CupidsChoice (11 page)

Bree told them, “I love you two, you know.”

Rachel, who was draped across the big, comfy armchair across
the room, gave her a huge smile. Petra reached over from her corner of the
couch and patted Bree’s leg.

“We know,” they said.

Cooper stood on Bree’s front porch under the umbrella she’d
given him, waiting.

He didn’t have any idea how long he’d been there, standing
in the rain, but he was willing to wait for as long as it took her to come
home. He had no idea where she’d gone or when she would be back, and he didn’t
care. He was going to be there when she returned, come hell or high water.
Which was starting to look like a real possibility.

It was well after dark before headlights appeared at the
four-way stop. In the light of the streetlamp at the corner he could see it was
her car. She sat there for what felt like an eternity, something he took to
mean she’d spotted him and couldn’t decide if she wanted to go home and talk to
him or keep driving and leave him there.

Eventually she pulled into her driveway and got out of the
car.

It had been two weeks since he’d seen her. She’d had the end
of that first week off work, then he’d taken one, knowing he wasn’t going to be
able to leave her alone when he saw her. He’d wanted to give her space, but the
fear that she would never come around and give him the chance to make things
right had gotten the better of him.

He was so happy to have her standing close enough to touch
again that he almost threw the umbrella aside and pulled her into his arms. The
look on her face stopped him, though. She was clearly not happy to see him.

He spoke before she could ask him to leave. “I could stand
here and make excuses all night, Bree, but the fact is I was doing my job.”

When she didn’t say anything he took a chance and stepped
close enough she was under the umbrella as well.

“Carrie was making a lot of dangerous mistakes and you were
her biggest supporter, so I went to the board and told them I felt it would be
in the best interest of the hospital to look into your work performance as
well. I was simply doing my job.”

She simply looked at him a moment. He had no idea what she
was thinking. Nothing about her expression changed. Then she moved past him and
went inside her house. He waited for the sound of her closing the door and
locking him out, but it didn’t happen. When he turned and looked, the door was
wide open.

Cooper shook the rain out of the umbrella outside before
collapsing it and standing it in the base of her coat tree. A box holding his
things was sitting on the tile floor. He could only hope it was a positive sign
that she hadn’t given them back yet.

“I’m going to make some coffee.” She hung her jacket without
looking at him. “Would you like some?”

“I would.” He wanted her coffee. He wanted to come home and
leave his shoes and his coat next to hers after work every morning. He wanted
her. Period.

“Please tell me you believe me when I said I thought you
knew it was me who went to the board,” he said, leaning on the counter to watch
her make coffee.

“I asked the hospital board why I was being investigated
when it first started and they told me they were simply looking into everyone
who’d worked with Carrie during specific incidents.” She looked up at him. “If
the board had been more forthcoming and told me it was you specifically who’d
turned me in, I can assure you I never would have let you in that night,
tornado warning or no tornado warning.”

He nodded and crossed his arms. “Fair enough. Then tell me
you believe me when I thought enough time had passed that you’d at least
forgiven me.”

She sighed as she scooped fragrant grounds into the filter
basket. “Fine. I’ll give you that one.”

“Good. Here’s one you probably don’t know. I was completely
stunned when you came to Carrie’s defense so quickly. You and I had been
working together, what, six months at the time? I thought you were one of the
best nurses I’d ever worked with. You’re whip smart, you thrive under pressure
and you make every patient feel as if he or she the only person you have to
take care of, even when the department is short staffed and you’re running your
ass off.”

She’d stopped what she was doing and put her hands on the
counter, looking straight ahead at the cabinet in front of her, listening.

“Yes, I felt guilty for siccing the board on you afterward,
especially when they didn’t find a single thing wrong with your work
performance, but I didn’t feel as if I had any other choice at the time.” He
shifted closer to her and leaned into her peripheral vision. “And me wanting to
get to know you outside of work has always been something completely separate
from that incident.”

He took a chance, peeled one of her hands off the counter
and held it.

“I thought you were one of the most adorable, funny, sexy
women I’d ever met the first time I laid eyes on you.” His heart skipped
optimistically when she looked at her hand in his. “I would have asked you out
much sooner if I hadn’t been going through a divorce when I first started at
the hospital. And in spite of the fact that I thought you hated me, maybe
justifiably so, that attraction never went away.”

She turned her big, dark eyes up to his again and he held
her hand to his chest over his heart. “I made a terrible judgment call when I
reported you, and I apologize, but you didn’t lose your job because you’re one
of the best nurses out there.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but she remained silent.

“Forgive me because you love me.”

She pulled her hand out of his and wiped the tears that
rolled down her face.

“Forgive me because I love you, and I refuse to do it from a
distance.”

She sighed and looked away, wrapping her arms around her
middle. “Cooper…”

“Don’t tell me to go. We can go back to having coffee and
talking about whatever you want to talk about instead of this, but please don’t
tell me to go.”

She hung her head and laughed without humor. “You’re such a
jerk.”

Now that was a good sign. “I know, baby.” He touched her
face and she turned her cheek into his palm. “I’ve missed you so much, Bree.”

“You took a week off work to avoid me.”

“I was not avoiding you.” He took a step closer. “You asked
me to leave you alone, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that once I saw you
again.”

Her eyes opened and she lifted her head out of his touch.
“So what are you doing here now? Coming here isn’t respecting my wishes.”

“If you thought I was just going to stay away, you were
mistaken. Giving you some space was one thing, but walking away without a fight
just wasn’t going to happen.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have any fight left in me.”

“So if I kiss you right now there’s a pretty good chance I’m
not going to get slapped again?” he asked sliding his hand under her hair to
cradle the back of her head. “You’ve got a mean right hook, and I’d rather not
be on the receiving end of it again.”

