Meant to Be (Sweetbriar Cove #1)(7)

Cooper gave her a sideways look. "It depends if you classify sending out a town newsletter about your new book 'too much.' She told everyone to keep an eye out for you this week. I'm surprised she didn't make us roll out the ticker-tape and put on a parade." He tossed another peanut up in a lazy arc and caught it in his mouth.

Poppy gulped. "So much for keeping a low profile."

"In hiding, are you?"

"Something like that." She changed the subject fast. "What about you? I can't believe it's been so long. The last time I saw you, you were running around dropping seaweed down everyone's shirts."

"Not everyone," Cooper corrected her. "Just yours."

"Gee, thanks." Poppy gave him a sideways look. It was still a shock to see him all grown up, the teasing memory in her head replaced with someone so broad-shouldered and solid, with stubble on his jaw and worn cotton stretching over the muscles in his back-

Poppy dragged her gaze away. She shouldn't be looking at anyone's muscles, let alone the guy who'd made an art of tormenting her. "So, what's new with you?" she asked instead. "Wife, kids, white picket fence?"



       
         
       
        

The smile slipped from Cooper's face, and Poppy had a feeling she'd just said the wrong thing, but before he replied, Riley returned with her beer, and another for Cooper.

"Thanks." She gave him a smile. "Although I probably shouldn't drink this on an empty stomach."

"Lightweight?" Riley asked.

"The worst," Poppy admitted.

"Well, just so you know, my place is right upstairs. If you ever can't make it home." Riley gave her another wink.

Cooper grumbled beside her. "C'mon. Now you're just being desperate."

"I like to think of it more as 'charming' and 'irresistible,' " Riley corrected him, and Poppy couldn't help but laugh.

"Thanks for the offer, but I'll be sleeping in my own bed," she said firmly. "For the foreseeable future."

"Our loss," Riley said, unruffled, and headed back towards the kitchen and-Poppy hoped-her food.

"Interesting," Cooper drawled. "The Queen of Hearts hasn't found her perfect soulmate yet." His words were light enough, but there was a sarcastic note in his voice that made Poppy feel like he was mocking her.

"Not yet, no," she replied, cooler this time.

"Yet you figure it's your job to lecture everyone else on true love," he said, and took a swig of his beer. "Huh. Don't you think that's kind of hypocritical?"

"I'm not lecturing anyone." Poppy frowned, wondering how the conversation had suddenly taken a turn. "People are free to read whatever they want. I just write my stories."

"Full of happy endings and lightning strikes," Cooper challenged. "You ever think you're setting them all up to fail? Chasing after some big happy ending that's never going to come their way?"

Poppy paused. His words hit a nerve deep inside her, the same whispered doubts that kept her up at night, taunting her with the questions she wished she had an answer for.

He was wrong. He had to be. Otherwise everything she'd spent her life believing was a lie.

"What's it to you?" she challenged him, trying to keep her cool. She felt weirdly vulnerable, her raw wounds open for everyone to see. "Have you even read one of my books?"

"I don't need to," Cooper shrugged. "It's all the same. Building up some fantasyland of love and forever so people can't help but be let down with the real world. You know, I feel sorry for the suckers who believe it, they don't even realize what a scam they're buying into. No offense," he added, like an afterthought. 

He had to be kidding. Poppy clenched her fists and got down from the stool.

"Where are you going?" Cooper asked, sounding confused.

"Well, you've just insulted me, my life's work, and every woman who's ever bought one of my books, so I figure I better get out of your hair. Unless you want to start in on my mom?" Poppy demanded. "My pastor? No? Good."

She turned on her heel and stalked across the bar. She would have walked out altogether if she hadn't been so hungry, but as she sat down at a corner table, she was fuming. What the hell was his problem? She didn't even know the guy, and he thought he could just dismiss her career as some kind of elaborate con on the readers of America. Poppy was used to dealing with snobbery-you didn't get to write romance without people looking down their noses at you-but usually that was easy to brush off. Literary elites scoffing at happy endings, like a book had to be five hundred pages of misery to be worth a read (but funnily enough, didn't have a bad word to say about all those trashy crime books for men). She'd stopped paying attention to those kinds of comments years ago, since she figured nothing would convince them that they were the ones missing out. Sure, she wasn't going to win any literary prizes, but that wasn't the point. Her readers didn't come to her looking for the real world, they wanted an escape from it. A place to disappear in between school pick-up runs and double shifts at the hospital; a place where fate wasn't cruel, hope won out, and love was never in vain.