CupidsChoice (3 page)

And then he left. Barefoot and still wearing her brother’s
clothes.

He stuck his hand in the bag and found she’d set his car key
on top of his clothes. He got in and pulled out of her driveway without looking
back.

He was stopped at the four-way stop at the corner when the
Ford F350 pickup truck with the RJ Trenton Landscaping and Tree Service decal
on the driver’s side door pulled up at the intersection across from him. From
the way the man he guessed was RJ himself was looking at him as he drove past,
he would bet her brother had already been by her house and recognized his car
from being parked in his sister’s driveway.

Just for fun, Cooper smiled and waved.

“Forgive her before she bakes me into a bigger dress size,”
Rachel said.

Bree had opened her front door to find Rachel standing
behind Petra and holding a large, rainbow-striped umbrella over both of them.

Bree had been alternating between reading and dozing since
the return of rain a couple of hours earlier. Her brothers Patrick and RJ had
been forced to stop working on cutting apart the fallen limb in her backyard
and the day had gone blissfully quiet.

She’d been in dozing mode when the doorbell woke her and she
found her two best friends—Rachel, tall and blonde, and Petra, thin and
dark-haired—on her front porch.

Rachel must have nudged Petra from behind because she
lurched through the doorway and thrust the covered thirteen-by-nine cake pan in
her hands at Bree. Rachel set a shopping bag on the floor and collapsed her
umbrella.

Bree looked from the food to Petra, then Rachel. “It hasn’t
been twenty-four hours.”

“She was up all night.” Rachel said, closing the front door
and standing her umbrella in the holder on the bottom of Bree’s coat tree. “You
know how she gets.”

Baking was the equivalent of nervous fretting for Petra, who
never lost her cool.

“Would you please not talk about me as though I’m not in the
room?” Petra asked coolly, kicking off her shoes and taking off her jacket.

“Holy crap, are these ‘sorry I effed up’ cinnamon rolls?”
Bree asked, catching sight of what was in the cake pan through the opaque
plastic lid.

Petra’s thin, dark eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”

“Yep,” Rachel answered. “And there are two kinds of cookies
as well as double chocolate and peanut butter brownies in the bag.”

Bree gaped at Rachel. “So you brought all of this here to
make me fat instead?”

“That’s only half of it,” Rachel assured her. “Ben took most
of what was left to Alex this morning,” she added, meaning her boyfriend and
his roommate, who was another of their close circle of friends. Among other
things.

“How do you know I’m still mad?” Bree asked Petra.

“How do I know you’re not?” Petra countered. “You hung up on
me last night, didn’t answer my calls through a tornado warning and then didn’t
call me today.”

“Well, you’re not the only person I freaked out.” Bree
turned and headed for the kitchen. “I lost my phone in the couch and missed
about a hundred calls from my family too.”

When her brothers showed up almost immediately after Cooper
left that morning, RJ had just about chewed her a new one for making their
mother worry. It would have pissed her off if Patrick hadn’t been there,
behaving like the clown he was, mocking RJ just out of his line of sight.

“Does that mean you were otherwise occupied?” Rachel asked
hopefully as she followed Bree and Petra into the kitchen with the bag of
goodies.

A thrill rushed through Bree at the memory of being held in
Cooper’s arms. “Yes, but not the way you’re thinking.” She set the pan on the
counter and turned, arms crossed. “Seriously, Pete. What were you thinking?”

Petra took Bree’s tea kettle off the stove and went to fill
it at the sink. “I was thinking it was time for you to give him a break. Talk
to him at least.”

Bree crossed her arms tighter. “Why would I want to do
something like that?”

Petra glanced at her. “Have you seen the way he looks at
you?”

“What? Like he’s tracking my every move so he can make up
new and exciting ways to humiliate me in front of my coworkers?”

“I mean the look he gets when he’s devouring you with his
eyes. The man has it bad for you, my dear.”

“Or he’s committing everything I do to memory so he can go
back to the hospital board and tell them how wrong they were about not firing
me.”

“He’s not out to get you fired and you know it,” Petra said
with an eye roll.

“Do I?” Bree snorted. “I think your arrow is way off the
mark this time, Cupid.”

“And I think you’re letting pride get in the way of what
might be a very good thing.” She put the full kettle on the stove and lit the
burner. She turned and mimicked the look Bree was giving her, although Petra’s
was admittedly much more haughty.

