But it didn’t matter. He knew he’d give her everything he had if it meant she’d stay with him. If she’d help him be the person he’d discovered, out there on the road. The version of himself he liked so much more than the one he had to go back to.
For the first time in his life, he didn’t care about the money, about success or family obligations.
He cared about her.
Cared about a woman who loved kooky roadside attractions and hated sugar for breakfast, who couldn’t narrow down an ice-cream choice to less than four, it seemed, and who wore cheerful tee shirts and short skirts and had the best legs he’d ever seen. Cared for a woman who listened when he talked of heartbreaks he’d thought he only wanted to ignore, to pack away and never deal with again. Who sang along with Elvis on the radio even when she didn’t know the words. Who kissed him as though she was giving him her whole heart and everything she was.
He loved Dawn the same way that she loved life—with hope, even while expecting to be let down. The way she hoped for happy endings, even after so many romantic disasters.
The way she’d given herself to him, even though she knew it was only for one night.
He loved her.
And he was so far beyond screwed now.
* * *
The ice-cream place was nice, but Dawn couldn’t help but suspect that Cooper had an ulterior motive for stopping there, so close to the beach house, especially since he hardly even seemed to taste the ice-cream he’d been so desperate to try.
‘Which was your favourite?’ she asked as they climbed back into Claudia.
‘Um, the honeycomb?’ he said uncertainly.
‘Right.’ She hadn’t ordered any honeycomb.
So, yes. There was definitely something going on with Cooper. Several times between there and the beach house he opened his mouth, as if about to tell her something, or ask a question, then shut it again without a word.
It was enough to make a girl very nervous indeed. Just in case the idea of facing up to the guy who’d left her at the altar wasn’t nerve-racking enough.
Eventually, and just before Dawn’s stomach ended up entirely in knots, Cooper took one last turn and, suddenly, there it was. The fabled beach house Justin had told her so much about, had shown her photos of, but never actually taken her to.
The white timber fronting glowed in the sunshine, the black shutters framing large windows and matching the gable roofs and the roof of the porch. Out the back, she knew, was a large private pool, and inside would be decorated in perfect beach-house style by whoever Cooper and Justin’s mother had paid lavishly to do the job.
It was perfect, and beautiful...and Dawn would far rather have stayed in Claudia than ever go in, if that was okay with everyone.
Except it wasn’t.
Cooper stopped the car at the front, then turned to her. ‘You ready?’
‘No.’
He gave her a small smile. ‘You mean we drove thousands of miles and now you don’t even want to go in?’
Put that way, it seemed a little ridiculous. She sighed. ‘I suppose I need to get my passport back.’
‘Attagirl. Come on. I’ll be your wingman.’
The house seemed quiet as they approached, but as Cooper let them in with his key they heard Justin’s familiar laugh from the back porch.
Frowning, Cooper moved ahead, dropping Claudia’s keys onto a sidetable. Dawn followed, oblivious to the house itself, focused only on that laugh. How could something so familiar sound so alien all of a sudden?
Cooper opened the sliding doors that led out to the pool, then froze. ‘Dawn. Maybe you should go back to the car.’
Oh, that wasn’t good. Suddenly, the heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach that had plagued her all morning made sense. Whatever this was, it was going to be bad.
But she had to live through it anyway.
Pushing past Cooper, she stepped out onto the porch, feeling the warmth of the day against her skin as she looked out over the pool. There was Justin, his arms wrapped around a slender redhead, his lips on hers, looking happier and more relaxed than she had ever seen him in their months together.
‘It’s happened again,’ she whispered, and Cooper was at her side in an instant. ‘He left me and he found true love.’
‘He’d better hope it happened that way round.’ She glanced up at the thread of fury in Cooper’s voice and saw his expression was thunderous. In fact, for someone who’d slept with his brother’s fiancée the night before, he looked surprisingly self-righteous, she thought.
But that wasn’t the most surprising thing. The part that shocked her most was how angry she wasn’t.
‘Justin!’ Cooper yelled, his voice echoing out over the water.
The couple in the pool sprang apart. Justin stared up at them, his eyes wide with shock.
‘Cooper? Dawn? Oh, God, Dawn.’
Suddenly, she didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to know why she wasn’t as good as the woman in his arms. She didn’t want to hear that a person couldn’t help who they fell in love with, or that everything happens for a reason, or any of the other clichés they all used.
She didn’t want to hear any of it.
Turning, she walked back into the beach house. But not before she heard Cooper say, ‘Get dried off and get in here now, brother. We have things to discuss.’
He shut the screen door behind him and moved across to where she stood, looking at a photo of the two brothers when they’d been much younger, both wearing wetsuits and emerging from the sea. They must have been close once. Dawn wondered what had come between them.
Cooper’s hand at her waist made her turn.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so.’ She did a quick check for the usual despair and misery that came around this point. Maybe she’d got it all out of her system on the wedding night that wasn’t.
Or maybe it just felt different this time because she knew it was for the best.
She sighed. ‘I’m not quite sure what I feel. I mean, I’d accepted that Justin had seen the cracks in our relationship before I had—that he’d realised what a mistake it would have been for us to get married. It took me a whole week in a car with you for me to figure it out.’ She gave him a crooked grin, but he didn’t return it.
‘When did you? Figure it out, I mean?’
‘I guess it came a bit at a time.’ There hadn’t been one moment, had there? Just a growing feeling that life as Mrs Justin Edwards might not have suited her as well as she’d assumed, that she’d been jumping into it all too fast. And then the acknowledgment of all the warning signs she’d missed—how she’d had to dress like someone else for Justin, had had to change her habits, her hobbies, what drink she ordered in a restaurant. How she’d never quite fitted in or measured up, never been quite enough.
But, most all, never been truly herself.
Because she’d forgotten who that even was until Cooper had driven across the whole of America with her and helped her figure it out.
She looked up into Cooper’s eyes, saw the concern there and knew he was waiting for her to say something more.
‘He never saw the real me,’ she said slowly. ‘Maybe that’s why it doesn’t hurt so much. He wasn’t leaving me, but the person I thought he wanted me to be.’
And it wasn’t just him, she realised suddenly. It had been all of them.
With Trevor, it had been pretending to like modern art. With Richard, long walks in the countryside where she hadn’t even got a pub lunch afterwards. With Harry, she’d had to pretend to love his family the way he did, even though they were vile to her. For Patrick, she’d embraced a love of horse racing she really hadn’t felt. Even Ewan had wanted her to be more like the ex-girlfriend who’d left him.
Every one of them had wanted her to be someone else.
‘I
see you.’
Everyone except Cooper.
She’d never bothered to put on an act with him, because she’d never expected anything from him. And somehow he’d given her everything, anyway.