She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. He moved in
anyway.

“Cooper, who is Lara?”

He stopped, straightened, dropped his hand. He’d been so
happy that she’d let him in her house that he’d forgotten about Lara.

“Your timing couldn’t have been worse when you walked into
my office.”

That earned him an arch look. “Or maybe my timing was perfect.”

“She and I used to be friends, but that’s finished. What you
walked in on was her making one last effort to get me to become something more
than friends. I was telling her that she and I were never going to happen
because I’d fallen in love with you. She lashed out at you because she was
angry with me.”

“And how did she know it was you who’d spoken to the board?”

“Her mother is the secretary to the hospital director.”

She blinked at him. “Oh.”

“I was just as surprised that she knew anything about it as
you were, because I’d never told her. I’ve never talked to anyone about it.”

She covered her face and took a deep breath, then ran her
hands through her hair.

“I’m so tired of this,” she huffed impatiently. “I’m so
tired of not knowing which end is up, and I’m tired of still wanting you in
spite of the mess.”

“There is no mess.” He took her face in his hands and drew
her close. “There is no mess, there is no Lara and the investigation is a thing
of the past.” She wrapped her hands around his wrists but didn’t try to free
herself. “There is only you and me, baby.”

She hated herself for loving it when he called her baby.

She hated herself for giving in so easily when he kissed
her—covering her upper lip with his mouth in a way that made his full, soft bottom
lip become the only thing that existed for her in the whole world—because she’d
missed it.

She’d missed him. All of him. Even the part that had
betrayed her, although she couldn’t deny that he hadn’t really betrayed her at
all. Once she’d let herself think about it with a clear head, and after several
long talks with Rachel and Petra in which they’d let her ramble on and on about
it, she’d known he’d just been doing his job.

And she’d known the second she saw him standing on her porch
under that umbrella that her fears about what might have been going on between
him and Lara were unfounded. She’d known it without a doubt.

“You’re a jerk for staying away so long,” she whispered
against his mouth.

His answer was to come back at her more urgently. She let
him because she didn’t have a choice. She loved him with every single fiber of
her being, especially her heart currently trying to hammer its way out of her
chest so it could fling itself at him.

He could have the damn, traitorous thing.

As long as he never stopped kissing her that way, it was his
for the taking.

“Take me to bed and let me make it up to you,” he murmured
against her neck.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, tightened her stomach
and brought her legs up and around him. He got his hands under her ass and
lifted. Familiar with the way now, he made it to her room without bumping into
anything or knocking any pictures off the wall, the way he had early on.

They fell onto the bed, wrapped tight around each other.
They barely parted to undress, each of them tearing their own clothes off to be
quick about getting naked.

And then his incredible body was on her, his weight, his
scent, his heat familiar and welcome and missed more than she’d realized. He
fit himself into her perfectly with his eyes holding hers steady and a promise
on his lips. “I love you,” he said.

The words were there, right on the tip of her tongue, but
he’d stolen her breath and rendered her half senseless with the long pull and
quick thrust of his cock.

She couldn’t get enough of the feel of his skin stretched
tight over lean muscle. She explored the deep channel down the middle of his
back, ran her hands over the taut muscles of his ass, feeling him tighten and
release as he fucked her. She wrapped her legs around his and brought her hips
up off the bed to meet every thrust.

He tucked his face into her neck and she whispered his name
in his ear. His hips jerked and sent her racing toward orgasm when she stroked
the tip of her tongue around the shell of his ear and then bit down on the
lobe. She shifted, moving farther beneath him so he went deeper, bumping
against her clit with every stroke, and licked the salty, damp skin of his
neck. Her teeth grazed along his collarbone, then sank into the meat of his
shoulder and he groaned.

She could feel the shift of his weight as he adjusted his
arms, never losing the steady, perfect momentum of his cock pounding into her.
He spoke her name and she looked up at him. He told her he loved her again, but
the words weren’t necessary. She could see it, right there in those amazing
hazel eyes of his.

How she’d ever thought she’d have been able to live without
him, she didn’t know.

She brought her legs up so he sank deeper and they both
groaned. Her toes curled and her nipples became tight and aching as pleasure
radiated out from her pussy to every other point in her body.

“I love you, Cooper,” she told him when she could, her hands
framing his face.

His eyes closed for a moment, as though he couldn’t bear it.
And then he was kissing her more, pushing so deeply into her she could hardly
believe he’d found yet another depth to explore. But it existed, and fuck if it
wasn’t incredibly good to have him there. And when she came, she came with her
head pushed back into the bed and a cry of pleasure loud enough to make her
next door neighbor’s outside dog bark.

She could feel him throbbing, thick and incredibly hard,
inside of her as she crested and her orgasm started to subside. He stayed
inside of her, kissing her as though his life depended on it for a long while
afterward. He could have stayed there for days. In fact, she would have liked
it very much if he did.

Eventually he rolled onto his side, taking her with him. He
tucked a pillow under their heads and smoothed her hair back from her face.

“Don’t ever ask me to stay away again,” he told her, looking
unusually vulnerable.

Too emotionally drained to cry and too physically exhausted
to argue that she wouldn’t as long as he didn’t give her a reason, she kissed
him. “We’ll see.”

“I won’t go again,” he warned.

Spent and happy to have him back, she let the warmth of his
smile work its way under her skin and fill the emptiness inside her with peace
and love. There was probably still a lot more to talk about, but it could wait.

“Give me another good reason to let you stay,” she
challenged.

“I’ll give you as many reasons as you need,” he promised,
and spent the rest of the night giving her at least three more.

* * * * *

“Bree.” She launched out of sleep because he was shaking
her. “Baby, wake up.”

He had her phone. It was vibrating as though it had been
made at a sex toy factory.