The Rebel (The Millionaire Malones Book 3) (2 page)

Maggie had sighed as she flopped back on the pillow. Evan had crawled up on to her bed, under the blankets, and snuggled beside her, one soft arm around her neck.

‘Who is it, Mommy?’ Evan’s whisper had been as loud as a shout and she’d smiled at how polite her little man was trying to be.

‘It’s Cooper’s friend, Alfie. Cooper’s in the
hospital, sweetie.’

Evan’s sleepy eyes had widened. ‘Is Cooper Cooper Cooper sick?’

‘No, he’s not sick like that. He hurt his knee. I’m sure the doctors and nurses will fix him and make him all better.’

‘Can we go see him? Can we?’

‘As soon as we can. I promise.’

Evan had tucked up under Maggie’s arm and continued to whisper. ‘Was there blood?’

‘Good question. Alfie, was there blood?’

Alfie had chuckled down the line. ‘I love your little bloke. He’s a little legend on his board. When he wants to go pro, make sure you come see me.’

Maggie had gritted her teeth. ‘When you-know-what freezes over, Alfie. And just quietly, wasn’t it your job to keep Cooper out of the … away from the … oceanic environment?’

‘Good one, luv,’ he’d laughed boisterously. ‘I wish I had those magical
powers that could keep Coop out of the water. You know he doesn’t listen to anyone.’

Maggie knew it. When it came to Cooper Malone and the water, he was stubborn as a mule and slippery as a fish.

Once she’d said her goodbyes to the still-sleeping Cooper and left the hospital, Maggie walked to her car and got in, dialling home before she started the engine. She knew Evan would be waiting for
news.

It was the understatement of the century to say that Evan idolised Cooper and, from Evan’s perspective, Maggie totally got it. Her son was only five years old and, to him, Cooper was like a gigantic superhero. Six four, wide shoulders, long and wavy blond surfer hair. Evan spent most of his time trying to get Cooper’s attention, craning his neck up to the sky and calling, ‘Cooper Cooper
Cooper.’

And, without fail, he would answer, ‘Yeah, mate? What’s up?’

Cooper was like an uncle to Evan and the closest thing she had to a decent man in her life. Their friendship seemed as improbable as finding herself a single mother.

Things like that didn’t happen to smart girls like Maggie MacLean, right?

The call connected. ‘Is he okay, Mommy?’

‘Yeah, sweetie. He’s doing fine. He’s sleeping
right now, which is the best thing when you’ve hurt yourself.’

‘Does he have a scar?’

‘It’s a bit hard to tell. His leg is all wrapped up in bandages.’

‘Matt from my class had his arm wrapped up in bandaids. It was a plaster cask. He broke it on a skateboard.’

Maggie smiled. ‘Did he?’

‘Did you see the blood? Was there blood, Mommy?’

‘No blood.’

‘Oh.’ There was a pause. Maggie imagined her
mom was standing right there next to Evan, her hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans, listening to the conversation and smiling at her wonderful grandson. A large part of who he was was due to her mother. She’d been a rock since Evan was born.

‘Can you kiss it better for Cooper, Mommy?’

‘Of course I will,’ she lied. She had no interest in getting on the end of that very long line.

There was silence and she could hear Evan murmuring. ‘Mmmm. What about a bandaid? I could stick it on for him. I could get him a Batman one.’

‘That is great thinking, Evan. What say I get some on the way home and you can give them to Cooper when he gets out of the hospital, huh?’

‘Okay, Mommy.’

‘Can you give the phone to Grandma, sweetie?’

‘Here she is.’

The phone dropped with a clatter on
the kitchen table and Maggie’s mom picked it up. ‘How is he, Maggie?’

The tension of the day, of hearing about Cooper’s accident, of seeing him semi-conscious and connected to every machine the hospital had, exploded out of her. ‘If he doesn’t hurt now, he damn well will when he wakes up. What the hell was he thinking getting back on a board again with that knee? I want to strangle him, you know
that, Mom?’

‘Stubborn as a mule. Apparently all Australians are.’

Maggie huffed. ‘Only the ones I know.’ She checked her watch. ‘Can you see that Evan has a snack and stays away from the cartoons? I’ll pick up some things for dinner and be home soon.’

*

Maggie absentmindedly walked
the aisles of her local grocery store, ambling along
with the trolley in front of her. She didn’t need much but was taking her time, eyeing the displays, trying not to buy any chocolate. Instead, she chose bananas and dropped them into her supermarket trolley. She remembered the bandaids for Evan. Some apples. Fresh bread rolls. Chicken fillets, a lettuce and tomatoes. It looked like burger night tonight.

It was nice to be out of the house, even
if it was doing a household chore. Sometimes—no, a lot of the time—she felt housebound and confined. She hadn’t envisioned this for her life. Before she’d fallen pregnant, she’d been a traveller. A restless So-Cal gal with a rucksack and a passport, she’d hopped on a plane whenever she’d scraped up enough money from waitressing and cleaning jobs. She loved being a gypsy, never planning where she
might venture next. First it was Morocco via Paris, with side trips to Croatia and Spain thrown in; and then New Zealand, where she met a couple of Tolkien fans who were flying to the land of the long white cloud determined to throw their wedding rings into Mount Doom. When she was fruit picking in the South Australian Riverland one Down Under summer, she’d met a wild Irish girl named Marion and
they’d travelled together to the Indonesian island of Bali. That’s where she’d first met Cooper. In a dingy bar in the main tourist strip in Kuta, she and Marion had braved the crowds of drunken Australians and met two surfers. Cooper Malone and Vance Walton, brothers in arms and brothers on the waves. The striking blond-haired tanned athletes had just returned to the tourist town after surfing in
Uluwatu. Vance had looked across at her, grinned, and said ‘G’day.’

