Trials and Tiaras (Untouchable #7) - Heather Long Page 0,5
he’d planned to just call a car. Jake joined her in bullying him to let me drive them. Still, he’d insisted she stay here.
What. A. Fucking. Mess.
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I shoved away from the door and crossed to the bed. The sun was up, theoretically, though the gray skies and continued chill after the freezing rain of the day before didn’t promise much brightness.
I flicked Coop’s ear first, and his eyes opened to snap up at me.
“How long?” I kept my voice low and soothing. If she’d only just gone back to sleep, then I’d leave her there.
Coop flicked his gaze past me toward his phone.
“It’s just seven-thirty.” It was a ninety-minute drive to get them to the airport, and their flight had been super early.
He pinched the bridge of his nose before rubbing his eyes, then glancing down at her. “She went back to sleep faster than I thought she would… What’s up?”
“Let’s get her up and go running.”
Horror crossed Coop’s face, and it took everything I had to bite back a laugh.
“She needs a distraction.”
“That’s not a distraction,” he argued. “That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
She yawned and stretched. Coop froze, and his attention went straight to her. Not that mine didn’t. “Why are you two arguing?”
“Because Bubba the Brute wants us to get dressed and go running,” Coop complained, and I shot him a look he totally ignored.
Frankie wrinkled her adorable nose and then scowled like I’d suggested we get rid of her cats. Then she huffed. “Why?”
Now for a little finesse. Because she needed to move. She needed to keep moving and accomplishing until we heard back from Archie, or she would worry herself into a frenzy. I didn’t want a repeat of the day before, and I never wanted a Friday like that night again. “Because I need to take care of you,” I told her, and I kept it simple.
Even rumpled, half-asleep, with a track left by drool at the corner of her mouth, she was still the most beautiful girl in the world. She studied me from beneath those half-lowered lids and then let out the softest of little sighs. “Okay.”
Coop transferred that horrified gaze from me to Frankie. “What?”
With a little lift of her shoulders, she smiled at him, though the expression didn’t quite reach her eyes, and that wrenched me all over again. “It could be fun.”
“Like a hole in the head. We don’t run. They run, we stay here and have sex.” Coop nodded as if to himself. “Let’s do that instead.”
A laugh escaped her, weak as it was, but a real one. “Ian doesn’t share that way, and he wants to run. He needs it and he needs to look after me, so we’re going to run. You can stay here though.”
Something settled inside of me when she acknowledged that I needed to look after her and acquiesced to it. In all our conversations, that play wasn’t going to leave the bedroom or sex, but this right here? Her pain? This was not something I could ignore.
Even stopping Archie from charging back into that building and attacking his father had been damn hard. I’d done it for him as much as for her. So had Jake. Archie hadn’t been rational, and Frankie had been a wreck. Not that Jake and I didn’t share the same temptation, but right now, making sure they were all right overrode any other desires. We’d deal with them later.
His father.
Her mother.
The whole damn mess.
Coop shot me a mock glare. “Fine, I’ll watch. You two have sex.”
I chuckled. A month ago, I wasn’t sure what my reaction to that statement might have been, but right now, it was both funny and a little charming. While he was going to some effort to make her laugh, he also wasn’t kidding. He absolutely meant he’d watch.
“You never know,” I told them both. “Maybe we’ll revisit the idea—after we run.”
Frankie pushed upward and dropped a quick kiss on Coop before she scrambled out of the bed. He stared at me dumbfounded for a second as she leaned up to kiss me, and I slid an arm around her to give her a hug. When she burrowed for a moment, I just soaked it up, then gave her ass a light swat to send her on her way.
“I’m just gonna pee and brush my teeth,” she muttered on a yawn, and I tracked her as she paused at the bathroom door. “Their flight get off okay?”