The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River) (22 page)

She opened the front door and slammed through the screen door. It banged loudly behind her.

“Hey!” Madeline said, appearing with a basket of laundry. “What’s wrong?”

Emma didn’t respond as she took the stairs up, two at a time. She was panicked, her breath coming in painful gulps. She had to get the other medal out of her bag before Cooper saw it. She had no doubt he’d follow her up this time, no doubt that he was right behind her.

In her room, she fell to her knees and reached under her bed.
Damn it
—she’d pushed it far underneath and had to wiggle partially under the bed to get her hand on it. She grabbed the handle and pulled it out, popping up—

“Shit,”
she muttered.

She was too late. Cooper was at the door of her room, his hand gripping the frame. “What’s the matter?” he asked, only slightly out of breath. “Is there a fire?”

“This is my room! You can’t come in here!”

“I’m already in,” he said, and stepped inside. His hands were on his waist again, and he nodded at the bag. “What’s that?” He lifted his gaze to hers. “What’s in there?”

He asked it so suspiciously that she wondered if he knew just how crazy she was. “What do you think?” she asked bitterly.

“Nothing would surprise me. Let’s have it, Emma. Give me the medal.”

“Just wait out—”

“No,”
he said.

Emma groaned. Or did she whimper? She was dazed with anxiety as she unzipped her bag and plunged her hand inside, her fingers rummaging, trying to find the box. But she had so many things in that bag, she couldn’t find it.

“What are you doing?” he asked as she swept her hand blindly along the bottom of the bag.

“I’m
looking.
”

“You’re wasting time,” he said, and moved forward, as if he meant to take her leather tote.

With a gasp, she grabbed her tote and held it closer. “I have a lot of things in here. Will you stop pressuring me?”

“Look, I just want to get out of here—”

Emma suddenly surged up onto her knees and dumped the bag upside down onto the bed. The evidence of her depravity tumbled out of it, falling and bouncing on the lumpy bed.
All
of it. Ties and tie clips. Medals and pens. The panties she’d stuffed into this bag.

She risked a look at Cooper. He was looking at the pile curiously, not understanding what the strange hodgepodge was. But as Emma sorted through it, looking for the box, his expression changed, sliding from confused to shocked.

She found the right box and clamored to her feet and thrust it at him. “Here,” she said, her voice shaking.

Cooper hesitantly took it from her and opened it. The medal was a star with blue ribbons. Cooper pulled the tab of the cardboard bed and lifted it up. With forefinger and thumb, he lifted out a diamond ring.

Emma gasped. How could she have missed it? The answer was simple, really—she’d missed it because the box meant nothing to her. She’d thrown it into this tote with the rest of the things and never looked back.

Cooper was frowning as he returned the ring to the bottom of the little box, the cardboard bed with the medal fastened to it on top. He didn’t look at Emma as he tucked it all back in and shut the lid. He didn’t look at her as he put it in his pocket. He withdrew the other box from his pocket and held it out to her, his gaze on her bed.

The heat of her shame flooded Emma’s cheeks. She took the box from him and began the humiliating process of returning it, along with everything else, to her bag. Cooper watched, studying each item as she stoically put them inside. He didn’t lift his gaze until she’d zipped the bag.

She could scarcely look at him as she dropped her bag to the floor and, with her boot, nudged it back under her bed.
What he must think of her!
Emma pushed her hair out of her face and folded her arms tightly around herself. Why didn’t he go? He had the medal; he’d seen her brought as low as she could possibly go. Why wouldn’t he just
leave
?

She couldn’t bear his silence and looked up. Cooper was studying her as if he were trying to figure out how the pieces of her fit together.
They don’t fit, obviously!
There are pieces of me all over Los Angeles, don’t you get that?
She couldn’t bear the silence, the scrutiny. “Jesus, Cooper, can we go now?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice low and soft. Ambivalent.

She moved, brushing past him as she fled her room and the evidence of how deplorable she was. She strode down the hallway, down the stairs, gaining speed as she moved.

“Hey!” Madeline said happily as Emma barreled down the stairs, Cooper right behind her. “It’s just about happy hour—”

“No,” Emma said curtly. “Cooper has a plane to catch.”

“Oh.” Madeline’s voice was full of disappointment. “Well, Cooper, I hope we see you again.”

