But it didn’t matter. He knew he’d give her everything he had if it meant she’d stay with him. If she’d help him be the person he’d discovered, out there on the road. The version of himself he liked so much more than the one he had to go back to.
For the first time in his life, he didn’t care about the money, about success or family obligations.
He cared about her.
Cared about a woman who loved kooky roadside attractions and hated sugar for breakfast, who couldn’t narrow down an ice-cream choice to less than four, it seemed, and who wore cheerful tee shirts and short skirts and had the best legs he’d ever seen. Cared for a woman who listened when he talked of heartbreaks he’d thought he only wanted to ignore, to pack away and never deal with again. Who sang along with Elvis on the radio even when she didn’t know the words. Who kissed him as though she was giving him her whole heart and everything she was.
He loved Dawn the same way that she loved life—with hope, even while expecting to be let down. The way she hoped for happy endings, even after so many romantic disasters.
The way she’d given herself to him, even though she knew it was only for one night.
He loved her.
And he was so far beyond screwed now.
* * *
The ice-cream place was nice, but Dawn couldn’t help but suspect that Cooper had an ulterior motive for stopping there, so close to the beach house, especially since he hardly even seemed to taste the ice-cream he’d been so desperate to try.
‘Which was your favourite?’ she asked as they climbed back into Claudia.
‘Um, the honeycomb?’ he said uncertainly.
‘Right.’ She hadn’t ordered any honeycomb.
So, yes. There was definitely something going on with Cooper. Several times between there and the beach house he opened his mouth, as if about to tell her something, or ask a question, then shut it again without a word.
It was enough to make a girl very nervous indeed. Just in case the idea of facing up to the guy who’d left her at the altar wasn’t nerve-racking enough.
Eventually, and just before Dawn’s stomach ended up entirely in knots, Cooper took one last turn and, suddenly, there it was. The fabled beach house Justin had told her so much about, had shown her photos of, but never actually taken her to.
The white timber fronting glowed in the sunshine, the black shutters framing large windows and matching the gable roofs and the roof of the porch. Out the back, she knew, was a large private pool, and inside would be decorated in perfect beach-house style by whoever Cooper and Justin’s mother had paid lavishly to do the job.
It was perfect, and beautiful...and Dawn would far rather have stayed in Claudia than ever go in, if that was okay with everyone.
Except it wasn’t.
Cooper stopped the car at the front, then turned to her. ‘You ready?’
‘No.’
He gave her a small smile. ‘You mean we drove thousands of miles and now you don’t even want to go in?’
Put that way, it seemed a little ridiculous. She sighed. ‘I suppose I need to get my passport back.’
‘Attagirl. Come on. I’ll be your wingman.’
The house seemed quiet as they approached, but as Cooper let them in with his key they heard Justin’s familiar laugh from the back porch.
Frowning, Cooper moved ahead, dropping Claudia’s keys onto a sidetable. Dawn followed, oblivious to the house itself, focused only on that laugh. How could something so familiar sound so alien all of a sudden?
Cooper opened the sliding doors that led out to the pool, then froze. ‘Dawn. Maybe you should go back to the car.’
Oh, that wasn’t good. Suddenly, the heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach that had plagued her all morning made sense. Whatever this was, it was going to be bad.
But she had to live through it anyway.
Pushing past Cooper, she stepped out onto the porch, feeling the warmth of the day against her skin as she looked out over the pool. There was Justin, his arms wrapped around a slender redhead, his lips on hers, looking happier and more relaxed than she had ever seen him in their months together.
‘It’s happened again,’ she whispered, and Cooper was at her side in an instant. ‘He left me and he found true love.’
‘He’d better hope it happened that way round.’ She glanced up at the thread of fury in Cooper’s voice and saw his expression was thunderous. In fact, for someone who’d slept with his brother’s fiancée the night before, he looked surprisingly self-righteous, she thought.
But that wasn’t the most surprising thing. The part that shocked her most was how angry she wasn’t.
‘Justin!’ Cooper yelled, his voice echoing out over the water.
The couple in the pool sprang apart. Justin stared up at them, his eyes wide with shock.
‘Cooper? Dawn? Oh, God, Dawn.’
Suddenly, she didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to know why she wasn’t as good as the woman in his arms. She didn’t want to hear that a person couldn’t help who they fell in love with, or that everything happens for a reason, or any of the other clichés they all used.
She didn’t want to hear any of it.
Turning, she walked back into the beach house. But not before she heard Cooper say, ‘Get dried off and get in here now, brother. We have things to discuss.’
He shut the screen door behind him and moved across to where she stood, looking at a photo of the two brothers when they’d been much younger, both wearing wetsuits and emerging from the sea. They must have been close once. Dawn wondered what had come between them.
Cooper’s hand at her waist made her turn.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so.’ She did a quick check for the usual despair and misery that came around this point. Maybe she’d got it all out of her system on the wedding night that wasn’t.
Or maybe it just felt different this time because she knew it was for the best.
