The One Real Thing (Hart's Boardwalk) (16 page)

“I am. Emery Saunders is so shy it’s painful to be around her.”

I noted his discomfort at even just the mention of her name. It surprised me. He seemed like the kind of man who was just cocky enough to be comfortable around all women. “She just takes a little time to come around. But her place is wonderful.”

“Her coffee is definitely good, I’ll give you that.”

“Her coffee, Antonio’s hot dogs, Bailey’s view, and your Long Islands.” I tallied them.

“What’s that?” He grinned curiously.

“My favorite things in Hartwell so far.”

“Not the people?” he teased, squeezing my hands.

I laughed because I liked how he teased me, even if it did complicate my feelings, and I teased back by not giving him an answer.

All was going according to plan.

Although Cooper hadn’t intended to walk out on the beach the other night and take the kiss he’d been itching for since he’d met Jessica, he was glad he’d done it. That kiss lived up to all his expectations and not even this fuck-buddy situation she had going on with some other guy was going to stop him from getting to know her.

And while he was getting to know her, he was crumbling her defenses.

Cooper planned to seduce Jessica right out of friendship and into his bed. Permanently.

She was smart; she was sassy; she was fun and cute and sexy all wrapped up in one irresistible package. And, Jesus, she could kiss. If the kiss was anything to go by, sex between them would be explosive. More than that, Cooper liked her. He liked how he’d shared a problem with her about work and not only had she listened, she’d even given him advice.

He liked that, despite how strong she appeared, he now knew there was something really vulnerable about her. He didn’t know what it was, except he’d caught a glimpse of it when he’d realized she wasn’t happy. It made her less perfect, more human.

He liked how protective he’d felt in that moment and how he’d wanted to change the subject to take the sadness out of her eyes.

The strange thing was Jessica had seemed startled to consider whether or not her life made her happy.

“
I don’t know
,” she had said in answer to his question. “
I don’t know
.”

Well, Cooper knew. The doc was not happy. He could see something was missing for her. Every time she talked about her life in Wilmington she was factual, disconnected, and she quickly changed the subject. But when she spoke about Hartwell she was animated and happy.

Cooper was suspicious that Jessica Huntington was falling in love with his town—a whirlwind romance—and she didn’t even know everything about it yet.

He found himself at Bailey’s place a few blocks from the inn, on the north side. Bailey had arranged a big dinner for Jess since it was one of her last few days in Hartwell. Ira and Iris had joined Tom, Jess, Bailey, and him.

“When you said we were having salad I nearly died,” Ira cracked at Bailey. “But this is damn good.”

Bailey beamed from the head of the dining table. “I’m glad you like it, Ira.”

Ira was right. The crab and apple salad with the crab cake fritters Bailey had put together for the main course was a hit.

“You have to give me the recipe for this,” Jessica said.

She’d moaned at the first bite and put heat in his blood, but Cooper was getting used to that feeling around her. That last walk they’d taken on the boardwalk had been so thick with sexual tension it had taken everything within him not to throw her over his shoulder and carry her back to his place.

“Sure,” Bailey agreed.

“I mean . . . not to use,” Jessica said. “Just to pin it to my fridge and pretend that it’s a possibility I could ever make anything this good.”

“You can’t cook?” Iris said, frowning at the thought.

The doc flushed a little. “Not really.”

“You can save lives, but you can’t cook?”

“You can cook, but you can’t save lives?” Jess countered.

Iris’s frowned turned to a grin as her husband chuckled at her side. “I like you. You remind me of my Ivy.”

“That is a compliment of the highest order,” Bailey assured the doc.

Jessica smiled that pretty smile of hers. “Thank you.” But when her eyes met Cooper’s across the table, that pretty smile wilted a little.

Cooper didn’t take it negatively.

He knew by the jealousy she couldn’t hide on the beach when she thought he was going to take Leanne up on her offer, and by the way she’d rushed to get into the inn and away from him after their nondate, that she was feeling exactly what he was feeling. She was scared shitless about it.

He thought maybe he should be, too.

But she had fired something in him, and he couldn’t ignore it.

