Some Girls Do (Outback Heat Book 1) Page 3

  More a flesh-and-blood man who was capable of understanding human failings.

  She had been such an idiot and somehow that seemed easier to admit to a man in nothing but trackpants.

  Sometimes she wished she could erase the last two-and-a-half years and start over with him again. Not have slept with him. Not have been his best friend’s little sister. Not have been such a brat in the intervening years. Just been his friend like she’d always craved but had lacked the finesse to carry off.

  “Got one of those for me?” she asked.

  Coop turned and the grim look on his face told her what she already knew—he wasn’t going to just let her crash on his couch for the night, like he’d done other times, without some explanation.

  “Kitchen bench,” he said as he walked towards her.

  Lacey turned to her left, conscious as she walked of the precarious hold his loose cotton boxer briefs had on her hips. She’d rolled the waist band a couple of times but they seemed determined to slip. She wished now as she tried to walk and maintain her dignity that she hadn’t bothered—Coop’s shirt practically came to her knees anyway.

  She picked up the mug in her uninjured hand and took a fortifying sip. Sweet and milky.

  “Let me fix your hand,” he said from somewhere beyond her shoulder and she turned to find him sitting on the couch.

  Lacey complied, conscious of her underwear situation and the kiss of warm air on her shoulder as Coop’s big shirt slipped when she sat opposite him. His gaze brushed and lingered on the exposed flesh, their history large between them.

  “It’s fine now,” she said, her voice husky as he briskly took her hand. “It’s stopped bleeding and it’s not very deep.”

  He nodded as he inspected the now bloodless gash, stark white and as wrinkled as the rest of her hand from exposure to so much water. “I’ll just cover it,” he said.

  Lacey didn’t move as he extracted a bandaid from a small first-aid kit and applied it. “How’d it happen?” he asked.

  Lacey contemplated telling him a lie. But it was late and she was tired of playing games. Hadn’t she just been played for the biggest fool on the planet? “I threw a bottle at the lousy, lying scumbag’s head,” she said, her voice steady now. “Then I felt bad about the mess I made and went to clean it up, but I was crying so hard I couldn’t see all that well and I—”

  “Cut yourself,” he said finishing her sentence.

  Lacey nodded. “Yes.”

  He curled her fingers into her palm. “Okay,” he said as she withdrew her hand. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  Lacey looked down at her hand. The beginning. Where was that exactly? Was it Jeremy? Or had the seeds of it all been planted a long time before, taking root in the deep well of sadness she’d never been able to fully shake?

  “I’ve been seeing a guy for the last two months … one of my lecturers—”

  “Isn’t that against the law?” he interrupted.

  Coop’s hand, fingers splayed against his bent knee, was in her direct line of sight and Lacey could see the knuckles go white. And if that wasn’t clue enough then the contempt in his voice was enough to tell her what he thought of Jeremy.

  “No.”

  The angle of his jaw clenched. “Well it’s sure as shit unethical.”

  Lacey nodded. She had to concede that one. “But for the first time since I’ve moved to Brisbane I’ve felt … happy. He made me happy.”

  “But now he’s a lousy, lying scumbag?”

  Lacey shut her eyes against the harshness in Coop’s tone, the erectness of his frame. He wasn’t going to give her an inch. Another wave of emotion rose in her chest but she bit back the tears. “I found out tonight that he’s married. With two teenage children.”

  Coop blinked. “You’ve been seeing a guy who’s married?”

  “Oh go to hell, Cooper!” she snapped, her eyes flashing open. What the hell did he take her for? “Jeremy told me he was divorced. Should I have run a background check?” she asked, her voice loaded with sarcasm.

  “Yes!” he snapped back. “Maybe.”

  “How was I supposed to know?” she demanded. “He told me I was special; that he’d never met anyone like me before …” Lacey stopped as the tears gathered again, afraid she’d break down if she didn’t take a breath.

