Make Me A Match: Baby, Baby / The Matchmaker Wore Skates / Suddenly Sophie
Melinda Curtis
Anna J. Stewart
Cari Webb Lynn
Three bachelors turned…matchmakers?One special night with Cooper Hamilton gave Nora Perry a precious gift. But no way is the sweet-talking salesman the right guy for her…or is he?Former pro athlete Ty Porter could get burned when he falls for the beautiful reporter who ruined his career—and could now expose his most zealously guarded secret!Gideon Walker has a long history with free-spirited flower shop owner Sophie Jennings. But when the banker-matchmaker fixes her up with potential candidates, he realises he’s made a terrible mistake…
Three bachelors turned...matchmakers?
One special night with Cooper Hamilton gave Nora Perry a precious gift. But no way is the sweet-talking salesman the right guy for her...or is he?
Former pro athlete Ty Porter could get burned when he falls for the beautiful reporter who ruined his career—and could now expose his most zealously guarded secret!
Gideon Walker has a long history with free-spirited flower shop owner Sophie Jennings. But when the banker-matchmaker fixes her up with potential candidates, he realizes he’s made a terrible mistake...
MELINDA CURTIS is an award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling author who lives in drought-stricken California with her husband, where they hope El Niño comes to visit...soon. Their three kids are away in college, but their neighbors are empty nesters, too, the house is clean and the fridge unraided, so it’s kind of fun. Melinda enjoys putting humor into her stories because that’s how she approaches life. She writes sweet contemporaries as Melinda Curtis (Brenda Novak says of Season of Change, “Found a place on my keeper shelf”), and fun, traditional romances as Mel Curtis (Jayne Ann Krentz says of Cora Rules, “Wonderfully entertaining”).
CARI LYNN WEBB believes in life lessons. Her three older brothers taught her how not to act like a clingy, high-maintenance girl (their words). Her mother taught her how to laugh at herself and life. Her father taught her to follow her dreams and always be kind. Cari lives those lessons today. Her husband keeps her laughing, even when life is stressful. She’s turned her dream of writing romance novels about strong heroines and the heroes who love them into reality. And she’s grateful every day for all of her family’s lessons that she now gets to pass along to her unsuspecting daughters.
ANNA J. STEWART wrote her first romance (starring a certain hunky rock star) back in high school, and the rest, as they say, is history. A longtime fangirl and geek, this native Californian spends her downtime attending sci-fi fan conventions, avoiding crazy new apps for her phone and dealing with a serious Supernatural, Star Trek and Sherlock addiction. While her independent heroines don’t need a man, when they find the one they want, that’s when the fun begins. Anna is a USA TODAY bestselling author.
Make Me a Match
Baby, Baby
Melinda Curtis
The Matchmaker Wore Skates
Cari Lynn Webb
Suddenly Sophie
Anna J. Stewart
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u54c96c99-7fa8-5463-84a6-84c088c064cf)
Back Cover Text (#u5ac17c3b-0227-5bad-9a29-646820e90db0)
About the Author (#uf4a44a99-10f3-5e8c-a1e5-3ff5fc8177f0)
Title Page (#u16de7f9d-04b7-5884-97b7-210d22b0e95c)
Baby, Baby (#ulink_8961d4d5-513c-5aeb-9d20-a9de4f79501a)
Dedication (#u7eb41e8d-7a22-5f7b-badf-5694f00ffff0)
Dear Reader (#ulink_8f5d91bd-4094-5ba7-9ae9-72ba5a1ecb91)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_d96e935a-d05e-5eb4-a7e5-c4807acf0299)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e0074337-7684-5126-a849-77457c5281ec)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b6098ef8-2e0f-5e5b-8794-ed91432945c1)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_62966e88-f21f-5bb0-9e8e-2a40850884dc)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_13398a0e-4cbb-5ac1-a6b6-7ce4eb88ab48)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_998b970c-1c91-50a2-9b6b-3a4140ea3040)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_bb094e1f-e6dc-5a4b-a389-f1361df75011)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
The Matchmaker Wore Skates (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Suddenly Sophie (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Baby, Baby (#ulink_d29ef4b8-a7b5-5c54-9456-93211e914f64)
Melinda Curtis
I consider myself lucky to have two great friends in Anna J. Stewart and Cari Lynn Webb. Thanks for making Kenkamken Bay fun. And to my family—especially Mr. Curtis—thanks for always believing.
Dear Reader (#ulink_cb6ad45b-55af-5fee-bdbc-10387171c041),
Welcome to Kenkamken Bay, Alaska!
In K-Bay most men don’t shave but once a year. And when they do shave? It might be because a spring trip to Anchorage is in the making. Most men in K-Bay aren’t really pining for women. They like the isolation. So when Cooper Hamilton and his friends make a bet that they can successfully match six couples, no one really thinks they’ll succeed.
