“Didn’t think you were, ma’am.” He shifted his weight from one dusty boot to another, graceful even when embarrassed. “And the name’s Cooper.”
Julia tilted her head as she examined him. “Doesn’t anyone call you by your first name? What is it? Sam?”
“Yup. But most everyone calls me Coop.”
“Even when you were a child? What did your mother call you?”
“Don’t know. She died when I was three. Hardly remember her.”
“What did they call you at school?”
“Coop.”
“And your wife?”
“Mostly she called me a son of a bitch, ma’am.” His black eyes bored into hers. “’Specially just before she left me.”
Well,
that
was a conversation stopper.
“Oh. I, ah…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, it’s just that…” Julia wound down with an embarrassed shrug, then watched curiously as Cooper pulled a note out of his jeans pocket and handed it to her.
Surprised, she unfolded it, only to find that it was one of the notes she had written and addressed to Rafael’s parents and that she’d tucked into the little boy’s Barney lunch pail. It didn’t matter which note it was, they all said more or less the same thing.
Rafael is having serious problems at school and I would appreciate a chance to talk it over with you.
She looked at the tall, silent man before her, then back at the note. “I don’t really see…”
Then, suddenly, she did.
Obviously, Sam Cooper was little Rafael’s father. Julia’s fertile imagination filled in the dots. Cooper’s wife—the one who mostly called him a son of a bitch—must have left him very recently, which was why little Rafael was having so many problems.
No, that didn’t work.
Rafael’s last name was Martinez not Cooper, so she couldn’t have been his wife…but he had said his wife had left him, so maybe Rafael was Cooper’s wife’s child from a first marriage—Cooper’s ex-wife’s child—it was hard to work it all out in her mind while those opaque black eyes were steadily watching her.
As always when at a loss, Julia talked.
“Look, I apologize for interfering, I usually don’t, believe me, but Rafael is truly having problems coping at school. Why just today, he cried because Missy…”
“Tomorrow,” Cooper interrupted. “Could you come out?”
She was starting to be able to decipher his code. Translated into human speech, Cooper was asking her if she would be willing to come out to the ranch tomorrow and talk over Rafael’s problems.
Fred poked his nose into Cooper’s hand and he idly scratched the matted fur, seeming to know just the spot to make Fred wriggle with delight. It looked like Sam Cooper was infinitely more gifted at communicating with animals than with human beings.
There wasn’t much Julia had to do tomorrow afternoon, besides fret over her situation and whine to Fred. Even talking over a little boy’s problems was preferable to that.
“Yes, of course,” she said, and Fred swung his head around to her without leaving Cooper’s side. “Where’s your house…er, ranch?”
“Drive five miles west out the old McMurphy Road towards the Interstate, turn right at the intersection, then drive northeast for two miles, take the east fork, drive four hundred yards…”
Julia listened to him in rising panic, having a sudden image of herself zigging when she was supposed to zag, driving in frantic loops around the vast empty countryside until the gas ran out and wolves ate her.
Her face must have registered panicky despair because Cooper stopped. “I’m coming into town tomorrow morning,” he said and she thought maybe she heard a slight sigh from him. “Could you be at Carly’s Diner around ten?”
“Carly’s Diner,” Julia said, enormously relieved, delighted she wouldn’t have to go out all by herself in this wild and lonely country, fodder for wolves. Five miles west…south fork…four hundred yards. He might as well have spoken Greek. “Ten o’clock. I’ll be there.”
“Fine.” He dipped his head gravely. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Julia said softly. “It’s the least I can do after…” She waved a hand awkwardly, fighting the urge to pantomime dropping a big pumpkin on Cooper’s head.
Cooper was in the open doorway now. It was still sleeting and the temperature had dropped precipitously. His breath created a wreath around his head, making him look slightly unreal. Those strong, unhandsome, craggy features seemed chiseled from stone, as if he were a statue in the mist instead of a human being in the cold. Only his eyes glittered.
For some obscure reason, Julia found herself staring into those bottomless eyes. She was no longer frightened of him, not really, however forbidding he looked. He seemed so remote, so untouchable. Yet he’d shown her—and Fred—nothing but kindness. It was hard to square that kindness with a man who could make his little son so miserable.
They were so close and he was so tall, she was getting a crick in her neck looking up at him. Fred kept swinging his head back and forth between his new friends.
It was as if he held her in some kind of thrall. When Julia felt herself beginning to lean forward as if Cooper’s eyes were a tractor beam in a science fiction film, she stepped back and tried to collect her scattered thoughts.
“Rafael,” she said breathlessly. She found it impossible to tear her gaze from his. “He’s such a nice little boy. I’m sure that with a little bit of help, things will straighten themselves out.”
He was standing blocking her doorway and precious heat was dissipating into the gelid night. Wisps of steamy warm air curled around his legs. He turned and walked across the rickety porch. The second step down had a loose plank and it creaked. She watched him walk across her small garden. Halfway across he stopped and turned. “Miss Anderson…”
“Sally,” she said.
“Sally. Rafael is…” Cooper hesitated.
“Yes, Cooper?” Her voice sounded soft in the snowy darkness. “Rafael is what?”
“Not my boy,” Cooper said. He turned on his heel, climbed up into his pickup truck and drove away into the black, sleety night.
* * * * *
Cooper could drive the 27.2 miles from Simpson to the Double C blindfolded and handcuffed, using his toes, which was a damned good thing because all he could see was Sally Anderson’s face in front of him and all he could think about was his steel hard-on, which fucking hurt.
