Road Trip with the Best Man

by Sophie Pembroke

  Worst of all was the realisation that had driven him to drink the night before: as he’d stood in her hotel doorway, taking in her fluffy bathrobe and handing her the stupid phone charger she’d left behind again, he’d realised he wanted to kiss her.

  And that was, put simply, the worst idea anyone had ever had. Ever.

  He reminded himself of that several times over breakfast: every time she tried to start a conversation with him that hit too close to the personal, when she smiled and thanked their waiter so graciously, and especially when she licked syrup off her lip with more enthusiasm than Cooper felt was really necessary.

  Although, they were damned good pancakes. Even his bad mood couldn’t hide that.

  They’d been on the road for almost two hours before Dawn tried talking to him again; apparently his grumpiness at breakfast had warned her off, as he’d intended. But a couple of hours of open road and Claudia purring through the landscape had improved his mindset, as he reminded himself he just had to take what he could from this experience and focus on helping his brother at the end of it. Everything else could go hang.

  ‘You know, the world’s biggest time capsule isn’t far from here, in Seward,’ Dawn said, her tone tentative. ‘I mean, if you fancied swapping drivers anyway...’

  ‘You want to stop and see it?’ Cooper asked. Time capsules weren’t really his thing. Although the idea of locking up the past and forgetting about it appealed, the thought that he’d have to dig it up and re-examine it again one day was less enjoyable.

  ‘Well, I just thought...it could be interesting, that’s all.’

  Cooper didn’t answer. But, when he saw the turn-off for Seward, he took it, all the same.

  * * *

  Dawn tilted her head as she stared at the large, white concrete pyramid set in the garden of a house in suburban Seward, Nebraska.

  ‘The plaque says the original time capsule was buried in 1975, then the pyramid was added on top eight years later.’ Cooper peered closer at the bronze plaque. ‘Apparently there’s even a couple of cars in there, for some reason.’

  His tone held the same disinterest it had all morning, and Dawn wondered for the hundredth time what it was she’d done to force that distance between them. She told herself she only wanted to know so she could make sure to keep doing it—the last thing she needed was to give in to any fleeting attraction to Justin’s brother.

  But the truth was she wanted the camaraderie back. The way they’d been the second day or so of their trip, when everything had been new and exciting and she’d been focused on her goal.

  Before she’d started staring at Cooper’s lips when he talked.

  Before she’d ever imagined what it might feel like to kiss him.

  Did he know? Was that why he was pulling away?

  Or did he really, truly have something against time capsules, since her suggestion to visit this one seemed to be what had set off this particular round of his hiding-behind-his-shades, don’t-touch-me vibe.

  Dawn really hoped it was the time capsule. Otherwise, it was going to be a very long few days to the Hamptons and Justin.

  ‘What would you put in your capsule?’ she asked, hoping to draw out any childhood traumas with time capsules that might be affecting him.

  Cooper just shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What are you supposed to put in these things?’

  ‘Items that represent your life right now, I suppose.’ Dawn glanced at the plaque, hoping for guidance, but it was no help. It just told her that the thing wasn’t to be opened until 2025.

  Where would she be by then? Dawn had no idea, but it almost certainly wouldn’t be Seward, Nebraska.

  ‘Then probably the work file for the latest deal I’m working on,’ Cooper said with a shrug.

  Dawn turned away from the pyramid to stare at him instead. ‘Seriously? That’s the only thing you can think of? Nothing personal at all?’

  Did he really have no personal life? She knew from Justin’s few comments that Cooper was the ultimate workaholic, but surely even the most dedicated CEO had to have some friendships, hobbies or interests outside of the office?

  ‘A pair of running shoes?’ Cooper tried. Because of course he stayed in shape. Even she’d noticed that. Okay, so she’d noticed that quite a lot, since his new wardrobe of thin cotton tee shirts and jeans did rather more to show off his body than the suit and tuxedo she’d seen him in before.

