Page 41 of Craving Cooper

Laurel tilts her head up, frowning at him, although her eyes are still filled with an abundance of love. “I didn’t tell you, but Mallory was coming to the festival with Cooper.”

He turns to me. “You kept that quiet.”

Before I can reply, Laurel nudges in to him. “Stop it, Brady. Be kind.”

“What about?”

“Cooper and Mallory.”

“I didn’t know there was a Cooper and Mallory,” he says, grinning.

Neither did I, but I like the sound of it. There’s a ring to ‘Cooper and Mallory’ or ‘Mallory and Cooper’. It rolls off the tongue, whichever way you say it.

Laurel blushes, looking back at me. “Sorry,” she says. “I must have misunderstood.”

“Misunderstood what?” I ask, joining their conversation at last.

“Oh… nothing.”

That’s about as credible as me suddenly developing a taste for Meredith’s crazy paintings, and I shake my head, stepping just a little closer. “No. You know something I don’t. And it’s about me… evidently. Me and Mallory?”

She sucks in a breath, looking pained… although I don’t think it’s got anything to do with her back. Then she glances up at Brady, although he just shrugs, which suggests he has no idea what’s coming. Getting no help from him, she looks back at me again. “Okay… I met Mallory yesterday.”

“I know you did. She told me. What I don’t understand is what that has to do with me… and her.”

“It’s just that she was excited, because you’d asked her to come to the festival with you.”

I’m intrigued by the idea of Mallory being excited about anything, but I want to know more. “What did she say?” I ask.

Laurel hesitates for a second. It’s long enough to pique my interest and then she says, “Not very much. I was in a hurry to get to the school to collect Addy, and as I can’t walk very fast at the moment, I couldn’t stay and talk.”

She’s hiding something. That can’t have been all there was to it. If it was, how would she have known Mallory was ‘excited’? It doesn’t add up. I’m about to ask her what gave Mallory away when Brady says, “I didn’t realize you and Meredith had officially broken up.”

I turn to him, shrugging my shoulders. “Neither did I until yesterday.”

“You mean she called at last?”

“No. Angela told me Meredith had asked to have her stall moved so she could be next to Zeke Hooper.”

“Who’s Zeke Hooper?” he asks. Brady knows everyone who lives here, but Zeke Hooper isn’t from Hart’s Creek, so he can be excused.

“He’s the pottery guy,” I say, turning and pointing in the vague direction of his stall. I let my eyes wander back there, unsurprised when I see Meredith has returned to his side, and they’re fooling around again.

“They need to get a room,” Laurel whispers under her breath.

“Yeah.” Brady stands up straight, looking a lot more official all of a sudden. “If they keep that up, I’ll have to go over there and speak to them… or arrest them. One or the other.”

“You can do whatever you like, as far as I’m concerned.”

He turns back to me, tilting his head. “At least you’ve seen the light at last,” he says. “I know you only tolerated her for S-E-X, but I can’t believe she was worth it.”

Addy suddenly pipes up from beside him, tugging on his arm. “What’s S-E-X?” she says, and I smile, although I notice his slight groan and the way he turns to Laurel, who narrows her eyes at him.

“Sorry,” he whispers to her and then crouches down in front of Addy, taking both of her hands in his, while she gazes at him adoringly, waiting for an explanation. I can’t wait to hear it myself… and I can’t stop smiling either. “It’s something grown-ups do,” he says. I’d hoped for better than that, but I guess she’s only five, and I watch while she takes that in, frowning for a second, and then nodding her head.

“Like having ice-cream for breakfast?”

I laugh out loud, and he turns his head, glaring at me, before he looks back at Addy. “It was once,” he says. “Just once. Are you never gonna let me forget it?”

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