Surviving however long it was going to take for the storm to pass was surely going to prove to be a whole new kind of hell.
Chapter Two
Bree didn’t realize just how short Dillon was, or how tall Cooper was for that matter, until she opened the curtain and saw him wearing what were basically her brother’s pajamas. The hem of the black sweatpants bunched up around Dillon’s feet, but they barely covered Cooper’s ankles. The white t-shirt hung long on Cooper, but not nearly as long as it did on her brother.
She took the collapsible air-drying rack from under the stairs and set it up.
“Feel better?” she asked, holding out her hand for his wet clothes.
“Yes, thank you,” he answered, his voice strange. He shook out his shirt and hung it on an empty rung after she did the same with his pants. “So, what do you do when you’re home by yourself on a night like this?”
She was thankful the flashlight was shining more on him than her when a flush rose in her cheeks. She cleared her throat and went to sit on the bed.
“If I know a storm is coming, I usually go to my parents’ house.” She supposed there was no harm in telling him that much.
He sat with his back against the wall and crossed his legs. He had good feet to match his good hands. His hair was drying flat and Bree had to fight the temptation to fix it for him.
“Any reason you’re so afraid of them, or is it just one of those things?”
“My mother and I were in a bad accident during a storm when I was eight,” she told him.
For as much as she’d been stunned and angry with Petra when she found him standing on the other side of her door earlier, she couldn’t deny his presence was a welcome, albeit annoying, distraction.
“I don’t remember any of it. Not why we were driving around in such bad weather, or the accident itself.” She mimicked his pose and folded her legs. “Mom says the rain was so heavy she could hardly see the road in front of her, even though it was the middle of the day. A semi going way too fast without its lights on crossed the center line. It clipped the front of the car and we were spun around. The car hopped the curb and hit a tree in someone’s front yard, pushing the front tire so far into the driver’s space that it crushed the lower half of Mom’s left leg.”
She’d propped the flashlights so it shone up the wall between them. In the light she could seen his mouth pull back in a sympathetic grimace. “Yes, I think that might cure me of being able to drive in bad weather as well.”
“Well, I’ve been freaked out by storms all my life. I remember lying in bed at night when I was little, crying because I was sure lightning was going to come right through my bedroom window and zap me dead, but too paralyzed to go to my parents’ room and crawl into bed with them.”
His grimace turned to a smile. “How’s your mom’s leg now?”
“She has a prosthetic from the knee down.” She smiled, thinking of her mother. “The woman is crazy. She has one that’s shaped like a real leg so she can wear shoes, but she loves to go shopping in the bionic-looking one she wears for running. She tells everyone she got into a fight with a bear when she catches them staring, and she always finishes the story with a wink and says, ‘You should see what I did to the bear’.”
He laughed then. She kind of liked the sound.
She shook her head, reminding herself that one random act of kindness did not wipe out the history she and Cooper Bennett shared. Bree’s life remained unchanged, but her friend still could not get a job as a nurse because of him.
“Your mom sounds like a tough one.”
She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs. “She has the most positive outlook on life. She loses her leg and sees it as a new way to strike up conversation with people.”
And Bree ended up with a phobia so bad she could hardly function the moment a cloud rolled over the sun. How she handled the trauma she dealt with on a nightly basis at work was a mystery some of the most educated shrinks she’d spoken with couldn’t solve.
A prolonged flash of light lit the basement through the high, narrow windows around the foundation. She tensed, wrapped her head in her arms and swallowed a scream as a gust of wind made the house creak and shudder above them. There was a long, ear-splitting cracking followed by something huge and heavy hitting the ground outside.
She didn’t realize he’d moved closer until she could feel his warm breath on the side of her face and hear his voice, soft-spoken and deep, close to her ear. It didn’t matter what he was saying, only that he was talking and he’d wrapped an arm around her back.
She didn’t protest, found she wanted it even, when he slipped an arm under her legs and pulled her onto his lap. She choked back the last shred of her pride, wrapped her arms around the solid strength of his body and buried her face in his neck. He smelled amazing—clean and just a little piney—and the feel of the deep vibration of his voice in his chest was soothing as he continued to speak to her.
It had to be the adrenaline coursing through her veins, building on itself with every shock she’d experienced throughout the night, that was causing her body to react to him the way it was reacting. She wanted to slide her hands under the hem of his shirt and feel the skin of his strong back. She wanted to tip her face upward and touch her lips to his neck, feel his cheek brush against hers as he turned his head for a kiss.
She tried not to squirm against his thighs, but she was getting warmer by the second. The rhythm of the tight contract and expand of his stomach and chest against her body was hypnotic. It didn’t help she could feel the beginning of a stunning erection against her hip.
How many conversations had she had with Rachel and Petra about sex during stormy weather? She’d thought they were crazy at the time, because seriously, was that how they wanted to be found when the house came down around them—naked and skewered together by cock and roof beam?
But as Cooper Bennett held her in his arms, talking about God knew what because she still wasn’t paying attention, she could see the appeal. And fear and arousal were pretty much the same thing when it came right down to it, weren’t they? There was the same rush of the unknown, the choice to either run into or away from what could either be a wild ride or a crushing blow.
Bree couldn’t move either way. She didn’t know how long she’d been trembling in his lap before she realized she could no longer hear the wind howling. The rain had been reduced to nothing more than a steady patter against the small windows around the foundation of the house.
“How are you doing?” he asked, smoothing her hair back from her face.
She loosened the grip she had on him. “I’m okay.”
“Will you be all right if I go take a look around?”
She really didn’t want him to let go of her yet, but he was already moving her off his lap. She nodded and answered, “Yes, I’ll be fine.”
“I won’t be gone more than a couple of minutes,” he assured her, clicking on the light and walking away from her without another word.
