Page 12 of Cooper’s Promise

“I’m not sure it’s that cut and dried,” he said wryly.

Brenna snorted. Hell, he even thought that was cute. He was in trouble. “Cooper, I am not going to put my plans on hold just because you think you’re finally ready for a relationship with me.”

“But-”

“Hear me out.”

“Okay.”

“What I am willing to do, is to go out on a couple of dates with you and see where this leads us.”

“Brenna, we’re a lot further than the dating stage,” he protested.

“Not really. You’re the one who said we needed to explore what was between us. If that’s not the textbook definition of dating, I don’t know what is.”

Fuck, she was right. “Okay. So do you want to go out for dinner?” He watched as her face fell.

“What? What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Brenna, if this is going to work, you have to be honest with me. Tell me where I’ve fucked up.”

“Why didn’t you want to have breakfast?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Two reasons. One, you have to start working pretty soon. Those candidates that you want to recruit start pretty early. Two, I have a bug to squash.”

“Cooper, you need to be careful. I don’t want you to get into trouble with the law.” He laughed again. After all of the dark shit he had just gotten done thinking about, it felt good to be laughing.

“What is so damn funny?”

“The idea of me getting in trouble with the law, that’s what’s so damn funny. Pretty girl, if I can’t handle this guy, then I deserve to have my Tough Guy merit badge taken away from me.”

Brenna giggled. “Seriously though, Josiah is not that big of a deal.”

“That’s a load of horseshit. He’s part of the reason you’re moving, so he’s a very big deal.”

“He is not part of the reason I’m leaving. That was just something I told Hudson so he would leave me alone.”

That stopped him in his tracks. It couldn’t have been all him, could it have? “Brenna?”

“What?”

“Was it me?”

She looked at his shoulder again.

“I should be shot.”

“This job was an incredible opportunity.”

“But you wouldn’t have gone looking for it if it hadn’t been for me, now, would you have?”

“Probably not,” she admitted. “But let’s talk about Josiah for a minute. He’s not as big of a deal as you and Hudson think. See, I told you, I’m not moving away because of him, so you can’t squash him like a bug. He’s really pretty harmless. Even the cops said that they didn’t have any evidence to do anything, so this is a non-issue.”

“And, again, I say bullshit. You went to the police, Brenna. You went to the fucking police. It’s an issue. He’s an issue.” He picked her up and placed her gently onto the couch beside him, and then got up and paced around the small living room.

“I still can’t believe that you had a problem significant enough that you went to the police and didn’t call me. I’m less than twenty minutes away, and you didn’t call me. For fuck’s sake, I’m a fucking Army Ranger. What the fuck?”