CupidsChoice (7 page)

When she couldn’t take it any more she brought her knees up
and dug her heels into the mattress. Her hips rose up to meet his, both of them
moaning and gasping out of control. She could feel him get thicker inside of
her, feel his cock pulsing within her as he came, his body seized tight.

Bree dug her fingers into his ass and her teeth into his
shoulder, rolled her hips once and her body burst into a million bright points
of pleasure. He rocked his hips once and pushed her higher, then did it again.
She released his shoulder and cried out as an even higher peak shook her body
and caused her vision to go dark for a moment.

Gradually she became aware that he was speaking to her in a
whisper, his mouth pressed to the side of her face. “Baby, baby, baby,” he
sighed, smoothing her hair back from her face. “You can’t believe how happy I
am that you opened the door.”

She felt him smile against her skin when she laughed.

“I still can’t believe you let me eat frosting off your
incredible little body for my birthday.” He growled and grazed his teeth
against the sensitive spot behind her ear, making her squeal. “And that I got
to hold you in my arms the night a tornado nearly carried us off to the land of
Oz.”

“Cooper, stop,” she pleaded, feeling a serious case of the
giggles coming on.

He kissed her, his lips salty with the sweat on her neck,
until she calmed.

“I don’t want to stop,” he told her, rolling so she was on
top of him. “I want to go all night with you.” He spread his arms wide. “I am
yours to do with as you please.”

Oh the possibilities. “Anything I please?”

He ran his hands up her thighs. “Anything.”

“All right,” she told him with a look of warning. “You asked
for it.”

Cooper was getting ready for bed, closing the light-blocking
curtains over his bedroom window when his phone rang. He smiled at the name on
the screen.

“Hey, Bree.” He hadn’t seen her outside of work in a few days.

They’d spent one day together since the day after his
birthday, but their confilicting work schedules had kept them from making any
more plans since.

“Did I wake you up?” Her voice sounded strained.

“No. I keep my work hours on my nights off.” He pushed one
of the curtains aside and looked down at the street six stories below. “Are you
all right?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and
then a shaky, “No. I’m downstairs. Can I come up?”

He turned away from the window. “Of course you can.”

“Are you sure? I’m not here at a bad time?”

“Bree, I already said come up.”

He pulled a pair of shorts over his naked ass, and met her
in the hallway as she was getting off the elevator. Her eyes and nose were red
and her hair was more disheveled than usual when she finished a shift. She was
still in her scrubs, and as she got closer he could see little spots of dried
blood all over her, an ugly brownish-red on lavender.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she came toward him. “I shouldn’t
have come.” Her chin quivered.

“Don’t apologize. Come in.” He caught the scent of
antiseptic soap and nervous sweat as she passed him through the doorway.

She made it five whole steps into the living room and kicked
off her shoes. She pulled off her top and pushed her scrub pants to the floor,
leaving her in nothing but a plain but unbearably sexy white bra, pink panties
and her socks.

“I want to forget, Cooper.” She reached for him, slid her
arms around his waist and pressed her shivering body to his. “Make me forget.
Please.”

As much as he’d been aching to get his hands on her again,
this was not the right time, no matter what his hardening cock was telling him
to the contrary.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently.

“Sweetheart, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Tell me
what happened first.”

She shook her head and her face crumpled. “I can’t.”

“All right. You don’t have to,” he soothed, smoothing his
hands over her hair when she touched her forehead to his chest.

Her shoulders shook twice. He could feel her tears on his
skin. He tried to hold her closer, but she drew in a deep breath and pushed
away.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, swiping at her eyes as she
blushed a deep red. “I don’t know what I was thinking coming here.” She bent
and snatched her scrub pants off the floor. “I’m a big girl. I’m a
professional. I can handle this.” It was almost as if she was talking to
herself. “I’ve had bad nights before.”

She was attempting to put her foot through the leg of the
pants but she kept missing. After the third time, Cooper laid a hand on her
shoulder. She stopped and straightened with her eyes shut. Moving very slowly,
he took her pants out of her hand.

“You wouldn’t be so good at your job if you didn’t care so
much, Bree.” He pulled her close again. “And everyone gets affected from time
to time.” She relaxed against him. “Come on. I’ll run you a bath and pour you a
drink. If you still don’t feel like talking about it afterward, at least you
might relax enough to sleep.”

