Some Girls Do (Outback Heat Book 1) (11 page)

He smiled at his daughter, but Coop could tell the bullshit excuse he’d fed Connie had cost his friend dearly. Ethan hadn’t said much about his ex, Delia, over the years but it was clear that he’d do anything to protect his daughter from being hurt. Even from her own mother.

“She missed the fete last month, too.”

“I know,” Ethan said. “It was a shame she got caught up like that, but you know what? I bet Lacey could whip you up a mermaid costume on her sewing machine that would make a
real
mermaid jealous.”

“Mermaids aren’t real,” Connie said with an I’m-not-a-child-anymore eye roll.

Lacey laughed and her eyes went from shining to luminescent and something in Coop’s chest went
thunk.
“Real, fake, legend? Who cares? The most important thing is that your Dad’s right and you know how much I hate admitting that, right?”

Connie nodded. “Right.”

“I can make you a totally awesome,
completely
kickass mermaid costume. Oops, sorry,” she said putting a hand over her mouth. “Kick bottom.”

Connie giggled and JJ pressed her lips together as Ethan rolled his eyes. “Right,” JJ said, that’s settled. “Take your drink and find a booth. Here—” she reached under the bar and pulled out a spiral notebook, ripping a few pages out of it and handing it to Lacey, along with a pen, “show Connie what you’ve got.”

Connie slipped off the seat looking more like her old self now. “C’mon Dad,” she tugged his hand.

“I take it that happens a lot?” Coop asked JJ as Lacey made her way around the bar and Connie and Ethan headed towards the booths.

“Delia?”

“Yes.”

Her mouth tightened again. “You could say that.”

“You joining us, Coop?”

Coop looked over his shoulder to find Lacey sitting at the booth, patting the empty space beside her. He glanced opposite to Ethan who looked like he’d rather eat nails than share a booth with Coop. Frankly, so would Coop. Sitting so close to Lacey was something he’d avoided for a long time. But he was supposed to be playing a role here.

He was supposed to be her lover.

“Duty calls,” JJ murmured.

Coop looked back at her. He got the distinct impression that she wasn’t buying their story at all, but that wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have.

He raised his beer to her then headed across the room.

*     *     *

Half-an-hour and three
pieces of paper later Lacey was satisfied with the mermaid costume sketch. Connie was thrilled. They’d also talked about fabrics and colours and Lacey had jotted down some notes beside the final sketch. There was only tomorrow to get the costume done so there was no time for experimentation, which was the way Lacey usually rolled. Thank goodness Hoff’s Haberdashery had survived the test of time and was still doing business in the age of the internet.

She supposed this wasn’t quite the designing her mother had in mind when she’d been saving up for Lacey’s college fund. Nor had it been Lacey’s plan. But she felt more connected to this piece of work for Connie than anything she’d conjured up thus far at design school. She felt more fulfilled in this half hour seeing the excitement in her niece’s face than she had in three-and-a-half-years.

Lacey forced herself to concentrate on that, because if she didn’t her brain slid to other things. Like how close she was to Coop in a booth that wasn’t exactly spacious. How good it felt to have his arm occasionally brush hers. And the intense heat radiating from his thigh, crossing the narrow gap to hers, melting her quads like gelatine.

“Okay,” Lacey said dragging her attention back to Connie. “I just need to take your measurements and I can run this up tomorrow. Dad can drop you in for a try-on after school.”

Connie gave an excited little wiggle on her seat, clearly thrilled by the happy ending she hadn’t been expecting. “Can I get another drink Dad, so I can toast Lacey?
Please
?”

Ethan cocked an eyebrow. “A toast?”

“Billy says that’s how people celebrate things.”

“Oh does he now?”

“I thought Billy was insufferable?” Lacey asked with a smile.

Connie shrugged and her cheeks turned pink. “Sometimes he’s not.”

“One more,” Ethan said. “But that’s it. Lacey still has to measure you and I’m sure you’ve got homework.”

Connie wriggled out of the booth and they watched her practically skipping away. “Thanks Lace,” Ethan said, “Really. I appreciate it.”

Lacey knew she should just shut up and take the compliment but she couldn’t resist a little dig. “Handy having me home isn’t it?”

He grunted. “We would have cobbled something together without you.”

Lacey could just imagine. “Marcus’s clamshell bikini top he wears to fancy dress parties won’t fit Connie.” Not to mention how trashy that would look compared to a subtle-but-glorious Lacey Weston original.

“We’d have figured it out.”

The way he avoided her eyes told Lacey that it
had
crossed Ethan’s mind. “Can I stop by the house tomorrow morning and pick up a few things? There’s some funky buttons that’ll look cool on the outfit and there’s probably some fabric from my stash there I can use.”

Ethan gave her a don’t-be-daft look. “Of course you can,” he said, exasperation colouring his voice. “Why don’t you just do it there? Your old machine’s still in your room. Save you hauling everything here and Connie can try it on when she gets home from school.”

