Chapter One — Cooper
Everything would be decided in a matter of hours. It was both an exhilarating and nerve wracking notion. Next to me, I could feel Allie’s anxiety radiating off her body, her hand twitching with restless energy as she tapped a distracted pattern along the inside of my thigh. She was staring out the passenger side window of my SUV—that she affectionately called “Cooper’s big obnoxious, look-at-me-ride”—and I knew her mind was a million miles away, lost in a tangle of worries I hadn’t been able to sort out for her yet…
Just a couple more hours. Then we’ll know what to do, I reminded myself, momentarily wondering if I should speak the reassuring words out loud. I cut another glance towards Allie, struck—as always—by her overwhelming beauty. Since the second I’d seen her, she’d entranced me and I never wanted to break the spell. I’d known from the start that she was a firecracker, and over the past few months, my initial suspicions had been confirmed…and then some. I smiled, remembering brief memories of our more fiery moments, and then turned my attention back to the road.
Our meeting had been the beginning of a very wild ride, but I knew without question, I’d do it all over again if it meant having her beside me in the passenger seat of my “big, obnoxious look-at-me-ride,” regardless of the destination.
“Hey gorgeous,” I said, capturing her anxious fingertips in my hand, holding them steady as I let our hands come to rest on my thigh. Allie rolled her head against the seat and shifted her big, beautiful blue eyes in my direction. “It’s going to be all right. I swear.”
She stared at me for another second before offering what I would call a very weak smile. “I know.”
My heart twisted in my chest, but I returned her smile and let my attention drift back to the road. I hated that she wasn’t letting me in. Dealing with her walls had been the toughest part of our relationship. I guessed in some way, I thought once she became mine, totally and completely, she’d be able to set aside the smoke screen bullshit and be real with me.
For the most part, I’d been right, but over the past few days, as we neared the date she’d circled on the sun-faded calendar that hung on the wall of her tiny apartment kitchen, she’d become distant and edgy. I couldn’t blame her, I was anxious as well—but her emotional walls were difficult to scale.
In my eyes, I thought I should be the one she let in. She could shut the rest of the world out, that was her prerogative, but I’d been locked out with them and it didn’t seem to matter what I did or said to try and break through.
It would all be over soon and he’d have the answers we’d been waiting for.
We just had one stop to make first.
I pulled through the iron gates that led to the exclusive neighborhood where my half sister, Angela’s house was perched up on the Hollywood hillside. Allie perked in her seat as we neared Angela’s house and a smile tugged at the corner of my lips. Allie and Angela had hit it off from the beginning, and I knew no one was more thrilled about our new relationship than Angela herself. She’d nagged at me for years to find a nice woman and settle down, and although Allie and I had only been together a few months, Angela was already hinting around for the ‘settle down’ part.
Not that I was opposed to it. A year ago, her prodding had been nothing more than a mere annoyance, and the idea of spending the rest of my life with one woman had been completely ludicrous. But now…making Allie my wife and starting a real life with her was a thought that was never too far from my mind.
I parked in Angela’s driveway and cut the engine. “Ready?” I asked Allie.
She smiled and I was relieved to see the crease that had become embedded between her brows over the past few weeks, had faded slightly. I leaned across the center console and cupped my hand around the base of her neck, gently massaging the knot of tension away, before pulling her gently towards me and pressing my lips to hers. At the touch of her soft lips, my body sprung to life, every sense heightened. The smell of her perfume was sweeter, the taste of her kiss more intoxicating, and the warmth of her skin more tempting. I couldn’t help but deepen the kiss until I heard the soft, vibrating purr at the back of her throat. It was a sound of pure desire. Allie’s back arched as I ran my fingers down her neck, over her shoulders that were bare except for the thin strap of her rose colored tank top, and then down her side, lingering over every soft curve. Her breasts pressed against my chest as she leaned over, hungry for each new kiss, and I had to break away with a guttural groan. “Remind me, why did we schedule this lunch with Angela right before the meeting?”
I tugged a free strand of Allie’s auburn hair loose from her ponytail and stroked it between my thumb and fingers. When I’d first met her, she’d had her hair dyed black, but after a special pampering day at the salon, she’d surprised me by coming to the office with deep, auburn locks. She was sexy as hell either way, but I had to admit, somehow her personality had intensified with her red hair, catapulting her from firecracker to full on bombshell, and the added sass had led to some mind-blowing sex.
Allie narrowed her eyes at me but couldn’t stop the smile twitching her lips. “First of all, we didn’t schedule this lunch, I did, because I miss Angela. And secondly, she’s on the porch right now, so we need to go.”
I laughed and kissed her right on the scrunched up bridge of her nose. “Seems like some sweaty afternoon fun would have been a better idea. That’s all I’m saying,” I joked, mentally kicking myself for not thinking to whisk Allie away to some luxury hotel suite for the day. A good fuck would help clear both our minds…
Allie giggled and pulled out of my arms, out the door and up the walk before I could blink. Angela and Allie were locked in a tight embrace as I got out of the SUV and joined them on the porch. I stopped walking and drank in the sight of them, letting every emotion wash over me, savoring the moment.
“You coming?” Angela called to me, not waiting for my reply before turning and ushering Allie into her huge house. I smiled to myself and followed the trail of their happy chattering. A couple of month prior, I wasn’t sure I’d have Angela in my life after her cancer fight had taken a scary turn, so the fact that not only had she survived, but was energetic and full of life and joy, hit a particular soft spot in my chest. Watching her and Allie become such fast friends had been the frosting on the cake.
I found the two women of my life in Angela’s kitchen. Allie was admiring the view from the floor to ceiling windows while Angela fussed over the coffee machine. “—I keep telling him, but you know how he is…” Allie said, casting a glance back over her shoulder. She smiled proudly as she caught my eye, knowing I’d walked in at the tail end of her rant.
