by Melody Grace
Poppy was just a friend. A neighbor. His platonic acquaintance.
At least, that was the plan.
Another car pulled into the spot next to him, and he turned to find a couple of teenagers in the front seats. The boy shut of his engine, then promptly reached over to start making out with his date.
Cooper averted his eyes. OK, so maybe he could have picked a more platonic spot than a dark drive-in movie theater, but he was a grown man, not some hormone-addled teen. Just because Poppy’s lips were undeniably kissable didn’t mean he was a slave to attraction. She hadn’t even mentioned what happened between them, and for all he knew, it hadn’t crossed her mind. He should be relieved she was being so relaxed about everything, instead of making a scene. He’d said to forget about it, that it meant nothing at all.
So why did it burn that she’d been able to do just that and move on?
Poppy stood in line at the concession stand and tried to ignore the butterflies spinning in her stomach. Movie tickets, popcorn . . . Had she and Cooper accidentally wound up on some kind of date?
No. She quickly shook off that thought. He was just being friendly, that’s all. Surprisingly friendly, given their history, but she wasn’t complaining. He was right, she’d been going crazy in that house, and she was feeling better already just getting out into the crisp night air for a few hours of welcome distraction.
“Popcorn, please,” she asked the boy manning the stand. “Sweet and salty, just mix it all together. And a couple of sodas . . . and red vines . . .” Poppy hadn’t been to the movies in months, and she got carried away; by the time she returned to Cooper’s truck, her arms were laden with snacks. “Maybe I went a little wild,” she said, passing the bounty before she climbed back up.
“A little?” he echoed, looking at the spread. He reached for the box of candy. “I guess I better step up to the plate.”
“Aim high. I believe in you.” Poppy laughed. She looked past him, and saw the windows of the next car steaming up. Inside, she could just about make out a couple of teenagers necking—hard.
“Ah, romance,” she quipped, and Cooper shot her a grin.
“You think they’ll catch a single frame of the movie?”
“No way.” Poppy munched on a handful of popcorn. “God, when I was a teenager, we used to drive out to this abandoned farm in the middle of the country to park. You couldn’t move for beat-up old Hondas.”
“We would all go to the woods,” Cooper said. “The property I’m working on now, actually. There’s a whole acre back there, and if those trees could talk . . .”
Poppy grinned. “Is that why you bought it? All those fond memories.”
“Something like that.” Cooper grinned. “Actually, it’s the rest of its history. Old saltbox houses like that are disappearing these days. Most people don’t want the hassle of restoring when it’s easier to just knock them down and build from scratch. But you lose all the historical details, the craftsmanship . . .” He was talking animatedly, and Poppy could see the passion on his face. He’d played it off before like just another money-making flip, but it was clear he cared about the house far more than that.
“Seems like a lot of work for something that’s just a paycheck,” she said carefully.
Cooper shrugged. “Call it a work ethic,” he said. “I can’t help but get the job done.”
She snorted. “Ha!”
“Excuse me?” he looked over.
“The Cooper I remember would find any excuse to get out of chores,” Poppy said, shooting him a mischievous grin. “Your dad had to come drag you off the beach to go do laundry.”
Cooper grinned. “He wasn’t exactly paying me sweat equity back then.”
Poppy took another handful of popcorn. The trailers were playing on screen, local ads for lobster shacks and pottery classes. “How is he these days?” she asked.
Cooper paused, and a shadow slipped over his face. “He passed a few years back. Stomach cancer.”
She gasped. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She looked at him anxiously, hoping she hadn’t just put her foot in her mouth and dragged up painful history, but Cooper just gave her a quiet smile.
“It’s OK. I mean, I still miss him, but . . .” He paused. “Life goes on.”
It did. The summer they’d all run wild as kids seemed a lifetime ago. Twenty years, gone in the blink of an eye. Poppy sighed. “We were babies back then.”
Cooper chuckled. “We’re not over the hill just yet.” He nudged her elbow. “You’ve got a few good years in you yet.”
“Gee, thanks.” She laughed. “I’ll need them. My mom is already sending me links about the likelihood of finding a husband after thirty.”
“Ouch.” Cooper looked over at her. “So what happened, with your wedding? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” he added. “I just heard it all got called off.”
Poppy let out a breath. She didn’t want to drag it all up now, not when she was finally getting some distance. “Let’s just say it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Fair enough.”
To her relief, Cooper didn’t push. He reached for the radio instead, and tuned it to the movie soundtrack. The cab filled with the opening music as the movie started on screen. But Poppy couldn’t focus. She still felt jittery, like she’d been drinking too much coffee. Maybe that cup she’d had an hour ago was wreaking havoc on her system. Or maybe it was being alone in the dark, just an arm’s length away from the man who’d kissed her senseless.
She snuck a look at him beside her, his features illuminated in the light from the movie screen. Why did he have to be so handsome?
“Everything OK?” Cooper turned and caught her looking.
“Yes. Great!” Poppy snapped her gaze back to the screen. “I haven’t seen this movie in forever.”
“It’s a classic,” Cooper agreed. “Are you comfortable? I can put the seat back if you want.”