  “That’s what they all say, Lacey,” Coop said and she could have tripped over the exasperation in his voice.

  She nodded, bowing her head. She was the worst kind of fool. So sad and desperate she was suckered in by the first man who had called her special.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t sure she even knew how to love a man. There’d been guys, she’d had fun, but none of them seemed to be able to reach inside her. “No. But he was the first guy I really liked. I could talk to, you know?”

  So many of the guys she knew didn’t talk about anything of any consequence, anything outside their own narrow existence. Jeremy had talked like a man of the world.

  Coop sighed. “How’d you find out?”

  Lacey was encouraged by the sigh. She peeked up to find his gaze a little warmer now. “She turned up on his doorstep tonight as a surprise. She lives in Sydney, apparently. Jeremy splits his time between the design college here and the one in Sydney.”

  Coop shook his head. “Well that’s just perfect for him, isn’t it?”

  Lacey nodded, her nose sniffling as the pressure of tears built again. “I suppose.”

  “How old is this … Jeremy.”

  It didn’t even occur to Lacey to lie but she did drop her gaze, knowing how sensitive Coop was to age gaps. “Thirty-eight.”

  She could feel his disapproval bouncing off her downcast head. “Jesus, Lace …” he rubbed his hands through his hair and she looked up in time for their gazes to meet and lock. “You have a daddy complex a mile wide, you know that right?”

  Lacey opened her mouth to deny his attempts at amateur psychology but something stopped her. Maybe he was right. Maybe she had been sub-consciously seeking out a father figure all along. Maybe that had been why she’d felt so instantly attracted to Coop.

  “So, what happened then?” he asked eventually, the silence stretched to the limit between them. “After the wife turned up?”

  “There was a lot of yelling and crying from both of us. I threw the bottle at him and then she told me to go, ‘just go,’ she said and she looked at me like … like I was this home wrecker. Like I was beneath contempt. So I did. I just walked out.”

  “Why didn’t you ring? I would have come and picked you up.”

  Lacey shook her head. “I didn’t have my phone. I walked out without my bag and my jacket, I just … left. I couldn’t stand being there for another second. I was crying and shaking, in total shock. I had no idea where I was going or anything. I don’t even think I realised it was raining or how cold it was until you dragged me inside just now.”

  Just thinking about the confrontation made Lacey want to cry all over again. “I feel like such an idiot,” she said, feeling desperately fragile and craving the warmth of his arms around her but determined not to ask.

  “Well it’s over now, right?” he said, his voice gruff.

  Lacey nodded but the finality of it all was depressing as hell. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, but it was growing bigger, choking her.

  “I don’t know what to do now,” she said on a sob.

  “No,” Coop said, his voice brooking no argument as he wagged his finger in her face. “You do not cry over lousy, cheating scumbags, okay? Just no.”

  Lacey squeezed her eyes shut and nodded, his words bolstering her.

  “Unless there’s something more you’re not telling me?”

  He grasped her chin lightly between his thumb and forefinger and her lids fluttered open. She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Okay.” His eyes searched her face for a bit longer but he seemed satisfied with her denial.
“Now, you are going to bed, you are going to sleep. You’re exhausted. And in the morning you can decide the rest. Okay?”

  Lacey nodded. “Okay.”

  “Good.” He helped her up and accompanied her into his bedroom. “I can sleep on the lounge, Coop,” she protested as he pulled the sheets back. “It’s not like I haven’t done it before.”

  “Yeah well, the other times were self-inflicted and deserved the heinous torture of my awful couch. This one wasn’t, so I’m being nice.” He fluffed his pillow. “In,” he ordered.

  Lacey didn’t protest. She sank onto the mattress and snuggled into the sheets. The aroma of Coop surrounded her and the urge to cry again at his kindness and the warm, solid familiarity of him gripped her throat hard.

  “Night,” he said as he turned to leave.

  “Night,” she returned, her eyes burning, her throat aching from holding back the well of emotion.

