CHAPTER
ELEVEN
HARLEY was pretty sure she was going to have a heart attack and drop dead on the beach. In a bikini of all things. One minute she and Mary Jane had been lounging on the beach in a couple of chairs, then the next she had suddenly realized Mary Jane hadn’t returned from the restroom.
Every Liam Neeson movie about abduction and sex slavery was running through her head and she was convinced that Mary Jane was tied up in the back of a windowless van on her way to the black market. She had looked everywhere on the beach and Cooper’s sister was nowhere. She’d asked the ice cream stand workers and everyone in sight if they’d seen her to no avail. She had even asked a random man to go into the men’s room and make sure Mary Jane wasn’t being assaulted in there while she wandered around helplessly.
Finally, after a frantic twenty minutes she had tried to call Cami, Cooper’s assistant, to see if there was a way to contact him during the race. Cami had given her Jeff Sterling’s number and she had called him. He had said he would meet her there but in the meantime she should call the police. Harley was so distraught it had been helpful to hear a rational and calm voice in her ear, reassuring her that Mary Jane frequently disappeared and that he was sure she was perfectly fine.
She had continued to pace the beach after she had hung up with Jeff and called the cops. They had told her they would be out as soon as possible, but given that another twenty minutes had ticked by, she wasn’t sure how seriously they were taking her call. Maybe she should have name-dropped and told them Mary Jane was Cooper Brickman’s sister. It was sad but true that celebrity status garnered more attention.
It was with both relief and fear that she saw not only Jeff coming across the beach, wearing a suit, but Cooper with him in jeans and a T-shirt. Harley power-walked over to meet them.
“I’m so sorry, Cooper, I’m so sorry.” And she promptly burst into tears.
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault.” Cooper reached out and pulled her into his arms.
Harley collapsed against his chest, sobbing, realizing it was utterly ludicrous that he was comforting her when she was the one who had lost his sister, but appreciating the strong body to lean against nonetheless.
“She said she was going to the restroom. I thought it was fine for her to do that by herself.”
“Harley, it’s okay. Mary Jane is fine. She just answered my incredibly threatening text message.”
She peeled her damp cheeks off his T-shirt and looked up at him. “What? She’s okay? You’re sure?”
He nodded. “It seems she decided to hang out with a group of middle school boys. They’re over by the clock tower. We’re on our way to go collect her thoughtless ass and take her home.”
Relief had Harley’s breath whooshing out of her lungs. “Oh, thank God.” Suddenly she felt light-headed and she bent over, resting her palms on her knees, trying to fight off the black spots in front of her eyes and the nausea in her stomach. “I’m going to puke. Or faint.”
Mary Jane was safe. She wasn’t being tortured while Harley scurried around the beach, dodging sand pails.
But then another thought occurred to her. She stood straight up, her vision going black from the sudden movement. “Why aren’t you on the track? Oh, my God, you left the race, didn’t you?”
The serious look on his face confirmed that he had. “It’s okay, Harley. I wanted to make sure Mary Jane was alright. Now let’s go get her.” He rubbed her arms before turning to Jeff. “Can you deal with the police while I retrieve MJ?”
“Sure, no problem.” Jeff smiled at her. “You did the right thing, Harley.”
Sure she had. She’d just caused Cooper to forfeit his standing in the race and any points he might have accrued. “Please tell me you weren’t running in first place when you quit the field,” she said to her boss.
He laughed. “Not even close. I had a bit of a dustup with Monroe and was in the garage making repairs. Jeff is right. You did the right thing. Come on.”
The clock tower was just past the beach. Just past where Harley had gone in her search for Mary Jane. It figured. It just figured.
They spotted Mary Jane at the same time she spotted them. She leaped off the ledge she’d been sitting on, looking very cozy with a floppy-haired pubescent boy, and gave them a nervous wave.
“Oh, hey.”
Oh, hey? Harley wanted to both hug her and shake her. Harley was so upset that she didn’t even wait for Cooper to take the lead. She stopped in front of her charge and said, “Say good-bye to your friend. We’re leaving now.”
Mary Jane’s eyes widened at her tone. “Fine.” She turned back to the boy, who looked both terrified and in awe. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Aren’t you Cooper Brickman?” he asked.
“I’m her brother, that’s who I am.” Cooper glared at Mary Jane. “You heard Harley. Get moving.”
Mary Jane mouthed Text me to the boy, then stomped off with a glum look on her face, cell phone in her hand. “Fine. I’m going.”
“I need a drink,” Cooper muttered as they followed behind her. “Maybe it will prevent me from strangling her.”
