She smiled at him weakly.
“Look what you do to me.”
He took her hand and brought it down, wrapping her fingers tightly around the shaft of his arousal. Josie caught her breath and dared to look down, down at the part of him she’d felt too shy to study in any detail before. He moved against her hand, and she felt a wave of desire that was so intense it nearly knocked her over.
She
did this to him . . .
Her eyes flashed back up to Cooper’s face. He was watching her through heavily-lidded eyes, his pleasure obvious.
He reached for her, touching her as intimately as she touched him, smiling his delight as he discovered the warm wetness of her own arousal. Josie heard herself moan, and she straddled him, wanting him now, not willing to wait another instant.
But he made her wait, kissing her hard as he quickly covered himself with a condom that he’d taken from his wallet. Then he pulled her toward him, holding her tightly, his muscular chest pressed against the softness of her breasts as she moved her hips, pushing herself down on top of him.
Josie had one brief flash of shock—shock that she dared to be so aggressive, shock that, for this, their first time making love, she was on top, actively giving instead of simply receiving.
But then she forgot about being embarrassed or shy or shocked as they began to move together. Slowly at first, then faster, clinging to each other. Cooper kissed her savagely, fiercely, then suddenly pulled back, trying to still the motion of her hips by holding her tightly.
“Josie! God—if we don’t slow down—”
But Josie didn’t want to slow down. She wanted more,
more—
She heard Cooper moan, his words a jumbled mixture of English and Spanish, and he gave up trying to hold himself back. He lay back on the bed, pulling her down on top of him, matching her rhythmic movements with thrusts that drove him deeply inside of her.
It was just what Josie wanted, and the world around her exploded, sending them hurtling together through space. She heard herself cry out as wave upon wave of pleasure spun through her, each one impossibly stronger than the last. She clung to Cooper and he held her just as tightly through his own turbulent release.
He kissed her again, this time a gentle, tender kiss, as they floated back down to earth.
They lay together in silence. Josie slowly became aware of the sound of the rain on the roof, the nearly inaudible ticking of her clock, the hushed sound of tires as cars passed on the wet street below. She heard Cooper’s breathing, slow and steady, felt the rhythm of his heart beating close to hers.
He was stroking her back very lightly with the tips of his fingers—up and down, from her shoulders to her derriere. It was soothing—and disturbingly sexy.
Josie lifted her head from Cooper’s shoulder to find him watching her. He smiled and her heart flip-flopped. His smile was utterly unaffected, totally, genuinely happy and content. There was a matching look in Cooper’s eyes—a look of supreme satisfaction and peace that she’d never seen there before.
“I love you,” he said. “Let’s get married right away.”
Married. He
was
serious—all that stuff he’d said out in the hall about the rest of their lives . . . Her surprise must have shown on her face, because he frowned slightly.
“You
are
going to marry me, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Are you asking?” Josie said breathlessly.
“I thought I already had.”
Josie rolled off of him, but he didn’t let her sit up. He grabbed her and pulled her down on the bed next to him, snuggling against her.
“You used the word ‘forever,’ ” she said, reaching out to touch his hair. “You didn’t say ‘marriage.’ Some people don’t want to get married—”
“I do,” he said without hesitation. “Do you?”
“I’m impossible to live with,” Josie said slowly. “The business runs my life. When I have deadlines, you’ll never see me—”
“I’ll come into your office and we can do it under your desk,” Cooper said, kissing her.
Josie laughed.
“I’m serious,” he insisted.
“I don’t have a private office—”
“Then, when I come in, David and the rest of ’em will have to take a break,” Cooper said. “I’ll share your brain, babe, but I won’t share your body with anyone.”
Josie laughed, but her laughter was sad. “Cooper, fidelity is the only thing I
can
promise you,” she said. “The business is my number one priority right now.”
“I can live with that,” he said, tracing her eyebrows and the edges of her ears. “I’m remarkably adaptable—”
She shook her head. “You’d be second place in my life, Cooper. You don’t deserve to be second place to anything.”
He was silent then for a long time.
Josie felt her eyes fill with tears, knowing that she’d hurt him.
“Joze, you said that you love me.”
“I do.”
“I do, too, babe,” he said, kissing her. “It’s that simple. As long as my rival’s not human, I can handle not being first place in your life. Marry me.”
“Cooper—”
“Not ‘Cooper.’ ‘Yes.’ Try it. ‘Yes.’ It’s a very easy word to say.”
