The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

Emma looked to the ceiling and blinked back tears. She hated what she’d grown up to be, but damn if she knew how to change it.

She took a breath and looked down. She turned her hand palm up and opened her fingers, stretching them. She’d held her hand in a fist for the last quarter of an hour, since the moment she picked up Cooper’s jeans and handed them to him. She stared, heartbroken, at the St. Christopher charm she’d taken from his pocket.





NINETEEN

Cooper called Michael from the Denver airport and asked him to pick him up at LAX when the flight arrived.

“Perfect. Audrey is doing a show at the Wiltern tonight, and she and Jack are throwing a party afterward,” Michael said, referring to Jack’s pop-star wife, Audrey LaRue. “You can come with us.”

“I’m not dressed for that,” Cooper said, looking down at his jeans and boots. Not to mention he wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Dude, it’s the Wiltern. Text me when you land.”

A few hours later, Cooper walked out of the LAX terminal. Leah, a vivacious brunette with short, bouncy hair, leapt out of a vehicle and threw her arms around Cooper as if he’d been gone for months instead of days. “I’m so glad you’re back! Braden and Brodie keep asking where Uncle Boober has gone.”

“What have you done with those hoodlums?” Cooper asked, bending over to peer into the back of the SUV Michael now drove. Gone were the sports convertibles he’d once favored.

“With their nanny,” Leah said, and did a little dance move. “’Cuz Mommy’s got her party face on!” She grabbed Cooper’s hand and did a twirl beneath it, then opened the back door and hopped in.

“Leah, I’ll sit there,” Cooper said.

“Nope. I’m sure Michael is going to interrogate you about the potential to break your necks, so I’m going to check some e-mail. Go on, Cooper, get in the front and leave me alone,” she said playfully, her gaze already on her phone.

Cooper sighed and glanced at Michael.

Michael eyed him curiously, a Cheshire grin on his face. “I wasn’t going to interrogate you, but now I am. You looked pissed, bro,” he said, and took Cooper’s bag, tossing it in the backseat next to his wife.

“Not pissed,” Cooper said. Pissed. So pissed. “Tired.”

“Sure,” Michael said, and fist-bumped Cooper’s shoulder, smiling a little as he walked around to the driver’s side of the SUV.

Michael started in on Cooper the moment they pulled away from LAX. “What happened in Colorado?”

What happened in Colorado? An invisible rug had been jerked out from beneath him, that was what. A rug Cooper hadn’t even realized was there until he found himself flat on his ass. That was the thing that had eaten at him on the flight to Los Angeles—not, as one might expect, the way Emma had sent him on his merry way after some of the most incredible sex he’d had in his life—but that he didn’t even know he’d held this torch for Emma Tyler all these months. Had he really been so smitten that night in Beverly Hills?

And yet, when he’d seen her at the door at Homecoming Ranch, he’d felt a familiar reverberation in his membranes. A recalled ache, a resurrected attraction.

“Yo—Coop?”

“Nothing happened,” Cooper said, startled back to the present. “I checked out Trace Canyon. It looks perfect for what we want.”

“Oh yeah?” Michael said.

That’s how you handled men—give them some sport to talk about, and they were happy to push aside the nasty business of feelings. Michael asked a lot of questions about Pine River and Trace Canyon. How sheer was the rock face, how deep the ravines? What sort of access would they have, and how would they get equipment up to the site? All business.

But as they turned on to Wilshire Boulevard, Michael looked at him curiously and said, “Anything else happen?”

“Like what?”

Leah’s head suddenly popped up between the bucket seats. “What my husband wants to know, and so do I, is what about Emma Tyler? What’s the deal with her? Did she have the thing?”

“The thing!” Michael scoffed.

“The thing, the thing, whatever it was Carl Freeman thought she took?”

“Yes,” Cooper said. He’d called Carl earlier to tell him he’d be personally delivering it to him tomorrow.

“Wow,” Leah said, and looked at Michael. “Is she really as loony as they say?”

“She’s not loony,” Cooper said instantly, and then caught himself. Unfortunately, not before Leah and Michael had noticed.

“No?” Michael asked, a big grin spreading his face. Leah punched Michael on the shoulder. “Ouch,” he said with a laugh. “So I guess you had some time to talk to Miss Tyler, huh?”

Cooper didn’t smile. He couldn’t banter his way out of this. “A little,” he said, and looked out the window. “Sorry guys, I’m beat.”