Home
At his front door, Cooper loosened his tie while holding his phone to his ear. “What exactly constitutes ‘good cause’?” And how had he even ended up in a position to be talking about terminating parental rights. It all still felt surreal, like someone had thrust him into another person’s life without giving him the slightest forewarning.
It sounded like Jim thumbed through a stack of papers. “In North Carolina, ‘good cause’ could be anything from abuse to neglect, the inability to provide proper care, even abandonment.”
He rattled off the list like everyday events—probably ones he was accustomed to seeing more than anyone should.
“So, basically, you have to be a crackpot father.” Now, there was a legacy.
Jim wheezed through the line. “Parents often want to get out of their financial obligation. The courts see it all the time.”
“Is that what they think I’m doing?” Financial support was the only thing he could offer Brayden.
“It’s nothing personal, Cooper.”
He tugged his collar away from his sweaty neck. “Well, maybe it should be.” If they knew him, they’d understand.
Cooper exhaled. He shouldn’t be taking his frustrations out on his lawyer. “Listen, I’m just getting back from a meeting and need to take care of a few things. Why don’t we talk later?”
Four hours with a high maintenance client had been draining enough. Sure, Cooper might’ve missed a few aspects of corporate life. But never-ending meetings? They were definitely supposed to be a thing of the past—a glorious perk of being a one-man operation.
After hanging up, Cooper rotated his tense shoulders, relieved to be home.
Home. The word sent a pang tightening across his chest. He stretched a palm against the siding, hung his head, and released another lengthy breath. This heat must be getting to him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be thinking—
Cutting off that train of thought, Cooper slid his phone into his pocket and pinched the bridge of his nose. His last coffee had obviously worn off one too many hours ago.
Through the door, a burst of cold air whirled around his collar onto his overheated skin, trailed by a sweet aroma of something honey-like. He smiled. Quinn must be baking again.
He stopped in the entryway at the sight of Brayden in his high chair, eating a concoction that looked almost gourmet, while Quinn sat crisscrossed on the couch, writing voraciously on a notepad.
Brayden flailed his chubby legs and slapped his sippy cup on the tray in front of him, face alight. “Dada.” He waved orange-coated fingers at him.
A warmth like Cooper’d never experienced spread through him as he returned Brayden’s wave. And just like that, the weight of the morning lifted.
Quinn obviously noticed. She looked from Brayden to Cooper, a thin sheen forming over her eyes at hearing him say “Dada” for the first time.
An onlooker who didn’t know any better might’ve thought he was a husband and father coming home to his family. Was this what it was like for Dad?
Shaking off the unsolicited emotions, he dumped his briefcase on the narrow table in the hall.
“Put that away.” Quinn’s expression shifted back to whatever had been weighing it down before he walked in.
His lips quirked. “Yes, dear.”
She twirled her long hair into a twist and jimmied a pencil through it. “I did some cleaning today.”
“So I see.” The place was practically spotless—no clutter, all boxes organized and out of the way. His forehead pinched. “You know that’s not part of the deal, right? I mean, I don’t expect you to be my maid.”
She met his eyes then. Soft, genuine. “Busywork helps me think.”
“Like baking.” His stomach growled on cue.
“Guess so.” She wiped Brayden’s face and hands and sat him on the floor by his foam blocks. “Though, I didn’t get around to baking today.”
“Really?” He jutted a thumb toward the kitchen. “But that smell . . .”
“What smell?”
He started toward her. “You don’t . . . ?” The honey-like scent swirled around him with the answer to his own question. The scent wasn’t Quinn’s baking. It was her—subtle, sweet, and dangerously alluring. Even worse, it was beginning to smell like home. The one he was getting ready to walk away from.
An errant strand of hair slipped loose from her twist as she tilted her head at him. “Are you all right?”
Hardly. “Fine.” He undid the second button on his dress shirt and loosened his collar even more.
Quinn slipped her fingers through the handle on her coffee mug and moved to sit on the very tip of the opposite couch arm. In an old Button Your Fly T-shirt she must’ve brought back from her parents’ house, she looked like the teenage girl in the photos lining her parents’ living room walls. All she needed was that cowgirl hat.
