“You’re lucky I love you, you pain in the ass.”
At the sound of his warm laughter, I felt better than I had since I’d found Sarah’s letters.
FOUR
Cooper
Hartwell, Delaware
“It’s your alternator, Ayd,” Cooper said, staring down into the engine and pretending he couldn’t feel his sister’s best friend’s breasts pressed up against his back.
“Really?” she said breathily. “And what about that squealing noise it was making before it died?”
“Drive belt needs to be replaced probably.” He pulled back, taking a step away from her.
Aydan was a good-looking woman, but Cooper had a rule. He didn’t fuck a woman who would care if he didn’t call her again. He especially wasn’t going to mess around with Cat’s best friend. Not only because he didn’t want to piss off his sister but also because Aydan was vulnerable. Her husband had run off a year before, leaving her alone with her teenage daughter, Angela. She was struggling to make ends meet, which was why he’d said he’d fix her car so she didn’t have to pay the local garage to do it.
But Cooper knew from Cat that Aydan was also looking for a stable man in her life.
Cooper wasn’t that guy.
For now, he was steering clear of relationships.
Despite the fact that they lived in a small town and everybody knew Cooper wasn’t interested in settling down again, Aydan seemed to be testing his position.
When he’d turned up at her place to tow the car to the large shed he owned on the outskirts of Hartwell, he’d known something was up right away. It was the short jean skirt, tight tank top, and high red heels she was wearing.
Aydan usually dressed for comfort. He’d only ever seen her in a skirt and heels when she was on the prowl with Cat when they were younger.
Shit.
“I really appreciate you doing this, Coop,” Aydan said, closing the distance between them again. She ran her fingertips down his bare arm. “Maybe I could have you over for dinner to say thanks.”
Shit.
“Sure. You, me, Angela, Cat, and Joey.” He said, deliberately mentioning her kid and his nephew. “A family dinner sounds good.”
Her face fell. “Well, I was thinking—”
“It shouldn’t take me too long to get the parts for your car. As soon as they arrive, I’ll make time, get it fixed up for you. For now I’ve got to get the bar open. I’ll give you a ride back into town.”
He went to move past her, but she grabbed his wrist. “Coop . . . I’d really like to have you over for dinner. Just you. Angela is staying with friends next weekend.”
Ah, hell.
She was staring up at him with those pretty blue eyes as if he could hand her the world with just one word, and it made him feel like the biggest asshole for not giving her what she wanted. She deserved a good guy in her life. Cooper just wasn’t the guy. He reached out and brushed her soft cheek with his thumb. “If you were anyone else but my sister’s best friend, I’d be over to your house for dinner in a heartbeat.”
She blushed, her gaze dropping. “That’s just your diplomatic way of saying you’re not interested.”
“Hey.” He tipped her chin gently to raise her eyes back to his. “Ayd, you’re gorgeous and you’re sweet, but you know I’m not in the place to start anything up.”
This time she gave him a sympathetic smile. “I get that. You know I get that.”
“Good. So we’re okay?” He grinned.
She rolled her eyes. “When you smile like that you know it’s hard for any woman to be mad at you.”
He winked at her and heard her laughing as she followed him to the truck.
Relief moved through him.
“How’s Angela doing?” he asked as they rode back into town.
“Oh, she’s doing great. She got a summer job at the fun park and she’s helping out a lot. She’s a good girl.”
“She is that.” Cooper smiled. “You’re doing a great job there, Ayd.”
She gave him a tired smile. “I do what I can.”
“Which is a lot more than some.” He pulled up to a stop at her small house. It was in the crappiest neighborhood in Hartwell. She’d moved Angela there nine months back. They used to live four houses down from Cooper, but when her asshole of an ex left them, he left them without the means to pay rent on the nicer house.
“Thanks for saying so, Coop.” She opened the door. “And thanks again for the car.”
“No problem. I’ll call you when it’s fixed.”
She threw him a wave over her shoulder and Cooper pulled away from the house.
“Call Cat,” he said to his truck’s computer system.
His sister picked up on the third ring. “What’s up?”
“Did you know Aydan was going to make a play for me?”
His sister groaned down the line. “Oh, please tell me she didn’t.”
“I wish I could.”
“Well, don’t feel special. She has a list of suitable guys and you’re actually last on the list. She probably just went for it because the opportunity arose.”
Cooper grinned. “You always know how to make me feel good about myself.”
“Like you need me to inflate your ego.”
He ignored that and asked after his nephew. “Joey okay?”
“At school. It’s his last week, so you know he’s more than okay. He’s hyper.”
“I’ll swing by to see you tomorrow.”
“Great. And I’ll talk to Aydan if you want.”
“It’s okay. I already did.”
“You weren’t mean to her, were you?”
That didn’t even deserve a response.
“Right,” she said. “Stupid question.”
“I’m pulling up to the house. Talk to you later.”
“Later.”
Ex-wives were hell.
Or at least in Cooper’s experience they were hell.
For instance, he was supposed to be free and clear of his. That was what the divorce was all about, right? So why the fuck had he stepped out of his house, set for getting to his bar, to find Dana Kellerman—Dana Lawson until eighteen months before—leaning up against the passenger side of his truck?
