by Andrews, Amy
Which was fine by Lacey. A girl could only be knocked back so many times before she started to doubt herself as a woman. And she was much too happy at being home to let any negativity ruin her high.
But it seemed like JJ wasn’t above prodding that particular sore spot, as Lacey found out the following Thursday afternoon during the lull before the evening crowd wandered in for some liquid socialising.
“How are things with you and Coop?”
JJ was the same height as Lacey but had a loose kind of lankiness to her limbs and a lack of female airs and graces that had her labelled as a tomboy from her very early years. Of course, hanging with the Weston brothers hadn’t helped.
“Great,” Lacey lied, plastering a big old smile on her face. As long as they didn’t get close enough to touch and stuck to safe subjects like paint and leather they were just dandy.
She tried not to think about the fact that Alec Campbell was due back on Wednesday. Six more days.
“He’s being very … attentive.”
“Oh?” JJ said as she wiped the wooden bar surface down with a wet cloth. “I don’t see him around very much?”
“He’s working hard on restoring my Mini at the moment. He wants to get it done as quickly as possible so I have wheels. For … appointments and stuff.”
“Yeah I guess,” JJ agreed. “I just would have thought two new lovebirds …”
Lacey frowned. Where was she going with this? “What?”
“Well … I didn’t think he’d let you out of his sight. I thought he’d be keeping you very,” she lowered her voice, “busy, if you know what I mean.”
Lacey almost snorted—if only!
“He seems quite besotted, Lace.”
Besotted? Lacey blinked. Had JJ been drinking? “Well, the … morning sickness is kinda putting a stop to all that,” she fobbed.
“Really?” JJ arched an eyebrow. “I was only just saying to Jarrod yesterday how remarkably healthy you always look considering how early it is in the pregnancy.”
JJ was looking at her expectantly. As if she was waiting for her to confess or something. But confessing to JJ was the last thing Lacey was doing. Everyone would know the truth soon enough. “It’s more a night-time sickness thing. He might as well be at the shop than be listening to me throwing up in the toilet all night.”
Lacey was surprised how easily the fabrication slipped off her tongue—one in a long line since this subterfuge had begun. No doubt she was cursing herself to the worst case of morning sickness ever known to womankind when she did eventually decide to have a baby.
Karma was a bitch like that.
“Ah. I see,” JJ said, not looking very convinced at all.
One of the regulars came up to the bar and JJ poured him a tap beer without having to be asked. Lacey was grateful for the reprieve. She had a feeling this was an interrogation of sorts and she wasn’t sure how long she could hold out against JJ’s deceptively friendly, big-sister technique of questioning.
Lacey was waiting for her when JJ came back. “You know,” she said. “I always thought you and Ethan would get together one day?”
Anyone who hadn’t known JJ forever might have missed the tiny little nerve leaping just under JJ’s eye but Lacey didn’t.
“Nah,” she dismissed with a flick of her hair and a quick easy smile. One that said that old chestnut. But the nerve continued to pulse. “We’re mates. Just mates. You know that.”
Hmm. Interesting. It had been a desperate question. One meant to force a retreat, or at least guarantee a change in the subject, but JJ’s response was interesting … or the jumping nerve was anyway.
Lacey regarded JJ seriously. “Haven’t you … ever been tempted to cross that line?”
God knew they’d had plenty of opportunity. And it wasn’t like the whole town wouldn’t have thrown them a massive party. Jumbuck Springs had been banking on them getting together since they played on the same under sevens touch footy team and continually tried to best each other.
And then high school had happened and Delia had come along.
JJ shook her head emphatically this time and the nerve stopped its frantic pulsing. “Nah. Our friendship is way too important to mess with.”
Lacey could relate to that. Wasn’t that the same with her and Coop? But then they hadn’t been friends first, had they? They’d been lovers. They’d put the cart before the horse well and truly. Maybe they weren’t destined to be friends either. Maybe it was lovers or nothing.
And Coop wasn’t entertaining the first option.
“Ethan’s friendship means more to me than some romantic entanglement that would never work out.”
“Why wouldn’t it work?” Lacey frowned. It seemed to her that her brother and JJ were like two peas in a pod.
JJ rolled her eyes. “Because he’s still in love with Delia.”
Lacey blinked at such a preposterous statement. Her brother had washed his hands of his troublesome ex a long time ago. In a romantic sense anyway. He still had to deal with her as the mother of his daughter. “What? That’s crazy. He’s done with her.”
JJ looked sad as she shook her head. “He says he’s done with her and yet after all this time he hasn’t found anyone to move on with? Please. It’s been years since their divorce, Lacey. And it’s not for a lack of women trying. Every single woman in the district, and their mothers, have tried it on at one stage or other. Your brother is a very eligible, very attractive guy.”
“Oh,” Lacey smiled, “so you have noticed.”
That earned her another eye roll. “I’m not blind. Just not interested. I’ve already had one disastrous relationship complete with messy divorce. That’s enough for me.”
“Maybe it’s the same for him? Nothing to do with still being in love with Delia?”
