Some Girls Do (Outback Heat Book 1) (3 page)

But that was nothing in comparison to the pickle she found herself in now.

Finally he took her hand and Lacey’s pulse leapt at the contact. She was reminded of how his hand had slid into hers at this very bar a week ago.

Of what had happened after.

“Nice to meet you,
Lacey
,” he said, his face tight, his blue eyes glacial.

“Sit, sit,” Ethan urged and she automatically folded herself into the bench seat. “Can I get you a Coke or something?”

“I’ll have a Corona,” she said, hyperaware of Coop all tense and brooding opposite her.

“Lace …”

“Damn it, Ethan, I’m nineteen years old. I don’t want a bloody Coke. I want a beer.”

Ethan turned to Coop. “Tell her beer is evil.”

Coop shrugged. “Your sister’s right. She’s nineteen. Get her a damn beer.”

Ethan shook his head. “You’re supposed to be on my side,” he grumbled as he ambled off to the bar.

Lacey felt Coop’s glare right down to her toes. “You’re
nineteen
?”

She shrugged. Nothing she could say would make up for her lie. “Would you have slept with me if you’d known?”

Coop recoiled as if she’d struck him. “Of course not!”

“Well then, wouldn’t
that
have been a tragedy?”

He raked his hand through his hair. “Oh God,” he groaned, “I’m going to hell. And do you know how?” he demanded. “Your brother is,
quite rightly
, going to kill me and, then, when he personally drags my sorry ass to the fiery depth of eternal damnation, he’s going to kill me all over again.”

Lacey blinked. And they said women were prone to flights of fancy. “Don’t be dramatic.”

If anything his eyes grew even cooler as he leaned in. “Guys
do not
sleep with their friends’ sisters. Especially if they’re
nineteen
.”

Lacey shivered at the low certainty in his voice as he dropped his forehead in his palms and cradled it. “Fuck … what have I done?”

Lacey glanced over at the bar. Ethan was still waiting to place his order, his back to them. She reached across the table, placed her hand on his arm. “Coop.”

He recoiled from her. “Don’t touch me.”

Stung by his rejection, Lacey withdrew her hand as he speared her to the seat with a hostile gaze. “For God’s sake, what are you doing picking up strangers in bars, going back to their places?” he demanded, his voice low. “I
know
Ethan taught you better than that.”

Lacey bristled. She had a hard time reconciling this distant, angry man with the easy lover who had made her come her brains out all night. She already had three older men in her life telling her what to do—applying some sexist double standard where men got to drink and screw around but women had to be virtuous and sit on a freaking shandy all night.

Well fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

“But it’s okay for you to pick up a stranger in a bar?”

“I’m thirty-two years old,
Lacey
and a …”

“A what?” she demanded as Coop left his sentence hanging. “A guy?”

“Yes,” he shot back. “A
guy
. So shoot me for being some sexist Neanderthal prick, but I can handle myself.”

Lacey snorted at his assumption. “If you think a girl with three brothers can’t handle herself then you’re delusional.”

“Well
that
brother,” Coop pointed towards the bar, “doesn’t think so because
I’ve
just been tasked with looking out for you.”

Lacey blinked at the revelation and turned to shoot daggers at her brother. “I don’t need you looking out for me.” She saw Ethan striding towards them and glanced at Coop. “You’re not going to do something honourable like tell him about us, are you?”

The look on his face would have been comical had the situation not been so serious. “Do I
look
like I took a crazy pill today?” he hissed as Ethan strode the last three strides to the table.

“You’re deep in conversation over here,” Ethan said as he sat placing her drink down. “Pleased you’re getting along. I’ve asked Coop to keep a bit of an eye on you now he’s back in town.

“Yeah,” Lacey said, lips tight. “So I hear.” She took three long swallows of her beer.

Ethan looked from one to the other. “She’s pissed right?” he said to Coop.

“Oh, yeah.”

“I don’t
need
a babysitter
or
a bodyguard.”
Especially not this one.

“We’ll all feel a lot better knowing that Coop is here for you to call on if you need him,” Ethan said in his calm, cop voice that Lacey hated with a passion. He held out his hand.

“Give me your phone.”

Lacey shook her head mutinously. “No.”

“You do know I’m going to text you a dozen times a day with Coop’s number, right? It’s going to be much easier if I just put it in your contacts now.”

Lacey didn’t doubt her brother’s determination for a moment. “What makes you think I won’t delete it the second I leave here?”

“Because Coop’s a mechanic and as that ancient Mini of yours breaks down with alarming regularity you’re going to need him more than you know. Unless you can suddenly afford the cost of repairs on your meagre salary?”

She doubted Ethan would be so gung-ho if she knew Coop had already done a little tinkering under her hood, but he was right—her Sunday shift at the café barely covered her living expenses.

“Fine.” She passed her phone over.

*     *     *

Coop dictated his
details as Lacey glared at her brother and Ethan punched them into her phone. “I have to go,” she said when Ethan handed it back.

“You only just got here,” Ethan protested.

“I told you I couldn’t stay long.”

Ethan moved out of the booth and Coop got to his feet, good manners overriding the antipathy burning in his gut. She held out her hand to him, her gaze not quite reaching his. “Nice meeting you.”

Coop gave a perfunctory shake and let go. “Likewise.”

