‘I didn’t—’ Cooper bit off whatever argument he was about to make, and Dawn hid her grin. Baiting Cooper was far more fun than learning about his secret marriage, anyway. ‘Fine. How far is Elko?’
Dawn bounced a little in her seat as she consulted her phone. ‘About another hour and a half. We’ll be there right in time for lunch!’
‘Perfect.’ Cooper’s voice was bone-dry. ‘A picnic with a polar bear. Just what I always dreamt of.’
‘I knew you’d love it.’ Dawn settled back into her seat with a satisfied grin.
Maybe this trip wouldn’t be so unbearable after all.
* * *
Cooper stared up at the giant, glass-encased polar bear. He had to admit, he’d never seen bigger. Not that he’d actually been looking.
‘Apparently, White King is ten feet four inches tall and weighs two thousand, two hundred pounds.’ Dawn straightened up from reading the plaque beside the bear.
‘I could have read that myself, you realise,’ Cooper said.
Dawn gave a light shrug. ‘It’s more fun to learn these things together.’
Fun. Last he recalled, that wasn’t what this road trip was about. Although, he had to admit, Dawn was a better travelling companion than he’d expected. She hadn’t complained about the long hours in the car, or demanded to stop for bathroom breaks every thirty minutes. And she hadn’t pressed too much to discover his secrets. It felt more as though she was using meaningless small talk—and polar bears—to distract herself from the end of the journey.
Which was interesting in itself.
‘What I don’t get is why this creature is here.’ Cooper gestured around him at the casino and hotel that housed the giant bear, which seemed to have nothing to do with the Arctic Circle, as far as he could see.
Dawn peered down at her leaflet again. ‘Apparently it was something to do with a competition to find the biggest polar bear, back in the fifties.’
Of course it was. Didn’t everything come down to competition in the end? To proving you could be bigger or better or greater or richer than everyone else?
Cooper turned away from White King and sought out the bar menu instead. Cheap and cheerful was what they were going for, apparently.
‘Hot dogs?’ he suggested, and Dawn hesitated for a moment before nodding.
Then she grinned. ‘It says here they’ll bring your food to the slots, if you ask.’
Cooper frowned. ‘So you’re a gambler? Did my brother know?’ Because that was exactly the sort of information that might have driven Justin away on his wedding day. A rich husband would certainly have solved the issue of any outstanding debts at the poker table...
But Dawn just laughed, as if he had to be joking. ‘I’ve never actually been in a casino before. Not counting sleeping above one last night, of course. Justin and I talked about eloping to Vegas at one point, but...’ She shook her head as she trailed off.
‘But he wanted a proper family wedding, I assume.’ Justin wouldn’t have deprived their mother of the chance for a society event of the year, however stupidly in love he was.
‘Actually, it was me.’ Dawn flashed him a small smile. ‘I knew my parents and my sisters would never forgive me if I just showed up married one day. And, besides, I’d waited long enough for a big day of my own.’ She shrugged. ‘Why skimp on it, right?’
‘Especially when your fiancé has the money to give you your dream wedding,’ Cooper replied. Of course she’d want the spectacle. What was the point of marrying into money if she couldn’t show it off? Eloping would have defeated the object. If she was anything like Rachel—and, from Justin’s note, he had to assume she was, even if she didn’t always seem it—an elopement would have suggested a hasty mistake. She’d have wanted to show the world that she’d completely won Justin over, made him fall absurdly in love with her, before she dropped him and ran off, laughing all the way to the bank.
Dawn’s smile stiffened. ‘Yeah, well, weddings are always a compromise, aren’t they? I mean, there’s so many people to keep happy.’
Why would she care about that? That was the part that Cooper couldn’t figure out. Unless it was all part of the act, of course.
Rachel had designed every aspect of their wedding, and had kept control of the reins with an iron grip. The day hadn’t been theirs, it had been hers, and everyone there had known it.
But, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen much of the Dawn he’d come to know over the last three days in the arrangements for and Justin’s and her wedding. And the guest list had been easily three-quarters full of people he knew his mother must have invited.
What he couldn’t figure out was whether that meant she was less good at screwing his family over than Rachel, or more. Because, from speaking to his family after Justin’s no-show, they’d seemed even more surprised—if not exactly disappointed—that the wedding hadn’t gone ahead than Dawn had been.
‘So, what do you think?’ Dawn asked, her smile still a little too forced. ‘Want to show me how to use these machines while we wait for our hot dogs? Perhaps White King here can be our lucky charm.’
Cooper stared across at the ringing, beeping, irritating machines. It wasn’t exactly his idea of a fun time, but at least it was something different from staring at the interstate for hours on end. Salt Lake City, where they’d decided to stop for the night, was still another three hours or more away, even if the traffic was good.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Fine. Let’s go get some change—as soon as I’ve ordered these hot dogs.’
