Snowbound Baby (Silhouette Romance) Page 10

  She only harrumphed, but she didn’t lose again. He did. She was craftier than he gave her credit for, and he worried that the little girl who’d come to him for help dealing with life was about to outwit him. Concluding he was somehow missing an important element about this game, something obvious she was doing to best him, he nonetheless told her that Ty had been old enough to become fifteen-year-old Seth’s guardian when their parents were killed.

  At the next loss, he admitted that Ty had put him through college.

  At the next, he regaled her with a story of how Seth had been a hot commodity with the ladies.

  She laughed. “So your younger brother is a sex symbol?”

  “We all had our moments with the ladies.”

  He saw her swallow and was gratified that—at least—she wasn’t totally unaffected by him. But none of that would matter if he didn’t figure out how she was winning.

  She beat him again the next hand and Cooper’s head was spinning. Just as she’d said, five-card stud was pure, especially when there was no betting involved so neither one could bluff. Unless she was pulling cards from the bottom of the deck, out-and-out cheating, she had the best luck he’d ever seen.

  “I want to know about your moments with the ladies.”

  “I think my moments with the ladies are irrelevant.”

  She caught his gaze. “Tell me anyway.”

  He sighed. “Okay, you won the hand and I’m out of stupid, equal-to-socks things to tell you anyway, so I’m going to give you the equivalent of my shirt.”

  Her eyes brightened and she leaned across the table eagerly. Cooper’s chest tightened. She was so darned beautiful that he knew her ex had to be a total dimwit to leave her. And so darned fresh-faced and enthusiastic, he began to wonder if sleeping with her would be as easy and uncomplicated as he kept all his other liaisons. He hadn’t wanted to get to know her. She’d slipped past his defenses. He hadn’t wanted to talk to her, yet he was now halfway through his entire life story. He had wanted to sleep with her. She was gambling him out of it.

  Still he’d promised her something good, so he said, “I once dated the same woman for five years.”

  Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

  “Nope. Not kidding.” But he was feeling odd. This part of his life story did not paint him in a good light. “Same woman. We weren’t in love. Not the passionate, icky, sticky kind that you feel when you’re eighteen.”

  She nodded.

  “But…well, I think you need to win another hand to hear the rest.”

  She groaned. “That’s not a shirt’s worth!”

  “Okay, consider it my wristwatch.” He handed the cards to her. “Deal.”

  Clearly frustrated, she dealt the cards. Cooper didn’t think he had a very good hand, but much to his surprise he had better cards than she did.

  She passed her wristwatch across the table.

  “Very funny.”

  “Give me something substantial in your next loss and I promise you will get something substantial in mine.”

  Her statement brought him back to the fact that all he had to do was get her naked and this stupid game would end. He either had to beat her more often, or he had to step up his story so she’d be compelled to remove her more important garments.

  He was almost gratified to lose since that gave him the opportunity to tell her something good—and something good should net him, at the very least, her sweater the next time she lost.

  “Okay,” he said, working to word his next revelation in such a way that it would have value. “My girlfriend called it quits because she told me I’m not very thoughtful. But I think of myself first because that’s how I stay on top of things. I might lose a woman here or there, but I don’t make any major life mistakes.”

  Zoe studied him. “Let me get this straight. Your girlfriend put up with you for five years, suddenly called you inconsiderate and left?”

  “I’d missed a lot of birthdays. She’d given me a lot of second chances.”

  “Wow. It sounds like it crushed you.”

  He shrugged and picked up the cards. “Zoe, that’s the whole point. I never let myself invest so much that I get hurt. Life taught me that lesson right off the bat. I lost my parents. I fought almost constantly with my brothers until they asked me to get the hell out of their lives. Losing my parents hurt because I loved them. Losing my brothers hurt because I had trusted them. And they didn’t trust me. In fact, they distrusted me so much it was easier for them to lose me than put up with me.”

