Lantern Lake (8 page)

He saw the truth in her eyes before she gave a short, ashamed nod. “Every day I stayed with him was like being in prison. It was awful—but I couldn’t leave. It was like making reparations, like penance. I thought, if I stayed with him even though I was miserable, then maybe eventually I’d earn forgiveness. But it didn’t work, because the person whose forgiveness I needed was you. And you were gone.”

“Oh, Viv.” Heart ripping in two, Cooper pressed his mouth to her forehead and tried to control his breathing. “Sweetheart. We need to get down off this roof.”

She sniffled. “Sorry. I know you were hoping to get this finished today.”

“Stop apologizing,” he growled, then blinked at himself. But he meant it. “The roof isn’t important. What’s important is that I need to hold you right now, if not sooner, and I don’t want a ladder and the threat of a fifty-foot drop between us.”

Giving a watery laugh, Vivian nodded once and let go of him to grasp the sides of the ladder. Cooper watched her make her careful way down the rungs, only the glossy black hair on top of her head visible. Every inch of space separating them felt wrong all of a sudden, and he hurried down after her.

When they were both on solid ground, Cooper wasted no time pulling her into his arms. It was colder in the shadow of the house, but he didn’t think the chilly breeze was what made Vivian tremble against his chest.

He could sympathize. He felt a little on the shaky side himself when he thought about how intent he’d been on punishing Vivian when he first saw her again after all those years apart. All those years, which he’d spent getting rich and seeing the world—and she’d spent miserable and trapped in a loveless marriage by her scheming, opportunistic parents.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words ripped from his gut.

“Hey.” Vivian leaned back enough to lift her face to his. “If I’m not allowed to apologize anymore, you definitely aren’t! Especially since you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Maybe not, but he’d sure thought about it. Shame curdled in Cooper’s belly. “I should have known you wouldn’t just leave me. I should’ve looked for you, made sure you were okay. Instead, I went off and made my fortune…and you lost everything.”

Vivian shook her head, her brows wrinkled in concern. “Cooper. Don’t blame yourself. I certainly don’t. And anyway, I might have lost a few things along the way, like my horrible ex-husband and the fantasy that my parents loved me and cared about me…”

“And all your money,” Cooper reminded her.

She laughed. “And all my money. But I found a couple of important things, too. Like my self-respect. And the strength to pick myself up and start over—that one was a nice surprise. I didn’t know that about myself, that I was capable of that kind of resilience.”

“You should be proud of yourself,” Cooper said, fierce protectiveness expanding his rib cage with every breath. He hated it that Vivian had ever been made to feel like less than the strong, amazing woman that she was. “I’m proud of you, if that means anything.”

“Of course it does!” She blinked up at him, dark violet-blue eyes wide with something like shock, mixed with trepidation. “Cooper, you’re everything. The last couple of weeks with you…that’s my latest and best discovery. That the past doesn’t have a stranglehold on us. Because if you can forgive me for what I did to you, then maybe, just maybe…there’s hope for the future.”

She stopped as if she’d run out of words and breath, and the expression on her face made Cooper want to shout and rage and tear down the world with his bare hands—because Vivian Banks should never look at Cooper Hayes like that. As if she didn’t know that she was everything to him, too.

Cupping her face between his hands, Cooper did his best to drill every word straight into her heart. “Vivian. I forgive you. I do. We were just kids, and the pressures your parents put on you…it must have been overwhelming. They sound like master manipulators, and you were so young, so sweet, so hungry for love. Your parents knew that, and they used it against you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Joy lit her eyes like sapphires, but she shook her head. “It means more than I can tell you, to hear you say that. I’ve wanted your forgiveness for a long time. But I can’t put all the blame on my parents. As you pointed out, I could have stood up to them. I wish I had. Every day and every night of my marriage, believe me, I wished I had the guts to tell them all to go to hell.”

She shuddered, darkness moving through her like a cloud passing in front of the sun. Cooper tensed, his muscles going tight and battle-ready as every part of him ached to fight off her demons. But then she smiled, and the sun came out once more.

“Just knowing you’ve forgiven me is the greatest gift, Cooper. I can hardly believe it.”

