The One Real Thing (Hart's Boardwalk) (38 page)

Bailey stared at me, her face pale, eyes gone round with a sadness that turned to tears as I told her my story.

Cooper had assured me that I didn’t owe my story to anyone—but also that he knew Bailey and he knew Bailey loved me. He said if I told my friend, all she would do was accept me and help me realize that I wasn’t destined to spend my whole life being rejected by the people I loved. He’d also urged me to contact Theresa.

“She’s your family, Jess. Give her a chance.”

I’d decided to be brave and take his advice.

First, I was starting with Bailey.

When I was done telling her everything I had gone through, she just shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks, and then she reached for me, hauling me close for a hug so tight I almost couldn’t breathe.

Bailey pulled back to cup my face in an almost motherly way. “How?” she whispered. “How can someone like you have been through so much?” She gave me a watery smile. “Bravest person I know, Jess. Bravest person I know.”

Relief poured through me. It was my turn to hug the oxygen out of her. “Thank you,” I choked out.

“I can’t believe you’ve been holding on to this so long.” She pulled back. “I wish you’d come to me sooner just so I could knock some sense into you about Cooper.”

I laughed. “Yeah. I’m an idiot. But I’m over that now.”

She grinned. “Good. So . . . about the inn? Does this mean I’ve got you back?”

I gave her a shaky, apologetic smile. “Actually . . . I was thinking about applying for the position at Dr. Duggan’s clinic.”

“Really?” She grabbed my hands in hers, looking genuinely delighted.

I laughed again. “Yes. I’m guessing you’re okay with that?”

“Of course I am. Jess! You’re a doctor! Not an innkeeper. Not that I won’t miss the help,” she hurried to assure me, “I’ll just need to find someone else I can trust.”

“You will,” I assured her back.

“So this is exciting.” She gave me a wicked smile. “You have no idea what you’re in for as a small-town doctor.”

“What do you mean?” I said, concerned by the mischief in her eyes.

“Being a small-town doc is being a full-time doc. No matter where you are—out for lunch, canoodling with Coop on the beach—people will come up to you with all their ailments, expecting a diagnosis.”

Not sure I liked the sound of that, I made a face.

“You just have to be firm from the get-go,” she said. “You tell them, ‘Come see me in my office; I’m not working right now.’”

“Okay.” That still didn’t make me feel any less worried about it.

“And of course if I’m with you, you won’t have to say a thing because I’ll tell the idiots to fuck off.”

I snorted because I knew she meant it and that she would.

“So,” she said, letting out a sigh, “you and Coop are going to be okay?”

The truth was, I would never forget the way he’d looked at me or the beautiful words he’d said to me the night before.

It hurts like hell knowing you’ve seen what you have, done what you have, but it came from a place of survival, strength, bravery, and loyalty. I don’t see anything but beauty in that.

I didn’t think it was possible to love him any more than I already did.

“We’re going to be great . . . but Cooper has a problem.” This was the second reason I’d come to Bailey. Cooper had said he would talk to Vaughn, but I was thinking I might already have an idea how to stop Devlin from going after Cooper’s liquor license. The only way his liquor license wouldn’t be renewed was if Devlin had bribed someone on the city board of licenses. I had an idea how to change the mind of the person who had been bribed. I laid out what was happening to Bailey and what my idea was. “Can you get everyone to meet at Cooper’s place tomorrow morning before it opens?”

Bailey nodded her head, looking fierce and determined. “You bet your ass I can. There is no damn way Ian Devlin is getting away with this shit.”

I nodded back, feeling just as fierce. Cooper loved his bar and I loved Cooper.

There was a snowball’s chance in hell of me letting anyone take what he loved away from him.

Loading the last of my stuff into my car, I turned in surprise at the sound of gravel crunching under wheels.

Vaughn’s beautiful but conspicuous dark blue Aston Martin Vanquish was heading up his driveway toward me. I leaned against my car and waited for him.

He got out, dressed as always in a tailored three-piece suit. He slipped off his sunglasses as he walked toward me and I wondered at how much in love with Cooper I had to be for Vaughn Tremaine not to affect me.

I smiled at him, perfectly at ease around him now that I knew he wasn’t the cold, hard businessman he seemed to want everyone to believe he was.

“You’re leaving,” he said, gesturing to the suitcase that was now in my trunk.

“Yeah. I was going to swing by the hotel to say thank you again. I really appreciated you letting me stay.”

He waved me off. “Cooper told me you two have reconciled. He also told me about the little problem with Devlin.”

“About that—”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Actually, I’d really rather you didn’t until we try out my plan first.”

Vaughn frowned. “Cooper didn’t say you had a plan.”

“Because Cooper doesn’t know about my plan.”

“And why is that?”

“Because Cooper won’t want to bother anyone else about ‘his’ problem. But Devlin is a problem for everyone on that boardwalk. So . . . tomorrow . . . be at Cooper’s at ten a.m.”

“What are you up to, Dr. Huntington?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling quite pleased with myself. “A little something called community backbone.”

Cooper had made space in his closet, and in his bureau, for me.

God, I loved that man.

But it wasn’t enough space for all my stuff, I mused. He was still holding all my furniture and clothes in the garage he owned on the outskirts of town. I’d like my clothes, but that meant possibly converting his second bedroom into a dressing room.

Hmm. I wondered how he’d feel about that.

