Games We Play (39 page)

He moaned and pulled her up until her lips met his. He kissed her mouth, consumed with a new hunger to have her, fed by the knowledge that he could trust her with the worst of him, that his professor was a fighter. He hands went to her hips, and then to his favorite body part. He lifted her slim booty, easy to do, as he entered her slowly, thrusting all the way in until he filled her completely.

Good thing he’s strong
, Kendall thought, loving the way he took control.
Didn’t ask, just…

“Oh…” she said, moaning at this thing between them that seem to combust like a match striking a flint. He moved her up and down, his hands at her hips, sliding her over him.

He kissed her ears and her neck, moved one hand on her breast, tugging, then shifted his touch to where his body moved in and out of hers, and played with her for a while, his finger moving around her, circling, and pushing into her in time to his thrust, making her moan.

He thrust up, hard and fast, and then again, hard and fast, like it was now or die, his hands moving around her body, the one hand anyway, the other one wrapped around her hips.

Then both his hands were on her hips, moving her up and down to meet him.

“Cooper,” she moaned against his throat, and she moaned again when his mouth latched on to her breast, sucking and tugging, his hands a little brutal in their push to make her come, a little like they were in a hurry and closing in on a target.

“Cooper,” a plea filled the air, accompanying his very long and painful-sounding moan as both of them reached their climax. His mouth still attached to her breast, his moan muffled by it, her arms wrapped around his head. He continued to move her up and down until they were done, completely spent, skin tingling with the climax they’d just shared, insides spastic with pleasure.

He fell back against the bed, pulling her into his chest, wrapped up tightly in his arms. It was quiet for a few minutes as their breathing returned to normal.

It took him a while to catch his breath. “Marry me,” he finally said.

“What?”

“You heard me,” he said, pushing her over onto the bed. He stood. “I’m really thirsty.”

She laughed, staring at him, surprised by his sudden proposal. He stood and walked to the bathroom, then over to the refrigerator. “You want a bottle of beer?” he said.

“Sure,” she said.

She sat up and took the bottle from his hand, and he took a seat on the floor next to her bed, turning his eyes up to look at the stars through the skylight.

He took a pull from his beer, and then peeled the bandage from his upper arm, revealing a small tattoo of a swastika, black against the pale skin.

“You could have your tattoo removed, you know,” she said. She’d moved closer to him, her head close to his as she traced his tattoo with her finger.

“I don’t want to. It’s a reminder.”

“Of…”

“Hating of others is a choice.…It’s taught at first, but then it becomes a choice. When I see someone who’s different from me, someone who’s doing something different from me, and my first response is fear or anger, I want to remember that it doesn’t have to be that way. That I can choose to respond differently,” he said, and smiled.

“That you can choose to live with love and hope,” she added. He leaned over to kiss her. They were quiet for a few minutes, letting all they’d shared settle in.

“I’m going to Austin to see Hank. I’ve put it off long enough.”

“Yep,” she said, and smiled. He laughed at her.

“I love you, Professor,” he said.

“Good. I love you too,” she said.

“Celeste didn’t take my desire to give away the Cooper fortune as well as you have,” he said, and smiled. “It was the first time I’d seen that side of her. She’d managed to keep that one attribute well hidden,” he said, and smiled again, looked down into his beer bottle.

“Vivian left my father because he wanted to give up modeling to work on cars. Who wants to be married to a mechanic? They met modeling, and she thought, here is someone like me, we can do well together. He opened an auto shop instead, and she never forgave him for that. She packed us up and moved after she accused him of abusing us. That was her way of ensuring she’d get full custody. I think it’s the main reason Aunt Myra has kept her distance from Vivian. My dad struggled for a while after that. It wasn’t until we were adults that Lark found him and we learned his story.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Lark left as soon as she turned eighteen, and she moved in with him. He got back on his feet after the divorce, and he went on to become successful. It wasn’t Vivian’s idea of success. He runs a small auto-towing-and-repair shop, and he managed to put away some money for us. He does fine. It pays the bills. Why does anyone need more than that?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“My mother was a lot like yours,” he said, looking at the sky again. “Married my dad for the lifestyle and had me to guarantee she could keep it.”

