Touch Me - Complete Collection (10 page)

Jenny squealed as he carried her to the bedroom, and threw her on the bed like a sack of flour.

**

“Do you really have to go?” She clung to his arm like a child.

He hugged her for the tenth time. “God, I’m going to miss you.”

“I'm going to miss you too. Can you try and wrap everything up quickly? So you can get back in a couple of days?”

“I will. Now go to work. I'm late for my flight.”

“I hate Australia,” she mumbled as he opened the front door.

He turned to smile. “It’s not Australia’s fault I have business there, sweetheart.”

She giggled and waved, and he was gone.

Jenny sighed, staring at the door, her heart sinking. A week wasn’t that long. But she knew what his empty apartment would be like without him – gloomy. The last time he had gone, they hadn’t even been
together
. They hadn’t been in love. “It’s going to be so much harder this time,” she whispered to the apartment, as she got ready for work.

**

Jenny sat in front of the TV, eating takeout Chinese. She was eternally grumpy, and bored. A few colleagues had planned a farewell party for the accounts executive, but she had no urge to go. She glanced at the clock. The days, the hours, everything… dragged without Cooper.

The doorbell rang, and she swiftly got up to peek through the peephole. Her lips curved into a smile as she saw Cooper’s brother, Dexter, and yanked the door open.

“Hi!” she cried, as he reached forward and wrapped his arms around her in a brotherly bear hug.

“Hi, Jen. Oh god, you’re so different!”

She chuckled. “So are you. It’s so good to see you! Come in!”

He made himself comfortable and she got him a beer from the fridge. “I've been asking Cooper for weeks about you.”

“Weeks?” He seemed confused.

“Yeah. Ever since I came here. And I heard you got married! Cooper is so vague, and honestly he is a little busy too.”

“Yes that he is. So busy, that he didn’t tell me you’ve been here for weeks.”

“He didn’t?”

He shook his head, staring at her. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

“I uh…I don’t know.” Her giddiness quickly evaporated, her brain flooded itself with negative thoughts – assumptions that would incriminate Cooper. “I've been here a couple of months now.”

A smile spread across his face. “Here? In his apartment?”

“Yeah.” She blushed.

“So you two are a thing now?” he asked with a conspiratorial smirk.

Jenny looked away
laughingly. “Well, that depends on what he told you.”

Dexter chortled. “He didn’t really tell me. I mean…he wasn’t planning to I guess. I told him I needed his golf clubs and asked if he left the key with the security desk in the lobby…and it came up that he has someone living here.”

“So Cooper didn’t tell you it was me?”

“He had to when I asked. Because I was going to see you anyway when I came for the clubs.” He shook his head laughingly. “He mentioned very casually that you were staying here.” When Jenny nodded, and tried her damndest to think that Cooper wasn’t ashamed of her – the poor little nobody – while he…the CEO of Farrell corp.

Dexter delved farther. “So you’re a thing then?”

“Umm…” She snickered, unsure what to say. If Cooper didn’t want his brother to know, she didn’t want to tell him either. She tried to think sanely, without making
Cooper the villain in the situation.
Maybe he didn’t want anyone prying into our delicate, complicated relationship.

“You know what, Jenny? A woman, in his apartment, that’s a big damn deal. So it’s pretty obvious that you’re
together
together.”

She beamed at the pleasing statement. “Yes, I've heard he doesn’t have women up here. This is his domain. Only his.”

He smiled, and Jenny felt the familiar tug of emptiness in her chest. Dexter looked so much like Cooper. She missed Cooper even more.

“I’m so happy…seriously, it’s about time,” Dexter grinned. “Cooper’s been pining over you for years.”

Jenny choked on her beer, then wiped her lips. “He has?”

“Yeah!” His eyes widened to enunciate. “Mom kept teasing him for years about you. That he would settle down only when his beloved Jenny returned.”

Jenny bit her lip. “You're not serious.”

“I am! I swear to God. Wait till mom knows about this. She’ll probably throw a party or something.”

Jenny laughed out loud, and Dexter joined in. “I hope he comes back soon. It’s so annoying whenever he has to go to Sydney.”

“Yeah. He’s been avoiding this trip for several months now.”

“But he just went two months ago.”

Dexter gaped at her, his eyes narrowed. “Ahan?”

Jenny snickered. “He went for ten days. God!” She rolled her eyes. “I was so bored.”

Dexter swiftly looked away and took another long swig of his beer.

“Is something wrong?” confusion swamped Jenny. As soon as she mentioned Cooper’s last visit to Sydney, Dexter’s face had clouded.

“No. Everything’s fine. Do you think you could get his golf clubs for me? He said they’re in his bedroom closet.”

Jenny swiftly stood up to find them, wondering why in hell Dexter suddenly turned so aloof and distant.
What was going on between the brothers? Did they have a personal rift, business problems
? “Sure.”

“I’d get them myself but it’s probably…you probably live in that bedroom too.”

Jenny couldn’t bite back a chuckle as he tried to probe. “Yes. That’s very thoughtful of you, Dex.”

She found the clubs behind the array of Cooper’s suits, and Dexter stood up to leave as soon as she handed them to him. “Thanks, Jen. It’s been so awesome to see you. Now I’m going to go home and call mom to tell her the good news.”

Jenny smiled and hugged him tightly. “Come over for dinner with your wife when Cooper returns.”

“Will do,” he promised sweetly and left.

Jenny still felt a tiny wiggle in her chest over what Dexter had said – or not said essentially. Something had made him shut down a little. She shrugged.
I’ll ask Cooper.
With Cooper being the founder of Farrell Corp., and later hiring all four of his brothers, things were bound to get tricky between them.

