Happily Ever Afton (6 page)

‘Hey, it
is
for charity after all!’ Cooper’s shoulders hunched in the air, everything in him fighting to keep the wide smile of satisfaction off his face.

Still silent, she turned and grabbed a fluffy white towel hanging off the fence nearby. Running over to the dunking booth, she reached up on tiptoes to hand it to Jason through the opening in back.

‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ Jason said. As Cooper watched with the dark frown transferred to his face now, the other man leaned over to give his former fiancée a quick peck on the nose, dripping water from his getting her wet as well causing her to giggle adorably.

Cooper pulled out his wallet and slammed another ten on the counter. ‘Three more balls!’

Afton whirled around and seeming to notice the determined look in Cooper’s eyes as he snatched the first ball from the counter, she turned quickly back to Jason.

‘Say – why don’t you take a break, Jason?’ she suggested hurriedly. ‘I’ll take a turn in the booth now. It looks like fun – and I could stand to cool off a little in this heat. And so could Cooper!’ she muttered on a low breath.

Cooper’s head jerked up overhearing her comment as Jason immediately jumped on Afton’s offer, hopping down off the bench and helping her climb up the ladder to perch on the seat in his stead.

What the hell is she doing
?

He frowned; doesn’t she realize she’s wearing a
white
T-shirt? The angel on his left shoulder said –
you should really warn her what’s about to happen
, while the devil on his right said –
throw that ball like you’ve never thrown it before, son!

Cooper palmed the ball in his hand weighing his options up and down, and then whoosh!

Bam! 
Ring!

The devil won, and he hit the red target on the yellow canvas smack dead in the center. Afton went plunging beneath the water before bursting back to the surface, her white T-shirt completely translucent; clearly transmitting the fact, she’d forgone
any
undergarments on the sizzling day.

Every red-blooded male over the age of ten seemed to quickly deluge the area around the dunking booth as, blissfully unaware, Afton climbed back on to the bench with a beautiful smile. She smoothed wet dark hair behind her ears with both hands like a centerfold come gloriously to life. Cooper stared frozen, his mouth suddenly dry as desert sand.

My God, she is spectacular
!

More so than he could have even have imagined – and boy had he imagined! Aware of the appreciative, testosterone-laden crowd forming in a jostling semi-circle before her, Cooper jerked a towel down from the fence and rushed over to the booth.

He held it up to her. ‘Here – you uh…better wrap this around you,’ he muttered, fighting to keep his own eyes at eye-level or above.

‘I’m fine, Cooper,’ Afton laughed off his offer, ‘besides I’m already wet – I don’t think I can get much wetter than I am right now.’

Oh mercy
!

Cooper swallowed. This was a brand new torture he hadn’t even imagined as her words momentarily distracted him sending him off into a whole new area of contemplation.

‘Take it!’ he insisted thrusting the towel at her while darting a lightning-fast glance south.

She followed his gaze, puzzled, then flushed a brilliant shade. ‘
Give
that to me!’ Afton hissed, snatching and holding the towel in front of her, ‘now help me get out of this thing!’

He took her hand, helping her off the bench and out of the booth and then stood rooted sheepishly to the spot watching as she huddled beneath the towel covering all but the wet shorts molded to the delectable curves of her rear. Afton pushed her way through the crowd of stupidly grinning men who parted like the Red Sea to let her through, many pairs of appreciative eyes trailing longingly after her.

Cooper cleared his throat, ‘Afton, where are you going?’ he called out.

She glared over her shoulder at him. ‘I’m going to go sit in the sun over there until I dry out,’ she pointed to a lone picnic table in the far off distance that was completely deserted as everyone else stayed close to whatever available shade they could find on the blistering day.

Cooper stopped long enough to grab their lemonades from the counter. He donated the abandoned giraffe to a delighted little girl who hugged it close with a shy smile and thank you, before he followed a few wary steps behind Afton as she stalked off, keeping the towel wrapped protectively around her. When she reached the distant picnic table, she used the rickety bench to climb up and sit down on top of it, finally lifting the towel from her shoulders to allow her shirt to dry quicker she muttered.

