The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River) (19 page)

“Where is everyone?” Emma asked.

“They went to bed,” he said. “Except Luke. He’s rounding up a quilt for the couch. Looks like I’ll be bunking there.”

Emma’s heart began to race. She glanced at the coin. “So what, I’m supposed to entertain you?” she asked crossly.

“I don’t need to be entertained.” He turned the coin over again, and she recognized the St. Christopher medal he’d shown her that night in Beverly Hills. “Don’t feel as if you need to keep me company—I’m used to making my own way. You know
. . .
like you.”

A shiver ran down her spine. “How could you possibly know what I am?” she asked, without rancor, but from a genuine desire to know.

“I’m good at reading people. And I think I’m especially good at reading you.”

She mentally stumbled. She’d been labeled aloof and distant; no one had ever claimed to
read
her. The idea made Emma laugh unsteadily. “I’m going to bed, detective.” She dropped the dish towel onto the bar and walked past him.

Cooper didn’t try and stop her. Emma faltered at the door, not wanting to leave it like this, not knowing how else to leave it. Cooper Jessup had knocked her off her game completely, and Emma couldn’t help but look back at him.

He was watching her go, just as she knew he would be. But his expression was not what she expected. It wasn’t predatory. It wasn’t the least bit wistful. It was
. . .
kind.
Kind.
Emma was used to disdain, to confusion, to lust. Not kindness! She hadn’t asked for that, and in fact, she’d sort of asked him for anything
but
kindness. She nervously pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Good night,” she said.

“Good night, Emma.”

She fled up the stairs before she did or said something stupid. She felt completely out of her league now, confronted by a man she didn’t know how to handle. What the hell was
wrong
with him? Why was he playing this game with her? It felt as if it had gone far beyond Carl’s medal.

It also felt as if something soft was
growing
in her.

For some reason, Emma thought of Grif, the one true relationship she’d had in the last eight years. Grif
. . . God, Grif
. Three years ago she’d met him, and she’d known he was bad news before he ever said hello to her. He was a beautiful man, handsome and rough, and he could charm a woman right out of her bra with merely a look, a touch. Emma had known Grif would be attracted to her. She’d known he would want her. He was the sort of conquest she enjoyed, a man who was so sure of himself that she took perverse joy in walking away.

But Emma hadn’t counted on wanting Grif. Once she’d realized it, it was too late; she hadn’t known what to do with herself. So she’d strung him along, teasing him, and enjoying every moment of their dating life. It went on for weeks, the give and take, always holding herself just beyond his full reach. She liked Grif. She thought he was funny and thoughtful, and vaguely dangerous.

At last, Emma let him catch her fully. Grif wasn’t like the men she generally pursued. He was young, he was hot, and he knew his way around a woman’s body. He liked his sex a little rough, and Emma, well
. . .
she was up for anything. The sex had been explosive, perhaps the best set of orgasms she’d ever had. For a week, they’d existed like animals, unable to keep their clothes on for more than a quick trip to the store.

And then
. . .
Grif was done. He was completely done with her. Emma hadn’t been surprised because she’d known Grif was just like her—it was all about the chase. After the prey had been caught, the rest of it was meaningless and empty.

Emma had
known
that would happen; she had known from the beginning she was nothing but another piece of ass to him. And yet, she’d allowed herself to be swept along by some ridiculous fantasy of love all the same because she’d been so physically attracted to him. She had presented herself to him as he wanted, had become exactly what women were to her father—a bird to be caught, and then mere flesh and bone, a port with a hole—and it had hurt no less than her father’s betrayal.

Grif was different from the older men Emma chased, who “chose” her instead of some other blonde at that given time. Grif was different because Emma had really wanted him, and somewhere along the way, she had wanted him to want her, too.

It was a strange, crazy world in Emma’s head when it came to sex.

Now she was confronted by a more complex problem. Cooper was like Grif in some respects. He was a beautiful man and Emma was strongly attracted to him. But she wasn’t going to make the same mistake as she’d made with Grif. Because when Cooper had what he wanted from her—that damn medal—he’d be done with her, too. Any hint that he was interested in more than her body was just a ploy. And the more Emma dragged this out, the worse it would be for her.

