The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

Emma stopped on the top step and glanced back at him. “All right, what do you want?” she asked, and looked at the man’s watch she wore loosely around her wrist.

“Emma!” Libby exclaimed, horrified as she always was by Emma’s abruptness. “You don’t need to be in such a hurry. It’s not a real job—”

“Yes, it is a real job,” Emma insisted with a withering look for Libby. Okay, so she’d had to talk her way into it and she wasn’t being paid for it. But it was where she wanted to be, and it was honest work. It was important work. It wasn’t a White Party for Chrissakes.

“I mean, it’s not like you have to punch a clock,” Libby clarified. To Cooper, she said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—Emma, can’t you at least introduce us?”

“Introduce who?”

Good God, here came Madeline to gape at Cooper, too. Emma was not going to do this. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t going to watch hopeful Libby and disapproving Madeline study Cooper. She wasn’t going to watch Cooper smile and chat them up. She wasn’t going to pretend that Cooper was some old friend and introduce him around. She didn’t owe Cooper Jessup money. She’d never slept with him. She hadn’t asked him to come, and she wasn’t going to stick around now just to be polite. What was the point of that? In the end, he would—well, who knew what he would do or why he was here, but Emma could hardly catch her breath, and she wasn’t going to stay and find out. “There went your minute,” she said to him, and started jogging down the steps.

“Where are you going?” Libby shouted.

Emma turned to answer and was startled to find Cooper practically on her heels. “What’s the hurry?” he asked in a silky, cool voice. “You’re running off like you just robbed a bank.”

“The hurry is that I’m in a hurry,” Emma said. She began to stride across the drive to her car. The four dogs that resided at Homecoming Ranch crawled out from beneath the porch with dusty fur and their tails wagging furiously to impede Emma’s progress as they sniffed around her feet, delighted to have company.

Cooper leaned over and scratched the biggest one behind the ears. “You’re in such a hurry I’m wondering if you’re trying to avoid something,” he said, and smiled.

It was a startling smile, and it reminded Emma just how devastatingly sexy he was. It knocked her off center a moment, but she quickly righted herself. She never allowed herself to sway off the precarious point that had become her center. The fall was too great.

“You’re not trying to avoid anything, are you, Emma?” he asked, stepping closer. “You have nothing to hide, right? Nothing that maybe belongs to Carl Freeman?” He watched her closely.

Holy shit. Emma’s heart began to pound painfully in her chest. Carl had sent Cooper up here? He’d finally stopped calling her, and she’d thought . . . she’d thought it was over, the whole ugly thing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her calm tone amazing her.

“You know Carl, right?” Cooper asked, his gaze laser sharp and completely fixed on her.

“Yeah, so?”

“So he says you have something of his, and he asked me to come and get it back.”

Now her heart was absolutely leaping about with panic. It was just a stupid old medal! It had been dusty and shoved off in one corner of his messy dresser, and it had looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years! Why was he making such a big deal out of it? “I don’t have anything of his. I hardly know him. How did you know where I was, anyway?”

“How?” Cooper glanced over his shoulder at Libby and Madeline, who were standing together at the top of the steps like two extras in a film, eagerly awaiting their cues. Cooper turned his gaze back to Emma and leaned in so close that she could see the stubble of his beard beginning to emerge. “Seems you mentioned Colorado during a little pillow talk. I did some checking around.”

“Pillow . . .” Now Emma could hardly draw a breath. “Wow, and here I thought you Thrillseeker guys were more on the ball than that, Cooper. I hardly know Carl Freeman. He’s obviously confused me with someone else, because I definitely don’t have anything of his.”