“Hey, Mo!” Buzz said in his best impression of Curly from The Three Stooges. It had taken him all of a week of knowing me to come up with that inside joke, but now that he considered himself my de facto big brother and protector, he felt free to tease me at will. Quietly pulling me aside a few days before and telling me that Teague’s body had been positively identified had been some sort of bonding moment for him. Alaskan men were very strange.
Pete stepped around the bar and helped with the heavy box of leaded glass.
“Look what I found, Evie!” I said, gingerly unwrapping my purchases. “I figured we could use them to display the new desserts. None of them match, but I thought that would be sort of quirky and fun.”
“Looks great, Mo.” She offered a wide smile as I tied on an apron and looked over the pending orders.
“When’s the big launch?” I turned to find Cooper sitting at the counter, glaring at me despite the relative calm of his voice.
“We start the new menu on Monday. What can I get for you?” I asked.
“I’m not hungry, thanks,” he said. “I’ll stick with coffee.”
“Not hungry,” Evie scoffed. “I’ve seen you eat five of Buzz’s flapjacks and tell him to hurry up cooking the sixth.”
Cooper shot Evie a warning look. She took her coffeepot and circulated among the booths.
I started to carry the stands into the kitchen before Cooper grumbled, “Settling right in, aren’t you?” He didn’t even look up to speak to me. Just stared down into his coffee as if he could divine my answer there.
“What is your problem?” I asked, taking another pot from the warmer when I saw that his cup was nearing empty. “I’m helping out a friend. I didn’t expect to make friends here or get a job that I love, so I’d like to do what I can to pay Evie back for her kindness.”
When he looked up, there were dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept well in weeks. “No, you’re setting Evie up for a fall. She’s already started depending on you. Her business is picking up, because people want to come in and get a look at you. And when you pack up and leave, she’ll suffer. But you’ll be too far away, ‘finding yourself’ in some other place, to give a damn.”
I felt like growling that if getting attacked in the alley behind my workplace didn’t scare me out of town, not much would. But Cooper didn’t know about that, and I didn’t particularly feel like sharing with him.
My throat tight, I said softly, “Has it occurred to you that this is none of your business, and you should let Evie and me figure it out?”
“Has it occurred to you that you’re never going to find whatever you’re trying to find up here, contentment or fulfillment or a closer connection to the land or whatever you outsiders come up here looking for?” he growled back. “If you didn’t have it in the lower forty-eight, you’re not going to find it just by switching locations. You come up here in your Range Rovers and your three-hundred-dollar hiking boots and spend God knows how much setting yourself up in houses you don’t need because the first time the temperature dips below zero, you figure out, ‘Oh, my God, Alaska is cold!’ And you whine and you complain to anyone who will listen because you can’t find your favorite brand of toothpaste. Or because you have to drive four hours to get to a Starbucks. And you turn on everybody around you, treating them like shit because they’re content to live in ‘a little pissant town’ and making them miserable until it’s thawed enough for you to make tracks for the nearest airport. And you, you’re worse, because you’re trying so damn hard to pretend that you belong here—”
“Enough.” At first, I didn’t realize that raw, harsh whisper had come from me. I pursed my lips to hold back the torrent of angry, hurt responses. Because they would have been loud, possibly quite profane responses, and I didn’t want to cause a scene.
“Pour your own damn coffee,” I said, dropping the pot next to his cup with a clatter. “Evie, I’m going to get some air.”
“Sure, sweetie.” She patted my back as I ducked through the kitchen. I heard her smack Cooper’s head and Cooper’s sharp oath. “What did you say to her?”
I shut the staff entrance door behind me with a click and leaned against the cold brick of the alleyway. The tears I expected to come rushing out stayed settled in my chest, a heavy weight against my heart. I doubled over, braced against my knees, and rubbed at my sternum with a shaking hand.
Returning to the scene of the crime didn’t really help my frame of mind. The scrape of the pavement under my shoes, the sour smell of the Dumpster, brought images bubbling back to mind. I could feel his breath on my neck, the warmth of his blood soaking my shoulder. Suddenly nauseated, I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. I thought of the sweet, heady scent of honeysuckle, the huge trucks that hauled cotton from fields every summer back home, leaving bits of snowy white in their wake.
“Evie says—”
“Gah!” I screamed, swinging out and clipping someone’s jaw with my clenched fist. My eyes flew open.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been making a fist, but just the tiniest part of me was happy to share that with Cooper.
“Jesus!” he yelped, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “What was that for?”
“You startled me!” I cried, shoving at his chest. “What the hell is wrong with you, sneaking up on someone like that?”
It was galling that I was pushing Cooper at full force and wasn’t even moving him. He caught my hands with little effort and held them to his chest. The warmth that radiated from his hands soothed, which seemed to irritate me all the more. I didn’t want comfort from this man. I wanted to kick him in the balls. His even warmer breath feathered over my cheeks, drawing my attention to his wide, full mouth, a scant few inches away from my face. I could taste him, the spicy musk that was Cooper, even before his lips closed over my own with a defeated groan.
Everything inside me seemed to still at the same time. I could feel with perfect clarity the soft, insistent pull of Cooper’s lips against mine, the mingling of air. The cold brick wall against my back as he leaned against me, slipping his warm, rough hands under my jacket, pulling me tight against him. My hands threaded into his hair, soft and silken against my fingertips. His hands, the very fingers I’d obsessed over, were impossibly gentle as they cupped the curve of my jaw. The tip of his tongue traced the line of my lower lip, then swept tentatively across it. I sighed and wondered how it had taken us so long to get here. Why couldn’t I have spent the last few months like this, wrapped in his arms, drinking in the warm, spicy scent of him?
Oh, wait. Cooper was a complete dick to me, that’s why. He’d been rude, sarcastic, and hurtful, for no reason. And he didn’t like me. He’d made that much clear. He was kissing me now because I was one of few available females within a hundred miles and he caught me at my weakest. He was using me to scratch an itch.
With a snarl, I raised my knee with lightning speed, right into Cooper’s now-bulging zipper. I slid out of his embrace and stood panting beside him as he leaned against the wall for support while his crotch recovered.
“What the hell?” he grunted.