  ‘Let me guess, exercise is important because it helps you work longer hours, right?’

  ‘And live longer,’ Cooper added. ‘Thus staving off retirement by a few more years.’

  ‘Of course.’ Dawn sighed. The man really was hopeless. ‘So, no friendships or relationships you want to commemorate?’

  Cooper’s expression turned contemplative. ‘I suppose I could throw in my wedding ring and a copy of my divorce decree, but I don’t think that’s the sort of upbeat, inspiring content you’re looking for here.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it is,’ Dawn said quietly. What had happened to make this man so bitter about people—especially love? He’d be amiable enough when they chatted about nothing in the car, or in the various diners they stopped in en route, but the moment she got close to anything personal he’d clam up. He liked to pretend that he cared for nothing and nobody outside the office, but here he was escorting her across the country to find his brother and her closure.

  She didn’t understand him.

  But she really, really wanted to—even if she wasn’t ready to admit why, yet, even to herself.

  ‘What happened with your wife?’ This was the closest Cooper had really got to talking about her since they’d met, and Dawn wasn’t going to miss the chance to find out more—to obtain another piece of the complicated puzzle that was Cooper Edwards.

  ‘Actually, it was rather like your parents’ story. And yours and Justin’s, to a point,’ he said. ‘Whirlwind romance, sudden wedding—except in my case it featured an even more sudden divorce.’

  ‘At least you got to the actually married stage,’ Dawn joked. Cooper didn’t laugh.

  She swallowed uncomfortably before asking, ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Last I heard, she’d moved to Seattle with a wealthy cosmetic surgeon and was planning another wedding.’ Cooper didn’t look at her as he spoke, and his words were completely devoid of emotion. Dawn felt sympathy welling up inside her.

  ‘You must have loved her very much,’ she said, trying to imagine Cooper ever feeling enough for anyone to propose—let alone falling desperately in love in just a few weeks. She couldn’t.

  ‘Rather more than she ever loved me, as it turned out.’ He flashed her a bitter smile. ‘I don’t suppose that’s quite what you were expecting from marriage.’

  ‘Well, for starters I was expecting my groom to show up,’ Dawn pointed out. ‘But beyond that, yeah, I guess I was expecting true love. The “for ever” kind. Like my parents have.’

  ‘I’m not sure mine ever did,’ Cooper admitted. ‘Even before Dad died, things were tense between them. And Mom...she knew what she married into with the Edwards family and she’s always played the role perfectly. I guess I believed Rachel would do the same.’

  ‘But she wasn’t interested?’ Dawn guessed.

  Cooper’s smile fell away. ‘Not exactly. But enough about her. What about you? Would you be truly happy playing at being Mrs Edwards, matriarch and upholder of Edwards family values once Mom is gone?’

  The question sounded too pointed to be just a casual one, and Dawn resisted her natural urge just to laugh at it. For some reason, this mattered to Cooper. He really wanted to know her answer. So the least she could do was consider it properly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, surprised by her own admission. If anyone had asked her the night before her wedding, she was sure she’d have said yes in a heartbeat. As it was... ‘I guess I
never really imagined that far ahead. I just thought about me and Justin being together, blissfully happy. Perhaps with a family—a couple of kids, a boy and a girl. I thought about summers together at the beach house, and Christmas together, one year in Britain the next over here. I thought about quiet moments, just the two of us. But I didn’t think so much about the Edwards legacy or any of that.’ She gave him a rueful smile. ‘Maybe, in my mind, I sort of assumed that you’d get married again and your wife would take care of all that.’

  ‘Well, that’s never going to happen. So maybe it’s for the best that Justin didn’t show up at the altar.’ Leaving her speechless, Cooper walked back towards Claudia, whose robin’s-egg-blue paintwork was shining in the midday sun. Apparently the conversation was over.

  Was that truly what bothered him about her—that she wasn’t suitable enough to take on the Edwards legacy? That she wouldn’t be able to step into his mother’s shoes in the future?