“I’m not sure whether to squeeze her in relief or scream at her.”
“Exactly. I say we do both.” Cooper shook his head. “And I also would like to cover her up with a fleece jumpsuit. My God. She’s wearing next to nothing.”
Now that he mentioned it, so was Harley. Fear receding, she was suddenly aware of the fact that she was also in nothing but a red bikini walking beside Cooper. “We are at the beach.”
He glanced over at her. He seemed to likewise suddenly realize what she was wearing. Or wasn’t wearing. His gaze dropped to her breasts and his eyes darkened. “You need to reapply your sunscreen.” His finger brushed across her collarbone. “You’re getting pink.”
Harley shivered, despite the heat. “We’re leaving anyway.”
Mary Jane had reached where they had been sitting, their bags still tucked under their lounge chairs. She pulled hers out and started rifling through it. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work, Cooper?”
It was the exact wrong thing to say.
Cooper exploded. “Yes! Yes, I am supposed to be at work! But when you go missing for forty minutes and don’t answer Harley, she rightfully worries about you and calls me. So I left in the middle of a goddamn race because you’re too selfish to understand that what you do affects other people. Harley was frantic. I was frantic. What the hell were you thinking?”
Mary Jane’s expression was mulish and she glanced around, obviously self-conscious of the fact that other beachgoers could clearly hear her brother’s angry reprimand. Harley put her hand on Cooper’s arm to attempt to calm him down, but honestly she didn’t blame him. She never wanted to feel that level of fear again. She had been absolutely convinced Mary Jane had been chloroformed.
“It wasn’t a big deal. I was just hanging out.”
“You snuck away. Admit it.”
“Maybe we should talk about this in the car,” Harley said, pulling on her cover-up and quickly packing up her sunscreen and paperback. “Do you think you have time to get back to the track?”
Cooper stood there, hands on hips, scowling. “It’s not like I can just jump back in the car.”
“It’s a five-hour race.” Guilt kicked in again. If she had been able to handle the situation on her own, Cooper wouldn’t have left the track.
“And I’m sixty laps down at this point.”
“I’m sorry.” Harley shook out her flip-flops and stepped into them.
“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. It’s Mary Jane’s.”
Harley pursed her lips. She wanted to tell him that she herself did bear some responsibility. She was there to ensure Mary Jane was safe, and she hadn’t done that. He would be well within his rights to dismiss her without a reference. It wasn’t like he hadn’t warned her that Mary Jane was capable of going rogue.
But she didn’t want to discuss it in front of his sister.
So she just followed both of them, sick to her stomach all over again. This had been a harmless wander-off, but what if it wasn’t next time?
She would be watching Mary Jane like a suspicious hawk with a magnifying glass from now on. But that didn’t mean Cooper would ever fully trust her again, and that sucked.
It just sucked.
* * *
COOPER wasn’t kidding about that drink. Every muscle in his body was tense as their solemn little trio went into his condo after Jeff dropped them off at the front entrance of the high-rise. The longer he thought about what had happened, the more pissed off he became. The only thing that had saved him from completely losing his shit on his sister was the presence of Jeff and an occasional look of concern from Harley. He knew if he yelled she would get upset because somehow ludicrously she thought this was her fault.
It said wonderful things about her that she had been so concerned about his sister’s safety and that she worried that in any way she had been remiss in her duties. His feeling was the kid was as slippery as an eel and looked deceptively sweet. There was no way Harley could have foreseen she would make a run for it. She didn’t have the experience with her to see the signs. Cooper didn’t have the experience himself, how could he expect Harley to have MJ’s number completely?
He knew he needed time to calm down so once they were in the condo, he flatly told Mary Jane, “Go to your room. Don’t come out until I say you can.”
“What?” She shot him a look of pure indignation. “What is this, prison?”
“It’s the nicest prison you’ll ever be in.” He was a little tired of the attitude. No, he was actually a lot tired of the attitude. He didn’t remember being such a dick when he was thirteen. If he had backtalked his gran like that she would have slapped him silly.
“Argh!” she yelled, stomping off as much as you can in flip-flops and a bathing suit.
Despite the rubber shoes, MJ managed it damn dramatically, he had to give her credit.
“I want a beer the size of my head,” he told Harley, heading into the kitchen. “Can I get you anything? Earplugs, maybe? A raise?”
“I wouldn’t mind some sweet tea.”
“With whiskey in it?”
She laughed. “No, I’m good. Technically, I’m still on the clock.”
He snorted. “Screw that. I say do a shot after the day we’ve had.”
