‘Unfortunately for you, I am a champion at this game.’
‘Fortunately for me, I’m a quick learner,’ Cooper countered.
‘Unfortunately, you’re an eternal pessimist.’ Okay, that was a little harsh, but Dawn was playing to win.
‘Fortunately, I’ve been taking lessons in optimism from you.’
‘Unfortunately, my optimism is at an all-time low—after being, you know, jilted on my wedding day—so I might not be such a great teacher.’
Cooper gave her a soft smile. ‘Fortunately, I know it would take more than that to keep you down.’
Dawn felt a strange warmth filling her at his words. Was he right? She hoped so. ‘Um... Unfortunately... Damn.’ She couldn’t think of anything.
‘Want to switch to I Spy?’ Cooper asked, and Dawn nodded. Much safer.
* * *
An hour or so later, Dawn sank down onto the hotel room bed, closed her eyes and smiled. Cooper had insisted on finding somewhere a little nicer to stay in Lexington, after the disaster at the motel the night before—adding that he’d cover it before she even had time to worry about the hit to her credit card—and she really hadn’t been able to say no. The fluffy bathrobe, power shower and ridiculously comfortable mattress almost made her forget that she’d spent most of the last two days in a car. And possibly a significant portion of her remaining money on Buffalo Bill keyrings for her family.
‘Are you sure you’ve got enough of those?’ Cooper had asked, nodding at her heavy bag as she’d carried it in from the car after an epic game of I Spy.
She’d shrugged. ‘I have a lot of family who flew a long way for a wedding that didn’t happen. I figure the least I owe them is a keyring. I kind of wanted to get the moose’s head for Dad, but that would be a nightmare to ship, so...keyrings all round.’
Cooper, she’d noticed, hadn’t bought anything at all, despite how excited he’d looked at stopping there. She wondered if it had been some sort of childhood favourite, one that Justin had shared, although Justin had never mentioned it.
She’d half-thought that Cooper might have bought something for his brother, but he hadn’t. She hadn’t either, after some consideration. Showing up with gifts would smack a little too much of her coming after him to grovel, to beg him to come back. And the more distance she got from the wedding the more certain she was that she didn’t want to do that.
And only a little bit of that reasoning was down to Cooper.
Dawn couldn’t get a good read on him. One minute he was laughing and calling their car Claudia, stopping for ridiculously huge boxes of doughnuts for the journey, pulling over at stupidly fun roadside attractions or playing road-trip games. That Cooper she liked, could relax with and even enjoy his company.
It was the other Cooper who was causing her problems. The one who glared at her when she cracked a joke, who shifted the conversation away from any question she asked about his past or his personal life. The one who looked at her so hard sometimes she felt as though he were trying to see right through her skin, right to the heart of her.
She wondered what he saw there. She hadn’t quite found the courage to ask yet.
A knock on the door pulled her from her reverie, and she groaned as she forced herself to her feet to answer it. Probably room service with the wrong room. Even nice hotels seemed to screw that up sometimes.
‘I didn’t order anything—Oh. Hi.’
Cooper stood outside her door, dark eyes warm in the dim lights of the hotel corridor. ‘You left this in Claudia.’ He held out her phone charger; it must have fallen out of her bag, she realised. She really needed to buy a proper bag to keep her stuff in, rather than relying on a ratty carrier bag. ‘I figured you’d probably need it tonight.’
‘I hadn’t even noticed it was missing,’ Dawn said, reaching out to take it from him. ‘Thanks.’
He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘No bother.’
‘What were you doing back at the car anyway?’ she asked.
Cooper’s expression turned furtive. ‘Nothing. Just...checking something.’
Had he been planning to leave? To abandon her here in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska? And, if so, what made him change his mind?
Her suspicions must have shown on her face, because Cooper sighed. ‘Look, I wasn’t making a run for it, I promise. I just needed to clear my head, so I went for a walk and found myself at the car. Your charger was sitting on the front seat. I didn’t drive a yard.’
