her. “Why?”
Joseph had trusted her to keep this discreet. With that in mind, she pitched her voice low. “You can ask him yourself. I’m supposed to take you to see him right now. But I imagine he’ll tell you he’s bringing you into the fold, so to speak, because it’s the right thing to do.”
“And he always does the right thing?”
She bristled. “As a matter of fact, he does.”
“Ah.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. The muscles in his forearms, visible because of his rolled-up sleeves, corded. They’d discovered he was part owner of a construction company. Clearly, he was the working part.
He nodded sagely. “So you think paying a scared, young, pregnant woman to disappear and somehow convincing her to never reveal the identity of her baby’s father is the right thing?”
Despite her sympathy for what Cooper and his mother had gone through, she adamantly shook her head. “Joseph wasn’t a part of that. After the first time, Marcus kept—”
“Oh, yeah, because a million dollars is so easy to—The first time?” he nearly shouted. “There were other—?”
“Not here!” Sara grabbed his arm, his biceps thick and hard beneath her fingers, and pulled him away from the post office door. “I think it’s time I finish what I was sent to do and take you to see Joseph at The Big House—”
“Babe, I just escaped the risk of ending up in the big house.” He aimed a thumb back at the county jail.
“No! The Big House is the name of the McCoys’ home on their estate.”
“So there’re Little Houses?”
She shook her head in frustration. How had she allowed him to fluster her so? “Please, Cooper. Come with me and meet your grandfather. Then you’ll understand everything.”
He dipped his shoulder and lowered his face close to hers again, his breath warm and frighteningly disarming on her cheek. “Honey, like I said before, I understand perfectly. And normally I’d be more than willing to let a cute thing like you drag me off somewhere more private. Hell, I’d let you drag me anywhere. But today is the beginning of what I was put on this earth to do.”
Every bit of her that was forever in debt to the McCoys told her she didn’t want to know, but because of that debt, she had to ask, “Which is?”
“Bring the arrogant McCoy machine to its knees.” He lowered his head yet farther, as if he really was going to kiss her, making the muscles low in her stomach contract. But this time she was prepared.
And mad.
She jerked away, releasing his arm. “How can you say such a thing? Especially without even speaking to Joseph?”
He straightened and gave her an unconcerned shrug. “Easy. And I found out all I needed to know a long time ago. Thanks for bailing me out, babe.” Saluting her, he started walking again.
Irritated that this was turning out so wrong, not to mention a little scared by the determination in his dark blue eyes, she called, “Where are you going?”
“To the office, babe. To the office.”
Her heart pounding from fear that he had thought of some way to damage McCoy Enterprises so quickly, she spun away and ran to her car. She’d get to the McCoy corporate headquarters just outside of town before Cooper and figure out a way to bar his entry without creating a scene.
Hopefully, she could defuse the situation and change Cooper’s mind about the McCoys before Joseph found out the grandson he was at home eagerly waiting to meet meant him harm. Because harming McCoy Enterprises was one and the same as harming Joseph personally. The company was his lifeblood, as it had been her father’s, Joseph’s right-hand man.
As it was hers.
Which made the fact that she was failing this seemingly simple assignment even worse.
How could the employee Joseph had placed so much trust in nearly melt beneath the hot gaze of the grandson who wished them ill?
Chapter Two
“Joseph, I need to—” Sara broke off when she saw who stood next to the man who had stepped into her life and filled the void left by her father’s death. Cooper must have parked in front of the eight-car garage on the side of the house. He appeared far too satisfied at having his newly found grandfather’s hand resting proudly on his shoulder.
While Sara had always seen Joseph as being a little larger than life, Cooper was a good head taller than him. Even so, their stature and stance—not to mention their arresting blue eyes and strong jaws—screamed family resemblance.
And Joseph’s misty gaze told her he was very happy to have Cooper with him. Her grip tightened on the handles of the doors to Joseph’s study.
Crap.
Cooper’s smile gave new meaning to the word gloating. “What took you so long, babe?”
His declaration of war on the steps of the county jail still rang in her ears. Despite the empathy she’d felt for him, she could barely keep from snarling. “I made it halfway to McCoy Enterprises headquarters before I remembered that the shabby little bar where you were arrested for brawling is named The Office.”
Cooper shrugged and said to Joseph, “Had to get my rig.”
Joseph raised his bushy gray brows and looked to her. “Sara was supposed to have driven you here.”
Cooper shook his head. “I wasn’t sure my truck would make it through the night without being stripped or swiped from the bar parking lot. Fortunately, neither happened, but I didn’t want to leave it there any longer than I had to. And The Office is only a block off Main Street, so not much of a walk.”
Unfortunately for Sara, the McCoy estate was on the opposite side of town from what she considered the office, so she’d had to double back, allowing Cooper to get to the house first. As much as she admired Joseph for building his headquarters in a part of town that had needed revitalization, the extra time it’d taken to get back here had stretched her nerves to the snapping point.
When her father had died ten years after her mother and the McCoys had been so kind to Sara, she’d sworn she would do anything for them. A failure like this could cost her everything. She had to warn Joseph about Cooper Anders’s intentions.
She refused to consider the motivations behind those intentions. On the way here, she’d focused on steering her car down the tree-bordered road to the estate, not on her memory of the pain clouding his blue eyes, the hard line he’d pressed his sensuous mouth into, the poorly contained emotions in his gruff voice. Her own throat tightened. To be that adrift in the world…
She frowned fiercely and released her death grip on the door handles. Cooper had simply startled her. That was the only reason she’d been so affected by him.
Joseph gave Cooper an altogether too affectionate squeeze before releasing him. “You still should have let Sara drive you. That was partly why I sent her to the jail.”
Cooper
