by Lily Everett
She could’ve been in her mother’s tastefully decorated parlor, politely saying farewell to one of her parents’ pre-approved dates. Fury achieved a sudden advantage over despair, sweeping through Cooper with an intensity he’d never experienced. He’d come here to repay Vivian for the hurt she’d dealt out, not to feel guilty for hurting her.
“That’s it?” he demanded, putting his hands on his hips, careless of his nudity. “Thanks, and see you around?”
“Well.” Vivian’s eyes dropped. “I don’t imagine I’ll be seeing you again anytime soon, but yes. Essentially.”
Galled past the point of self-control, Cooper stalked back over to the bed and stared down at her. “Last night was better than ‘nice.’ Admit it.”
A hot rush of blood to her cheeks chased away the remnants of sleep. “What do you want me to say?”
Kneeling on the bed, Cooper loomed over her, fascinated by the way she melted into the mattress, as if she couldn’t help herself from yielding to him. “I want to hear that you never had it so good. Come on. Tell me it was ever once that good between you and your husband.”
Vivian stiffened. “Ex-husband,” she reminded him tartly. “And he’s got nothing to do with this. Don’t be gross.”
He shrugged, straddling her thighs and trapping her under the tight sheet. “So I want to know the man you ditched me for was a loser in bed. Sue me, I’m human.”
If he hadn’t been scrutinizing her face, studying every minute shift and tightening of muscle, he would have missed the brief flare of intense emotion before she dropped her lashes once more.
“If I told you that no one has ever come close to touching me the way you do, what would you do?” Vivian asked quietly, her fingers still and tense on the coverlet. “You’d still walk out that door and never come back. And I’ll still be here on my own, the way I deserve.”
Cooper had always hated being predictable. “What if I stayed?”
He hardly knew what he meant, the words almost as a big a surprise to him as they obviously were to Vivian. Her head shot up, eyes wide. “You mean…”
Backpedaling, trying to catch his footing, Cooper sat up and climbed off the bed. He needed a little distance. “I mean…what’s for breakfast? After all the calories we burned through last night, I could stand some pancakes.”
Looking as if she very much wanted to interrogate him about his intentions, Vivian dropped the blanket and scooted out the other side of the bed, keeping the high queen-sized mattress between them as a barrier. It didn’t make her invisible, though, and Cooper had to fight to keep his eyes on her face with all those glorious curves on full view. “I can do pancakes,” she said carefully. “It’s the least I can do, as a good hostess, before my guest…departs?”
Cooper spread his hands. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m feeling my way, here. Nothing has turned out the way I thought it would, since I first set foot on Sanctuary Island. All I know is that I’m not ready to get out of Dodge just yet.”
It looked as if Vivian’s ribcage burst free of the bands of tension that had been binding them. She heaved in a great breath, a wide smile brightening the whole room, and for a disorienting moment, everything in Cooper’s world dimmed except for her.
“So…pancakes,” she said, snagging a soft-looking cotton robe off a chair in the corner. “You still like chocolate chips in them, or are your tastes too refined for that now?” Her was voice a little breathless, but happy. Happier than the idea of feeding breakfast to her ex-fiancé really warranted.
“Whatever you’ve got is fine,” he replied absently, his attention on the sway of her hips as he followed her downstairs to the tiny, spic and span kitchen. “I’ve learned to eat and enjoy weirder food than you could possibly imagine in the last ten years. Actually, I’m allergic to chocolate now. It’s kind of a funny story.”
He picked up his clothes on the way down the stairs and hopped into his pants while relating the tale of the Aztec chocolate festival to a giggling Vivian. But even as he cracked jokes and made her smile down into the mixing bowl full of pancake batter, Cooper wondered what the hell he was doing.
He hadn’t left already because…he was probing for a weakness. His revenge idea wasn’t going to work if Vivian was prepared to be left hanging after their one night stand. But what if it wasn’t a single night? Could he really keep up the charade of falling back in love with her, and play this thing out until it actually surprised her when he picked up and left without a word?
For some reason, the idea of that was sour on the back of his tongue. Swallowing down the sickness, Cooper acknowledged that as much as he hated what she’d done to him, he wouldn’t turn the tables and give it back to her, pain for pain. But he could stay through breakfast, and see what other opportunities presented themselves.
Because no matter how sweetly she sighed into his kiss and writhed in his arms, Vivian Banks still deserved to be punished for breaking his heart.
***
Vivian dropped the whisk into the batter for the third time and bit back a curse as she fished it out with trembling fingers. This wasn’t what she’d expected from Cooper. It was almost as if he wanted to stick around. His reluctance to leave the Lantern Lake cabin sent flutters of warmth all through her, and made it extra tricky to concentrate on pancakes. She’d be lucky if she didn’t burn all her fingerprints off on the griddle.
But Cooper had requested pancakes, and as she’d told him, it was the least she could do. Heaven help her if he ever realized that no matter what he asked her for, she’d do her best to give it to him.
It was more than the years of conditioning with her overbearing parents and her demanding ex-husband. When it was Cooper, she actually wanted to make him happy.
