’s good to see you so happy again.”

  Presidents’ Day was cold, clear, and the final day of the Winter Festival. She and Marissa had claimed one of the benches that ringed the rink to watch the kids get in one final skate. The papier-mâché trees with their hundreds of tiny white lights didn’t look as fairy-like as they had in the dark, but they were still wonderfully effective, and brilliant sunlight glinted off the giant ice sculptures that flanked the arena across the field. Fair food scented the air, and the sound of laughter rode the crystalline air all around them.

  “The downside, of course, is this means Coop was right,” Veronica said, looking at her friend’s radiant face. “I hate to admit it, but he was. Which makes me quite the bitch, I guess.”

  Marissa gave her an amused smile. “Care to share why?”

  “I went off on him yesterday about Kody. I said you’d be an idiot to take him back even if he came crawling—at which point Coop warned me not to confuse you with my mother.”

  “What?”

  “He said I seemed to think forgiving and moving on meant subjugating one’s will to another, the way Mama always did with Dad.”

  “What utter rot.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. I was positive he was full of it. But maybe not, Riss. It stuck in my mind, and I thought about it quite a lot yesterday and last night.” She tucked her cold hands into her armpits and looked at her friend. “What if he’s right? I mean, I was certainly willing enough to have you remain miserable if that meant not letting Kody get away with hurting you in the first place. That’s not exactly rational thinking.” Pulling a hand free of its warm nest, she reached out and touched Marissa’s sleeve. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m not a very good friend.”

  “Oh, please. You have got to rein in this dramatic streak. Go with your first impulse—Cooper’s theory is full of holes.”

  “But I’m not so sure that it is. I was pretty rabid about this—and I really did think for a while that forgiving Kody gave him carte blanche to forever mess with your
emotions.”

  “Hell, Ronnie, you grew up with a mom who waited on your dad hand and foot and never once made him pull his share of the weight, simply because he had the ability to charm her socks off and wasn’t above using that talent. So you slipped me into her slot for a minute. Big deal—it was a brain fart. But you’re happy for me now, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you’re not secretly thinking, Rissa, you stupid slut, what are you doing taking this cretin back after he failed to instantly recognize your many sterling qualities?”

  A muffled laugh escaped her. “No.”

  “Then get over it. Coop’s a cutie, and clearly he’s crazy about you. But he’s just plain wrong about this.”

  Veronica suddenly felt light as a helium balloon, and she flashed her friend a crooked, self-deprecating smile. “Or he was right when he said it, but I glommed onto a momentary truth and turned it into a big, fat obsession.”

  “There’s always that possibility, too.”

  “Why do I keep letting the things that bugged me so in childhood continue to affect me today?”

  “Beats me. Family dynamics just seem to have a way of doing that to a person.”

  Thinking that they certainly had affected her relationship with Cooper even though she’d worked overtime not to allow them to, Veronica said with heartfelt sincerity, “Well, I wish they would knock it the hell off.”

  But that wasn’t likely to happen as long as she and Cooper kept dancing around the things that drove little wedges into their ability to fully trust each other. So she vowed then and there to tackle him about it at the first opportunity.

  Later that evening, after he’d slipped into her room and made love to her, Veronica thought about that pledge as she snuggled against him in postcoital bliss. Resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder, she drew patterns on the smooth skin of his chest with her fingertip, and for several long moments, while their heartbeats slowly regained their normal rhythms, the temptation to simply keep her worries to herself kept her silent. She had a feeling asking questions would only open up a new can of worms, and she didn’t want to ruin the peaceful feeling of perfection she got from lying in his arms, all logy and replete from his lovemaking.

  But her conscience kept clucking bad chicken imitations over her procrastination, and eventually she murmured, “Coop? Can I ask you something?”

  He held her to him with one strong arm while his free hand lightly stroked her from armpit to hip beneath the blankets. “Sure.”

  “How do you plan on earning your living once the Tonk is sold? Are you going to ask the new owner to keep you on?”

  His hand stilled midstroke. “No. I only took the job in the first place because it seemed like a good place to gather information to help clear Eddie.”

  “So what will you do, then?”

  “This or that.”

  Her heart sank. “I…see.”

  “Do you?” He stiffened and rolled away until they were no longer touching, and the sudden chill in Veronica’s bones was the result of more than lost body heat. “Then why do I get the feeling you don’t approve?”

  “It’s just—isn’t that pretty much the same thing you said the first time I asked about your work history before coming to Fossil? I thought we’d progressed beyond that.”

  “Funny, and I thought we’d progressed beyond the let’s-judge-Coop-by-what-he-does-for-a-living stage. But apparently not.” He climbed out of bed and stood facing her, unselfconscious in his nudity. “You claim you love me.”

  “I do love you.”

