Harlequin Romance July 2013 Bundle: A Cowboy To Come Home ToHow to Melt a Frozen HeartThe Cattleman's Ready-Made FamilyRancher to the Rescue

by Donna Alward

  She picked up her plastic fork and dipped it into the mashed potatoes and gravy. The food wasn’t piping-hot any longer, but was still quite warm, and as she tasted the first bite she was struck by a pang so bittersweet it made her heart ache.

  This was something they might have done in the old days: a bunch of them together, some takeout, hanging out on a Saturday night. Only it wasn’t a bunch anymore, but just she and Cooper. Some of their circle of friends had drifted away, some had left Cadence Creek and gone to work in bigger towns and cities. So little of the past remained. In some ways it was good, but in other ways, Melissa missed it. Up until things had blown apart, there’d been a lot of good times.

  “You okay?” Cooper asked, pausing to look at her while holding a French fry.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking about when we were kids, and some of the stuff we used to do on a Saturday night. It sure wasn’t picking up takeout because we were too tired from dealing with ‘real life’ to cook.”

  He chuckled. “We all have to grow up sometime. At least mostly.”

  He held out the box of onion rings. “Have one. You know you want to.”

  She wasn’t sure if she was glad that he remembered her fondness for onion rings or not. It was too much to resist as he waved them under her nose. She reached into the package and took out a round battered ring. When she bit into it, her teeth caught the onion and it came out of the batter. She pulled it into her mouth like a piece of spaghetti.

  Cooper laughed. “Good, right?”

  “So good,” she admitted.

  He put the box between them on the table, an unspoken invitation to share. A peace offering? Was he hoping that the deep-fried treat would accomplish what time had not? It was a big thing to ask from a carton of onion rings.

  For the moment, she chose to cut into her meat loaf and peas and carrots.

  They were quiet for a few minutes, eating and listening to the breeze whisper through the leaves that still remained on the poplars lining the creek. She didn’t know what to say to him. Talking about the past would only bring up the painful way her marriage had broken apart. And anything else seemed...contrived. Awkward. He ate his burger in silence as she finished her meal, then he handed her another onion ring before taking one for himself and dipping it in ketchup.

  “You still like doing that?” she commented.

  “Yeah. Ketchup should be a food group all by itself.” He put his empty containers in his bag. She did the same with hers and they left the picnic table, stopping at the garbage cans to deposit their waste.

  “Feel better?” he asked quietly.

  She did, surprisingly. It wasn’t just the food, either, although she’d been very hungry. She’d had a few moments to breathe, to unwind. Funny how he’d seemed to know she’d needed that. Or maybe she was reading too much into his motives. Maybe it truly was all about eating his dinner while it was hot.

  “I do feel better,” she admitted. “I was pretty spooled up after my day.”

  “Give me five more minutes, okay? Come with me.”

  She frowned but followed. He led her over to the swings. “Sit down.”

  “Okay, now you’re being silly. I just want to go home and get off my feet.”

  In response, he sat on the swing beside hers. It was set low for kids, and his long legs folded up like a frog’s, but he pushed off anyway and put it in motion. “This gets you off your feet. Look.” He held his booted feet up in the air. He looked ridiculous.

  She felt foolish, but sat down and scuffed one shoe in the dirt, making the swing rock a little.

  “Hold on to the chains and lean back.”

  “Cooper, you’re crazy.”

  “Do it, Mel. Lean back and then open your eyes.”

  She pushed with her foot a little harder, then gripped the chains between her fingers and leaned back. The breeze from the motion ruffled her hair, making bits of it feather across her cheeks. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked up.

  There were stars. Not too many, but a handful that seemed to rock in the sky as she swayed back and forth. When had they come out? Sometime between leaving the restaurant and eating her dinner in the twilight.

  The sky was so big, so endless. She heard a loud sigh and realized it had come from herself. As she watched, more stars appeared out of nowhere. One second vast emptiness, then the next time she looked, pop. There they were, twinkling down at her from the infinite blackness.

  “Make a wish,” Cooper suggested.

  Her throat tightened. What in the world was she doing, sitting on the swings in the dark with Cooper Ford? “I’m too old for that nonsense. Besides, that’s for the first star you see, and there are at least two dozen right now.”

  His voice was low and warm beside her. “Then make two dozen wishes. Wish on every one.”

  “Cooper...”

  She knew it was stupid and juvenile, but she couldn’t resist. She closed her eyes and made a wish.

  Let this time be the one.

  All she really wanted was to be a mom. She’d wanted it when she was married to Scott, and they’d supposedly been trying when she’d caught him cheating. The divorce had killed not only their marriage but her dream of a family, too. And she wasn’t interested in getting married again.

  But the longing for a family, for a child of her own, hadn’t abated. If she could survive starting her own business and her marriage blowing up, she could handle being a single mom. She certainly didn’t want to marry someone she didn’t love just to make that happen. That made less sense than doing it alone.

  She really wanted the pregnancy to take this time. If not, she could look into adoption, but she truly wanted to experience the joy of carrying her baby inside her. There was just something so...complete about it.

  “You still here, or are you on another planet?”