  Maybe he was right about that. But Dawn couldn’t help but feel that there was something more to the story that she was missing.

  Either way, his comments had cut deeper than she’d like, and she made a point of staying away from Claudia for longer than she otherwise would have, until she’d recovered her equilibrium. She tried to take in the details about the time capsule—the controversy about whether the large space underground that formed most of it really was the biggest in the world, which had resulted in the additional pyramid on top, and the fact that Guinness had actually dropped the category from their world records shortly after, so it didn’t really even count.

  But mostly she wondered if Cooper was right about one thing. Would she really have been happy as a corporate wife once Justin had stepped up and taken on a bigger role in the family business, as she knew he’d been planning to? Would she have been happy giving up her own job to support his, organising dinners and galas for him, sweet-talking potential business partners?

  In truth, she was pretty sure she would have hated it.

  Except that admission led her to the acknowledgement of another of Cooper’s hard truths: maybe it was just as well Justin had jilted her.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Cooper called eventually from where he leant against Claudia’s bonnet, his arms folded over his broad chest. ‘I want to make Des Moines before we stop for dinner.’

  Dawn absently waved a hand at him.

  Des Moines could wait. She had a lot of stuff she needed to figure out first.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE WAS SOMETHING up with Dawn and, whatever it was, Cooper didn’t like it.

  She’d been quiet when she’d come back from the time capsule, and hadn’t even objected to grabbing lunch from a drive-through to eat on the way to Des Moines. After they’d found a hotel that evening—which he’d put on his card without even thinking about it—he’d suggested dinner, but she’d declined, saying she needed some time to herself.

  In Cooper’s experience, that never boded well.

  He’d spent the evening eating room service, avoiding the mini-bar and watching bad sci-fi movies, all while obsessing over exactly which part of what he’d said by that stupid pyramid had upset her. And, more pertinently, why he cared.

  The thing was, he’d lashed out when it wasn’t even her fault. He knew himself well enough to admit that talking about his ex-wife, and his abject failure of a marriage, put him in a lousy mood.

  But what he couldn’t tell was whether she’d been more upset at the suggestion that Justin jilting her at the altar was a good thing, or her realisation that he might be right.

  Because he was right. He’d seen it in her eyes, however fast she’d tried to look away, and as much as she’d been avoiding meeting his gaze ever since.

  Justin needed a wife who could play the part, like their mother had all these years. But Dawn wasn’t interested in any of that.

  Which led him back to his initial question—why did Justin think Dawn had been after their money? Because, as far as Cooper could tell, she wanted the perfect, romantic, true-love marriage her parents had, whether it meant being poor for life or richer than she could imagine.

  And that thought just made his head hurt even more than yesterday’s hangover had.

  He’d hoped that the weirdness of the time capsule, and their conversations the day before, would have passed by the morning. But when Dawn met him in the hotel lobby she was still quiet, and didn’t even question his suggestion of doughnuts for breakfast again.

  Yeah, he really didn’t like this.

  ‘I thought we’d stop for lunch around Walcott, Iowa,’ he said, once they’d finished off the doughnuts. It was strange, he realised suddenly, how much of their day revolved around meals on this trip. Usually, he’d forget to eat at least one meal a day unless he was meeting with clients at a restaurant, or his assistant brought him something. Even then, he rarely really tasted them, distracted as he was by whatever he was working on while he ate. But on the road with Dawn he’d savoured pancakes, doughnuts, burgers, milkshakes, steaks and all sorts, and had enjoyed every mouthful.

  Maybe it was the company.

  No, he wasn’t thinking that way. Even if he’d stayed up half the night, after the last movie had finished, with a sudden urge to put together a list of bizarre roadside attractions for them to stop off at during the rest of their journey. He’d told himself he was just being practical, but he couldn’t deny that a large part of his motivation was the smile he knew Dawn would give him when they pulled off the interstate to check them out.

  Oh, boy, he was in trouble.