“Tell me more about your travels,” she said, keeping her back to him as she fiddled with the ancient dials on the gas stovetop. Every time she cooked, she battled the fear that the oven would explode and blow the cabin to smithereens, and her along with it. But so far, it just clicked and sputtered and eventually spat out a few sullen blue rings of flame.
“Not much to tell.” She could almost hear the shrug in Cooper’s voice. “Been all over, seen a lot. There’s still a lot out there left to see, though. Spin the globe…”
His voice trailed off, and Vivian was assaulted by a crystalline memory of getting trapped in the university library after the doors were locked. They’d been in the stacks, deep in the dusty philosophy section where no student ever went, and they’d…lost track of time. Locked in for the night, they’d run all over the library like kids in a candy store, high on breaking the rules and being in love. When they’d happened on the giant globe in the mahogany and brass stand near the history section, they’d taken turns closing their eyes and spinning it before stabbing a finger down to stop the thing. Wherever that finger landed, that location was written down and added to the list of places they planned to travel to together after college. Cooper had called it the Backpacker’s Hippie Honeymoon, and Vivian closed her eyes against the burn of tears. That long lost list—all those places she’d never seen. Had he gone without her?
Unwilling to ask in case the answer was ‘yes’, Vivian cleared her throat and went back to spooning batter onto the hot, spitting griddle. “Think you’ll ever settle down?
“Can’t see the point of that.” Cooper’s chair squeaked, and she could picture him kicking back, leaning the chair on two legs the way he always used to do, as if daring gravity to pull him down. “Not when the world’s this big and full of interesting stuff. You only get one life.”
“True.” Vivian shrugged off the lingering desire to see more of the world. Maybe she’d be able to travel one day, after she got her life together. Until then… “That’s part of why I bought the house here. Sanctuary Island is so southern, so beachy and beautiful, and the people are so friendly and welcoming. Nothing like where I grew up.”
“Or where you lived with Richie Rich.” Cooper’s tone was knowing, sardonic, a
nd Vivian fought not to show any reaction.
“Sanctuary Island isn’t like anywhere else on earth,” she said with certainty, staring down as bubbles began to form in the glossy surface of the circles of pancake batter. “I only wish I could stay here.”
The thud of chair legs hitting the cracked linoleum floor confirmed her earlier vision, and Vivian smiled a little. “What do you mean? You just bought this house. Sick of playing poor already?”
The harsh edge to the words had Vivian tensing, defensive. But he didn’t know, she reminded herself. Not yet.
And maybe now was her chance to be the one to tell him. Surely that would be better than having him find out another way.
Right. There was no way this was going to be anything other than humiliating. But even as she steeled herself for the mortifying moment of truth, Cooper blew out a breath. An instant later, she felt his big, warm palm sliding around to cup the bend of her waist. He dropped a soft kiss on the side of her neck, just above the gaping collar of her robe, and Vivian’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “I’m being a jerk. Don’t listen to anything I say until I drink at least one more cup of coffee.”
“That’s okay.” Vivian twisted her head to give him a quick smile before turning back to flip the pancakes. “It’s not a big deal. I just…I didn’t buy the cabin to live in. It’s more of an investment.”
Cooper’s hands slipped away, and she immediately felt a chill in their wake. “I never got the appeal of a summer home,” he said, wandering over to the coffeemaker to pour himself another steaming cup from the pot. “Doesn’t that basically just mean that whenever you have time off or want to take a vacation, you feel like you have to go back to the same place? You’ll never see anything new.”
He thought she’d bought the cabin as a vacation house. It was a reprieve—but for how long? Swallowing thickly around the white lie, Vivian pointed out, “But if you go back to the same vacation spot year after year, you build relationships there. You make friends you get to see over and over, and you can learn to really fit into the place. It can be a home away from home.”
Not really a lie, she consoled herself. She hadn’t confirmed that the cabin was her vacation home. She’d just argued that a vacation home could be a nice thing to have.
Although, to be completely truthful, she hadn’t enjoyed it all that much when Gerald took them back to the Hamptons every single summer. It never felt like home—more like yet another stage where they could play out the elaborate drama of her marriage and Gerald’s business dealings.
“I guess. But you’d probably have to have a home first, before you could have a home away from home. Got any sugar?” Before she could caution him, Cooper put his hand on the brass pull of the cabinet over the coffeemaker…and the entire cabinet door jerked off its hinges.
“What the hell!” Off kilter, Cooper fumbled with the unwieldy door until it clocked him in the side of the head, then clattered to the floor.
Rushing to his side, Vivian exclaimed, “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I should have warned you about my temperamental cabinets.”
Cooper shook his head as if to rattle his brains back into place. “Cats are temperamental. That cabinet is psychotic. Your house is trying to kill me.”
Putting a gentle hand to Cooper’s temple, she nudged him to tilt his head so she could examine the red mark left by the falling cabinetry. “Don’t be a baby,” she said automatically. “You’re fine. It’s just a bruise, and my house is not trying to kill anyone. It’s just a little…old. And in need of some TLC.”
“I could use some, too,” Cooper told her, leaning closer. “You could kiss it and make it better.”
