First Star I See Tonight

21

Piper folded her body over Jada’s to keep her safe. She was afraid to raise her head and expose any part of Jada to harm. The nightmare seconds dragged by. Was Coop dead? Let it be Hank who’d taken the bullet. Or the wall. Or the floor. Anything but Coop. He had to stay alive. He had to stay alive because she loved him-loved him with all her heart-and because she had to protect Jada and because he had to finish the job she couldn’t.

Coop, be alive.

A garbled woman’s scream. Not her own. Not Jada’s. Karah.

“You bitch!” Hank’s howl of outrage chilled Piper to the bone.

A fierce obscenity from Coop.

He was alive.

Jada’s body heaved beneath Piper. Where was the gun? Piper had to get the gun. She turned her head.

Coop had Hank trapped on the floor. There was blood.

Piper reared off Jada and dove for the gun. As she came to her knees with the weapon in both hands, she saw Karah standing just inside the door, her mouth an oval of horror. Piper shouted at her to call the police.

What happened next was short and brutal. Coop hauled Hank up by the throat and slammed him into the wall. He beat him until Hank collapsed unconscious to the floor.

Jada grabbed her Nerf gun. With sobs racking her body, she rushed toward Hank and fired at his crumpled figure. One foam bullet after another.

Piper saw the blood smear on the wall first and then, seconds later, she saw something far worse. A crimson rose blooming through the wool of Coop’s jacket.

The EMTs had to block her from climbing into the ambulance with him. She jumped in her car and followed, not thinking about speed limits but only about what parts of him that bullet might have hit. When they reached the ER, she refused to leave him alone for even a moment.

He’d been shot in the side. Both an entry and exit wound, so that was good. No vital organs hit. That was good, too. Except he’d been hurt, and that was horrible. Unthinkable.

She stood guard by his bed, cross-examining every doctor, nurse, technician, and orderly who came in to check on him. She even tried to go into the X-ray lab with him, but they threatened to call security.

Coop was fully conscious through all this, but he made no attempt to settle her down. Instead, he watched her with a kind of bemusement.

While Coop was in X-ray, Piper began putting it all together. She’d assumed he had only one enemy-Noah Parks. But she’d been wrong. Noah was behind the attempts to sabotage the club, the drone, and the false accusation. But Karah’s pathologically jealous ex-boyfriend was responsible for the rest. Hank believed Coop and Karah were lovers. He was the one who’d attacked Coop the night they’d come back from taking Faiza to Canada. He was the one who’d slashed Coop’s tires. She also suspected he’d known exactly who was behind the wheel of the Audi the night he’d run it off the road. If he couldn’t have Karah for himself, he wanted to make certain no other man could have her.

She told the police all of it and tried not to imagine what would have happened to Karah and Jada if Hank hadn’t gotten the apartments confused. Or what would have happened to all of them if Coop hadn’t shown up.

She waited until eight in the morning to call Heath, who came running into the emergency room barely half an hour later, his face as pale as a hospital sheet. His questions were terse but thorough, and as soon as he understood that Coop was going to be all right, he reverted to his normal manner with a nod toward his client stretched out on the hospital bed. “Nice nightie.”

“Leave him alone,” Piper snarled.

Coop and Heath exchanged looks she ignored. She didn’t want anyone harassing Coop about anything right now.

Later that morning, Piper talked to both Karah and Jada on the phone. Hank was in jail for attempted murder, along with a slew of other charges. Karah blamed herself for everything. “He was really sweet when we started dating, and by the time I realized how sick he was, it was too late. That’s why I left St. Louis. To get away from him. I never thought he’d follow me.”

Piper tried to comfort her and then spoke with Jada. Their conversation was reassuring. “Mom is going to make me see a counselor for a while to make sure I don’t, like, go psycho or anything because of what happened, but I’m pretty sure I won’t. And guess what else? After the police left, Mom said she’d take me out for pancakes, and with everything that happened, I wasn’t paying attention, and Clara shot me. I’m officially dead.”

“Oh, no. I’m really sorry.”