The adrenaline in Cooper’s bloodstream converted to hunger in the blink of an eye. “Believe it,” he said, bending to sweep her up into his arms and hold her high against his chest.

Vivian didn’t even tense at the abrupt move—she only sighed happily and melted against him, winding her arms lazily around his neck. “I’ll try,” she promised, pushing her face into the side of his neck and inhaling as if she liked the smell of sunshine, male sweat, and roofing dust. “But it might take a while.”

She shot him a glance from beneath her lashes, and Cooper realized what she was really asking. A sense of rightness steadied his steps as he carried her around to the front of the cabin, heading toward their warm, soft bed. “Take as long as you need,” he told her seriously, laying her down on white cotton sheets that already smelled like the two of them. Like home.

Vivian caught her breath. “You mean…”

Leaning over her, Cooper smoothed back a lock of her hair and brushed her bottom lip with his thumb to make her shiver. “I mean, we have time. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. And neither are you.”

And as they sank into each other, Cooper tried to lose himself in the moment. Because the moment was wonderful, heat and tightness and the kind of pleasure that turned a man inside out…but in the back of his mind, the past lurked like a cancer, sending our tendrils of black poison.

He still had questions, things he wanted to know but hesitated to bring up because he didn’t want to cause Vivian any more pain than she’d already suffered. Now wasn’t the time, anyway. They’d made enough progress for one day.

Cooper forced the questions down, focusing on the sweet taste and eager response of the woman in his bed. They had time. He’d make sure of it.

Vivian scraped one last curl of flaking paint off the porch railing and blew out a breath. She paused for a minute to wipe her forehead and smooth her flyaway hairs back into the hasty knot she’d twisted it into after the long—shared, delicious, knee-weakening—shower that morning.

Since she’d stopped, it was a perfect time to check her messages. Vivian pulled her phone from the pocket of her sleeveless down vest to see if either the bank or the title company had returned her emails. There was a notification from her bank, and she clicked it quickly only to frown at the news that it would take several days for Cooper’s check to clear. And there was still no news on the status of all the ownership paperwork.

“What’s the matter?” Cooper called from the yard, where he was working on scraping and sanding down the front door, which they’d taken off its hinges and rested on a pair of sawhorses in preparation for repainting the cabin’s trim a bright, happy red.

Vivian slipped the phone back into her pocket. “It’s kind of crazy that I could deposit a tiny check for not much money and have it all available immediately—but when it’s a lot of money that I really need, it’s going to take another week.”

“Whatever you need the money for, I can cover it,” Cooper said.

Vivian went still. She didn’t want to offend Cooper, and she could tell it meant something to him that he’d pulled himself up by his bootstraps into the financial stratosphere, and that he could afford to buy her anything she wanted. But at the same time, she didn’t want to set a precedent she wouldn’t be able to live with.

“That’s sweet of you,” she told him sincerely. “I truly appreciate the thought. But it’s important to me to be independent.”

Cooper frowned. “You always shared whatever you had with all your friends at school—buying rounds of drinks, picking up the tab for lunch. What’s the big deal about me helping you out now?”

“I don’t want to owe you anything.” Vivian’s fingers cramped, and she realized she was clutching the metal-handled scraper too tightly. Uncurling her fist, she set it gently down on the railing.

“I’m not going to collect on you,” Cooper protested, starting to get frustrated. Worse than the irritation, though, was the hurt Vivian could see lurking in his hazel eyes. “What do you think, I’m going to take it out of your hide? If you insist on it being a loan, that’s fine—I know you’re good for it, since I already cut you a check.”

“That’s different! I’m earning that money by renovating and selling you the cabin, which you will then own free and clear. It’s straightforward, simple, clean. I can live with that.”

Something flashed across Cooper’s face too quickly for her to read it, and when he opened his mouth, she held up a hand. She was determined to get this out on the table between them. Any future they might have depended on being up front about this.

“What I can’t live with,” Vivian said, “is another man thinking he owns me because I don’t have the means to make my own way in the world.”