He suppressed a laugh. Before this was all said and done, he’d get her to admit she missed that part of her life.
Quinn closed her eyes, visibly lost in her own thoughts, and stretched her legs into a sunbeam while balancing her mug in one hand.
Cooper laughed. “You know, the coffee table’s over here, right?”
“But the sunshine’s right here.”
Glowing, she looked more at home in that one spot than he’d ever felt anywhere.
Man, that smile. He turned before she caught him reciprocating it. Doubtful it held her finesse anyway. He scratched his cheek. His five-o’clock shadow was getting out of control. As were his thoughts.
A text chimed from his phone. He glanced at a message from his realtor about needing his appraisal paperwork. He ignored it, not in the mood to duke it out with Ray, but the interruption had already changed the atmosphere.
With a long sigh, Quinn plopped back into her spot on the couch among stacks of notes. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who’d had a rough morning.
“Long day?”
She flung a magazine over top of her notepad as he neared. “I’ve been working on the party for Ginny,” she rambled off a little too quickly. “The band she wants is too expensive. She’s going to be crushed when I tell her. Since it’s so close to the Fourth, maybe doing fireworks would make up for it. Ooh, and sparklers.” She shook her head. “Or is that too lame for kids her age? It is, isn’t it?”
She tapped the end of a pen ferociously against her thigh. “You have way too many pens, by the way. Seriously, if the stockbroker thing doesn’t work out for you, you could start a business selling refurbished office supplies.”
“Uh-huh.” The girl’s rambling stress mode was more than a little cute, but it didn’t compensate for the underlying ache behind it. He sat on the arm of the chair beside her. “Quinn, listen, if money’s an issue, why don’t you let me—?”
“No.” She curled the corner of the magazine in her lap back and forth. “I appreciate it, really, but I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You aren’t.” He leaned down to meet her gaze. “I’m offering.”
The hints of amber in her eyes brightened but only for a moment. She looked away. “All the same, I’ll figure something out. You’ve been generous enough already,” she added so softly, he almost didn’t hear her.
“If anyone owes something, it’s me.” He scooted forward to the edge. “Money doesn’t come close to what you’re doing for Brayden and me. You know that, right?”
Her brow furrowed, the pen falling from her fingers into the crease between the cushions.
He reached for her hand without thinking. “Quinn?”
When she finally faced him, a glimpse of the fractured girl inside that she strained so hard to hide looked back at him. She slid one leg out from the other and smiled that girl away. “Do you need more coffee as much as I do?”
More like he needed a sledgehammer if he was ever going to break through her walls. Resigning for now, he took her empty mug, stood up, and ruffled Brayden’s soft hair on his way to the kitchen. “I’ll make us a pot.”
Once the coffee finished brewing, Cooper shuffled back into the living room with two filled-to-the-brim mugs in tow. He handed her one. “Hey, while you were cleaning, did you happen to see a paper about the appraisal I had done a few weeks ago?”
“I put it in a folder with the other house sale paperwork. It’s in your office by your laptop.” The corner of her mouth curled above the rim of her mug. “Where it should be.”
Of course it was. He headed to his office. “You sure you don’t want me to start calling you Pepper?”
“Try it once and see what happens,” she called.
Laughter tipped his head back. Title or not, she definitely made things easier around here. At least, when it came to business. His heart was another story.
He turned to his study. “I’ll be in my—Whaaat is that?” Briefcase against his stomach, he tried not to spill his coffee and whipped a glance from a random black cat rubbing its cheeks on the doorframe back to Quinn.
She lifted a shoulder. “Most people call it a cat.”
“Thanks for clarifying.” He gave her a stiff smile. “What’s it doing in my house?”
“She’s not yours?”
The cat trotted over and brushed up against his pant leg. Cooper shooed it away. “That would be a negative.”
The moment Quinn called it, the cat ran for her and settled into her lap like it was a favorite vacation spot. “I found her out on your deck the other day.”
“So, you decided to let her in?”
“She seemed at home.” Quinn nuzzled her nose to the cat’s. “Figured she’d been here before.”
