The Guest House (17 page)

“She’s not forcing me, Dad.” Meg swallowed. “I want to go.”

“You do?” He stared at her, startled by her answer. “Really?”

Tears filled her eyes. “I like George. And I feel like I’m supposed to pretend I hate him to make you feel better, but I don’t hate him, Dad. He’s a good guy. And he doesn’t treat me like I’m ten years old. He doesn’t freak out because I want a glass of wine or if I stay out late with my friends.” Her tears spilled over; she wiped them harshly with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

Owen shifted his gaze to his lap, her complaint scalding, her disloyalty crushing.

Heather’s words of advice to keep quiet evaporated in an instant. “Well, sure. He can do that because he isn’t really a father, Meg. Because a real father wouldn’t let some jerk send his sixteen-year-old daughter text messages like that.”

Meg’s face drained of color, then filled scarlet. “You looked at my phone?” she whispered, horrified.

“I don’t want you seeing him anymore. In fact, I’m calling the headmaster first thing Monday and telling him I want that kid suspended for harassment.”

“Dad,” Meg started, “Ty hasn’t been harassing me. He’s my boyfriend and”—her voice turned shrill—“oh, my God, I can’t believe you read my
texts
!”

Her eyes darted all over the dashboard in a panic; he imagined her cataloging all the things he’d read, and shame came over him.

“I’m sorry, Meggie; I know I shouldn’t have read them—”

“No,” she shrieked. “You shouldn’t have!”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?”

“Why?” She stared at him, her face shiny with tears. “Dad, you buy me Nilla wafers like I’m still five years old! I can’t even wear the bathing suit I want to the beach because you’ll freak out. How could I tell you I have a boyfriend?”

She bent her head and covered her face with her hands, her slight shoulders trembling with her sobs.

“Meggie . . .” Owen lifted his hand to reach for her, but she shoved open her door and rushed out into the night, dashing up the front steps and disappearing into the house with a slam of the screen, leaving Owen in the driver’s seat, headlights glowing, his seat belt still buckled, heartbroken.

•   •   •

C
ooper’s call came in when Lexi was already dressed for bed and shutting down her laptop for the night.

“I know it’s late,” he said. “But I was just out on the porch. And you can’t believe how clear the sky is right now.”

Lexi moved to her window and drew back the lace curtain, seeing the street below, quiet and dark.

“I thought if you weren’t busy, maybe you’d like to come over for a drink and a little stargazing.”

Nights like this I always wish I knew the constellations. . . .

Her eyes swerved to the pile of clothes she’d just peeled off and tossed into the corner of her room, when she’d imagined this night over and done. She reached for her shorts, already pulling them back on before she’d answered, Cooper’s words sailing back to her.

You fell in love with the wrong brother
.

T
he first time Lexi had visited the Moss house at night, it had been a full moon—an event that Kim had assured her was a good sign, even though she couldn’t explain why. Lexi hadn’t argued. She herself had decided the ripeness of that yellow moon was proof of her and Hudson’s enduring love even before he’d sneaked her into the guest house where he was staying that summer. It had been a risky act. She was still living at home and it had required her to lie to her parents as if she were fourteen and not eighteen, not newly graduated from high school, not about to start classes at a local college that fall.

She’d felt utterly childish and deliciously reckless steering her car down the unlit dirt road. Now she was making the same pilgrimage sixteen years later, her heart racing just as fast. Only this time she knew just where to park her car. This time she didn’t worry about being caught. This time she knew just what she would find when the pines yielded and the coppery tint of the house lights came into view.

But she wasn’t prepared for the rush of heat that scalded her body when she saw Cooper’s silhouette at the end of the porch.

Or the sense of urgency that hastened her steps across the driveway, the fear that she might begin to run to reach him, or what she hoped he might do when she got there.

•   •   •

T
here was already a bottle of red wine sitting open on the porch. Cooper poured her a glass and held it out. Lexi savored a long sip as she wandered to the edge of the steps, looking up at the quilt of stars.

“I still don’t know a single one,” he confessed, joining her with his own glass.

She smiled. “Not even the constellation Pizza Slice?”

He laughed at the reference. “I’d forgotten about that one,” he said, looking where she looked. “Yeah, I see it now. Pepperoni, right?”

“Right.”

In the soft quiet, Lexi had to remind herself they weren’t alone. She glanced back at the house, unaware of the telling concern in her expression until Cooper said, “He’s already asleep.”

She met his gaze.

“There’s something I want to show you,” he said.

“Something beside all these?” she said, gesturing to the sky.

He nodded.

