CupidsChoice (2 page)

A set of curtains cut the neatly organized space in half. In
the second half of the basement a narrow bed stood against the back wall,
joined by a wardrobe on one side and a small dresser with a television sitting
on top on the other.

“My younger brother Dillon lives in California,” she
explained, going to the dresser, slightly calmer now. “He stays with me when he
comes here to visit.”

She pulled out a drawer and handed him a t-shirt, then a
pair of sweatpants from a bottom drawer. “He’s shorter than you, but he wears
his clothes big, so these should fit if you want to get out of your wet
clothes.”

Cooper looked at her a moment, then opened the first drawer
and pulled out a second t-shirt. He set the clothes she’d handed him on the
dresser, opened the shirt and shoved it over her head.

“What are you doing?” she asked when her head popped through
the neck.

“Covering you up.” He took one of her arms by the wrist and
helped it through the short sleeve when she didn’t automatically do it herself.
“I can see through your shirt.”

She gave him an impatient sigh. “They’re just boobs,
Bennett.”

“Yes, but from what I can see they’re spectacular boobs, and
this is no time for that kind of distraction.”

He took the flashlight out of her other hand and set it on
the dresser so he could hold the other sleeve and reach for her other hand at
the same time. She moved it out of reach.

“If this storm hadn’t hit and we’d ended up at the party
you’d have gotten to see them tonight anyway. Those stupid rules being what
they are and all.”

He shook his head. “The rules?”

She gave him an impatient look. “Don’t try to tell me Petra
didn’t explain the rules when she invited you. I know better than that,
Cooper.”

Petra had told him if he came she could guarantee he would
get to spend some time with Bree, but she hadn’t mentioned rules. “Refresh my
memory.”

She sighed. “You sleep with whoever’s keys you draw, or
whoever’s keys she draws depending on how she has the game rigged, and condoms
are a must.”

No, he definitely hadn’t been told anything of the sort.
“You’re kidding me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “She really didn’t tell you that part?”

“No. She really didn’t.” An odd kind of excitement filled
him as they stood looking at one another, both of them still as the weather
raged above them. Did the flippant way she’d just explained the party rules
mean she would have gone through with it? The idea caused a stirring in his
cock despite his cold, clinging clothes.

Bree moved first, pushing her arm through the sleeve on her
own and taking the flashlight from him. “I’m assuming you know how to find your
way around yourself well enough to change without this.” She walked to the
other side of the curtains and took them in her hands. “I’ll wait out here
while you change,” she said, and pulled them closed.

She pointed the beam at the heavy curtain anyway, giving him
enough light to see as he unbuttoned his shirt. Cold, wet clothes or not, the
effect of what she’d just told him had done the trick. He left his boxer briefs
on, thankful they weren’t quite as damp as the rest of his clothes as he needed
them to restrain what was now a full erection.

Cooper tried to think unpleasant thoughts as he pulled on
her brother’s clothes, but it wasn’t helping. The bed, the storm and the luscious
little woman on the other side of the curtain were fueling some serious
fantasies about how they could spend the time waiting for the weather to clear.
Even the fact that she had seemed horrified to see him when he first arrived
was doing nothing to help ease the growing ache in his balls.

Surviving however long it was going to take for the storm to
pass was surely going to prove to be a whole new kind of hell.

Bree didn’t realize just how short Dillon was, or how tall
Cooper was for that matter, until she opened the curtain and saw him wearing
what were basically her brother’s pajamas. The hem of the black sweatpants
bunched up around Dillon’s feet, but they barely covered Cooper’s ankles. The
white t-shirt hung long on Cooper, but not nearly as long as it did on her
brother.

She took the collapsible air-drying rack from under the
stairs and set it up.

“Feel better?” she asked, holding out her hand for his wet
clothes.

“Yes, thank you,” he answered, his voice strange. He shook
out his shirt and hung it on an empty rung after she did the same with his
pants. “So, what do you do when you’re home by yourself on a night like this?”

She was thankful the flashlight was shining more on him than
her when a flush rose in her cheeks. She cleared her throat and went to sit on
the bed.

“If I know a storm is coming, I usually go to my parents’
house.” She supposed there was no harm in telling him that much.

He sat with his back against the wall and crossed his legs.
He had good feet to match his good hands. His hair was drying flat and Bree had
to fight the temptation to fix it for him.

“Any reason you’re so afraid of them, or is it just one of
those things?”

“My mother and I were in a bad accident during a storm when
I was eight,” she told him.

For as much as she’d been stunned and angry with Petra when
she found him standing on the other side of her door earlier, she couldn’t deny
his presence was a welcome, albeit annoying, distraction.

“I don’t remember any of it. Not why we were driving around
in such bad weather, or the accident itself.” She mimicked his pose and folded
her legs. “Mom says the rain was so heavy she could hardly see the road in
front of her, even though it was the middle of the day. A semi going way too
fast without its lights on crossed the center line. It clipped the front of the
car and we were spun around. The car hopped the curb and hit a tree in
someone’s front yard, pushing the front tire so far into the driver’s space
that it crushed the lower half of Mom’s left leg.”