Her arms tightened around his waist and she nodded in
agreement. “Thank you.”

He jokingly swore her to secrecy before he showed her the
jar of bath salts he kept for soaking after long runs. He dumped a liberal
amount into the water and left her to finish undressing while he put her
clothes in the washing machine and poured her a glass of wine.

“I don’t mind that you came here,” he told her when she
apologized for what seemed like the tenth time. He sat down on the closed
toilet lid. “Actually, I’m flattered you think I could have made you forget whatever
it is that has you so upset,” he added hoping to at least make her smile.

She’d taken the braid she’d been wearing when she arrived
out of her hair and twisted it into a messy knot on top of her head. There were
damp curls around her face, which had been scrubbed clean of her smudged
mascara. She was heartbreakingly beautiful that way, even though, when she did
humor him with a little smile, it didn’t eliminate the haunted look in her
eyes.

She sipped the wine and settled deeper into the water.

“There was a car accident on the expressway,” she started,
her voice quiet.

Cooper leaned forward, elbows on his knees and fingers laced
together, and waited.

“A semi truck swerved and ran over a Volkswagen Beetle with
three young women inside.” Her eyes closed and her nostrils flared as the tip
of her nose reddened. “They were on their way home from dancing in the city.
There wasn’t so much as a drop of alcohol in one of them. The truck driver had
fallen asleep at the wheel.”

“Two were dead at the scene but we got the third. We worked
on her for more than an hour, but she was too far gone.” She set the glass on
the side of the tub and wrapped her arms around her knees as she leaned
forward. “I don’t know why we tried so long. There was hardly anything left of her
to put back together,” she whispered.

The water rippled around her as she hung her head and sobbed
quietly.

Cooper got a washcloth and knelt next to the tub. He soaked
it and squeezed the water out over her exposed upper back, letting it run in
wide rivulets over her skin. He’d cried that way over similar situations
throughout the years. There were some things a person just never developed the
strength to handle without falling apart.

He also knew the situation had struck close to home. It
would have been the most awful reminder of her and her mother’s close brush
with a similar fate.

Bree rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and looked
forward, staring at nothing but likely reliving the scene in her mind.

“They were sisters, two years age difference between them.
Twenty-one, twenty-three and twenty-five.” The look she gave him was a knife
through his heart. “Cooper, they were their parents’ only children, and they
were all wiped out in a blink. And the semi driver walked away with nothing
more than a couple of stitches in his face.”

He held her as best he could with the side of the tub
between them and let her cry. There was no reason to point out the driver had
walked away with far more than a scar. He’d taken the lives of three, and would
have to deal with that for the rest of his life.

Cooper knew Bree knew that as well.

When she stopped crying and leaned back with her eyes
closed, he let her be for awhile. He put her clothes in the dryer when the wash
cycle ended and gave her a t-shirt to wear to bed. He lay awake for a long time
after she’d fallen asleep with him curled up behind her, thinking how odd it
was that she’d chosen him out of all of her friends to come to on a night when
her job had become too much.

Even more odd was the fact that he didn’t mind her showing
up out of the blue that way one bit. In fact, he liked it very much.

And when she turned in his arms some time later and woke him
up with soft kisses and her hands stroking him everywhere, he liked that very
much too.

* * * * *

“Cooper, what happened to your marriage?”

They’d been sitting at the tall counter on the back side of
his kitchen island in comfortable silence, drinking coffee and waking up
slowly. They’d been half focused on the television he’d had installed in the
space in his cupboards where a microwave was supposed to go, watching one of
the cable news channels they both liked.

He looked at her. “What made you think to ask me that?”

She continued to look at him a moment. She was beautiful
first thing in the morning, sleepy-eyed and rosy-cheeked, still wearing nothing
but his t-shirt.

“I know I have limited knowledge of you considering we’ve
only spent a handful of days together. Granted, most of that time has been
spent in bed, but you’re not a jerk outside of work,” she finished, as though
it was an explanation.

“So what you actually want to know is how I missed it up.”
He nodded when she did. “Why does it have to be my fault?”

She snorted and slid him a sly sideways look. “Darling, it’s
always the man’s fault.”

She was right, they’d only spent a very little amount of
time together outside of the hospital but he’d already picked up on the fact
that Bree did not speak in generalities unless she was having fun with whoever
she was talking to.

