Sometimes, Forever (Sometimes Moments #2) (2 page)

It was time he said thank you.

With that thought, he began to write.

Dear Callum Reid,

You don’t know who I am, but I like to think you had an idea of me. My name’s Cooper Hepburn …

The husband to Peyton Hepburn, and father to our child, Callum Stuart Hepburn.

“C
ongratulations, Rhys and Megan!” his sister, Margot, screamed into the microphone. Then the entire function room exploded in applause.

Cooper Hepburn stood idly by as one of his sister’s cheeks blushed at the attention. Megan loved it. She killed for attention like this. Margot, the baby Hepburn sister, would find a moment to embarrass the newly engaged pair soon enough. Though Margot had been in a relationship with her boyfriend, Phillip Hall, for much longer than Rhys and Megan, she hated attention. She was quite the opposite of Megan, and that was probably why Cooper loved her so much more. Sure, he loved them both. But he was honest when it came to who was his favourite.

And it was Margot.

Always Margot.

She even topped their mother as Cooper’s favourite Hepburn family member. His mother, as sweet as she was, was annoying when it came to his personal life. It was always ‘when are you going to be serious about your life, Cooper? When are you going to settle down?’

The truth was there was no one within a fifty-kilometre radius for him. Warren Meadows was slim pickings. It was smack bang in the middle of the bubble. The South Eastern suburbs bubble. By now, according to popular bubble belief, Cooper should be married and have a couple of kids running about. But he didn’t. Nothing quite turned him off the idea of marriage and kids than watching all his friends, and now, his sister, enter the bubble. For Cooper, he was much better off alone with his mother shooting disappointing glares his way. Quite frankly, he believed there was a lot more than what Warren Meadows offered. And he believed he deserved more than marrying someone he had met in high school who
settled
for him.

“Stop lookin’ so miserable, Coop,” Margot hissed from next to him. He wasn’t sure when she had made it to him, but he was just happy to have her company.

“I’m not,” he muttered, searching for a waiter and a beer to distract him and his sister.

“You definitely do. Trust me, Megs is the last person who needs to be getting married. We all know she’s going to be a bridezilla. God, our lives are about to become hell.”

He chuckled. “Probably worse than that.”

“You still avoiding Mum?”

Cooper’s focus was on his mother by the cake as she spoke to several people he did not recognise. He assumed they were people his sister worked with at the office. But he wasn’t sure. The engagement party was held at The Oaks Garden, highly sought after and ridiculously expensive to have a hundred or so people in a garden with some tables and chairs. But his sister always got what she wanted.

“I’m not avoiding Mum,” he said, slightly annoyed at himself for even trying to lie to Margot. He craned his neck to see her brushing back her curled hair and squinting her light brown eyes at him. In her attempt to distance herself from their sister, Megan, she had continuously dyed her hair an auburn colour.

“You are so avoiding Mum. You should just stop and get it over and done with. Her only son unwedded and without an upcoming engagement. What will the rest of the family think?”

He rolled his eyes at her. “You’re annoying. How does Phil stand you?”

She smiled. One mention of her boyfriend, Phillip Hall, and her tough exterior melted. “He just does. Do you know what’s strange?”

“What?”

“Megs invited Meredith.”

“
Your
best friend Meredith? That Meredith?”

Margot nodded. “Yeah,
my
best friend Meredith. Odd, right? Meredith hasn’t been in Warren Meadows for like four or five years. Didn’t even think Megs remembered her. Then, suddenly, she asked if she was coming when we walked in here.”

Cooper set his hand on his baby sister’s shoulder. There was a story with Meredith Driessen. From what he remembered of her, she was a nice girl. There were also secrets about her that Margot had kept. Not even her boyfriend knew them. And Cooper knew for a fact that she missed her best friend. As close as he was with Margot, he never asked. He always assumed when she was ready, she’d talk to him about it.

“You know, you can always go to the Netherlands to see her,” Cooper reminded.

Margot tensed as her eyes quickly scanned the room. “Shh!” she hissed. “You’re not supposed to know, remember? You just so happened to see that one letter.”

“
Margie
.” He used her nickname to calm her. A nickname only he ever used. “She’s going to come back; you know that.”

She sighed. “I know. Like I know that you’re not gonna be sticking around much longer at this pretentious soiree our lovely older sister has thrown.”

“
You’re
pretentious for even saying ‘soiree,’” he teased.

“Shut up,” she muttered as she swatted his hand away.

“Could you two ever stop fighting long enough for us to enjoy a special occasion?” their mother asked from behind Cooper.

Cooper and Margot exchanged looks. He was sure she was thinking of how they could both escape her grasp. Their mother was pushy and resilient in her quest to match them off. He was sure Margot thought their mother didn’t like Phil. They’d been together since high school. If anyone could deal with Margot, it was Phillip Hall. And that man was a saint.