“I know. I thought I’d be more depressed, but it’s kind of okay because it was Clara who shot me, and her and I are kind of getting to be friends.”

“Still, after everything that happened today, that’s rotten timing.”

“Yeah, but I could tell she, like, felt really bad about it, and she needs the money even worse than I do, so I told her it was okay, and we’re going to hang out tomorrow and work on our project about child sex trafficking. The good thing is that I don’t have to carry around those stupid Nerf guns anymore.”

The doctors overrode Coop’s protests and insisted on keeping him overnight. Coop had already kicked Heath out, but he seemed to expect Piper to hang around, not that she would have left.

The orderly assigned to transport Coop from the ER to his private room looked like a nice kid, but Piper stayed by the wheelchair as they traveled up an elevator and down several long corridors. Coop fumed the whole time, not from pain, but because the medical staff wouldn’t let him walk.

There were too many people hanging around outside his room, and Piper wasn’t having it. “If you’re not his doctor or nurse, you shouldn’t be here. Move on.”

Mr. Nice Guy raised his hand from the wheelchair and gave his cocky grin. “Appreciate your concern.”

The adrenaline she’d been riding on had faded, leaving her exhausted and heartsick. All she wanted to do was get away, but she couldn’t leave him in a hospital full of people looking for excuses to come into his room. He needed someone stationed outside his door until he was discharged, and while a nurse took his vitals, she got Jonah on the phone and told him what had happened.

Coop had been given the hospital’s version of the penthouse-a large room with a city view. He had the head of the bed in an upright position as she came back into the room from talking to Jonah. “You should be lying down,” she said.

He looked at her oddly, as if she were a stranger he was trying to identify, but then he reverted back to his normal self. “Get serious. I had worse injuries in high school. I can’t believe they’re not letting me out until tomorrow.”

“It’s for your own good.” She turned her back on him and went to the window.

“Thanks, by the way,” he said. “I appreciate you watching out for me.”

He didn’t sound begrudging, and she pondered what it must have cost him to say those words. How could she have done this to herself? How could she have fallen in love with someone so different? “I’m the one who’s grateful,” she said. “If you hadn’t come back to the apartment…” She turned to him from the window. “Why did you?”

He dropped his head back onto the pillow. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“It couldn’t wait until morning?” She wrapped her arms around her chest, hugging herself.

“It was important,” he said.

She regarded him quizzically.

His jaw set in that obstinate way she’d come to know. “I was hoping you’d calmed down enough to realize this whole breaking-up thing makes no sense. Instead of that, we need to ratchet it up. That’s what I’d been planning to talk to you about at dinner on Wednesday night before you had your freak-out. Moving in together. My place, not yours.”

The knife twisted in her chest. “Why would I move in with you?”

His eyes narrowed. “It’s a good thing I have an oversize ego because if I didn’t, you’d have destroyed it.” She swallowed the constriction in her throat as he went on. “You’re being stubborn about this for no reason. It’s common sense.”

Could he really have convinced himself of something so fundamentally wrong? “I don’t know why you’d say that.”

“I’ve done a lot of thinking about the two of us this week.” The color was coming back to his face. “You look me in the eye and tell me this isn’t the best relationship you’ve ever had, because I know it’s the best one for me.”

That brought her to a full stop, and she quashed a dangerous spark of hope. “Really? If this is your best relationship, you are in serious need of therapy.”

She watched his stubbornness take over. The stubbornness that refused to accept a loss. The quality that made him a champion, but also made her so wary of him. She had to do something quickly. Something definitive. She knew exactly what it was, but she wasn’t certain she could go through with it. She took a deep breath. She had to do this for no other reason than that she loved him enough to want the best for him… even if it broke her heart.

“Here’s the thing, Coop…” She took a shaky breath. “As soon as the dust settles, you need to call Deidre.”

He tilted the bed back a few inches. “I’ve lost the desire to do business with her.”

