by Donna Alward
She stepped over the gravel, her boots crunching in the silence. She was nearly to his shoulder when he said, in a low, ominous voice, “The answer was always going to be no, wasn’t it?”
It stopped her in her tracks. “I’m afraid so, Coop. I just can’t.”
She studied his profile. His jaw tightened, and his back was ramrod straight. Without looking at her, he spoke. “I don’t suppose I’m ever going to be good enough for you, right?”
“What?” She stepped forward and grabbed his arm. “Where the heck did that come from? I have several reasons for saying no, Coop, but not one of them has anything to do with you being good enough for me! Wow.”
“But you’d have some random stranger—or no baby at all, before letting me be the father.”
There was such bitterness in his voice, and she wondered where it came from. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. You men, it’s always about your damned pride, isn’t it? You want reasons, Coop?”
She started ticking them off on her fingers. “First of all, you say that this would be my baby, but I know you. You theoretically wouldn’t want to be involved, but you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. I’m not looking for a parenting partner. Secondly, if I did go ahead with it, knowing this was your baby, how could I possibly deny you access to your child? And before you say it, I know, just as you do, that you want a family and kids of your own. Once he or she was here... Like I said, you wouldn’t be able to help yourself.”
She touched a third finger. “This is a small town. The secret would get out. Even if we kept it quiet, what if our kid looked like you? Oh, the speculation! The last thing I want is my child being brought up with whispers about whether or not someone local is his real father. I’ve had my share of whispers behind my back, believe me.”
She lowered her hand. “But more than all of those reasons, Coop, is this. You and me. This would tie us to each other forever in ways I’m certainly not prepared for. We’re barely even friends again. Parents? And then there’s...what happened today. Everything is mixed up. We’ve got no business bringing a baby into the middle of that. It’s just better if I...if I do this alone.”
Today had changed the game, though. Suddenly “alone” sounded awfully empty. And how would it feel to carry another man’s child, knowing that Coop was out there, with his great kisses and sexy smile and...
She sighed. And what? Oh, why did he have to come along and complicate everything?
Coop faced her. “After today, do you think I could stand to see you carry another man’s child? Do you know what that would do to me?”
Confused, she frowned. “Do to you? It got pretty hot, pretty fast, but it wasn’t more than a couple of kisses, really. I mean...all our clothes stayed where they belonged.”
“You tell yourself that,” he said darkly, his eyes glittering. “But a minute more and those clothes would have been on the ground, and you know it.”
Charged silence hummed between them.
“You don’t own me,” she warned quietly. “You don’t have any say. Any right...”
“No? Well, maybe I want to,” he answered.
* * *
Coop hadn’t planned to say it just like that, but he hadn’t planned on kissing her again, either. Kissing, hell. They’d been doing a foreplay dance and they both knew it. One taste of her and everything had exploded, just like the last time, only today she wasn’t in such an emotionally fragile state.
And he’d admit to himself that he’d been a little edgy. He’d known since he’d opened the door and seen the uptight turn of her lips that she was going to say no. On the one hand he was relieved. Especially now, because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. The truly crappy thing was that he actually agreed with her. They couldn’t do this thing and go their separate ways. Not after today. He could hardly keep his hands off her.
Ironic, considering he’d been doing a great job of that for years now.
“You want to what?” she asked slowly, and he could hear the underlying threat.
“Have a right. Be important to you. Maybe I don’t want to be the best friend who hears all your troubles. Maybe I don’t want to be the guy who brings you a beer and makes you laugh, but doesn’t get to go home with you at the end of the night. I’ve been doing that for years, Melissa, and I’m tired of it.”
“What the...” She stepped back, her face white. “What are you saying, Coop? Years? Are you serious? Because I had the biggest crush on you when we were kids, and you were always so determined to stay friends. You weren’t interested in me that way. We were buddies, remember?”
“Yeah, and I was an idiot. And by the time I realized it you’d had your cherry popped by my best friend.”
She turned away as if slapped. He regretted his choice of words; they’d been harsh and indicative of his frustration. He closed his eyes and tried again. “I’m sorry, Mel. I shouldn’t have put it that way.”
“No,” she said quietly, speaking to the water, “that was pretty clear and to the point.”
“It’s not your fault, okay? I’m frustrated. I didn’t realize how I felt until you were with someone else. We were so young. I thought if I just waited it out, maybe I’d get another chance. And then you married him. What was I supposed to do?”
“You want me to feel bad for you?” She spread her arms wide. “I wasted years on that guy!”
“Why did you?” Coop asked. “I mean, no one forced you to marry him. People kept expecting you to break up. Most high school couples do, you know. So what did the great Scott have that made him such a prize?”
Her eyes blazed at him. “Don’t even, Coop.”
“Why? Because it’s making you take a long hard look at your marriage? Was it his good looks? His charm? Money? What was it?”