Lacey’s family had bought her a top-of-the-range sewing machine for her eighteenth birthday to replace the one her mother had given her when she’d turned twelve. It was true she wouldn’t need anything fancy for this job and it made sense to run it up back home where she’d have easier access to Connie, but she wasn’t ready to make nice with her brother just yet.

“Here’s fine,” she said.

Ethan gave a tense nod. “Suit yourself.” He looked at the tabletop for a moment before returning his attention to Lacey. “I didn’t ask yesterday … are you well? Have you set up an appointment with Doc Janson?”

Lacey screwed up her face. “What for? To tell me what I already know?”

Even if she had been pregnant she wouldn’t be seeing Doc Janson. He was a lovely old gent who’d been the family doctor forever and had been a constant support during their mother’s two-year battle with cancer, but Lacey wasn’t comfortable taking any female stuff to the man who had previously only given her her shots and, once in a blue moon, looked down her throat.

“For … tests and general pregnancy … stuff,” Ethan said vaguely.

“Thanks. I think I’ll stick with someone who trained this century.” He had to be at least ninety by now, surely?

“She needs to see a doctor,” Ethan said, ignoring her and talking directly to Coop.

“I’ll make sure she sets it up,” Coop said.

A spiral of rage catapulted through Lacey’s system.
I’ll make sure she sets it up?
Like he was her freaking keeper or something. Both of them talking about her like she was a child. Like she wasn’t even here?

Lacey opened her mouth to tell both of them to shove it, but Connie chose that moment to return with her drink and Lacey forced a smile onto her face.

It almost killed her.

*     *     *

Later that night
after a bowl of Coop’s mother’s delicious soup Lacey was in a better mood. She’d done a shop at the local supermarket today so there was food in the cupboards, but not having to cook was always decadent. Coop had buttered up a stack of hot toast to go with it and Lacey had devoured three slices.

In fact, curled up on the couch now in her pajamas with a cup of hot chocolate, watching
Masterchef
on the TV, Lacey felt positively mellow. Coop was at the other end of the couch reading a book. It seemed like he was far away down there. And not just physically.

She watched him out the corner of her eye every now and then as he read an absolutely huge hardback. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles and his T-shirt sat snug against his abs. His concentration on the book was absolute.

Lucky book.

The show ended and Coop was still reading. Lacey rolled her head to look at him. “You know you can read books on your phone now, right?”

“So I hear,” he said, not looking up.

“I’ve got about ten on my phone at the moment.”

“I like paper.” His gaze remained steadfastly fixed on his book. “Guess I’m just old-fashioned like that.”

If he was trying to remind her of their age difference, he’d succeeded. But the truth was it didn’t matter to Lacey. It hadn’t mattered to her the night she’d picked him up in a bar and it didn’t matter to her now.

“Each to their own,” she shrugged.

“Mmm.”

Lacey contemplated yanking her top off to get Coop to look at her. Was this the way it was going to be? Was a little conversation too much to ask? Was there anything wrong with making the best out of a bad situation?

She was up for making the best of it in
every
way possible.

“There’s also Kindles,” she said, goaded by his continuing concentration. “They’re supposed to be brilliant too.”

Coop sighed and finally looked at her. “Yes.” He shut the book, put it on the coffee table and stood.

“Where’re you going?” she asked as her gaze followed him around the couch. “Hitting the sack already?”

“Shower.”

His answer was curt, but it didn’t really matter as Lacey’s brain went into overdrive. Thinking about Coop in the shower. Thinking about
doing
Coop in the shower.

It didn’t bode well for the next two weeks that she was already thinking about turning their fake situation into something a little more real. But the truth was there wasn’t one way she
hadn’t
fantasied about doing Coop—
about Coop doing her
—over the years. They’d had chemistry right from the start. She’d been hot for him right from the start.

Weren’t little sisters supposed to develop crushes on friends of their brothers?

Lacey wasn’t sure she had it in her to keep this two weeks platonic. The sound of the shower running did not help. Could she take listening to that shower run for the next two weeks and know he was naked in there and not just strip off and get in with him? Something wild and wanton pulsed between her legs. That’s what impulsive Lacey would do.

But she was supposed to be proving to him she wasn’t a screw-up …

Lacey sighed, shoving a fist between her legs and pressing in hard to relieve the ache.

Being a grown-up sucked.

*     *     *

Two hours later
Lacey was lying in her double bed, her back turned to Coop, pretending to be asleep while he sat up in his bed against the headboard and continued to read. The room was quiet and dark except for the glow of Coop’s bedside lamp. He was wearing a white T-shirt that stretched very nicely over his shoulders. Beneath the sheets were a pair of Nike sports shorts. They fell to just above his knee and were loose but made from some kind of polyester that tended towards a build-up of static.

She’d been able to see the outline of his thighs and other parts of his anatomy as he’d walked out of the shower. It had been most distracting and nigh on impossible not to cop a perve. She’d managed—but only just.