  Coop’s voice intruded. Her swing had stopped swaying and her arms were twined around the chains, while her face remained tilted toward the sky. She swallowed and opened her eyes. “I’m still here. It takes a while to make twenty-four wishes.”

  He chuckled in the darkness. That funny curling sensation wound its way through her stomach again.

  She jumped off the swing and brushed her hands down her trousers. “I really do need to get home. I’ve got to be back to work tomorrow to do up all the arrangements for the Madison funeral.”

  “All work and no play makes Mel a dull girl.”

  She shrugged and reached for her purse. “It happens when you own your own business. You know how it is. There’s no real time clock to punch.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m going to be locked up in my office tomorrow going over paperwork.”

  They made their way back to the sidewalk and on toward Melissa’s house. “We really did grow up, didn’t we, Cooper?”

  His boots sounded on the concrete, steady thumps that seemed slightly out of place and yet reassuring. “Yes, we did. And some of it was painful.”

  Melissa had hoped he wasn’t going to bring it up. She shivered in the rapidly cooling air. Without saying a word, Coop took off his jean jacket and slid it over her shoulders.

  “Live and learn.” She injected some lightness into her voice, as if it was no big deal.

  Her house was just a few blocks away now. She had to put him off for only a minute or so and she’d be home and he’d be gone.

  “Live and learn?” Coop stopped and put a hand on her arm, halting her, too. His voice was harsh. “You don’t talk to me for three years and then come out with a flippant ‘live and learn’?”

  She pulled her arm away from his fingers. That was twice tonight he’d taken the liberty of touching her. “Maybe you should take the hint that I don’t want to talk about it.”

  They carried on for a few minutes, the silence growing increasing
ly awkward between them. Twenty more steps and she’d be at her front walk. She was nearly there when she realized she couldn’t hear his boots just behind her anymore. For some weird reason her heart was pounding, but she made herself keep going. She took five more steps before his voice stopped her.

  “I was wrong.”

  She slowed, paused for just a breath of a moment, but kept walking. They weren’t going to do this. Not tonight and not on the sidewalk outside her house.

  The memory of their argument was still fresh in her mind—as if it had happened yesterday—and nearly as painful. She’d been so angry at Scott. Angry and hurt with the vitriolic bitterness of a wife betrayed. But with Coop, it had been different. It had been a trust of a different kind that he’d broken. She’d been hurt by that, too. Hurt and disappointed that the one person she’d turned to when everything blew up had already known. He’d betrayed her, too.

  “So you said already,” she replied, wondering why the last twenty steps felt like a hundred.

  “I thought maybe you’d be willing to accept my apology after all this time.”

  His longer legs caught up with her by the time she reached the first row of interlocking patio blocks that wound their way to her front door.

  “Melissa. Please. Hasn’t this gone on long enough?”

  “What, our hating each other?”

  She looked up into his face. In the glow of the streetlamp, he actually looked hurt. That was preposterous. She’d been the person wronged in all of this and they both knew it.

  “I never hated you.”

  “Well, you sure never cared about me. That was clear enough.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw and his gaze slid away for a moment. He took a deep breath and let it out before looking down into her eyes again.

  She really wished he wouldn’t do that. It was so hard to stay angry when he gazed at her that way, all wide eyes and long eyelashes. “Bedroom eyes,” her mother had said once. Eyes that were used to getting him what he wanted.

  Melissa also knew she was entitled to her anger. Coop had told her once that he would always be there for her. And when push came to shove, he hadn’t been. There was no way he could deny it.

  “I never hated you,” he insisted softly. “Not ever. It was complicated, but you are completely right in that I should have told you. I was wrong, Melissa, and I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry.”

  She did not want to believe him or be touched by his apology. It was a real struggle, because he was looking at her so earnestly that she knew he wasn’t lying. Nor was he trying to charm or joke his way out of anything.

  But one thing stuck in her mind from that whole speech, and it wasn’t that he’d admitted he was in the wrong, or that he was swallowing his pride to apologize.

  It was that he’d said it was complicated.

  “How complicated could it have been, Coop?” She kept her voice down—there were neighbors to consider—but her words were still crystal clear in the cool night. “Scott was cheating on me and you knew about it.”

  “Scott was my best friend.”

  “So was I. You said you’d always look out for me. You were like my big brother, do you know that?” She lifted her chin and finally said what she’d wanted to for ages. “You knew he was with her in the afternoon and coming home to me at night. Do you know how sick that is?” Tears pricked Melissa’s eyes. “How dirty I felt for months afterward? All it would have taken was a few words from you. I trusted you, Coop.”

  He ran his hand over his hair. “Mel.”

  Her name sounded ragged coming from his lips. So he wasn’t completely unaffected, either. Good.

  “I trusted you,” she repeated, softer now, and a sadness took over where her anger had lived. Sadness and acceptance.

  “I was friends with both of you. Have you even considered for one moment how caught in the middle I was? I swear, as soon as I found out I confronted him about it. I begged him to put a stop to it. I demanded.”

  “Did you threaten to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you didn’t.”

  He swallowed and looked away. “No.”

  “And why is that?”