“I’ve got it.” Poppy grappled around for the lever, until Cooper chucked.
“Here.” He reached across her, sliding his hand down the side of her seat. “It’s temperamental,” he said apologetically. “You have to yank it just so . . .”
“Uh huh.” Poppy’s reply was faint. He was leaning in, so close she could smell the rain still on his hair.
“There!”
Suddenly, her seat tilted back so fast Poppy let out a yelp and grabbed hold of him for balance.
“Whoa.” Cooper braced against the seat. For a moment, they were almost horizontal. His blue eyes were dark in the shadows, and she was so close, she could feel his breath on her cheek, hot. If she just slid her arms around his neck . . . The thought slipped recklessly into Poppy’s mind, and her gaze dropped, drawn to his mouth. His lips were just inches away—
“Sorry.” Cooper pulled himself up and shifted back to the driver’s seat. “I told you it was temperamental.”
“Right.” Poppy gulped. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Cooper grabbed another handful of popcorn. He was staring straight at the screen, like nothing had even happened. “Let’s enjoy the show.”
Poppy had always loved Hitchcock, but by the time the credits rolled, she couldn’t have told you anything that happened on screen. She’d spent the movie sneaking furtive glances at Cooper, wondering if he felt the electric tension between them, or if it was all in her mind.
None of this would have happened if he hadn’t kissed her. It was like how they said a bell could never be un-rung; he’d kissed her, and now she couldn’t be un-kissed. In an instant, he’d gone from being Cooper, the gruff neighbor keeping her up when she needed to sleep, to Cooper. The man who had pulled her into his arms and made her feel something she hadn’t in a long, long time. And for all their casual conversation that night, Poppy still knew something between them had shifted, and it wasn’t ever shifting back.
“What did you think?”
Cooper’s voice pulled her back, and she realized the movie was over.
The other cars were rolling out, and the concession boy was pulling up the screen.
“Oh. Great. It was good,” Poppy blurted. “Thanks for bringing me.”
“Any time.” Cooper turned on the engine and joined the snaking line heading back across the field to the highway. They drove back towards Sweetbriar in companionable silence, but Poppy couldn’t help but feel the tension still crackling between them. Unless she was delusional and conjuring something out of thin air. She glanced over again. Cooper looked perfectly at ease, like he was probably thinking about rivets and hammers, or whatever sports game was on tomorrow night.
“Feel any better about that book?” he asked.
She sighed, and he shot her a sympathetic look. “I guess not.”
“I’ll figure it out. I have to,” she vowed. “I just need to decide what it’s about. Not the plot,” she explained, “but the theme.”
“What do you mean?” Cooper asked as he pulled up back outside the cottage.
“It’s hard to explain, but there’s always a question I wind up asking in my writing, or some argument I want to explore,” Poppy said. The truck stopped, but she didn’t move. “My last book was about forgiveness—how you can heal and move on with someone you love. But when I try to think about what matters to me right now, the message I want to send my readers, I just come up a blank. It’s like everything that’s happened with Owen and the wedding just drained away my inspiration. I don’t know how to get that back,” she said sadly. “Not when I wonder sometimes if chasing my soulmate is just a childish dream.”
Poppy stopped herself, too late. Listen to her, blabbering her deepest insecurities—to someone who had already made it perfectly clear he thought she was a naïve con-artist peddling lies. “Anyway, thanks for this. I needed to get my mind off everything.” She opened the door and got down, wanting to put as much distance as possible between herself and that confession, but Cooper followed, shutting off the engine to walk her to the door.
“Maybe that’s your question,” he said finally. Poppy turned. “How you can keep believing in something, even when you don’t have any proof it’s going to work out,” he explained. “And what about if you believe it?” he added. “If you think you have everything, and it doesn’t work out. Are you supposed to just do it all over again, like nothing ever happened? Offer up your heart for someone to stomp all over because, what, they might be the real one this time?”
Poppy saw the emotion flashing across his features, then he shrugged, looking self-conscious. “Or, something like that. What do I know?”
“No . . . you’re right,” she said slowly. She was wondering if her faith in happily-ever-after would ever be rewarded—or if she was just a foolish romantic for hanging onto that dream. Well, plenty of her readers could relate to that dilemma. And what Cooper said about starting over . . . that was the real risk. The highest stakes of all. To love, even when you’d been hurt before. Even when you knew the price of watching it all fall apart around you.
For the first time in months, Poppy felt a shiver of inspiration. Cooper was right. The story had been inside her all along. She’d been holding back, not wanting to throw all her personal issues onto the page, but maybe that was the only choice. Write through her fears and insecurities, and see if she could find the answers that way.
Relief crashed over her. She wasn’t doomed, after all.
“Thank you!” Poppy threw her arms around Cooper, smothering him in a hug. “Seriously, thank you!”
Cooper froze, clearly surprised. For a moment, his body was solid against hers, and even separated by their layers of bulky winter wear, Poppy could swear she felt the heat from his body, all the way to her bones.
Her breath caught. They were back on her porch, the place it had happened. Only this time, she knew what was coming.
She knew how good it would be to taste his lips again.
