I could think about. Because it felt right. I touched you because I couldn’t help myself.”
She yanked on the doorknob, the ache inside her slicing hard.
“I asked you to dinner because I’ve had a shit week, and I thought it would be nice to know more about you.”
Morgan exhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t want to go to dinner with you.”
“I think you’re scared.” His voice deepened, and she sensed him a few feet behind her.
She blinked rapidly and waited until her heart rate slowed down, and opened the door. A heartbeat passed. Scared? She was more than just scared. Hell, there wasn’t even a word for what she was feeling.
“Good night, Cooper.”
With that, Morgan hurried outside, streaks of red and orange coloring a sky she barely glanced at. She trudged through mud and tufts of green grass, ignoring the quiet fall of dusk, and slid into her car. She pointed it toward town, all the while thinking hard. What was the word she was looking for? What was it that she felt?
It was something she thought about all the way home, though the word never did come to her.
15
Cooper wasn’t exactly sure what made him swing by the Campbell place. Maybe he took a wrong turn without thinking. Maybe he was bored with his own company. Or maybe he was a glutton for punishment. Whichever it was didn’t matter all that much in the end, because at about ten to eight that evening, he found himself in front of Morgan’s home.
He cut the engine, his gaze on the lights shining from the windows of the house, and sat in his truck for a couple of minutes, contemplating what exactly it was he was doing. Because being here on Morgan’s doorstep wasn’t what he’d planned on when he’d headed to town.
Morgan had made it more than clear he made her uncomfortable. He’d crossed a line with her, and she hadn’t liked it.
Not. One. Bit.
He swore and sank deeper into the soft leather seats, hands drumming against the steering wheel. Maybe he should just leave. Head out to this great Italian restaurant on his own, have a nice glass of wine and some pasta. Maybe meet a lady willing to spend a no-strings-attached night of hot sex with him, and call it a day.
Except that wasn’t what he wanted. Well, the sex part he could use, but the other? Some nameless woman he’d never see again? That wasn’t what he wanted, at least not tonight. The thought should have surprised the crap out of him, but for some reason, it didn’t.
For the first time in a long time, he wanted to spend the evening with a woman because he wanted to know her.
Cooper thought of the scars he’d seen. Of how she froze as soon as he’d touched her. And that led to so many damn questions, the main one being, why did he care so much? What was it about this woman he barely knew that intrigued him to the point that he found himself sitting in his truck, in her driveway, uninvited and unwanted, racking his brain for a way to make her come to dinner with him?
“Shit,” he muttered, reaching for the ignition. He should just leave.
He was just about to start up his truck when the front door flew open and Morgan appeared. Her hair swirled in the wind, and she grabbed at it, slamming the door behind her as she took a step down. It was then that she saw him.
Then that she froze.
Then that his chest constricted and his heart began to beat faster. What the hell was wrong with him?
The two of them stared at each other for several long moments until Cooper shook his head and thought, fuck it. Sure she’d already shut him down, but he’d never been the guy to give up, especially when he was going after something he wanted. She would say yes or no.
He would end up at La Spagatt with or without her.
Cooper opened his door and slid from the truck, pulling up the edge of his coat as the wind rattled toward him, shaking the eaves and loosening old, rotted leaves. He walked toward the house, noticing for the first time Morgan had no coat. Her skin was pink, that thick silky hair all over the place, and those eyes of hers looked like massive, shimmery circles of ice. They really were amazing.
She’d changed. Gone were the sweatpants and oversized sweatshirt. Instead, she’d pulled on black