“Not likely!” Emma shouted, and pushed through the screen door, bounding down the steps to the car, ignoring the dogs that were jumping around her, demanding attention she would not give them. They may as well learn it now, too, Emma thought. She had an amazing capacity to turn off, to disengage.

She had already turned the engine when Cooper slid into the passenger seat. He said nothing, just stared straight ahead. Disgusted with her, obviously, but the joke was on Cooper. He couldn’t possibly be more disgusted with Emma than she was with herself.

In fact, Cooper didn’t speak at all until they were pulling into the parking lot of the park. And then he asked a very simple question, for which there were no simple answers.

He looked at her, covered her hand with his. Gently. Tenderly. “Why?”

“Don’t try and understand,” she said roughly, her gaze on the trees in front of her. She owed him no explanation, no matter how much she wanted to give him one. No matter how much she wished she had one. She couldn’t make sense of it, much less try and explain it. The humiliations ran together, overlapping, until there was no beginning and no end to them.

Cooper opened the passenger door and put one leg out. But then he turned his head and fixed those gray eyes on her.

Kryptonite,
she warned herself
. Don’t speak, don’t speak.

“Emma—”

“Get out,” she said. “Get
out.
”

He didn’t argue.

He’d scarcely closed the door before she sped off. She drove blindly, tears filling her eyes. She’d never felt so debased, not even the day she’d found Laura in her father’s bed. At least that indignity had faded with time, the edges of it fraying.
This
was heartbreaking and, she was fairly certain, the pain of it would never fade.

Emma had never felt so low.

When she reached the ranch, she ran up the stairs, past Libby and Madeline’s chatter in the kitchen. She took a hot shower, scalding hot, and tried to get that thing, that humiliation, off of her. It wouldn’t come off, of course, because there was no way she could possibly scrub her own essence from her skin. Leo could say it was okay all he wanted, but Emma had seen the truth on Cooper’s face and in his eyes.

It was not okay. It was
not okay.

SIXTEEN

Sleep was impossible for Cooper in the bizarre Beaver Room. He tossed and turned, wanting desperately to hit something besides a feather pillow.

He closed his eyes, but he kept seeing all the items Emma had—had what,
stolen
?—fall from that worn leather bag. He kept seeing the way she sorted through the things, looking for the box, tossing aside this tie clip, that pen, a tie. His first reaction had been disgust—it wasn’t a great leap of logic to figure out how Emma had come by those objects.

But what sort of person
did
that?

He was trying not to be judgmental about it. A lot of people in Los Angeles slept around and, in fact, Cooper had a couple of partners who had fallen into that category before they’d married. God knew Cooper would be a hypocrite to think he was somehow better than that—he’d been through his share of women in his life.

But there was something very disturbing in taking things from one’s conquests like little trophies.

Cooper woke up cranky and tired. He didn’t want to go skiing, but he was too much a guy’s guy to let Luke down. He’d do it, he’d go, he told himself, and then he’d get the hell out of Pine River. He’d take that goddamn medal back to Carl and tell Michael or Jack they had to handle the event up here. Not him. He was going to put the distance of space and time between him and the girl who had, against all odds, crawled under his skin to bite him.

Luke was in a good mood when he picked up Cooper and chatted on the way to the ski valley about everything and nothing. Fortunately, his enthusiasm for the day didn’t require a lot of interactive conversation from Cooper beyond the occasional grunt of agreement or a yes or no.

He couldn’t push Emma from his mind.

She was a beautiful, gorgeous, puzzle of a woman. Cooper had never been the type to think too long about personalities or idiosyncrasies. People were what they were, and he never bothered to examine it. But Emma? How weird, how unhappy, how extraordinary could one woman be? He wanted a woman as beautiful as Emma to be reasonable, to have all those things going for her that would make her a perfect mate.

And why did he want that? Why did he need ordinary? Wouldn’t that bore him after a time? Didn’t it always? Jill was pretty and accomplished and a great hostess (which she’d pointed out to him more than once) and would be a great mother. And yet, there had been something missing for Cooper in that relationship. Jill’s perfection held no intrigue for him.

Emma Tyler was the other extreme, however, and not in a good way.

There had always been something about her that had set her apart from all the other gorgeous blondes in LA, but who would have guessed it was something so bizarre? She’d seemed secure to him before this week, but now, he’d describe her as floating without a rudder.

He was granted a reprieve from the endless loop of thoughts in his head when they reached the ski area and strapped on the sticks. It was great snow, great runs, and it was a good and solid diversion from the strange week he’d spent in Pine River. At the end of the day, he and Luke dined on steaks and beer and relived every turn on every run.