Unfortunately for him, this wasn’t his first encounter with his ex since they’d divorced. For a while he had been free and clear of the traitorous she-demon. Until a few weeks back, when, out of the blue, Dana was suddenly in his face again, wanting to talk and angling for reconciliation.
She was out of her fucking mind, that was all Cooper could say.
Sighing at the annoyance, he strode down his porch steps to his drive, completely ignoring her existence as he got in his truck. He could feel her eyes burning on his face. Once upon a time he’d thought those eyes of hers were stunning. Now he looked at her and he couldn’t remember what the hell he’d seen in her.
Cooper guessed that was only natural since Dana had fucked his best friend behind his back.
He pulled out of the drive, ignoring her thumping her hand against his truck and yelling his name. After getting angry at her calls, at her turning up at the house and his bar, he realized all he was doing was giving her a reaction. She was obviously taking that emotion to mean he still felt something for her.
Now he was out to get the message across that he couldn’t give a shit about her. Maybe then she’d get out of his face and leave him in peace.
Irritation bubbled in his blood, but Cooper attempted to force the feeling out, to turn his mind away from his ex. The woman had monopolized too much of his life as it was.
By the time he got to his bar on the boardwalk he felt a little better. It was hard not to feel good as he walked the boards, knowing that he had a business there, in the one place in the world he wanted to be. The salt air, th
e clean light spray of the water, the mingling scents of sweet food, hot dogs, burgers, surf, and coffee—all of it was so familiar he hardly even thought about it, except to acknowledge that it smelled like home.
Cooper had barely let himself into the bar when there was a knock on the front door. The bar wasn’t open yet. It didn’t open until noon, when he served lunch five days a week. His cook, Crosby, wouldn’t show for another hour to set up.
Even so, Cooper knew who was at his door.
He let Vaughn Tremaine inside and locked up behind him.
Without even asking what he wanted, he poured Vaughn his favorite scotch and slid it across the bar to him as he sat on a stool.
The businessman owned Paradise Sands Hotel next to Cooper’s. The hotel was swankier than anything that had come before it on the boardwalk. Vaughn had bought the old hotel and completely renovated it, turning it into an upscale hotel and conference center. Some folks in town said the hotel was too swanky for Hart’s Boardwalk; that the people who vacationed here didn’t come for contemporary luxury but a little piece of tradition. Somehow, however, Vaughn had made it work. The conference center was always busy and the guy had made a success out of the hotel.
Cooper wasn’t too surprised. The Manhattan-born businessman owned a number of hotels and was the son of a hugely wealthy CEO of an international real estate and construction company.
The boardwalk community hadn’t exactly warmed to the New Yorker. No one could understand why a guy like him would choose Hartwell as his home. He wouldn’t explain himself and people around there didn’t like that much. Frankly, Vaughn didn’t do much to make them like him. But he’d been coming into Cooper’s every week for that shot of whiskey for the past year and Cooper had gotten to know him better. There was definitely more to Vaughn Tremaine than met the eye.
“Thanks,” Vaughn muttered. “I need it this morning.”
“Rough night?”
“Dentistry conference yesterday. Those assholes can party. One of them assaulted my night manager. It was a late night.”
“Jesus. Your manager okay?”
“Fine. Just a swollen eye, thankfully.”
“And the dentist?”
“Out on his ass. Fuck knows where he went.”
Cooper grinned. “Did—”
A knock at the front door cut him off.
Dana?
“Coop, it’s Bailey!”
Noting the way Vaughn tensed, Cooper smirked.
Idiot.
Ignoring Vaughn’s reaction to the sound of Bailey Hartwell’s voice, Cooper hurried over to let her into the bar.
“Coop, Dana is on the boardwalk,” Bailey said a little breathlessly. Her hair was windswept, suggesting she’d been running. “I was walking to my place and I was just nearing the bandstand and I saw that bitch marching this way so I took off. I’m pretty sure she knows I was running to give you a heads-up that she’s slithering around the boardwalk.”
He laughed at her rambling, but he did it while he shut his blinds and locked his door.
When he turned back he nearly laughed again at Bailey’s reaction to finding Vaughn in the bar. Her whole body had gone rigid.
“Miss Hartwell,” Vaughn said with a mocking salute of his scotch glass.
He never called Bailey by her first name. Cooper knew it drove Bailey crazy and he more than suspected that Vaughn knew that, too, and that was exactly why he did it.
The two of them had clashed from the moment they met. There couldn’t be two people more different from the other. If Vaughn Tremaine was the Prince of the Upper East Side, Bailey Hartwell was the Princess of Hart’s Boardwalk. A descendant of the city’s founders, Bailey had inherited Hart’s Inn at the north end of their stretch of the mile-long boards. The inn was the last remaining piece of real estate owned by the once incredibly wealthy Hartwells. But the family Bailey was born into wasn’t wealthy. They’d worked hard to run the inn, and when her brother and sister went off to live their lives elsewhere, Bailey’s parents had left the running of the inn to her and took off for their retirement in Florida.