  With that Zoe fell silent. And Cooper was damned glad because the god-awful odd feeling was back in the pit of his stomach. He’d never suspected his sparse love life was entwined with losing his family and, frankly, he could have gone the rest of his days without knowing.

  Without saying a word, he dealt, looked at his cards, tossed two, and motioned to her to tell him how many she wanted.

  “All three.”

  He dealt her three cards, then gave himself two. Two kings to go with his three sevens. If this wasn’t perfect timing, he didn’t know what was. Now that the real truth about his life was out, he was determined to start winning so they could move on. To the bedroom.

  “Only the strong survive,” he said, then caught her gaze and flipped over his hand, revealing his full house. “I intend to survive and I want your sweater.”

  She turned over her hand. Four nines.

  He stared at her. “How the hell do you do that?”

  “Once I warm up, I’m lucky at cards.” She shrugged. “Lucky at cards. Unlucky at love.”

  Though he had been gathering the deck, what she said stopped him, and he suddenly knew why she wanted to hear about his life. “You don’t want my story. You want to know how to live like me.”

  “I believe I told you that.”

  “No, you made it sound as if you wanted my life philosophy but you don’t want the generic facts. You want to know my decisions. You want to copy my life.”

  She said nothing, only looked across the table at him.

  “Zoe, I’m on the road, have no kids, and have a partner who can back me up…. You can’t make the decisions I’ve made.”

  “Are you saying a girl can’t live like that? Because if you are, you should know that I beat my male cousins at cards. I was also a better marksman. And I got better scores on the SATs.”

  But she hadn’t gone to college, likely because her parents deserted her. He and Zoe were comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they had similar pasts in that they had both lost their parents and neither one of them had fit into the life that was left after their parents were gone. But the real reason he lived his life the way he did wasn’t a decision—it was an admission that he was untrustworthy. She was about the most trustworthy person he had ever met. There was no reason for her to live like he did. If she copied his life, she would essentially go from being good and reliable to being a relationship schlep like him. He felt like a heel for giving her the idea.

  “What do you do for a living?”

  She shook her head. “Nice try. But you lost the hand. So you’re the one who’s supposed to be talking.”

  He drew a frustrated breath. She had a baby. She needed to be soft and sweet and honorable. This was all wrong. Even having an afternoon fling with her suddenly seemed horribly, horribly wrong.

  He swore he heard his hormones groan, but he knew it was true and he knew he had to stop this right now. “My fight with my brothers began over a woman.”

  One of her eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  “My brother Ty, the oldest, was engaged. His fiancée ran around on him all the time, but I didn’t tell him until she hit on me.”

  “Holy cow!” Her eyes widened in disbelief and Cooper realized he had a quick way to end this game, the conversation, even their bet.

  “You want to hear about some more cows? My brother had already taken the family business much further than my parents ever dreamed. Anita was a gold digger. Ty
had money and she wanted it.”

  Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Your family had money?”

  “Ty made Bryant Construction into Bryant Development. He’s probably worth a billion dollars right now.”

  “You left billions of dollars?”

  “No, when I left we were only millionaires.”

  “You’re a millionaire?”

  He shook his head. “No. I washed my hands of it.”

  “Are you insane?” She rose from the poker table with her eyes flashing fire. “Every month I wonder whether or not I’m going to have enough money to pay my utilities. This fall, I got a notice from the county that my parents haven’t been paying the taxes on my house. I’m going to lose it soon because after so many years of unpaid taxes the county can sell a piece of real estate right out from under anybody living there.”

  “Money isn’t everything.”

  His quiet statement seemed to bring her back to earth and she shook her head and sat again. He had expected her to storm out of the room. Instead she grabbed the cards. The game was still on.

  Anger ripped through Cooper. Under normal circumstances hearing that someone was about to lose her house would have made him think the involved person was a nitwit who couldn’t keep up with life. But having felt the sting of betrayal after reading the letter from his brothers’ attorney, he knew that sometimes some people really were innocent victims.