“But—”
“Closer. You got it down to one syllable this time,” Cooper said, grinning. “Try it in Spanish if you want.
‘Si.’
Even easier to pronounce. Come on, let’s hear it.”
“Cooper, I’m thinking about
you
—”
He turned, flipping her onto her back, pinning her gently to the bed. He was smiling, but his eyes were deadly serious. “I don’t care,” he said. “Whatever problems you can come up with—I don’t care. I love you and I already told you I’m never going to leave. You can’t shake me, babe, so you might as well give in gracefully. Marry me.”
“Yes.”
Cooper had been right. It had been a remarkably easy word to say.
Now, more than five years later, sitting alone in the darkness, Josie couldn’t keep from crying.
She loved Cooper ten times as much as she had back then, but she
still
couldn’t put him before Taylor-Made Software. He
still
only held second place in her life.
Or did he?
The thought of him being gone—
permanently
gone—left her feeling as frightened and sick as she felt at the thought of losing her business.
But surely there was a way that she could keep both Cooper and the company. Somehow, they could work it out. Cooper hadn’t given her the nickname “Queen of Negotiators” for nothing.
Besides, she thought, he hadn’t really left her. He’d simply needed some time to think—that’s what he’d said, right? He wouldn’t actually go and
leave
her. He’d promised he wouldn’t, and Cooper didn’t break his promises.
Of course, everyone had their limit. It
was
possible that Cooper had finally reached his.
THREE
A
S THE
yellow cab pulled into the driveway of the Connecticut house, it nearly had a head-on collision with Cooper’s red ’66 Mustang, which was pulling out. Both drivers veered to the right and slammed on their brakes, coming to a screeching halt.
“You can drop me here,” Josie said rather breathlessly to the cab driver, handing him the wad of bills she had gotten from the bank machine before leaving New York City earlier that morning.
As she climbed out of the taxi, she could see Cooper. He’d gotten out of his car, and was standing in the driveway, staring at her as if she were Elvis stepping out of a UFO. There was so much amazement and surprise on his face, Josie felt her heart clench in pain.
He truly hadn’t expected her to come after him.
How could he have thought she wouldn’t come?
As the cab backed out of the driveway, Josie slowly walked toward Cooper. He smiled at her, but his smile was shaky, and she could see tears in his eyes.
He apologized as he pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he held her close. “God, I’m so sorry.”
She dropped her bag on the gravel and wrapped her arms around his waist. She could hear his heart beating, strong and steady, as she pressed her head against his chest.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said.
“I was on my way home,” he said, kissing her. His smile still wasn’t up to its full wattage. “Another few minutes, and you would’ve missed me.”
“Oh, Lord,” Josie said.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Cooper said. “I’m not usually so insecure, but I was starting to have some doubts and—”
“Oh Cooper, you know that I love you,” she said. Tears escaped from her eyes, rolling down her checks.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I just didn’t know how much.”
Gently he caught the tears that were falling with his knuckles, brushing them away. Cupping her face with his hands, he kissed her deeply.
Damn, he was tired. He hadn’t slept at all last night. He hadn’t even tried. He’d sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and trying to come up with a solution to their problems. For a while, he’d contemplated a permanent, final solution—separation or even divorce. But as the night wore on, he realized the bittersweet truth. Josie owned him, heart and soul. Without her, he’d be empty, a mere shell of a man. No matter how difficult living with her was going to be over the next thirteen months, and even though there was no guarantee that things would ever change, he knew he would be far happier with her than without her.
As he’d focused his attention on finding ways to make the next thirteen months easier for both of them, he’d been running on caffeine and adrenaline. And a healthy dose of fear had added more fuel to his energy source. What if, he had wondered, what if now that he’d walked out she wouldn’t take him back?
But she’d come after him. She loved him enough to skip work and follow him.
Cooper’s relief was total. And right on the heels of that relief came a wave of fatigue so intense he felt himself sway and nearly fall over.
“Let’s go inside,” he heard Josie say. “If we’re going to talk, I’m going to need some coffee. I didn’t sleep a wink last night.” She chuckled. “You didn’t either, from the looks of things.”
As she picked up her bag, he pulled his from the backseat of his car, along with a tube of drawings that he’d done. Holding tightly to each other’s hand, they walked up the hill to the house.
Cooper had designed this house. Josie was still surprised every time she saw it. She’d seen work of his that had been bold or quirky, with an underlying hint of his humor, but this house was all softness and grace. Cooper had envisioned it as a place to relax, to unwind, and everything about the house, from the beautiful wraparound porch to the faintly Victorian tower, was soothing to the eye.
