Me & Timothy Cooper (3 page)

“Oh no, I don’t think …”

“Listen, Southern, it was
an
honest offer. My mom is there, and y
ou can stay in my little
brother’s room. No strings. We
’ll feed you, and
anyhow,
I don’t think you can walk at this point.” He nodded towards her ankle,
now
swollen to twice its normal size.

H
er answer made him laugh.

“
What will people say
about
me staying at Timothy Cooper’s house?”

He wiped tears from his eyes. “You crack me up. Do you care what they’ll say? And weren’t we supp
osed to learn about each other
?”

She wrinkled her nose. “
Yes, we were, a
nd n
o, I don’t care. But d
oes this mean our date is cancelled?”

This time it was his turn to startle.
“Our date?”

“Wednesday, isn’t that a date?”

“O
h, right, yeah, I guess it was
.
No, I’ll still pick you up.”

He entered an upscale neighborhood, passing through an automatic gate and following a street lined with
salmon-colored
pavers and expensive shrubbery.

“This
is
where you live?” she asked. “But I thought …”

“You have a bad habit
of not finishing your sentences
, Southern
.”

She smiled. “I know. My mom tells me that a lot.
I
was
gonna
say, I
thought your dad was in the service.”

He made a left. “Now, who’s spying on
whom
?”

“
Which reminds me.
” She dragged out the last word.
“Your turn.”

He chuckled. “Let’s just say I’m male, and I needed to know.”
He drove up a long
driveway and parked
in front of
a
three-car garage. Extracting the keys from the ignition,
he glanced at her
.
She had a peculiar expression on her face. “What? Was it something I said?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

CHAPTER 3

Timothy Cooper needed to know about me?
Timothy Cooper who never spoke to me one day before today.
Timothy Cooper whose car this was, whose house this was, whose shirt I was wearing. Timothy Cooper.

I eyed
his naked chest, my mind in a wh
irl, and traced
the thin line of
blond
hair descending
to his naval.
Distracting.

“Well, what was it, Southern? What’d I say?”

Southern.
Where in the world did he pick that up from? I knew I had a twang sometime
s
, but no one had ever called me out on it.

“You … you …
nevermind
.”

It seemed pointless to bring up his interest in me. After all, before today, we’d ne
ver said one word to each other, so it didn’t mean anything. He was probably being nosy.

He smiled crookedly and climbed from the car. Moving around the front, he opened my door and scooped me from the seat.

I let out a squeal. “What are you doing?”

To balance myself, I
threw an arm around his neck, and h
e leaned back, forcing me
harder
against his chest.
God help me.

“I’
m carrying you.”

And my mouth wouldn’t quit talking. Why did he bring this out in me?

“This because I can’t walk or because you’re male?”
I asked.

He laughed. “Both. What is this point number three against males?”

I smiled.
“So far.”

He flipped his keys onto his forefinger.
“Third key.
Stick it in the lock.”

I did as I was told, and he toted me into the lobby. Okay, it wasn’t a lobby, just a foyer, but
it was big enough to be a lobby.
Everything about the house was huge.
Huge entrance.
Huge staircase.
Huge living
room.
Hug
e
kitchen with a huge center island.

And his mom
, not huge,
standing in the middle.
She was pretty, and he looked like her.

“Afternoon, Mom.”

She stood
there uncertainly, her hand on the top of the open refrigerator door.
Huge refriger
ator
too,
the size of
two of ours.

It came to me perhaps her son entering the house shirtless toting an unknown female who was wearing said shirt was a bit unusual, so I attempted to smile. But my ankle really was h
urting badly and so I imagine it looked more like a scowl.

“Tim?”
she asked.

He carried me through the kitchen into an attached family room and plopped me on
to
a chocolate-brown leather couch. He
shoved a pillow behind my head.

“
Southern’s
hurt her ankle. Can you take a look?”

S
he
padded over the terrazzo tiles and
knelt at my feet. Her fingers gently probed my flesh, and I winced.
It hurt.

“Be best to have an x-ray,” she said, “to make sure the bones aren’t broken. But
I suspect it’s only a sprain.
O
ne thing’s for sure, you won’t be walking on it.” A smile rose on her face. “He
do
that to you?” She inclined her head toward Tim.

I smiled back.
I liked her already. “No.
Why,
is
he in the habit of injuring people
?”

She laughed and
then looked at Tim
. “Should I ask about the shirt?”

I should have been nervous around her. This was
,
after all, Timothy Cooper’s mom
. But I wasn’t. She was
the kind of person who made you
relaxed right from the start.

