Anger rekindled inside him and he stoked it, adding piece after piece of evidence against her. She’d betrayed him. She’d betrayed his family. That story she’d written would wreak financial and emotional havoc that he might not live to see righted.
This wasn’t the city. He wasn’t a practicing lawyer any longer. And Angel wasn’t the light of his life. She was leaving whatever was left of it.
But he had one more item to take up with her first.
Staring at Cooper towering over her, Angel steadied herself by gripping the open passenger door. Her heart wouldn’t calm, though, so she sucked in a hasty breath. The air tasted faintly of smoke, thanks, she guessed, to the anger burning in his dark eyes.
“What do you want?” she asked, hanging tight to her poise. He wasn’t going to see her sweat. Hurt. Cry.
He would never see her cry.
With the wind blowing his hair off his face, Cooper shoved his hands in his front pockets and regarded her coolly. “Call me dense, but it didn’t occur to me until a moment ago what was behind all this. I think I have it now, though. Stephen’s attorney is John Abbott of Baker & Abbott in Monterey. He’ll require proof of your claim. I assume you have a birth certificate listing Stephen as your father. However, you’ll still need to submit to a DNA test.”
Angel blinked. “A DNA test?”
“I’m certain Abbott won’t recommend Lainey giving you any kind of financial settlement without one. I know I won’t.”
“You think I want a ‘settlement’?” For the first time since she’d finished writing the story on Stephen Whitney, Angel felt her fury rise again. “You think I came here for his money?”
Cooper’s gaze didn’t move off her face. “Why else?”
“I came here for the truth,” she said hotly. “The world was ready to canonize him and I wanted to see which Stephen Whitney was for real.”
“And what did you find out?”
She looked down at her laptop resting on the passenger seat. On the floor below it was her satchel-style briefcase, yawning open and bristling with notepads and the manila folders of research that Cara had accumulated for her. More papers and files were stacked beside it.
What had she found out?
Shaking her head, she closed her eyes. “He was a loving father…and he wasn’t. He was a loving husband…and he wasn’t.” Her eyes opened. “He was a fake.”
“Harsh, coming from someone who arrived here under false pretenses herself.”
That made her bristle. “I did not. I am a professional journalist.”
“And it was as a journalist that you were asking your questions and digging into our lives?” Cooper leaned closer. “What did you really want to know, Angel?”
Though she backed away from him so that she was plastered against the hot car door, she refused to look away from his face. “When I was twelve years old I wanted to be Bob Woodward, and I’ve worked my butt off to be the kind of reporter who uncovers the whole story and doesn’t hesitate to tell it. What does it matter that Stephen Whitney was my father? I know how to be objective.”
“Objective?” Though Cooper’s voice was still cold and controlled, it had a furious edge that stung like a fresh cut. “Is that what you call making friends with my family, with my niece?”
“Your family? I don’t ca—” Angel broke off as the breeze shifted, blowing a hank of hair over her mouth. But she did care about them, despite her best intentions. It had been so easy to slide into Cooper’s little family circle.
A circle where Angel didn’t belong.
She wasn’t surprised that he was so angry with her. He’d do anything to protect the ones he loved.
“And what about sleeping with me?” he demanded now. “Would you call that being objective too, or was that merely the sacrifice the ‘whole story’ was worth?”
Angel felt herself flinch.
Story-whore. In journalism school, that’s what they’d called women who had sex with a source.
“It wasn’t like that,” she whispered.
“Yeah? Then what was it like, Angel? Because I’d sure as hell like to know.”
But there was nothing she could say. No way to make him understand.
“It’s time for me to go.” She started to turn from him, thinking only of getting away, and getting away fast. “Past time.”
But a glance at his expression had her freezing again. It was tight, set, yet beneath the anger she suddenly thought…she suddenly wondered…she suddenly worried that there was—pain.
She’d hurt Cooper.
Her stomach fell. No. No.
Yes. Yes. A woman who’d spent a lifetime hiding her wounds could spot them in another easily. It was what she’d sensed in Beth too.
“Cooper.” She stepped toward him, put her hand on his arm.
The wind whipped his hair across his face as he pulled away from her touch. “Goodbye, Angel.”
“No!”
He turned his back.
She almost let him go. But then she remembered. This was Cooper! Cooper wasn’t like other men. He wasn’t the kind of man who was looking for an excuse to leave her. That was why she’d fallen in love with him, wasn’t it? Cooper would give her another chance, if she only had the courage to ask for it.
“Cooper!” When he kept walking, she put her heart into her voice. “Cooper, please!”
He paused, then slowly turned around.
Of course Cooper would turn around. He was such a good man. She could tell him what was in her heart, she told herself. She could trust him.
Swallowing hard, she gave herself one last chance to chicken out. But Angel Buchanan had never been a coward.
“Please,” she said softly, beckoning him to her. “Please come here.” She knew exactly how to make her point. “I have something for you.”
In the few seconds it took for him to return, her pulse rate leaped to thrum at a new, dizzying level. There was a half-panicked, half-excited whine in her ears and when he was standing in front of her, she thought she would probably talk too loud. But she went ahead anyway. “Hold out your arms.”
