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‘And sometimes it doesn’t happen even when a couple tries for years.’
Sophie sat very still, waiting for the rest. She had a feeling it would be extremely revealing.
Cooper’s brow furrowed, as if he were thinking it through. Then he indicated and veered off onto the shoulder of the expressway. With traffic zooming by, he shut off the ignition, laid an arm loosely over the back of her seat and spoke directly to her eyes.
‘I was involved with a woman for two years. I wasn’t ready to settle down. She was. She thought if she fell pregnant it would hasten the process. She broke it off a few months ago because she wanted a family and didn’t believe I was capable of giving her one.’ A muscle ticked just above the square angle of his jaw. ‘Although she’d led me to believe otherwise, she hadn’t taken the contraceptive pill for over a year.’
Sophie’s annoyed response shot out. ‘She tried to fall pregnant without telling you?’
‘Apparently her biological clock was ticking.’
When he shifted, his unbuttoned collar gaped wider, revealing a hint of the hair Sophie had ploughed her fingers through the night he’d made untiring, liberating love to her. Right or wrong, she didn’t want to think of Cooper in another relationship. But it was his confession time. It would change nothing in their situation, but she would do him the courtesy of listening.
‘Her cousin had gone through the IVF deal for years,’ he continued. ‘Evangeline saw how that affected her and her marriage, and decided to bail out of our barren relationship while she could.’
Sophie predicted how Cooper must have felt. Angry. Wounded. Worried. ‘You thought you might have the same kind of delay with any partner?’
He shrugged a maybe. ‘I didn’t know which of us was responsible for the hitch, but I knew I wanted a family some day.’ His eyes darkened. ‘Sitting at that wedding reception, it suddenly seemed right to start looking for the future Mrs Smith.’
She gave a lame smile. ‘And now the baby egg has come before the chicken, so to speak.’
He combed back the curls framing her cheek. ‘I hardly think of you in those terms.’
The gesture tied her midsection in a flurry of loops. Perhaps she should take the roundabout compliment—but the truth was obvious, and had been from the moment she’d told him of her pregnancy and he’d proposed. He wanted to commit to her not because of who she was, but because of what she could give him—a gift that a part of him had doubted he might ever receive … a child of his own.
Cooper wanted to come home to his wife and baby every night. Was she his destiny? Or simply part of a pre-wrapped package?
The car’s engine fired back to life and they drove in silence until, halfway home, he swerved off again—this time in front of an old-fashioned suburban grocery shop. He pulled on the handbrake and swung out of the car. ‘Time to sweeten the mood.’
Still mulling over their conversation and her reflections, Sophie followed and sat outside the shop at one of two round plastic tables. When Cooper returned, her tastebuds burst to life; he held two monstrous double cones.
She clapped her hands. ‘Triple choc. Just what I need.’ She’d gone mad for ice cream since she’d fallen pregnant, and right now she definitely needed a sugar boost.
After he’d handed hers over, she got down to business. She’d bitten off the lower pointed end of her cone before Cooper had even pulled in his rather rickety plastic chair.
He frowned as she munched. ‘Don’t bite the bottom off. It’ll leak everywhere.’
She didn’t bother explaining. Instead she grabbed his hand and bit the end off his cone too. She mumbled over the delicious cold and crunch, ‘Die another day.’
She brought her mouth to the lowest opening of her own cone and sucked hard.
He fell back in his chair and chuckled. Then he shrugged. ‘When in Rome …’
After striking the same elevated-cone pose, he latched on and drew the ice cream down into his mouth. He savoured the reward, swallowed, then licked his top lip.
‘To think I’d have happily gone through life licking rather than sucking. In fact, we should explore that thought a little more.’ He traced a suggestive fingertip up her arm. ‘Ask not what you can do for your ice cream, but what your ice cream can do for—’
‘Almost forgot.’ Before his finger, or temptation, snaked any higher, she cut him off. ‘Penny’s invitation came in the mail today.’
Rocking to one side, she extracted a pink sheet of paper from her back pocket. The other slip of correspondence, which she’d also received that day, accidentally came out too.
Setting the principal’s note aside, she lifted the invitation and put on a snooty voice. ‘“You are invited to Penny Newly’s Hollywood or Bust cocktail party.” ’ She slapped the paper on the table. ‘It’s tomorrow night. What should we go as?’
‘Depends on how daring you want to be.’
Conditioning, perhaps, but she couldn’t think of anything bold. ‘We could go as Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. But we’d have to do something drastic with your ears.’ She thought about pulling the closest one out, wing-nut style. ‘Or what about James Bond? And I could be the girl who holds your golden gun?’
