He stood, stretched, and then slowly made his way to the entrance, his pace completely contrasting the urgency of the knock. He opened the front door, and Austin barrelled in. “Took you long enough. I have other places to be, Coop.”
“Well, you should’ve gone directly,” he said, taking a sip of his beer casually.
He went back to the couch while Austin headed to the kitchen in search of a drink. Moments later, his brother sat in the chair across from him, propping his feet up on the ottoman and sipping a beer. “So, what are you doing?”
Cooper frowned at him. “Why are you here?”
“Because I may have heard something about you going on a date, and I happened to see your truck in the driveway, so I thought I’d see if it was actually true.”
Dread pooled in his stomach. “Who told you?”
“I know things. I also know that you were at Emily’s house last Saturday night by yourself.”
He was going to play this cool and not get lured in. “What, are you stalking me?”
“No.”
He took another drink and propped his feet up on the coffee table, hoping his brother wouldn’t notice Emily’s contract. “I already told you, she had a mouse problem.”
“So she called you?”
“No, I actually called her, warning her to turn off the boiler.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“That boiler was serviced properly.”
Cooper shifted in his seat. His brothers were really irritating. “Well, I was double-checking. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen.”
“Or, more likely, you wanted a reason to talk to her.”
He rolled his eyes. “I talk to her every day.”
“With us around. Maybe you wanted to talk to her by yourself.”
“I’m not sixteen, calling a girl on the phone.”
“So, then, how did you end up at her house, again?”
“I told you, there was a mouse situation.”
“She told you?”
“Something like that. She sounded…upset, so I thought I’d see if I could help.”
His brother smiled a stupid smile. “I bet you did.”
“I don’t even know what that means or why you’re saying it like that. There’s nothing going on. She’s our client.”
“Our hot client for whom you threw a baseball game. You, the king of competition, actually struck out for the first time in your adult league baseball history, against your most detested team. Then you ran out of the town hall meeting after her. Oh, and don’t forget you’re going on a date with her on Saturday.”
He shifted in his seat. “I didn’t run out of the meeting. It was over.”
“But you didn’t go home.”
“Again, why are you stalking me?”
“Someone has to keep tabs on you.”
“Have I told you lately how irritating you are?”
His brother cackled. “Only when I’m right. I have to say, though, this date really threw me for a loop. I didn’t expect that. I expected months of you denying your attraction to her and us having to take turns at convincing you to go out with her.”
He blinked. “What?”
His brother nodded. “Yeah. We had a big family discussion about this.”
“When?”
“When you were late last Sunday for dinner. Everyone knows. Even Dad, who has no idea what’s going on in our personal lives most of the time. Oh, we all love Emily, too.”
He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his legs and running his hands through his hair. He hated when they did this, acted like he was this pathetic loser who couldn’t get his life back on track. “Well, you don’t need to be talking about me behind my back. I’m fine.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you and let them all know you’re not denying your feelings and that you’re actually moving on with your life.”
“Thanks,” he said drily.
“What’s that?” Austin asked, leaning forward and snatched the contract up before Cooper could hide it away.
He watched as Austin’s eyes widened comically. What was even more surprising was that his brother didn’t even laugh. His reaction appeared very similar to how Cooper felt when they were writing up the contract.
Austin looked up at him a minute later. “What is this?”
He settled back onto the couch and finished the rest of his beer. “I know. That’s exactly what I thought. You can’t tell anyone about that.”
“Don’t worry. I can keep a secret.”
Shit. They both knew very well that no one in his family could keep a secret. “Obviously, she’s been out with a loser or two, and I don’t want it getting around. You shouldn’t have even read that.”
“I know. You’re not even technically supposed to be talking about this according to rule number one.”
Cooper dragged his hands down his face. “Then stop talking.”
His brother grinned and stood. “Good. I’m glad to see my work here is done.”
“Uh, to be clear, you did nothing. No work was done here. I already signed and agreed to the terms anyway.”
“Well, then, I reassured you that you’re doing the right thing.”
“You did?”
Austin frowned at him. “Clearly.”
He shrugged. “Fine. Bye.”
Austin paused at the picture frame on the mantel and then looked back at him with that expression he had whenever he mentioned Catherine. “She would have liked Emily, you know.”
Cooper avoided his gaze. “Yeah. I know.”
“And it’s okay to want someone again.”
He ignored the jab in his stomach. “I know that, too.”
“It’s okay to want to be married again.”
He straightened his shoulders. “Hey, this is a date, you know, like what all you guys do? I’m not looking to get married. Are you?”
Austin took a step back, his eyes wide. “Hell no. But I’m not you.”
Cooper narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You just have that marriage vibe about you.”
“Time for you to go,” he said, walking toward the door, ready to kick Austin out. He didn’t want to hear about the family discussion about him being a marrying man.