•   •   •

L
exi followed him wordlessly back into the house, through the great room down the hallway toward the study. Just shy of the last doorway, Cooper pointed them to a smaller room and stepped inside.

It took Lexi a moment to understand what it was she was seeing as her eyes traveled the space. The room’s two windows had been boarded up cleanly. A table hugged one wall; empty processing trays lined up on one side of an enlarger, a pair of printing tongs, a row of bottles.

“What is this?” she whispered.

Cooper grinned. “Wow, you really
haven’t
been in a darkroom for a while, have you?”

She looked around, overcome.

“Your friend Mo set it all up,” Cooper explained as she toured the room. “He told me what to get and what went where.”

Lexi scanned the supplies, the chemicals she hadn’t seen for years: developer, stop bath. She wanted to open the bottle of fixer and take a whiff, suddenly craving the vinegary smell. A fresh swell of gratitude filled her; she knew how much a setup like this would mean to Mo’s summer sales.

Now she knew why Cooper had visited the shop.

She turned to him. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I know I didn’t,” said Cooper. “I wanted to. It’s a gift.”

I know; that’s why it’s a gift.

The memory of Hudson’s present and her similar refutations shoved its way into her thoughts.

She met Cooper’s eyes, seeing the unmistakable darkening of suggestion in them.

I’m sure I’m not the first guy to leave college thinking darkrooms are sexy as hell. . . .

Her eyes fell to his mouth, imagining those lips on hers again, imagining how much deeper and longer their kiss could be now. She’d be ready this time.

The floor creaked with movement above them. Lexi looked up.

Cooper smiled. “It’s a big house.”

She remembered just how big—and how small. Did he hope to make love to her in this room? She glanced around, thinking how ironic it was that he’d brought her here, that he’d set up a darkroom for her, a place where pictures were revealed from blank paper.

“What if it’s too soon?” she asked.

Too soon for what? She regretted the question as soon as she said it, but Cooper didn’t need clarification for whatever “it” she meant.

“I think eleven years is the opposite of
soon
.” Cooper took a step toward her, filling the safe space they’d left between them. Lexi searched his face, drawing in a quick breath when he reached out to slide his palm under her cheek, his thumb grazing her bottom lip.

“That night,” she said. “You told me that I fell in love with the wrong brother.”

“I remember.” He moved his thumb back to her mouth, tracing the edge.

This time when he leaned in to kiss her, there was no hesitation, no question of her desire. Lexi could feel her own eyes pooling with it as Cooper took her mouth under his. She sank, like someone slipping naked under flannel sheets. Whatever this was, wherever it went, she wanted to wrap herself inside it, to leave it swimming on her tongue so that she could taste it, over and over, before she had to swallow it. He searched and she revealed. When he slid his hands up to the top of her head and released the knot of her hair, loosening the thick coil, the sensation of his fingers against her scalp pushed the air out of her in a sound that was unquestionably craving, and forced gooseflesh to bud along her bare thighs. When he held handfuls of her waves, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back into his palms, baring her throat. He dipped down and delivered a trail of hard kisses, an electric path paved from the hollow to her ear, drawing the flesh of her earlobe gently between his teeth and sucking hard enough that her eyes shot open.

She searched the ceiling, the places where the weathered beadboard planks held fast to their joints, her mind trying to see the unfamiliar in every tongue-and-groove seam but how could she? She knew these rooms too well. And they knew her.

She shut her eyes and the reminders faded. There was nothing but Cooper’s kiss, deep and warm, and her own aching need.

This time it was Cooper who pulled away first.

Lexi’s eyes opened slowly, as if she were afraid she might find herself having been kissed by the wrong brother, but there he was, Cooper, smiling down at her, his dark eyes sincere. How long had it been since she’d felt that feverish speeding of desire, that pressure of lust building deep within her core like air bubbles, combustible and dangerous?

“I want you,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.”

Lexi searched his eyes, reminded of how he had been her anchor that night, how the only thing that had kept her mind from spinning away from her was to watch Cooper as he drove her deep into the dark. Now the same need for escape filled her; she didn’t care about what lived beyond this room. Let the wine bottle be drained; let the fixer reveal the true picture.

“I’ve wanted you too,” she confessed. “I wanted you even then, but I didn’t understand how I could. I felt so guilty.”

He reached out to the collar of her cardigan, fingering the top button, rolling the pad of his thumb over the smooth, pearl-inlaid surface.

He grinned. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

She arched her body against his hands, aching for him to undress her. “Planned what?”

“These buttons,” he said, slowly freeing each one. “They’re just like the ones on the switch plate in the pantry.”

