Page 46 of Craving Cooper

“Of course. She goes every year. I even knew she’d asked to have her stall placed alongside Zeke Hooper’s.”

“So, you knew they were together?”

“Yes.”

“And you still say you didn’t invite me there to make her jealous?”

“I do. If I reacted to seeing her with another man, I wasn’t aware of doing so… and my reaction was nothing more than disappointment.”

“That she’s with him now?”

“No. That I wasted too much time on her.” He wasn’t supposed to say that, and for a moment we just stare at each other. Then he sighs, shaking his head. “I feel like this is just one big misunderstanding.”

“Do you? How can you be sure what it is, when you don’t even know why you invited me to spend the afternoon with you? I—I thought you did it because you liked me, but…” My voice cracks, despite my best intentions, and he leans closer, although I shift back, keeping a distance between us.

“I do like you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You expect me to believe that when you have no idea why you asked me out in the first place, although you admit you knew your ex was gonna be there with her new boyfriend? Honestly, Cooper… it might feel like a misunderstanding to you, but it still feels like a set-up to me.”

“It’s not, although I guess I can see how it might have seemed that way,” he says, letting out another, longer sigh as he picks up Saffron and puts her down on the couch in the tiny space between us, ignoring the scowl she gives him and getting to his feet. “All I can say is, if I’ve hurt you, it wasn’t intentional, and I’m sorry.”

He turns, walking to the door and quietly lets himself out. Saffron looks up at me, as though she’s blaming me for his departure, and there’s a part of me that agrees with her.

Chapter Twelve

Cooper

I didn’t see that coming.

How could I have done? I thought Mallory left because she had a headache, not because she thought I’d used her.

I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t feel like that. And although it was never my intention, the fact that I can’t explain why I invited her to the festival, and that I knew Meredith would be there with Zeke Hooper by her side, definitely counted against me.

Which must be why I feel so bad. It’s not just disappointment that we’re not having dinner together tonight. It’s not just regret that she felt she had to lie to me about having a headache, so she could get away.

It’s more than that.

It feels like my insides have been ripped out.

I feel hollow. Empty. Numb.

Because, even if I didn’t do all the things she accused me of, I let her down. Our day wasn’t what she thought it was going to be. Hell, it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, either. But this isn’t about me. It’s about Mallory and her perception of me… which I think has taken a serious hit after today.

The question is, what can I do about it?

It’s an odd sensation to want to try, but I do. I need to work out what can I do to get us back on track… back to where we were when the thought of spending time with me was exciting to her. That’s what I need. I need to see that in person, instead of hearing about it from someone else. I need to know it’s real.

Going back up there doesn’t seem like the wisest move. I can still hear the distrust in her voice… still see the hurt and anger in her eyes, and I’m not sure I’m ready to face her again.

Not yet.

I keep repeating our conversation, but I can’t get my head around it all. That’s because I’ve never done any of this before, but it’s also because I hadn’t expected things to go the way they did. I’d already worked out that I couldn’t ask her outright why she’d been so excited about spending the day with me. Laurel clearly knew and wasn’t willing to say for some reason, but that didn’t make it any easier for me to ask Mallory, did it? So, I decided to ask her to have dinner with me instead, in the hope I’d find a way to ask her then. Not in so many words, perhaps, but as part of a longer, more interesting conversation. That was all I wanted… to have dinner with her, and to find out what was going on, while discovering more about her than the content of her resume. I honestly thought she’d say ‘yes’. Call me arrogant, or conceited, or self-obsessed, but I never anticipated a ‘no’, or that she’d have seen things the way she did.

Not in a million years.

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