Almost Married Read online

  She’d miss him. She’d miss this life, this sharing of food, work and conversation. But he probably wouldn’t give her a thought when he left. He’d probably be glad to get away from the backbreaking work, the fussy baby and from herself with her questions about a past he’d rather forget.

  “They must be proud of you,” she said. It was her last attempt to continue the conversation.

  “Why?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “Well, because you’re so successful, so good at what you do.”

  “But that’s all.”

  “That’s all you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said emphatically and climbed back up the ladder to resume picking while Laurie carried the picnic basket back to the house. What was he thinking? she wondered. What were the “circumstances” in his life that Gretel had hinted about? She was pretty sure he wouldn’t tell her, nor would he want her to know, but that didn’t stop her from trying to figure out what made Cooper Buckingham tick.

  Chapter Six

  Doesn’t your back hurt?” Laurie asked Cooper the next morning as she got up from the breakfast table and rubbed one hip.

  Cooper let his gaze linger on the sweet curve of her hip for just a moment. Then he shook his head. But his back felt as if he’d been sleeping on a bed of nails. It was the bending and stooping, the stretching with a twenty-pound baby on his back as well as a canvas sack full of apples over his shoulder. If he admitted it, Laurie would put Morgan back in her playpen where she’d cry or she’d try to carry her around herself.

  “I’m fine,” he assured her. “But I want to check in with my office. I never told them where I was going. I might have some messages.”

  “What if they want you back?” Laurie asked, worry lines forming between her eyebrows.

  Cooper dialed his office number on the kitchen phone. What if they did want him back? He couldn’t go. Couldn’t leave the two of them in the lurch. Even though they were barely making a dent on the orchard. The support he gave was more psychological than anything, considering the number of apples he actually picked. But he couldn’t tell his back that.

  When his boss answered, he told Cooper there was a crack in the pen-stock. “Not that it’s your problem anymore. Where are you anyway?”

  “Taking a few days off in the country,” Cooper explained. “How big is it?”

  “Not that big, but I want to stop it now, before it gets any bigger. I know you’re finished here and you did a fine job, too,” the older man said gruffly. “But is there any way you could get back here and help us out? I don’t want to have to shut it off.”

  Cooper frowned. Shutting off the power would mean a loss of revenue, a big blow to the power company. “I might be able to design something with steel straps. I don’t know, I can’t promise anything.”

  “You mean you’ll come? You’ll give it a shot?”

  Cooper glanced at Laurie who was standing at the sink listening, the breakfast dishes forgotten. “All right. But only as long as it takes to fix the crack, then I have to get back here.”

  “Thanks, Cooper, I knew you wouldn’t let us down.”

  When he hung up, Laurie turned off the water and removed her rubber gloves without turning around. “You’re leaving,” she said with a catch in her voice.

  “Not for long. I’ll be back tonight if all goes well.”

  She nodded, but her shoulders slumped.

  He crossed the room in two strides and put his hands firmly on her shoulders. “Don’t even think about picking apples without me.”

  “I have to,” she said, matching his determined tone.

  “You can’t. Not with Morgan on your hands.”

  “There must be a way,” she said. There was grim determination in her voice.

  “There is no way. Take the day off,” he insisted. “Come with me.” He turned her around to face him. “I’ll drop you and Morgan at the viewing area if you promise to keep your keys in your purse.’’

  She bit back a smile. “You must have thought I was a complete idiot,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment to blot out the scene she knew she’d never forget.

  “Not complete,” he assured her.

  “Oh, good. That’s reassuring.” One corner of her mouth tilted up in amusement despite herself.

  He grinned at her and traced the outline of her cheek with his thumb. He hadn’t known a thing about her that day at the Falls. Didn’t know how patient she was with Morgan, how determined she was to save the orchard, how loyal she was to her friend. How beautiful, how classic her looks, how sexy... But he had known that then. Or suspected. The electricity between them had been there even then, had drawn him to her that first day, and continued to draw him closer even now.

  She was still hesitating. “I feel so guilty,” she said. “Gretel’s counting on me.”

  “For what?”

  “For taking care of Morgan, of course. But the orchard sort of fell in my lap.”

  “There you are. Morgan first. Morgan will enjoy a trip to the Falls.” He didn’t mention that on Morgan’s last trip she’d cried nonstop. He only knew he didn’t want to leave them alone, even for a day. Morgan, still in her high chair, smeared her oatmeal all over her face. As if to cast her vote in favor of another trip to the Falls, she clapped her sticky hands together. Laurie and Cooper exchanged an amused look.

  Laurie gave a sigh of resignation. “All right, you win,” she said.

  Cooper wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to Morgan. “We all win,” he said quickly before she changed her mind. “The Power Authority wins if I can solve the hydraulic problem and you...we...give our backs a rest and tomorrow we go back to the orchard. And you and Morgan get to see the sights you missed the first time around. I’ve got passes for the guided tour to the platform at the bottom of the Falls.”

  She hesitated only a moment before she nodded and went to pack Morgan’s diaper bag.

