Meant to Be (Sweetbriar Cove #1)(46)

Poppy stretched. She rather liked the sound of that. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked around. "I like this place," she said. "It's very . . . you."

"Run-down and out the back of beyond?" Cooper arched an eyebrow.

She laughed. "Rustic and manly."

"You like that, huh?" Cooper's hands slipped under the sheets. Poppy wriggled, ticklish, and he leaned in, murmuring low and sexy. "You should drop by the construction site sometime. I can hammer a joist like nobody's business."

"I'll bet you can." She laughed and kissed him again, loving how easy it felt. How natural. His body was hot and deliciously naked against her, still sweaty from all their tanglings, and she was reminded of her thought that very first day she'd seen him, grown up from the boy she'd known.

He was all man.

Eventually, Cooper broke away. "What did you bring with the wine?"

Poppy took a moment for her brain to function again. "What?"

"The Tupperware. It looked like pie. Was it pie?" Cooper brightened, and she had to laugh.

"Cobbler. And I can't believe you're thinking about food when you have a naked woman in bed with you."

"You made me work up an appetite," he said, hopping out of bed. She was treated to the sight of his naked body in all its glory before he grabbed a robe. "Don't move an inch," he said, and headed down the stairs. 

Poppy sank back into the pillows. She couldn't if she tried. Amazing sex and a man to bring her dessert in bed?

This must be what heaven was like.

And she would have missed out on all of it if she hadn't taken that leap and showed up at his door tonight. Poppy thought how close she'd come to just going home, and shivered. It just goes to show that working up the courage and taking that risk brought all kinds of unexpected delights. For once, she hadn't been content to disappear into the comforting fiction of her books-she'd gone after what she wanted in the real world, and it had worked out better than she could ever have dreamed.

Well, maybe she had dreamed this, late at night in those secret fantasies. But Cooper live and in the flesh was more glorious than even her most fevered daydreams. She'd found a man who could teach her romantic heroes a thing or two. Or three. Or more . . .

"You didn't say it was Fran's famous plum cobbler."

Cooper reappeared with the bottle of wine, the Tupperware container, and two forks. He dove onto the bed, bouncing beside her, and she laughed.

"Now, this is a feast," Poppy said. He offered the wine, and she took a gulp, sweet and straight from the bottle. "When I was a kid, I used to love all those books about British boarding schools. My parents even asked me if I wanted to go away to school, and I had to tell them no, I just loved all the midnight feasts they had, sneaking off in the middle of the night."

"I remember you always had your nose in a book." Cooper fed her a fork of cobbler, and Poppy sighed with satisfaction. "You always seemed so . . . self-contained. Like it didn't matter what else was going on in the world, you had your books, so you didn't need anyone. I envied you for that."

"Really?" Poppy looked at him in surprise. "I read so much because I felt lonely all the time. Even that summer here, I was such an outsider. I felt like everyone thought I was such a nerd."

"We did." Cooper grinned, and reached to push back her hair from her eyes. "But a cute nerd."

She smiled. "You drove me crazy. If I'd had a dime for every time you dropped something slimy down my shirt . . ."

"Sorry. I couldn't help it," he said. "You got so flustered and angry when I called you-"

"Don't!" Poppy covered his mouth with her hand. "Don't even think about it."

She slowly lowered her hand, but Cooper gave her a wicked look. "Pipsqueak," he said, before she could stop him. Poppy shoved him back playfully.

"That's no way to seduce a woman," she warned, and he laughed.

"I'll take my chances. This woman seems pretty receptive to my . . . charms." He leaned in and kissed her bare shoulder, a trail of whisper-soft kisses that made her sigh with pleasure.

"Fine," she said. "But no seaweed down my back."

"Deal."



Cooper settled back, Poppy snuggled in the crook of his arm. He took a gulp of wine, and felt pretty damn satisfied about how the night had turned out.

Life didn't get much better than this.

"I owe Mackenzie a drink," Poppy said, her head resting against his chest. "She's the one who told me to show up on your doorstep."

"Did she? That sounds about right." He stroked her hair, and marveled at the silky feel.

"She said you were too stubborn to make the first move." Poppy gave him a mischievous look.