Cooper wasn’t in the mood for a wedding. He snapped photos, cracked jokes and smiled charmingly, the same as usual, but his heart wasn’t in it. For once, the joy of the occasion hadn’t rubbed off on him. No, he was dwelling on Sophie—on the sheen of tears in her eyes when she told him she wasn’t as I as she used to be.
He’d hurt her. While that had never been his intention, this was new territory for him, and he was only just learning to navigate the terrain. He understood why she’d jumped to the conclusion she had, but it hurt that she’d thought the worst without giving him a chance to explain. He’d never told anyone about Trisha and Madison, so he didn’t even know where to start, but she’d made it abundantly clear that if he wanted to be with her, he’d better explain quickly. Otherwise, she might shut him out completely, and he couldn’t stand the thought of that.
“Hey, Coop, why the long face?” Brianna, one of the bridesmaids, asked.
“No reason,” he replied, embarrassed at being caught mulling over his problems. “Sorry, I was away with the fairies. What were you saying?”
She blinked prettily, eyelashes fluttering. “I was asking if you know of any place where I could stay tonight. I thought I’d booked accommodation, but I got mixed up. Silly me.”
Cooper stared blankly. He knew she was angling for an invitation to his place, and not long ago he would have leapt at the opportunity to have an attractive woman fall into his bed so easily, but right now he had more important things on his mind. Besides, Brianna was too tall, her eyes too brown, her hair too pale. Usually, he didn’t have a type, but it seemed that short, strawberry-blonde women were growing on him.
“Well?” she prompted.
Cooper fished a business card from his pocket and scribbled a number on the back. “Call this number. It’s for a new motel just up the road. I’m sure they’ll have something for you.” He caught sight of a flash of white in the background. The bride was on the move. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He brushed past, ignoring the twinge of guilt he felt for rebuffing her attentions. He couldn’t be bothered flirting with random women tonight, even for the sake of business. He only wanted one woman, and she wanted nothing to do with him. He needed to tell her about Trisha and Madison, but how? How could he admit to failing his friend, and leaving Ben’s soul to walk in the dusty Iranian sun forever? Cooper had survived purely based on luck, but he wasn’t whole anymore, and if he opened up to Sophie about Ben, it would mean admitting that.
Perhaps it would be worth it. Sophie was a beautiful, fun woman, a lioness in the sack, and the most giving person he knew. Regardless of his previous reluctance to commit to a woman, he’d be a fool not to hang on to Sophie for as long as the fire blazed between them. At the very least, he couldn’t let her go on thinking he was like Evan. He’d never gone behind a woman’s back before, not even during a fling. He’d especially never do that to Sophie.
Cooper nodded to himself as he snapped a picture of the bride silhouetted against the bright light shining through a window, his mind made up. Somehow or another, he had to tell Sophie the truth.
Sophie sat cross-legged on the sofa, a bowl of popcorn in her lap and a blanket around her shoulders. She reclined against the cushions, smiling as the opening credits of the TV show Game of Thrones started rolling. Her favorite. As she munched on a fistful of popcorn, Cletus curled up next to her and kneaded her thigh, his tail twitching. His needle-like claws pressed into and out of her leg. Sophie tried to ignore the small bursts of pain, but they grew to be too much.
“Cletus,” she hissed. “Stop it!”
Cletus stared at her, frozen in place, his ears set back against his head.
“Aw, come on. Don’t look at me like I’m the bad guy.”
He shoved away from her thigh, sending another jab of pain up her leg, and stalked away.
“You’ll be back.”
Sophie reached into the popcorn bowl just as someone knocked on the door. Casting a wistful glance at the popcorn, she set it aside, shrugged the blanket off and went to the door. When she yanked it open, her greeting died on her lips at the sight of Cooper on the doorstep, hands in his pockets, his expression inscrutable. Suddenly, she wished she were still dressed for work, or for a date. Anything rather than the loose track pants and knit jersey which probably made her look like someone’s virgin aunt or a high school reject.
“What do you want?” she asked tiredly, rubbing her eyes so she didn’t have to look at him and his gorgeousness.
“I’ve—um—got some explaining to do,” he said, then glanced past her up the hall. “Can I come in?”
