Someone to Watch Over Me (2 page)

“Cooper must be special if
you’ve named an ice cream after her.”

“What can you say? Cooper’s got
good taste.”

Cooper would have to disagree.
Cooper made all kind of wrong decisions in her life. Picking ice
cream, however, wasn’t one of them, so I pinched a smile.

“Cooper,
”
said Biker Boots, “
is that like your last name?”

“Nope. It’s
like
my
first name.”

“Your name’s Cooper?” He gave
me a look that said,
‘
Bullshit.
’
I returned it
with a look that said,
‘
Really?
’
“It’s a boy’s
name is all. I know you probably hear it all the time.”

“A million times.”

“So what’s your last name,
Sharp
?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve heard
that a million times, too.”
I made the mistake
of calling the quip ‘cheesy’ once. You know…Cooper Sharp cheese…so
lame. It was completely unintentional, but the guy trying to pick
me up at the time thought I was flirting back.

I never made that mistake again.

Nibbling the last of the
dark
chocolate shell from my ice cream, I
dragged my tongue along the edge of the cone. When I looked up
again, he was staring. I suspected I wore the same expression when
he tongued the paper cup in front of me. Gathering my composure, I
grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and wiped my mouth.

“So…?”
he
prompted.
When I declined to answer, he asked, “What? Is it
a secret? Some hidden identity you’re trying to maintain?” He
smiled at some
private
joke
. Ironically enough, he had no idea how close to the mark
he’d come.

“Sorry. I just don’t give my
name to every Tom, Dick and Harry.”

He smiled
,
liked
the challenge. Except for me, it wasn’t a challenge.
“Good thing my name’s not Dick. It’s Tate.” He stabbed his hand in
my direction. “Tate Watkins.”

I stared dumbly
, and t
hen choked on my ice cream as recognition set
in. Pounding myself on the chest, I slid from the stool. My face
turned
six shades
of red. Tate stood,
following me as I backed across the room, his brows raised in
concern. “Are you
alright
?”

I nodded and waved him off. No,
I wasn’t ok. I was far from ok. I was standing beside Tate Fucking
Watkins. The lead singer of
Hautboy
.
For
the past ten years, at any given time, you could find at least one
of their albums fluctuating on the top-ten list.
Everywhere
they went, the freaking cameras followed. The paparazzi swarmed
around
them like flies on shit. Jesus.
Were they here already? My head snapped to the door looking for
long white lenses and flash bursts. Christ, I was so screwed.

The problem was Grant Hayes.
The guy was a psychopath. Literally, not figuratively. I met him in
my freshmen year of college. We dated for six months. I guess you
could say our relationship ended with a bang. Or more
like
a right hook. He fractured my eye socket. I
lost vision of
my left
eye for almost a
month. To this day, it wasn’t one hundred percent.
I had lost my peripheral vision.
I came home from
college
to heal
, and
I
never went back.

But it didn’t end that easily.
My nightmare had only just started. He followed me across the
entire fucking continent. He stalked me, left an
odd and threatening
assortment of
gifts
on my doorstep
for almost
six months
.
He called around the clock,
sent
endless streams of
text
messages
and
emails
.
Though the gifts stopped, the latter continued.
I guess it
was his way of
letting me know he was still
available
.

No,
my
story’s
not done yet. When I spent that few days in the
hospital
before and after my surgery
, my
test reports came back. And the nice lady doctor told me they were
positive. Like two pink lines positive. I never told Grant, and I
went to all lengths to make sure he never found out. I
’d
moved three times in the past two years, each
time drifting farther from my
friends and
family.
I uprooted my life to keep my secret
safe. Yet each time I received the inevitable text that would
allude to the fact he knew exactly where I was.
It was
threat enough.

If it were just me, I could
deal with it, but I had
Levy
to think of,
and there was no way I was letting Grant within a mile of him.
That’s all I needed was one little image of my mug to grace the
papers, reading, “Tate Watkins’ mystery girl.” I saw them all the
time. The fan
girls
. The groupies. The
faces plastered in all the gossip magazines
and
across the internet.

Without a doubt, Grant would
find me, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Cooper?”
Tate prompted.

Turning back, I forced a smile.
“It was nice to meet you, Tate, but I—” I coughed again
, c
leared my throat. “I’ve gotta go.”

“You
didn’t
tell me your name
.”

I coughed into my wrist.
“
Smith
.”

“
Smith
.” He didn’t believe me one bit.

I nodded. “
Smith
.”

“Tell Levy that there’s a cone
here with his name on it,” Ash called as I pushed my way through
the door.

“Will do. Bye
,
Ash.”

Sliding into
my Mini, I pressed the ignition and backed out, scanning the lot
with a cursory glance. By the time I’
d
driven two miles down the street, I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten
there. I had completely fazed out, which was frightening because I
couldn’t say if I’d stopped at either the traffic light or the stop
sign along the way. I drew a complete blank.

In my haste, I forgot about my
ice cream. It was running down my fingers and had dripped onto my
skirt.
Mentally cursing my stupidity, I
pul
led
over
and
tossed my cone out the window, then dug through my bag for the baby
wipes and scrubbed futilely at the raspberry stains, which only
made them spread into a wider circle of diluted pink dye.

“
Damn
it
!”

Balling the wipe in my hand, I
tossed it into my bag and dropped my head
against
the headrest. My knuckles whitened around
the steering wheel. I hated that
Grant
still had control over me even after all these years. It wasn’t
fair. He took everything from me. I liked to think that I had
prevailed, t
hat I was a
survivor
, b
ut deep
down
inside I knew that’s all I was doing
, surviving
. I wasn’t really living
, n
ot truly. He hovered constantly in the background
of my mind. I never made decisions without taking him into
consideration first. From where I lived to whom I accepted as a
friend, he affected every aspect of my life.