“How am I?” I asked, challenging her with a sparkle of mischief in my eyes.
“Stubborn as a mule,” Allie replied automatically, returning my playful glare.
Angela turned and looked between us, offering her own eye roll to the conversation.
I laughed and walked over to join Allie by the window. “It must be serious if you’re busting out your country vocabulary,” I tossed back to Allie, before wrapping her in my arms, letting my hands slide down the easy curve of her hips.
She smacked my shoulder. “He’s impossible, you know,” she said, peeking past me to gather Angela into her persuasion. “He thinks just because I’m from Kansas, I was raised on a farm or something.”
Angela laughed. “He doesn’t get out much. Too busy stuck in his little concrete tower.”
Allie joined in her easy laughter and I opened my mouth to protest, but decided against it and let them have their fun. I had ways of getting Allie back later…when I could get her all to myself…
“So, tell me, what am I being stubborn about now?” I asked. I palmed Allie’s ass cheek before releasing her and went to get a cup of the steaming hot coffee Angela set out on the large, quartz island.
Allie joined me and I poured her a cup. “I was just telling Angela that if I’m going to give into your relentless requests that I abandon my apartment and move in with you, we need to get something like this,” she explained, waving her hand in the air at the large kitchen. “I don’t want to trade one box for another.”
I barked a laugh. “A box? Really? I hardly think the penthouse suite is a box.”
Angela stifled a giggle into her coffee cup.
“I’m just saying, Cooper, I want some space, room to roam. And with a view like this.” She stared longingly out the window.
Since we’d started our relationship, I’d insisted on her moving to my place. But, so far, she’d resisted every attempt, no matter what lengths I’d gone to in order to sweeten the pot and convince her. As it was, she ended up spending nearly every night at my penthouse and had moved so much stuff in— it was becoming hard to imagine she had anything left at her small, one bedroom apartment.
“That’s what the lake house is for,” I countered, thinking of the house I’d purchased on the lake a few years back. It was a sprawling craftsman style mansion in the woods with no one around for at least a mile.
Allie sighed. “When was the last time we were there?”
She had a point. With everything going on, our schedule was too packed to escape the city for a getaway. I made a mental note to remedy that once things settled down. I wrapped an arm over her shoulders, pulled her in close, and pressed a kiss to the side of her temple. She smiled and looked up at me with her big blue eyes. “Soon,” I promised. “After the trial.”
Her face fell slightly but she did her best to keep her smile frozen before she dropped her attention back to the steam rolling off the top of her coffee.
“Speaking of,” Angela interjected. “What is going on with all that?”
I took in a deep breath. I was beginning to abhor talking about the trial and I knew we’d spend the whole afternoon talking of little else, which made me even more resistant to talk about it with Angela—but I knew I had to. As my sister, she had the right to know. “We’re meeting with my legal team this afternoon.” I pushed back the sleeve of my navy blue suit jacket to check the platinum watch on my wrist. “In about an hour, actually. This is kind of a drive-by visit.” I smiled apologetically at Angela.
“Then I guess I’d better get the frittata in the oven!” She didn’t wait for a response before crossing the kitchen and busying herself at the fridge. I smiled as she worked.
Although her acting career had stalled while she went through treatment, Angela had already made more money in the five years she’d been working in Hollywood than most people made in a lifetime. She could’ve hired a private chef, or at the very least bought something premade, but that wasn’t how she was. Angela had always loved cooking and baking, and it was the only other thing I could imagine her doing besides TV and movies. If not for her acting career, she could’ve easily been a chef or caterer. In fact, it was an idea I’d been tossing around in my mind since her prognosis had improved. She hadn’t talked much about going back to acting, but the last time I’d been over to visit, I’d seen a stack of scripts on the coffee table. I trusted her judgment, but as her older brother, I needed to give her my opinion. As I watched her glide around the kitchen, I couldn’t help but think she might be better off turning her career ambitions into something that didn’t require sixteen hour days on a movie set.
Angela caught me staring and prompted me with a rolling hand gesture, “Keep talking,” she said, before turning back to press some buttons on the control panel above the double ovens. “Apparently we’re on a countdown timer here.”
Allie took a deliberate sip of her coffee, her silent way of letting me know that she’d bowed out.
“There’s not a whole lot to tell. At the moment, we’re still trying to decide if we want to press charges against this Clay character,” I continued.
Angela stopped working for a moment and cocked a brow at me. “Isn’t that kind of a no-brainer? I mean, the guy tried to sabotage your entire company.”
“True, but it isn’t quite that simple,” I answered quietly. I looked over at Allie, and felt the now familiar press of guilt tighten its grip on my stomach. If something happened to her…I blinked away the thought, telling myself it would be fine. It had to be.
Angela shot me another confused glance, and I continued, “In a nutshell, I had Allie do some hacking while she was working on the Plush account, and it’s possible that it would be brought up during the trial.”
If Angela was surprised, she did a hell of a job masking it. She simply nodded her understanding and came over to join us at the island quietly, as she stirred a splash of cream into her own cup of coffee.
For a few minutes, we sat, sipping on coffee and turning over our own thoughts, no one eager to add to the conversation. I was just about to ask Angela about her most recent doctor appointment, when the oven timer interrupted the silence, and she hurried to pull the bubbling frittata out. “Mmm.” She poked at the top with a fork. “Looks good, I have everything set up on the deck.”
Allie jumped up and smiled sweetly at me as I snagged her coffee mug and headed for the expansive deck off the kitchen where Angela had laid out the patio table with blue and rust colored plates and bowls filled with fresh fruit and a large platter of toast. I followed the girls outside where the tension of the previous conversation melted away in the hot LA sun.