  Feeling euphoric, Cooper went to the guest room to get his jacket. Why he should feel this rush of adrenaline he wasn’t sure. It was just another day at work for him, wasn’t it? It couldn’t be that he was getting attached to Laurie, could it? So attached he wouldn’t be able to leave her at all? He shuddered at the thought.

  Maybe he should have thought of that before he urged her to go with him today. Because he was suddenly aware that the more time he spent with her the more time he wanted to spend with her.

  In the car it got worse. He had second thoughts and then third thoughts. The worrisome part was that it felt so natural to be driving around with a baby in the car seat behind him and a warm and lovely blond woman at his side. They talked easily about the weather and what the rain might do to the apples while his mind was in turmoil. They talked about the ordinary everyday things people talk about when they know each other very well. But he didn’t know her very well. And yet he did know her. He knew what she wanted. Knew what she deserved. And it wasn’t him.

  He dropped her and Morgan in the parking lot. The same parking lot where he’d kissed her goodbye for good. He had an overwhelming desire to kiss her again. And not goodbye. But that was ridiculous. He’d be back in a few hours. And he wasn’t that far gone that he had to kiss her every few hours. Not yet.

  “Here are the tickets. Or if you don’t want to take the tour, take a boat ride on the Maid of the Mist.” He lifted Morgan out of her car seat and into the backpack on Laurie’s back. “Behave,” he instructed the baby. “No crying, understand?”

  Morgan playfully grabbed his finger and bit it. He withdrew it and turned to Laurie. “If you get tired, go over to the hotel. I’ll try to join you for lunch, okay?”

  “Thanks. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.” She turned and made her way to the viewing area. Morgan craned her neck around in his direction and he grinned at her despite the teeth marks indented on his finger. He had to admit she was a cute kid, and bubbled over with personality. Not always the kind of personality that made her easy to handle, but a p
ersonality nonetheless. He stood staring after them until they disappeared in the crowd.

  A gray-haired man with a grandfather twinkle in his eye caught Cooper’s attention. “Nice baby,” he observed.

  “Thanks,” Cooper said. “I mean...”

  “You’re a lucky man,” he added with a trace of envy in his voice.

  Cooper nodded politely. Lucky? If only the man knew he’d had the worst luck a man could live through.

  At one o’clock Cooper looked up to find his neck was stiff and his brain was numb. He needed a break. His colleagues had temporarily slowed the leak to a dribble while he worked, so the sense of urgency he’d felt at first had diminished somewhat. He wondered where Laurie and Morgan were. Was Morgan screaming her head off in the dining room? Had she thrown something else into the tempestuous river? He turned off his computer, told everyone he would be back in an hour and drove to the hotel. He scanned the dining room, but they weren’t there. He frowned. They should be hungry by now. Or had they already come and gone? He asked the maitre d’ if he’d noticed a woman with a baby, but he shook his head.

  Cooper strode briskly across the road to the visitors’ center, hit the snack bar and the gift shop, but Laurie and Morgan were nowhere to be seen. A tremor of anxiety hit him. He took the glass elevator to the observation platform, his heart pounding in his chest, and there, two hundred feet above the base of the gorge, he had a view of both falls— But no blond woman with a red-haired baby on her back, unless they were in the midst of the dozens of figures in yellow raincoats. There was no way to tell.

  Why had he let them take off on their own? The churning, tumbling water usually soothed him, but today it seemed ominous, dangerous. He knew thousands of tourists visited the Falls every year and nothing happened to them, but they weren’t his friends. Cooper punched the Down button with his fist but after waiting an interminable thirty seconds, he ran down the five flights of stairs to the base and from there to the hurricane deck.

  As his feet pounded the deck, the winds hit him and the mist sprayed him, saturating his shirt and pants. Everyone else had donned the slickers provided, but he’d been too concerned, too much in a hurry to find Laurie and Morgan to bother about a raincoat.

  He had to make sure they were okay. He couldn’t afford to lose anyone else he loved. Loved? What was he thinking? He liked Laurie, liked her a lot. Even Morgan had her moments. But love? He wasn’t ready to love again. He might never be. He couldn’t ever go through what he’d been through before. He certainly wasn’t going to take a chance on losing the ones he loved again.

  Everybody on the deck looked alike in their raincoats. Men, women, and children all in yellow slickers, taking pictures, watching the water tumble down the gorge, shouting above the roar of the Falls. The spray doused his hair and matted his eyelashes together, making it even harder to spot the two people he was looking for in the crowd. As it turned out, they found him.

  “Cooper,” Laurie shouted, putting her hand on his wet shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

  He whirled around and threw his arms around her while Morgan watched, still perched in her backpack and dressed in a tiny rain slicker with a hood that covered her red-gold baby curls. “You had me worried,” he muttered gruffly in Laurie’s ear.

  “Sorry,” she said breathlessly, “but we couldn’t tear ourselves away, even for lunch. This is so exciting, being right down here in the middle of it all.”

  Morgan expressed her agreement by tangling her hands in Cooper’s hair and pulling it happily.

  “She loves the rainbows,” Laurie explained, smiling up at him. “Have you seen them?” She pointed to the spectrum of color created by the mist that hovered just overhead.