She’d propped the flashlights so it shone up the wall
between them. In the light she could seen his mouth pull back in a sympathetic
grimace. “Yes, I think that might cure me of being able to drive in bad weather
as well.”

“Well, I’ve been freaked out by storms all my life. I
remember lying in bed at night when I was little, crying because I was sure
lightning was going to come right through my bedroom window and zap me dead,
but too paralyzed to go to my parents’ room and crawl into bed with them.”

His grimace turned to a smile. “How’s your mom’s leg now?”

“She has a prosthetic from the knee down.” She smiled,
thinking of her mother. “The woman is crazy. She has one that’s shaped like a
real leg so she can wear shoes, but she loves to go shopping in the
bionic-looking one she wears for running. She tells everyone she got into a
fight with a bear when she catches them staring, and she always finishes the
story with a wink and says, ‘You should see what I did to the bear’.”

He laughed then. She kind of liked the sound.

She shook her head, reminding herself that one random act of
kindness did not wipe out the history she and Cooper Bennett shared. Bree’s
life remained unchanged, but her friend still could not get a job as a nurse
because of him.

“Your mom sounds like a tough one.”

She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs.
“She has the most positive outlook on life. She loses her leg and sees it as a
new way to strike up conversation with people.”

And Bree ended up with a phobia so bad she could hardly
function the moment a cloud rolled over the sun. How she handled the trauma she
dealt with on a nightly basis at work was a mystery some of the most educated
shrinks she’d spoken with couldn’t solve.

A prolonged flash of light lit the basement through the
high, narrow windows around the foundation. She tensed, wrapped her head in her
arms and swallowed a scream as a gust of wind made the house creak and shudder
above them. There was a long, ear-splitting cracking followed by something huge
and heavy hitting the ground outside.

She didn’t realize he’d moved closer until she could feel
his warm breath on the side of her face and hear his voice, soft-spoken and
deep, close to her ear. It didn’t matter what he was saying, only that he was
talking and he’d wrapped an arm around her back.

She didn’t protest, found she wanted it even, when he
slipped an arm under her legs and pulled her onto his lap. She choked back the
last shred of her pride, wrapped her arms around the solid strength of his body
and buried her face in his neck. He smelled amazing—clean and just a little
piney—and the feel of the deep vibration of his voice in his chest was soothing
as he continued to speak to her.

It had to be the adrenaline coursing through her veins,
building on itself with every shock she’d experienced throughout the night,
that was causing her body to react to him the way it was reacting. She wanted
to slide her hands under the hem of his shirt and feel the skin of his strong
back. She wanted to tip her face upward and touch her lips to his neck, feel
his cheek brush against hers as he turned his head for a kiss.

She tried not to squirm against his thighs, but she was
getting warmer by the second. The rhythm of the tight contract and expand of
his stomach and chest against her body was hypnotic. It didn’t help she could
feel the beginning of a stunning erection against her hip.

How many conversations had she had with Rachel and Petra
about sex during stormy weather? She’d thought they were crazy at the time,
because seriously, was that how they wanted to be found when the house came
down around them—naked and skewered together by cock and roof beam?

But as Cooper Bennett held her in his arms, talking about
God knew what because she still wasn’t paying attention, she could see the
appeal. And fear and arousal were pretty much the same thing when it came right
down to it, weren’t they? There was the same rush of the unknown, the choice to
either run into or away from what could either be a wild ride or a crushing
blow.

Bree couldn’t move either way. She didn’t know how long
she’d been trembling in his lap before she realized she could no longer hear
the wind howling. The rain had been reduced to nothing more than a steady
patter against the small windows around the foundation of the house.

“How are you doing?” he asked, smoothing her hair back from
her face.

She loosened the grip she had on him. “I’m okay.”

“Will you be all right if I go take a look around?”

She really didn’t want him to let go of her yet, but he was
already moving her off his lap. She nodded and answered, “Yes, I’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be gone more than a couple of minutes,” he assured
her, clicking on the light and walking away from her without another word.

When he was gone, Bree pulled up the blanket covering her
brother’s bed and wrapped herself in it, freezing now that he wasn’t holding
her any longer. Her head started to ache and her body went limp as the
adrenaline subsided and she crashed. Hard.

* * * * *

“Dr. Bennett, wake up.”

His body was shaking as he rocketed out of a sound sleep,
but Bree’s pleading wasn’t the kind of pleading he might have hoped for. He was
on her couch still wearing the clothes she’d lent him, not naked in her bed with
her coaxing him back to consciousness with her equally naked little body.

“
Cooper
,” she insisted, and shook him so hard his
teeth clicked together. “
Please
.”

“I’m up.” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and
rolled onto his back. “Stop shaking me. I’m awake.”

“You have to go,” she said, shoving a plastic grocery bag at
him as he sat upright.

“Did you call me Dr. Bennett a second ago?” He set the bag
holding his clothes on the cushion beside him.