“No.” If she let him in, she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to kick him out again.
“Okay. I guess that’s fair enough.” He stepped back and sat on the porch railing, palms resting on his thighs. “There are some things I need to tell you.”
Intrigued despite herself, Sophie leaned against the door frame and looked across at him. “Like what?”
His brow furrowed, and his deep blue eyes pierced her to her soul. “This is going to be really hard for me to say. I need to know that you’re going to hear me out.”
Sophie nodded, although his words had shaken her. This serious, uncertain Cooper wasn’t the man she knew, and she wasn’t sure how to react to him.
“When we were younger, did you ever meet a guy named Ben Macintosh?” he asked.
The question took her by surprise. It was so seemingly innocuous, so unexpected. “Not that I remember, but I didn’t get out much.” She’d been too busy working and taking care of Antonia.
“He grew up in Timaru,” Cooper continued. Not exactly a local, then, Sophie thought. “He joined the navy at the same time as me. We went through training together and were stationed in the same unit.”
The cords of his throat moved as he swallowed. She didn’t speak, afraid that if she did, he’d stop confiding in her. He’d never spoken to her about his time in the navy before, and she didn’t want to blow it.
“We were friends—best friends,” he corrected himself, flushing as though he’d admitted something very personal. “Our tour was almost finished when there was an explosion.” He stared into the space somewhere behind her right ear. “A car bomb. I survived, he didn’t.”
Oh, no. Sophie ached to go to him and provide the comfort he so obviously needed, but she wanted him to finish his story. To tell her how this was relevant to them. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly.
“It should have been me.” The words were wrenched from him. “Ben had a wife and a baby waiting for him to come home. I had no one.”
“That’s not true,” Sophie interjected. “You had your family.”
“But no one who depended on me. Not like that. Before he died, I promised Ben that I’d look after Trisha and Madison, and I have, as best I can. They needed him to come back, but they got me instead.”
Suddenly, it all made sense to Sophie. The nightmares. The strange mood he’d been in when he arrived on her doorstep that night. Survivor’s guilt. Combined with the episodes of PTSD, the emotional baggage he was carrying around must be overwhelming. It was a miracle he managed to get out of bed in the morning, let alone be the charismatic guy he usually was.
Grief was written all over his face, etched in the lines around his mouth. She couldn’t bear to see him in such pain. Slowly, so as not to startle him, she crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his waist. They hadn’t held each other like this before without it being either the precursor or the aftermath of sex. With every part of her being, she hoped he could sense how grateful she was that he had come back from the war. He was needed, too.
After a moment, Cooper’s arms settled around her and he pulled her close, resting his chin on the top of her head. “The woman from the park,” he continued, apparently determined to finish his story.
“Was Ben’s wife,” Sophie said for him. “I understand. I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions. I just—”
“It’s okay,” he broke in, stroking her hair. “I don’t blame you. I know how it looked, and after what you’ve been through, I should have told you.”
Sophie closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of his big hands running softly over the back of her head. His unconscious caresses filled her heart to brimming. She’d never felt so cherished before, and so full of admiration for another person. “Thank you for telling me. I feel honored that you trust me enough to be honest.”
Cooper shifted on his feet awkwardly. “I wasn’t ready for things to be over between us. I hope, now, that we can stay together for a while longer.”
The hesitancy in his voice slayed her. “Of course. You don’t have any other secrets I should know, do you?”
He huffed in amusement. “Come on, woman. Let a man keep some secrets.”
“Okay.” She laughed against his chest. “As long as those secrets don’t affect me, I don’t need to hear them. Fair?”
“Fair,” he confirmed, releasing her from their hug. He stepped back, hands on her shoulders, to look into her eyes. “Do you have any deep, dark secrets I should know?”
Sophie smiled wryly. “I’m a twenty-five-year-old real estate agent who’s never been overseas and still lives where I grew up, with my mother and my cat. I think that about covers it.”
“No secret past as a double agent? No crazy exes locked in the attic?”
She laughed, relieved he could joke. “No. I don’t have an attic. The basement, on the other hand…”
His eyes widened. “What’s in the basement? Do you even have a basement?”
She smirked. “Do I? That’s for me to know, and you to wonder about.”