Cooper’s mouth shut with a snap, the muscle behind his jaw ticking for a second before he rounded the sawhorses and stalked across the yard toward her. When he was close enough to touch her, he leaned his arms on the railing she’d been scraping and stared up at her. His voice was low and serious when he told her, “I would never think that.”

Softening a little, Vivian leaned over the railing to hug his shoulders. Cooper rested his forehead between her breasts, his breath hot through the waffle print of her thermal shirt. “I know, Cooper. I promise, I’m not confusing you with my ex-husband. But money…it changes people. It changes relationships. And if we want this one to work, we have to be honest about how we’re feeling about all the issues that crop up. Money is only one of them, but it’s a big one for me.”

Vivian held her breath a little, the way she had every time she’d mentioned the possibility of a future together over the past two weeks, and once again, Cooper didn’t disappoint her. He tilted his head up and reached over the railing to wrap his thick, muscular arms around her hips. “You’re right. We should talk. There’s something I have to tell you.”

From the guilty glint in his hazel eyes, Vivian had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to like it. The buzz of the phone in her pocket felt like a reprieve.

“Hold that thought.” She straightened up and fished out the phone. “It’s the title office! I have to take this.”

Cooper’s eyes went wide and he shook his head, making a grab for the phone, but the woman on the other end of the line was already speaking. Viv swatted at him and turned away, tuning out Cooper’s antics and trying to focus on what Janine was saying.

“I was surprised to get your email.” Janine’s nasal voice filtered through the phone speaker. “Seeing as how the paperwork was signed on Monday. A representative for Mr. Cooper Hayes took care of it.”

“Oh. He didn’t tell me.” Vivian glanced over her shoulder at Cooper, who grimaced and palmed the back of his neck.

“Well, it hasn’t been processed yet, but everything is in order,” Janine said briskly. “A copy of the deed was overnighted to you, I’m surprised it hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Island mail service can be a little unreliable,” Vivian said absently, her brain working overtime. “What do you mean, the deed was overnighted to me? Shouldn’t you have sent it to Mr. Hayes’s attention?”

“What?” Janine sounded confused. She wasn’t the only one. “We’re talking about the property at forty-two hundred Lantern Lane, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Whew! For a second, I was worried I’d sent your deed to the wrong address. What a mess that would have been.”

“You mean Mr. Hayes’s deed,” Vivian corrected her, heart fluttering in her ribcage like a wild bird trying to get free.

“Hmmm. Nope, no, I’ve got a copy of the paperwork right here. The property at Lantern Lake is in your name, Ms. Banks. Mr. Hayes signed a quit claim and transferred the property to you on the same day that he became the owner.”

***

The instant Vivian dropped the phone from her ear and clicked it off, Cooper was vaulting up the porch steps and rushing to her. “I can explain.”

“You put the house in my name,” Vivian said blankly. “You paid me five times what it’s worth, and you didn’t even want it for yourself?”

“I got what I wanted.” Cooper reached out, and felt his entire body unclench when Vivian didn’t pull away. “More time with you. A second chance. That was worth a hundred times the amount I paid for the house. A thousand.”

But Vivian was shaking her head. “Cooper, you can’t—you can’t just give me this house. It’s not what we agreed. I mean, thank you. I know you meant well, but…”

“You love this house!” Cooper knuckled under her chin, lifting it to get a look at her eyes. They were damp and wide, conflict darkening the irises to deep violet. “I knew from the first night, when we drove over the hill and you looked down at the property. This is your dream house. Or it will be, with a little more hard work and a lot of love. Don’t be mad at me.”

Her mouth twisted. “Of course I’m not mad. You’re right, I love this house. It’s beautiful, the lake renews my soul every time I look at it, I have friends on the island, and this house is where you and I reconnected—but I can’t let you give it to me.”

Cooper’s heart froze, ice prickling at the inside of his chest. For a horrible moment, it felt like she wasn’t rejecting the house. She was rejecting him, and everything he could offer her. “Vivian. I want you to have it.”

Something like sympathy lightened her gaze for a moment before she firmed her mouth and shook her head regretfully. “I know. But I can’t accept it. And I’ll tell you why, but you’re going to wish I hadn’t. It’s not a pretty story.”