“So, Jessica,” Tom said, “are you planning on returning to our little town anytime soon? I know Bailey would love that.”

She gave Bailey a wistful smile. “I will definitely be back, but I work such long hours I couldn’t say when. I do know that my phone bill is about to go sky-high.”

Bailey gave her a sad smile. “I’m going to miss you being at my inn every day. I feel like you’ve been there forever.”

“Me, too.”

Cooper watched the friends share a long look.

It was the way of it sometimes. Like it had been for him and Jack as kids. They were friends from the moment they met.

He immediately threw the thought away.

“Coop, I went into Dr. Duggan’s office the other day to see if they were looking for anyone after his daughter left. They are,” Bailey said, her eyes round to playact a
Help me!
look. “And he said he’d be happy to talk to Jess about it.”

The doc groaned across from Cooper. “We talked about this all day yesterday.”

Cooper frowned at her downcast expression and looked sternly
at Bailey. He didn’t want Jess to feel coerced into staying somewhere she’d only been vacationing for three weeks. He wanted her to stay longer in Hartwell because—even if a little crazy—it felt right. “Don’t.”

Bailey opened her mouth to protest, but Iris cut her off. “I want the recipe for this, too. We could add it to the menu.”

“You’re not stealing my recipe for the restaurant,” Bailey said, sufficiently diverted.

“What if we called it Bailey’s crab apple salad and fritters?” Ira offered.

Bailey considered it and then shook her head. “Sorry, no. We serve this at the inn. I can’t have my competition serving the same dish.” She frowned. “Anyhow, it’s not Italian.”

“Oh, right.” Iris grinned mischievously.

“Coop, I saw Cat the other day with Joey. That boy is getting bigger every time I see him,” Ira said.

He felt the doc’s curious gaze and answered her silent question. “My sister, Cat, and her eight-year-old son, Joey.”

“Oh.”

He looked back at Ira. “He’s skipping a grade, did she tell you that?” he said proudly. Unfortunately, Joey’s dad had been a one-night stand, a tourist whose name Cat couldn’t even remember. Not so unfortunately for Cooper, that meant he got to be the man in Joey’s life and it filled a hole in his own in a way that he’d be forever grateful for. His nephew was the nicest kid and he was smart as a whip.

“She did.” Ira grinned. “Proud as punch. And she should be. That boy is being raised right. All ‘yes, sirs’ and ‘no, sirs.’ You don’t hear that much anymore.”

“And he is your spitting image, Coop,” Iris said. “I swear that boy has got more of you in him than his own mother.”

It was true. Joey had inherited his and Cat’s blue eyes and dark hair, but he looked just like Cooper had when he was his age. Except Joey was smarter and more talented.

“Cat was saying he’s doing really well with his piano lessons,” Ira said.

He nodded even though that was an understatement. The kid was a little virtuoso. When he was four Cat had the piano she’d inherited from their mom tuned and refurbished because Joey was so fascinated by it. He just took to it. Cooper had offered to pay for piano lessons, and the teacher had just recently suggested Joey audition for a private tutor in Dover who had once been a tutor at the New England Conservatory and had a high success rate of getting his kids into the best music schools in the United States.

He was very picky about who he worked with and he liked to start with them when they were young like Joey.

He also didn’t come cheap.

But Cooper had promised Cat he’d do whatever it took to make it work if this guy took Joey on as a student.

“Plays ‘well’,” Bailey scoffed at the word choice. “Ira, you should hear him play. He’s eight and—” She made an exploding noise as she made a bursting gesture with her hands near her head. “Seriously. Blows my mind.”

“He sounds amazing,” Jessica said quietly and Cooper’s gaze got all tangled up in hers again. “You must be very proud.”

“The proudest,” he said gruffly.

“They make everything better, don’t they?” she said.

He guessed she was thinking about her goddaughter and he found himself wanting to know more about the girl, whose kid she was, and why those people meant so much to her. “Yeah,” he answered instead. “They do.”

“Thank you for dinner,” the doc said, giving Bailey a hug. “And for everything. Best vacation ever.”