As for the rest of my stuff . . . well, I liked Cooper’s place as it was, but maybe we could take a look at my stuff and see if anything would fit.

The rest we could sell.

“You’re moving in with him?” Matthew had said, sounding a little shocked, after I’d called to give him a rundown on what was going on in my life. He sounded relieved when I told him that I’d confessed my past to Cooper.

“He asked me to move in. I know it sounds fast, maybe even crazy, but for us . . . it’s not, Matthew. It feels right. I don’t want to
waste any more time. I just want to be with him and by some miracle he wants to be with me.”

“Of course he does. He’s a lucky bastard to have you.”

“And he believes that.”

“Good.” Matthew sighed. “Well, now I really need to come out there and meet this guy.”

“You do. And you are welcome anytime. I’d love to see Perry and introduce her to Coop’s nephew, Joey.”

“Definitely. I’m happy for you, Jess. You have no idea.”

That got me all teary eyed because no matter how happy or sad I was, this guy was always there for me. “Yeah, I do. Come see me soon, Matt.”

“I will, sweetheart. I promise.”

“I’m going to try to find my aunt Theresa,” I told him. “Cooper thinks I should give her a chance.”

Matt was silent on the other end of the line.

“Matt?”

“You don’t have to look very far,” he finally said. “I have her number.”

Shock froze me to the spot. “You do?”

“When you shut her out, she came to me. I’ve been keeping her up to date on your life over the years. I wasn’t trying to betray you, Jess. I was just . . . She loves you. She misses you.”

Tears clogged my throat. “My God,” I whispered. “I’ve been such a fool.”

“You were scared. She understands that.”

“Will you . . . will you text me her number?”

“Right away.”

And he did. But I didn’t call Theresa immediately. I had to build myself up to that. So I spent the rest of the day unpacking, then I dropped by Paul Duggan’s office to submit my résumé, and now I was back, hanging around Cooper’s. Well, technically, I was hanging around my and Cooper’s place.

Cooper and Jessica’s place.

It had a great ring to it.

Lying on the couch, reading a book, trying to stay awake until Cooper came home from closing the bar, I thought about how much more amplified my feelings for him were now that he knew everything.

I’d been in love with him before.

But now what I felt was so powerful it was a little overwhelming. There had not been a second of the day that I hadn’t thought about him, and those thoughts put good butterflies in my belly.

At the sound of a car pulling into the drive I sat up, waiting in surprise as I heard the heavy footfalls that belonged to a tall, rugged, flannel-wearing, blue-eyed guy.

I grinned as Cooper stepped inside the house.

He stopped at the sight of me, seeming just to drink me in.

“You’re home early,” I said softly.

Cooper walked toward me and I recognized the heat in his eyes. “Got Riley to cover again.”

I felt that familiar luscious flip in my lower belly and the answering tingle between my legs. “Needed something, did you?” I whispered.

His answer was to take hold of my hand and pull me up off the couch. And then he was leading me by the hand, hurrying us up the stairs and into his bedroom. He spun around and I couldn’t even speak, I was that lust dazed already, as he stripped off his clothes and then came at me. I was naked before I could even manage to whisper his name.

And then Cooper shoved me gently on the bed and the breath whooshed right out of me as I lay back in anticipation, watching him as he got on the bed and settled his knees on either side of my waist. I looked up at him and in that moment he was my entire world.

The heat in Cooper’s eyes flared to tenderness as if I’d said what I was thinking out loud. Hands braced on the mattress on either side of my head, he bent to graze his lips over mine. Soft, teasing kisses that grew deeper, longer, sweeter. Kisses that dissolved everything
else around us, until we were just lips and breath and love. And that love sparked what it always had between us:

Passion.

I gripped Cooper’s waist as the kiss turned rough, breathless, desperate; I sighed into his mouth with pleasure as his erection stroked my belly. His lips drifted from my mouth and he whispered my name before lacing kisses across my chin, down my jaw. He kissed his way down my body, his mouth hot, hungry, as though it had been more than a week for us. It was as though it had been years.

I held on, caressing his muscled back, sliding my hands up into the silk of his hair.

When that hot mouth of his closed around my left nipple, my hips undulated against him. “Oh, God.” My thighs gripped him as I urged him closer, my back arching for more as he licked me and then sucked hard, all the while pinching my other nipple between his forefinger and thumb.

“Cooper,” I moaned in delight.

He lifted his head, watching my reaction as he moved against my hips, his dick sliding against my sex, shooting off sparks of sensation. I whimpered. “Cooper,” I begged.

He groaned and dipped his head again, licking my other nipple now, knowing how sensitive I was there. As he continued to suck and tease and torment me, I felt the coil of tension tighten in my lower belly.

I was panting hard, my fingers tugging his hair and making him grunt with desire, and the noise vibrated against my areola. “I want you inside me,” I gasped.

But Cooper wasn’t done making love to every inch of me. He moved down my body, his lips trailing wet kisses over my stomach. I shivered at the touch of his tongue across my belly and melted, knowing his destination was my clit.

He kissed me there. Licked me. Sucked me. Until I was shivering and trembling, my orgasm building to its height as he lapped at me.

I lost my breath as the tension tightened inside of me, my hips
stilling against his mouth momentarily as I balanced on the precipice of explosion.

And then one more lick.

Over the edge I went as my climax blasted through me. I pulsed and pulsed against his mouth until I was limp with satisfaction.