  This woman was about as innocent as they came and he would not be the one to ruin her.

  “Why don’t you pay the taxes?”

  Calm again, she shuffled the cards. “I didn’t realize they were going unpaid. I was eighteen when my parents left. Which means six years have gone by. When I got the notice that the taxes were so far behind, I called my dad, and found out he had paid for a few years but he’d felt it was my mother’s responsibility to pay for a few years.”

  “And your mother?”

  “My mother was busy. She couldn’t believe I had called her. She said that since she didn’t live in the house, she had no reason to be responsible for the taxes and hung up the phone.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t,” she said, holding up her hand to stop the flow of sympathy he could feel ebbing from himself and which she undoubtedly could feel as well. “After I got off the phone, I realized she was right. I’m twenty-four years old. I shouldn’t be calling my mommy to bail me out. Since I’m the one living at the house those taxes are my responsibility.”

  She drew a quick breath. “Unfortunately, with the penalties and interest that have accrued, I owe so much I can’t even get a loan for the amount. But even if I could, I couldn’t afford the loan payments. I’m a clerk at a grocery store. The only thing that has made it possible for me to live on my own and support a child is that I have a house and haven’t had to pay rent.” She paused and sighed. “But we’re talking about me again.”

  “And I told you something equal to your win.” Not sure what else to do, Cooper ran his hand along the back of his neck. “If you want more info you need to beat me again.”

  She dealt. He lost. He was beginning to believe she really was cursed to being lucky at cards, unlucky at love.

  “Frankly, Zoe, I’m out of things to tell you.”

  She looked him in the eye. “Tell me how to do it. Tell me how to stay sane, how to get the attitude that I should only look out for myself, how to resist the temptation to try one more time to get somebody to love me.”

  He couldn’t handle the sadness in her pretty blue eyes, so he focused on the other point of her question. “Is that how you see me? As somebody who only looks out for himself?”

  “Isn’t that how you see yourself?”

  Yes and no. He looked out for himself because he was strong, able, independent. Somebody avoiding pain. Not somebody intent on hurting people. Not somebody who was selfish. She saw him as selfish.

  He cleared his throat. “No. That’s not how I see myself. And you win. My story is over and you’re fully clothed. You don’t have to go to bed with me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Cooper couldn’t sleep that night. He tried to tell himself that the difference between being inconsiderate and selfish was small and he had accepted himself as inconsiderate, which made him an idiot to care about being called selfish. But it didn’t work.

  There wasn’t a small difference between inconsiderate and selfish. There was a pool. A swimming pool. An Olympic swimming pool. Inconsiderate people didn’t see things, didn’t think things through. Selfish people were deliberately self-centered. They saw others’ needs and ignored them.

  Pacing, Cooper tried to remember when he’d seen one of Bonnie’s needs and ignored it, but he couldn’t recall a time because there wasn’t a time. He simply, honest-to-God had never seen what she needed.

  He didn’t believe that made him a bad person. He thought being inconsiderate made him unfit for relationships. And he accepted that. Hell, he had recognized that as part of the deal back when Seth had kicked him out of the house. He was who he was. Since he couldn’t change, he chose to keep his distance from people who couldn’t tolerate him as he was.

  Except Zoe didn’t think that he was inconsiderate. She thought he was selfish.

  He fell to the bed and groaned. Damn it! Why did he care?

  Because she was a smart woman. She’d seen so much of life he could tell she was a good judge of character. She wasn’t just a pretty girl or a sexy woman. She had a real heart. And if she thought being selfish kept him sane and she decided to imitate him, she would lose that heart.

  But, he wasn’t selfish. He was thick, obtuse…or overworked. Burdened with his own problems.