He started to smile, then checked himself. “Duly noted.”

“I mean, it has to be something you did,” she added, giving
him a playfully challenging look over the rim of her cup as she sipped.
“Otherwise I can’t find anything but your bossiness at work wrong with you, and
I don’t believe in too good to be true.”

He arched an eyebrow at her, then looked down at his own
coffee cup.

He wasn’t perfect. Not by far.

“It’s more like what I didn’t do,” he told her, becoming
serious as a twinge of old guilt worked in his gut. “She wanted the kind of doctor
husband who only worked Monday through Friday, put her up in a huge house in a
fancy neighborhood, gave her two kids and took her on two-week-long tropical
vacations twice a year.”

That summed it up, right?

She leaned her forearms on the table in front of her and
gave him her full attention.

“You married someone who wanted you to be someone other than
who you are.”

“Not intentionally. I mean, when we first met I thought I
wanted to be a general practitioner, have my own private practice some day. We talked
about moving to the suburb where my parents lived, having a family and sending
the kids to private school. When I was a resident that all changed. I
discovered I worked best when I had to think fast on my feet. Even if it’s just
stitching up a bar fight, or comforting a lonely old man who thinks he’s having
a heart attack when it’s just anxiety, I fit in the ER.”

Bree nodded. “I know what you mean.”

And she did, didn’t she? He knew of several times that she’d
been approached by the heads of other departments about moving out of the ER
and up to less hectic floors, but she always turned them down. And she’d
clearly been panicked when she’d been faced with the prospect of being moved
out of her department during the investigation.

Not that he was going to bring that up after she’d clearly
forgiven him.

“Eventually she asked me to get my shit together and find an
office, but I felt as if I already had my shit together. So…” He shrugged, but
what he was about to say still stung. “So she went out and found herself a nine
to five man and divorced me.”

She considered that for a long time, her doe eyes never
leaving his. “What a bitch.”

He laughed in spite of himself. “She’s not a bitch. She was
lonely and she did what she felt she needed to do to be happy.”

He had no idea why he was defending her to Bree. He took
responsibility for his part in their marriage failing, but he’d been cut deep
by what his ex-wife had done.

“If she cheated on you, she’s a bitch.” She said it with
such finality that he laughed. “I don’t care if she donates half her salary to
some heart-wrenching charity and hand-feeds the weak and helpless on weekends,
if someone wants to leave a relationship, they leave both parties with a little
of their dignity intact.”

Interesting. “Are you speaking from experience?”

She looked as if she felt she’d said too much.

“I shouldn’t get on my high horse,” she said, looking down
at her arms. “I almost did the same thing to get myself out of a bad
situation.”

The words
bad situation
set his teeth on edge. He
wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“How bad?” he asked anyway.

She sat back and unwound the elastic out of her ponytail,
letting it fall into a sexy mess around her face. Cooper shifted in his seat as
his dick reacted to the memory of the way it had spread out around her head as
he’d made love to her the night before.

“He never hit me,” she said a little too flippantly,
gathering her hair higher on her head. “He did eventually start to dictate my
every move. Who I could see outside of the house and for how long. What I ate
because he thought I was fat. What I wore because some of my clothes
embarrassed him.”

She twisted first her hair and then the elastic around it
and
voilà
, it was piled on top of her head.

“He never tried to limit how much time I spent with my
family because they loved him, but he tried really hard to get between my
friends and me.”

“That’s a laugh,” he said, then immediately realized his
mistake.

“I reached a point where it became easier to go along with
him than try to argue. Arguing only inspired him to make my life hell in other
ways.” She topped off her coffee from the carafe on the table. “Someone else
started paying attention to me about the same time I’d decided to leave and I
was tempted to let him rescue me,” she said, bringing the conversation back
around. “The best thing I ever did for myself was decide to tell him no thanks
and get out without attaching myself to someone else first.”

“Did he make it hard to leave, your ex?”

“He tried, but once I told my brothers what he’d really been
like, they had a little talk with him.” She gave him a little smile. “He moved
out of state shortly after that.”

Cooper raised his eyebrows. “I’ll make sure I never piss off
your brothers.”

Her smile morphed into a mischievous smirk. “That might be a
good idea considering the two who live near me own a top of the line wood
chipper.”

He stared at her blankly for a full heartbeat, then
shivered.