Cooper (The Family Simon 6)

Tight-lipped, mood decidedly not as happy as a few minutes earlier, Morgan gripped her cell. “We did.”

A few moments passed.

“Good,” Sara replied, her voice soft. “I’m glad Mr. Hot-as-hell Cooper Simon was with you. I bet Christy’s freaking eyes nearly fell out of her head.” That was said with relish. After Nathan and Morgan broke up, Sara’s feelings toward Morgan’s former best friend were frosty to say the least.

Morgan expelled a long, hard breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding in and winced as a wave of dizziness rolled over her.

“Morgan?”

“I’m here.”

“You okay?”

Okay was a relative term, but at the moment, she was pretty sure it applied to her. “Yep.”

“So did her eyes nearly bug out of her head?” Sara chuckled.

“Well, if they did, I missed it.”

“Huh.” A pause. “Nathan called me this morning.”

Wait. What? That was totally unexpected. “Why?” The word was torn from her, and she found herself straining to hear her sister’s response over the cries from the gulls and the sound of the waves hitting the rocks below.

“I don’t know. I didn’t pick up, and he didn’t leave a message, but he called three times, so it seems pretty obvious to me why he wanted to talk.”

With a small frown, Morgan turned as the helicopter roared to life. Cooper stared at her from across the clearing, and even though he was at least one hundred feet away, she felt the intensity of his gaze as surely as if he stood right in front of her. New shots of fire surged over her skin, and she tugged on the collar of her sweater.

“Morgan?”

“Yeah,” she replied, distracted, confused, hot, and way more aroused than she’d like to be.

“He still has feelings for you.”

“Who?” She jerked back as her sister’s voice filled her ear.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sara sounded annoyed.

“Yes.”

“I’m talking about Nathan. I think he still has feelings for you.”

Morgan thought of the text messages he’d left this morning. We need to talk. “God,” she muttered. Nathan was the last person on the planet she wanted to talk to.

“Morgan?”

Her seagull swooped down only a few feet from her and then disappeared below the bluff. So bold and daring. So wild and free from constraint. Maybe it was time for her to do something totally out of character. Maybe it was time for her to live a little, to see if she could dance along the edge and not fall. Maybe it was finally time for her to deal with some of the ghosts from her past. Deal with them and move the hell on.

Cooper watched her, hands shoved into the pockets of his worn denim, the black leather jacket lending an air of danger that she liked. Heck, if she was honest? Not only did she like it a lot, she liked him.

And yet…could she get past her hang-ups? Let someone in, even if it was only for this moment? For tonight? She thought of the heat in his gaze, and an answering burn erupted in the pit of her stomach.

She didn’t think. She just acted. She was about to embark on what just might be the stupidest thing she’d ever done, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass. On account of the no-thinking thing.

With an abrupt turn, she started toward Cooper. “I gotta go, Sara. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? It’s Saturday. I thought we were doing dinner. I didn’t make plans tonight because we were doing dinner.”

“Not tonight.”