Nothing had come easy for this particular princess and she wasn’t exactly gearing up to make friends with the arrogant, wealthy businessman she saw as her competition.
And, Bailey being the boardwalk’s sweetheart, most people came down on her side of this particular war.
Cooper found the whole thing damn funny. The pair was a comedy act and didn’t know it.
“Mr. Asshole,” Bailey replied.
Vaughn just laughed and finished off his scotch.
Bailey whirled around to glower at Cooper. He assumed for having the audacity to serve Vaughn, especially while the bar was closed. “Don’t tell me I’m stuck in here with this idiot, Lawson.”
The door handle of the bar turned and rattled. A loud knock followed it. “Cooper! I know you’re in there!” Dana yelled.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “You’re stuck.”
“I have to get back to the inn. Can I sneak out the back?”
He nodded. “Go ahead. If you see her—”
“Oh, I’ll take that bitch down before I let her in here,” Bailey assured him and turned to go.
“I’m going with you.” Vaughn slipped off the stool, slapping money down on the bar. “Cooper.”
“Vaughn.”
Bailey threw a horrified look over her shoulder at Vaughn. “Wonderful.”
“You know, you really need to stop flirting with me, Miss Hartwell,” Vaughn said as he strode toward her. “It’s a little inappropriate.”
She narrowed her eyes, ready to spit fire at him, but Cooper distracted her.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Bailey.”
“Anytime. And remember, my bitch-slapping services are always available.”
“How much do you charge?” Cooper heard Vaughn say as they walked through the staff door.
“Oh, I’ll slap you for free.”
“Kinky.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“I think you need to find a new word.”
“Turd!”
“Careful, your maturity is showing.”
Cooper laughed softly, but his amusement fled at the continued knocking on his door.
“Cooper!” Dana shrieked now.
He winced at the sound. Seriously, what had he seen in her?
“Cooper! Open up!”
“Well, that’s enough of that,” a familiar voice admonished.
Iris.
Cooper tensed.
Iris and Ira owned the Italian pizzeria next to Paradise Sands. They’d opened it twenty-five years back and named it Antonio’s because they reckoned no one wanted Italian food from “Iris and Ira.”
Iris and Ira were like family to him.
“Iris, this isn’t your damn business,” Dana snapped.
“Cooper is like a son to me so it is my business. You’ve done enough damage here. You are not going to harass that boy. Now go away. You are not wanted.”
“I need to talk to him. Cooper!”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you, by the looks of it, so get going. Get going before I call the cops.”
“Stay out of it, you nosy bitch.”
Enough was enough. His blood turned hot as he marched across the room. No way was he going to continue hiding in his own bar, and no way in hell would he stand by and let her talk to Iris like that.
He shoved open the door and Dana skittered back as it caught her elbow.
“Cooper.”
“Don’t you ever fucking talk to Iris like that again. You hear me?”
She licked her lips nervously, a gesture she thought got to him. “Coop, please. I just really need to talk to you.”
“About what, Dana? About us getting back together? Are you out of your min
d?”
“Cooper, if you just forgive me—”
“It’s not about that anymore. I don’t want you. I see you now. And I’m so grateful I’m free of you. You get that? I don’t want you.”
Tears spilled down cheeks he’d once found pretty and she let out a harsh sob before pushing past Iris. She half marched, half ran down the boardwalk in her four-inch high heels and Cooper was pissed off all over again because he could feel a twinge of guilt in his chest.
“Crocodile tears.”
He looked back at Iris, who was staring at him sternly.
“Don’t you feel guilty for anything, Cooper Lawson. Everything that woman does is a manipulation.”
The reminder eased his guilt somewhat and he stepped forward to press a kiss on Iris’s forehead. “Thank you.”
Her eyes were bright when she smiled up at him. “Always here, you know that.”
“Back at you. Say good morning to Ira for me.” He pushed open the bar door.
“Will do. See you later.”
Cooper walked through his empty pub, trying to will the tension out of his muscles. He took a beer out of one of the fridges and sat down at a table.
Thirty-six years old. Thirty-six goddamn years old. Just a little over ten years of those he’d spent with Dana. Ten years of his life gone. Thirty-six and divorced. A crazy ex-wife. No kids. No dad. No mom.
But he had his sister.
He had his nephew.
He looked around the pub.
He had his bar.
And he had friends on the boardwalk and they were like family.
If it felt like something was missing from his life, then Cooper guessed that just made him ungrateful.
Or maybe just human.
Finishing his beer, Cooper let all the crap of the morning disappear as Crosby came in to prep for the lunch service, and as he opened the bar it started filling up. The tourist season hadn’t quite hit yet, but his place was never empty. He had his regulars, and as those people filled his bar, the emptiness left him for a while and the tension eased.
FIVE
Jessica
The two-hour drive to Hartwell had taken it out of me, but that wasn’t surprising. I suspected my singular focus on my work had kept my body going for as long as it had. As soon as I’d decided on Hartwell for my vacation I’d felt myself growing more tired, as if just the thought of vacation had caused my mind and body to go, Hey, thanks a lot; we’ve only been waiting forever for you to notice we’re fucked.
The One Real Thing (Hart's Boardwalk) Page 4