“Angel—”
“Hold out your arms.”
Looking wary, he obeyed.
Angel bent into her car and pulled a handful of files and papers from the floor, then shoved them at Cooper.
“What are you doing?” He grabbed at them, then grabbed at the next stack she dumped on top of the first. “What the hell are you doing?”
She didn’t speak, but instead kept piling on the papers, notepads, and files—all that represented her story on Stephen Whitney. Finally, when they reached his neck and the floor of her car and her briefcase were both empty, she brushed her palms together.
“There,” she said, looking at him expectantly. Her pulse was still beating, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
“There?” he echoed.
She wiped her damp palms on her pants and nodded at the tall stack. “There. Now you know.”
His expression impatient, he shifted, struggling to keep control of the messy pile in his arms. “No. I don’t know.”
The whine in her head edged up a notch and she had to lick her lips, the air was so much hotter and dryer than the hot, dry state it had been minutes before. How else could she tell him?
Inspiration struck. She bent inside the car again and whipped her laptop computer from the seat. With a little flourish, she slid it to the top of Cooper’s stack. It wobbled, then wobbled again, forcing him to brace it with his chin.
Damn it, Angel.” With his jaw against the precarious pile, he had to speak through clenched teeth. “What the hell do you mean by this?”
She swallowed, then gestured at what he was holding. “It’s…it’s not obvious?”
He glared at her. “No. I’m afraid you’ll have to spell it out for me.”
Spell it out. Lay it on the line. Bare her heart. Expose her vulnerability.
Show him he could be—God, that he was—her weakness.
<
br /> Her whole body trembled. She gripped her fingers together and braced against the car to keep herself upright. “I…”
She had to swallow, remind herself that Angel Buchanan was no sissy, then start over. The wind blew her hair across her eyes and she pulled it away to meet his gaze. “I choose you.”
He frowned. “What kind of bullshit is this?”
“None, none at all.” She was speaking too fast, but it seemed to come easier that way. “I choose you. Not the story. Not the truth. They’re not important.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Not usually,” she admitted. “Not when ignoring the truth protects the wrong people. Not when leaving the truth buried means that more people get hurt. But this time…”
This time the truth would only hurt. Closing her eyes, Angel wondered how many other times she’d plunged ahead with her story, with her own interests, without conducting the litmus test of pain first. Wasn’t that what Stephen Whitney had done all those years ago?
She opened her eyes and looked straight into Cooper’s. “This time it’s the story or it’s you. And I choose you.” Just as she’d wanted to be chosen by her father all those years ago. “The story is not worth losing you.”
His body tensed. “What? What?”
With an explosive movement, he dropped the pile of papers and the laptop onto the hood of her car. She didn’t even wince when her computer slid off the tall stack and landed upside down.
Then he grabbed her by the shoulders. “Now what the hell are you talking about?”
Her hands waved. “You. Choose. Whatever. You know.” It was pure babble again, pure protect-herself babble.
“I don’t know.”
It was easier if she closed her eyes. “When you come back to San Francisco…” It was easier, too, to talk about it as some future thing. “I want us to, um, be together when you come back to San Francisco, Cooper. I think we…I think we have something together. Something, uh, very special.”
It was a lame finish, but her heart was pounding so hard and he had yet to say a word. She let her eyes open partway.
He was staring at her, a strange—forbidding?—expression on his face. She had to be wrong about that. Of course she was wrong about that.
“What exactly are you saying, Angel?”
“If I’d known you’d be so slow, maybe I’d feel…” She tried to laugh. The forced sound fizzled out. This moment wasn’t about funny. She knew that. It was about truth. Her truth.
“Cooper…I…” The breeze suddenly died, as if the whole world were waiting for her to say the words. “I’m in love with you.”
His hands dropped and he jerked back. At the same instant, a gust of the renewed wind tugged at the papers sitting on her car. It caught a handful, and then another, sending them skittering across the hood and then into the air.
“No.” His eyes flickered to them, then flicked back to her. His voice was harsh and his face grim. “No, you don’t love me. You can’t. I’m never going back to San Francisco.”
“Of course you are.” She’d surprised him, she thought, swallowing her panic. He wanted her to love him. He loved her back! “When Lainey and Katie are settled, you’ll—”
“I’m dying.”
Her flesh flashed from hot to icy. “What?” she whispered. It was that whine, her speeding pulse, something about the day that made everything sound strange to her ears. He was lying, he’d said. Or sighing, buying, frying. Yeah, frying. “It is very hot,” she said desperately.
“I’m dying.”
“Dying?” The idea was so ridiculous she could hardly reply. “No, no, you told me your doctor said you were fine.”
“The doctors told my father he was fine, too. And then he was dead of his second heart attack within twelve months. I’ve already had my second heart attack, Angel. How much time do you suppose I have left?”
“That’s silly—”
“My time’s borrowed, sweetheart. Every day, every minute, every breath, borrowed.”
“But—”
“The stats will back me up.”
Give her a stat and she’d find a way to beat the crap out of it. “But—”
“So don’t tell me you love me.”