“Well you’re not just going to sleep with her and leave. You can’t actually do that when you see the woman the next day and for the next few months because you’re renovating her house.”
Cooper took a deep breath and resisted the urge to tackle his brother. “I’m not an ass. As if I would do that.”
“Fine. Just offering advice, in case you’d forgotten the rules.”
Cooper opened the door. “You are the last person I need rule advice from.”
“Clearly you’re wrong since you just signed a contract in which you have to pick up rodent carcass for the rest of your life, just for taking a woman out to dinner.”
He shut the door in his brother’s face, hating that Austin was right, and hating that he’d do it all over again for Emily.
Chapter Eleven
Cooper shifted from one foot to the other as he waited for Emily to answer the door. He wasn’t going to concentrate on the fact that this was the first date he’d been on in over a decade, since that was just pretty damn sad.
But he didn’t have to worry about any of that, because Emily opened the door a moment later, looking like a woman he didn’t deserve to have. Her brown hair fell in loose waves around her shoulders and the deep wine-colored sweater dress hugged her curves. But when his eyes met hers, his gut clenched, and he cursed his family. She knew. Sympathy and pity were shining in those green eyes, and he wanted to smash his fist against the brick. He didn’t want Emily’s sympathy. He wanted to be Cooper and not the poor widower that everyone felt sorry for.
“Hi, you look beautiful,” he said, manners forcing him to be polite.
“Thank you,” she said, tossing him a smile.
“Is everything okay?” she said when they’d been driving a few minutes.
He glanced at her and cursed himself for being distant. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me why you were looking at me like you wanted to cry?”
She let out a little moan. “It’s… I’m sorry. Callie is going to kill me.”
He gave a short laugh. “Callie. I should have guessed.”
“She meant well, she really did. She didn’t tell me much, and she emphasized it was your story to tell. She just said that you’d been married before…and that your wife had died.” Her sentence ended on a whisper.
He glanced at his rearview mirror and then he pulled the truck over onto the shoulder. It was a quiet country road, but he put his hazard lights on to be safe. There was no way he was having this conversation while he was driving. He was just going to get it out there and done. “I met Catherine in high school. Her family had just moved here from Vancouver. We became friends right away. She was into sports and a lot of the girls’ and boys’ teams hung out after games and practices. We had a lot in common. We were friends for a long time. We went to senior prom together and…were together ever since. Everything with Catherine was easy. We were so similar. We hardly argued. We jogged together. We played co-ed sports together. We were inseparable. Everyone loved Catherine, she was everyone’s favorite. Just so easygoing and happy.”
Emily’s smile was wobbly, and her eyes were filled with that same kind of sympathy he’d seen on her porch…but they were filled with something else, too…something he couldn’t deal with right now because he was talking about something he hated talking about. He’d never really had to tell what had happened to Catherine. Everyone who knew him already knew their story. He turned away from the questions in her sad eyes, staring out the windshield and into the black night.
“We decided we wanted a baby after we were married a couple years and, uh, were trying for a few months. I thought that it would just take longer but Catherine insisted something was wrong.” He turned to look at her because she would keep him grounded in the present, and because he wanted her to know he was here. He wasn’t still living a life that didn’t exist. He had come to terms with his past and with saying goodbye to the woman he’d planned on spending the rest of his life with. There hadn’t been anyone else, because he just didn’t want to go down a road that could ever bring that kind of pain again…which of course made him question what he was doing here now with Emily.
“What happened?” she whispered, tilting her head.
He cleared his throat. “They found a tumor on her liver, and that was the beginning of the end. It was the most unfair thing I’ve ever witnessed. She didn’t have any hope of surviving. It was like one of those things you see on TV where a person is given months to live. We went everywhere. We wanted more than one opinion, but it was all the same. It was too fast.”
Emily’s hand went to his knee, and he stared at it, felt the impact of the compassionate gesture ripple through his body. “I’m sorry,” she said in a raw voice that cut through him.
He didn’t want to talk about any of this any longer. He wanted to be rid of the injustice of Catherine’s cancer instead of living in the haze of loss for the rest of his life. He didn’t want to be a man Emily pitied. He wanted to act like the man he was before Catherine. “It was five years ago, Em. I’m not there anymore. I’m right here.”
The windows were fogged from their body heat, and it almost felt like the rest of the world didn’t exist, and that was what he wanted. He slowly grasped Emily’s hand in his, his thumb running over her fingers, enjoying the softness, until that wasn’t enough. He slowly brought her hand to his lips, and her soft gasp ricocheted through his body. He turned her hand over and kissed the inside of her palm, and she watched him with an expression he knew, one that he was feeling, too. He held her hand in his and then raised his other one to cup the side of her face, leaning toward her, wanting to taste her, wanting to hold her in his arms, wanting to show her that she was the woman he was thinking about now.