“Mine was a casualty of the accident,” I supplied in his defense.

This seemed to satisfy her because
she didn’t ask
anything else
.
Then again, she was a woman
and
had to kno
w the trick.

She stood to her feet. “I’ll get you an ice pack.”

As she walked away, Tim
called out to her back. “She needs a place to stay tonight. I was thinking she could use Justin’s room.”

Justin Cooper.
His little broth
er.
I had heard rumors about what happened
, me being relatively new in town a
nd so not here at the time,
it was one of those things you never asked
about
. Not knowing the full story, however, didn’t stop my guilt. I was there
,
and he was not. Maybe staying in his room was wrong. I really should go home, but how I’d navigate once I was there was beyond me.
I wasn’t even sure I could make it to the
bathroom
safely
.

She never flinched. “You’re homeless?”

I smiled because that sounded like something Tim woul
d say.
“No, my parents are out of town. I’m sure I can manage
fine
, but he wouldn’t take me home.”

“No, he wouldn’t, and you can’t manage. You have to stay off that foot.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

I laid my head back on the pillow and met Tim’s gaze. His blue eyes stared right through me, and I was back to wondering why he knew so much about me.

“About our date,” I said.

He tilted his head.

“Here’s the thing … my parents are gone for longer than tonight.”

His eyes widened slightly. “Oh?”

My attempt to smile was feeble, the pain in my ankle swamping over me.

“Like how long?”

His mom returned
,
and I yelped at the
weight
of the ice pack. I looked past her toward Tim. “Like ‘til Sunday night.”

CHAPTER
4

“Sunday night?” Tim stared at her. Her parents left her alone for an entire week?

She read his thoughts.
“Yes, but my Grandma is supposed to check on me. They’ve done it
before,
and …”

They’d done it before? His mind swam with the idea. Her parents were in
the habit of leaving her alone.
What if something happened?
Like spraining her ankle.
Then what was she supposed to do?

“I’ll be okay by tomorrow,” she said.

He ran a hand through his hair. “You will not be okay by tomorrow. You think you’ll get up
,
and it’ll
all be gone?”

Evi
dently that’s exactly what she
thought because the confusion on her face raised itself before him. Fortunately, his mom stepped in.

“Southern?” She hesitated.

“Taylor,”
Taylor
supplied.

His mom smiled. “Taylor, your ankle won’t be right for the next
week
, much less twenty-four hours. We can’t let you go h
ome to stay by yourself. You’ll
stay here.”

“But …” Taylor
blurted.

“But nothing,” Tim shot back. “There’s no argument. You stay.”

“I need clothes
.”

That was an issue, for sure, and she was in no shape to go retrieve them. Neither was he going to retrieve
them. Dig around in her underthings
? No way.
He looked to his mom who sighed.

“Give me your address and the key, and I’ll go.”

“You’re sure about this?”
Taylor
asked, “I don’t want to put you out. This is so much trouble.”

His mom patted her
on the
shoulder. “No trouble at all.”

Taylor
unzipped her purse and produced the key. “There’s another thing,” she said. She swallowed nervously. “My clothes are all dirty and …”

“And?” his mom asked.

“And I don’t have, you know, anything decent to sleep in.”

She looked at him when she said it, and his mind went right where it shouldn’t.

***

Whatever he was thinking about my statement was most likely accurate. I slept in whatever I found and often that was nothing more than
my
underwear. That I had just confessed this to Timothy Cooper’s mom hit me the minute I said it, but I didn’t want her to spend fruitless hours trying to find what wasn’t there. I also figured as his mom she’d want to protect her son from whatever this strange girl he’d brought home was up to.

I wasn’
t up to anything … yet …
but she wouldn’t know that.

The thought of staying at Timothy Cooper’s house pounded in my brain
once she left
.
A
nd for a
n entire
week.
I was still marveling at this when he got up and wandered into the kitchen. He waved a canned soda in the air to get my attention.

“Want one?”

“Sure,” I called. He brought it to me and returned to the kitchen to fetch his own. Then he went through a doorway on the far side.

“Be back in a sec,” he said.

I popped the top a
nd sipped the cold drink
, taking in my surroundings. Through the window I could see a swimming pool surrounded by large round stones, which piled up to
a
waterfall on one end. Water ran over the stones, through thick green ferns into
a dark pool
.

“My dad’s doing.”

I glanced up. He’
d donned a shirt, and
I was mildly disappointed. “Why is the water black?”
I asked.

“It’s not, that’s the color of the pool lining. Makes it look natural.”

“It’s very pretty.”

“We can take a swim, if you like.”