She sighed. ‘I’m not quite sure what I feel. I mean, I’d accepted that Justin had seen the cracks in our relationship before I had—that he’d realised what a mistake it would have been for us to get married. It took me a whole week in a car with you for me to figure it out.’ She gave him a crooked grin, but he didn’t return it.
‘When did you? Figure it out, I mean?’
‘I guess it came a bit at a time.’ There hadn’t been one moment, had there? Just a growing feeling that life as Mrs Justin Edwards might not have suited her as well as she’d assumed, that she’d been jumping into it all too fast. And then the acknowledgment of all the warning signs she’d missed—how she’d had to dress like someone else for Justin, had had to change her habits, her hobbies, what drink she ordered in a restaurant. How she’d never quite fitted in or measured up, never been quite enough.
But, most all, never been truly herself.
Because she’d forgotten who that even was until Cooper had driven across the whole of America with her and helped her figure it out.
She looked up into Cooper’s eyes, saw the concern there and knew he was waiting for her to say something more.
‘He never saw the real me,’ she said slowly. ‘Maybe that’s why it doesn’t hurt so much. He wasn’t leaving me, but the person I thought he wanted me to be.’
And it wasn’t just him, she realised suddenly. It had been all of them.
With Trevor, it had been pretending to like modern art. With Richard, long walks in the countryside where she hadn’t even got a pub lunch afterwards. With Harry, she’d had to pretend to love his family the way he did, even though they were vile to her. For Patrick, she’d embraced a love of horse racing she really hadn’t felt. Even Ewan had wanted her to be more like the ex-girlfriend who’d left him.
Every one of them had wanted her to be someone else.
‘I
see you.’
Everyone except Cooper.
She’d never bothered to put on an act with him, because she’d never expected anything from him. And somehow he’d given her everything, anyway.
‘Dawn, I need to tell you something.’ Cooper’s words were hurried, his eyes frantic. ‘Before Justin gets here. The reason he left—’
But then the screen door opened and Justin walked in, dressed in chinos and a tee shirt, still rubbing a towel over his wet hair.
‘Okay, I’m decent, and Cynthia has gone up to get showered and dressed. Maybe you can tell me what the hell you’re both doing here?’
* * *
Cooper spun round, anger coursing through his body. ‘You want us to answer questions? Brother, you’re the one who failed to show up for his own wedding, who left me that note saying—well, you know what it said. And now you’re here—’
‘I don’t know what it said.’ Dawn’s words cut him off as she came to stand beside him, looking between Cooper and her ex-fiancé. ‘All he said to me was that he had to give us both our best chance of happiness. I assume, in your case, that meant Cynthia?’ Justin at least had the good grace to look a little guilty at that. ‘But that’s not what he told you, Cooper. Is it? Did you know? Did you know what you were bringing me here to see?’
‘No!’ God, she thought he’d known Justin had been cheating. He grabbed her arms gently, forcing her to look into his eyes, to see the truth there. ‘I swear to you, if I’d known he’d left you for someone else, I’d have told you. After Rachel... You believe that, don’t you?’
Dawn gave a slow nod. ‘I do. But if it wasn’t that...what reason did he give you for leaving?’
And there was the rub. ‘He told me he thought you were only marrying him for his money. And...’ Hell, but this hurt. ‘He knew that would work—that I’d support him and take care of everything—because that’s what Rachel did to me.’
‘And I told you so before you even married her,’ Justin pointed out. ‘You didn’t listen.’
Cooper ignored him, keeping his gaze fixed on Dawn’s, waiting to see the moment she accepted he was telling the truth.
‘That’s why you hated me so much to start with,’ she said. ‘You thought I was like your ex-wife.’
‘You’re nothing like her,’ he said fiercely.
‘But when did you figure that out?’ she asked, her voice dangerously calm. ‘Before or after you kissed me?’
Behind them, Justin barked out a laugh. ‘Wait! You two are here to berate me for falling for another woman when you’ve been carrying on together for a whole week behind my back?’
‘No.’ Dawn turned towards Justin and Cooper could see the fury in every step she took closer to him. Good. She should be angry. She deserved to be angry.
Maybe this was the closure she really needed.
‘I came here for two reasons, Justin. Firstly, because you left with my passport, you utter idiot, so I couldn’t go anywhere else. And, secondly, because I needed to know why—why I wasn’t good enough for you, why you left me there at the altar. But that one doesn’t matter now. Cooper helped me figure it out when he agreed to drive three thousand miles across the country with me.
‘It wasn’t me that wasn’t good enough. You weren’t deserving enough to see the real me. You wanted me to be a person I’m not, and neither of us would ever have been happy that way in the end. So I’m glad you left me at that altar. Because it didn’t break me, the way I thought it would. It made me stronger. And, quite frankly, it’s none of your damn business what I got up to after that point.’
‘None of my business? You’re still wearing my ring, Dawn. And you’re trying the same tricks on my brother you tried on me!’ Justin turned to Cooper. ‘I don’t know what she’s told you, how she’s convinced you, but she’s just like all the others, Coop. Just like Rachel. She’d do anything to get in with our crowd—do you know, I found a credit card statement just before the wedding? She’d near enough maxed out her cards buying designer clothes, spending cash in fancy bars, all trying to fit in. To be good enough.’
