by Ann Charles
I scowled. “Of course I mean the caste thing.”
“Don’t give me that scrunched face, whiner forty-niner. You’ve assembled a team of your own for hunting your enemies, just like Ness.” She cocked her head. “You know, I kind of like that name for our team—The Untouchables. We should borrow it.”
“We are not going to borrow the name of Eliot’s team, ya gomer.”
She stuck her tongue out at me.
I blew a raspberry back at her.
Her smile brought out mine. “Okay, so being around you is dangerous to Doc’s health. You’re apparently forgetting an important detail in your pity party celebrations.”
“I’m not having a pity party.” At her raised brows. “Okay, but it’s a small one, more like a pity meeting. What important detail?”
“Being around you is a risk, period.”
“Gee, that makes me feel so much better.”
She held up her index finger. “Hear me out, Vi. When you love someone, you are weakened. Consider Addy and Layne.”
“What about them?”
“You’re always fretting something will happen to them.”
“For legitimate reasons.” I went on the defense. “Do you know how many times Layne has super-glued his fingers together? And I’m waiting for that day when Addy gets bit or stung. She brings all sorts of wild animals home without thinking about the diseases they could be carrying, like rabies or fleas with the plague. I have spent a ton of money on hand sanitizer over the years, especially since Elvis came into our lives. If Addy hadn’t potty trained the damned chicken so fast, I would’ve had to break my daughter’s heart and keep Elvis outside where the coyotes probably would’ve eaten her.”
Natalie nodded. “You do remember that I was there with you in the delivery room when those two popped out, right? I’m not new to their antics.”
“What’s your point?”
“When you love someone, you’re willing to take all sorts of risks to keep them safe.”
“Yeah, but they’re my kids. I really don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you do. There are plenty of crappy parents out there who opt out from the get-go, like Rex.”
“He’s not a parent. He’s a piece of shit sperm donor.”
She growled in her throat. “Jeez, you’re a pain in the ass to talk to this morning.”
“Sorry. Finish making your point before I grow old and die.”
“Have you considered that Doc feels the same about protecting you as you feel about Addy and Layne? That he’s willing to take on the risks that come with loving you, no matter what you’re up against?”
“But what if he’s not? Or if he changes his mind down the road?”
She shrugged. “I’ll take a sledgehammer to his Camaro SS.”
I grinned. “God, I’d hate to get on your bad side.”
“Nobody hurts my favorite girl,” she said with a wink. Then her expression sobered. “I suspect the risks that come with loving another is what scares some people from investing in any sort of romantic relationship. A lack of attachment is the safest bet for the heart.” Her tone had grown bitter.
“Are we still talking about Doc and me?” I was ninety-nine percent certain we’d shifted focus.
“I meant in general.” She grabbed her coffee and took a drink.
“No, I think you meant a certain detective.” I called her bluff.
It was time to talk about what had happened at the Purple Door the other night. I was tired of dancing around the truth, and since it was only the two of us in the office at the moment, now was as good a time as any to find out what was really going on in her head.
Her cheeks darkened. “I was thinking of the many bachelors I’ve known over the years.”
I wasn’t going to give up that easily. “But specifically Cooper.”
She stared down into her cup. “We’re not going to talk about this right now, Vi. We’re focusing on you here.”
“I’m tired of focusing on me. What the hell is going on with you?”
“Nothing. I’m just sitting here trying to help you make sense of your bizarre life.” She gave me a lopsided smile. “And I’m trying to decide what to get your aunt for Christmas. Any ideas?”
“Stop trying to derail me. You have been acting skittish and weird since your birthday, especially when Cooper is in the room.”
She stood, walking over to the front windows. I waited as she took another drink of coffee, trying to be patient with her. Natalie was never one to be rushed into any sort of admission, whether it be heart or crime related.
“I can’t do it, Vi,” she finally said.
“Do what? You can’t tell me what has you acting so strange?”
She downed the last of her coffee, returning to set the mug on the corner of my desk. “Coop kissed me on my birthday.”
“I know. I was there.”
She fell into the chair across from me, rubbing her palms on her thighs. “Do you remember what he said after he kissed me?”
“That’s where the scene gets a little fuzzy.”
“Damn.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I was hoping you’d remember, because I’m fuzzy, too. I’m pretty sure he said something about trying again with me.”
I was more than pretty sure of that, but I had to dance across the coals here since I’d agreed to keep my mouth shut. Besides, I wanted to give Natalie the space to work through this whole Cooper attraction on her own. I feared blurting out something that might nudge her one way or the other, and if her world crashed around her in the future, I’d feel terrible.
“What do you think Cooper meant by telling you he wanted to try again?”
“I’m not sure, but he looks at me differently now.”
Hell, Cooper had been looking at her differently since before Halloween, she’d merely had her blinders on before.
“Different how?” I pressed.
“Like he’s thinking about me in my birthday suit.” She kneaded her thighs. “Like he wants to do things with me. Naked things.”
“That’s nothing new for you. You’ve had tons of guys undressing you with their eyes before.”
