The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

It was cold; she leaned back against her car and folded her arms tightly over her sweater. She looked up at the night sky rather than into his piercing gray eyes.

The night was brilliant, a black swath of velvet between mountains, glittering with millions of stars that looked so close it seemed she could reach up and grab a handful. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“Hey!”

Emma turned toward the sound of Madeline’s voice from somewhere near the house.

“Luke can’t find it, but he says it’s here. Just give me a couple of minutes more.” She disappeared back inside.

“Unbelievable,” Emma sighed.

Cooper leaned up against her car beside her and tilted his head back to look up. His shoulder grazed hers, and Emma found herself pulling in a little tighter. It was instinct, a natural reflex. Protect yourself at all times from the advances of men who looked like him, men who attracted her on a supersonic level.

“I never think about stars like this in LA, do you? It’s like they don’t even exist there. Everything is so phony there that it’s really hard to imagine that there is this entire world out here,” she said.

Cooper didn’t respond. Emma glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He had shifted his gaze from the sky and was studying her. “What are you looking at?”

“Who, me?” His low voice trickled warmly through her like a good bourbon. “I’m enjoying the night sky as you suggested.” He smiled. Heat began to sluice through Emma.

“Whatever,” she said.

“I guess you think you won some little victory tonight,” he said.

She didn’t think that at all. But she said, “You’re kidding, right? Because I haven’t thought about it at all.”

“No? Not even a little?”

“No.” Emma abruptly turned around to face him, her shoulder against her car, her arms folded tightly across her. “Out of sight, out of mind,” she said breezily. It was a lie, a huge lie. Cooper had been with her all through dinner, swirling around in the shadows.

“Funny . . . I thought about you,” he said, and damn him if he didn’t let his gaze slide down her body. “I thought, how am I going to get this girl to let go of that medal? Am I going to have to check her at every turn until we get this business resolved?”

Under any other circumstance, Emma might have invited him to check her now, check every inch and take his time. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing, because there was something veiled beneath his careful expression that made Emma feel a tiny bit short of breath.

“Would it be easier if I invited you to come up to the ranch and go through my things? Is that what you want?”

“Actually . . . that would be great,” he said, and looked at her mouth.

She wanted to kiss him. It occurred to her in that charged moment that maybe she’d been going about this all wrong. Maybe the way to get rid of Cooper was to seduce him. She didn’t exactly have the time or inclination to work out that reasoning, or how dangerous that thinking was for her, but brushing him off hadn’t gotten rid of him, so maybe he would forget the medal in favor of wanting her.

“You look like you want to kiss me,” Emma said flatly. “Are you going to try it, or are you going to deny that’s what you want again?”

He chuckled and touched his knuckle to her temple. “I thought we’d been over this already and established that you are delusional. One of us wants a kiss, and it’s not me. All I want is that medal.”

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself,” she said, and shifted closer, her hand finding his waist and resting there lightly. He made no move to disengage from her hand. Emma wanted to remove it, to stop herself from doing something she would completely regret, but she was finding it impossible with the light of a million stars shining down on them on that cold winter night.

“I have a view of the mountain peaks from the window of my room at Homecoming Ranch. Every morning I wake up and think of the nearly twenty-eight years I’ve wasted looking at billboards.” She tilted her head back and looked him directly in the eye. “It makes me wonder about what else I’ve missed.” She eased forward so that her body was touching his.

Cooper smiled. He was allowing her to play this game with him, to see how far she would take it.

She would take it far enough that he would forget that stupid medal, she thought languidly. “I wonder what might have happened at the bat mitzvah if I’d let you kiss me.”

Now Cooper grinned. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and his fingers lingered on her neck. Sizzling spots of skin on a cold night. “Maybe if I’d let you kiss me, you wouldn’t have slept with a married man,” he said, and put his hand on her arm.