The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

“Antagonize people! For God’s sake, Emma, you don’t tell a woman she needs to lose weight!”


“You do if she is complaining about the pain in her back,” Emma countered. “Oh, come on, Libby. She’s in obvious pain. She made it clear she won’t have surgery, and the only other option is for her to lose some weight. She’s as big as a house! Don’t pretend you didn’t think the same thing.”

“But the difference between you and me is that I don’t say it. I don’t intentionally hurt people.”

Emma glanced at the dining room door. “I didn’t hurt her,” she said, but could hear the uncertainty in her voice. “I would want someone to tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Libby shook her head. “You’re unbelievable sometimes.” She mumbled something under her breath, the exact words lost under the sound of a car pulling into the drive. Emma supposed that would be some man, either one attached to Libby or Madeline, or one of the five veterans who stayed on at the ranch and engaged in the rehabilitation therapies set up for them. Whoever it was, almost certainly a man.

Emma picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry if anyone was offended,” she said, but she wasn’t really sorry at all. It was reflex, old habit, to say sorry when she wasn’t. You think you’re so cute. That used to be one of her mother’s favorite lines to her when Emma said something she apparently wasn’t supposed to say. You’re not that cute, girl. You better watch that mouth. You better lose that tone. She wasn’t sorry for something she couldn’t seem to change about herself no matter how she tried. And for the record, Emma never said anything to be cute—she’d said what she had today to be helpful. Emma liked Dani. Was it the way she’d said it? That she didn’t couch it in the vague, touchy-feely language of women?

Story of her life, assuming people wanted to hear the truth.

Emma walked down the hall to the entry. She took a coat off the rack and donned it, belting it tightly around her. She picked up a pair of earmuffs from the communal basket and donned them, too, and was sliding her hands into her gloves when the sound of the doorbell startled her. No one ever rang the doorbell. Until this moment, Emma didn’t know they even had a doorbell. The people who came to the ranch generally just walked inside.

“Will you get that?” Libby shouted at her.

Emma pulled her earmuffs off and let them rest around her neck, then opened the door.

She would never know how much time actually passed before she managed to speak. Later, she would remember how her heart hitched with a little thrill of excitement at the sight of Cooper Jessup on the other side of that screen door, peering down at her, his dark hair hidden under a ball cap, the scruff of a beard on his chin. And then the panic, the sheer panic.

Her mind raced through all the improbable reasons he would be standing there in a canvas coat, jeans, and hiking boots, patiently taking her in, top to bottom. She hadn’t seen him since almost a year ago in Beverly Hills. For a brief moment she wondered if it was coincidence, but that was impossible—how could he even know about this ranch?

She stared up at his dove-gray eyes, his almond-brown hair, and at last said the first word that came to mind, a truncated question of how or what had brought him here, what spirit had divined him, if he was in fact a ghost or a figment of her imagination. But all that she could manage to get out was a singular, impatient, “What?”

“Well, hello to you, too, Emma,” he said, unaffected by her brisk greeting. “You remember me, right? I was hoping I’d catch you here. Have you got a minute?”

A tingling sensation began to crawl up Emma’s spine. As thrilled as she was that he should come in search of her, there was no way that this could be good. No way could this be anything but very, very bad.

At her lack of response, he arched a dark brow. “Hello?”

Emma snapped out of it, retreating quickly into her turtle shell. “I don’t have a minute. I’m on my way to work.”

“Really?” He looked surprised. “Not even a minute? Because I’ve come all the way from LA just to talk to you.”

“Hello?”

Libby had appeared from thin air to stand behind Emma. She peered at Cooper curiously, as if she were trying to recall him from some long-forgotten function.

“You don’t know him,” Emma said. “But take all the time you need to get acquainted. I have to go.”

“One minute, Emma,” Cooper said as she pushed open the screen door, forcing him to step back. “Like I said, I’ve come a long way.”

“Oh?” Libby asked, her voice annoyingly full of delight. “You did? Are you a friend of Emma’s?”

“Don’t, Libby,” Emma warned her. She stepped through the screen door, brushing past Cooper.

“Slow down,” Cooper said. “Please.”