“In all seriousness, Soph, what’s wrong with your mother?”
Sophie froze, her heat hammering violently in her chest. “When did you see my mother?”
He glanced away guiltily. “I followed you out to her room one morning. She told me she’s terminal. Is it really that bad?”
“She spoke to you?”
He acted as if she hadn’t said anything. “Don’t be mad at me for going behind your back. You would never have told me, otherwise.”
He had a point, but it was her right to keep things to herself if she wanted to. Antonia was none of Cooper’s business. “You’re right,” she said. “I wouldn’t have told you. Just like you never told me about your nightmares. We all have things we like to keep to ourselves.” She paused and took a deep breath. “But tell me, did she really speak to you?”
Cooper stared at her, his brow furrowed, looking perplexed. “Yeah. What’s the big deal about that? And how do you know about my nightmares?”
Sophie rolled her eyes impatiently. “Your sister told me. She’s my best friend, dumbass.”
“Remind me never to trust her again,” he muttered.
“Don’t hold it against her. You had plenty of opportunities to tell me that the reason you don’t like sharing a bed was because you have nightmares. Believe it or not, most women would prefer knowing that to being kicked out with no explanation.”
“I don’t care what they’d prefer. It’s embarrassing. And don’t make this about me. I asked about your mother.”
Focusing on the first part of what he’d said, Sophie wrapped her arms around him again. When she spoke, her voice was muffled by his shirt. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. You were brave enough to go to war. Most people can’t say that. And the things you went through… Anyone would have nightmares after that.”
“Thank you, Soph.” His voice was rough, as though he was holding back tears. She squeezed him more tightly and was relieved when he swallowed his pride and hugged her back.
When he finally let go, she screwed up her courage and told him, “Mum has multiple sclerosis. It’s a disease that makes the central nervous system shut down. It’s slow. She’s had it for more than a decade, but she only became unable to walk in the last couple of years. She’s depressed, too, which makes it worse.”
Sophie drew a shuddering breath. Cooper clasped her to his chest again, and somehow it was easier to talk when she didn’t have to look him in the eye. “How do you convince someone to fight for their health when they don’t care whether they live or die? I can hardly ever talk her into leaving the bed, and she never leaves the property. She only speaks to me and her nurse, which is why it shocked me that she talked to you.”
Cooper’s eyebrows shot up. “She never leaves the house? How long has she been that way?”
“Since her speech started to deteriorate. Mum has a lot of pride. When she started feeling like she wasn’t in control of her own body, she couldn’t bear to let people see her.” Sophie could hardly blame her. Antonia had a sharp mind trapped inside a body which continued to let her down.
“How long ago was she diagnosed?”
“A little while after Dad died.”
Though she couldn’t see his face, she could almost hear his mind whirring as he did the math. “Your dad died when you were really young. How’d you manage?”
The corners of her mouth tightened grimly as she recalled the way she’d scrimped and saved to get by when Antonia could no longer work, then the black pit that had opened up inside her when she realized it would never end. “I applied for a disability benefit on her behalf, and I worked to cover the cost of everything else.”
Cooper’s fingers tightened on her arm. “Wow. That must have been tough. You were just a kid. I’m sorry. I never knew.”
Sophie shrugged a shoulder. “Of course you didn’t. I kept it as quiet as possible. Mum wanted it that way. It’s not like you could have done anything. No one could.”
“You don’t know that. Did you get help from anyone? Is she being treated?”
Sophie pushed free, crossed her arms, and scowled at him. “Of course she’s being treated. M.S. isn’t curable, but she’s on medication and gets regular physio.” Not that Antonia engaged much. “What, do you think I would let her shut herself away without doing everything I could to help her first? I may have been a kid, but I wasn’t stupid. I was desperate to help her. To make her happy.” God, how she’d longed to see Antonia smile again, just once. “When we were told there wasn’t a cure, I pushed her to attend her physical therapy sessions, take her medication, go out with friends, and keep up her hobbies. If anything, I made it worse, but I still try. One day it might work.”
Cooper nodded solemnly. “I know you would have tried everything. You’re that kind of person. I’m sorry if it sounded like I was suggesting anything else.”