“Are you still angry with him for getting that Carrie person
fired?” Rachel asked, using a spatula to put cinnamon rolls almost as big as
Bree’s head on the plates she’d gotten from the cupboard.

Rachel had been working as a massage therapist for a
London-based cruise-ship company when the whole thing with Cooper and Carrie
happened. She’d never met Carrie and only knew parts of the story from emails
Bree had sent her at the time.

“Yes, Bree. How is good old Carrie?” Petra asked pointedly,
giving Bree a look over her shoulder as she got mugs for the tea. “Heard from
her lately?”

“Oh, bite me.” Bree turned and yanked open the silverware
drawer.

Petra knew damn well Bree hadn’t heard from Carrie in
months. She’d disappeared from Bree’s life a few weeks after she’d been
fired—after Bree told her no, she couldn’t live with her rent free until she
found a new job. Dillon had been home for an extended stay at the time and
there simply hadn’t been enough room. Carrie had taken the no personally and
hadn’t spoken to her since.

“I thought you were seeing Alex,” Rachel said, changing the
subject on purpose

Alex and Petra were both nurses on the pediatric floor of
the hospital where Bree worked. He was as close to Petra as Petra was to her
and Rachel. Bree had been set up with Alex at the same party Petra had thrown
to reunite Ben and Rachel.

“Alex? Oh no.” She picked out three place settings and
closed the drawer. “I mean, I went back for a couple of encore performances.”
She rubbed her free hand under her nose and muttered, “And a curtain call or
two.” Because seriously, the man was close to six and half feet tall and
built
,
agile as a cat and so much fun. “But it wasn’t serious for either of us. You
know Alex. He’s for fun, not for keeps.”

Rachel nodded and put one half of the roll she’d cut on a
plate. “True.”

“That’s not true,” Petra said, opening and closing the
cupboard doors with a sharp snap as she hunted for something. “Alex is going to
be a great husband someday.”

“You know,” Rachel said, pointedly changing the subject once
more. “I asked Ben if he knew Dr. Bennett.” She took the plates to the small
table under the window in Bree’s kitchen. “Ben was at the end of his residency
when Cooper started working at the hospital. He had nothing but good things to
say about the guy.”

“Of course he did,” Bree scoffed. “That’s the difference
between the way doctors view each other and the way they view nurses.”

“Not on my floor it isn’t,” Petra countered.

It wasn’t really that way on her floor either but she was in
a contrary mood. For the most part the respect between doctors and nurses was
mutual. There were exceptions, and Cooper wasn’t a jerk to the entire nursing
staff, but it did seem as if he were harder on her than some of the other
nurses some nights.

“Ben was surprised to hear you’d invited him to the party,”
Rachel said to Petra. “He was under the impression Dr. Bennett was married.”

“He was when he first started at the hospital.” Petra opened
a different cupboard and eyed Bree’s tea selection. “How about orange to go
with the cinnamon rolls?”

“Sounds good to me,” Rachel answered.

“Me too.” Bree took forks, knives and napkins to the table
and set them next to the plates. “So he’s divorced, huh?”

She looked up just in time to see her friends exchange a
look—Petra with an I-knew-it smirk and Rachel grinning that she’d been right.

“Oh, don’t get all full of yourselves.” Bree shook her head
and hated herself for blushing so easily. “I was only asking.”

“You’re going to have to ask him those questions.” Petra
took the kettle off the stove just as it sounded its first low whistle. “It’s
time for you to talk.” Without looking up she added water to the tea in the
mugs. “What happened last night?”

Another rush. Another vivid memory of how he’d felt and
smelled and sounded.

Bree gripped the back of a chair and closed her eyes at the
memory of that kiss.

“Nothing,” she answered, collecting herself. “Nothing
happened. He got stuck here overnight because of the storm. We waited down in
the basement until the storm cleared and then he slept on the couch.”

She opened her eyes and found Rachel watching her, her
expression making it clear she knew there was much more to the story.

“And you didn’t talk? About anything?” Rachel asked, giving
her the chance to redeem herself for that bald-faced lie she’d just told.

Her chair scraped across the floor as she pulled it out.

“I might have told him about my mom.”