Maggie’s life had been linked to both men ever since.

She hadn’t travelled since Bali. That gypsy soul was now a sensible accountant who worked from home. It was a long way from her old life, but she’d made it work for her and Evan. She took him to school, and then worked in her office, the third bedroom at the front of the
house, which overlooked her quiet street, until it was time to pick him up. Sometimes she worked at night, after Evan had gone to bed. Her mom was close, in the home Maggie had grown up in, which was a blessing for emergencies like today.

It had been the two of them—her and Evan—since he was born. When she’d finally tracked Vance down in South Africa and told him she was pregnant and that she
was keeping the baby, he’d made it perfectly clear that fatherhood wasn’t his bag. ‘I’m trying to break into the professional circuit, babe. I can’t be tied down like that.’

In her heart she’d known Vance wasn’t a long-term bet. She’d known it that first night, when he’d slipped an arm around her but kept an eye on her friend Marion, whose Irish eyes and Dublin brogue were as compelling as her
long red hair and her curves. She wasn’t that upset, because Cooper was handsome and so tall, and had looked at her with a glint in his eye that she imagined was flirting. But he’d disappeared with Marion not long after their first drink, and the gypsy in Maggie decided she didn’t care about being anyone’s second choice. She was young and adventurous and this was only going to be for a few days
of fun—maybe a week—in the heady tropical heat of Bali, and Vance was too gorgeous to refuse.

When Maggie realised she was pregnant, on the way to Vietnam, she turned around and went home to California. Her travelling days stopped and her sensible life had begun.

Vance was true to his word about not wanting to be tied down and had never bothered to come to California to meet his son. But Cooper,
the tall handsome Cooper, had dropped in the summer after Evan was born. He’d been in San Clemente to prepare for a surf competition and had turned up on Maggie’s doorstep with a stuffed koala for Evan and a bottle of Australian wine for her.

Their friendship had grown in the years since. As his surfing career had exploded, he’d travelled more and more and had made a point of sending postcards
to Evan from wherever he was in the world. The colourful collection now filled the wall above the desk by Evan’s bed. Kangaroos and bears and lions and elephants; he’d found cheesy animal cards from around the globe to delight his young friend. Maggie had followed Cooper’s career online and in the sports news, and whenever he was on a break from competitions, he would fly in and crash at his San
Clemente house, instead of going home to Sydney, and simply hang out with Maggie and Evan.

Their friendship had grown strong and solid over the years and Maggie had decided it was the perfect arrangement. Friends was so much easier than lovers, and she wasn’t that gypsy she’d once been. She couldn’t fly off to exotic locations on a whim, and she certainly couldn’t sleep with a man simply because
he was tall and tanned and charming. That wasn’t her life anymore.

All of that history meant she could get angry at him and he would understand. Friends could do that with friends. Cooper shouldn’t expect anything less.

Because she was going to get angry at him. Cooper Malone was going to feel the full-on wrath of Maggie MacLean.

And it was going to be ugly.

‡

C
ooper gingerly dropped
his legs over the side of the bed and checked out each of the four walls in the vain hope they’d miraculously become more interesting since the last time he looked. Nope, they hadn’t. He was feeling stir-crazy. Some interior designer had
obviously figured pale green would be calming to patients, but it reminded Cooper of toothpaste. The drapes on the windows were the same shade as the walls and the view was of the car park. Hanging on the wall opposite the bed was an anonymous watercolour painting of a dense forest with snow-capped mountains in the background; he’d spent two mind-numbing days wondering if it was Montana, Colorado,
Switzerland or Canada. Why hang a picture like that in a hospital in Southern California? It baffled him. The wall-mounted TV in the corner hadn’t had enough sports for his liking, so he’d barely turned it on. On a whitewashed sideboard to his right sat a huge bunch of flowers sent by his twin brother Callum and Ava, Cal’s fiancée.

Cal’s message on the card read:

What next—a Zimmer frame? Get
well fast, bro.

Cooper needed the laugh. Hell, he needed more than that. He needed to get out of here. Why wasn’t anything in this damn room blue? This was San Clemente, the Spanish village by the sea, for God’s sake. It had the Pacific Ocean. Great waves. The pier. The sun, which was so much like the climate back home in Australia that sometimes the only things that reminded him he wasn’t in
Sydney were the lanky palm trees and the white stucco buildings with the terracotta tiled roofs. But this room, with its forests and green, could be any hospital room anywhere in the world. He knew: he’d seen more than a couple.

And he couldn’t wait to get out of it. From his house, he could see the water and blue as far as the eye could see. He could spot when the surf was up. That’s where he
wanted to be right now, instead of perched on the side of his bed wondering if his knee would hold up if he put any weight on it.

Dr Alvarez stood by him, her hands on her hips. ‘Want me to help you?’

Cooper shook his head. ‘I’ve been standing on these legs since I was twelve months old, I’ll have you know Doc. So that makes it a thirty-three years they’ve been doing their job.’

She tut-tutted.
‘And how many years of surfing in all that?’

Cooper looked up at the Doc through the flop of his blond hair. ‘Twenty-two.’

She tut-tutted again and he knew what was coming but he didn’t want to hear it. ‘You’ve had a long time to do a lot of damage, Cooper. It’s catching up with you. You’re not a young man anymore.’

Cooper huffed. ‘You sure know how to kick a bloke when he’s down.’

She rested
a reassuring hand on her patient’s shoulder. ‘Cooper. I’ve been a doctor for as long as you’ve been a surfer. We all get old. Unfortunately for you, that left knee of yours is slightly older than the rest of you, after years of overuse and twisting and grinding.’