  ‘That sounds fine,’ Dawn said, still staring out of the window. Cooper eyed her as closely as he could while still keeping his attention on the road, but didn’t spot any sign that the name Walcott meant anything to her. So far, her discovery of roadside attractions had mostly seemed serendipitous, or discovered online while they’d been driving. Since she hadn’t even taken her phone out of her pocket this morning, the chances were she hadn’t even checked out their route for the day yet.

  Good. He quite liked the idea of surprising her for a change.

  He smiled to himself for the first time that morning as Claudia sped along the interstate—at least, until his mind caught up with him and started asking a whole bevy of new questions.

  If Dawn was pulling away from him, it could be for two reasons, as he saw it. One, she was realising he was right and giving up any hope of a future with Justin. Which, on the off-chance that Justin was right about her motives, could only be a good thing. And actually, even if he wasn’t, it probably wasn’t exactly a bad one. Cooper knew his brother, and he was getting to know Dawn. They might have had the whirlwind romance but surely he was proof enough that those didn’t always work out?

  Of course the second reason was more troublesome. Because there was an even chance that Dawn was determined to prove him wrong instead. That she was pulling away so she could prepare herself for winning Justin back to silence the doubts that Cooper had raised.

  And if that was the case he knew he couldn’t let her drift too far. He had to keep her focussed on the truth—that she and Justin weren’t meant to be. Not because, as his restless mind taunted him at night, the idea of watching her with his brother made his guts knot up with something he refused to call jealousy, but because it was the only way he could think of to spare Justin a messy divorce further down the line.

  He never wanted his brother to have to go through the sort of heartbreak he had, whatever the cause. Dawn might not be a gold-digger—and he still wasn’t one hundred per cent certain if he could trust his gut on that—but she wasn’t the right wife for Justin either. The ending would be the same, bitter one, either way.

  Except that Justin loved her. Which meant, if he knew that she wasn’t after his money, he’d want her back. So it was entirely possible Cooper was driving Dawn to a reconciliation with Justin that he was almost certa
in was a bad idea.

  But what else could he do at this point? Apart from anything else, he wasn’t willing to give up a few more days on this journey with Dawn.

  Not even for his brother.

  Cooper’s head hurt from all the permutations and possibilities. Maybe he’d just focus on their next stop and forget all about their ultimate destination for a change.

  At least, until they stopped in Chicago that night. Because then they were well over halfway to the Hamptons, and Cooper knew he had to accept that they definitely weren’t turning back then. Which meant he wouldn’t be able to put off a certain task any longer. Justin might have been able to ignore the text messages and emails Cooper had sent him from the road but that couldn’t go on for ever.

  Tonight, it was time to call his brother and warn him they were coming.

  * * *

  ‘What is it with you guys needing to be the biggest and the best?’ Dawn asked as she clocked the sign at the turn-off: Walcott, Iowa, home of the World’s Biggest Truck Stop. She’d known it sounded familiar when Cooper had mentioned it that morning, but she’d been too preoccupied with her own jumbled thoughts to figure out why.

  ‘By “you guys” do you mean Americans, men or just American men?’ Cooper accompanied his request for clarity with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘A bit of all three, probably. You have to admit, it’s kind of an obsession.’

  ‘Says the woman who insisted on eating hotdogs with the world’s biggest dead polar bear.’ Cooper shut off the engine and opened Claudia’s door. ‘At least this place has a museum. About trucks.’

  ‘A museum and all the testosterone you can handle,’ Dawn murmured as she followed him out of the car.

  Cooper pointed at her across Claudia’s bonnet. ‘Just for that, you’re driving the next leg to Chicago.’

  Dawn rolled her eyes. ‘I always drive after lunch. Because you’re too grouchy to surrender the keys in the mornings—that, or you want to make sure we have the least healthy breakfast possible.’ At least, that had been their routine for the past four days. Was that how long they’d been travelling together? Somehow, it seemed much longer. Wasn’t time supposed to fly when you were having fun?