A loud horn and lights from an eighteen-wheeler had them both jumping, and he checked his mirrors to make sure they weren’t in immediate danger. The truck roared past them, robbing them of their moment. He hung his head for a second. “I think that was our warning. I’d better get us off the side of the road,” he said.
She nodded. “Of course.”
He started the engine again and took her hand in his as he pulled back onto the dark road.
…
Emily laughed as Cooper told her a funny story about his childhood antics with his brothers. She was sitting across from him at the restaurant at a corner table that had a full view of a gorge. There was a suspension bridge over it, lit with twinkling lights. The restaurant was charming and cozy, and all the tables had white tablecloths and flickering candles. It couldn’t have been a more perfect evening.
She never would have expected Cooper to be like this the entire night. Her first surprise had been seeing him out of his usual work clothes—which he pulled off exceptionally well. Most of her daydreams were about him in the worn jeans and fitted T-shirts. But the clean-shaven, button-down-shirt–wearing Cooper was mouth-watering.
She didn’t know what exactly she’d expected him to be like, but after that moment in the truck when they’d almost kissed, there had been a change in him, almost like a relief, and then he’d become this man who was affectionate and caring. She loved the rough texture of his strong hand in hers, she loved the way he’d graze his thumb across her hand every now and then, and she loved the ripple effect it had throughout her body. She had believed him to be so hard and indifferent when she’d first met him, but now she knew. When he’d told her about Catherine, when he’d reached for her, and now, sitting across from him, she knew the truth—he was a man who felt deeply, who loved deeply. And somehow, he had found something in her that made him want to trust her with his heart. She believed he was ready to move on, but she also didn’t think it could ever be that simple.
“Can I get you anything else?” their waitress asked a moment later.
Cooper looked at her. She shook her head. “I really can’t eat anything else.”
“Coffee?” he asked.
She nodded, smiling. She didn’t want tonight to be over, the magic of it. She didn’t want Cooper to go back to being the guy who viewed her as just a friend. Maybe tonight was her own Cinderella night, and she wanted to enjoy it for as long as she could.
“Do you miss Toronto?” he asked after the waitress left.
She thought about that for a moment, absently admiring the orange and burgundy roses on the table. “Not…really. I didn’t belong there. There was a different kind of energy, and it was easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle and excitement of the city, but it’s also really easy to get lost in it and forget what’s important.”
“How so?”
He was easier to talk to than she’d expected. She had always had a hard time opening up to people, trusting people and letting them in. She was so cautious, never wanting to get hurt or be vulnerable, but somehow Cooper made her feel safe and warm. “Maybe it was just our social circles, but it was like I was always so busy trying to be the person everyone else thought I should be. I hate shopping. I hate makeup. I hate getting my hair done. I resented that I had to do those things to keep up appearances. I couldn’t go to work dressed casually. I couldn’t go for brunch in jeans, unless the outfit had been carefully planned out. If I had a day off I’d rather sit at home and drink coffee and read a book, but my days off were
spent doing things that other people thought I should be doing.”
The warmth emanating from his eyes made it clear that he liked her answer or that he felt the same way. “I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I can’t see you living that city life. Maybe when I first met you, but I think I know you better now.”
She swallowed hard. “Sometimes it takes distance to figure things out. I just went along with everything and never questioned it, until something snapped. It’s like a huge weight has been lifted off me. There are no expectations of me, because no one knew me.”
“Your family…you said you have a brother, right?”
She shrugged but nodded and took a deep breath. She really didn’t want to talk about her family. How did a person get into all that? Technically, they’d be breaking the Darth rule, too. She was from a dysfunctional family, and he came from the most high-functioning family she’d ever seen. “I think I needed space from him. We all worked together, and it was just too much.”
He nodded politely like he understood, but she knew he didn’t. His family worked together, and they drove each other crazy, but they were all in it together. They were all close. “Sometimes space is what we need. Would you ever go back?”
She shook her head, knowing the answer without even thinking about it. Their waitress brought their coffees, and she was adding cream to hers when a man and woman walked over to them.
“Cooper?” the woman said with a slight smile. They were an attractive older couple. Cooper’s smile fell slightly, and his gaze slipped from hers as he stood to kiss the woman on the cheek and shake the man’s hand.
Cooper turned to her. “Bernice, Frank, this is Emily…”
She stood out of politeness and shook their hands.
“Emily, these are Catherine’s parents,” he said softly.
Goose bumps prickled her flesh, and she struggled to find words, but the awkwardness of the four of them standing there made it impossible to think. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she said, unable to come up with anything else. She wanted to shrink away and hide.
The Boyfriend Contract Page 14