But Coop has more than matchmaking on his mind. Last spring when the snow thawed, Coop made the drive to Alaska and met Nora Perry. Nora thought she might have met “the one.” And Coop? He wasn’t thinking along those lines. Now Nora has tracked Coop down before the most romantic holiday of the year—Valentine’s Day! Too bad romance is not on Nora’s to-do list.
I hope you enjoy Coop and Nora’s journey. I love to hear from readers. Check my website to learn more about upcoming books, sign up for email book announcements and I’ll send you a free sweet romantic comedy read, or chat with me on Facebook (MelindaCurtisAuthor (https://www.facebook.com/MelindaCurtisAuthor)) or Twitter (MelCurtisAuthor (https://twitter.com/melcurtisauthor)) to hear about my latest giveaways.
Melinda
MelindaCurtis.com (http://melindacurtis.net)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_189e0500-8247-563a-951e-2958c37001fc)
“A GOOD CAR is like a good life,” Cooper Hamilton said to his friends over a beer on Friday night in Kenkamken Bay, Alaska’s, Bar & Grill. “Make it affordable, make it practical, make it easy to trade in. And you’re all set.”
“A good car starts up and goes no matter how bad the storm,” Gideon Walker added, tightening the knot on his don’t-leave-home-without-it blue tie. “Nothing keeps a good car stuck in your driveway.”
Ty Porter scratched his full, dark beard—the one that gave half the men in town beard envy—and channeled his inner cynic. “Unless it runs out of gas.”
Coach, the bar’s owner and bartender, rolled his eyes. And Coop couldn’t blame him.
In their high school years, Coop, Gideon and Ty had strutted around town looking down their noses at K-Bay because they were destined to leave for better things in the Lower 48. Now they’d become a sad cliché. A fixture at the K-Bay Bar & Grill. Always taking up the three seats at the elbow of the bar near the kitchen.
As demoralizing as the 0–0 score of the hockey game.
There were other fixtures in the old bar, of course: the large brass bell that hung over the beer taps, the hand-painted sign above the mirror proclaiming it a Nag-Free Zone, and the other regulars at their regular seats. Mike and his fishing buddies around the pool table. Sam and other cannery workers in the booths near the front windows. Derrick and the cross-country truck drivers at the round wooden table in front of the big-screen television.
Coop supposed there was nothing wrong with being a regular and keeping to your group of friends. It was just that Coop hadn’t expected to be one of them—the bearded, parka-wearing, windshield-scraping residents of a remote town in southwest Alaska.
The hockey game on the big screen ended. There were calls for a change of channel. Coach worked the remote with arthritis-gnarled fingers. Other sports played silently on smaller TVs around the bar.
Out of habit, Coop flexed his digits. His father had lost all the fingers on one hand in a fishing accident that had nearly killed him, right before Coop had planned to leave for college. Made Coop appreciate his limbs and everyone else’s, arthritic or not.
A lifestyle report from an Anchorage station popped on-screen. The reporter was interviewing a woman wearing a turquoise business suit that looked as though it belonged in Washington, DC, not Alaska.
“The possibilities for matchmaking in Alaska are limitless due to the ratio of men to women here.” Not one of the suited-lady’s highlighted curls moved in the wind. “When I meet a female client, I intuitively know what kind of man she’ll be happy with. You could almost say that love is guaranteed.” She flashed a calculated smile at the camera. “If you hire me.”
Jeers rose from the crowd.
Coop groaned. As a car salesman and used-car-lot manager, he knew a slick sales pitch when he heard one. “If that woman sold cars, she’d be doctoring repair records and rolling back odometers.”
Coach found a basketball game and the patrons settled down.
“‘There are no women in Alaska.’” Ty framed his statement in air quotes. “That’s a myth.”
“A myth everywhere but here,” Gideon said. Since he worked as a loan officer at Kenkamken Bay Savings & Loan, he should know the area’s statistics. “K-Bay is seventy-five percent male.”
“And some of the females...” Coop didn’t voice the rest of his opinion. The women in town were nice, but they weren’t the kind you’d see in beauty pageants or in a Lower 48 big city. Heels? Glossy hair? Artfully applied makeup? Not in K-Bay. “Why would they put a story about matchmaking on the news?”
Coach slapped the lifestyle section of the Anchorage Beat on the nicked oak bar. “Because Kelsey Nash wrote an article about that woman.”
Coop’s gaze cut to Ty. His friend looked away from the paper and touched the scar on his cheek, the one half-hidden by that thick beard.
Kelsey was from K-Bay and had been the first to report on Ty’s career-ending injuries seven years ago. That wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t slanted the piece to make Ty look like an irresponsible, immature fool. Never mind the puck to Ty’s face, detached retina, medically induced coma and the end of the man’s pro-hockey dreams—of all their dreams. Ty wasn’t a fool. He was just...Ty.
“It’s a fluff piece. It’s not as if matchmaking would be hard in a city like Anchorage.” Coop tried to discredit Kelsey’s story. “Let that woman try matchmaking in K-Bay.”
