The Rebel (The Millionaire Malones Book 3) (15 page)

‘Cooper’s still asleep. I checked. He’s in your bed. Why are you in this bed and he’s in your bed?’

Despite being half asleep, Maggie knew the answer to give her son. ‘Because this is my bed while Cooper is staying with
us, remember?’ Maggie reached for Evan’s hand and he scampered up on the bed and she drew him close in a cuddle.

‘But before I went to Grandma’s you were in your bed with Cooper.’

‘I know, right? Now, what about breakfast? Would you like some scrambled eggs?’

Evan twisted his little head to look into her eyes. His expression was so earnest and little-boyish. God, she loved her little man.

‘Does Cooper like scrambled eggs, too? I’ll go ask him!’ And before she could stop him, Evan was racing into the hallway.

Maggie got out of bed, tugged on some yoga pants and her Foo Fighters T-shirt, humming ‘Everlong’ to herself as she walked to the kitchen.

It was Monday morning. Normal transmission had resumed.

*

The next two
days
were busy. Evan was in school, Maggie buried her head in her work during the day, and Cooper was feeling well enough to head out the front door for a short walk a couple of times a day. When he was home, he had visits from a physical therapist, or he was on the phone, and occasionally Maggie would lift her head from her screen full of spreadsheets and listen to his voice through the door as he
hobbled up and down the hall.

They hadn’t talked about the sex.

Which didn’t mean she hadn’t been thinking a whole hell of a lot about the sex, but they’d been clear. It was clearly a one-time thing to break her drought. He’d offered nothing more and she’d asked for nothing else.

It was unspoken, but they slipped back into being Cooper and Maggie, friends.

And they had Evan to consider as
well, which made it all the more important to be normal with each other. Maggie had her morning routine: taking Evan to school and then settling down to work in her study.

But now she couldn’t concentrate.

Cooper was just outside the door. The memory of his lips on hers, of his fingers making her come, of him inside her, was too strong to ignore. It had been two days of politeness but she’d
spent every moment craving his touch, as if six years of wanting him had compressed into the past forty-eight hours.

Maggie pushed back her chair quietly, tiptoed to the door and pressed her ear to it.

*

‘So you’ve set
a date for the wedding, you and Ava? That’s great news.’ Cooper hobbled up and down Maggie’s hall as he spoke to his
brother Callum, all the way across the ocean he loved in Sydney. He was doing some physical therapy, working his knee, and he walked from the front door, past the closed door to her office, where he paused for a moment, before continuing to the kitchen and back. Over and over.

‘Well, almost. We need to know if you can make it back at the end of next month. We’re thinking of the twenty-ninth.’

That was three weeks away. He had no clue what his knee would be like in three weeks.

‘I’ll see what I can do. You know I want to be there, Cal, but I’ll have to talk to Alfie about what’s on my schedule. I’ve been a bit out of the loop the past week since the surgery.’
Since I’ve been living here with Maggie—and since I’ve seen her naked and we’ve had sex—and my brain is a little fried.
Cooper
shook off the thought. ‘I’m seeing him in a couple days. Can I get back to you?’

‘Sure. But Coop? I’m not getting married without my twin brother as my best man. If that date doesn’t work, we’ll think of something else. But can you let me know pronto? I’ve got a bride here, you know what I’m saying? We’re trying to work around a couple of big landscaping jobs she’s got in her schedule.’

‘Sure,
no problem.’ Cooper stopped outside of Maggie’s door. He wondered what she was doing in there, whether she was still buried in spreadsheets and accounts. She worked too damn hard. And knowing that she had to, that she had no-one else to rely on, cut him up. It always had. And if he went back to Sydney for Callum and Ava’s wedding, he would be leaving Maggie once again to shoulder all her burdens
and responsibilities alone. But that was his life, right?

This time, more than any other time, he realised that going home would mean leaving Maggie and Evan behind in California.

And that made him wonder. Was Sydney really home to him anymore?

Something shifted in Cooper’s chest and he put a palm there to quell it. He’d left them before, for months at a time. That’s the way the worldwide surfing
circuit worked. It was summer somewhere, all year round, and his life had been planes, baggage carousels, hotels, beaches, waves and podiums. And there had been women. A few. More than a few. He was a grown man—a single man—not a monk. He’d been living that life for a long, long time and it was a good life. It was the best life.

Or at least it had been.

In the past few days, something had changed
in him. He’d never lived with a woman; his relationships had always been more casual than that. And he’d woken up at six a.m. more than a few times in his life. Catching the best waves meant being up at the crack of dawn, no matter where you were in the world. But he’d never been woken up at six o’clock by a little grommit all excited about scrambled eggs and going to school and watching old
cartoons.