“Mother,” Margot said in the extremely fake voice she’d mastered for the woman who gave birth to them. “Doesn’t Megs need you attached to her hip today?”

“You’re so very funny, Margot,” their mother deadpanned. Then her determined glare found Cooper. “And you, Cooper, there are plenty of women here you can meet.”

Too bad I went to high school and university with almost every single one of them.

“I’ll pass, thanks, Mother.”

“You’re twenty-five, Cooper. You can’t keep passing off women as if they’re legs of lambs at a butcher. You have to
try
them.”

Margot burst into a fit of laughter. “You’re suggesting Coop
tries
these women like legs of lambs? Christ, you are sick. He isn’t going to shower them in olive oil and rosemary. They’re women, not meat. Come along, Cooper, we’ll give Mother what she wants. Let’s go see what cut of lamb you’d like.” She looped her arm through his.

“Honestly, Margot. Common sense,” their mother hissed.

“You said women were legs of lambs. How was that common sense?” Margot challenged.

“Come on, Margie,” Cooper said, trying to calm her though the humour in his voice was loud and clear.

“Eleanor, leave the boy,” their father, Roger, said. “He’s got his head screwed on right. Career driven. We should be lucky that he didn’t give us grandbabies at eighteen.”

He felt Margot tense next to him.

“Yeah, still a teenager,” Margot reminded.

The humour in his father’s light brown eyes had Cooper shaking his head. Little did their parents know that it was Margot’s pregnancy test. She hadn’t seen the results when she had panicked and threw it in the bin. Cooper had covered for her, telling his folks that it belonged to the girl he was seeing. At family dinner, he had expressed that the test was negative. That he—
Margot
—was not having a child anytime soon. Nothing like a pregnancy scare to bring the family together.

Cooper cleared his throat. His family drama tolerance had hit his quota for the day. He was going to say goodbye and congratulate Megan and then go home. Instead of dating during university, Cooper had gotten a job at a local hardware store. From there, he had saved enough money until he got a loan to buy his own home. After his degree, he became a manager for the store once a major hardware store chain had bought it out.

“Women are not meat. Dad taught me better. I have an early start tomorrow,” he said, excusing himself.

The disappointment sizzled in his mother’s eyes. He kissed Margot’s cheek and then stepped towards his ever-so-determined mother. Cooper set his hands on her shoulders and gave her a smile.

“Mother, I don’t need you to find me a wife. I’m sure when I meet the one, I’ll know. But right now, I don’t want to be tied down and have children. I like not having to be exactly what folks around me are. Married with kids. I don’t want to be changing nappies. When I want responsibility, I’ll get myself a dog. Okay?”

“But, Coop—”

“Mother,” Margot interrupted as she stood next to him. “Have you ever wondered why you didn’t just call me ‘Audrey’? You had the perfect setup for me. Audrey Hepburn. It was right there for the taking.”

“Because she knew from the moment you were born that you weren’t worthy,” Megan teased once she approached them. “Coop, that’s your bailing face. You’re leaving?”

He nodded. “As much as I love you, Megs, parties aren’t my thing. Congratulations to you and Rhys.”

Megan handed her champagne glass to Margot and wrapped her arms around him. Then she whispered, “Don’t listen to Mum.”

“I never do,” he said softly once their embraced ended.

Cooper took a long pull of his cold beer and then set it on the desk he sat at. He began to scroll down the employee performance reports on his screen. He missed the days where he had manual work. Sure, the management role paid well and it was in the field of his degree, but report after report bored him.

He wanted something new.

He
needed
something new.

Opening up a new Safari browser, Cooper decided that it wouldn’t hurt to look. In his Google search, he typed ‘manual work’ and ‘farm.’ When he came across a jobs search website, he clicked on the link. Once he clicked the state he lived in, job after job advertisements appeared on the screen. Pursing his lips, Cooper decided to throw caution to the wind and find something new. If he found something he liked, he’d go for it. He’d burn a bridge with his current employers, but he hadn’t liked working for them. He’d only remained out of gratitude to the previous owner who had asked the hardware giants to keep Cooper on board. But Mr Jenkins no longer owned the hardware store. Instead, he had given his daughter, Annie, the money to put a deposit on a house.

Cooper got comfortable in his leather desk chair as he read through the job ads. Most weren’t the kind of manual labour he was looking for. Some had salaries that doubled his current one. But it was the same job, if not worse. An office with four grey walls and night after night of reports.

No.

Cooper wanted more than that.

His philosophy of going where life took him had to be more than the suburbs and reports.

He was about to give up his ridiculous search when he came across a headline of an ad that caught his eye. Leaning forward, Cooper read it.

Daylesford lavender farm seeks operations manager.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but when Peyton got pregnant, my focus was on her and getting ready to welcome our son into our lives.