“It’s not over yet,” Bailey said, sounding almost panicked about it. “We still have a few days.”

The doc grinned at her. “That’s true. We’ll make the most of them.”

“I’ll walk you back, Doc,” he offered.

Her grin wilted a little. “We all will.” She gestured to Iris and Ira.

Iris smirked. “Oh, we just live a block over. We don’t live at the boardwalk.”

“Right. Of course.” She turned back to Cooper. “You don’t either, right? So I don’t want you to go out of your way.”

“You’re not walking back to the inn alone at night, Doc. We’ve been over that.” He grinned as she flushed at the reminder of their make-out session on the beach.

She huffed. “I’m perfectly capable of doing so.”

“Not arguing about it.”

“What happened to the enlightened gentleman who let me pay for dinner the other day?”

“Splitting the cost of a date is different from seeing to your safety.”

“Date?” Bailey’s ears perked up.

“Fine, you can walk me home,” Jessica said abruptly, cutting off Bailey’s curiosity. “’Bye, all!” She hurried out of the house.

Cooper was met by four amused stares. He smiled back at them and Bailey looked ready to burst with delight. She thought they were a tag team.

They weren’t.

Cooper still wanted the doc to make up her own mind.

Didn’t mean teasing her wasn’t fun as hell.

He hurried to catch up with her outside. “Hold your horses, Doc.”

She turned to wait for him. The sadness he caught on her face kicked the amusement right out of him.

They walked together toward the inn in silence until Cooper couldn’t take it anymore. It needed to be talked about. “You happy back in Wilmington, Doc?”

He felt her tense beside him. She suddenly threw her hands up in seeming frustration. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know. But I do
know that my life
is
back in Wilmington, Cooper. My job is there. And I’m good at my job. Those women need someone like me. I made a commitment to my job that I can’t just break.”

“And what about you?” he argued. “What about what you need?”

Her only answer was this pained expression he didn’t quite understand.

It was full of so much hurt he decided to drop it.

Silence fell between them, but the usual camaraderie he enjoyed so much between them was gone. As the moments passed, he was aware of everything about her. The heat of her body close to his, the quick rise and fall of her chest that told him she was just as affected by his closeness, the little tremble in her full bottom lip he didn’t think she was even aware of.

The previous night, he’d dreamed about her.

She was in his bar like the day they’d met. No one else around but them.

He’d fucked her on top of one of the tables.

Fast. Furious.

So hot.

Cooper had woken up only to jump into the shower. He’d closed his eyes and remembered the dream as he took care of himself.

It was empty, so fucking empty, in comparison to what reality could be.

His dick tightened in his jeans thinking about it, his gaze shooting to Jessica’s mouth. It was time to remind her what was possible between them.

Cooper grabbed her wrist and pushed her up against the side of Dahlia’s gift shop. The alley between it and George’s place was dark and silent except for their heavy breathing. He pinned her in, his hands braced on the wall at either side of her head.

Jessica stared up at him with those big, dark eyes. “Coop—”

He cut off her coming question with his mouth just like last time.

She tasted of the mint ice cream they’d had for dessert and something else. Something all Jess.

She whimpered against his kiss a second before he felt her tongue touch his and that was it.

He was lost.

His kiss turned hungry as a feeling of desperation came over him and he pressed his body down the length of hers. The lush feel of her mouth mingled with the weight of her breasts pressed to him was enough on its own to fire him up, but when she wrapped her arms around his neck and tightened her fingers in his hair to draw him closer, he was done for.

He gripped her ass in his hand, urging her closer, his dick straining against her belly. His hand slid down to the back of her thigh and he hiked one of her legs up against his hip so he could be where he needed to be, fitting snugly between her thighs.

Fuck, he wished she were wearing a skirt.

“Cooper.” She breathed out his name, breaking the kiss. Her head fell back and her eyes fluttered with the sensation of him rubbing against her, mimicking sex. Her cheeks were flushed as she moaned and dug her hands into his shoulders to hold on. She flexed her hips against his and he felt his nerve endings catch fire.