Late the next day, after a night that would be seared into his memory till his dying day, followed by a long afternoon nap with Shelby spooned against him, Cooper stood once again at the grill. Last night’s burgers had gone to charcoal while he and Shelby had tangled in his bed, and he assumed she must be hungry by now, though to look at her, nobody would ever know. Curled up in his chair, with his sweatshirt hooked over her toes, she looked gorgeous, sated, hellishly beautiful.
And happy.
He’d never intended to take her to bed. Hell, he’d never intended to kiss her, but once he had, it was like his brain had fled the coop completely. When he should have been pulling back, because Jesus, his life could totally be about to implode again, he’d been pulling her closer. When he should have been walking her back to her cabin, he’d been chest deep in bubbles, knowing he could totally die happy at that moment.
And when he’d rocked with her as dawn crept softly through the windows, the tips of her hair brushing against his face, he’d never felt more sure that there could never, ever be another woman more perfect for him.
But sometime late this morning, the guilt had started clawing at him. Who was he to start something here? Who was he to drag her into a web she’d hate him for eventually? She thought his case was over. She thought he was a free, innocent man.
Unfortunately, she was the only one who did.
A momentary thought hit him, at the same time it had him scanning the hillside above him, the lodge behind him, and her cabin beside them.
If someone with a camera got wind of her location, and that someone had the potential to be paid a boatload of money to take incriminating pictures, Shelby Quinn–slash–Tara Gibson—sitting on the back porch of a Montana cabin with a disgraced cop, looking deliciously sated and wearing his sweatshirt—would give that paparazzo a big frigging story.
He turned off the grill. Maybe tonight they’d eat inside.
“Think we’re out of gas,” he said, hating that he was lying. “How about we save burgers for another night?”
“Sure.” She stood up. “You know, there’s a fridge full of food in my cabin, and I have no flipping idea what to do with any of it. Want to see if we can throw dinner together there?”
Cooper blinked hard, trying to push his doubts and guilt aside until he figured out what to do about it all. Shelby was happy—really happy—and the last thing he wanted to do right now was extinguish that beautiful smile of hers.
“If you’re comfortable letting a man loose in your kitchen, then…sure. Let’s do it.”
“I’m comfortable letting you loose in my kitchen. Also comfortable letting you loose in other places. But definitely the kitchen. Yes.”
A few minutes later, Shelby sat on one of the stools at her kitchen counter, sipping wine as she watched him pull ingredients from the fridge. He felt her eyes on him as he moved, and it made him feel like lasers of delicious heat were hitting him in all the right places. He’d be damned if they could possibly go another round so soon after the last, but his body was saying otherwise.
“Stop watching me, princess.”
“Why?”
“You’re making me nervous.”
She laughed. “You? Nervous? I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
“Well, here I am, wielding sharp objects, and you’re—you know—looking at me. I’m liable to cut something off.”
“Just make sure it isn’t anything important.”
“It’s all important!”
“Of course it is. Sorry.” She sipped her wine. “You know, there’s something very erotic about watching a man make dinner.”
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t chop off your finger, bozo.” She laughed, pointing his eyes back at the cutting board. “And yes, there is.”
“Good to know.”
“Hey, Cooper? I’m really glad Kyla picked you to live next door to me.”
Cooper laughed. “Me, too, little bit.”
“And also, I don’t think I want to go home.”
“Well, that’s understandable. I mean, really. Look, you’ve got a sex slave and a chef.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t the bright one he’d seen over the past few hours. “Exactly.”
He cleared his throat. “What’s waiting for you at home?”
Translation: who might be waiting for you at home?
“I don’t even know. I mean, a big empty house, a big empty cabin, a studio who’ll want me back on the road, an assistant who’ll make it all happen…and a long stream of stages and hotel rooms. Tara Gibson awaits me, like it or not.”
“And that makes you downright miserable?”
“It does.”
“I don’t understand. If you hate this so much, why do you still do it?”
Shelby sighed. “Because I’m under contract.”
“But you’re unhappy, you say your sales reflect it, and yet they want to keep pouring money into producing you? Why?”
“Because I was…huge. And they’re hoping for a comeback. They’re hoping I’ll come up with that all-elusive summer hit that will play every forty-five minutes on every pop station in America. They’re hoping I’ll do a duet with a sixteen-year-old and shoot a video that makes me look like his eighteen-year-old girlfriend. They’re hoping that with enough makeup and glitter, they can cover up the fact that my ship has already sailed, and they should have contracted for one less album.”