‘Keep your eyes to yourself, Stewart!’ she added in a brusque tone when he joined her a moment later.

‘I promise,’ Cooper crossed a hand over his heart. He handed off her lemonade gingerly taking a seat next to her on the knotty pine table. They sat in silence listening to the distant din of laughter and shouts from the boardwalk intermingled with faint old-timey music emanating from the whirling carousel.

Cooper made a valiant effort to keep his promise, but his disobedient eyes kept straying to the shapely length of her legs swinging off the edge of the table. They rose, following a path from a dainty ankle to a creamy stretch of thigh to where it ended at the edge of her frayed cutoff shorts. He jerked his gaze away as that path spelled
d–a–n–g–e–r
, but in his distraction his hand accidently knocked over the lemonade he’d placed beside him, allowing a few sticky sweet drops to spill out on the table unknowingly setting a chain of events in motion before he rescued it and set it upright.

‘Er…you and Jason seem to be making something of a connection again,’ Cooper decided conversation was the safest method of distraction.

‘Yes, I think he may want to try to work things out – now that Mollie is out of the picture,’ Afton sighed and shifted her weight on the table seeming restless, ‘he swears they haven’t spoken since she stormed out of the ball after their argument on the dance floor. He says that he made the
biggest
mistake of his life letting me go.’

Cooper bit his tongue to hold back the ‘
damn right!
’ hovering on the tip of it.

She paused before continuing, her sumptuously full lips pursing. ‘He also said that I would be making just as big a mistake if I was to marry
you
so soon after he and I broke up.’

‘And what about you – how do you feel about him now?’

‘I …I don’t know for sure,’ Afton’s gaze was pensive; lingering on the Ferris wheel slowly rotating in the distance. ‘I hope you don’t mind that I’m still using you to fake out Jason, Cooper,’ she stole a sideways glance at him, ‘because I just don’t know how I feel right now. I mean just a few weeks ago I was ready to say ‘I do’ to him for the rest of my life…there has to be
something
of those feelings left or what kind of person does that make me – to be able to turn on and off emotions so quickly like a faucet?’

Cooper was silent, slurping absently on his straw for the last refreshing drops of lemonade remaining at the bottom of his cup. It was when he opened his mouth to point out maybe she should think hard before making another hasty decision, that he spotted it; buzzing right towards them in an almost drunken flight pattern, its fat yellow-and-black striped body weighted down with honey, but perhaps now craving spilled lemonade.

Cooper turned to sound an alarm. ‘Um…Afton…there’s a bee coming this –’

Whenever the story was retold, Cooper would always swear that crazy bee made a
beeline
right for her. Before he could get the words of warning out of his mouth, it landed on her shirt – and just like that – war between Afton and bees was declared anew!

Maybe if she hadn’t swatted it, things would have turned out differently, Cooper mused; the bee would have buzzed off to visit a nearby flower – or flown back to the hive to gossip with the queen, or whatever else honeybees do on hot summer days. But swat it she did – and it retaliated in the only way it knew how – nobly sacrificing its honey-filled life in the process.

Afton’s shout of pain coincided with Cooper’s swiftly uttered curse. He reached over and dragged her across his lap, moving her hand away from the sting located on the exposed expanse of skin just above her left breast.

‘Are you allergic?’

His harsh question caused her to give a shake of her head, tears of pain welling in her eyes, white teeth biting deeply into her lower lip leaving a reddened indentation.

‘Hell, what are you supposed to do for bee stings!’ Cooper swore again wishing he’d paid more attention in Boy Scouts during first aid week.

‘Pull the stinger out,’ Afton gasped out instructions and he quickly moved aside the T-shirt using his fingertips to fumble for the stinger in the silver-dollar sized area already beginning to swell and redden.

‘I can’t get the damn thing,’ he muttered vexed. After several more tries probing with no success watching her wince with pain each time, he bent his head using his teeth to grasp the stinger and remove it, spitting it out on the ground. ‘It’s out!’

‘Ice,’ she said between gritted teeth and Cooper quickly grabbed his empty lemonade cup scooping out an ice cube.

‘Move your hand!’