In her room, Emma pulled out her tote bag and unzipped it. She turned it upside down and watched her prizes tumble onto her lumpy bed. She picked up the box with the medal and held it in her hand. She didn’t bother to open it; she knew the medal was inside. She didn’t
want
to see it, because that medal was all she really was to Cooper, and all she ever would be. That was all Carl had been to her. A thing. A trophy.

If Emma swallowed her pride and gave Cooper this medal, he would disappear. Being mean hadn’t worked. Seduction hadn’t worked. The only thing that would work to get rid of him before things got really complicated was to give him the medal. If Cooper had that, he would go back to LA and tell stories about her.

If she gave it to him, she would humiliate herself. But she would also spare herself the agony of wanting to climb a mountain she was incapable of scaling. Best to look at the mountain from afar, admire the peaks, but keep her distance.

So give it to him. Give it to him, give it to him, send him on his way. The longer he stays, the more he sees. The more he sees, the weaker you are.

It was the only thing to do, and yet it was so hard, almost unbearable to admit that she really was a liar and a thief and a slut with some very mixed-up ideas.

Emma rolled onto her back on the bed, put the box on her belly, and stared up at the peeling ceiling.

Shortly after she’d arrived in Pine River, she’d attended a yoga class with Libby. Yoga wasn’t her thing, but Libby had convinced her.
Come on, you’ll feel like a new person,
she’d said. Emma had needed to feel like a new person. So she’d gone.

At the end of class, with her hands in prayer pose, her thumbs pressed to her heart center and her head bowed, the instructor had said, “Today, be yourself. Your true, undefined self.”

That particular comment had stuck with Emma and had pointed out a huge gaping hole in her: She didn’t know who her undefined self was. She’d been defined by the summer of her seventeenth year for so long that she’d barricaded her spirit from the world. And in that yoga class, Emma had been struck with the unnerving realization that she didn’t know how to set her spirit free.

“Maybe now,” she said aloud. Maybe now was the time to be undefined, to step out of the borders of her boxed-in life.

FOURTEEN

Cooper was thirty-eight years old. His ability to close out the world when he was in an unfamiliar place—to sleep anywhere, like he had in his twenties—was considerably diminished.

The sleep he’d managed on that couch over the last two hours had been very shallow. He’d been aware of every creak and moan in this old house, and had even believed he could hear the snow falling. In fact, the snowfall became so loud that he worried it was a true blizzard and he’d be trapped at this ranch. He got up to peer out the big picture window, wearing only his boxers.

Not only had the snow quit falling, there were only three inches of it on the ground, if that—nothing that Luke couldn’t manage in his Jeep.

Cooper was not trapped. He hadn’t miraculously developed supersonic hearing.

He’d returned to the couch and slung an arm over his eyes. His nerves were electrified, his thoughts whirring. He kept thinking of Emma, of the way her eyes weren’t exactly green, but neither were they blue. More like the color of a tropical sea. He thought about the way she’d interacted with everyone at the supper table, the invisible veil she put up between her and everyone else. As if she was present, but not entirely. Her gaze had found him occasionally, and the faint flicker of a smile across her lips would show before she quickly averted her eyes. She was afraid to look at him after he’d talked to her in the kitchen. Why?

Cooper also thought about the canyon he’d seen today. He must have drifted into sleep, dozing a little, because he was climbing the sheer face of a cliff, his hold so tenuous that a breeze would have dislodged him. He became aware of someone or something, and when he turned his head to look, he slipped from his hold.

Cooper’s eyes flew open; a shadow passed in his peripheral vision. He blinked against the dark until he could focus in the dim light of a lamp that had been left on in the hall, and turned his head.

Emma was standing at the front window, gazing out. She was wearing an oversized shirt, and her legs, slender and shapely, were bare. Her hair fell down her back in one long silken drape, and Cooper was reminded of the feel of it between his fingers.

“It’s stopped snowing,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Cooper didn’t speak; he lifted up to one elbow.

Emma turned around to face him. She looked ghostlike, framed in the window as she was. Cooper’s curiosity was aroused, as was his body. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice gravelly from fitful sleep.

Emma moved toward him, gliding across the braided rug like a wraith. Cooper tensed, wary of her intent. But when she reached him, she climbed on top of him, forcing him onto his back as she straddled his groin. He put his hands on her hips, his thumb sliding under the tiny strip of panty on her hip. Her hair spilled around her shoulders, her eyes shining in the low light. She was sexy as hell, and his body was responding, hardening against her.