Her cheeks bloomed. Had she truly said that?
Cooper’s smile was pure sin. ‘Consider that tabled for future discussion.’ His attention dropped to the invitation and, next to that, the note. Frowning, he picked up the latter. ‘What’s this?’
Sophie thought about dismissing it, but it was a day for sharing. The first day of at least ninety.
‘I received a message from the school principal today,’ she told him. ‘Seems he’s heard some rumours.’
Cooper’s brow dropped more. ‘About us?’
‘About the baby.’ She shrugged at his questioning look. ‘The only answer I came up with involves the principal’s daughter—a student in my tenth grade English class. Dumb of me, but after they’d all left for final home class, I pulled out a baby’s outfit I’d bought at the mall during my lunch break. I was smiling and hugging it to my belly when Samantha came back to get her sweater.’
He pushed the note back across the table. ‘She passed her suspicions on to her father?’
‘Actually, I think she told her friends. Then it was just a matter of time.’
‘Now the principal wants a “please explain”?’
Trying to keep her anxiety levels down—being upset was not good for the baby—she studied the message. ‘He can’t terminate my employment. The days when teachers had to resign due to “personal circumstances” or marriage are long gone. But if he has a problem with single mothers teaching at Unity he might consider making my life there uncomfortable.’
‘Uncomfortable enough for you to resign?’
She took a moment, then nodded.
Cooper’s face hardened. ‘I’ll talk to him.’
She held up a hand. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ Although his protective traits in this instance put a warm glow around her heart, Cooper’s pride might only make matters worse. ‘Anyway, I’m only surmising, thinking the worst.’ She sat back. ‘Might be he merely wants to let me know I have Unity’s unconditional support, should I need it.’
Chocolate ice cream had drained over his fist. Cooper tossed the cone in a nearby bin. ‘Either way, you can tell them as soon as tomorrow to keep their job.’
Sophie pitched her runny ice cream too. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘You don’t need it.’ He leaned forward, and she was hit anew by the searing force of his magnetism. ‘When I said I’d look after you and the baby I’d never meant anything more in my life.’
Conviction shone from his eyes. One part of her couldn’t help but be touched; another couldn’t pretend to accept the offer.
She tried to disentangle herself from his overpowering allure. ‘I told you … I like my job. I like the school.’
He wiped his fingers on the handkerchief he’d removed from his front chinos pocket. ‘You’d like being a lady of leisure just as well.’
Her mid-section pulled. Was he listening at all?
She tried again. ‘I worked hard through college. I love teaching and making a difference. A lot of my friends are teachers there. That’s a huge part of my life, of who I am. I would never give it up.’
He consolidated his case. ‘Only if the principal forces you to.’
Her heart smacked against her ribcage. She refused to feel cornered—by the principal or by Cooper. She had options. ‘Then I’ll get another teaching position.’
Cooper covered her chocolate-smeared fist with the handkerchief and gently wiped. ‘We’ll see.’
A jet of irritation shot through her. There was nothing to ‘see’. She wanted to work. The last thing she needed was to feel indebted to him, or reliant upon his charity, and if she resigned that was precisely what she’d be: a commodity sponsored by Cooper Smith.
If she lost or gave up her job, and didn’t find another, what would that do to their relationship’s balance of power? Living in his house, surviving off his income … Would she then feel obliged to abide by his laws?
How had Paige summed up Cooper’s thinking?
I make the rules, you just have to follow them.
Sophie understood Paige was a teenager—and he wanted to protect her—but did Cooper make any distinction between the two of them as far as that was concerned? Weeks ago she’d decided she would follow her own path, her own rules. She hadn’t changed her mind, and, as much as he wanted to, Cooper wouldn’t change it for her.
He squeezed her hand, determination shining like steel in his eyes. ‘Understand that if and when you need me to step up and speak for us all, I’d like nothing better.’
Sophie understood very well.
That was what worried her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘YOU ready?’
Cooper stepped back from Sophie’s closed bedroom door and caught a glimpse of himself in the large teak-edged mirror at the end of his home’s mezzanine floor hall. He frowned. Bare chest, longish scruffy wig, nothing left to the imagination about a pair of hairy muscular legs. Good thing the loincloth concealed the essentials.
Sophie’s melodic voice drifted out. ‘Did you say you’d picked out other costumes this morning, in case these didn’t suit the party tonight?’
He was toying with the novel idea of thumping his expanded pecs when Sophie opened the door a crack. ‘I’ll need a big long coat,’ she said. ‘It’s cold outside, and there’s not a whole lot to this outfit.’
Her face looked fresh. Well, maybe flushed. Her eyes perhaps a touch more than alarmed.