JJ gave a sad little shake of her head like Lacey didn’t have a clue. And maybe she didn’t. Ethan was thirteen years older than her. There was probably a lot of things she didn’t know about him that JJ, his best buddy, did.
Would she and Coop still be friends twenty or thirty years down the track?
For some reason the thought was depressing as hell.
Chapter Nine
‡
Coop almost hit his head on the underside of Lacey’s Mini as a thundering knock landed on the back door of the shop later that evening. Since Lacey’s unannounced visit here last week he’d taken to locking it after business hours had ended and he prayed to God it wasn’t her again.
But at least he had coveralls on this time.
“Coop? You in there?”
Ethan? Coop rolled out from under the Mini where he’d been tinkering with the engine. It had gone back in this morning after the paint job yesterday but was still requiring some adjusting. “Coming,” he yelled, vaulting to his feet.
What the hell did Ethan want?
Coop wiped his greasy hands on his coveralls and strode over to the door, flipping the deadlock. Ethan stood there in his navy uniform, complete with big black boots, looking his usual serious self, one hand shoved on his hip, the other behind his back.
“Ethan,” Coop nodded warily.
“My spy network told me I’d find you here,” he said.
“They were right.”
Coop knew that all good cops had a network of people they relied on for information. In the city they were called snitches, informants. In a town the size of Jumbuck Springs they were called the grapevine. Or the bush telegraph.
Ethan looked at him for long moments. Coop held his gaze and stood his ground. He got it, Ethan was pissed at him. But what was done was done. He wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life apologising to his friend for something he wasn’t even guilty of.
Although, of course, he was partially guilty …
Ethan pulled a sixpack of beers from behind his back. “Truce?”
A wave of relief flooded Coop’s body but he wasn’t about to get too excited. Truce was still a long way from where they’d been prior to L
acey’s rash announcement. Coop stood back and Ethan brushed past him, setting the sixpack on the workbench and pulling two out.
He handed one to Coop, which he took and cracked the lid. “Cheers,” he said tentatively, holding his bottle up to Ethan.
“Cheers,” Ethan replied tapping his beer against Coop’s before taking a big swallow. Coop took one too.
“I hear there’s been a spate of breakdowns in the district,” Ethan said. “All the ladies wanting to check out the hot new mechanic.”
Coop gave a half laugh. He had done a lot more roadside assistance than Alec Campbell had led him to believe was likely.
“This Lacey’s?” Ethan asked gruffly as he turned to the Mini before an awkward silence could build between them.
“Yep.”
“She said you were restoring it so you could use it for promotional purposes to attract more female clientele. That true?”
Coop shrugged. “We’ve been looking for a project to increase our demographic for a while,” he said carefully.
“And you were sick of her shit box breaking down all the time, and her stubborn devotion to it, so you decided to kill two birds with one stone?”
Coop smiled grudgingly. “There was that.”
They took a slow tour around the car, talking about the project as they drank their beers. All the internal fit was still to come. Gav was overseeing the custom upholstery of the seats and had managed to find a wood grain finish dashboard. Coop doubted it would arrive before he left but he could fit it back in Brisbane.
By the time they got back to the start again things felt less awkward. It wasn’t exactly like old times between them but it was better than it had been since the great baby daddy admission.
Ethan leaned against the workbench and downed the rest of his beer in two swallows. He cracked another one from the pack offering it to Coop, which he declined.
Ethan took a swig out of the fresh bottle then looked at Coop. “Sorry about Marcus hitting you.”
Coop rubbed his hand over his jaw. The swelling was gone but the odd twinge remained. “Forget it. I probably would have done the same thing if the positions had been reversed.”
“Jarrod thinks if we’d listened to her and what she wanted instead of railroading her into going, and guilting her into staying, we mightn’t be in this mess. Do you think that’s true?”
Coop felt about as low as a snake’s belly carrying on this subterfuge with Ethan, who was obviously still having a hard time with the situation.
He shrugged. “You were just doing what you thought was right.”
“We promised Mum,” Ethan said, eyes bleak.
“I know,” Coop nodded.
“That day … that she died …” Ethan looked at his beer label. “It was like she wouldn’t let herself go until we all promised. She was so frail and wasted and in pain but she grabbed my hand so hard I thought she was going to break it. She looked me right in the eye and told me Lacey’s education was my responsibility now.”
Coop didn’t say anything. What could he say? Promising someone you loved was solemn enough, but a deathbed promise was a whole other level.
“I didn’t think she was that unhappy.” Ethan picked at the label. “Sure, she was always a bit emotional when it came to going back to school after breaks, but I just put it down to missing Mum and … girl stuff … hormones and late onset teenage rebellion.”
Coop guessed they were easy conclusions to jump to when you were a guy who was dealing with his own grief as well as his daughter’s, while still being a single father and the chief of police of a small town. But from where Coop stood he’d have classified Lacey’s unhappiness as profound.
Lacey’s entire world had been tilted on its axis at a young age. Coop knew what that felt like. Ethan did too but sometimes it was easier to see standing on the outside.