When he was gone, Bree pulled up the blanket covering her brother’s bed and wrapped herself in it, freezing now that he wasn’t holding her any longer. Her head started to ache and her body went limp as the adrenaline subsided and she crashed. Hard.
* * * * *
“Dr. Bennett, wake up.”
His body was shaking as he rocketed out of a sound sleep, but Bree’s pleading wasn’t the kind of pleading he might have hoped for. He was on her couch still wearing the clothes she’d lent him, not naked in her bed with her coaxing him back to consciousness with her equally naked little body.
“Cooper,” she insisted, and shook him so hard his teeth clicked together. “Please.”
“I’m up.” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and rolled onto his back. “Stop shaking me. I’m awake.”
“You have to go,” she said, shoving a plastic grocery bag at him as he sat upright.
“Did you call me Dr. Bennett a second ago?” He set the
bag holding his clothes on the cushion beside him.
“Yes. That’s your name.” She picked up the bag, put it back on his lap and tugged on his hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Listen,” he grumbled, pulling free to rub his eyes, gritty from sleeping in his contacts. “If you’re offended that I carried you upstairs to bed last night—”
“That’s not it,” she cut him off in a hurry. “My older brothers are on the way over to cut down the branch that fell off my tree and they can’t find you here.”
He looked up at her. “Why not?”
She looked unbelievably adorable with that wild hair of hers twisted into a messy knot on top of her head. She’d changed out of the t-shirt he’d put on her the night before and was wearing very skimpy jean shorts and a tight red t-shirt.
“You just can’t be here. Please,” she breathed the last word desperately.
He stared at her for a moment.
“You want me to get in my car and drive before I’ve had coffee?”
“There’s a great coffee shop two blocks down. It has a drive thru and everything. You have to kind of go around the back of the shopping center, but it’s there. They make whatever kind of coffee you drink.” She got close enough to set the bag, which had slid onto the seat again, onto his lap a third time. “Come on,” she prompted, giving his arm another tug.
“What’s going to happen if your brothers show up and find me here?”
She straightened and looked at him, wide-eyed. “What do you mean happen?”
“I mean that you’re an adult, aren’t you? Adults go out on Saturday night, and occasionally their dates are still around on Sunday morning. What’s the rush?” He looked around and found a large, artsy clock hanging on the wall behind him. “It’s only nine in the morning.”
“Of course I’m an adult, Cooper.” He’d clearly pushed a button. She frowned and jammed her hands on her hips. “My brother RJ will be a complete dick to you, and then Patrick will never let me hear the end of it. So spare us both, won’t you?”
He groaned. “Can I please have just a moment to wake up all the way?”
“Nooo,” she moaned when he leaned back and rubbed his eyes some more, crossing his legs, ankle to knee.
She swiped his foot back to the floor just as quickly as he could prop it up there.
This was quickly becoming the most fun he’d had in a long time.
“I’ll leave if you promise to go out to dinner with me tonight,” he proposed.
Her arms slapped against her sides. She blinked at him once, very slowly.
“You’re blackmailing me into going out with you?”
He considered that. Nodded. “Yes.”
Whatever it took to get her to see him as something other than a coworker who’d made her life miserable for a few months.
Heat danced in her dark-chocolate eyes, hardening instead of melting them. “No.”
“Okay,” he tossed the bag of his clothes onto the floor and started to lie back down.
“Cooper, this isn’t funny.” She grabbed at his arm and pulled him up straight with a surprising strength for such a small girl. But then she’d have to be strong to do what she did in the emergency room night after night, wouldn’t she?
He stood, raising himself to his full height above her. “I’ll leave when you say yes.”
He’d never in his life had to resort to this kind of thing to get a woman to go out with him. But then he’d never wanted someone quite like Bree Trenton before either.
She considered that. “Fine. Now go.”
He picked up the bag that had fallen on the floor. “Do I have time to change?”
“No,” she got an arm around his back and started trying to usher him to the door.
He used the advantage of his size this time and didn’t budge.
“Would you have gone through with it if we’d been set up last night?” he asked.
He had to know. When she hesitated he asked, “Would you have slept with me?”
“Of course.” She shrugged. “Those are the rules of the game.”
“But only because you would have felt obligated to follow the rules?”
The sound of a car on the street made her eyes go even bigger than they were already. She glanced nervously at the window, but it passed.
Cooper dropped the bag on the floor and took her face in his hands, his movements slow so as not to spook her. Being at least a foot taller than she was, he had a bit of a distance to travel to kiss her. As his mouth covered hers, open just enough to take that gorgeous, fat upper lip of hers between his, he knew in that instant it was a journey he wanted to go on again and again and again.
She drew in a quick breath as he put just a little more pressure, sinking into her pouty mouth the way he wanted to sink into her lush little body—slowly so he wouldn’t miss a single detail. Her small hands came up and wrapped around his wrists as he tasted her bottom lip and found it equally sweet and unbearably soft.
Electric pleasure hummed along his spine and through his body to his cock. She moaned and opened to him when his tongue touched her lip, then slipped inside to seek out hers. Her hands slid languidly down his forearms as he angled her head and deepened the kiss, fighting the urge to dive in and drown himself in her. His cock grew harder at the thought of her soft hands on him, exploring him everywhere as he explored her. Everywhere.
It took a huge amount of self-control and more willpower than he knew he possessed to break the kiss and step back. He waited, watching as she wrapped her arms around her body, looking stunned.
“Forget the date,” he told her, picking his bag up off the floor. “I wouldn’t want you to feel as though I forced you into anything you didn’t really want to do.”
He picked up his shoes and put one hand on the doorknob.
“For the record, I did not agree to Petra’s little setup to get you into bed.” He let that sink in and added, “And I probably would not have gone through with it.”
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.
Chapter Three
“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?”
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