Dawn’s beaming smile was almost enough to make him forget why they were there in the first place, and the childish way she clapped her hands with glee was enough to make him doubt the only things he knew about her all over again.
She was a liar. She was after Justin’s money.
So why was he having so much fun travelling with her?
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I’M PAYING FOR the hotel tonight,’ Dawn reminded Cooper as the lights of Salt Lake City appeared on the horizon through the windscreen. Hopefully he’d take the hint and find somewhere affordable.
Cooper looked up from the hotel app on his phone. ‘Planning on using your winnings from the historic commercial casino?’
‘Ha! You’d better hope not, or we’re sleeping on the streets tonight.’ White King had, sadly, proved to be less of a lucky charm than she’d hoped.
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t turn to a career in professional gambling any time soon.’ He scrolled through the pages of vacant hotel rooms on his phone, and Dawn tried to concentrate on the road rather than the prices on the screen. She’d have to check her card balance online when they stopped. Maybe she could up the credit limit...
‘Okay, I’ve got us two rooms at a motel on the outskirts,’ Cooper told her. ‘Nothing fancy, but I figured we’d grab dinner first anyway, then just show up in time to sleep.’
Nothing fancy. In Cooper’s world, that could mean anything, but at least it sounded as though he hadn’t purposefully booked the most expensive place he could just to mess with her.
He had to know that she wasn’t from the same sort of world as his brother and him—he’d met her family, after all. With five girls all at home, money had never exactly been abundant in the Featherington house—although, until she’d met Justin, Dawn had never felt badly off. Still, compared to the Edwards’ world of beach houses in the Hamptons, vineyards in California and the ability to fly first class everywhere, Dawn supposed most people would feel kind of broke.
Of course, it was more her credit card bill that made her feel particularly poor these days. Because, while Justin had always been generous, he just hadn’t always got that keeping up with the Edwards cost money. He’d happily pay for flights, holidays and dinners, but it wouldn’t occur to him that the outfits he liked to show her off in, or the drink she needed to order at the fancy restaurant bar a
nd sip slowly until he showed up an hour late for dinner, blaming work, were rather more expensive than she was used to paying for. Apparently Top Shop and a bottle of cider were not the Edwards’ way.
She’d tried explaining it to Justin once or twice, but embarrassment meant she’d bungled it, hinting around the edges of the problem but never fully articulating it. Justin had just patted her hand and said how nice it was to date a girl with an actual job for a change, one who wasn’t always looking for new ways to spend his money because she had her own.
But Dawn’s job, good as it was, definitely hadn’t paid for the same sort of lifestyle Justin was used to.
She just hoped Cooper was a bit more reasonable in his hotel expectations.
‘Take a left off here,’ Cooper said, glancing between the road and the map on his phone. ‘There’s a pancake house along here we can eat at, and the motel’s not far after that.’
‘Pancakes for dinner?’ Dawn asked as she signalled. ‘Aren’t they more of a breakfast thing?’
Cooper shrugged. ‘Why limit ourselves?’
‘Fair point.’
The thing was, Dawn mused as she tucked into her chicken and mushroom cream sauce pancake a short while later, that until this week she’d always been more of a salads girl. At least, since she’d come over to the States. Firstly because her sisters had teased her about American portion sizes, and joked that she’d be as big as the other four of them put together by the time she came home again, and she’d really wanted to prove them wrong. And then, of course, having spent all that money on expensive clothes of the sort Justin liked, she really couldn’t afford not to fit into them any more.
Besides, Justin liked her in bikinis, and they took a certain amount of self-discipline to look good in. Especially given the fact that most of the other women he introduced her to had nothing else to do with their time but make sure they looked good in bikinis. Dawn couldn’t commit time or money to a personal trainer for three hours a day, plus nutritionally balanced meals delivered daily from a world-class chef, but she could order a plain salad when she ate out, and go for a run once in a while. So she had.
Until this week. Since Justin had failed to show up at the altar, she’d eaten a burger, doughnuts, hot dogs and now pancakes.
And she’d loved every delicious mouthful of them.
One thing was for certain—whatever happened with Justin, she was never going back to limiting herself to boring, tasteless food again.
They ate quickly, both tired and ready to get to the motel after a long day guiding Claudia across the country. Dawn drove the last mile or two to the motel, Cooper calling out directions from the satnav on his phone. As he guided her into the car park, Dawn let out a sigh of relief. The motel looked clean and respectable enough, but not as though it was going to break the bank. If they stuck to places like this, and she could get another five hundred dollars on her credit limit just in case, she should get away with paying for every other night’s accommodation.