Emma casually scraped her fingers down his pecs, across his nipples. She slid her palms to his shoulders, then leaned down to kiss him. God help him, but her mouth and tongue were so soft against his. Every vein in him began to swell with desire, and Cooper kissed her back, sinking his fingers into her hair, gripping thick ropes of blond silk in his fist. He knew she was using her body to toy with him, and yet, he couldn’t keep from responding.

She shifted, her mouth sliding to his neck.

“This is beneath you, Emma,” he said gruffly.

“
You’re
beneath me,” she murmured, and licked his ear.

“You don’t even like me,” he reminded her.

“Not true. But what does it matter? You like this,” she said, sliding her hand in between their bodies and over his erection.

He hated the machination, the manipulation. He hated even more that he was aroused by it. He abruptly sat up and caught her wrist, forcing her to look at him. “My
dick
likes it. Don’t confuse that with me.
I
don’t like it.”

“Come on, Cooper,” she purred. “You want this.” She surged forward, catching his head between her hands, kissing him.

Damn it, he
did
want it. He was male, he wanted sex, he
always
wanted sex, and part of him was berating himself for ruining a good thing. But he wasn’t going to have sex like this. It was cheap and meaningless, it was overt manipulation, and this was not the way he wanted Emma Tyler. Cooper wasn’t certain he wanted her at all, but if he ever did, it damn sure wouldn’t be like this. He pulled her hands from his head and pushed her back. “That’s enough.”

“Liar,” she said, and shimmied back, onto his thighs. She smiled as she began to trail kisses down his chest, her gaze on him, daring him to stop her as she moved to his groin.

Cooper grabbed her roughly by the arms and hauled her up. Emma gasped, wincing a little, but Cooper didn’t loosen his grip. “I said
no
,” he said firmly.

She laughed, the sound of it harsh. “You just lost your chance,” she said, and shifted back, bracing her hands against his chest to climb off of him.

Cooper swung his legs off the side of the couch. “If we’re going to have sex, the desire will be mutual. No power plays.”

He saw the almost imperceptible hitch in her shoulders. “There will never be anything mutual between us, Cooper. I don’t do things in the ordinary ways. I don’t do ordinary love. Haven’t you learned anything about me?”

She turned, as if she was going to leave the room, but Cooper caught her hand in his. “No one said anything about love, ordinary or otherwise,” he said. “I swear to God I can’t figure you out, Emma, but I’m not your adversary.”

Emma hesitated; her fingers curled a little around his. It was nothing more than a brush, really, but in that darkened room, it felt a little to Cooper as if she were clinging to him. Her fingers scraping, however faintly, against a life ring.

And then her fingers slipped away from his altogether. “I never implied you were my adversary. I never said anything about you at all, other than you should go home. You
do
need to go, Cooper. So I came down here to tell you that I have it.”

Cooper’s head was still wrapped around the physical encounter between them and the notion that there could never be anything mutual between them. “Have what?” he asked impatiently.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “What do you think?”

He realized what she meant. “Are you kidding?”

“You’re surprised? You said you didn’t believe me.”

“Where is it?”

Emma reached for something on the end table. She took his hand and turned it palm up, then put the box into his palm.

Cooper opened the box, saw the medal nestled inside, and closed the box.

“Jesus,” he said, and pushed a hand through his hair.

Emma floated down onto the couch beside him, looking deflated.

“Why?” he asked.
Why lie, why now, why take it in the first place?
God, there were so many things he didn’t understand about this woman. So many little twists and turns that made no sense.

“Why?”
she echoed.

“Why do you have it?” he asked her. “Why did you take it?”

She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just a weird thing,” she said with a flick of her wrist.

“Then why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you give it to me the day I showed up instead of dragging it out like this? Why even hide it?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked curtly. “I’m ashamed of myself. I would rather lie than adm
it I took that stupid box. But
you
. . you just wouldn’t give
up,
” she said, her voice filled with wonder.

Cooper fell back against the couch. He was relieved and he was oddly disappointed. Not that she had it—he’d known that all along. It was her explanation. He wished there had been something—
she robbed Peter to pay Paul, anything other than
it’s just a weird thing.

“Thanks,” he said.

“For what?” she asked with disgust. “For not lying?”

“More like for being honest.”

