A Bride for the Black Sheep Brother

Twelve


Cooper left for the lodge first thing in the morning. He wasn’t about to leave Portia alone with those guys any longer than necessary. Despite that, the earliest flight he could get to Salt Lake City wasn’t until ten. By the time he took the helicopter from the airport down to the lodge, it was well after lunch. He was annoyed, but not particularly surprised, when he talked to the flooring crew and discovered Portia was not there, but rather off with Drew Davis and The Friends. Of course she hadn’t taken his concerns seriously. He hadn’t been exactly laying it all out on the line because he hadn’t wanted to sound like an ass or an idiot.

But by the time he talked to Drew and figured out where they were, and then borrowed a snowmobile from the Becks and made it up the mountain, he was done worrying about how he looked.

When he pulled up, the guys were almost done building the jump.

Something in his heart clenched when he saw Portia. She was dressed in her bright pink ski gear, looking like she’d planned on staying out for several hours. She looked ridiculously adorable among all the rugged guys. Pale blond hair in braids on either side of her neck peeked out from beneath her snow cap. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes hidden behind oversized sunglasses. She looked like Heidi by way of a Vogue photo shoot.

She waved when she saw him, but her smile froze. “I thought you weren’t coming up for a few more days,” she said as he shook hands with Drew.

Drew was the only one near her. Cooper recognized the director and cameraman from a previous meeting, but they were both focused on filming the other guys.

“I had an unexpected opening in my calendar.” Drew was standing closer to Portia than Cooper liked, so he stood on her other side, casually dropping his hand onto her shoulder. “So I decided to come on over and keep an eye on things.”

Drew grinned as if he saw right through Cooper. “Hey, things are fine, man. You have nothing to worry about.”

Cooper nodded toward the jump. “Sure, you and The Friends are experts at this, but sometimes you need a more delicate touch.”

“You don’t think I have a delicate touch?” Drew asked.

“I just think I have a little more invested in this than you do.”

Drew threw back his head and laughed. “Good point, man. Good point. But don’t worry, I’m watching out for your interests here.”

Portia was looking back and forth between the two of them, her brow furrowed in confusion. Apparently, she’d missed the entire subtext of the conversation. Which frankly relieved him. He didn’t need her to know how tied up into knots he was over her.

Portia practically beamed at him. “Do you see what they’re doing?” She pointed off toward the jump, rising up and down on her toes. Either she was very cold or very excited. And it was adorable. “They’ve been building the slope all morning. They actually moved the snow from over there—” she pointed off to her left “—to over here. In big blocks like bricks. And then they packed in the rest of the snow to make it swoopy like that.”

“Swoopy?” he asked.

“Yeah. Swoopy.” She made a motion with her hand that could only be described as...well, swoopy.

“It’s a jump, not a slope. And that’s the kicker, not the ‘swoopy part.’” He shot Drew a glare. “Have you been letting her call it a slope and a swoopy part all morning?”

Drew just flashed her a charming smile and threw an arm around her shoulder. “It’s adorable.”

“Oh.” For a second, she looked embarrassed, but then she waved it away. “Anyway, it’s amazing to watch. I had no idea they were going to do this.”

Cooper shrugged. “This is how it’s done.”

“I think I expected more machinery to be involved or something.”

“Nah, real snowboarders don’t want anything messing with their powder.”

“It’s a lot of work,” she said. “All these guys must really like you for them to come all the way here to do this for you.”

He looked at the jump. They were already smoothing out the snow on the kicker, dragging the backs of snow shovels down the curve. The kicker was nice and tall, so they’d have a ton of air when they jumped. They would put on an amazing show.

“Nah,” he said. “They would come do this anywhere, anytime, if it meant they’d get to ride it later. That’s the thing about these guys. It’s always all about the snow.”

She tilted her head to the side, looking at him as if she wanted to say something else. Or maybe she wanted to protest. Before she could, Stevey Travor stopped goofing around on the snow and sauntered their way, a cocky grin on his face.

Portia changed the subject and because she seemed to be talking about something related to the exhibition, Cooper tried to focus on that instead of the need to charge headfirst into Stevey and beat the crap out of him.

“I was worried about transportation,” Portia was saying. “It hadn’t even occurred to me to think about where the exhibition was going to be and how to get the money types up here to see it.”

“Hmm,” he said noncommittally.

“I know!” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about that. I’ve just been so busy working on the party Saturday night and arranging accommodations for everyone, I just didn’t think about it. And—”

“And I told her that as long as we made sure we could get a snowplow up here, we could build the jump close to the road,” Drew chimed in.


“Did you know they could do that?” she asked Cooper. “Just move the snow around and make a jump anywhere they want? How crazy is that?”

