Page 16 of This Time Around
Seven
Rebecca
“I’m telling you right now, Rebecca, if you don’t get your butt into town tonight, I’m sending Jordan out hunting for you tomorrow.I haven’t seen you in so long I’ve forgotten what you even look like.”
I rolled my eyes at my friend Brooke on the other end of the phone as she kept talking.
“Wait.Are you blonde?Brunette?A redhead?See, I can’t even remember.”
“I haven’t been blonde since that disaster junior year of high school.”I smiled at the memory of trying to force my jet-black hair to a platinum blonde color as Brooke laughed.It had resulted in me looking more like a skunk with striped hair than the runway model look I’d been trying for.
“Oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten.”Little liar, Brooke remembered everything, including that I’d been avoiding her phone calls for the last two weeks, which she was now determined to get to the cause of.Hence the threat of sending Jordan my way.“Seriously, you’re coming and you’re talking, even if I have to get you drunk to do it.You’re hiding and I don’t like it.”
“I’m not hiding, Brooke, I’m busy.”
“I’ve heard that before, too.”
“Yeah, but I’m not lying now, I’m telling the truth.”I tapped my pen on my desk in the office where I’d been recording cattle information Cooper and I had taken that day.Some days I swore that eighty percent of the work on the ranch was paperwork.
Plus, I really didn’t want to tell Brooke about Cooper.So far, in the two weeks he’d been here, he hadn’t once had an excuse to leave the ranch, and the few times I’d had deliveries, he’d hidden in the barn when I asked him to.
At this point, I was no longer clear if I was hiding people from him, or if I was hiding him from people.Either way, I wasn’t sure I was ready to explain any of it.
I also knew Brooke wouldn’t give in.
“Okay.I’ll come tonight.”She screamed and I pulled my phone from my ear, cringing at the noise.“I also have something to tell you,” I said when she quit screeching.“And, I’m only telling you because I know I can trust you, but Max sent someone out here to help me this summer—”
“Your uncle Max?”
“Yes.And I’ve been busy getting him acclimated to everything.That’s it.”
She paused, her silence the weight of a bull on my chest.
“Him?”she finally asked.
It wasn’t my place to tell her about Cooper, but at some point he had to figure I’d talk to someone about him.
Plus, I was beginning to think I had to.Things between Cooper and I were gettingweird.Like, we were friends.Maybe.Sort of?
Twice now he’d come over to have dinner with me which we’d eaten out on the patio, but more often than that he’d shown up while I was sitting outside, going over spreadsheets or perusing farming magazines and he hadn’t hesitated to refill my wineglass or sit with me.
The last time I went into town I stocked my fridge with beer for him.
So, yeah, we were friends.Yet, when he left at night and gave me that hand flip on his way back to the guesthouse, there was this weird lingering feeling in my stomach.There was an even stronger disliked feeling in my chest when I saw him in the morning, already in the barn, cleaning out the stalls and brushing the horses.
Like my thoughts alone had conjured him, Cooper appeared in the doorway to my office.I gripped the phone tighter at his presence, and the way he always casually leaned against a doorframe with his broad shoulder, but there was never anything casual about his expression.He was always focused, intent on whatever I was teaching him.
He’d even been there the morning Paisley had delivered her kid, who he immediately named Pepper because it was all gray and black.
Cooper had smiled, and not caring the kid was still covered in slimy amniotic fluid, he’d picked it up and held it to his chest.
He smiled at me so hard my chest ached from the beauty of the moment.“That was the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” he’d said, and set the kid back down by Paisley.
Now, he was in my office, KU hat in his hands in front of him, curling the bill, frowning at me.
“I’ll be there later,” I told Brooke.“And I’ll tell you what I can.I promise.”
“Good.I’ll put Andrew on standby as our driver.”