His lungs deflated.
Jungle Fever had sounded ideal when the costume shop assistant had suggested it. Now, however, he wasn’t completely sold on dragging his fists around in public dressed as Tarzan. All the same, he was eager to see how well his pretty mate had fleshed out her animal print.
As he drew closer, her vanilla scent tugged on his senses, and he found himself hurtling back in time. One word summed up that night perfectly: sensational. He planned for the next few weeks to be equally enjoyable.
Starting tonight.
He moved closer. ‘Your friend will have central heating.’ Beyond that, he would do his utmost to keep his Jane warm.
But Sophie hadn’t heard. One set of fingers on the jamb, the other curled around the doorframe, her gaze drifted up and down the length of his body.
A glut of testosterone ran out to alert the team of this latest development. He puffed out his chest a little more.
She wolf-whistled. ‘Don’t know if my friends are ready for that.’
He found her hand and dragged her out. Jungle fever might work, after all.
Surrounded by spiralling dark ribbons of hair, her luminous green eyes stared out. Lower, a slash of faux fur fabric stretched over the ripe swell of her breasts; another adorned her curvaceous hips. Her still slender waist, slightly rounded midriff and shapely legs were left exposed. It was all he could do not to swing her over his shoulder like a sack and whisk her away to his treehouse.
Definitely later.
His bare toes wiggled against the carpet as she tossed back her head to shift a wayward curl hanging over one eye: a clear sign.
He accepted the invitation and reached out to play with her untamed mane. ‘Jane silky soft.’ His index finger trailed over her jaw. ‘Want to throw some leaves around?’
‘Only if they stick and cover some of our birthday suits,’ she said. ‘If I show up like this, I’ll send everyone into fits.’
Physical need coursed through his system. Taking possession of her hips, he gently gyrated the lower strip of cloth as he surveyed the provocative picture before him. ‘Do you have any idea how sexy you are?’
She quit squirming from his hold to peer up into his eyes. She looked maybe half convinced. ‘I am?’
His thumbs pressed the sensitive dips either side of her navel and his pulse began to boom. ‘Penny Newly had better be decked out as Kermit the frog or her envy will show big time. In fact, I have a better idea.’ Drawn like a magnet to a ready supply of molten steel, his hips edged closer. ‘Let’s have our own party.’
She assessed his eyes, the suggestive position of their bodies. Her breasts jostled and unintentionally teased as she wrangled to disengage herself and return to the room.
Cooper’s arms swung down, but the grin didn’t leave his face. She’d chosen the bedroom the greatest distance from his—as if that would keep them apart.
About to walk in and join her, he paused.
He hadn’t thought till this moment, but a lot of stairs led up to this floor—a spiral of open timber boards. Well-positioned strips helped to grip shoes and feet. Nevertheless, the stairs needed to be approached, and descended, with care and respect.
He and Paige were used to them, but their once-a-week housekeeper had had a tumble recently. Thankfully, Joan hadn’t been hurt, but neither was she pregnant. As he’d told Sophie yesterday, he would not take any chances with her condition.
Down the far end of the hall, the top of the handrail seemed to taunt him. Cooper considered again the possible dangers and nodded.
Tomorrow he would move Sophie’s belongings into the guest wing downstairs. He would move into the adjoining suite. By the end of the week they’d be sharing one or the other.
He sauntered into the bedroom.
Standing before a white-lacquered dressing table, Sophie collected an amber bottle and spritzed her hair. When she saw his reflection in the mirror, the tassel on her teensy skirt arced out as she pivoted to face him. She tried to look in control, but the quiver of her bottom lip and saucer-wide eyes were dead giveaways. She wanted him to leave. More so, she wanted him to stay.
She placed a hand on her stomach and raised her chin, defiant even in the face of defeat. ‘I didn’t invite you in.’
His attention dipped to the creamy length of her body—lines drawn by nature’s brush on a very good day. He shrugged and closed the distance between them. ‘Too late.’
When she took a step back, her animal print behind hit the edge of the table. She narrowed one eye at him. ‘You’re not going to start making monkey noises, are you?’
Stopping inches away, he loomed over her. ‘I do feel rather primal.’ He found her palm and rubbed it against his chest hair. ‘What do you think?’
As her own chest rose and fell, he imagined the tips of her breasts tightening to the beads he loved to roll around his tongue. Sweet heaven, he could taste them now.
He was about to gather her in when she dodged around him. She stopped on a pastel-striped rug in the middle of the large room, her back to him, head lowered, hands fisted at her sides. ‘I was surprised last night, my first night here, when you didn’t try anything. You’re making up for it now.’
