Turbulent Intentions(59)

When they got back to the house, he walked her to the bottom of the stairs and kissed her cheek. “Thank you again.”

He turned and walked away.

She couldn’t tell how he was feeling by his tone. She almost wanted to rush back to him. But she knew that wasn’t a wise idea. So instead, she made her way up to her bedroom—alone.

When she finally lay down, she wondered why she was fighting this so badly. There wasn’t a reason to.

Maybe because she knew if she slept with him again, he was going to own her heart. And she didn’t think he would want to keep it for very long. It might just be worth a little pain now in order to avoid a hell of a lot of pain later.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Three days came and went without Cooper making another move on her. Stormy wondered if that had been his one and only attempt at romance. The thought of it was slightly heartbreaking, even if it was for the best.

Then one night she couldn’t stand being in her room any longer and found herself slowly coming down the stairs, unsure if she were intruding on Cooper or not. Before she saw anything, Stormy could hear the crackling of a fire and the smell of something delicious in the air. The darkened house was lit by the flickering glow that emanated from the great room.

The couch was positioned in front of the fire with the coffee table in between. On the table were two plates and two glasses of wine. Cooper sat quietly on one end of the couch, looking incredibly inviting.

Her cheeks flamed. What if he had a date? The thought of that made her eyes prickle with tears, though she felt like a fool to be feeling that way. It would be good if he had a date, she tried convincing herself. But the pressure on her chest assured her she really didn’t feel that way at all.

She turned around to scamper away before he could see her humiliation. But that’s when he called out to her.

“Come sit, Stormy.”

“What is this?” she questioned as she turned back to him.

“You’re on my mind constantly. I thought we’d have a nice evening together,” he told her.

Stormy’s breath caught as she looked at this man telling her that she meant something to him. Was it real? It seemed real. He felt real.

She had two choices. She could accept the invitation or she could run and hide. Stormy was sick of running and hiding. So she moved forward and sat—on the other end of the couch, which made Cooper chuckle.

Handing her a glass of wine, he raised his own in a toast.

“This is to you, Miss Stormy Halifax. You make me . . . I don’t know, feel something I haven’t felt in a very long time.”

Dang, she loved hearing him say this to her. It brought back that moonlit walk, that night when she had felt special. Was her prince back to stay?

“Thank you, Cooper. You’ve been incredible,” she said.

“I should warn you, I’m doing all I can to get you to come back to my bed—willingly,” he said with a smile and a wink.

She flushed as the image of the two of them entwined on his bed shot to the forefront of her mind. Oh, how she wanted that more than she wanted breath. But it couldn’t happen. She decided it was time to change the subject.

“Now that I’ve met your brothers, why don’t you tell me more about your family?”

“That’s a boring topic,” he said with a slight choke. Of course it was a lie.

“I’ve met the Armstrongs, or a good amount of you, and boring is never something I would use to describe your family,” Stormy said with a raised eyebrow.

“My dad was a pilot for Pan Am, but died several years ago. My mother was a talented photographer who sold her art in galleries around the country. Just your average family, really—I have three brothers, no sisters.”

“That would explain all the photographs of you around the house. You obviously enjoy spending time with your family.”

“Yes, my brothers and I are incredibly close.”

“Okay, so I know Nick is in the Coast Guard, but what does Maverick do?”

“Are you sure you want to hear about them? I’m much more interesting,” he said with a laugh.

She agreed. But to know him she needed to know his family, too.

“Yes, I’m sure I want to hear.”

“All right. First there’s Nick, who you know is a Coast Guard pilot. Then there’s Maverick, who flies an F-18 for the Airforce and is based here at McChord Field. Then there’s Ace . . . Ace has been away for a while.”

The slight crack in his voice intrigued her, but she could see that wasn’t something she could push him to talk about so she didn’t.

“It’s really cool that you all share a love of flying,” she mumbled.

“Yeah, it just sort of happened. Our father and our uncle were pilots, and we all fell in love with flying at a young age, none of us realizing that it would become a career for us,” he explained.