If she’d been around the yard, Cooper had never noticed. “Yeah, well, she can feel at home back outside. I don’t do strays.”
Quinn feathered two fingers over her scarred ear. “Aw, come on. She’s adorable.”
“She’s missing half her whiskers.”
“She’s scrappy.” Quinn stroked a hand down her back as it nestled the top of her head under Quinn’s chin. “I’m gonna call her Trooper.”
He coughed to drown out his snicker.
“You don’t think a girl can be a trooper?” With her arms crossed, she wriggled up the back of the couch an inch taller with each punctuated word. “Maybe she’s tough and smart and resilient.” She glowered at his growing smile. “What?”
“Nothing.” If she admitted she was talking about herself, he’d add downright attractive to the list. “I’m sure the cat can hold her own . . . outside where she belongs. No use in her getting attached here. We’ll all be gone soon.”
The words nearly sawed him in half with their pressing reality. He’d do good to heed them himself.
Backing up, Cooper bumped into the table behind him and almost spilled his coffee again. Smooth. He pointed to the doorway. “I’m just gonna . . .” Pretend she wasn’t getting to him.
Quinn gave him a thumbs-up, unaware she didn’t give him even half a chance.
In the safety of his office, he lowered his briefcase to the floor, set his mug on his desk, and slumped into his leather chair with a heavy exhale. What was wrong with him?
A yellow sticky note sat beside his laptop with a message from a girl he’d gone on two dates with a month ago. Nice girl, but after the second date fell flatter than the first, he politely ended things before they ever started. She shouldn’t still be calling.
He dropped a folder over the note and wrenched backward in his chair. Why did he get himself in these situations?
A glance up intersected another sticky note—a bright pink one that read You’re Welcome adhered to an overflowing cup of pens Quinn must’ve collected from around the house. He tore it off, laughed. She may be right, but being a pen hoarder was the least of his problems.
The calendar on the wall waved under the A/C like a shot clock. The days were moving the same direction his heart and focus needed to go. Forward. There was no point grounding roots he’d only have to pull up in a matter of days. He peered at a framed photo of Dad and him on his old skiff. “I’ll make things up to you, Dad. Promise.”
Productivity swept the minutes by until a shriek from the living room propelled him out of his chair. He swung around the trim toward a hint of embarrassment tingeing Quinn’s forehead.
She covered her face with her magazine. “Sorry.” Lowering it, she batted apologetic eyes at him. “Didn’t mean to distract you.”
His gaze fell over Brayden, half asleep against a pile of blocks he’d stacked together. “Everything all right?”
“No.” She dropped the magazine to her lap and smacked a finger to an ad. “Someone please tell me why anyone would name their coffee shop Xpresso Café? That’s only going to perpetuate the common mispronunciation. Do you know how annoying that is? It’s almost as bad as ex-cetera. Ugh, or real-a-tor.” She shuddered. “I better never hear you call Ray that.”
He reined in a laugh, but the honest exasperation tinting her eyes pulled it right back out of him.
She rolled up the magazine and chucked it at his stomach. “I’m serious.”
“I see that.” He picked up the evidently disgraceful magazine and peeked into her empty coffee mug. “Maybe you should add a couple shots of Kahlúa to your coffee next time.”
“Funny.” She fell backward on the couch. “I’m trying to write up something to say at the party. A tribute to the family, I guess.”
“Like your old blogs.”
“In ways, yeah.” She grabbed the scribbled-over notepad beside her. “But I keep hitting this wall. I just thought . . .” She smacked the page to her head and sighed. “I used to be so sure I was meant to be a writer. That I had something to say that’d matter, but lately . . . I don’t know. Maybe this is a stupid idea.”
He pulled the paper away from her face. “Or maybe you just need a break.” He knew the weight of stress, the roadblocks it could create. Just like he knew the solution.
Cooper helped her to her feet. He might be leaving in a couple of weeks, but he could at least leave her with something worthwhile.
The notepad fell to the floor and sent her pen rolling under the coffee table. She resisted his pull. “Where are we going?”
“To take a leap of faith.”