“It was everything,” she yelled. “It was everything, okay? He was there. He was in it and he asked. And you know what? I genuinely thought I loved him. It’s not like I didn’t care about him or he didn’t care about me. Marrying him made sense, all right?”
“Except it was missing something.”
“Yeah, well, we were trying to start a family, remember?”
Coop didn’t know how she could be so blind. Did she really think her marriage had failed because of an infidelity? That was the easy and short answer, but he knew it was a lot more complicated than that. He knew more than he cared to, because he’d been caught right smack in the middle.
“I’m not talking about a family. I’m talking about love. I’m talking about soul mates. I’m talking about marrying the one person who gets you. The person people talk about when they say The One. And don’t kid yourself. Scott knew he was somebody, but he also knew he wasn’t The One.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
But her eyes skittered away. He had hit on a nerve and he knew it.
“I’m sorry, Mel. I truly am.”
She looked up. “He told you that?”
Coop nodded. “You’ve got to understand, I was friends with both of you. Guys don’t unload like women, but sometimes things get said over a beer or two, especially when a man’s troubled. He didn’t know how to make you happy, and he could tell that you weren’t. I told him he couldn’t make you happy if he wasn’t happy. Then he laughed. And said that you’d married too young.”
“We were twenty...”
Coop shoved his hands into his pockets. He wanted to reach out to her. She looked so forlorn, so alone. But it was time, wasn’t it? Time she learned the whole truth.
“He knew you wanted a family, so he agreed to try, remember? I told him that kids wouldn’t fix things. That was the first time he ever accused me of trying to push my own agenda. He said I didn’t want you to have kids because that would complicate things when I made my move.”
“Oh, Coop...” Her eyes widened. She came a little clo
ser, hugging her arms around herself as if she was cold, even though the day was still mild. “Was it true?”
He swallowed against the pain that still managed to rear its head when he thought of those last six months before hell broke loose. “I would never have tried to break you up. But understand this, Mel—I knew you weren’t happy, and it was killing me. We all still did things together, and we smiled and laughed a lot, and it was all churning around like acid in my stomach. And then I saw him one day, when I was on my way back from Edmonton. He was coming out of that motel—you know, the little one out by the highway? With her. At first I couldn’t believe it was him, and that there must be a good explanation. And then he opened her car door and kissed her before she got in.”
Silence followed his words. Not once had he shared the details of how he’d found out about Scott’s affair. Coop had apologized, but until recently she’d never accepted his apology. He’d tried to explain and had always been cut short. He gave her time now to digest the truth.
She picked up a stone and tossed it into the creek. They both watched the splash and then it was gone.
“You asked him about it.”
Her voice was hoarse and tired. He wondered how much more he should say, but then considered where they were and what they’d been doing, and knew he couldn’t keep things hanging between them any longer. Not if they were going to move forward.
“I told him I saw him there. I expected him to deny it, but he didn’t. He just shrugged and said, ‘So what?’ I told him that he had to put an end to it. And he asked why. Said that he was twenty-four years old, and did I really think he was going to sleep with the same woman for the rest of his life? When he said that, I lost it, Mel. Things got heated. I said something about how he shouldn’t have married you in the first place.”
And Scott had been cunning and very astute. Coop could remember clearly the sneer on his friend’s face as he turned into someone Coop didn’t know. That would clear the way for you, Scott had said. I see the way you look at her. It had ripped his guts out, hearing that, because Scott was throwing away the one thing Coop would have given anything to have.
And his loyalty to Scott had died a very quick death.
He inhaled deeply, suddenly realizing he’d been silent for several seconds and that Mel was watching him curiously.
“Does it hurt to remember?” she asked quietly.
He nodded. “I demanded that he end it or I would tell you. And he laughed at me, Mel. He said that if I told you, he’d deny it. And he said you’d believe him, especially when he told you that I was in love with you and was making up stories to try to ruin your marriage.”
She lifted her chin. “My God. And he thought I’d seriously believe him?”
“Wouldn’t you? I’m pretty sure he could have given you a list of times I’d done or said something that was maybe a little too personal for a simple friend. At least enough to make you doubt. And let’s face it. You would want to believe him because otherwise the truth meant...”
She heaved out a breath. “The truth would mean exactly what it meant in the end.”
“I wanted to tell you so bad. As a friend, I owed that to you. But it was impossible, don’t you see? All that would happen was that Scott would go on cheating, and you would hate me and we’d no longer be friends. I thought at least this way maybe you’d find out on your own, eventually, and...”
Her gaze was keen. “And you could be there to help me pick up the pieces?”
He hung his head. That sounded terrible. As if he was just waiting for his opportunity to move in. “Something like that,” he admitted. “Please believe me, Mel, that my motives weren’t opportunistic. I knew that you’d need a friend, someone to support you.”
“Except when I found out, Scott told me that you already knew.”
“He turned out to be not a very nice person when he was cornered,” Coop said. “I couldn’t be friends with him any longer. We had stopped hanging out....”
“You’d started dating Sharla someone from Ponoka.”