“It was a rough one, I have to admit.” Harley rubbed her arms with her hands, padding into the kitchen after him, her feet bare. “Besides, it’s cold in here, so maybe I will have just a splash of whiskey.”
“The housekeeper keeps the A/C on arctic. I leave notes that she ignores.” Cooper wondered what Harley thought about his rather bizarre lifestyle. People he paid had more control over his day-to-day existence than he did. “I can turn it down now, though. Or is it up? I’ve always wondered about that.”
“Well, you’re turning the temperature up. But turning the A/C down. So both are accurate.”
“So I’m always right? Excellent.” He winked at her. It took him a second to remember where the thermostat actually was. He was just too transient to be able to log in minor details like that. But it was right in the entryway and he quickly adjusted it before heading back. He didn’t want Harley to retreat to her room. He wanted her to understand he didn’t blame her in any way.
He also just wanted her company. He’d gotten used to being able to relax with her in the evenings. And he definitely needed to relax after the debacle of a day they’d had. But she hadn’t bolted. She had poked around in the cabinets and found two highball glasses and was filling them with ice.
The whiskey was in the cupboard above the fridge. That he knew. He got it down and poured himself a full glass. In hers he splashed a finger of whiskey, then fished around in the back of the fridge for a can of iced tea. It wasn’t necessarily classy, but it was what it was.
Harley took a sip and shuddered. “Oh, dear Lord. I’m not much of a liquor drinker.”
He knocked his own back like he was a dying man in the desert. It burned, but in a good way. “Let’s chill out on the balcony for a few.”
It had a good view of the water and given the time of day the temperature outside was probably perfect. He left the door open to kill some of the A/C and to listen for the sound of the front door if MJ decided to escape from her pampered prison.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Harley said.
“It is.” Then because he’d been thinking about how beautiful she was for damn near every minute for the last three weeks, he spoke before he could turn on the filter between his brain and his mouth. “Not as beautiful as you, though.”
Her eyes widened. “Cooper . . .”
“What?” He brushed his knee against hers. She looked like a hot fudge sundae in her bikini, even with that wrap thing on over it. “It’s true.”
“Thank you, but . . .”
“But what?” Now he found himself brushing his fingers over her bare knee, enjoying the way she shivered. “I find you very attractive, Harley.”
“I work for you.”
“I am very aware of that. I am also aware of the fact that every minute since I’ve found myself thinking about you. What I don’t know is if you find me attractive.”
“Are you kidding?” She looked shocked. “Of course I do!”
Well. Fuck yeah. His cock swelled in response to her vehement conviction. “Then what’s the issue?”
“The issue is that I work for you.”
How did he phrase this without scaring her off? “That would be a problem if I just wanted something casual. But I don’t want to just mess around with you. I want to have a relationship.”
He hadn’t been planning to blurt that out either, but looking at her, staring into her beautiful and warm eyes, he couldn’t resist. She needed to know he wasn’t the dude who banged the help then either let them go or ignored them. He needed her to see that he thought she was amazing. He thought she was maybe The One. In fact, he was pretty damn sure she was. Thirty-five years, a lot of women, and no one, not one single person, had ever made him feel as calm, protective, and content as Harley did.
“I admire you. I like you, as a person. I like you a whole hell of a lot. I want to take this to its natural conclusion.” He traced a pattern on her knee with his thumb. He wanted to touch her, everywhere. To own the right to be the man who put his arm around her, to whisper in her ear, to touch the small of her back and kiss the corners of her mouth. He wanted that so bad he ached for it. Was willing to throw himself out there for rejection just on the off chance he’d get it.
“What? A relationship? With me?”
Cooper took her hand and squeezed it. “Yes. You. I think you’re honestly the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. Please just give me a chance. Truth be told, I think we’re already having a relationship, aren’t we? A friendship at the very least.”
“But . . . but . . .”
She was just about sputtering. Cooper knew how to fix that. He slid his fingers into the softness of her blond hair and drew her head toward him. Then he dropped his lips over hers in a soft kiss. When he pulled back she was quiet, blinking at him. “But nothing, Harley.”
Then a horrible thought occurred to him and he finished off the rest of his whiskey to brace himself. There was no way around it. If they were going to have a relationship it needed to start out honest, and he had a big old naked skeleton in his closet.
“I do need to tell you something, though.”
“I need to tell you something, too.”
“Me first.” Because his sucked, and he wanted it out before he dropped his balls down onto the beach and lost his nerve. “I, uh, had sex with your sister.”
She blinked at him. “You what?”