“Not tons.”
“Okay, a bunch.”
“A few,” she conceded. “But none of them were Coop.”
“I thought you were over Cooper. That you’d put that night at the Purple Door behind you.”
She shook her head slowly. “There’s no putting that night out of my mind. I’ve tried to shut it away, but as soon as I see Coop, the door pops back open and there it is again.” She sucked air through her teeth. “When he undresses me with those gray eyes …” She trailed off for a moment, her gaze growing glassy before she blinked back to me. “It’s all I can do not to tackle him and finish what we started years ago.”
“Maybe you should.”
Her forehead puckered. “I’m on sabbatical, Vi.”
“I know, but it’s not like you signed a chastity contract in virgin’s blood.”
“Don’t you get it? If I go off and sleep with Coop, I’ll be right back where I was last summer.” She stood, pacing in front of me. “There’s no way I can have sex with him and then skip down the road on my merry way. It took me months to get over the burn of his rejection last time.”
“Months?” I had my doubts about that. She usually brooded for a week or two after the breakup, but not months in the plural form.
“Months, Vi.” She continued to pace. “Around Coop, I’m in serious trouble. If I open the door a little, he’ll shoulder his way inside. Then when he grows tired of me, which I have no doubt he will since I’m just a ‘local’ girl, I’m going to be majorly screwed up in the head. Not to mention what this will do to my heart.”
I understood her worries. I’d done some pacing myself in the past about falling for Doc. A lot of good all of those miles on my bedroom carpet had done me, though. “What makes you think Cooper is the love-‘em and leave-‘em type?”
“Please. The guy
is forty-plus and hasn’t been married once, let alone even had a fiancée.”
“Maybe he’s picky.”
“He’s not interested in long-term relationships.”
“How do you know?”
“I ran into him at a bar down in Rapid months after our night at the Purple Door. He had a curvy blonde on his arm.”
I remembered her mentioning that blonde back before she knew the truth about Doc and me. She’d been determined to set me up with Cooper at the time.
“The jealousy bug bit me hard that night,” she continued. “After a couple of beers, I dug up the courage to ask Coop if there was a wedding in his future. Right in front of the blonde, he told me he was more of a one-night stand sort of guy.”
I winced. Way to go, Cooper. Had the bonehead been drunk, or trying to hurt Natalie even more for some reason?
“Maybe you’re different, Nat. Or maybe he’s changed his mind.”
“I’m different right now only because I’m not giving in to him like all of the other women.”
Were there really that many women in Cooper’s past? The detective ate, drank, and slept police work. I wouldn’t think there was a lot of availability on his social calendar to hook up, at least not since I’d moved to town and filled his desk with unsolved murder cases.
“If I have sex with Coop, I’m fucked.”
“Aren’t those one and the same?” I tried to joke. When she threatened to sock me, I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry but I think you’re giving Cooper too much power. You are a strong, independent woman, Nat. I highly doubt Cooper’s abilities in the sack could turn you into his sex slave that easily.”
She stopped, jamming her hands on her hips. “Did you, or did you not, have sex one time with Doc and then try to ruin our thirty-plus years of friendship because you wanted to keep having sex with him?”
My neck warmed with guilt. “Touché.”
She returned to pacing. “If one night of heavy flirting with Coop messed me up for months, imagine what sex multiple times with the guy is going to do.”
“Multiple times? I thought we were talking about one night.”
“We are. You’ve seen Coop’s house. That man is overflowing with testosterone. On top of that, Harvey told me that Coop is extra ornery because he hasn’t had a woman in a long time. One night allows multiple opportunities to blow off steam, if you get my gist.”
I grimaced. “I wish you’d keep your gists to yourself.”
“I’m telling you, Vi, when I kissed Coop years ago, it was like falling down a rabbit hole.”
“He kissed you the other night and you remained topside.” Although Cooper had been the one to pull away first, if my drunken memory was correct.
“I was totally wasted.”
“That’s never stopped you with men before.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I believe we established whose headboard has more notches on it during our tequila shots.” My middle-fingered response made her grin for a moment. “The tequila made a good buffer. On top of that, I don’t think he was really giving it his all.”
“How would you know? You were drunk.”
“Because I’ve previously been on the receiving end of him giving it his all, remember? Trust me on this.”
“So, you’ve been acting weird the last couple of days because you don’t want to lead Cooper on?”
“No.” She sat back down in the chair across from me. “I’ve been acting weird because I want to drag him off to the nearest closet and finish what we started.”
“I’d avoid my closet. It has chicken feathers and eggs in it.”
Natalie didn’t appear to hear me. She buried her face in her hands. “I want him, Vi. I want him bad. There are times that I can hardly stand to be near him. This is horrible. Going on sabbatical was supposed to keep anything like this from happening.”
I had a feeling Cooper was suffering on a similar level.
“Part of me wants to punch him in the jaw for messing with my head again.”
“I’d pay to see that.”