  “If you care for me so damn much, then what difference does it make what I do for a living?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what—it probably shouldn’t make a darn bit of difference, and it wouldn’t…if we lived in Utopia.” She sat up, pulling the covers with her, and tucked them under her arms. “But we have to live in the real world, and aren’t you the guy who accused me of confusing Marissa’s situation with my mama’s? I know I sometimes have a tendency to say black when you say white, but I gave your accusation a lot of consideration. And I had to admit that you had a point. So, as much as I’d love to tell you that I’ve seen the light and outgrown it, the sorry truth is, I haven’t. I won’t be like her, Cooper. I can’t.”

  “Shit.” Coop grabbed his jeans off the little slipper chair where he’d tossed them earlier, stepped into them, and began working them up his long legs. Veronica’s heart pounded over how fast everything had gone to hell as she watched him tug the denim over his hard butt.

  He glanced over at her as he reached inside his fly and rearranged everything safely out of reach of the zipper. The abrupt laugh that exploded out of his throat was sharp-edged and humorless. “I guess you gotta appreciate the irony.” But the hint of bitterness in his eyes negated the wry self-deprecation of his voice. “Here I came to town braced to meet another Crystal—but it turns out you’re my mother instead.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing I ever did was good enough for her, either.” The bitterness grew more pronounced. “Is it too damn much to ask that just once in my life someone want me for who I am rather than what I do?”

  His cool, expressionless “military” look was gone. He looked at her with dark eyes that burned with anger and stark, raw pain.

  The anger she could have lived with, but she couldn’t bear seeing such wounded vulnerability on the face of a man normally so contained, and she climbed out of bed to wrap her arms around his waist and press herself against him. “No,” she said and rose onto her toes to kiss him with almost motherlike gentleness. Then she pulled back and looked into his dark eyes. “It’s not that much to ask at all. We’ll just go along the way we have been for the time being, okay? I’ll be honest with you—eventually, I’m going to need some answers. But for now—”

  “I love you,” he said fiercely as his own arms clamped around her so tightly she could barely breathe. “God, Ronnie, I never knew it was possible to love someone the way I love you. All I ask is that you love me for me for a while. Just for a little while.”

  It wasn’t an unreasonable request, given what he’d just divulged, and Veronica readily agreed. A tiny niggle of unease still hummed along the lining of her stomach, but she firmly shoved it away. She didn’t begrudge him some time in which to come to believe in the strength of her feelings for him. Time was probably a very good thing—she could use a little of it herself.

  The issues would sort themselves out eventually. So, really, there was no burning hurry to settle every single difference between them tonight.

  It wasn’t as if the two of them were rushing off to get married, or anything.

  22

  “I THINK WE OUGHTTA GET MARRIED.”

  Unable to believe the words had come out of his own mouth, Coop simply stood by the stove for a moment, staring at Veronica. Finally, he blinked, turned the heat down under the chicken stock, and wondered if he looked half as shocked as she did. Considering the proposal had leaped fully formed from his subconscious to his lips, it wouldn’t surprise him.

  Yet it felt so right.

  “What?” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. Setting down the paring knife she’d been using to chop vegetables for the soup pot, she stared at him as if he’d just spoken in tongues, her slender eyebrows gathered above her nose. The day was cloudy, but a ray of sunlight found its way through the kitchen window to pick out blue highlights in her hair. Her pale complexion held the faintest hint of a flush along the high arc of her cheekbones.

  He stepped forward, discovering an unprecedented need to persuade her. “It’s a good idea, Princ—”

  “It’s a crazy idea!”

  “Well, yeah, that, too—but only if you insist on being absolutely literal-minded.”

  “Coop, we’ve known each other, what, a month?”

  True. And it hadn’t even been a full three days since he’d asked her to love him on personal merit alone.

  Remembering that
mindless little piece of neediness made him take a large step back, both literally and from the subject under discussion. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I talked to Rocket while you were at that parent/teacher thing,” he said stiffly. “And I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that Jacobson is officially off the hook. He’s been cleared.”

  Personally, he found the news depressing as hell. He’d been so certain Troy Jacobson was the man who’d killed Crystal, so sure that finally they’d caught a break in clearing Eddie’s name.

  But Rocket said no. And since Coop respected Rocket’s thoroughness as an investigator, he now found himself in the position of not only having to search from scratch for another likely candidate for Crystal’s murderer, but also of having to admit—if only to himself—that Ronnie’s precious Troy was blameless as a nun.

  That pinched.

  And it was no doubt what had led to his rash proposal, or whatever it was he’d just done. He’d been discouraged by Rocket’s findings, but then Ronnie had waltzed into the house, pumped up from the conference with Lizzy’s teacher, and had roped him into helping her cook dinner. Making soup together in a warm, steamy kitchen on a cold afternoon, while the little girl they were responsible for played up in her room, had taken a lot of the sting out of his disappointment. Somehow he would help his brother. It might not happen today, or even tomorrow, but one way or the other he was going to get to the bottom of it and see that justice was done.

  Meanwhile, it didn’t hurt that he had this. This warm and fuzzy, familylike sense of belonging that wrapped around his heart like a fleece blanket. Aside from his relationship with Eddie, it wasn’t something with which he’d had much experience. He could sure get used to it, though.