“Now remember,” an oblivious Ethan continued as he gave his sister a quick hug, “Coop’s your man if you need anything.
Anything.
Right, Coop?” he said, clapping his friend on the back.

Coop tried not to think about the broad parameters of
anything
. Keeping his distance was probably the best thing all round. Because whatever had happened between them last week could
never ever
be repeated.

Just his luck. The best time of his life was with a woman so completely off limits she may as well have been a nun.

“Right,” he said forcing a smile as he realised Ethan was still waiting for confirmation.

And then,
thankfully
, she was gone. But the lingering knowledge of his transgression wasn’t.

He’d slept with his best friend’s sister.

So going to hell.

‡

Two and half years later …

C
oop woke with
a start, disorientated for a moment, a strange sense of foreboding sitting tight in his chest. Had the dream woken him again? But as the layers of deep sleep fell away a noise intruded and he realised someone was knocking at his door. He frowned, glancing at the luminous face of his bed-side clock.

Two-thirty.

What the? Who in hell would be knocking on his door in the middle of the night? He got up and found his trackpants, pulling them up over his bare ass as he strode out of his room through the darkness of his apartment to his door.

It had better not be the party crowd four doors down who got loaded most Friday nights and were fond of practical jokes.

He checked the peephole, his uncharitable thoughts screeching to a halt as a soaking wet and dishevelled Lacey stood there blinking back at him.

“
Fuck.
” He pressed his forehead against the door.

He should have guessed it was her. Despite her protestations that day with Ethan about not needing him, it wasn’t the first time she’d disturbed him at ungodly hours of the night. Although it had been a good couple of months since he’d heard from her at all apart from his weekly
are you okay
duty text.

He’d learned with Lacey that no news was good news.

His pulse spiked as he tore the door open. “Lacey. Jesus!” She was dripping on his doormat, her clothes soaked, her filmy shirt plastered to her breasts and belly, her hair hanging in straggly dripping strips around her head, droplets of water clinging to eyelashes and running down her face and bare arms.

“What the hell? Are you okay?”

Had she walked here in the rain? In the middle of the night?

Then he noticed blood at her temple and a hot fist lodged itself high and hard against his diaphragm. “Crap.” He reached for her. “You’re bleeding,” he said, his fingers probing the area. “What happened, are you hurt?” A sudden sick feeling assailed him. “Did someone hurt you?” he demanded.

He’d
kill
whoever did this to her.

“N-no. Nothing like that.”

A surge of relief ran hot through Coop’s veins as he ran his hands over her shoulders, down her chest and ribs, across her belly, up her back. Where was the blood coming from? “Tell me where you’re injured.”

“J-j-just my h-hand,” she said raising the violently trembling body part to reveal a slowly oozing cut.

It was then that he noticed her teeth were chattering, her lips were practically blue and goosebumps the size of confetti covered her arms.

“You’re bloody freezing,” he muttered as he yanked her inside and hustled her into the warmth of his temperature-controlled apartment. He left her standing in the living room while he went to get towels.

When he arrived back he threw one around her shoulders and rubbed it up and down her arms to try and warm her.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” she said looking at him through spiky eyelashes as he rubbed. “I d-don’t know how I g-got here.”

And then she promptly burst into tears. Or maybe she’d been crying all along and he hadn’t been able to tell from her state of general drippiness.

Coop sighed, reluctant to do what any other human being would—hug her. He’d spent the last two-and-a-half years avoiding any kind of physical closeness with her. But he couldn’t hold out against such wretchedness. Resigned to his fate, he pulled her into him.

“Jesus, you’re
freezing
,” he said, as she settled like a block of freaking ice against his naked chest, his nipples responding to the contact.

“Why don’t you have a jacket?” he asked.

“I d-d-did,” she sobbed.

“Okay, okay. Shh, shh,” he murmured, just holding her, transferring his body heat to her as she huddled in the cocoon formed by the thick fluffy towel and his chest.

He wasn’t sure how long she cried, but he was also damp by the time her weeping settled to the odd hiccupy sob. “You okay now?” he murmured.

She nodded. “Sorry.”

Coop pulled back slightly so he could look into the two pools of molasses that had sucked him in from day one. “Why don’t you go and have a warm shower? Then I’ll fix your hand.”

She nodded and Coop knew something was most definitely up. Lacey wasn’t this docile—especially with him. Begrudgingly thankful and generally antagonistic seemed to be her two states of being where he was concerned. Unless he counted tipsy and flirty; but he tried not to think about those few occasions.

Never
, ever
had she been so submissive, like the will to take even another step had been sucked right out of her.

“Come on,” he said leading her down the hallway, grabbing two more towels from his supply and striding into the bathroom. When she just stood looking at the shower cubicle like she’d never seen one before, he reached in and turned on the taps. A plume of steam rose quickly from the pounding spray.

“Get in,” he said. “I’ll bring you some dry clothes.”

She didn’t say or do anything, just stared at the steam billowing out, as if showering was a completely foreign concept. He left quickly hoping she’d figure it out because there was no way in hell he was stripping her out of her wet clothes. It was bad enough he could see right through her blouse to the bra beneath.

When Coop returned with a T-shirt and boxers, which would no doubt be hopelessly big, the door was pulled to and when he cracked it open to place the clothes just inside, he noticed a pile of sodden garments discarded on the floor.