“But you,” Ethan looked up from the label, “knew how unhappy she was, right? Why didn’t you tell me?”
There was no accusation in Ethan’s voice. Just weariness.
“I didn’t realise I was supposed to report on her to you. You asked me to look out for her, Ethan. Not spy on her. Do you think she would have rung me when her car broke down or at three am when there were no taxis and she was too pissed to drive home if I’d run to you over every little thing she did?”
“C’mon man,” Ethan growled. “I didn’t want you to spy on her. I just thought you might have said something.”
“Would you have listened? You were all pretty fucking pig-headed about her going to design college. You forget I know what you’re like when you get an idea in that thick head of yours.”
Ethan puffed up his chest and looked like he was about to argue but let it all out in one noisy breath instead, raking his fingers through his hair. “You’re right. We screwed up big time … I just …” He looked at Coop in that direct no-bullshit way of his. “Tell me you love her. That she isn’t just some notch on your belt that’s looking more and more like a noose and you regret ever getting involved with her.”
The question took Coop completely unawares. For starters, he and Ethan did not talk about love. They talked about the job and cars and sport and what was going on with the weather. Occasionally they talked about getting laid.
But love?
Coop didn’t even know if Ethan had ever loved Delia—he’d never asked. He’d assumed his friend did because that girl had had Ethan firmly by the balls from the beginning. But Coop had never asked. Because they were guys and guys just did not talk about that stuff.
Not to each other. Not the guys he knew anyway.
And then there was the other thing. The big thing. Punching him slow but hard right between the eyes. He did love her. It was so freaking obvious to him now. It was there in the grip around his heart, the hitch in his breath and the cramp in his gut. It glowed like a crashed meteor inside him and created about as much havoc.
Holy fucking crap.
She’d given him hell from the day he’d met her. She’d lied to him, used him, discarded him. She’d been inconvenient and inconsiderate. She’d challenged and disobeyed him. And she’d cramped his style something dreadful. He’d spent a good part of their acquaintance wanting to put her over his knee and spank her.
And none of that mattered because somewhere in the middle of all that he’d fallen in love with her.
In love with Lacey Weston. His best friend’s sister.
It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Love seldom did, right? Some people didn’t get to choose. Sometimes it just happened. And the heart wanted what the heart wanted.
Ethan frowned at his continued silence. “Christ, Coop …” He shut his eyes briefly before piercing Coop with a look. “Please tell me you’re not having casual sex with my sister.”
Coop shook his head, shaking himself out of the strange inertia that seemed to have afflicted him. How could he have been so blind? All these years she’d been firmly under his skin not just because she was an annoying pain in the ass.
If only this made things better. Instead of worse.
“No, I’m not,” he said, finding his voice finally. “And I do … love her.”
It felt foreign to be telling Ethan something so personal. And new. Something he’d rather keep to himself. But it was a fair enough question given the circumstances and deserved an honest answer.
“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t plan to. I didn’t plan any of this. It just … happened and I wish it hadn’t but … I’d do anything for her. You have to know that.”
Even pretend to be the father of her fake baby.
Ethan nodded, although the answer didn’t really seem to be much comfort to him. “Anything? Would you let her go if that’s what she needed? If something happened and there was suddenly no baby and she wanted to go back to college or go on a working holiday overseas or … work in Antarctica. What happens if she has her fill of you and playing happy families with a baby and wants out of this one-horse town?”
Coop rai
sed an eyebrow at the bitterness in Ethan’s tone. He wasn’t entirely sure they were still talking about Lacey. “Are we talking about your sister still, Ethan, or Delia?”
Ethan pursed his lips at the enquiry and glared at Coop. “Answer the damn question. Do you love her enough to let her go?”
Coop didn’t know how to answer that. It wasn’t like loving Lacey made a difference to their situation. They were living a lie. It was a total mess.
Loving Lacey complicated the hell out of it.
“Are you asking me to let her go? Is that what this is, Ethan?” Because Coop knew with sudden clarity that he couldn’t. Only Lacey could ask him to do that.
“No, damn it,” he growled. “I’m just … curious.”
“Is this some kind of if-you-love-something-set-it-free bullshit?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“If she asked me to? Yes.” But the thought sat heavy in Coop’s gut. Despite the futility of loving her, leaving her would be harder.
Crap. He was going to be emotional Swiss cheese at the end of all this.
Next week. Alec was back on Wednesday.
Ethan looked at him for long moments then nodded slowly as if he was satisfied with the answer. He placed his barely touched beer on the workbench beside him. “Looks like you’re family now,” he said. “Better come to Sunday lunch this week.”
* * *
Later that night, Lacey woke with a start. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest as she looked around the room, disorientated for a moment, her eyes adjusting to the dark, her ears straining to hear whatever it was that had woken her.
Nothing seemed out of place. Coop was asleep lying on his back. The kitchen windows were shut; so was the door to the room and the bathroom door, and the television was off.
She glanced at the clock—two-thirty. She shut her eyes again, her pulse settling as sleep pulled her in from the edges.