They went up onto the porch and Cooper unlocked the front door.
Josie set her bag down by the stairs leading up to the second floor and followed Cooper into the kitchen.
The kitchen was her favorite room in the entire house. It was a big, spacious room, with huge windows on each side to let in the cool breezes in the summer and the sunshine in the winter. Large squares of warm, earth-colored Mexican tile covered the floor, and the cabinets and counter tops were a bright, clean white.
As Josie switched on the coffee-maker and started measuring the water and grounds, Cooper sat heavily in a chair at the kitchen table.
“I may have to mainline that stuff to keep coherent,” he said.
She turned toward him. “Then maybe we should wait to talk,” she said. “We could take a nap first. I could use some sleep myself.”
“Isn’t Fenderson waiting for your decision?”
Josie shook her head. “I told them I needed an extra day,” she said. “I have until tomorrow, but then they’re going to approach another software company.”
“I think I’d feel better if we talked now,” Cooper said. He smiled tiredly. “Come on, O Queen of Negotiators, hit me with the deal. What concessions are you willing to make to me in order to get this contract with Fenderson?”
“I’m willing to concede the whole ball of wax,” Josie said. “If you really don’t want me to take the contract, Cooper, I won’t.”
Cooper reached out to adjust a pair of ceramic airplane salt and pepper shakers that were in the center of the table. “You’ll concede,” he repeated. “But not happily.” He looked up at Josie, but she had turned and was pouring the water into the coffee-maker.
“No,” she said quietly, her back still to him. “Not happily.”
“What else did you come up with?” he asked. “There’s an awful lot of room between all and nothing. A creative thinker like you surely came up with at least one alternative plan.”
“I’ll expand my staff,” she said, turning to face him. “I’ll hire a senior level programmer and two personal assistants.”
“That won’t do a hell of a lot of good unless you actually learn to delegate,” Cooper said.
Josie sat down across the table from him. Dressed in her jeans and T-shirt she looked like a college student, not a company president. She held out her hand, and Cooper took it. Her fingers were slender and cool compared to his. His hand dwarfed hers, enveloping her with his warmth and strength.
“I’ll learn to delegate if it kills me,” she said.
He laughed, but his eyes were sad. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I’ll still ultimately be responsible for the project,” she said.
“That’s also what I’m afraid of,” Cooper said. “Even if you do manage to delegate some of your work, you’ll be hovering around the office, worrying about whether or not it’s getting done properly.”
He sighed, and Josie could see the weariness in his eyes. It was more than physical fatigue, and that frightened her. The words she had spoken just yesterday to David Chase came back to haunt her. Was Cooper finally getting tired of her?
“What if you put good old Dave in charge of the entire project?” he asked.
But she was already shaking her head. “It wouldn’t make any difference,” she said. “It’s still my company, Coop. It’s still my butt that’s on the line if something goes wrong.”
“There
are
people who own companies who have nothing to do with the day-to-day operations,” Cooper said. “It could be a sweet deal, babe. You could put someone else in charge, then spend all your time eating bonbons, watching soap operas and collecting your dividend checks.”
“Bonbons, huh?” Josie said with a weak smile. “That’s not really my style.”
“Even if I’m the one who’s feeding them to you?”
She pulled her hand free. “Cooper, I know you don’t understand why I worry so much about the company—”
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. You’ve built this amazing thing out of nothing, Josie. It was tough going for a while there, but now the company is healthy, it’s expanding. It’s time to stop worrying.”
“It’s not that easy—”
“It should be.”
“But it’s not.” The tears were back in her eyes. “I keep thinking, what if we get sued? What if we miss our deadlines and our clients stop using our services? What if—”
“What if you continue to succeed, and you end up richer than God?”
“What if we don’t? What if the bank calls in our loans and our creditors demand payment all at the same time? What if we go bankrupt?”
Cooper leaned across the table and took her hand. “Josie, you will never be poor again. I promise you that,” he said. “Even if Taylor-Made Software shut its doors permanently tomorrow, I would still be earning enough as an architect to keep you in caviar and furs. Assuming, of course, that you ate caviar and wore fur.”
“What if something happened to you?”
“Life insurance,” he countered, adding, “damn, you should get a job writing worst-case scenarios.”