It still hadn’t gone down. Cooper was worried that his cock had somehow zeroed in on Sally Anderson and now had a serious jones for her and her alone. This probably meant he was never going to have sex again in this lifetime, considering how he’d behaved. He hadn’t been able to get more than ten words out and had rubbed his hard-on against her when he held her after she’d been frightened by the trick-or-treaters.
She probably thought he was some kind of weirdo who couldn’t talk to women, just rub up against them for his jollies.
Still, he couldn’t fault his cock for its excellent taste. There was just something about Sally Anderson. Something about the quality of her skin, pale and so luminous it seemed to glow as if there were a light within. Or maybe it was the clear turquoise eyes, the color of the sea at Coronado at dusk. Whatever it was, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
She had a small dimple in her left cheek when she smiled and he suddenly wished he could have coaxed another smile out of her, just to see it. But he’d lost the art of making a woman smile, if he’d ever had it. He could rappel down from a hovering helicopter, scuba dive to 200 feet, make a two thousand yard shot, tame the wildest horse, but making a woman smile…that was another matter.
Cooper knew everything there was to know about soldiering and everything there was to know about livestock. But damned if he knew how to coax a beautiful woman into his bed.
* * * * *
“Not my boy.”
Julia thought in bed later that night, as she read the same paragraph for the third time in a row.
Now what on earth did that mean? That Rafael was his wife’s child? If so, not my boy seemed such a cold, cruel way of putting it. But Sam Cooper didn’t strike her as cruel.
Granted, he wasn’t the most articulate of men—though Julia felt that was due more to a defect of communication ability rather than of intelligence. She’d read somewhere that commandos or special forces or whatever they were called had to be above average in intelligence, though it was very likely that charm and the ability to chitchat weren’t in the job description.
Sam Cooper certainly looked forbidding, but somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to think of him as cruel.
She glanced at Fred, curled up on an old blanket in a corner of the room, watching her steadily out of soft brown eyes. Cooper had been gentle even in his handling of the mangy mutt who had adopted her. Surely a man who was kind to stray animals and stray women couldn’t be cruel to such a small sweet boy. Could he?
But then again, what did she know? She wasn’t sure of anything any more. Her whole world had been turned completely upside down in the past month.
She had been living a perfectly ordinary and satisfying existence and then
wham
! Her whole life had suddenly turned into a country and western song—one of those whiny, complaining ones. Julia started making up some lyrics in her head to a Nashville beat, tapping her foot under the blanket.
I Lost My Job and I Lost My House and I Lost My Car
… Fred suddenly yipped and started biting angrily at his shoulder. …
And My Dog Has Fleas
, she finished despondently.
To top it all off, for the first time in her life she couldn’t read her distress away. The greatest panacea in the world—becoming immersed in a good book—wasn’t available. The only reading material in Simpson was
The Rupert Pioneer
and a few scandal sheets reporting weekly sightings of Elvis, available at Loren Jensen’s grocery store. So Julia had to make do with the few books she had with her.
She had had a hurried ten minutes at an airport bookshop during one of the many stopovers on the way to Boise and had basically just tipped the rack into the shopping bag. To her disgust, she had netted four books she had already read, a history of trade with Japan in the 20th century and a Spanish-English dictionary. The rest were the novels she’d been reading over and over again for the past month.
Julia’s eyes fell on the book she was reading for the fifth time. Maybe that was why she couldn’t concentrate on the murder mystery. She was reading it this time with her critical editor’s eye. The book could have done with a good editor. The book could have done with her. She’d been a very good editor.
Before.
Who had taken her place at Turner & Lowe? The company had just been eaten up by a huge German publishing conglomerate when she had disappeared. The dust hadn’t settled yet and there had been word that job cuts were in the offing. No doubt her request for indefinite unpaid compassionate leave had come in very handy. Had Dora taken over her job? No, Dora was known to have a keen editorial eye for nonfiction. Even the faceless businessmen on the other side of the Atlantic would want their editors to be working in their own area of expertise. It made good economic sense.
Maybe Donny had taken over her authors. Donny Moro had been her PA for a while and Julia had caught him more than once with a speculative gleam in his eye. He’d have leapt at the chance to take over from her. She could just hear him, the smarmy little brat.
Too bad Julia had to leave just now, when we’re all so busy. What was she thinking? Never mind. I’ll be happy to take up the slack.
Who knew what she’d find when she got back?
If she got back.
Tears pricked her eyes, though she knew perfectly well a few tears weren’t going to change her situation. Not one iota. She should know. She’d cried buckets over the past month, cried out her fear and her fury at what was happening. And her problems were still there at the end of the crying jag—looming over her life like Flattop Ridge loomed over Simpson.
Julia swiped at her eyes, then yawned. She had used up all her adrenaline today, what with Davis’ phone call, braining a SEAL, then her plumbing threatening to flood the house, her terror when she thought one of Santana’s killers had found her, lusting inappropriately after a non-talking soldier-rancher…it had been a big day. Her eyelids drooped. Time for sleep.
Her hand automatically reached out to the cheap alarm clock on the nightstand, then she stopped. Tomorrow was Saturday, so she didn’t need the alarm.
And besides, she had been alarmed enough.
Chapter Four
“Freshen up your coffee?”
Julia glanced up from
The Rupert Pioneer
into the smiling, anxious face of a pretty young woman about Julia’s age, holding a carafe of coffee.
Should she have more coffee? Maybe not, considering the fact that the closest hospital was probably two hundred miles away. The stuff was lethal.
Julia smiled at her. “No, thanks. One cup is plenty.”
Julia tried to follow her normal routine as much as possible, which gave her the feeling of having some sort of control over her life. One of her most cherished routines was a long, leisurely cup of coffee in a favorite coffee shop after work, preferably with a girlfriend or two. And no Saturday would be complete without a morning coffee out while reading the paper.