  * * *

  Coop was still wide awake twenty minutes later when the sound of a soft sob floated towards him. What the hell? He’d thought she was asleep. He rolled over on the world’s most uncomfortable couch trying to ignore it, but her crying yanked hard at invisible strings.

  There were a helluva lot of tears for a guy she didn’t even love. He sat up, swinging his feet onto the floor, his head in his hands, a battle waging on the inside.

  Go to her. Don’t go to her.

  Coop hauled his shirt off over his head, hot and bothered in the artificially warm environment, tossing it aside as he flopped back down annoyed at himself for his weakness and indecision. But a few minutes later he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Lacey may have been a major pain in his butt but she was hurting and it didn’t seem right to ignore that.

  He wouldn’t ignore an animal whimpering in pain, would he? He sure as shit couldn’t ignore his best friend’s sister alone and hurting not ten metres and a wall away.

  And what Ethan didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  Coop rose from the lounge, threw his shirt back on and stalked to his bedroom with determined strides, lecturing himself as he drew closer. He was an adult man in control of his body and his impulses. She was a mess. She was sobbing over another man for fuck’s sake. A lying, cheating scumbag who didn’t deserve a single bloody tear.

  Although he suspected Lacey was crying over a lot more than some lousy prick that had done her wrong. The death of ideals was often harder to bear.

  He paused momentarily in his open doorway. He could just make out her outline on his bed with his night vision. Her back was to him, his spare pillow over her head, an arm anchoring it in place. He hesitated briefly again before letting compassion win out over common sense.

  “Don’t cry, Lacey,” he murmured as he stopped beside the bed.

  She pulled the pillow away and looked up at him with a wet face and swollen eyes and he wished, not for the first time, he had some superpower that allowed him to go back in time and fix bad shit before it happened.

  They both could have done with a bit of that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said looking at him like her entire world had ended and it grabbed a big handful of his gut and squeezed hard.

  He sighed. “Move over.”

  Thankfully she didn’t question him or his motives, just wriggled over enough to admit him. Coop pulled back the covers and lay down beside her, putting out his arm in silent invitation. He braced himself as she took it, rolling on her side, moving closer, her head making a pillow out of his shoulder, her breasts and belly and thighs smooshing up against his side, her toes brushing his ankle, her upper hand sliding onto his ribs.

  He didn’t dare breathe as she settled against him, but his heart thudded like a gong in his chest and his body burned in carnal recognition. When she seemed comfortable he curled his arm up, his hand coming to rest on her bare shoulder. He swallowed as his palm prickled with heat and awareness.

  “I—”

  “Shh,” he interrupted. He didn’t want to lay here in the night and talk as if they shared a bed on a regular basis. He just wanted to get through this night with his sanity intact. “Go to sleep,” he murmured.

  “Th-thank you,” she whispered on a hiccupy sob.

  Coop stared at the ceiling as her body grew heavy and relaxed against his.

  What the fuck am I doing?

  Snuggled up in bed with a woman who should come with a flashing neon warning sign.

  Danger, danger, danger.

  A woman whose body he knew intimately. Who he’d spent probably one of the most amazing nights of his life with. Who came to him in dreams so erotic, so vivid, he woke from them calling her name.

  Who was his best friend’s sister.

  Who he could never ever have.

  Coop sighed, resigning himself to a night of staring at the ceiling. After all, he wasn’t any stranger to those. But holding her close, all warm and pliant, the patter of rain on the high window above them and her soapy aroma winding around his senses, he knew he needed more than the ceiling to distract him from the slow burn of heat licking through his veins.

  So he turned his mind to everything that had pissed him off about her since their first acquaintance—including her disappearing act. Cataloguing her litany of sins and pitting them against the slow simmer of lust invading every cell in his body helped. Even if he did understand why she’d been such a pain in the ass.