At the end of the meal, Luke brought up Emma. “Maddie said you were out at the ranch yesterday,” he’d said as they waited for the check. “That you and Emma came together and left together.”

“Yep,” Cooper said.

“So did you get what you came for?” Luke asked, looking down.

Cooper got more than he had come for, so much more he didn’t even know what he had now. “Yeah,” he said. “She had it.”

Luke looked up. “What now?” he asked. “Are you leaving our little slice of heaven in Pine River?”

Cooper thought of the moment he’d opened his eyes and seen Emma standing at the living room window in that shirt, and the way she’d climbed on top of him, the soft look in her eye that was so different than anything he’d seen from her yet. “I’m going back to LA in the morning,” Cooper said. “A couple of days there, and then I’m off to Texas to help my mom with the holidays.”

“Bummer,” Luke said. “There should be some good snow between now and Christmas. Hey, if you’re back this way at the end of the year, I’d love to have you at our wedding.” Luke smiled. “I should qualify that by saying that I’m not actually authorized to extend that invitation
. . .
but I think I can pull a few strings.”

Cooper laughed. “Thanks. But I doubt I will make it.”

“Nevertheless,” Luke said, waving a hand. “It’s going to be a small wedding. I’ll put you on the list just in case.” He reached for his wallet as the waitress deposited the check.

The next morning, Cooper was up at dawn, eager to get out of the Beaver Room and Pine River. He figured that if he reached Denver by three o’clock, he could catch a flight to LA and still make cocktail hour at Marnie and Eli’s house. It was a four-hour drive to Denver; he had plenty of time.

Cooper packed up the rental car and headed out on Main Street. At the end of the street, he turned right, toward the old Aspen Highway. The route took him past the city park and the bench where Emma sat in the afternoons, watching the kids.

He thought about her knit cap and the long strands of blond hair spilling out from beneath it.

Cooper turned at the next corner and drove around the block, coming up to a stop sign directly across from the park. It was empty; it was cold this morning, the sun made bleak by a thin gray haze that had overtaken the sky. He could imagine Emma sitting on that peeling bench, watching kids play. He recalled with a small shiver how angry, how
livid
he’d been when he’d seen her sitting there a couple of days ago. And yet, at the same time, he’d felt a sense of isolation and loneliness in her as he’d strode to that bench to confront her. Maybe he was reading something into her that wasn’t there. She certainly deserved his disdain, but Cooper couldn’t shake the feeling that she deserved compassion, too.

He was loathsomely familiar with that incongruent feeling—he’d had it many times for Derek. No matter how charming Derek had been over the years, or the promises he’d make and break, or the assurances that this time, he really had changed, Cooper could always sense that it wasn’t so. He truly believed it was beyond Derek’s ability to change. It wasn’t like Cooper was clairvoyant or anything like that, but he had a strange sixth sense about certain people. He had it about Derek, and he had it about Emma.

Cooper glanced at his watch. He should go, get on a plane, get the hell out of here and away from crazy. But when he put the car in gear, he turned back into town and drove down Main Street to Elm.

Emma’s car was not at the Kendrick house. Cooper drove on, to the end of the street, and turned west. Not toward Denver. Toward Homecoming Ranch. He gave a stern talking to himself on the drive up to the ranch. This was a stupid thing to do. Emma wasn’t his problem, so what was the point of this? What the hell was he doing?

He liked her, that was what. It was hard to admit to himself because she was so enigmatic and peculiar. Was it because she was beautiful? Was this infatuation because his body snapped to attention every time he looked at her? Was he so shallow? Or was it something deeper than that?

When he turned into the gates at the ranch, he noticed a couple of men were down in the meadow, working on the fence. Cooper drove up and pulled into the circular drive. He stepped out of his car, shoved his hands in his pockets for warmth, and looked around. Wind chimes were tinkling somewhere nearby, and the breeze was chilly. He looked at the house, expecting the sisters to spill out, the dogs to come out from under the porch, to see a tail of smoke rising from the chimney. But the house was silent.

Cooper glanced around. He felt a little foolish being here after all that had gone on between them. A glutton for punishment. A boy with no game, no head for women. But Cooper also knew if he didn’t do something, if he didn’t reach for her now, he never would, and Emma
. . .
well, he feared what would happen to Emma if he, or someone, didn’t grab her.