To my left,
I heard the terse honk of a horn. A
largish black SUV pulled
to a stop alongside me. The window powered down
with a soft hum
, revealing a lean and dark Tate
Watkins. “Car trouble?”

“No. Just made a mess of
myself. I’m trying to clean it up.”

“So you’re good
?
”

“Great.”

“See you around then, Cooper
Hale
.”

He
left
me
gaping as his truck pulled away,
listening to the deep sound of his chuckle. Just before the
wi
n
dow went up, I caught a flash of white
teeth. I needed to have a heart to heart with Ash about doling out
my personal information to strangers. And what did he mean by
that—see you around? Shit!
Damn it!
Fuck!

♫♪♫♪

“Hautboy,” said Em in
disbelief. “What would they be doing
here
, in
Collegeville
? I know we
’
re
not in the boon docks, but you’d think they’d stay at the Ritz
Carlton or Palomar.”

Emily was my closest friend. My
only
friend, truthfully
, though she was a
few years older than I was
. She lived in the
apartment
beside mine. The place was a little more
lived in and a lot more loved, while mine was bare bones. I hadn’t
had time to make it a home. Grant made sure
I
never did
.

Em
watched Levy for me Friday and Saturday nights while I waited
tables at the bar. She knew
about
Grant.
I disclosed everything to her for her own safety, just like I had
with the landlord. Both parties were surprisingly understanding. Em
was quick to take me under her wing. C
o
me
to find out, she had been in my shoes once before. So she knew my
pain. Her ex was in prison, but she still kept a revolver tucked
safely between her mattress
and box
spring
.

And Mr. Craig,
my landlord,
he just had a soft spot for broken
girls, in a platonic, fatherly way. God bless him. They didn’t make
enough men like Garrison Craig.

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I
was busy choking on my ice cream.” Pulling my legs up behind me, I
settled into the plush, floral printed sofa. “He must think I’m
such an idiot.”

“I’d say he thought you were
effing
hot. Enough to
wheedle
your name from Ashley after you left. He’s
interested. Tate Watkins is interested in you, Coop! My God, most
girls could only dream of such a thing.”

“Most girls could only dream of
such a
fling
,” I corrected. “That’s all he wants. And it’s
something I don’t need right now.”

“Don’t fool yourself. It’s
exactly what you need. One lo
oooo
ng night
of hard sex with no attachments. Think about it. Wham bam thank you
ma’am and he’ll be on his way.”

“I have a kid, Em.”

“You’re twenty
-
one. Not a saint. Live a little.”

Ouch. If that didn’t strike a
nerve.

Setting
her glass down, Em moved from her chair and
sat next to me. “You have to live life to its fullest, Coop,” she
said, squeezing my hand. “Don’t let these moments pass you by.
You’ve given up too much already, don’t you think?”

Yeah, yeah I have. Shaking my
head, I said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m sure they’ve moved on anyhow.
They were probably just passing through on their way to the next
gig.” But in the back of my mind, Tate’s ‘so long’ niggled a
warning.
See you around
,
Cooper Hale
.

It kept me up
at night
and left me distracted most of
the week
at work.
See you around
. What the
hell was that supposed to mean? I went so far as to check their
website for news. They had a show in NJ in two weeks and NY
a week after that
. Was he staying in
town? Did he have family here? Did
it
really
matter
?

“He’ll be back.” Em grinned
slowly. “And don’t give me those coy eyes. You know damn well
that
you drive the men crazy. Not to
mention Ashley Lemming has a big mouth. You and everyone knows it.
The man probably knows half your life story.”

“That’s comforting.”
Ashley Lemming spouting my business to Grant
when he came searching for me was the last thing I
needed.

Sighing, Em
shook her head
. “You haven’t heard from him”— Grant
—“in a while, right? Maybe he’s finally done toying with you.”

“He just doesn’t know where I
am, yet.” Once he learned of my new address, I would get the
inevitable text. I always did.

“There’s always Wes.” Wes was
her forty-five
caliber Smith and Wesson
.
She called him Wes for short, and claimed he was
the only man she needed in her life. She also liked to make tongue
in cheek comments over the reasons she preferred Wes over a real
man.

“Some day
,
I might take you up on it.” It’s not like I’d
never given it a thought. Just standing my ground and waiting for
him to come after me. Then pulling the trigger. Bam. Done. Over.
Who the hell was I kidding? I couldn’t kill a person. Not even
Grant. I didn’t have it in me, or I would’ve bought
myself a sidearm
a long time ago.
Moving
was easier.

Em gave me a look that said I
could if the need ever arose. She had. And she didn’t have Levy to
defend. I don’t know. Perhaps she was right. If Grant hurt
Levy…

“Go to work, Coop. I’ll
keep Levy tomorrow until you
wake
up.”

God bless her. “You’re a
lifesaver, Em.”

“I know. So don’t let me down.
If Tate Watkins comes nosing around, remember I’m living
vicariously through you.”

I pushed out a smile and gave
Lev
y
a kiss. He was already asleep,
his
blond hair curling at his temples,
lips pushed in a tranquil pout. I hated leaving him, but
I comforted myself with the fact that
he
was sleeping and
wouldn’t
even know I was gone
.

At home, I pinned my hair up
and showered, tossing on my best pair of jean shorts and the
mandatory red and black checkered Daisy Duke shirt. I
’d
rather have worn a comfortable pair of sneakers,
but the leather boots were also part of the uniform. Those we had
to purchase ourselves, which was fine because I wasn’t into sharing
footwear unless it was at the roller rink or bowling alley.
Truthfully, I suffered the uniform because I made good tips.