Page 31 of Rebels and Roses

Cooper’s mouth opened as if to contradict her, but he snapped it shut before any words came out of his mouth. His lips were pressed into a thin, unhappy line, his moss-green eyes now a cold and icy gray.

“We should all have dinner,” Fiona said, clapping her hands together. “We can all get to know one another. It will be so much fun.”

Cooper looked like he was being led to the gallows, not an amusement park.

“I don’t think that’s a good?—”

“It will be great,” Fiona insisted. “I want to get to know your family. Dinner is on me. Where’s a good place to eat in your cute little town?”

“What about the tavern?” Frankie asked. “Everybody likes the food.”

“Yes, let’s go there,” Tom said. “The food is awesome. Lucy…Jane…you should join us, too. The more the merrier and all.”

Jane wanted to be there, and absolutely didn’t want to be there, in equal measures. The wanting to be there won out, however, by a nose. She was simply far too curious to sit home. Watching Cooper and his ex-wife was fascinating, a psychological study unfolding before her eyes.

I am a terrible human being.

“We…could go,” Lucy finally replied. “I don’t have any plans, but I can’t speak for Jane.”

Jane could feel the weight of Cooper’s gaze heavily, but she still couldn’t say whether he wanted her there or ten miles away. It didn’t matter, though. She wasn’t going to send Lucy into this cage match alone.

“I’m free.”

She could have been working on homework, but that would simply have to wait.

Fiona had her arm hooked through Cooper’s, a wide smile on her face. Cooper? His expression had closed up completely. If he’d been playing poker, no one would know whether he had a royal flush or a pair of twos.

This impromptu dinner party might just be a disaster in the making.

8

Cooper didn’t know what he’d done to piss off the universe, but he must have done something heinous for this sort of punishment. His ex-wife was in town, and if that wasn’t bad enough, she wanted all of them to have dinner together and pretend it wasn’t incredibly fucking awkward.

They hadn’t parted on terrible terms, although they hadn’t vowed to stay friends or some shit like that. They’d both realized the marriage wasn’t working, and they’d agreed that they needed to divorce and go their own way. At the end, there hadn’t been any screaming or crying - just a sad acknowledgment that it wasn’t going to work.

The last time Cooper had seen Fiona, she’d waved to him as she stepped into a taxi that would take her to the airport. She’d been planning to fly to Tahiti to meet some friends for a vacation.

She’d been happy and smiling, too. There had been no regret in their breakup, although there had been a few tense moments along the way. At one point, Fiona had vowed that she’d never see or talk to him again. He was fine with that.

He didn’t have a clue as to why she was acting like they were a couple, and their love still alive. She’d been hanging on his arm all night, trying to bring up inside jokes that no one else would understand. At one point, she’d pressed her lips to his cheek, leaving behind a lipstick mark that he’d scrubbed at with a napkin.

Just what game was she playing? He didn’t believe for a minute that she wanted him back. She hadn’t reached out in over six years. Not that he would have run back to her. Their relationship was over. Way over. Looking back, he wasn’t sure what had led him to marry her. Perhaps he’d just been young and optimistic.

It didn’t help that Jane was sitting down at the other end of the table, watching this all play out in front of her eyes. Did she think that he wanted Fiona to be there? Because his ex had been glued to his side, he hadn’t even had a chance to talk to Jane. He’d tried to call her earlier, but she hadn’t answered his calls or texts.

Her expression wasn’t giving much away either. She wasn’t hiding the fact that she was watching them, but she wasn’t showing outwardly how she felt about it.

He didn’t want to be sitting here listening to Fiona drone on about their travels ad nauseum. He would rather be with Jane - and he didn’t care what they did. Eat, talk, read, laugh, make love. He just liked being with her.

Tom and Fiona were getting messy drunk. They were partiers, so Cooper shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d wrongly assumed that Fiona must have slowed down a bit in the last several years. If anything, she was going as hard as she had when they were in their early twenties. Cooper couldn’t drink like that and still have a productive day afterward. He wasn’t a kid anymore, for Christ’s sake.

Fiona and Tom hadn’t received the memo that they weren’t kids anymore. After dinner, but before dessert, they’d pressed everyone to do tequila shots on top of the booze they’d already imbibed. Tom had been drinking whiskey neat, and Fiona had been downing glasses of red wine like they were water, and she was in the desert. Tequila on top of that was going to have both of them puking in the alley behind the tavern.

When did I get so uptight about partying? Right, when my body told me I was getting old.

These days, Cooper preferred quieter pursuits, preferably with a pizza and a ballgame on the television. If that made him boring, then he’d embrace it.

Tom had invited some girl to join them, and she was getting sloppy drunk as well. Giggling and practically sitting on Tom’s lap, they were both far too gone to be making any sense.

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