“She didn’t care about you?” Kendall asked.

“She was indifferent. I was a means to an end.”

“Where is she now?”

“She died.”

“Did you see her much before?”

“I didn’t, not at first. It took me a while to forgive her for what she wasn’t, and my dad too,” he said.

“But it left a bad taste in your mouth about women?”

“And my almost marriage. Celeste, let’s not forget my engagement to her,” he said, and smiled, taking a pull from his bottle.

“I can understand. But you can’t let that color you view of all women, one or maybe two bad apples don’t ruin the whole bunch,” she said.

“I’m not, or at least I’m not anymore. So how about it, Professor, are you going to marry me or not?” he asked, turning to face her.

“Why me?” she asked.

“What?”

“When did you know you wanted to marry me?”

He was quiet for a moment, considering. “I think I fell for your ass first. Yes, it was the first time I saw it walking past me into the gas station. I said to myself, Cooper, now there goes an ass you can commit to,” he said, and laughed. “There wasn’t just one time—it was everything, the sum total of all that is Kendall.”

“Yes, then. Of course I’ll marry you,” she said, running her hand over his tattoo again. “I love you.”

He smiled, admiring the woman in his bed, the woman who had taken in his secrets, the worst of him there was. He hadn’t planned on proposing tonight, but he’d looked at her and realized that he’d found something rare, that this was more than friendship, and that he should do something about it. “I love you,” he said again. It was quiet for a minute.

“You like my beer,” he said, a smile in his words, and she could hear that it was more statement than question.

“I do like your beer,” she said.

C
ooper looked around Austin. God, it was growing. He’d been here often enough, and he was always surprised by the changes in the old neighborhoods and the new businesses popping up. He drove here often, mostly to visit some of the local breweries. Stayed in his family’s condo if spending the night was required. Now that Kendall was to be a permanent part of his life, he’d started to consider opening up a pub here, so that she wouldn’t be the only one who needed to change her life.

Hank worked and lived in the least diverse, most expensive part of Austin. The place where most of the moneyed and well connected lived. And as he’d expected, it was also the most picturesque part of the city, all small hills and greenbelts.

He parked outside of the small boutique office building, which belonged to Hank, he guessed. It overlooked the famous Penny Whistle Bridge and Town Lake. Hank had done well for himself, and nothing about his current digs bespoke of his poor-boy-from-a-Podunk-town beginnings. Cooper stepped into the office building and was impressed by the well-decorated small room, in the middle of which sat an unattended desk. A door stood open to his left. Cooper had made an appointment, which had been surprisingly easy, as if Hank had somehow expected a confrontation.

“It’s about time you showed up here,” Hank said, leaning against the frame of the open doorway.

“What?” Cooper said, surprised. No way had he expected that greeting from Hank.

“Come on back,” Hank said, walking away, clearly expecting to be followed. He’d even had the nerve to smile—a businessman’s friendly smile mixed with a shark’s I’m-going-to-have-you-for-lunch grin.

Cooper fell into step behind him, following him into an impressive office, which featured a big window with a view of Town Lake from three sides. Someone was paddling a kayak on the lake.

“Have a seat,” Hank said.

“I don’t think so,” Cooper said from his spot near the door. He wasn’t here to be friends either. The two men stared at each other.

“Why?” Cooper asked, the first to speak.

“Why, what?” Hank said.

“Why are you doing this? What are you doing? How can you be on the same side as those two…as Tom?” Cooper asked, voicing all the questions that he’d spent the last month asking himself.

“Something in Coopersville is very important to me. You could say it means more than anything to me, and it’s why I’m back there, why I’m doing this to you.”

“Doing what? Trying to make the town into a place you used to hate?”

“What’s important to me, Cooper?” he asked.

“I have no fucking clue. Revenge against my father, or me, now that he’s dead.”

“Nope, wrong answer, boys and girls. Think, Cooper…what could I want from you?” he said, staring at Cooper now.

“You’re crazy. Is that it?” Cooper asked.