‘You were sitting in the car imagining you were some fifties movie star, weren’t you?’ Dawn joked, mostly to distract herself from the overwhelming relief flooding through her. He hadn’t been leaving her.
‘Something like that.’ Cooper gave her a small, lopsided smile. ‘I guess I find Claudia calming.’
‘You are the only person I know who, after spending basically a whole day sitting in a car, would voluntarily head back out there to sit in it some more even though you weren’t getting anywhere.’
‘Who said I wasn’t getting anywhere?’ Cooper asked.
Dawn frowned. ‘You said you didn’t drive anywhere.’
‘No, but that’s not always the same thing.’ Leaning against the doorframe, Cooper looked at her—that deep-down, searching look she could never read properly—and Dawn tried not to flinch under his gaze. ‘I had some thinking to do, was all.’
‘About life, the universe and everything?’ Dawn asked flippantly.
‘About you.’ By contrast, Cooper’s tone was a hundred per cent serious.
‘Me?’ Dawn wasn’t sure she liked the thought of that. What was there to think about, anyway? She liked to think she was a pretty open book.
‘Yeah. You’re a puzzle, Dawn Featherington.’
‘I’m really not.’ Somehow, as they talked, she’d leaned in closer to him, so she was halfway through the doorway herself. She just hoped no other guests happened on them. Their conversation must look far more intimate than it really was. Yet Dawn couldn’t quite bring herself to pull away. ‘What are you trying to figure out? Just ask me and I’ll tell you.’
She would, Dawn realised. She’d answer any question he had, just to get him to stop looking at her as if he was seeking out all her secrets.
Or maybe to make sure he never stopped.
She wasn’t entirely sure.
And that, right there, was a problem.
Dawn stepped back away from the doorframe, away from Cooper and his too-knowing eyes. He was her almost-brother-in-law, nothing else. The last thing she needed was to be sharing secrets and moments with this man.
Cooper looked as if he understood, because his smile turned sad. ‘Ah, but where would be the fun in that?’ he asked, and it took her a full minute to remember what she’d offered.
He pushed away from the doorframe and raised a hand in farewell. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Dawn.’
‘Eight in the lobby?’ she guessed.
Cooper was already halfway down the hallway towards his own room a few doors down but he threw his answer b
ack over his shoulder. ‘Let’s make it nine. We can get pancakes before we leave.’
It wasn’t until she saw him disappear into his own room that Dawn shut the door, leaning against it and breathing deeply.
They’d talked about practically nothing. He’d returned her phone charger. They’d made plans for the morning, just like the last couple of nights.
So why did she feel suddenly as if everything had changed?
* * *
Cooper was already regretting the previous night’s indulgence with the minibar by the time Dawn met him in the lobby. He’d known, after their conversation in her doorway, that he should just get some sleep. If sitting in Claudia examining his every interaction with Dawn so far hadn’t given him a better understanding of whatever game she was playing—or the possibility that Justin had been mistaken—he definitely wasn’t going to find any answers at the bottom of a miniature bottle of alcohol. Or even several miniature bottles.
But he’d tried anyway. And, by the time he’d dragged himself to bed and to sleep, he’d been drunk and clueless instead of just clueless. Perfect.
‘Pancakes?’ Dawn asked in greeting, her tone far too annoyingly cheerful for nine in the morning.
‘We should get going,’ he replied shortly, then cursed inwardly as her face fell. ‘But there’s probably time for pancakes,’ he conceded, cursing himself even more.
What was it about this woman?
The problem, he’d decided last night, a couple of bottles in, was that he was starting from a place of incomplete information. Gut instinct aside, all he really knew was: A: Justin loved Dawn, but also believed her to be a gold-digger, and B: Dawn was willing to drive all the way across the country with him to win Justin back. Even if she denied it, it was pretty obvious to him.
Those two pieces of information alone should have been enough to compel him to keep his interactions with Dawn to a minimum, or at least keep his distance emotionally. He didn’t need to know her secrets, didn’t need to understand her motivations.
But apparently knowing that wasn’t enough to make him stop trying.