  He didn’t answer, but they’d come this far and she wanted to know. He’d been the one to open the can of worms, and now he would have to deal with her questions. “Why didn’t you tell me, if you told him you would?”

  Cooper took a few moments to respond, and when he did his words seemed measured. “Scott said he would deny it, and that you’d believe him.”

  She frowned, puzzled. “Maybe I would want to believe him, but don’t you think I’d ask why you would tell me such a thing if it wasn’t true? Come on, Coop.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, my intention wasn’t to relive this thing from start to finish, okay? I just wanted to say I was wrong, and that I’m sorry. Isn’t it time we moved on?”

  It bothered her that he was probably right. It had gone on a long time. She’d picked herself up and dusted herself off, made a good life for herself. The one thing she hadn’t done was let go of her resentment for Cooper. Funny how she’d been able to put Scott in the past and not miss him a bit, but not Cooper. She supposed it came from staying in the same town and being faced with seeing him on a regular basis, even from a distance.

  “I forgave you a long time ago, Coop.”

  “You could’ve fooled me.”

  “Forgiving isn’t the same as forgetting. You’re right. It’s over and done. But you know the old saying, ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...’”

  “‘Shame on me’,” he finished.

  “Our friendship as it used to be is over, Cooper. We can’t go back. It’s how I’m built. Once someone hurts me, they don’t get a chance to do it again. Once I learn a lesson, I don’t forget it. So maybe we can just call a truce, okay? I can live with that. If you’re expecting more...”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t really need to, did she?

  Cooper took a step back, out of the circle of lamplight. “You should go in. It’s getting late.”

  She didn’t like how they were leaving this, but knew there was no other way. “Thank you for the walk home.”

  She’d turned and taken two steps along her walkway when his voice stopped her once again. “Mel?”

  Her heart quaked. Why did this feel like goodbye? Why did it feel final? Final had been three years ago when she’d said she never wanted to speak to him again.

  The words had been extreme, but that had been an extreme period in her life.

  “I lost two best friends, you know. You might think I sided with Scott, but I didn’t. I hated what he was up to and begged him to do the right thing. It was the end of our friendship. I did not condone or support his behavior in any way. You need to know that.”

  Sadness swept over her. “You didn’t stop it,” she whispered. “To me, you condoned it by doing nothing.”

  Silence spun between them, until finally Cooper gave a curt nod and turned, walking away. She watched until the sound of his boots faded and his tall form turned the corner, out of her line of vision.

  Only then did she realize that she was still wearing his jacket. She curled her fingers around the edges and pulled it close, drawing in the scents of hay and fresh air and the cologne he’d worn for as long as she could remember. The smell of it was imprinted on her brain, bringing a wealth of memories and emotions. It took her back more years than she cared to count.

  She’d worked so hard to put the past behind her, but as the scent of him wrapped around her, she grieved just a little bit for the life she’d nearly had and the dreams she’d lost.

  CHAPTER THREE

  COOPER SAT IN HIS TRUCK a half block from her flower shop, trying to muster
the courage to go in. The other night he had come this close to telling her the truth. It had all been going so well. Not quite like old times, but at least they’d been talking. He’d gotten the impression that she’d be open to his apology, so he’d made it.

  Only it hadn’t gone quite according to plan. She’d pushed. He’d thought for a long time that she hadn’t spoken to him for years because of simple pride. The longer the impasse, the harder it was to swallow pride and end it, right? It was difficult to take the first step. But he’d miscalculated. It wasn’t just pride with Melissa. He had truly, honestly hurt her.

  He’d never intended for things to get so intense the other night. With any other woman he could try flowers to ease his way back into her good graces. Considering Melissa owned the flower shop, he’d had to come up with something else. Besides, she’d see right through that sort of thing.

  So a plastic container of his mother’s peanut butter chocolate chip cookies sat on the seat beside him as a peace offering. She’d always had a weak spot for those.

  He was still trying to figure out what he hoped to achieve by mending fences. Was it simply a need to put the transgressions of his past behind him? To receive absolution from his guilt for the part he’d played in the breakup of her marriage?

  Then there was the problem of his feelings for Melissa. They’d been good friends since junior high school. By the time he’d figured out he wanted more, she’d only had eyes for Scott. What was worse, Scott had known how Coop felt, but had never said anything to him. It had been an unspoken rule—that they didn’t talk about it. To Scott’s credit, he had never rubbed Coop’s nose in it. Not until Coop backed him into a corner. Then Scott had shown what sort of man he truly was. And what sort of man Cooper was, too. The kind of guy who would choose to save his own skin rather than do the right thing.

  So what did he really want? Coop drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He considered the idea that maybe he should let her go. Until he did, he couldn’t move on. And he really should at some point.

  He was twenty-seven years old and he’d never had a serious relationship. All because of Melissa Stone. It went beyond his mom and dad asking when he was going to settle down and give them grandbabies. He wanted that, too. He loved his business, but he wanted a wife and a few kids running around his big empty house. He wanted to teach them to ride and coach their hockey team. More than that, he wanted a partner to share things with. A meal at the end of the day. A beer while watching the football game. A woman he loved waking up beside him in the morning.