  He combed his fingers through his hair. Actually, that was the gist of it. When he was with Ty and Seth, his burden had been to do his share of work needed to make Bryant Development great. Ty was a genius planner. Seth was a networker. Cooper was the guy who got things done. While his brothers made deals, Cooper oversaw the resultant projects. Yes, he was tough. But being the voice of the company at the job sites was not an easy task. He took it seriously. It was a responsibility…a burden of sorts. It had hurt that his brothers hadn’t seen his value, had only seen him as trouble.

  Then after Seth had asked him to leave, his burden had become starting over from scratch and making something of himself. Alone. No money. No contacts. No help. And he’d done that. Until they’d bought his mortgage.

  Now his burden had become trying to hold on to the ranch—and not for himself, for his partner. If he failed to get the mortgage money to his brothers’ lawyer on time, his partner, Dave, would lose the money he’d invested, too.

  There was no way Cooper would let that happen. So, Zoe Montgomery was wrong. He wasn’t selfish.

  He was who he was.

  But if he didn’t somehow make her understand the difference between being burdened and being selfish, she was going to imitate all the wrong things and it would be his fault.

  That was the part of the situation that made him the most angry. He stayed out of other people’s lives not merely because he was inconsiderate, but also because he always screwed things up when he got involved. Now, he would have to fix the impression he’d unwittingly given Zoe.

  The only way he could do that would be to talk to her again and if he talked to her again, there was a possibility he’d make a bigger mess of things. Worse, there was also the possibility that he’d like her even more than he already did. He’d fought it and fought it and fought it, but the woman was just plain nice and funny and pretty. But he was trouble. The absolute last thing she needed in her life was a man like him.

  The next morning, Zoe awakened feeling miserable. Now that Cooper Bryant had gotten to know her, even he didn’t want to sleep with her. Could a woman get any lower? Sure, he’d tried to pretend he’d lost the bet, but it was abundantly clear to Zoe that he hadn’t so much lost the bet as he’d lost interest. He’d heard her story and metaphorically run for his life.

>   She slipped out of bed, changed Daphne, then took her to the kitchen for some cereal and a bottle. She made a pot of coffee and toast but Cooper still didn’t come downstairs. With a sigh, Zoe put Daphne on the blanket on the floor in the center of the great room, turned on the TV and sunk on to the sofa.

  After an hour, Daphne played herself out and fell asleep on the comforter, but there was still no sound from Cooper. Zoe turned and peered up the stairs. She suspected Cooper was avoiding contact with her, but it seemed odd he hadn’t come down for coffee. She walked to the French doors to stare outside and suddenly realized that the second storm had stopped. It was even somewhat sunny.

  A horrible thought paralyzed her. The snowplow could have come through the night before. If it had, Cooper could have gone.

  And why wouldn’t he? The details of her life had made him uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, he couldn’t even bring himself to sleep with her. If he’d heard the snowplow in the middle of the night he could have taken advantage of the opportunity to skip out.

  Something inside Zoe snapped. After four days of being stuck together, he hadn’t even had the decency to say goodbye. Was anybody ever going to stick with her to the end of anything?

  Wanting to confirm her worst fear so she could get really angry and stop being such a schmuck about people, Zoe bounded up the steps. When she reached the top, she turned into the bedroom she knew Cooper was using and stopped dead in her tracks.

  He wasn’t gone. He was still asleep.

  She took another step into the room. Seeing him tucked under the covers sent a shaft of pure, unadulterated relief through her, but it also confused her. Not once during their stay had he slept in. More than that, even if the snowplow hadn’t gone through last night, both she and Cooper expected it to come by today sometime. He should be up and packing, or, at the very least, pacing, dying to leave.

  She walked to the bed and peered down at his face. Oh, Lord! His cheeks were red. His brow was dewy with fever-induced sweat. She and her daughter had both exposed him to their virus. She squeezed her eyes shut in misery. She shouldn’t be surprised he had caught it, too. But that didn’t stop the guilt that spiraled through her. She had been nothing but trouble to this man.