“Yes. That’s your name.” She picked up the bag, put it back
on his lap and tugged on his hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Listen,” he grumbled, pulling free to rub his eyes, gritty
from sleeping in his contacts. “If you’re offended that I carried you upstairs
to bed last night—”

“That’s not it,” she cut him off in a hurry. “My older
brothers are on the way over to cut down the branch that fell off my tree and
they can’t find you here.”

He looked up at her. “Why not?”

She looked unbelievably adorable with that wild hair of hers
twisted into a messy knot on top of her head. She’d changed out of the t-shirt
he’d put on her the night before and was wearing very skimpy jean shorts and a
tight red t-shirt.

“You just can’t be here. Please,” she breathed the last word
desperately.

He stared at her for a moment.

“You want me to get in my car and drive before I’ve had
coffee?”

“There’s a great coffee shop two blocks down. It has a drive
thru and everything. You have to kind of go around the back of the shopping
center, but it’s there. They make whatever kind of coffee you drink.” She got
close enough to set the bag, which had slid onto the seat again, onto his lap a
third time. “Come on,” she prompted, giving his arm another tug.

“What’s going to happen if your brothers show up and find me
here?”

She straightened and looked at him, wide-eyed. “What do you
mean happen?”

“I mean that you’re an adult, aren’t you? Adults go out on
Saturday night, and occasionally their dates are still around on Sunday
morning. What’s the rush?” He looked around and found a large, artsy clock hanging
on the wall behind him. “It’s only nine in the morning.”

“Of course I’m an adult, Cooper.” He’d clearly pushed a
button. She frowned and jammed her hands on her hips. “My brother RJ will be a
complete dick to you, and then Patrick will never let me hear the end of it. So
spare us both, won’t you?”

He groaned. “Can I please have just a moment to wake up all
the way?”

“
Nooo
,” she moaned when he leaned back and rubbed his
eyes some more, crossing his legs, ankle to knee.

She swiped his foot back to the floor just as quickly as he
could prop it up there.

This was quickly becoming the most fun he’d had in a long
time.

“I’ll leave if you promise to go out to dinner with me
tonight,” he proposed.

Her arms slapped against her sides. She blinked at him once,
very slowly.

“You’re blackmailing me into going out with you?”

He considered that. Nodded. “Yes.”

Whatever it took to get her to see him as something other
than a coworker who’d made her life miserable for a few months.

Heat danced in her dark-chocolate eyes, hardening instead of
melting them. “No.”

“Okay,” he tossed the bag of his clothes onto the floor and
started to lie back down.

“Cooper, this isn’t funny.” She grabbed at his arm and
pulled him up straight with a surprising strength for such a small girl. But
then she’d have to be strong to do what she did in the emergency room night
after night, wouldn’t she?

He stood, raising himself to his full height above her.
“I’ll leave when you say yes.”

He’d never in his life had to resort to this kind of thing to
get a woman to go out with him. But then he’d never wanted someone quite like
Bree Trenton before either.

She considered that. “Fine. Now go.”

He picked up the bag that had fallen on the floor. “Do I
have time to change?”

“No,” she got an arm around his back and started trying to
usher him to the door.

He used the advantage of his size this time and didn’t
budge.

“Would you have gone through with it if we’d been set up
last night?” he asked.

He had to know. When she hesitated he asked, “Would you have
slept with me?”

“Of course.” She shrugged. “Those are the rules of the
game.”

“But only because you would have felt obligated to follow
the rules?”

The sound of a car on the street made her eyes go even
bigger than they were already. She glanced nervously at the window, but it
passed.

Cooper dropped the bag on the floor and took her face in his
hands, his movements slow so as not to spook her. Being at least a foot taller
than she was, he had a bit of a distance to travel to kiss her. As his mouth
covered hers, open just enough to take that gorgeous, fat upper lip of hers
between his, he knew in that instant it was a journey he wanted to go on again
and again and again.

She drew in a quick breath as he put just a little more
pressure, sinking into her pouty mouth the way he wanted to sink into her lush
little body—slowly so he wouldn’t miss a single detail. Her small hands came up
and wrapped around his wrists as he tasted her bottom lip and found it equally
sweet and unbearably soft.

Electric pleasure hummed along his spine and through his
body to his cock. She moaned and opened to him when his tongue touched her lip,
then slipped inside to seek out hers. Her hands slid languidly down his
forearms as he angled her head and deepened the kiss, fighting the urge to dive
in and drown himself in her. His cock grew harder at the thought of her soft
hands on him, exploring him everywhere as he explored her. Everywhere.

It took a huge amount of self-control and more willpower
than he knew he possessed to break the kiss and step back. He waited, watching
as she wrapped her arms around her body, looking stunned.

“Forget the date,” he told her, picking his bag up off the
floor. “I wouldn’t want you to feel as though I forced you into anything you
didn’t really want to do.”

He picked up his shoes and put one hand on the doorknob.

“For the record, I did not agree to Petra’s little setup to
get you into bed.” He let that sink in and added, “And I probably would not
have gone through with it.”