  He understood she was pissed at the world. Pissed that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Pissed that her mother had fought for two long, awful years then lost the battle anyway. Pissed that her brothers had insisted she leave home so soon after. That she’d been appointed a babysitter. That she’d had to ask him for help.

  He got it.

  But it was time she grew up. Crap happened to people—he knew that better than anyone. And you were allowed to be sad about it and you most definitely were allowed to be pissed about it. But at some point, you had to get your shit together.

  It was time for Lacey to get her shit together. And if he had to threaten her with getting her brothers involved he would.

  It was that or putting her over his knee and spanking her. And he wasn’t entirely sure if that would be a hardship.

  For either of them.

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  Lacey cracked open her bleary eyes to tiny slits, taking in an expanse of T-shirt covered chest, her hand resting on ribs exactly where she’d left it, and weak light filtering into the room. Her eyeballs felt swollen twice their size and like they’d been rolled in dirt. Her lashes were practically glued together and she shut them again, cringing at her naivety, as the events of last night returned.

  Jeremy. Jeremy’s wife. Yelling and tears and her cut hand. The rain. The cold.

  And Cooper.

  Calm. Patient. And always there for her.

  Coming here last night had been the right thing to do. Even if she hadn’t given any conscious thought to it. Coop seemed to be her true north when she was in trouble, and her internal compass had taken over.

  She just wished she hadn’t screwed up so badly—again. These last few years had seen her lurching from one disastrous relationship to another. Looking for God knew what.

  Something. Anything.

  Anything to soothe the hard ball of grief that sat like a boulder in her gut.

  Distraction. Diversion. Absorption.

  But she chose too quickly, too unwisely; some would say too recklessly. Guys who wanted to party because they could. Because they were young and free. Like her.

  And she’d had some good times. But still the sadness persisted.

  And then Jeremy had come along and she’d felt … settled. He was so different from the others. Tall and slender with wire-rimmed glasses, good looking in a scholarly kind of way. He’d given her something different. The partying stopped. She concentrated on her studies. She cooked for him. He cooked for her. They talked about world events and travel and politics. She’d relished being part of a couple. Bein
g with someone who thought she was special.

  Maybe Coop was right. Maybe she did have a daddy complex. Maybe she had been looking for someone to take care of her, because that’s what all the men in her life had done until they’d pushed her out of the nest to fend for herself.

  Lacey shut her eyes. Gawd. She sounded pathetic and she hated herself. She felt stupid and it had to stop. If she wanted to be treated seriously by her brothers, to be listened to, then she had to start showing them she could get her shit together.

  She had to take control of her life, direct it, instead of letting it sweep her along.

  And it had to start now. Today.

  With Coop.

  The white cotton of his shirt was soft against her cheek, the muscle pillowing her head was warm and solid, and the slow, steady thump of his heart beneath her ear was reassuring. He smelled like laundry detergent and whatever deodorant he used. Something unremarkable, knowing Coop. He didn’t believe in fancy cologne or high-price aftershave.

  No metrosexual trappings for him.

  She glanced at the hard line of his jaw, covered with light stubble, then on to the ridge of his cheekbone and higher still to the pale white scar that started behind his ear and arced all the way to his temple, courtesy of a ricocheting bullet. It stood out easily through the blond spikes of his buzz cut.

  Lacey felt sick just thinking about that scar and how close Coop had come to death. Surprisingly not from the head wound but from the second bullet that had hit him in the chest; it had taken a team of surgeons thirteen hours to fix that wound.

  It made her want to cling to him even more. Her fingers itched to trace it. Her mouth tingled to kiss it better. Even though it had been healed for years now and she was turning over a new leaf.

  Now. Today. This moment.

  It took every inch of Lacey’s willpower to roll away from him, but she did. Turning on her side, turning her back on temptation, putting the devil behind her.

  The last thing she expected was him to follow her over. But he did. His warm hand sliding over her belly as he pulled her in close to him, his lips at her neck, his thighs spooning hers.