“And there’s no way to buy yourself out of the contract?”
Her face fell, then shuttered, like there was still something she hadn’t quite told him. But he didn’t want to push—not now, when everything was still so…new.
“I tried. Daddy tried. They weren’t interested.”
“What about now? Would they have any sympathy whatsoever, with what’s happened lately?”
“No.” Shelby laughed bitterly. “Sympathy is not an emotion this particular label understands, and honestly, I need the money. I need the album, and I need the tour, as much as it will kill me to go back out there as Tara.”
Cooper felt his eyebrows pull together as his assumptions broke into pieces. The woman’s face was on posters all over teenage-bedroom America, and she was hurting for money?
“I didn’t realize,” he finally said. “I just sort of assumed—”
“That famous equaled rich?” She sighed. “I know. I was, at one point.”
“What happened?”
“A slimy financial advisor—that’s what happened.”
“Oh, no.” Wheels clicked together in Cooper’s head. “Did you get caught up in that Ponzi thing?”
She nodded, her lips pressed together. “Not just me. Daddy, too.”
“How much did you lose? If that’s not a completely inappropriate question?” Cooper shook his head. “Never mind—that’s a completely inappropriate question. Sorry.”
But then Shelby rattled off a figure that had his jaw dropping and eyes going wide at the same time. Holy shit.
“And you couldn’t recover any of it when the arrests were finally made?”
“No.” She frowned. “It was gone. All of it. That’s why Daddy was still touring, rather than opening his little dream of a music shop in some little Southern paradise. He’d planned to buy a farm and retire two years ago, but no.”
“I’m sorry, Shelby. I can’t even fathom what that would have felt like.”
“Well, unfortunately, it’s far from over. His estate’s being liquidated to cover his debts, so everything he worked for—it’s all being auctioned off, piece by piece, to the highest bidders.”
“I had no idea.”
“Well, good, I guess.” She twirled her wine slowly in its glass. “Maybe nobody else does, either. Hopefully they’re keeping it all under the radar, or at least spinning it like it’s not desperation and debt that has everything going on the block.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
Cooper stopped chopping. “Is this last album going to be enough to get you free?”
“I don’t know.” She looked down, and an abject misery took over her face. “But it has to. It’s the only thing that can. I’m not terribly qualified to do anything else.”
He watched her, feeling a mixture of anger, sadness, and frustration with the sequence of events that had brought her to this point in her life.
And that gnawing pit in his stomach opened up as he realized he had no right to be with her right now. No right to take her to bed and make promises he couldn’t keep.
“You know what?” Shelby’s voice broke into his thoughts. “It actually wouldn’t be nearly as bad if I felt like anything more than a commodity they were required to finish up with. I’m like this ghost of a person past…of a fake person they created in the first place. And I don’t know if I remember how to be her anymore.”
“I can’t believe you don’t have other options. Another label, maybe? Could they buy you out of your contract?”
“Nobody will touch me right now.”
“That’s insane. Every label in America should be knocking at your door, desperate to help you record the music you really believe in.”
“Even if I was lucky enough for that to happen, LolliPop would just take me to court, make up a bunch of bullshit about potential dollars I’m costing them, and bankrupt me. And if they do that, the mask of Tara Gibson will come off. They’ll sue Shelby Quinn, daughter of Tommy Quinn, and it’ll be in every newspaper in the United States. I’d never work again. And I would never do that to my father’s memory.”
Cooper crossed his arms as a long sigh deflated him. “I’m not sure I’m a fan of Neverlandia, princess.”
“Yeah, me neither.” She scraped at her thumbnail with her other thumb. “Really, the only thing that could get me out of this is a headline bad enough that it would come with a book deal at the same time the label drops me. So I either have to suck it up and go back out on the road as Tara Gibson, or I need to do something really, really bad, make sure the press gets wind, and hope New York publishing is listening.”
“That’s just…wrong.”
“I was kidding.” She shrugged. “Sort of. The thought has crossed my mind.”
“It could totally backfire—just saying.”
“I know.” She tried to smile. “But if you think of anything, let me know. I could use a good publicity stunt right about now.”
Cooper didn’t answer—just went back to chopping carrots into smithereens as his mind raced and his gut twisted, realizing how close he might be to handing her that very headline.