“What happened with Noah wasn’t her fault, and I’m not talking about business. I’m talking about your personal relationship.” She pushed the words through her throat. “She’s better than Hollywood. The two of you are perfect for each other. And she’s already half in love with you. If we learned anything last night, we learned how short life can be. If you keep dallying around with another woman-namely me-you’re going to screw up your chance to find your perfect woman.”

He looked at her as though she’d developed a hole in her brain, and the bed came back up. “Deidre Joss is not my perfect woman.”

How could he not see what was so clear? “She is! She’s smart, successful, beautiful-the kind of woman who’ll always have your back. And she’s crazy about you. She’s also nice. A decent human being.”

“It’s official,” he declared. “You are out of your mind.”

“You’re thirty-seven years old. It’s time.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re trying to break up with me and fix me up with another woman, both at the same time? Do I have that right?”

“Not any woman. You and Deidre are a matched set. I’ve seen the way you act when you’re together. You could easily fall in love with her if you’d give it half a chance. It might not be clear to you what you should be doing with your life, but it’s clear to me.”

“Go ahead,” he said with something close to a sneer. “Tell me. I know you’re dying to.”

“All right. You need to get out of the nightclub business. It’s wrong for you. Buy some land. Plant it. Grow crap. And settle down… with the right woman. Someone who’s as… as dazzling as you are. You need someone spectacular. Someone brainy and gorgeous and successful, but grounded, too. Like you.”

He spoke with almost a sense of wonder. “This is so mind-numbingly fascinating. So tell me… What do I do about the fact that I might be maybe”-his gaze wavered ever so slightly-“falling a little bit in love with you?”

A sob threatened to spill right out of her. Somehow she managed to alter it into a harsh, unfunny laugh. “You’re not.”

“You know that, then.”

She did. As surely as she knew anything. A little bit in love. As if there were such a thing. She would not cry in front of him. Never. “You’re a champion. That’s in your blood. It’s the mind-set that’s made you great. But this is life, not a game. And instead of throwing up a smoke screen, think about what I’ve said. About you. About Deidre. About everything.”

This made him furious. “What happens with us, then? After I’ve hooked up with Deidre, that is.”

“Nothing happens with us.”

“Don’t you want to be pals?” The rough sweep of his arm made him wince, but he didn’t seem to care. “Get together now and then to have a couple of beers? Go to a strip club? Poker night? Just us guys.”

She couldn’t take any more. “I’ll wait in the hall until Jonah gets here.”

“You do that,” he said.

I might be maybe… falling a little bit in love with you. Love either was or wasn’t. She knew that now. For the first time since she was a kid, she cried. All the way to her apartment-big, blubbery tears that sloshed down her cheeks and dripped on her jacket. Tears that came from a well with no bottom.

She’d waited too long to fall in love. That was why this was so hard. She should have fallen in love for the first time when she was a teenager, like any normal girl. And a couple more times after that. If she’d done things the normal way, she’d have practice dealing with heartbreak, but she’d had none. That was why her world had fallen apart.

The Sonata’s front wheel climbed the curb as she turned into the alley behind Spiral. She had to pack up her things, but she couldn’t go inside with her nose running and tears everywhere. She couldn’t let anyone see her so broken. She backed up and drove blindly to the lakefront. When she got there, she stumbled across the grass to the lakeshore path.

The wind was sharp off the water. It cut hard through her sweatshirt, but her tears kept running. All the tears she’d never let herself shed over the years were escaping at the same time. Tears for a mother she couldn’t remember, a father who had loved and resented her, and an ex-quarterback who’d stolen her heart when she wasn’t paying attention.

She started to run. There weren’t many joggers on this part of the path, and a few snowflakes scuttled in the wind. November would be here in a couple of days. And then winter. A cold, Chicago winter. She ran faster, trying to outrun her misery.

A woman clad in trendy athletic gear and pushing a jogging stroller was running toward her. As the woman came closer, her pace slowed, and then stopped. “Are you all right?” she asked as her baby slept peacefully in the stroller.

Piper knew how crazed she must look. She slowed long enough to acknowledge the woman’s concern. “My… dog died.”

