by Leah Vale
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How could he have thought he could hold his heart safe from Sara? She’d slipped through his defensive line with her tenacious belief in him and willingness to trust him.
In the bedroom, at least.
He held her closer with the arm he had around her, damn well aware that she’d steadily eaten away at the foundation of the wall he’d lived behind with her determination and spunk. Then she’d hit him with her understanding and soft heart.
There was no way around it. He’d gone and fallen in love with a woman who held dearest the one thing he’d sworn to destroy.
He suppressed a groan of bone-deep agony. His mom had been right. Love did bring nothing but pain and frustration.
Sara’s arm slung across his chest was featherlight compared with the weight of the regret lying like a concrete block there.
Knowing he’d never fall back asleep now and needing a distraction, Cooper slipped from beneath Sara’s arm and eased from the bed, careful to keep her covered with the sheet so she wouldn’t grow chilled without him. His eyes now accustomed to the dark, he stood for a moment and watched her sleep. She hadn’t so much as stirred, lying on her side with one arm tucked beneath her pillow and the other stretched out
over the spot he’d occupied.
She looked so right in his bed, her dark hair fanned out on the cream pillowcase, waiting for his fingers to tangle in it again. No dreams of pain or distress marred her smooth forehead. Guilt didn’t force her to take shallow breaths.
She belonged here, in this house. More than he did. She’d at least earned it with her loyalty and dedication. He was a bastard who had won the sperm megalottery when his father turned out to be the crown prince.
He snorted under his breath at the analogy and went to retrieve his jeans and shorts from where he’d shucked them at the end of the bed. Yeah, Marcus "Hound Dog" McCoy had been a real prince of a guy, all right. Cooper pulled on his pants as quietly as he could. Even Sara had been unwilling to sing Marcus’s praises. If she’d spoken honestly about Marcus, could she be hitting the nail on the head about Joseph being the complete opposite of his son?
Cooper shook his head as he buttoned all but the last button on his jeans. The woman thought enough about him to give herself so completely to him. What did that say about her judgment?
He silently left the bedroom. He headed to his desk and settled in his chair, grimly noting he’d become so accustomed to living here that he could easily navigate in the dark. The whisper of Sara’s voice in his head suggested he had so easily acclimated to this place because he was meant to be here.
Equally uncomfortable with the thought of belonging in the McCoy house, he pulled the large desk chair forward and moved the mouse to bring his computer out of sleep mode. The bright glow of the fiat-screen monitor forced him to look away for a moment until his eyes readjusted to the light. He turned back as the financial spreadsheet for a newly planned store he’d been studying for sabotage opportunities came up.
His elbow on the edge of the desk and his chin propped in his hand, Cooper stared at the spreadsheet, but his enthusiasm for his plan that had already been waning was now completely nonexistent. Stubborn to the bone, he forced himself to continue studying and questioning the information. But rather than spotting opportunities for mayhem, he kept noticing how poorly organized and presented the information was. Whoever had prepared the report had treated the information like numbers simply in need of crunching, rather than thinking in terms of managing new construction.
Cooper sat up and started reorganizing the report, implementing the sort of spreadsheet he had developed for Ted to use for their construction company. He wasn’t sure how long he worked on it, but by the time he finished, a sense of accomplishment he hadn’t experienced in far too long energized him. With no opportunity for wreaking disaster close at hand, the satisfaction and fulfillment he felt doing the job Alexander had given him surprised the hell out of him.
He shrugged the surprise off. Tonight seemed to be the night for surprises.
He thought of Sara, sleeping peacefully in his bed. Maybe this was also the night for new beginnings. So love brought pain and frustration, but they just happened to be two old friends of his. Maybe he could find some middle ground. The first stirrings of hope tickled through his chest, but he vowed to take his relationship with Sara slow. Scars couldn’t fade overnight.
Just as his desire for Sara hadn’t faded despite having made love to her twice already that night.
He’d print off the report to give to Natalie in the morning to use as a template, then go see if Natalie’s boss had slept enough to be ready to explore sharing control.
His body heating up at nothing more than the thought of making love with Sara for the third time, he grinned as he pushed the power switch on the desktop all-in-one printer he’d distractedly turned off earlier. It beeped loudly and shattered the quiet with a series of clicks and whirs. Cooper noticed he’d left the bedroom door open and immediately turned the printer back off. He hadn’t realized how loud the stinking thing was.
And he didn’t want to wake Sara yet. Especially not with the jarring noise of a printer running. He’d prefer to kiss and stroke her awake, not make her think she’d dozed off at work.
Since all the computers in the house were linked via a network, he sent the document to the big laser printer in Joseph’s den, where the noise wouldn’t wake anyone. By the time he got down there, the report would be printed, so he’d be back up here and in bed again with Sara in no time.