  Relief coursed through his body, so strong that it made him shake. He found them. They were safe. He dropped his arms to his sides. “I’ve seen the rainbows,” he said. “What I want to see right now is some dry clothes and lunch. Have you eaten?”

  Laurie shook her head and he grabbed her hand to walk back along the windy, narrow walkway, passing more visitors who’d come to visit the Cave of the Winds. When Morgan and Laurie had returned their raincoats, and they were all back outside in the pale autumn sunshine, Laurie looked Cooper over.

  “You’re soaked,” she said, noting how his pants stuck to the muscles in his thighs, how his shirt molded to the contours of his broad shoulders and his flat stomach. The man was unbelievably attractive, wet or dry. But he scarcely seemed to know he was soaked to the skin. He was staring at her with such intensity in his eyes that she felt her heart bang against her ribs.

  “I see that,” he said with a look that said he saw a lot more than that. Then he reached behind her and took the backpack from her, with Morgan still in it. “Come back with me to my room. I’ll change and we’ll eat. You’ve got to be hungry, and tired of carrying her around.”

  Laurie nodded. The cool autumn breeze must be turning Cooper into an iceberg and yes, she was tired. She hadn’t realized that her shoulders were stiff and she knew Morgan needed something to eat. Maybe they all did. She thought about waiting for him in the lobby, but before she knew it, they were all in the elevator on their way to the third floor, to that luxurious room with the view of the Falls, with Morgan happily riding on Cooper’s back, and Laurie carrying her diaper bag.

  Once in the room, Cooper handed Morgan to Laurie and disappeared into the bathroom. Laurie changed Morgan’s diaper on a waterproof pad, then gave her a bottle of apple juice and a cracker. She tried to ignore the sound of the shower, tried to wipe out images of Cooper standing under the hot water as it coursed down his shoulders and all the way down his naked body to his feet. The image made her feel lightheaded, or was it due instead to the lack of food? She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and even the mashed peas she offered Morgan from a small jar almost looked good to her at that point.

  When Cooper came out of the bathroom wrapped only in a towel around his waist, Laurie jerked her head toward the window and the view of the Falls. Just how much could a woman take of a half-dressed man without losing her cool completely? And this was not just any man. This was Cooper Buckingham, hydraulic engineer, apple picker, favorite of little girls— and big ones, too.

  All she could think about was racing across the room to flatten her palms against his bare chest, to feel his heart beat in time with hers. She swallowed hard and stared at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She was aware that Cooper had opened the built-in dresser drawer and then closed it. She heard him slide open the door to the closet, slide it back into place and then return to the bathroom.

  Morgan, full of peas, apple juice and crackers, fell asleep in the middle of the king-size bed. Just like the last time, Laurie thought, which seemed about two years ago. In between she and Cooper had eaten many more meals together, worked together and exchanged a few searing kisses, too.

  And now what? What would they do next? Where was it all leading? Nowhere, she told herself firmly. It all came back to her in a flash of crystal clarity. The reason she was there—to take care of Morgan. And the reason he was there—to escape involvement by taking only temporary jobs like this one. She wanted love, marriage, kids, the whole nine yards.

  He wanted to do his job and then go on to another. To enjoy her company for a short time and then move on to someone else. She was attracted to him, and he was hard to resist. He was kind and considerate and a hard worker besides. But none of that changed a thing.

  Laurie smoothed Morgan’s damp hair back from her flushed cheek and promised herself she would be strong this time. That she had learned something from her past. That she would hold out for the right man. But how could a man look and feel any more right than Cooper? She wondered as he walked back into the bedroom dressed in clean khakis and a plaid cotton shirt. His hair was still damp from the shower and her fingers itched to run through it.

  “Lunch?” he asked, standing at the foot of the bed, the smell of the European hotel soap wafting her way.

&
nbsp; She tried to speak, but suddenly her vocal cords wouldn’t work. It might have been just hunger that made everything tighten up inside, or it might have been the half smile on his face. His gaze slid to the baby sleeping in the middle of his bed.

  “I see we’ve lost one of our group.”

  Laurie nodded, grateful for the distraction Morgan provided.

  “Then why don’t we order from Room Service?” he suggested.

  She nodded again and he picked up the telephone. She scarcely heard what he said. His voice was a low rumble, a soothing sound that promised delicious food to come. When he hung up she finally came to her senses.

  “What happened this morning?” she asked. “Did you fix the... uh...”

  “Penstock?” he asked with a grin. “Not yet. But I think I can. I just don’t know how long it will take me. I have to go hack this afternoon. The other guys are probably working on it right now while I’m here. Will you be all right without me?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said without hesitation. “When Morgan wakes up we’ll go out for a walk.”

  “You can take one of the stone bridges to Goat Island. But be back here, say at four o’clock.”

  The food came and the busboy set the tray on the table at the window. Before he left the room the young man lifted the cover on a glass bowl of green leafy salad and two plates of sizzling shrimp scampi with rice.

  “It looks wonderful,” Laurie said, taking one of the wing chairs at the small round table. “Hotel life sure has its advantages. Especially if you can’t cook.”

  “That’s what I always thought,” he mused, “until... Well, our friends Steve and Gretel don’t have it so bad.”