She lowered her hands, her expression forlorn. “I’d gotten over the petty jealousy and urge to finish what we’d started way back when, damn it. Why in the hell is he interested in starting up the merry-go-round again? I haven’t changed, so why has he?”
“But you have changed. Since you went on this sabbatical, your self-confidence has soared.”
“But I don’t even wear makeup most days anymore. I don’t dress to impress anyone. I’ve been focusing on myself for months, straightening up the mess I’d made on the inside, ignoring the outside.”
“Makeup and clothes are not what make you beautiful.” I drew little hearts on my desktop calendar, considering what I was about to say before letting it fly, testing it out in my brain first. It passed muster. “Natalie, whether or not you have sex with Cooper, you need to talk to him and clear the air so that our team of untouchables can continue to work together without all of the awkward friction.”
“Really? And how would that conversation go?” She crossed her arms, her chin jutting. “ ‘Hey, Coop, I can tell by that smoldering look you keep aiming my way that you’re interested in some friends-with-benefits action. What I need to know is how many times you’re planning to frequent my vagina before you get bored of this local girl and move on to greener, non-local pastures again?’ “
I grinned. “I don’t think you should use the word vagina. It’s too clinical. Maybe something prettier sounding, like flower box.”
“Frequent my flower box? Oh jeez, you got that from high school. I remember Trip Mendletain asked you if he could plant his tulips in your flower box, and that’s when I punched him in the ear.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Oh, yeah. No flower box references. How about your Venus butterfly?”
“No.”
“Baby oven?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Lady attic?”
“Stop.”
“I know. Your tunnel of love.” I made some porn music sounds.
“Seriously. If you don’t shut it, I’m going to tell Doc that you only want him for his oracle-ness.”
“All right, I’ll quit, but I was just getting rolling.”
“You really need to quit looking up synonyms for bad words when you’re bored at work.”
“I have to keep up on this stuff. I have kids heading into high school soon, you know.”
“Sure, blame your kids for your sick curiosity.”
“Anyway, have you considered that maybe Cooper wants more than just a few rounds of sex with you?” I could be wrong there, but the guy wasn’t acting like he was only interested in a piece of ass. There was some true pining going on with him.
“Please. I’ve been with enough men to know better than to start picking out a wedding dress.” She sighed. “Plus, I think Coop’s kind of broken.”
“What do you mean ‘broken’?”
“You’ve seen his scars. The guy has been shot to hell.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he’s full of holes on the inside.”
Wait! What was I doing? Why was I defending Cooper after all of the times he’d bitten me?
“And he sees ghosts now. That’s really messing with his head.”
I couldn’t argue with that, but my head was pretty messed up too at the moment. “He’s working through it. Doc is helping him.”
Shush! Did I really want my best friend to hook up with a law dog who repeatedly threatened to throw me in jail?
“If I get involved with him and—”
“Fall in love?” I finished.
“No, interrupter. I was going to say that if I let him lean on me for emotional support, I’m going to want to fix him. But there is no fixing that man.”
“We can’t be certain of that without a psychological evaluation.” I covered my traitor mouth before it defended the detective any further.
“It’s a doomed relationship,” she said with a final no
d.
“Maybe so,” I said through my fingers. “But what if you have the right tool for him?”
“There is no right tool for Coop.” She smirked, making little quote marks in the air. “End of story.”
Damn Cooper for saying those three words that were now branded into her brain. Screw it. I’d tried to help him here, but short of love potion number nine, Natalie wasn’t willing to get her heart singed again. I couldn’t blame her.
The sound of the back door opening made Natalie and me both turn. It was a little early for Mona to be back.
Cornelius strolled into the front room wearing his favorite robe over a pair of flannel-striped pajama bottoms. A neon orange stocking cap topped off his outfit with wires coming down from each ear that joined in the middle and disappeared into a pocket in his robe. What was he listening to? A choir of moaning ghosts? Heavy metal attic chain rattling?
“Have either of you seen my alarm clock?” His cornflower blue eyes seemed droopy at the corners. He pulled out Jerry’s desk chair and took a seat.
Natalie glanced around at the other desks. “What’s it look like?”
“A small, thin rectangular device with a large digital screen that has numbers on it.”
I sighed. “You mean your cell phone?”
“One might call it that.”
Most people did. I crossed my arms. “Did you just wake up?”
“Partially.”
Natalie chuckled. “Are you sleepwalking?”
“Almost. I haven’t officially gone to bed yet.”
What had he been doing all night? “Why not?”
“I’ve been wiring the office. It takes time to set up the mics to receive optimal results. Not to mention my commute time between buildings slowed me down since your ghost boss refuses to let me keep my equipment in her old office.”
Set up what mics?
“Between buildings?” Natalie hit me with raised brows. “He’s using Doc’s office now, too?”
I nodded. “Doc is letting him keep his monitors and other paranormal gadgets in the back room.” I frowned at Cornelius, who was scanning the room. “You set up microphones?”
“Correct. I’m going to talk to your boss later tonight when she is usually most active. I’ll expect you here to join me after the sun sets.”