Once back at the brownstone—I know I really ought to head back to the office, but seeing as how I’m home now anyway, I decide I’ll just give Lucy a quick walk—I pause briefly in front of the antique, gilt-framed mirror in the front hallway to reapply my lip gloss, while Cooper goes back to his office to replay his messages. I’ve already glanced around to make sure that there are no signs of the love tussle Jordan and I shared on the runner the night before.
Still, when Cooper comes out of his office a second later and asks, “What exactly is going on with you and Jordan?” I nearly have a heart attack.
“Wh-what do you mean?” I stammer.
“Well, what was he doing outside Fischer Hall today, anyway?”
“Oh,” I say, relaxing. “That. Nothing. Just talking.”
“I see.” Cooper leans against the door frame, his blue eyes brighter than normal. “So you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that blond he was photographed by the Post kissing on my doorstep?”
I almost swallow my tongue.
I can’t believe he’s seen it! Are thing sever going to go my way? Or had I used up all my luck already? You know, those ten years of good luck I once read that everybody gets—one magical decade where nothing goes wrong… or at least, nothing major.
Had my decade of luck already gone by? And if so, can I have a do-over? Because if someone had asked me, “Hey, Heather, do you want your decade of luck between ages fourteen and twenty-four or twenty-four and thirty-four?” I’d have chosen the latter. I really would have.
Because who wants the best years of their life to be the ones they spent in high school?
I guess my extreme consternation must show on my face, since a second later Cooper has straightened and is going, “What’s the matter?” in a voice that—almost—sounds like he actually cares.
Which just makes me want to start sobbing, right then and there.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Really.”
It isn’t nothing, though. I mean, everyone else can deny it, but I know—I know — someone is trying to kill me. I had sex with my ex, who is engaged to someone with a way better career—and much smaller butt—than mine. And, worst of all, Cooper’s seen the photographic evidence of my indiscretion… or at least, of what led up to it.
“Something’s wrong,” Cooper says, coming to stand beside me in front of the mirror. “Don’t deny it. I’m a trained observer, remember? There’s this little line you get between your eyebrows when you’re upset—” He points at my reflection. “See it?”
God. He’s right. I have a little worry line between my eyebrows. My God, if I keep this up, I’ll have wrinkles by the time I’m thirty.
With an effort, I force my face to relax.
“It’s nothing,” I say, quickly, averting my gaze from my reflection. “Really. That thing with Jordan last night —it was just a good-bye kiss.”
Cooper looks at me. Skeptically.
“A good-bye kiss,” he says.
“Yeah. Because it’s, you know, really over between us. Jordan and me.” I clear my throat. “You know. Really,really over.”
Cooper nods, though he still looks dubious.
“Right,” he says. “Well, if you say—”
“We’re both ready to move on,” I interrupt, warming to my story, “at last. You know, we needed to have some closure, because the way things ended—with me storming out like that, and all—well, it wasn’t healthy. Things are good now between us. We both know it’s really… over.”
“So if things are really, really over between the two of you,” Cooper asks, “what was Jordan doing in front of Fischer Hall this morning when that planter fell on him?”
Dang! I forgot about that!
But it’s okay. I have the situation under control.
“Oh, that?” I say, with a breezy laugh. Yes! I even manage a breezy laugh. Maybe I, like Britney and Mandy, have a film career in my future. Maybe I should be a theater major, like Marnie. Maybe someday I’ll have an Oscar to put on the shelf next to my Nobel Prize. Wait. Is a Nobel Prize a statue or a medal? I can’t remember.
“Yeah,” I say. Still breezy. “He was just returning a, um, CD that I’d left at our place. You know, when I moved out.”
“A CD,” Cooper says.
“Uh-huh,” I say. “My, um,Tank Girl soundtrack. You can’t find it anymore. It’s very rare.”
“I see,” Cooper says. I try not to notice how, now that he’s taken off his leather jacket, his biceps—barely visible beneath the short sleeves of his plain gray T-shirt—are just as defined as his brother’s….
Only from actual work, not working out, I know. It’s not all sneaking around with a camera when you’re a PI. I imagine Cooper has to… you know. Lift things. And stuff. I wonder if maybe he ever gets sweaty doing it and has to take his shirt off completely, you know, because he’s so hot…
Whoa. I so need to go back to work.
But all this detective stuff has reminded me of something.
“Yeah,” I say. Now that the danger of tears has been averted, I’m feeling a little more daring. “In fact, now that Jordan and I have everything settled, I feel, you know, like celebrating.”
“Celebrating,” Cooper echoes tonelessly.
“Yeah. You know. I never go out anymore. So I thought, Hey, why not go to the, um, Pansy Ball tonight.”
“The Pansy Ball?” Cooper’s gaze doesn’t stray from my face. I hope he isn’t checking to see if I’m lying. I really do want to go to the Pansy Ball. Just not, you know, for the reasons I’m telling him.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a ball to honor the trustees and people who’ve been given Pansys. You know, for service to the college. Rachel’s getting one.”
It isn’t my imagination. At the sound of my boss’s name, Cooper abruptly loses interest in the conversation. In fact, he walks over to the mail that has just slid through the drop slot—to Lucy’s intent interest—and, after wrestling it from her, starts sorting through it.
“Rachel, huh?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “The tickets are like two hundred bucks, though. To the ball. And God knows I can’t afford one. But I was thinking, your grandfather was an alumnus, right? So I bet you have access to some free ones. Tickets, I mean.”
“Probably,” Cooper says, giving Lucy, who is whining piteously, a J. Crew catalog to chew on.
“So could I, maybe, have one?” I ask. Subtle. That’s me. Miss Subtle.
“So you can spy on Christopher Allington?” Cooper doesn’t even look up from the mail. “Not a chance.”
My jaw drops.
“But—”
“Heather, didn’t you hear a word that detective said? He’s going to look into it. Subtly. In the meantime, stay out of it. At best, the only thing you’re going to get for your efforts is sued.”
“I swear I’m not gonna talk to him,” I insist, raising my right hand and making the Girl Scout’s honor symbol with three fingers. Except, of course, I never was a Girl Scout, so it doesn’t count. “I won’t go near him.”
“Correct me if I’m mistaken,” Cooper says, “but aren’t you convinced he tried to kill you today?”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out,” I say. “C’mon, Cooper, what could possibly happen at the Pansy Ball, for God’s sake? He’s not going to try to do anything to me there, in front of everybody… ”
“No, he isn’t,” Cooper says. “Because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
I blink. Wait. What did he just say?
“You—you want to go with me?”
“Only because if I don’t keep an eye on you, who knows what’ll fall on your head next time.” Cooper puts down the mail. His blue-eyed gaze bores into me like a pair of headlights. “And because I can see by the look in your eyes that you’re going to get your hands on a ticket somehow, even if it means seducing some unsuspecting rube in the geology department.”
I’m stunned. Cooper is taking me to the Pansy Ball! Cooper Cartwright is taking me out! It was almost like