Heat rolled up Vivian’s spine, tingling and good. “Show me where,” she murmured, lifting up on her tiptoes to reach the sore spot on his temple. She kissed where he pointed, her lips following his fingertip from temple to jaw to nose, and finally to the masculine fullness of his bottom lip.
Instead of a kiss, Vivian nipped that succulent bite of flesh between her teeth, light enough to sting the way he liked. The heartfelt growl from deep in his chest was cut off by a grunt of frustration, however.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, heart hammering and wetness gathering at her aching center.
“I guess I could get my revenge on your house by watching it burn to the ground,” Cooper said, taking her shoulders and turning her to face the smoking, blackened pancakes curling on the griddle. “But then we wouldn’t get to have breakfast.”
Chapter 5
After breakfast was salvaged and they both found their missing articles of clothing, Cooper still didn’t leave. Instead, he asked for a tour of the property.
Something was going on here. Something Vivian didn’t want him to know—which, of course, made him want to know more than ever. In the last ten years, she’d become more of a mystery, but her basic tells hadn’t changed.
For instance, she always tugged on her left earlobe when she was skirting the truth. If she were wearing earrings, she’d play with them. If not, like this morning by the stove, talking about the state of disrepair of her summer cottage…tug, tug, tug.
What was she hiding?
They bundled up against the cold, and Cooper thanked his lucky stars he’d brought his duffel to the reception and left it squeezed into the Ferrari’s tight little trunk. He’d intended to fly away from the wedding in Miles’s helicopter, just to make a point about winning the bet, so he’d packed up what he brought to the island in preparation.
Vivian plopped a knit hat on her head, complete with hilarious earflaps and a fluff ball on top. The way her eyes sparkled erased the years from her face. “Come on! You’ve got to see Lantern Lake, it’s absolutely glorious.”
For Cooper’s money, he’d already gotten to see Vivian’s “private paradise” the night before, but he was always game for an exploration. “Lead the way.”
Every breath fogged the air in front of them as they trooped out the door and down the porch stairs, Vivian carefully guiding him to skip the sagging second-to-top stair in case it wouldn’t hold his weight.
Other than a few idle comments about how much the temperature had dropped overnight—or maybe it was the absence of a blazing beach bonfire—Cooper walked beside Vivian in comfortable silence. It wasn’t the emptiness of having nothing to say, but rather the fullness of not needing to say anything in order to enjoy one another’s company.
Telling himself he hadn’t missed that at all, Cooper stared out over the quietly lovely vista of the secluded freshwater lake in the middle of a maritime pine glade. Frost tipped the cord grass and edged the cattails, bending their heavy heads down toward the water’s surface. Across the lake, maybe a hundred feet away, a wild horse lifted its shaggy head from its morning sip of lake water and scented the breeze.
Grabbing Vivian’s hand, Cooper pointed wordlessly at the animal, who watched them without blinking for a second or two before slowly lowering its dark chestnut head to the water once more.
“They’re all over the island,” Cooper murmured, gaze resting on the wild horse. “There must be five or six separate bands of horses.”
“I love them.” Vivian’s low voice was surprisingly fierce and raw. Giving her a sidelong glance, he saw that moisture had welled along her bottom lashes, turning her eyes into sparkling amethysts. “They know how to be free.”
It was an odd comment from someone who’d grown up a child of wealth and privilege. Vivian’s parents had given her every opportunity, every advantage, which gave her plenty of free time to spend on fun. For a kid like Cooper, who’d worked for everything he had, including working two jobs to be able to afford his textbooks and an off-campus apartment even on a full academic scholarship, Vivian had always seemed to have it easy.
He hadn’t held it against her, back then. He’d loved her ease—her casual generosity, her willingness to drop everything for the prospect of adventure, her unthinking, s
imple joy in her own body and what it could feel when the two of them were together.
“What happened?” Cooper asked, before he could stop the words. “In the last ten years, what changed for you? You used to be so…”
“Stupid?” Vivian asked, every line of her body tensing into taut, wiry suspense. She reminded him of the horse across the lake, when it first sensed the presence of potential predators. “Weak? Cowardly?”
“No!” Cooper grabbed her stiff shoulders and turned her to face him, but she looked down. The black fringe of her lashes hid her expression. Always hiding from him. “I meant—you used to be free, too. Happy. What changed?”
“You really don’t know?” She glanced up from under those lashes, the shine on her eyes making his heart clench into a fist. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Cooper said roughly, not even pausing to question if that was the truth, or if he was playing her. He wasn’t sure he could tell the difference anymore. Maybe he never could.
Vivian closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, Cooper. Do you honestly think my life was so perfect back then? When we met, that first day of Professor Engelhoffer’s English Lit class—that was the first time I ever tasted freedom. Happiness. Before that…”
She shook her head mutely, and Cooper had to fight down the urge to turn her upside down and shake her until the rest of her answer fell out. “I don’t understand.”
Vivian finally met his gaze head on, no hiding. “You want me to say that it was my awful ex, or the years of loveless marriage, or the scandalous divorce that made me this way. But it wasn’t. I was always like this—except when I was around you.”