“Okay, I’ll play along,” Hank said. He stood up and made his way over to Cooper, stopping when he stood in front of his face.

“I need for you to leave my wife alone,” Hank said.

“Your wife?” Cooper said, nonplussed.

“Yes. My wife.”

“You’re married to Kendall?” Coop managed to spit out, the thought of her with someone other than him making him ill. Fuck, he couldn’t handle another betrayal.

“The African American woman?” Hank asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought it was just for the summer.”

“What?”

“You don’t know who my wife is, do you?” Hank said, studying Cooper like he was a specimen under a microscope.

“If it’s not Kendall, then no, I don’t. I’m engaged to her. I didn’t even know you were married. I haven’t seen you in at least twelve years.”

“I came to see you in Austin five years ago. I’d heard about Senior’s illness, and I wanted to talk to you, wanted to let you know that I was done being angry at the Coopers. My revenge ended with Senior. You weren’t at the apartment, but Celeste, your ex-fiancée, was. Your ex left you for me, and now I’ve come back for her,” Hank said. That stopped anything else Cooper had intended to say.

“You married Celeste?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No,” Cooper said. He walked over to the couch next to the door and took a seat. “How would I have known that?” he asked, looking at Hank, questioning.

“I thought she might have mentioned it, seeing she came back there for you.”

“You keep saying that like it’s true. It’s not. She’s not here for me, and even if she was, I’m engaged to another woman,” he said, staring into Hank’s eyes. “She works at the pub, yes…” Cooper said, silent, remembering what he’d once mistaken for signs that she wanted him back. He shook his head. “But she’s not here for me. I’m surprised you don’t already know that. You could have asked her a long time ago. Or you could have hired a private detective to search that out for you,” he added.

“I did.”

“They saw us together?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Not recently.”

“No, but I’ve called her a few times and asked her point-blank if she was back there for you, and she’s said yes every time. She told me that Kendall would be gone after the summer. None of that’s true?”

“No, not at all,” Cooper said. He was staring at Hank now. “Maybe she’s just playing you. What, you can’t be played? Maybe she doesn’t want you thinking she doesn’t have any options. It’s what I’d do. Is that really why you’re messing with Coopersville?” Cooper asked. “None of this was about revenge?”

“No.”

“What the hell?” Cooper said out loud.

It was quiet for a while between them as both men sat thinking.

Cooper shook his head and started to laugh, relief filling his body. “I’m not interested in your wife, and even if I was, she’s not interested in me. She may be back in Coopersville, but it’s not to win me back. She’s never loved me, not even at the beginning.” He started to laugh again. “All this was about Celeste? You want her back?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re the ex then, the one who doesn’t love her?”

“What?” Hank asked, and it was his time to be surprised.

“She told me all about you. So yes, it makes sense that she wouldn’t want you to think she was alone. She never told me your name, and now I understand why,” Cooper said. “But why are you messing with Coopersville?”

“It’s like you said. I love her,” Hank said, “and I want her back.”

“Then why doesn’t she know it, if it’s as simple as that?” Cooper asked, shaking his head. “Here you are, ready to ruin my life, not to mention the whole town,” he said, chuckling. “I guess you really do love her. So what now? What happens now?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? How did you think this was going to end?”

“By you accepting the Proctor brothers’ and Tom’s land, and me dropping the proposal in exchange for my wife.”

“You wanted to barter for her? You don’t think a lot of me, do you?”

“It’s not that,” he said, looking out the window now. “Have you ever screwed up so royally that you’d didn’t think it was fixable? That about sums up my relationship with my wife,” he said, still staring out the window.

“That sucks,” Cooper said, laughing. “I’m reluctant to tell you this, but I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for you, doing all this for her. I think she misses you too. Like I said, she told me about you. Maybe you should just drive down and see her,” Cooper said.

“You think?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you’ve done to make her leave you. But you could try. Hell, tell her what you were willing to do to get her back,” he said, chuckling again. “This is really some strange shit,” Cooper said, shaking his head. “So are you going to drop the proposal or what?”