A happy ending all round.
Before he knew it, Cooper was the one crying. He swiped at his eyes a few times, before giving up and letting the tears come. They’d been held back in there long enough.
Then, he opened the folder to Emma’s application, clicked open his own and for the first time in his life prepared to fix a scientific study.
‘Oh, come off it,’ he mumbled as he adjusted all his answers to make sure they matched perfectly with Emma’s. ‘This is not scientific research, it’s a stupid bet. No ethics or morals required.’
Except for the part about marrying his best friend’s sister, of course.
* * *
He managed to spend nearly the whole day hiding in his office pretending to do work while actually veering between complete panic and full-on freaking out, but at five twenty-nine, Bridget threw open his office door.
‘Oops!’ She laughed, before shutting the door again and knocking on it several times in rapid succession.
After about twenty seconds of knocking she cracked open the door and poked her head in the gap. ‘Why aren’t you asking me to come in?’
He couldn’t help smiling. ‘I did. You’d have heard me if you’d stopped thumping the door and waited for a reply.’
‘So, I can come in?’
He pushed out a chair from under the table with one foot and Bridget bounded in and plonked herself down in it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about that new application?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t know when you snuck out to run the DNA test, but the match is virtually perfect.With the questions, it’s a compatibility of 94 per cent!Ninety-four!The DNA markers were uncanny! I checked them three times to make sure it wasn’t a mistake.’
She glanced at the open door, got up, closed it, and sat back down, huddled forward so she could whisper. ‘I even used Prof Love’s compatibility test, as best I could given the limited information, and the initial indicators were “excellent potential for compatibility”. I’m gobsmacked.’
She pressed both hands to her cheeks, shaking her head in wonder. ‘On the one hand, I can’t believe it. I mean, compatibility tests are one thing, but reading about this guy in the additional information section, he seems like everything that Emma wants. But then, how much can you tell from a few questions? There could be hundreds of reasons why he’d be terrible. But, I don’t know… this genuinely could be a miracle! I’ve been going back and forth and round and round, wondering what to do, wanting to ask you about it. But as project supervisor I know you have to tell me to follow the protocol. So, I’m going to give him a follow-up call, as listed in the project plan. That way, at least I’ll know if he’s serious. He could have filled the form in for a joke. Or when he was drunk and feeling lonely. I can find out if he sounds weird. And I can speak to his references, do some online stalking…’
She looked up. ‘Am I a horrible person for even thinking about going ahead with this?’
‘What would Emma say?’ Cooper couldn’t believe how normal he sounded, given that his heart rate was approaching warp speed.
‘She’d say shut up and do your job, Young One.’ Bridget gaped at him, eyes shining. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to do this!’
Then, before he could suddenly dash off on urgent business, or find his phone underneath the piles of student papers and switch it off, she whipped out her phone and pressed call having obviously had the number typed in and waiting to go.
Cooper’s work phone rang several times before Bridget nodded at him to answer it, her own phone pressed to one ear.
Unable to think of any way to avoid this, especially given that he had a recorded answer-phone message, and he could hardly keep his phone switched off indefinitely, Cooper slowly picked up his phone and answered it.
‘Hello?’
Bridget’s eyes widened with excitement, and she pointed to her phone as she spun the chair to face the wall in order to hear better. ‘Hello? Um, this is Dr Bridget Donovan. I’m calling from the Nottingham University Neuroscience Department. You completed an application and submitted a DNA test for a study we’re conducting?’
‘Yep.’
‘Well, I’m very pleased to say that we are interested in taking you through to the next stage of the study. Is that something you’d still be prepared to consider?’
‘Yes.’
Bridget spun back around and gave Cooper a thumbs-up. He stared at her, holding the phone, eyebrows raised as he waited for her to connect the dots.
‘Would it be possible to have your full name, please?’ Bridget asked slowly, her tone turning from friendly to decidedly stern as she stared back.
‘Patrick Charles Cooper.’
‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?’