“Yeah.” And before that it had been Christine, and Kirsten, and a bunch of others he hadn’t cared for much, but who helped him pass the time. He always broke it off before things got heavy, or if he got the sense they were getting too close. He always tried the parting-as-friends thing before it got too intense.
“He hated you that much?”
Coop raised his shoulders and lowered them again. “He saw what you couldn’t. That I cared for you too much. Add in the fact that he was well aware you were both unhappy...”
“And the past three years?”
The wind plus their kissing had taken her neat hairdo and shredded it. He thought it looked beautiful, all wispy around her face. He loved how she never shied away, but looked him dead in the eye, ready to face whatever was coming her way. She’d maybe been a little sweeter when she’d been a teenager, but Melissa was way stronger now, and he loved that about her.
“You told me you hated me. That you didn’t want to speak to me ever again. It wasn’t really the best time for me to tell you how I felt. Besides, you were right. I had let you down. I didn’t like myself for what I’d done. For a while I was angry with you, too, for not seeing how I had been put in an impossible position. I stayed away because I had to find a way to let you go.”
“Except here we are.”
“Yes,” he said, “here we are. Apparently that plan didn’t work so well.”
And he still loved her. He was as sure of that today as he’d been three, five, seven years ago. And he was equally sure that if he said so, she’d run back to Misty, jump in the saddle and be gone in the space of a heartbeat.
“I need to think about all of this.” Mel unlocked her arms and pushed her hair back from her face. “It changes things.”
“It doesn’t, not really.”
Her expression twisted with consternation. “Yeah, it does. Especially when you consider how...what we...” She frowned deeply. “This complicates everything, Coop. And more than ever, I’m positive that the last thing I should do is take you up on your offer. There’s just too much history and too much drama. We could never be objective about it.”
“I’m sorry, Mel. It seemed like a way to help you, that’s all. To make up for all the crap that you’ve had to deal with. But you’re right. I couldn’t stand by and watch you carry my baby and stay on the sidelines. It’s probably best.”
It would also kill him to watch her carry someone else’s child, but he couldn’t have it both ways. Unless by some miracle she gave up on the idea...
“Can we go back now, please? It’s getting late. We’re going to lose the light before much longer.”
“Sure.”
He needed to give her time. Time to digest all she’d learned and time to think about what had happened between them today. It was important. It wasn’t going away. It would probably happen again. He knew it, and he was pretty sure she knew it, too.
He untied Sergeant while she put her foot in the stirrup and swung onto Misty’s back. She didn’t wait, but set off ahead of him, as familiar with the way back as he was.
There was history that she couldn’t deny. There was something new she couldn’t deny, either. And he knew how to be patient.
But not too patient. Not now that he’d had a taste of her and knew for sure what he’d always suspected. There were fireworks between them—on both sides. She could deny it for only so long. For the first time, he actually felt as if they might have a future.
And yet one question still nagged at the back of his mind. The one thing Mel wanted more than anything was a child. Were her feelings for him genuine, or were they a means to an end? The last thing he wanted was for Mel to be more in love with the idea of having his baby than with him. A relationship with that as its foundation would be doomed to failure, and ther
e was too much at stake.
Once again, his heart was on the line. But this time he was prepared to risk it.
CHAPTER NINE
THE STRETCH OF WARM weather continued, making October feel more like early September. Mel worked in a T-shirt and her apron most days, finding long sleeves too warm. Amy came down with the flu that had been going around, and Melissa put in long, hard hours trying to keep up.
It was good to keep busy. After leaving Coop at the creek, she’d made good time getting back to the Double C barn, Coop and Sergeant following right behind. Bob had been at the barn already, talking to a man with a huge horse trailer and bigger truck. The rancher from Montana had arrived early, despite it being a holiday. Mel was saved from a long or awkward goodbye as Bob took care of Misty and Coop looked after business.
She was still trying to come to terms with everything she’d learned.
Coop had been in love with her when she was married to Scott. Looking back now, perhaps there had been signs, but she’d been so caught up in herself and trying to make her marriage work that she’d missed them. She believed Coop now, though, when he said he’d wanted to tell her about Scott’s indiscretion. It had been in the anguished tone of his voice, the way his eyes were wide and earnest as he explained.
But more troublesome than either of those things were the two truths she had to face.
One, Scott hadn’t been the only party to blame in the failure of their marriage. Granted, he’d been utterly wrong to cheat. But they’d been in trouble for some time.
And two, Cooper Ford had the ability to make her feel as if she were going to fire off like a Roman candle.
She couldn’t do a thing about the first now. But the second...what was she going to do about Coop?
She didn’t have an answer for that, so she avoided him. Religiously. As long as he didn’t venture into the flower shop, it was pretty safe. Right now it seemed as if all she did was work and sleep.
Her parents returned from their New England trip and invited her over for dinner. When questioned, she admitted she’d spent the holiday with the Ford family. Her mother and father were surprised and shared a significant look between them, but let the matter drop.