He arched an eyebrow. “You do remember that I’m a snowboarder, too, right?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

Just then Stevey reached them. “Hey, old man.” He clapped Cooper on the shoulder and winked at Portia. Cooper wanted to break the guy’s hand. “You can’t blame her for being impressed. I mean, everything we do is golden, right, babe?”

Cooper felt a wave of irrational anger wash over him. He didn’t just want to break Stevey’s hand; he wanted to rip it off. He wanted to tear the guy limb from limb so that he never boarded again. And just for good measure, break the guy’s nose in a couple of places to knock that pretty-boy sheen off his face.

And that was it right there—the moment Cooper knew he was in deep trouble. Hell, he’d nearly lost his cool and beat the crap out of an innocent—well, sort of innocent—guy who was basically his friend, even if he was a bit of a jerk. And it was all over a woman he was supposed to be done with by the time the weekend was over. Done.

Except he apparently wasn’t done at all.

“Okay,” he said, taking Portia by the shoulders and steering her over to his snowmobile. “I think it’s time I get you back to the lodge. The flooring guys said they needed your input on something.”

“Is it about the wax? Because I wasn’t sure about that shade of brown and—”

“Yeah. Absolutely. Total wax nightmare.”

She dug in her heels a few steps later. “Wait. Don’t you want to watch them finish? It’s really pretty impressive.”

“Yeah, man,” Stevey said with a cocky grin. “If you want to stay, I can take her back.”

“No. It’s fine. I know what you’re capable of. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

* * *

“I don’t understand,” Portia said as she stared at the empty entrance hall of Bear Creek Lodge. The floor guys were nowhere to be seen. Their van wasn’t even out in front. They’d left yellow caution tape strung across the door with a note saying no one could walk on the floors for at least twelve hours. More to the point, the wax job was clearly finished and looked amazing. She turned to Cooper. “What’s going on?”

He took a step forward like he was going to walk right through the tape. She pushed a hand into his chest. “Oh, no, you don’t, mister.”

When she broke off suddenly, he raised his eyebrows in question.

Damn. Why had she touched him? His muscles were firm beneath her hand, despite the layers of clothes separating them. She couldn’t think when he was near. She had to force a casual note into her voice. “Didn’t you read the sign? No walking on the floor.”

“So, what, we’re just supposed to stand out here in the cold?”

She pointed down the porch. “No, we can go in through the back door to the kitchen if we need to, but let’s not touch much there, either. The cleaning crew worked for four days to get it inspection-ready and the inspector is coming tomorrow.”

Once she’d let them in the back door, she turned to him, frowning. “So what’s the deal? You acted like there was some big emergency. What’s wrong?”

“I just don’t want you hanging out with Drew and Stevey and The Friends, that’s all.”

“Oh.” She blew out a breath, unsure what she was supposed to do with this information. “So you don’t want me around your friends.”

“It’s no big deal. It would just be best for everyone if you spent as little time with them as possible.”

“I see.” His words stung more than she wished they did, and she turned away from him so that he couldn’t see the hurt in her eyes. They weren’t together. Maybe they had seemed like a couple for the past few weeks, but they weren’t. She’d momentarily forgotten the boundaries of their no-pressure fling. There was no need for her to be around his friends.

Maybe she was being too sensitive. Maybe this shouldn’t hurt her, but it did.

She stared sightlessly at the kitchen. It wasn’t much by the standards of a modern industrial kitchen, but it was one of her favorite rooms in the lodge. If you looked beyond the aging stainless-steel appliances, you could see the bones of the grand kitchen it had been when Wallace had first built Bear Creek Lodge. Thankfully, the Becks had only done the bare minimum of updates, leaving the solid maple cabinetry and massive butcher-block table in place. But like much of Bear Creek Lodge, you had to look beyond the surface to see the real beauty. Some people were no good at that. “Well, I guess that makes sense. Okay.”

“Thank you,” Cooper said gruffly.

But still it stung. And maybe she should have let it go. After all her years of marriage to Dalton, she was good at letting things go. But wasn’t that the kind of thinking that had gotten her into trouble with her marriage in the first place? When she’d filed for divorce, hadn’t she sworn that she was done just letting things slide? That she was going to fight for herself more often?

So why wasn’t she standing up for herself now? Because she genuinely liked Cooper and she didn’t want him to think she was a bitch?

She was so bad about that. In general, the more she liked someone, the more important they were to her, the less likely she was to show that person the real her. She was always so afraid of screwing up or doing the wrong thing or being an embarrassment. So she hid all her silliness, her propensity for panic attacks, her sensitivity. She buried it deep. But—as Cooper had pointed out—this wasn’t long-term.