“I had sex with Charity. At the wedding. But don’t worry about it. It didn’t mean anything.” Then because her lip was starting to tremble and he was starting to panic, he added what he thought she would want to hear, even though it was a total lie. “It wasn’t even good sex. It was terrible, actually. Awful.” So much for being honest. “A complete mistake.”
Her highball slipped out of her hands and shattered on the concrete floor of the balcony. “Oh, my God.”
Harley leaped to her feet, shoved past him, and retreated into his condo. He heard the definitive slam of her bedroom door.
Shit. That hadn’t gone so well. Not that he could have hoped for any better, frankly. But he’d had a running start. He was almost certain Harley had been contemplating dating him until he’d told her about Charity.
He stood up and promptly cut his foot on a piece of glass.
Perfect ending to a perfectly miserable day.
* * *
THE return trip to Charlotte the next morning was a thousand times more awkward than the trip down. Harley kept her earbuds in the entire time, while trying to pretend that Cooper wasn’t continuously giving her smoldering looks at frequent intervals. He kept trying to corner her, but she didn’t want to talk to him. She couldn’t.
His words on the balcony kept ringing in her ears over and over, the humiliation poignant enough to give her hot cheeks and a sick stomach every single time she thought about it. Even now on the private jet Cooper had rented, she winced as she aimlessly flipped through the pages of a magazine.
She sucked in bed. She was a bad lay.
And not only was she a terrible lover, she was too stupid to know it. The whole time she’d been thinking that she and Cooper had shared a night of mutual pleasure and passion, and he only reflected back on it with a wince. Fabulous. Just fucking fabulous.
In the past twelve sleepless hours she had dissected everything about that night trying to determine where she’d gone wrong and how she could have misread Cooper’s response to her. Was she not flexible enough? Admittedly, she was terrible at yoga. Should she have showered first? Did she have a hooked vagina or something and no one had the heart to tell her? Had she scraped him with her teeth? The number of potential horrors was astonishingly high and she had run through every single one. Then started back at number one and run through them again.
It wasn’t particularly productive.
Nor was it a great idea to be contemplating texting every man she’d ever slept with and asking him to rate her bedroom skills on a scale of one to ten, one being he’d had root canals more pleasurable, ten being he’d pick her over a porn star. Fortunately, she was on the plane and in full view of Cooper, so she resisted the urge. Her grandmother had always said if you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question. It definitely applied to this situation.
The most horrific part of the whole thing was that she had been stunned to hear that Cooper actually liked her. Wanted to date her. He’d said she was amazing. It had been like everything she could have ever wanted handed to her in a pretty package with a beautiful bow on top. Then she had dropped it and watched it get promptly run over by a semi-truck. And set on fire. She’d been prepared to tell Cooper the truth. That she was the one he had slept with. That she had lied, allowed him to think she was her sister. He would have been angry, but she had been prepared to deal with that. There was no way around it. She couldn’t engage in a relationship without being honest.
Clearly, he felt the same way, which told her everything she needed to know about his character. Everything she had already seen, truthfully, but it was a further reminder. He was a good guy who cared about doing what was right. Having him care about her? Want to be with her? It was something really special and for the briefest, most fleeting of moments she had felt giddy at the very concept.
Only to hear that on the sexual scale she was about as seductive as a slug.
So here they were, trapped in a tin can together, Cooper moving restlessly in his seat, Harley so tense she had a softball-size knot in her shoulder, Mary Jane pouting as her brother continually snapped at her.
It was a whole lot of not fun.
Her knee-jerk reaction was that she clearly needed to quit her job.
But she didn’t think she could do that to Mary Jane. Everyone always left her, from her father dying, to her mother taking off at random intervals, to the two previous nannies ditching after just a few weeks. Harley couldn’t do that to her as well. Mary Jane acted with bravado and nonchalance, but she was still a little girl and she had shown Harley moments of great vulnerability.
Abandoning her was out of the question, so Harley was going to have to figure out how to deal with Cooper. Or not deal with Cooper.
He chose that very moment to sit down next to her, dropping down with long-legged sexiness, filling her space with his scent and presence. He tossed his hair out of his eyes. “We need to talk.”
Actually, she’d be perfectly content to never do that again. She couldn’t even look him in the eye. “This isn’t the time,” she said, voice low and tight.
“You’re not going to quit, are you?” he murmured.
So much for this not being the time or place. Harley forced herself to turn and look at him.
His eyes were pleading, his head leaning toward her. “Please don’t. No matter what you think of me, please don’t quit. You never have to see me if you can’t stand the sight of me.”