“Well, that’s definitely not nothing,” Petra quipped,
setting steaming mugs in front of Bree and Rachel’s places at the table.

“And?” Rachel prompted.

“And he told me a story about getting caught in a storm
while he was out fishing with his grandfather when he was a kid.” Bree cut into
the roll—glossy with thick, sweet icing—and shoved the bite in her mouth before
she added that she’d been curled up in his lap with her face buried in his
incredible-smelling neck while he’d talked.

“Right, right. The usual getting to know you stuff.” Rachel
made a rolling motion with her hand. “What else?”

“There’s nothing else,” Bree told her, mouth full, face
several shades redder.

“You’re the worst liar in the world,” Petra said.

Bree lifted her mug, blew on the steam and took a sip that
scorched her mouth.

Petra sat, her own tea in hand. “You’re not going to get out
of telling us what else happened by burning yourself. I’ll make you talk until
your tongue swells up so thick you can no longer speak before I help you and
you know it.”

Bree put her cup down and slid Petra—whose sense of humor
always veered toward twisted—a narrow-eyed look.

“Fine.” She cut off another bite of heavenly, gooey roll.
“He might have kissed me before he left this morning.”

“I knew it,” Petra whispered triumphantly.

Rachel clapped. “So what was it like?”

It took every bit of control she had to not squirm in her
seat as the way it had felt rushed her, tingling in her sex and causing her
nipples to tighten.

She shrugged and stuffed the bite in her mouth. “It was all
right.”

* * * * *

It was kind of cute, the way she was trying so hard to avoid
him the next time they worked together, three nights after the storm. When they
did have to discuss a patient, she wouldn’t look directly at him. She was angry
and Cooper couldn’t say he blamed her. He knew what he’d said as he’d left her
house Sunday morning had been confusing and kind of playing dirty.

A little after midnight, he overheard her telling Langley,
the head nurse on duty, that she was going to the vending machines in the
cafeteria for something to drink. Since they weren’t particularly busy at the
time, he decided to follow her to find out if he could get her to speak to him.

He let her get a little bit of a head start, waiting until
they were in a mostly unused part of the corridor before he cleared his throat
to let her know he was following her. She glanced over her shoulder, faced
forward as though she meant to continue ignoring him, them doubled back so fast
her shoes squeaked on the floor.

“What did you mean you might have gone through with it?” she
demanded. “Who the hell goes to a sex party without the intention of going
through with it?”

“I already told you I didn’t know it was that kind of party.
Showing up there, expecting to sleep with you when I know damn well you can’t
stand me would have made me the worst kind of dirtbag, Bree.”

She licked her lips nervously, causing his pulse to speed up
a notch, but didn’t respond. He hadn’t been able to think about much more than
kissing that mouth again since he’d left her house Sunday morning. No, that
wasn’t entirely true. Thinking about kissing her always led to a whole lot more
in his imagination.

“And let’s take a step back to the way you reacted when you
opened your front door and found me standing on the other side.” He crossed his
arms and gave her a look. “Would your reaction have been any different if we’d
ended up at the party?”

She put her hands in the pockets of her purple scrub top and
stuck out her chin defiantly. “I probably would have left.”

“I figured as much.” He took a step closer to her. “Petra and
I both know you don’t like me, and why,” he added, then stopped.

They fell silent as a man carrying a fussy toddler came
around the corner. Cooper recognized him as the husband of a woman who’d come
in earlier with a dangerously high fever. The wife’s temperature was coming
down slowly but surely, but she needed to be admitted and it was taking
forever.

Cooper felt for the guy, whose son was exhausted but
refusing to sleep, but he admired his determination to stay by his wife’s side.
Too many didn’t.

“Can we finish this talk in my office?” he asked when the
man was out of earshot.

She glanced at her watch. He could see her hand was shaking.

“Cooper, I told Langley I wouldn’t be gone very long.”

“If she knows you’re with me she’ll be fine,” he countered. “Please.
Just a few more minutes of your time.”

After a moment of staring him down, she headed toward his
office.

The lights automatically came on when he opened the door and
motioned for her to go first. They both stopped short, partially wedged in the
doorway together, at the sight of a large bouquet of flowers and balloons
sitting next to a brightly wrapped present on his desk.

She looked up at him. “Is it your birthday?”

It took a moment for her question to register through his
surprise.