**

Three days later, Jenny pressed the phone to her ear as Cooper told her he loved her. “I miss you, Jen. I’m trying my damndest to hurry this up. Why don’t you fly over to see me?”

“I told you. I can’t now. The auditing team is keeping the whole bank busy. I can’t ask for leave.”

He sighed. “I know.”

“Coop…do you and Dex have an issue? Like problems at work or something?”

Cooper paused. “Not really. Why? Did he say something?”

“No, he didn’t say anything. He just got a little weird while I was talking to him. I thought maybe you two…”

“No. Dex is the only one I don’t have problems with. That’s why I've kept him in New York and the rest I’ve stationed in Sydney.”

“Okay. Just had the niggling feeling.”

“However, I think now he and I are going to have problems, since he told mom about you and she’s going bonkers.”

Jenny chortled. “What did she say?”

“She’s planning to come with me, to stay with us.”

“That’s nice.”

“No. I've told her it’s not a good idea. Not yet, not until we…you know.”

“Have sex?” Jenny offered.

He guffawed. “No. Until we both know what we have is headed in the right direction. That we have something worth showing.”

“Oh.”

“Listen, I have to go. I’ll call you when I get back to my hotel alright?”

“Okay. Bye. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She hung up dejectedly, and glanced around the apartment, wondering what to do.

Her gaze fell on his desk in the far end of the apartment. It needed to be dusted and cleaned, so she got a dust cloth. She collected the random sheets of paper lying on the desk, and opened the top drawer to see if they needed to be sorted. It was stuffed full of papers, and as she extracted them out, she realized they were financial statements and credit card bills.

She hadn’t planned to snoop, but her eye fell on a considerable amount of money charged by The Ritz. She sat at his desk and wondered why he had to stay at a hotel in the city, when he had an apartment. He probably didn’t have the apartment back then, which meant the papers were useless and old. She sighed at Cooper’s laziness, and checked the date.

Feb 18.

Feb 18?

She knew the date well. On Feb. 17, she had lost her job and come to New York. And the next day, Cooper had left for Sydney.

“What the hell?” she whispered, checking and double-checking the date on the statement.
Maybe it’s last year’s statement.

No.

His credit card was charged with ten nights worth of stay, at The Ritz in New York.

In the days he had said he was in Sydney.

She rested her chin on her hand. “What is this?” she hissed, confusion swamping her. Then a pretty image crossed her mind.
Celia, blonde, gorgeous, model. She had walked in on them the previous night, and he had suddenly decided to get up and go to Sydney.

Or T
he Ritz.

Anger burned her insides.

Cooper had been with Celia for ten days. At The Ritz. God! She shook her head, clasping her forehead. When Cooper came back, he had been so persuasive, so sure of what he wanted. He had barged in on her and commanded that she sleep with him.

And being stupidly naively idiotic, she had thought he had
a thing
for her.

“Oh, my God!” She couldn’t breathe, and felt nauseous. She covered her mouth with her hand.
Relax! We hadn’t been together. We hadn’t been sleeping together. He had just had me over, given me a place to sleep, and then maybe he went off to meet Celia.

For ten days.

The anxiety returned. She could just picture Cooper’s bare, gorgeous body on top of…Celia’s.

“Ugh!” Her heart was ripping up into a hundred pieces. She covered her face with her hands, and tears spilled from her eyes.

What am I doing? Why is this so hard? Why can’t I just stop having these surprise demons crash into my life and scatter everything?

As soon as she got everything together, the shambles that was her life, something came along to destroy her balance once again. She sniffled and wiped the tears off her cheeks.

Cooper hadn’t essentially cheated on her. But he had lied. He had said he was not sleeping with Celia, and he had said he was in freaking Sydney.

Her lips parted and her eyes widened.
So that’s what had happened to Dexter!
As soon as she mentioned that Cooper had gone to Sydney two months ago, his face had clouded, and he had become reserved.

Dexter was covering up for his brother. He had realized that Cooper had lied to Jenny.

She felt pathetic. First Cooper didn’t even think she was special enough to tell his family about her, and then she had stupidly admitted in front of his brother how idiotically trusting she was. Cooper was a womanizer, just like she had thought earlier, and she had to run before this got out of hand.

Angry, furious at being treated like a doormat by Cooper, she retrieved his iPad from the drawer and went through the contacts.
There!
She scribbled Cooper’s architect’s phone number on the back of the credit card statement.

**

Traffic roared behind her as she stood in front of the picturesque little apartment building. She stepped inside, and went straight to the lobby. “Celia Banks? She’s expecting me.”

Her heart slamming in her chest, she wondered wildly what she was doing. Once the initial fury wore off, she was shaking, her legs trembling.
Do I really want to see the woman Cooper slept with for ten days? While I lay in his apartment, believing stupidly that he was in Sydney?

She swallowed and fidgeted outside Celia’s apartment. As she raised her hand to knock, nostalgia gripped her.

Months ago, she had been engulfed in the same confusion, same embarrassment, when she had come to Cooper’s place. She had known she had to knock, but at the same time she hadn’t wanted to. It was utter helplessness.

Sighing, she finally tapped on the door and almost instantly it was pulled open. Celia stared back at her, a polite smile on her face. “Hi.”

Jenny was taken aback by her cordiality, “Hey, Celia.”

“Come in, please!” She swiftly drew back. Jenny sat on a high backed chair next to the large windows that overlooked the street, and Celia came to sit beside her. “You wanted to talk? I’m sure this is about Cooper so fire away.” She chuckled shyly.

“I'm sorry, Celia. I know you don’t owe me anything, but I really need to know something.” When Celia stared at her questioningly, Jenny looked away gutlessly. Did she want to know? If Celia admitted that she had been with Cooper, she was sure she was going to die. “Have you met Cooper since you came to his apartment?”