Besides, Cooper had seen beneath the polished facade long ago. He knew she had the heart of a flibbertigibbet. He knew she was overly sensitive and flighty and a little bit wack-a-doodle.

So there was no reason not to tell him exactly how she felt.

* * *

Even though Portia had said it was fine, when she turned back around to face him a moment later, he could see in her expression that it wasn’t. Not at all. Her brow had furrowed and her eyes had darkened to match her tumultuous expression. Her lush, gorgeous lips twisted into a grimace.

“But you know, it’s really not okay.”

Uh-oh.

“It isn’t?” he asked.

“No. It isn’t. I was getting along fine with them. And, frankly, I’m a little annoyed that you even feel like you have to barge in and say anything.”

“Oh, so I’m supposed to just stand there and say nothing while you hang out with Stevey freaking Travor?”

“Look, I get it. We’re not really together and you don’t want them thinking we are. Fine. You want me to stay away from your friends, and I’ll do it. But it’s kind of rotten, you know? Because they were genuinely nice to me and now I have to act like the bitch and be all cool and distant. I’ll do it, but just so you know, I think you’re a jerk for expecting me to.”

She seemed to run out of steam then, because she just stood there, glaring at him. Her delicate skin had flushed a deep pink and her chest was rising and falling rapidly—as if she’d just run a mile. Or torn him a new one.

“You done?” he asked softly.

Her gaze narrowed, like she was thinking it over, trying to decide if she had anything else she wanted to throw at him. But then she nodded.

“First off—” he started walking toward her, slowly, because he was half-afraid she was so amped up she’d bolt if he moved too fast “—I’m not asking you to be a bitch. I don’t care if you like them and want to be their friend. I don’t even care if you want to start a frickin’ book club with them.”


Her frown deepened. “Then why were you so adamant about me not hanging out with them?”

Her complete and total confusion charmed him. She truly didn’t see it. At all.

By now he’d closed the distance between them. She had backed herself into the corner of the kitchen. She still looked skittish, like she might want to run, but he reached out a hand and cupped her cheek.

“I don’t want you hanging out with them because I’m trying to protect you.”

“You’re protecting me from them?”

“Stevey Travor is a womanizer. He’d talk your pants off you in a second if he had a chance.”

She looked completely baffled, then she laughed. “You’re worried I might sleep with Stevey Travor? That’s absurd.”

Her amusement did not improve his mood. “I’ve seen Stevey in action. He’s quite charming.”

“He’s like a big puppy dog. And he’s a decade younger than me. He’s a child.”

“Great,” he groused. “I’m glad this amuses you.”

She shook her head, a smile playing across her lips. “And I’m pretty sure it would never occur to him to seduce me. It’s just silly.”

“It’s not silly. And it’s driving me crazy.”

“It’s driving you crazy?” she asked, her voice sounding breathless.

“Yes.” He stood a few inches away from her, taking in everything about her. He’d been away from her for over two weeks. It felt like a lifetime. Why was that? How was it that this woman—whom he’d known for years and had always been able to force out of his mind in the past—was suddenly someone he could hardly function without? He studied her, taking in everything from her adorable Heidi braids to her sun-kissed cheeks. She’d blossomed these past few weeks, but her appeal went far beyond her physical appearance.

“Should I apologize?” she asked sheepishly.

“I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make any sense, but the thought of you with any of those guys—hell, with any guy—it drives me crazy with jealousy.”

Something that looked like sorrow flickered through her gaze. “I’m sorry, Cooper. I’m sorry it makes you uncomfortable. But it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Are you kidding? It has everything to do with you.”

Her face set into stubborn lines and she pushed her way past him. “No. It really doesn’t. You said yourself that you don’t want to be in a relationship. You have no interest in me outside the bedroom. Isn’t that the point of a no-pressure fling? That means you don’t get to be jealous. A husband would have the right to be jealous. A boyfriend would. But not you. All you ever wanted was to take me to bed. That’s just about my body, so I don’t see what that has to do with me at all.”

“You think this is just about sex?”

“Do you think it’s about anything else?”

“If it was your body I lusted after, I would have found a way to take you to bed years ago. I wouldn’t have spent the past decade tormented by the idea that you were in love with and married to my brother. It’s not just your body that I want. It’s not thoughts of your body that keep me up at night. It’s you. With all your quirks and funny little personality ticks. It’s your pride and your stubbornness and your compassion. It’s your sheer mule-headed determination to do the right thing no matter what. It’s your very soul.” He laughed then, because if he didn’t know better, if he didn’t know that love was a fantasy, he’d think that what he’d just described was a man in love.