Releasing him, Poppy slowly stepped back to solid ground. She caught his eyes, and she could see it there: the same desire that was singing in her veins. A low heat burning, ready to flare brighter in the dark.
Oh God. This was it. Time seemed to slow as she parted her lips and took a breath, and leaned in to—
“I’ll see you then.”
She felt the gust of cold air replacing his nearness as Cooper stepped back. He jammed his hands in his coat pockets, looking at the ground. “Good luck with the writing,” he said gruffly, then turned and hurried back to his truck before she could get a word out.
Poppy quickly turned and let herself in, slamming the door shut behind her. She sank back against the solid wood and took a trembling breath.
What just happened there?
Nothing. A whole lot of nothing—exactly the way it should be, she reminded herself. She hadn’t come here to get entangled in romantic drama with Cooper, she was here to leave all of that behind her and work. And for the first time in too long, Poppy finally had words dancing in her brain, sentences waiting on the tips of her fingers.
No more distractions, however tempting.
She grabbed her computer, turned on the study light, and got to work.
10
It rained all week, and Poppy loved every minute of it. With the outside world damp and grey, she had the perfect excuse to hide herself away at the cottage again—except this time, instead of staring at her blank screen with a sense of looming dread, she was writing.
All day long.
This was when she loved her work: when a story finally took flight, and she was so caught up in spilling the words onto the page that she didn’t even notice the time passing. She surfaced briefly for food, and to shower, but aside from the essentials, Poppy blocked everything out and just wrote. No distractions, no calls; she ignored her emails, let her phone go to voicemail, and just threw herself into the book.
It felt good to be back on her game again. Sure, the chapters were messy, and she was sprinting to make up for lost time, but that crushing panic was finally gone, and it felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
Speaking of . . . Poppy paused to massage her aching neck. She’d been hunched over her laptop for days, and even though she tried to take breaks to stretch and walk around, she felt the tension running tightly across her shoulders and back. She glanced outside. The rain had finally passed, and she’d woken that morning to find clear skies and a bright horizon. Maybe she should take a real rest, and walk into town. She’d pretty much lived off store cupboard pasta and soup all week, and she needed fresh groceries and supplies if she was going to keep up this pace.
The phone rang, and Poppy reached for her cellphone before she realized it wasn’t hers, but the landline. She picked up the retro red handset Aunt June had in the corner. “Hello?”
“Hi, Poppy,” a friendly voice said. “It’s Mackenzie, we met the other day? Caffeine addict, fan-girl . . .”
“Hey.” Poppy smiled. “I remember, how’s it going?”
“I’m great. I didn’t have your cell number, but I figured I’d give you a call,” Mackenzie said. “My book club is meeting tomorrow, and I know you’re probably busy, but Franny’s made her plum cobbler, and it would be a crime for you to miss out.”
Poppy hesitated. She didn’t want to interrupt her progress on the book, but she knew a break would be good for her. She’d been holed up for so long, she hadn’t had a chance to meet any more Sweetbriar citizens, and Mackenzie seemed like fun.
Besides, home-baked plum cobbler was too good to resist.
“I’d love to,” she said.
“Yay!” Mackenzie exclaimed. “It’ll be fun, I promise. It’s my turn to host, so just come by Fired Earth around four. It’s the pottery studio on Main Street.”
“I know it.” Poppy smiled. “Can I bring anything?”
“No, you’re good,” Mackenzie said. “Unless you have a bottle of wine or two knocking around.”
“Wine?” Poppy was surprised—especially because they were meeting in the afternoon.
&
nbsp; “Like I said, we’re not your usual book club.”
Poppy laughed. “Wine it is then. See you later.”
She hung up, smiling. With all the work she’d done, she’d earned some drinks and cobbler tomorrow—and maybe the chance to make a few friends, too. Aunt June would be back from her cruise in a week, but Poppy was already thinking about staying longer, and taking her time to enjoy the local area and all its attractions.
Like the attraction next door.
Poppy listened to the sound of hammering and tried not to imagine Cooper at work. They’d been on a rain break all week, but he’d arrived with his crew first thing in the morning, and Poppy had taken all her self-control not to find a reason to cross that property divide and say hello.
She couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Ever since that night at the drive-in, feeling that strange electric tension shimmering in the air, Poppy hadn’t been able to get him off her mind. Her days were filled with writing, but when she closed her laptop at the end of the night and climbed into bed, somehow, thoughts of him were always waiting. The solid, confident movement of his body. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
His kiss.
She shivered at the memory. He was probably working there now, wearing that pale blue T-shirt that brought out the blue in his eyes . . . and those jeans that hugged his ass just right . . . his muscles rippling under the fabric of—
Nope. Poppy dragged her mind out of the gutter and back to her screen. She was clearly rebounding from her failed engagement—looking for love in all the wrong places. And Cooper Nicholson couldn’t be more wrong.
There was a knock at the door, and Poppy leapt up, glad for another distraction. “Coming!” she called. She went to go open the door, and stopped dead when she saw who was waiting on the other side. “Cooper.” She flushed, wondering for a second if she’d conjured him up with all her lustful thoughts. “Hi.”