The woman’s ponytail swung. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Piper started to run again. She’d told another lie. She’d never been a liar, but now she’d become a pro. All those lies.

“I go by Esme. Lady Esme, actually. Esmerelda is a family name… The fact is… I’m your stalker.”

She spun around and yelled after the woman. “I broke up with a man I love with all my heart, and he will never, ever love me the same way, and I hurt so bad I don’t know what to do with myself.”

The only indication that the woman heard was the way she raised her arm from the handle of the jogging stroller and waved.

Piper gazed out at the lake, her hands in fists at her side, her teeth chattering, icy tears on her cheeks. She had to find a new self. A self who was indestructible and who would never, ever again let this happen to her.

A week passed. Piper was gone. It was as though she’d never been there. The cleaning staff had scrubbed his blood off the apartment wall and put the furniture back where it belonged. Coop had walked in there once and couldn’t go again.

The image of Piper standing in front of him with a gun shoved to her head was seared on his brain. At that exact moment he’d understood. It was as if a gust of wind had swept away the fog that had obscured the truth he should have recognized long before. But instead of coming out with it right away, he’d screwed up bad at the hospital. He hadn’t said the right thing, which was ironic, considering his reputation for working a good sound bite. Years of having microphones shoved in his face had taught him how to divulge exactly what he wanted to, precisely as he intended. But when it came to saying the right words to Piper, he’d fumbled in the worst possible way, and now she wouldn’t take his calls.

The wound in his side was healing, but the rest of him was a mess. Someone knocked on his office door. This was the first time in days that anybody had bothered him. He didn’t blame them for keeping their distance. He was brusque with the customers, unhappy with the servers, and outright hostile to his bouncers. He’d even gotten into an argument with Tony because Tony insisted there was nothing wrong with the club’s HVAC system. But the air was stagnant, not circulating. So heavy with the funk of perfume and liquor it had seeped into Coop’s pores.

He twisted from the computer screen he’d been staring at for who knew how long and directed his wrath toward the door. “Go away!”

Jada barged into his office. “You broke up with Piper! How could you do that?”

“Piper broke up with me. And how do you know about it?”

“I talked to her on the phone. At first she didn’t tell me, but I finally got it out of her.”

He leaned back in his chair, trying to be casual, even though he wanted to shake the details out of her. “So… what did she say about me?”

“Just that she hadn’t seen you since the accident.”

“And from this you deduced that I’d broken up with her?”

“She sounded sad.” Jada dropped down on the couch. “Why did she break up with you?”

“Because she thinks I didn’t take our relationship seriously.” He couldn’t sit a moment longer. He shot up from his desk, then pretended to adjust the shutter slats on the window behind him.

“Is that what she said?” Jada asked.

“Not in so many words, but…” He made himself go over to the small refrigerator next to the bookcases. “She’s extremely competitive. She thinks I am, too.”

She leaned forward like a minishrink. “Aren’t you?”

“Not about her.” He pulled out a Coke and held it up. “Want one?”

Jada shook her head. “Are you going to try to get her back?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound too confident.”

“I’m confident.”

“You don’t sound like it.”

She was right. He snapped the Coke’s pull-tab, even though he couldn’t drink anything right now. “She won’t talk to me. She won’t answer my texts or pick up her phone.” He wasn’t exactly sure why he was telling a teenager all this, except that she’d asked, and nobody else had been brave enough.

“You should go to her place and knock on her door,” Jada said. “She’s staying at her friend Amber’s. Or… you could wait by her car and then kind of jump out at her and make her listen to you.”

“That’s okay in the movies, but in real life, it’s called stalking. I want to talk to her, not piss-not make her madder.”

Another knock sounded on his door. “Get lost!”

The door opened anyway. This time it was Deidre Joss. Now he’d need to be polite, if he still remembered how.

“Bad time?” she asked.

“Sorry, Deidre. I thought it was Tony.”

“Poor Tony.”

He turned to Jada. “We can talk later.”

She hopped up from the couch. “Okay, but don’t tell Mom I yelled at you. She doesn’t like anything that upsets you.”