And that night with with Maggie? That was a game changer.

Cooper looked at her door again. He had the feeling that everything was about to be thrown into the air and rearranged, if it hadn’t already been.

‘Coop, you there?’

‘Yeah, I’m here.’ Cooper pressed his smart phone to his ear.

‘What’s up with you?’ Callum asked with the insight that only a twin understood.

Cooper leaned
against the wall in the hall to take the weight of his bad leg. ‘You know that woman I told you about?’

Callum laughed. ‘Mary? Madeline? Monique?’

‘Maggie. It’s Maggie.’

‘Ah, Maggie. That’s right. ‘The friend’—and I say that with absolutely no cynicism whatsoever. The very reason you had to jump on a plane and leave your brothers just a couple of weeks ago.’

Maggie’s door was closed. ‘Yeah,
her.’

‘So what’s going on, mate?’

Cooper gritted his teeth. ‘Things just got complicated.’

*

From inside her
office, Maggie heard her name. And then the words, loud and clear:

Things just got complicated.

She hesitated and knew she should feel guilty about listening in to his conversation, but since he was talking about her, it
was her business, right? And what did he mean, anyway, that things had gotten complicated? Was that complicated bad, complicated embarrassing, or complicated good? She didn’t have a minute more to mull it over because there was a pounding knock on the office door.

‘Maggie?’

She waited a beat, so he thought she’d had to get up from her chair, and then opened the door. ‘What’s up?’

Cooper still
had his phone in his hand. He looked her up and down. There was nothing remotely sexy about the light linen pants and the loose white T-shirt she was wearing, but damn it if his eyes didn’t darken.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt you.’

‘No, it’s all right. You didn’t.’

He looked over his shoulder at the front door. Was he plotting his escape? What was going on?

‘I need to get out of here,’ he announced.

And her heart clenched in her chest.

‘Oh, okay. Look,’ She pulled herself together. ‘I know it’s been a little awkward between us—’

‘What?’

‘But I’m okay if you are. It was a one-time thing. And we’ve been through enough without letting this …’ she waved a hand back and forth between them, ‘… get in the way.’

He held up a hand. ‘Whoa. Chill, Maggie. I meant that I need to get out of this house,
not away from you. I’m going stir-crazy staring at these four walls. And although they’re nice walls and I appreciate you having me here, I need to get out of here. Let’s go somewhere.’

‘But, I’ve got things to finish …’ Maggie said, her forehead crumpling, her hand gripping the door knob.

Cooper took a hobbling step towards her and reached for her hand. ‘C’mon, Maggie Mac. It can wait, can’t
it? My problem is that I’m still not allowed to drive so I can’t escape without you. So either you drive or I may be forced to kidnap you.’

She laughed. ‘I’d fight back and I’d win.’

‘Yeah, you would. C’mon. Let’s go for a drive. Take me to a place where I can see some waves. Even if I can’t get out there at least I’ll be able to smell the ocean and breathe the fresh air.’

He was trying to
make light of it, but she could hear the truth in his words. He was going stir crazy.

‘You’re missing the water, huh?’

He tugged on her hand. ‘Like crazy.’

She checked her watch. ‘Okay. We’ve got a couple of hours until Evan finishes school.’

‘Let’s go.’

*

They drove to
the place known to locals as Top of the World, up in the hills
behind San Clemente. Down below, most of the town was laid out before them, but what Cooper loved most was the big, big sky and the Pacific Ocean as far as the eye could see. It filled his tanks, that sky, and he’d been needing that sustenance.

Once Maggie parked the car, Cooper got out and stood, and cursed repeatedly under his breath.

‘I heard that.’ Maggie had slipped out of her seat and
was peering at him over the top of the car.

‘Give me a break. I’ve been holding them all in so Evan doesn’t hear anything he shouldn’t. It’s not that satisfying, let me assure you, to say gosh darnit or golly gee.’

Maggie laughed at his compromises. ‘I appreciate that. Last thing I want is for him to pick up any bad habits from you. I know they’ll come soon enough. I mean, he is a boy and all,
but the longer he remains under my thumb the better.’

Not a bad place to be, he thought on a whim. Under Maggie Mac’s thumb.

She turned her gaze to the distant ocean. ‘This good for you then?’

Cooper felt the smile deep down and sucked in a lungful of that clear, salty air. ‘Yeah. Perfect.’

Maggie walked to the front of the car and climbed up on the hood, put her flat palms behind her and
lifted her face to the sun. She fluttered her eyes closed and her silky hair draped down her back. He walked to the front of the car and, using the strength in his arms, pushed himself backwards up next to her.