She shifted, her back straightening, her hands going to her knee. “Funny, that’s the thing about me that people find so annoying—I’m usually too honest.” She stood up. “Okay, Cooper. You’ve got what you wanted. You can go home now. You’re going to leave Pine River, right? No more pretending to look at cliffs or whatever it is you’ve been doing?”

The expression in her eyes was wistful, and that look did not match the words coming out of her mouth. “Is that what you want?” he asked uncertainly.

“
Yes.
I want you to go back to LA and not come back. Is that plain enough for you?”

Very plain, and Cooper was more than a little annoyed by her blunt honesty. And by his goddamn fickleness. A moment ago, he despised her for trying to use him. Now, he was stung she wanted him to go.

“What?” she demanded impatiently.

“I thought we were getting somewhere,” he said simply.

“
Where?
Where were we getting?” she exclaimed. “You know what? We
were
getting somewhere,” she said, sounding angry now. “But we got there too fast. And now it’s over. So in the end, we got exactly nowhere, which is exactly where we were destined to go from the beginning.”

He would have bought that explanation had she not spoken so angrily and looked so sad. Whatever was going on in her head was a spectacular mystery, and Cooper grudgingly admitted to himself that he was more interested than he wanted to be. “Okay,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll go.”

“Good.” She moved to leave the room.

“But I could also stay a little while,” he said, uncertain where
those
words had come from. All he knew was that he wanted to unlock the mystery in Emma Tyler. It was like reading a thriller and being denied the last few chapters. He’d figure her out, and then he’d go. But in that moment, staying felt
. . .
important.

Apparently not to Emma. She whirled around to face him with a murderous gaze. “
Not
a good idea. Are you deaf, Cooper? Are you
dumb
?
I want you to
go.
I want you to leave and never come back. In other words, get the hell out of my life!”

It made no sense to Cooper that he should stand up and grab Emma then, much less kiss her. But he did, kissing those words off her breath, nibbling them off her lips, his tongue sweeping into her mouth and swallowing them whole. Emma struggled weakly at first, but then responded to him, pressing against him. He was heating up again, his body swelling with desire. He kissed her neck, her shoulder. His hands swept up her body to her breasts, then down again, over her hips.

He didn’t know how long he kissed her, but Emma shoved against him and backed away from him. She unsteadily touched her fingers to her swollen bottom lip.
“Bastard,”
she spat, and walked out of the living room.

Cooper could hear the stairs squeaking under her weight as she went up. He slowly sat down, an image of Emma shimmering in his thoughts. He was not an obtuse guy—she certainly spoke like she wanted him gone. And yet there seemed to be a major contradiction lurking in her. Maybe he was crazy, maybe he was trying to see something there because he wanted to make love to her—but he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that she was not what she presented.

Emma Tyler was more intriguing than any woman he’d met in a very long while. He rubbed his scalp. He didn’t have the time or the energy for this! He was too old for games. He was way past the point in his life that he would be strung along in ways and for reasons he didn’t understand.

Yeah, he’d get out of the mountains before it snowed again, and head back to LA.

Cooper lay down, pulled the quilt over his chest. But his sleep was even more fitful than before.

He was dressed and ready to go when Luke came downstairs. Cooper was anxious to get off this mountain. He wanted the sunshine of LA, the predictability of women there. He wanted to see Braden and Brodie and give them the kiddie sombreros he’d picked up at Tag’s Outfitters.

Cooper told Luke on the slow drive down the mountain that he was heading out after their ski date. Luke had looked at him strangely, apparently waiting for Cooper to say something more, perhaps about the thing he’d come to get from Emma. But Cooper didn’t mention it, and Luke apparently knew not to ask.

Luke dropped him off at the Grizzly. Cooper grabbed a bear claw pastry and coffee from the Grizzly Café, then went up to the Beaver Room and called his mother. “Hi, Mom,” he said through a yawn.

“Coop, honey, I’m so glad you called,” she said. “Derek called this morning. He said he’s due to be released on the twenty-third to a halfway house, and then three months after that, he can come home! After all this time, I’m going to get him back!”

Cooper resisted the urge to rain on her parade. God knew his mom had long been the stalwart, making the twelve-hour round-trip between the oil fields of West Texas to the penitentiary near Houston to see Derek four times a year. She’d watched the prison tattoos bloom on Derek’s arms, had watched the lines in his face deepen, the features harden, and still, she had that mother’s eagerness to have her boy home.