Afton gasped again as the cold ice was applied to her skin, but Cooper was relieved to see the swelling beginning to subside dramatically. He held the ice firmly in place watching the furrow between her brows ease, color creeping back beneath her skin.

‘Is that better?’

‘Yes,’ she gave him a weak smile, the dark circle of shock fading from her eyes leaving them a brilliant golden-green, ‘that feels absolutely wonderful, Cooper.’

Cooper swallowed jerkily. He soldiered on with his ministrations, but at some undetermined point, they took a dramatic turn and the hand that held the ice shifted slowly lower causing visible goose bumps to rise on her skin and shivers to run up and down her spine, as she lay acquiescent across his lap.

The ice cube slid beneath the slashing v-neck of her T-shirt tempting a bud found there to full thrusting attention and he lowered his head to capture it through the thin damp material. Cooper sucked it hungrily into his moist mouth and Afton gave a cry of tortured sensation, her eyes closing, long lashes fluttering in a crescent fan against passion-flushed cheeks.

His head lifted and she blinked dazedly up into his eyes as the ice cube next journeyed to her mouth, tracing its wet, pink fullness, his hot lips replacing it with a stimulating shock felt by both after the chill of the ice. His tongue stroked over the indentation her teeth had caused until her lips parted soft as the petals of a flower beneath his and the sweetness he discovered between was just like honey to a bee – and Cooper wanted more –
much
, much more!

He deepened the kiss, his hands planted on either side of her to press her back down on to the table beneath him when, with a loud crack of thunder, the clouds that had been circling above unnoticed, converged and the heavens opened up – drenching them both with the buckets of cold water the situation called for.

Afton came to her senses first, sitting up abruptly as cold raindrops splashed against her face. 
What was I thinking – carrying on like that with Cooper in a public place?

The crowd was far off and distracted by the approaching storm, still, anyone who wanted to could have walked over and discovered them at any time – including Jason!

‘Should we make a run for it?’

A remarkably collected Cooper asked the question quietly from beside her, seeming to read the distress written on her face. Even though he appeared outwardly composed, Afton noticed his eyes still simmered a deep indigo-blue.

She nodded her head and he grabbed her hand, racing with her back through the sheets of rain to where the soaked crowd was gathering beneath a large red-and-white striped canopy tent where long metal tables were already set up for the barbecue dinner that would be served later.

They huddled along with the rest of the group who waited out the passing summer storm. Unlike the other laughing couples, trying their best to dry each other off with whatever was available, Cooper and Afton stood silent and dripping, her arms folded protectively across her chest – studiously avoiding each other’s eyes.

It was just like after their kiss at the publisher’s ball last week, was Afton’s bleak thought. The same awkwardness and unease. What
was
it between them anyway? Sexual attraction for sure, but what else? She stole a quick glance at Cooper’s rigid profile. Yes, he was all kinds of gorgeous, but was she that superficial – that shallow?

As she debated on, the sun made its triumphant reappearance from behind the clouds, the rain miraculously stopping. A loud cheer of relief went up from the crowd, children immediately darting away from their parents to run and splash into the nearest puddle.

‘Here, Afton, you can borrow this.’ One of the young college interns from her department standing nearby loaned Afton the kicky purple vest from her own outfit after seeing her dilemma. She accepted with profuse thanks, slipping it on immediately for needed cover until her shirt finished drying.

‘Hey, Afton, we’re going to have the tug-of-war contest now since we have the biggest mud puddle you’ve ever seen courtesy of the rain,’ Derrick, the jovial tubby sports columnist, came over to tell her. ‘I think we should recruit your date here as our anchor,’ he flashed Cooper a friendly grin. ‘The editors have another pretty tough lineup this year and of course Jason, the frustrated bodybuilder, is
their
anchor again.’

Afton peeked up at Cooper who seemed puzzled by the request, ‘it’s a tradition at the company picnic – a battle
royale
between departments,’ she explained. ‘Last year it was a pretty intense match of tug-of-war between the writers at the paper and the editors…’

‘I still say the editors cheated,’ Derrick grumbled, ‘I think Suzie was popping steroids before the picnic last year – it was almost
freakish
how strong she was for someone so short and spindly!’