This was a perfectly horrific irony. She wanted nothing more than to spend every day with him. The fantasy Cooper had been outdone by the real Cooper and she had been steadily and easily falling hard for him. At the moment all she wanted was to close the distance between them and kiss him. But he would probably end up gagging from disgust, she was so clearly unskilled.
“I’m not going to quit,” she whispered. “Mary Jane is important to me.”
“But I’m not?”
He looked so earnest, so sincere, that Harley felt everything inside her melt like hot butter. She gripped the armrests with sweaty palms and wondered if she had the courage to confess that she was the dud he’d slept with. “You are.”
“But I fucked it up.” It wasn’t a question.
Harley shook her head. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She didn’t know how to tell him.
Cooper sighed when the pause drew out. “Fine. I won’t bother you anymore.”
There was nothing satisfying about that at all.
* * *
COOPER arrived home in a foul mood. So that was that. He’d finally met a woman he wanted to settle down into a relationship with, and in the most ridiculous of all scenarios possible, he’d banged her identical twin already. It wasn’t even like he could chalk this up to misguided youth. He was thirty-fucking-five.
But it wasn’t like he walked around with a sexual crystal ball. How the hell had he known he was going to fall head over ass for Harley? With the knowledge he’d had at the time, he hadn’t made a faulty decision when he’d slept with Charity. He just regretted it now more profoundly than about anything that he’d ever done. Harley obviously had seen through his desperate and unconvincing attempt to convince her the sex had sucked. She wasn’t even willing to discuss it with him.
He was grateful she wasn’t going to quit as MJ’s nanny, but it was cold comfort.
Rosa was in his bedroom when he got home, and that irritated him all over again. It reeked like church in his inner sanctuary and he didn’t even know what church smelled like. But he was convinced this was the smell and he didn’t need to be reminded of his sins, thank you very much. He was well aware of them.
“Rosa, stop burning that shit in here,” he said sternly. He was way too lenient with his staff. Hadn’t he just been reflecting on the fact that their preferences dictated his life, not his own personal likes and dislikes? “It makes my eyes water.”
She made the sign of the cross in front of him. Rosa was short and curvy and she cleaned in jeans and an astonishing diversity of cardigans with embellishments. He’d never known there were so many colors of yarn in existence until she’d started working for him. He really did like her. She was like a Hispanic grandmother to him and MJ. But at the moment he couldn’t deal with the incense.
“Then stop taking the nanny’s intimate apparel. It’s not right.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never taken Harley’s . . . intimate apparel.” That particular phrasing made him want to laugh. It was like he was six and in Sears shopping for bras with his gran. It had never ceased to amaze and intrigue him, that particular department with its bins and bins of lacy cups, while simultaneously making him feel like a first-class creeper. He felt exactly the same way at the moment discussing Harley’s underwear with Rosa.
“That bra I found in your closet. It’s Harley’s. Don’t think I don’t know.”
She was giving him some kind of evil eye.
“No, it wasn’t. It was someone else’s.” He wasn’t going to say who, but definitely someone else’s.
“But I do the wash, and so I saw that Harley has the matching panties. It’s a set.” She gestured to her breasts and to her crotch.
Cooper could have done without the visual aid. He didn’t need Rosa’s body parts pointed out to him. It was so distracting and scarring that it took him a second to process what she was saying. That didn’t make sense. “There are lots of types of red lingerie. How do you know it matches?”
“It has a little pearl heart in the middle on both and the fabric is the same.” She waved her hand to dismiss his protests. “They match.”
That was weird. Did identical twins share underwear? That seemed a little hard to believe. “Well, it’s not hers. Trust me. It’s just a coincidence.”
Her eyebrow went up. She made the sign of the cross again.
“Stop doing that.”
“I’m allowed to practice my faith.”
“Not in my bedroom.” Enough was enough.
She started muttering to herself in Spanish and threw her hands up in the air. But she started toward the door. Cooper felt guilty immediately. “Rosa. Thanks for caring about my soul.”
She stopped and nodded, a smile splitting her face. “Open your eyes, Cooper Brickman, and your heart. You’re a good man and you deserve love. Not harlots.”
He was fairly certain he’d never slept with a harlot, and that one woman shouldn’t be morally judging another. But he appreciated her sentiment all the same. “Thanks.”
Then he went into his closet and instantly lost all positive feelings when he discovered a two-foot statue of the Virgin Mary nestled among his dress shirts. It looked like it belonged in someone’s garden. Mary was looking up at him solemnly, her hands clasped in prayer over her turquoise robes.
“I never touched Harley’s bra,” he told her. “I’ve been framed.”
She didn’t look like she believed him.