The wind picked up again, and another gust buffeted them, then another, wrapping her hair around her face. By the time she’d pulled it out of her eyes, the air was swirling with papers. She saw a half-sheet fly by with her messy handwriting on it, then an article from Health magazine she’d copied at the library in San Luis Obispo fluttered past. Her reflexes must have been as desperate as her mood, because she made a miraculous grab.
She held the paper up to Cooper’s face, rattling it beneath his nose. “I did my research on heart attacks. I know that with the right…”
But he was already shaking his head. “Listen to me, honey. This is for you. I didn’t—don’t—want us to get any closer because I saw what happened to my mother. How my father’s death sucked the life out of her. I wouldn’t wish that on you. On anybody.”
Honey. He’d called her honey. Hope reined back Angel’s alarm. “I’ll take the chance, Cooper.”
A light smack hit her back, then her legs. It took Angel a moment to realize it was more of the unleashed paper from the pile on her car. Then the wind flared again, more sheets joining the flurry, some scattering at their feet, others dancing at their ankles. When a photocopy of a Whitney painting blew between her and Cooper, she batted it away to move in on him. “Think, Cooper. Think of what we could have.”
Her hand reached to touch him, but he stepped away, shaking his head again. “No, no.”
“Cooper,” she tried again, laying it all out now. “I’m in love with you.”
“And I won’t love you back.” His eyes had turned from greeny-brown to inky-dark. “Ever.”
A paper slapped against her face. Then another landed against her chest, the wind keeping it pressed tight to her heart. Angel didn’t move it, glad for even that flimsy protection.
Because she believed him. Oh Lord, she couldn’t look into that set face of his and not believe him.
“Why?” Her voice came out sounding thin and lost. Young. But she didn’t have the energy to strengthen it, she only had what it took to ask the question that had always lived in the darkest, scariest corner of her mind. “Am I…am I so unlovable, then?”
Cooper staggered back. “No, God, no.”
The papers were whirling and twirling around them now, blowing across the parking lot, blowing against her car, blowing against their bodies. But through the tornado they stared at each other.
Cooper scrubbed his face with his hands. “Angel, Angel, I don’t…I can’t…” He scrubbed again, then looked at her once more, his expression somewhere between sadness and pity.
“Let me tell you what my father said as he lay dying in my arms.” Cooper’s voice was calm, so calm. “I was asking him to fight, to hold on, even though I could see how much pain he was in.” He glanced away. “I know how much pain that was, now.”
He took a breath, then met her gaze again. “He used the final moments of his life to give me advice. And the last thing he said was that it wouldn’t hurt so badly to die if he didn’t love my mother so very much.”
Angel shook her head. “Are you telling me that you…that you decided not to love anyone?”
“Yes.”
“You’d turn your back on what we could have? You’d turn your back on me?”
“Yes,” Cooper said gently. “For you.”
Angel tried making sense of what he’d just said. He was rejecting her for her own good?
“I don’t believe you!” She was suddenly furious. And determined to get at him. She launched toward him, batting papers out of the air on her way. “I don’t believe a word you say!”
He grabbed her wrists before she could strangle him. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She twisted her arms, trying to get away from his grasp so she could gi
ve him the death he so richly deserved. “You’re not doing anything for me! This is for you, damn you!”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t you hear yourself? You’re afraid to love me. It makes it so much easier for you not to.”
He dropped her wrists and looked away. “Shut up, Angel. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She laughed. “Oh yes, yes, I do. Because you’re just like him. Loving someone only when it’s easy, when it’s convenient. You’re another one, just like him.”
His hand snaked out so fast she didn’t see him move. One moment she was an arm’s length away, the next he’d snagged the hem of her top and had her hauled up against his chest. Papers had been caught between them, and they made a crackling sound, like flames.
His gaze was flaming too, and trained on her. “Maybe you’re right, Angel, maybe you are. I’m human, damn it.”
“Human, or just plain male?” Angel spit out. “I should have known better than to trust someone from your half of the species.”
His eyes narrowed. “Well, then, you should know this too. You might call yourself Bob Woodward, but from here you look a lot more like Lois Lane. And believe me, baby, you’re looking in the wrong place for your Mr. Perfect. Superman is in the pages of a comic book, not Big Sur.”
Angel’s car peeled out of the parking lot and onto the narrow road leading away from the retreat. Sick at how things had ended between them, Cooper watched her dust rise in the air, bargaining with himself. He’d move as soon as the drone of her car engine no longer reached his ears.
But as it grew fainter, then fainter, he made a new deal. When that lingering dust finally settled, that’s when he’d make himself return to the solitude of the retreat. He was still waiting when he thought he heard her car turn back.
Yes, the sound of the engine was definitely coming closer.
He looked around the parking lot, strewn with the mess of her papers. She wanted them. Or at the very least, her laptop.
But when she’d sped off, the small black machine had skated along the hood of the car, then smashed to the ground. Hell. With his toe, he tried pushing the scattered pieces of metal and plastic into a neater heap, but then he gave up and decided to escape to the retreat. He wasn’t up to another explosive confrontation.
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