Meant to Be (Whisper Creek #5)(18)

"Your wife." She pointed across the little yard separating their cottages.

He looked in the direction her finger was aiming, then back at her. "Oh. Right. Not married."

"So … why are you staying in the honeymoon cabin?"

He paused for a moment, then smiled. "You have any wine that goes with spaghetti?"

She looked at him curiously.

Well. Mister tall, dark, and Italian had a story.

"I'll see what's in the fridge." Shelby stood up and scooted through the screen door, heading for the kitchen, a little dazed. She'd banked on another lonely, quiet evening looking at the stars, wishing she could turn back time. She'd planned on another sleepless night, another set of hours spent staring at the ceiling through a watery haze. She'd never thought a neighbor-guest would show up on her porch with a dinner that smelled so good she forgot to be afraid of him.



       
         
       
        

She located a bottle of red and one of chardonnay, found a corkscrew and glasses, and headed back to the porch. On the way there, she stopped for a moment in front of the mirror beside the door, adjusting a stray wisp of hair. Then she stopped. What was she doing?

"Good news." She pushed open the door and held up the two bottles. "We have choices."

"Excellent. Have a preference?"

"I'm not much of a drinker, actually." She threw out her practiced line as she set the bottles on the table, knowing already that she'd sip at one glass, pouring the majority of it down the sink later. She actually liked wine-liked the feel of a well-made goblet in her hands, liked the warmth of the deep red alcohol as it slid down her throat.

But someone else had liked it, too-liked it far too much-and if there was one path she wasn't following, it was that one.

He paused the corkscrew, studying her for a moment. "Well, you're alone in a honeymoon cabin. I'm alone in a honeymoon cabin. Pretty sure that gives us both enough excuses to polish off as much as we want to."

Shelby laughed out loud at his tragic expression, and then put her hand over her mouth. It felt … wrong to laugh. It was wrong still.

He handed her a half-full goblet, then motioned to her plate. "Eat up, before it gets cold."

"That would be awful." Shelby picked up her fork and tasted the pasta, feeling the spices light up every crevice of her mouth. She took another bite, then another. "Oh, my God. This is really good."

"It's just … spaghetti."

"I know. But it's the best spaghetti I've ever tasted." She tried to slow her fork, suddenly self-conscious that she was plowing through her plate at a speed generally reserved for frat boys at a pie-eating contest.

"Then you are really easy to please." Cooper smiled as he watched her.

"I'm well-trained in that art, thank you."

Shelby bit her lip after the words came out, but it was too late.

He looked up. "Huh. Loaded statements for eight hundred, Alex."

"Sorry." Shelby lifted a napkin to her mouth, mostly to cover the redness she felt creeping up her cheeks. "I didn't really mean that."

"Fibs for five hundred."

She smiled as he put up five fingers. "I'm just-I don't know-I try to be … easy to get along with. That's all."

"Do people expect you not to be?"

She swallowed a snort. "Pretty much always, yes. It's practically a requirement for survival, in my line of work."

"Why? What do you do?" He posed the question innocently, like he couldn't care less what the answer was, but she could sense a frisson of energy under the question. 

For a wild second, she was tempted to tell him. But she didn't know him from Job, and she'd be an idiot to start confiding in a stranger less than a week after she'd escaped the craziness that was her life.

Even if that stranger did make the best spaghetti she'd ever tasted.

And was unfairly, ungodly hot.

And apparently didn't have a wife stowed in his cabin.

She spun her glass slowly in her hands, trying to think of an answer that would be truthful, but not revealing.

"I do … a little of this and a little of that."

He smiled, like he'd predicted exactly that answer. "A woman of mystery."

That smile tickled her way down low, and she sat back in her chair, lifting her wine to her lips. Time to turn the attention firmly away from herself.

"What about you? What makes a man travel to Montana and rent a honeymoon cabin, by himself?"

Cooper pushed his plate away and sat back in his own chair, one hand relaxed behind his head as the other cupped his wineglass.