“Too bad everybody doesn’t feel that way,” he muttered.

Deidre closed the door after her. He realized he still had the Coke can and held it out. “Want one?”

“No thanks.” She looked as cool and sleek as ever in a tidy black suit. No rumpled jeans or Bears T-shirt. No blueberry eyes. Her hair was a smooth, dark curtain instead of a crazy muddle meandering here and there.

“How’s the injury?” she said.

“Barely noticeable.” Unless he moved too fast. It hurt then, but he wasn’t complaining.

“I’m glad to hear it.” She came farther into the room. “You haven’t returned my calls.” She said it without any snark, only sympathy. She was too nice. That’s exactly why he could never fall in love with her, and Piper should know him well enough to understand that. “I’ve heard from Noah’s attorney,” she said. “He’s going to plea-bargain.”

Coop got rid of the Coke. “That’ll make it simpler.”

“I went to see Noah to make sure he understands that once the justice system is done with him, he’ll have to find somewhere else to live. Far away from the city. Back to Mommy, is my guess.” She slipped her bag from her shoulder and set it on the couch. “I feel like an idiot. I knew he was possessive, but he made my life so much easier after Sam died that I ignored it. I came here to apologize for not being smarter about him and making you go through all this.”

“We all have our obtuse times.” Especially him. He needed to talk to Piper. He had to explain how he’d felt when he’d seen that gun jammed to her head, but she was making it impossible.

Deidre gave him a bright smile. “You’ll be getting a formal offer from us tomorrow. I have complete faith in your vision, and I’m looking forward to financing you. I should have trusted my gut and made this deal weeks ago, but I let Noah get in my head.”

The time had come to say it out loud. He tucked his thumb in the pocket of his jeans, then pulled it back out again. “I’m getting out of the business, Deidre. Selling the club.” It felt good to finally put his cards on the table.

Her businesswoman’s poker face failed her. “But you’ve been so passionate. Are you sure about this? What’s changed?”

“It’s been creeping up on me slowly.” As slowly as anything could creep up with Piper Dove pushing her misgivings at him like a bulldozer. But Piper was right. All the satisfaction he used to experience when he walked into the club was gone. Spiral was a great place, and he’d enjoyed creating it, but he hadn’t enjoyed the day-to-day, and the idea of spending years going from one club to another had lost its allure. “I liked the challenge, liked the idea of building something from scratch, but as it turned out, that was all I liked. I thought nightclubs would be a good business for me-high risk, high reward-but I was wrong.”

“Because…?”

He gave her the simplest answer. “I miss the mornings.”

She didn’t get it, but Piper would understand how tired he was of crowds, of yelling over music, of the smells and flashing strobes. He was sick of living so much of his life at night. He wanted clean air. He wanted more than three hours of sleep before he went out for a morning run. He wanted to do exactly as Piper had said. To “grow crap.” He didn’t know how he’d work that out, but then he didn’t know how he was going to work out a lot of things right now. He only knew he had to make some big changes.

He gazed at his jersey hanging on the wall behind her. “A friend of mine tried to tell me this was the wrong business for me, but it took a while before I figured that out for myself.”

“Piper?”

He didn’t deny or admit it.

“I called her the other day,” Deidre said. “We talked.”

It seemed as though everybody was talking to Piper except him.

“Do you know she thinks the two of us should be a couple?” Deidre twisted a silver ring on her finger. “But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

He hated hurting women, but he owed her honesty. “I’m afraid not. And I’m sorry about that.”

“Not all that sorry.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and gave him a rueful smile. “Once I got some perspective, I understood why I’m not the right woman for you. You need someone more… unconventional.”

Interesting how all these women believed they knew what he needed.

“I’m sorry we won’t be doing business together,” she said. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

“I’ll do that,” he said, even though he knew he wouldn’t.

As soon as Deidre left, he picked up his phone, stared down at it, then sent Piper another text.

I love you. Not a little. With all my heart.

The text went undelivered. She’d finally blocked him.