After flicking the monitor off, he quietly left his suite of rooms and headed down to Joseph’s den. Once he reached the lower level, all the party supplies that had been unloaded earlier in the evening made the going interesting. Thankfully, the moon had come out in the time that he’d been working and he could see enough to keep from bashing his toe and waking Helen, whose room was on the first floor at the back of the house.
Cooper let himself into the large den, which smelled of leather and power, just as the laser printer whirred to a stop within its concealing cabinet behind Joseph’s huge desk. The heavy curtains had been drawn in here, undoubtedly to protect the dark wood paneling from the late-afternoon sun. so he had to grope a bit to find the switch on the desktop lamp.
He wasn’t nearly as familiar with Joseph’s den, having pretty much steered clear of it and its occupants since that first day. Whether the old guy had noticed or not, Cooper wasn’t sure. This time he wasn’t surprised when guilt jabbed him a good one. Sara had made a good case for Joseph, and his grandfather really did seem to want him around.
Cooper shook his head as he squatted to open the cabinet below the credenza and retrieved his freshly printed report. Making love to Sara had softened him up big-time.
Looking for a spare file folder to put the report in, Cooper pulled open the bottom drawer next to the printer cabinet. He pushed the files hanging within the drawer forward with the assumption that everyone kept extra folders in the back as he did. While he wasn’t consciously looking at the typed headers identifying each file as he shoved them forward, the fact that several files bore women’s names caught his attention.
An icy chill raced down the bare skin on his back. Shifting so he didn’t block the muted light from the desktop lamp, he slowly flipped through the files. Helen Metzger. Ann Branigan. Bonnie Larsen.
Nadine Anders.
Cooper’s knees dropped to the floor and he sat back on his heels. The block of suspicion that settled on his heart crushed the newly sprouted hope. Joseph had a file on his mother. He assumed the other names were the rest of the women who’d fallen under Hound Dog’s spell.
Those they knew of. Sara’s words echoed in his head.
He mentally shoved away the hand of dread creeping along his spine. The files probably contained nothing more than the information the lawyers and P.I. had gathered after the reading of Marcus’s will. But there was no way he was going to leave without makin
g sure.
He pulled his mother’s file out and flipped it open. His heart skipped a beat when the first thing he saw was a black-and-white picture of a young woman. It was his mother. but not as Cooper remembered her. In the grainy photocopy of what must have been an enlarged print of her high-school senior-class picture, she was smiling brightly. her expression full of life and hope. Cooper was only able to recall images of his mother looking sad and drained, robbed of what she’d wanted in life. How could she have let one man change her so?
He flipped past the photo and found a copy of an official-looking letter. typed very ostentatiously on an obviously old style of McCoy Enterprises letterhead. The letter was addressed to his mother and dated five months before his birth. From Marcus himself.
Cooper’s heart started to pound as he read the letter. Marcus had flat-out threatened not only his mother’s financial security by taking back the million dollars he’d already paid her if she were to expose him as the father of her child, but also that of her entire family. It wouldn’t have been an idle threat, either. Even if you weren’t directly employed by the McCoys, their influence alone could leave you blackballed and without a job.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. That explained Grandpa Ned’s unwillingness to believe him about Marcus being his father. He must have known of Marcus’s threats.
But here was the proof.
Cooper took the letter out of the file. The same surge of adrenaline that had hit him on the county-jail steps after he’d read the lawyer’s letter swamped him again. If this piece of paper were to find its way into the pocket of the reporter being allowed to attend Joseph’s party to keep the tabloid news shows from hovering over them in a helicopter, then the sleazy things Marcus had done would be exposed.
Along with the complacency of Cooper’s mother.
He blew out a breath, his guts churning. He’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t drag her name through the mud along with Marcus’s.
Cooper snatched out one of the other tiles and flipped it open. An old but professional-looking color photo of a very pretty platinum-blond woman was in this one and, behind it, an eerily similar letter. Cooper held his mother’s letter side by side with the blonde’s. It seemed Hound Dog wasn’t the creative type when it came to threats.
A coldness that had nothing to do with Cooper’s lack of a shirt settled over him.
He could anonymously gift the reporter with one of these other women’s letters to topple the McCoys’ lofty image and...and Sara would know he had something to do with it. She’d just know.
And be hurt.
The thought was like a knife in the stomach.
"Damn it," he said through clenched teeth, and crumpled his mother’s letter in his fist.
"Cooper? What are you doing?" the woman responsible for his twisted insides whispered from the doorway.
He closed his eyes as a horrible sick feeling settled in the pit of his soul.
Hurting Sara might prove unavoidable.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
While hurting Sara might be unavoidable, Cooper refused to lie to her. "I’m reading some interesting files Joseph has here."
"Files?" Her voice quavered.