She smiled up at him, immeasurably impressed that he would remember that.

“So turn me on,” she whispered as she shifted her arms to let her sweater slide down to the floor.

Two

S
un was everywhere when Lexi woke. The master suite, dark when she’d come into it with Cooper the night before, was now drenched in light. Everything was so clear: the sloped ceilings, the papered walls, the dormered nooks.

And Cooper. She rolled over to find him still asleep, his face calm, one hand over his shoulder, the other reaching out to her.

She could leave, she thought, surveying the room. Her clothes were within reach, mostly in one place. She could slip out and dress in the hall. She’d take the back stairs, and even if Jim was already up and in the kitchen, there was no way he’d see her coming down the steps. He’d hear the car start, but so what? She’d be gone by then.

But she didn’t
want
to leave. The smell of him was killing her. That warm, musky scent of sleep, a mix of used sheets and sweat and skin—her whole body softened like butter left out.

Cooper shifted, stretched. His eyes opened, fixing on her right away. “Morning.”

She reached out and ran her fingers through his short hair. “Morning,” she whispered back.

As much as she knew they’d pushed their luck sleeping so late, she couldn’t bear to think of leaving this bed, this room. They were safe in here. Beyond this door, all that would change. There was the world of Jim, of her mother, of Owen, and Kim. Her best friend would surely do a dance on the hood of her car in celebration; somehow Lexi didn’t see her family doing the same.

She scanned Cooper’s face, searching his eyes for a clue to his thoughts.

“Are you sorry we did this?” she asked.

He smiled. “Trust me; you don’t want to know how
not
sorry I am.”

Relief bloomed in her, faster and fuller than she would have imagined. He tugged away the sheet that she’d been so careful to tuck into all the right places; off it came, kicking up dust in the ribbon of sunlight she’d been trying to hide her body from. Skin to skin, mouth to mouth. Her moment of lucidity had come and gone.

Then a terrible noise: the familiar whine of a power tool, the cacophony of the crew below on the lawn. She slipped out from under him, panicked. Surely her mother had seen her car there, had known she hadn’t come home the night before. Lexi chastised herself, reminding herself she was thirty-four and not eighteen. Still, she wasn’t crazy about emerging from the house to an audience.

“I should go,” she said. “Everyone’s here.”

Cooper weaved his arm around her waist, slowing her departure. “Everyone’s
out there
,” he corrected.

She smiled back at him. The balloon of panic that had expanded in her chest popped, deflated. But only a bit. There was still Jim to consider, her car sitting in plain sight. Probably blocking the driveway. She’d been so eager to get to Cooper last night, to get close to him, like a love-struck teenager. Had she even turned off the engine? Applied the parking brake?

“I need to move my car,” she declared.

“What for?” He traced the curve of her hip. “Are you expecting someone?”

“No, but it’s right in front of the house.”

“It’s a big driveway.”

It was. Why was she acting as if this were the first time she’d ever been in this house? She looked over her shoulder at him, a smile trying to play at her lips, a natural response to his grin that refused to go away, no matter what let’s-get-real excuses she threw at him. And she had plenty more.

Cooper climbed off the other side of the bed, plucked his boxers from the floor, and pulled them on. “Stay put,” he said. “I’ll go make us some breakfast.”

Stay put.
All right, she could do that. She reached for her shirt; Cooper sent her a wary look from the doorway.

“Don’t bother with all of it,” he said, pointing to where her shorts and undergarments dangled off a nearby chair. “I’m not done with you.”

Desire flared under her skin. She felt idiotic. She felt sensational.

She hurled a pillow at him. “Go,” she said. “I get the worst headaches if I don’t have coffee before eight.”

When he’d gone, quietly closing the door behind him, Lexi glanced around the master suite, surveying it freshly. It was strange to see it in daylight, this room that had always stood at the end of the hall. She still had yet to photograph it. Now she wandered its spaces, taking a slow inventory of the room and its details in preparation for where she would begin when she returned later today with her camera.

He’d set up his desk by the room’s oversize dormer—not surprisingly—though it could hardly be called a desk, just a rough table nestled in front of the window seat, his laptop and a printer, a stack of papers, and a cell phone charger the only things on it. Coming closer, she saw the pages more clearly. They were manuscript pages. Trepidation skittered down her arms; it was like finding a diary—she knew that. Something deeply personal she hadn’t been given license to read.

For a moment she considered walking by the stack, but something changed her mind. It was the names that caught her eye. Too familiar to be chance. A knot of something, not yet dread but alarmingly close, began to form even before she sat down and began to make her way through the pages.