Her fingers tightened on his. “Coop, I know I’m an intelligent human being,” she said. “And I hear what you’re saying. I see my balance sheets, I read the financial reports. Everything’s great, everything’s fine. I
know
that. I’m not stupid. But I can’t stop this panicky feeling I get in my stomach. I get scared. I get so scared—”
She shook her head, feeling Cooper’s blue gaze on her.
“I don’t know what to say to make you feel any more secure,” he said.
“Let me bring in all that money, the two million dollars,” she said, her dark eyes pleading with him. “After that, I promise you, I’ll try to cut my time back.”
Cooper laughed. “You’ll promise that you’ll
try.”
She nodded. “I’ll hire those extra people, and I’ll keep them on staff after the project’s finished.”
“A senior level programmer and two assistants,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Make it two senior level programmers and two assistants,” he said, “and you’ve got the beginning of a deal.”
“Only the beginning?” she asked.
He brought her hand to his lips. “I’ve got a few other demands,” he said, “and maybe a few solutions.”
Cooper set her hand gently down on the table, then pulled a blueprint free from the carrying tube he’d taken out of the car. He unrolled the blueprint on the table, turning it so it faced her.
Josie looked down at the large sheet of paper, frowning slightly. “What’s this?”
“Your office,” he said. “The executive floor. I’ve made a few changes.”
She could see that. David’s office and one of the conference rooms were currently next to her office, but in this drawing David had been moved to an empty space across the hall, and the conference room was . . .
“That’ll be my office,” Cooper said, pointing to the former conference room.
Surprised, she stared up at him.
He smiled. “If you’re going to be over there day and night,” he said, “I want to be there, too.”
She couldn’t stop the rush of tears that filled her eyes. Cooper, who loved his office at home, who hated the thought of commuting, who usually worked in his underwear until noon, would give all that up just to be closer to her.
“I’ve also got some demands regarding the length of your work day,” he was saying. “I’m putting my foot down at anything longer than a fourteen hour day, the rare emergency being the exception. Does that sound fair?”
Josie nodded. It was fair. It was more than fair. The tears had vanished as quickly as they’d come, and she was filled now with a sense of excitement, a feeling of euphoria. She was winning, big time. She was going to get the Fenderson contract, and she had proof that Cooper loved her, perhaps more than ever. To think that he would go to such extremes for her . . .
“What’s this?” she said, bending over the blueprint, pointing to the space that David’s office used to occupy. There seemed to be a smaller room there, and it looked as if Cooper had enlarged her private bathroom.
“That’s our living quarters,” Cooper said.
She looked up at him in surprise and he smiled.
“It’s just big enough for a couch, a bed, a TV and a VCR. It’s for those nights that we don’t feel like making the trip home,” he explained. His smile turned into a decidedly wicked grin. “I’m sure we can find a use for the forty-five minutes we’ll save by not commuting.” He pointed down at the floor plan. “I’ve added an extra door to your office so you’ll have direct access to that room. We both will.”
Direct and
private
access. As long as her office door was closed, no one would ever know if she was sitting behind her desk or . . . Josie started to laugh.
“I added a shower and a jacuzzi to your bathroom, and replaced the single sink with a double,” he said. “I’ve also made allowances for closets. If we’re going to stay overnight, we’re going to want something to change into.”
Josie nodded, still looking down at the blueprint. “How soon can you get the work started?” she asked.
“It’s okay?”
She met his eyes. “It’s fabulous,” she said. “I’m going to love having you around all day. I can’t believe you thought of this.”
Cooper smiled. “Well, you know what they say, babe. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” His gaze softened. “And when it comes to you, I’ve got one hell of a lot of will.”
Josie woke up alone in the big master bedroom of the Connecticut house. From the looks of the sun slanting in through the windows, it was late afternoon. She’d gone and slept away the entire day.
She stretched, luxuriating in the knowledge that all the work on her desk was over an hour’s drive away. Even if she rushed, she couldn’t get into the office until dark. As long as she was playing hooky, she might as well make a full day of it and not plan to go in until tomorrow morning.
And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t accomplished quite a bit today, she thought with a smile. David Chase had been very pleased when she called and asked him to tell the Fenderson people to send over the contract. In fact, he’d been so pleased that he hadn’t even minded when she told him that his office was going to be moved. Of course, she hadn’t quite told him
why.
Cooper, with his flashy, quirky, eccentric style drove staid, conservative David straight up the wall. Having Cooper around all day, every day, was going to be difficult for David. Nevertheless, Josie wanted to tell her vice president the news in person, break it to him gently, so to speak.