He glanced over his bare shoulder and the expanse of Joseph’s desk at her. The sight of her hovering in the doorway, with his dark blue T-shirt hanging to midthigh of her calf-length jeans and her soft hair poorly finger-combed back from her beautiful face, hit him square in the heart. He’d thought hurting her was like a knife in the stomach? Try a six-foot length of rebar.
God, he loved her.
Fat lot of good it did either one of them.
They were on opposite teams. Always had been, always would be, no matter how badly he wished things were different.
He pushed off his knees and stood. Tuming to face her, he tossed his mother’s and the blonde’s files on the desk. "Yeah. Files. I came down here to print off a report I’d reformatted because I hadn’t wanted to wake you." He gestured at her, all sex rumpled and gorgeous. "Clearly, it didn’t work."
"A dream woke me."
Cooper glanced down at the crumpled letter in his hand. "What kind of dream?"
"A wonderful one. About you." Her voice carried traces of their lovemaking, of the mind-blowing, rock-their-world releases they’d shared.
His heart lurched, and being a guy and all, his body instantly decided taking her back to bed was a very good idea.
But now was not the time. Probably never would be again. His heart caved in on itself.
"So the files had to do with your report?"
Her question, and the trace of suspicion in her tone, affirmed his decision. She still couldn’t quite bring herself to trust him. The rebar skewering him twisted sharply and jerked upward.
But Sara was, above all else, a smart woman.
He straightened the crushed letter as best he could. "No."
"Cooper?"
He glanced up and found her standing on the opposite side of the desk, her eyes huge and scared. Not suspicious or angry. Scared for him. For them.
He gritted his teeth against the pain of loss.
Yep, a smart woman.
She reached out and gripped the edge of the desk.
He leaned forward and placed the crinkled letter on the gleaming desktop directly in front of her, turning it so she could read it herself. "I found this in a file with my mother’s name on it in that bottom drawer."
She gasped and swayed forward, and he found himself thankful she’d put a death hold on the desk the way she had, because if he’d had to rush to her to keep her from falling, if he touched her...he wasn’t sure he could go through with what he had to do.
When she looked back up at him, her big green eyes shimmered with unshed tears. "Oh, Cooper."
His throat closed up and he had to drop his gaze to the letter to keep from losing it himself. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. He knew the sound was telling, but what was the point of trying to hide anything from this woman, anyhow? She’d already paddled around in his soul.
"The funny thing is, I hadn’t even been snooping. I just needed an empty file folder to put my report in."
He gestured at the other files. "My attention was understandably caught by a string of files with women’s names on them. They’re kinda faded, too. Like they’ve been in there for a while. Not just since the reading of Marcus’s will. Safe from falling into the wrong hands..."
"They could have very well been in with Marcus’s files." She practically leaped to assure him, looking more than a little panicked. "Joseph himself cleaned out his son’s things, both at the office and here."
A surprisingly large part of him wanting to believe her logic, Cooper glanced back at the still-open drawer. "The rest of those files appear to be Joseph’s," he pointed out.
She burst into action, rounding the desk and clutched his forearms much the same way she’d grabbed onto the desk. "And these would have been more important to him than any others of Marcus’s. These have to do with his grandsons. The men he wants in his life. What’s left of it."
Her touch was like an anchor, but he couldn’t ignore what Joseph had known about Marcus. "Come off it, Sara. You can’t go playing the-old-man-ain’t-got-much-time-left card with me. Joseph McCoy is as fit as Alexander’s best horse."
"He’ll be seventy-five years old the day after tomorrow, Cooper. Fit or not, any number of things could bring him down, and he knows it." She shook her head. "Regardless, he wants you to be a part of this family. You should be sure of that by now."
He wasn’t sure of anything. Sara, with her big heart and stubborn loyalty, had him questioning what he’d thought was a universal truth he could count on as absolutely as a dropped hammer landing head down: Marcus McCoy had been a bad seed sprung from rotten fruit. The McCoy machine deserved to pay somehow, someway. If she hadn’t encouraged him to see the opposite...
He, too, shook his head, to clear out all the temptations she represented--the sens
e of connection, of belonging. "All I know is that I’ve taken way too long to do what I’d set out to do."
She lowered her chin and fixed her gaze on some spot on his bare chest. "You said you’d never want to reduce me to begging, but you have, Cooper," she said, tightening her hold on him, physically as well as emotionally. Her breath came fast and hot on his skin. "I’m begging you to give up on your revenge and let yourself be a part of this family. I’m certain you’ll grow to love them, just as...just as I’ve grown to love you."
She inhaled a deep breath and met his gaze. "I love you, Cooper. I love you so much and I can’t bear to see you torment yourself like this."
It was a good thing Sara had such a strong hold on him, because her unexpected declaration nearly landed him on his rear. She’d just offered him the greatest temptation of all: to love and be loved in return.