Cooper froze at Justin’s words. Just like Rachel. But he’d been so sure that Dawn was different. His instincts had screamed at him that she wasn’t like the others.
But his instincts had been very, very wrong before.
‘That’s not how it was!’ Dawn protested, but Cooper knew his brother. He knew when he was lying.
And, right now, Justin was telling the truth. And it broke his heart.
‘She’d have done anything to marry me,’ Justin went on. ‘And now she’s doing the same thing to you. Being the person she thinks you want her to be so you’ll fall for her act. After all, she needs someone else to pick up the tab on those credit cards now, doesn’t she?’
Dawn looked up at him, her green eyes wide and panicked, and suddenly he knew for certain that it was all true. Every bit of it.
Of course it was. Because that was all he was to women, wasn’t it? A bank account. Why on earth had he let himself believe that Dawn—happy, free and joyful Dawn—would have any interest in a man who barely left the office most days?
He’d been an idiot to think that the last week was anything more than a holiday from reality. Tomorrow, life would go back to normal, and he already knew that Dawn had no interest in living that with him. Hadn’t she said just one night?
Would she have pretended to want more, if he’d given her the chance, now that she knew there was no way for her to win Justin back? Maybe. He could almost see it—her sudden change of heart after a night in his bed, needing his comfort after everything with Justin. Suddenly they’d have been talking about living together to save her paying rent, and then it would have been diamond rings, wedding venues and...
And he’d already lived that once. He didn’t want it again.
But then Dawn said, ‘You know me, Cooper,’ her voice low and hard. ‘You don’t have to listen to him. You know me.’
‘I thought I did,’ he replied, and watched as the hope in her eyes died.
* * *
This. This was the one that was going to break her heart.
‘I didn’t believe my brother last time, Dawn, and look where that got me.’ Divorced, she supposed. And heartbroken. So heartbroken, he wouldn’t even risk it again.
Especially not for her. Why would he, when no one else ever had?
‘I believed your brother, when he told me he loved me, and it got me jilted at the altar,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re going to need a better reason than that.’
He’d told her he saw her. He knew her, not whichever act she was putting on today, trying to be the girlfriend or fiancée she though a man wanted her to be.
If Cooper walked away from her, it would be because the real her wasn’t enough.
And that might ruin her.
‘Tell me it’s not true.’ There was a hint of pleading in his voice, and that surprised her. Cooper Edwards would never beg for anything—she knew that. But here he was anyway, wanting to believe her. ‘Tell me you don’t have credit cards that need paying off, that you didn’t spend money you didn’t have trying to fit in with Justin’s world, knowing he’d pay it off when you were married.’
Dawn froze. If he’d asked her outright, was she with Justin for his money, the answer would have been easy—no. But that wasn’t what he’d asked her.
‘I can’t,’ she admitted. Because that part, at least, was all true. And she’d done it all not to win Justin’s money but to win his heart.
And she’d been left with neither.
‘Then how does that make you any different from Rachel?’ Cooper’s voice was flat, the pleading, the hope, all gone.
Dawn shook her head. ‘It is different. I didn’t do those things because I wanted to get my hands on the Edwards family money. But you’re never going to believe that, are you?’
The realisation chilled her heart. ‘It doesn’t matter what I say, because you’ve convinced yourself that the only reason anyone could ever want you is for your money.’
Cooper flinched. ‘This isn’t about me.’
But it was. She could see it now.
Not caring that Justin was still watching them, Dawn moved closer to Cooper, resting one hand against his chest as she looked up at him, wanting him to look at her the way he had in the beginning. When he’d stared so deep into her soul she thought he might come up again holding all her secrets.
She wanted him to this time. She wanted him to see the heart of her.
She wanted him to understand what she only knew for sure in that moment: she was in love with him.
‘It is about you,’ she whispered. ‘About us. You know I don’t care about money, and you know, deep down, that the only reason I’d do those things was to find what really mattered to me—true love. I wasn’t winning Justin’s money, I was winning his heart. But I couldn’t, because it wasn’t meant for me. He’s not my happy ending. I was trying to be the person he needed, the true love he was looking for, but that wasn’t me. The Dawn you know...that’s the real me. The me that fell in love with you, somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the I-80, when I was least expecting it. When I wasn’t trying to be anyone but myself.’
‘You can’t love me.’ His words were a statement, not a question.
‘I can’t do anything but,’ Dawn replied with a sad smile. ‘But I know it’s not going to make any difference. Not until you believe that you’re worth loving for more than your bank account, or your family name.’
Her heart breaking, she stepped away. ‘Justin? Courier my stuff to me at the office, okay?’ She slipped her engagement ring from her finger and placed it on the table by the photo of the brothers, picking up the keys Cooper had left there. ‘Goodbye, boys.’
And with that she walked out of the Edwards’ beach house, climbed into Claudia, her heart aching, and drove away, knowing that this time Cooper wouldn’t do a thing to stop her.
Road Trip with the Best Man Page 15