“Your jealousy. It’s kind of cute.”
“I’m not jealous,” he shouted.
Nacho and I both stared at him until he groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. “We aren’t even talking about the same thing, but I can’t believe that asshole actually gave you his number.”
I pointed to the paper. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, he said you could watch.”
His jaw dropped until he actually read the receipt and saw the scribbled message.
If your dog ever has puppies, I’d love to have one.
“Oh,” Cooper said.
I tried to bite back the laugh, but it came out as a muffled snort.
“Ohh,” he repeated. He looked down at Nacho. “So it was you being flirted with, not your daddy. Huh.”
I took the receipt from him and crumpled it up before tossing it in a nearby public trash can. “When you say it like that, you make it weird.”
“Hey, we needed that for our expenses.”
“No we didn’t. It wasn’t an expense. It was a date. Stallion doesn’t need to pay for me to take my boyfriend out to dinner.”
Cooper looked up at me like my words might have been a joke. I gave him a serious face to make sure he knew they weren’t. He hesitated another minute before taking my hand in his. “Boyfriend, huh?”
I shrugged. “That’s what the website says anyway, so I guess it must be true. You know what they say about things on the internet.”
Cooper laughed, and all was right again in my world.
Despite the long daylight hours of summer, it was full dark by the time we finished grocery shopping and got back on the road. The rumble of the truck, combined with the good food and glass of wine, must have done their magic on Cooper because he fell asleep just outside of Shale Falls and was slumped across the console onto my shoulder the rest of the drive back. I had to take the mountain curves extra slowly to keep him from sliding the other direction and banging his head against the window.
When we pulled into the clearing, I had an odd sense of coming home. It was like Cooper’s and my own little hideaway, something just for us. I let Nacho out of the back seat before going around to the passenger side and opening the door. Cooper blinked up at me and looked around to see where we were.
“Home,” I murmured, reaching in to unclip his seat belt. “Come on, let’s get you in bed.”
He let me help him out of the truck and into the RV which had gotten cold in the night air since we’d left the windows open. Cooper shivered, so I tightened my hold around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his head. “Just give me a minute to sort Nacho out, and I’ll warm you up under the covers.”
After we both took a turn in the bathroom and I closed up the RV, including closing and latching all the windows, I stripped down and slid into bed, reaching for Cooper and pulling him close.
“I had a really good time tonight,” he murmured sleepily.
“Me too. I should run the heater so we run out of propane more often. I can use it as an excuse to take you to town.”
He chuckled. I felt the warm breath of it against my chest. “Don’t need an excuse. Next time it’s my turn though.”
I thought about that for a minute. “I guess with two guys, it’s a little different, huh?”
He laughed again. “Guess so.”
“No, I mean, it’s not like one person mostly does the asking and the paying. Like at home with girls, it’s expected to be the guy, you know?”
Cooper snuggled closer and snuck a whiff of my armpit. I’d noticed him do that before. At first I’d thought it was weird, but now I thought it was kind of cute. Anyone willing to put up with my stink was a winner.
“Only because you live in a small town that’s still really old-fashioned.”
I kissed him on the head again. His hair still held a faint smoky scent from the campfire we’d had the night before even though he’d showered. “Mm. Maybe so. But the women I’ve gone out with sure expected the man to do all that stuff.”
Cooper lifted his head to look at me. “What was it like when you dated those women? I mean, why didn’t it work out with any of them?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about it. It was embarrassing. But for some reason, I didn’t think Cooper would tease me about it the way my brothers did.
“I mean, it wasn’t like there were a lot of them. Mostly just Lauren from a couple of years ago. She’s the only one you’ve met, I think. Before that… I had sex for the first time with my prom date because that’s a cliché. She was still in love with her ex-boyfriend, so it never turned into anything between us. Then I kind of dated this woman named Yaz, but my family fucked that up for me.”