“We could do better than her.” Gideon was right there with him, adjusting the knot in his tie as if it was Monday morning, not Friday night. “I mean, come on. What does a woman like that know about what a man from Alaska likes? It’s not worth the space in the paper or the airtime on TV.”
“Listen to yourselves.” Coach’s voice rumbled like a logging truck speeding over rutted black ice. “Talking as if you had any idea about life or love.”
“I just said life was like a good car.” Coop sat up straighter. There was nothing that got his heart pumping like a good bar argument. “And women like a good car. Just look at me.” He spread his arms. “I’m good-car material.”
“Sure you are.” Coach poured the sarcasm over Coop’s belief. “You’re cheap, boring and stuck in a rut. Just like my wife’s snowbound sedan out on Old Paris Road. Won’t get that out until spring. If ever.”
And if that didn’t deflate Coop’s tires...
Ty was still lost in thought when Gideon jumped to Coop’s defense. “Men know what they want in a woman. To make a match, you’d just have to dig down deep to discover what the heck a woman really wants. That matchmaker using her ‘intuition’ is farcical. If two people would just be honest about what they wanted—”
“Exactly.” Coop leaped back into the fray. “If a woman would just say, ‘I do want a long-term commitment from a man that’ll likely lead to marriage and probably having babies,’ it would cut through all the awkward, getting-to-know-you part.” And transition Coop to the “sorry, that’s not me, been nice to know you” part.
Coach chuckled, but it wasn’t the sound of shared humor. “The three of you sit in my bar every Friday and Saturday night, and most Sundays, too. Sometimes you go to Anchorage to meet women, but you don’t date anyone regular. What could you possibly know about matchmaking?”
“I bet we could make introductions with more success than that woman.” Coop’s voice rang with confidence. It wasn’t as though he was actually going to have to prove his point. “Look at all the single guys in this bar. There’s a catch here for every gal.”
They all scanned the bar’s patrons.
Coop almost considered issuing a retraction. Scraggly beards. Scraggly hair. Scraggly flannel shirts. K-Bay wasn’t exactly Baywatch.
But Gideon was back in the game. “I bet we could match more couples than her, too. And I wouldn’t use my intuition.”
“We’d have the Bar & Grill’s bell ringing on the hour.” Coop’s statement might have been a little over the line. Whenever someone found The One, they rang the bell over the bar. The bell hadn’t been heard in more than a year.
“I’ll take that bet,” Coach said, puncturing the wind from their sails. He leaned on the bar, capturing their attention the same way he had years ago as their high school hockey coach—with a steely-eyed stare that said he was done with small talk and ready for action. “There are three weeks until Valentine’s Day. I’ll bet you three can’t get three couples to ring that bell by Valentine’s eve.”
“Three?” Coop scoffed, the first of their trio to find his voice. “We could do twice that.”
Ty and Gideon stared at Coop as if he’d just told them he’d traded his truck for a minivan.
“Deal.” Coach offered his hand.
Coop reflexively put his out, but Gideon arm-barred his hand aside. “We don’t know the terms. What do we get if we win this bet?”
“A hundred bucks.” Coach smirked, making his face as wrinkled as a shar-pei’s.
Again, Coop put out his hand.
Again, Gideon batted it down. “That’s not worth one match, let alone six.”
“Six hundred, then.” Coach’s grin said he thought they’d fail.
Heck, Coop thought they’d fail. Six? What had he been thinking?
Clearly he hadn’t been. Still, Coop kept his smile—the one that had helped him sell hundreds of cars—glued to his face. No reason to let Coach sense blood in the water.
Coop glanced at Gideon. Gideon glanced at Coop. It was too late to back out now. They nodded and extended their hands to seal the deal, but this time it was Ty who stopped them from accepting the bet.
“Forget the money. If we win, we want jobs on one of your hockey teams.” Ty had an expression on his face that Coop hadn’t seen in seven years—like a bull charging toward the china shop. He’d scowled like that during a high school championship and had defended four shots on goal in two minutes to ensure their team won.
Coop wasn’t sure if the entire bar heard Ty’s terms or not. For a moment everything seemed quiet. Or it could have been the ringing in Coop’s ears that blocked out the clinking of glasses, beer-roughened voices and deep drifts of laughter.
Jobs in the Lower 48? It was all they’d ever wanted—to get out of town and work together in professional hockey.
Coach’s gaze morphed from dismissive to appraising. He owned large stakes in a couple of farm teams in the contiguous US. He’d been a successful hockey coach at the highest level, retiring early due to a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis now under control with a change in lifestyle and diet. “You want to sell popcorn and pretzels at some of my games?”
Ty didn’t flinch at the jab, although it hit him where it hurt because his thickly bearded chin jutted out. He’d gone from being a potential hockey superstar at eighteen, predicted to go high in the draft, to a jack-of-all-trades employee at K-Bay’s run-down skating rink. “Coop can sell bottled sand in the desert. I’m sure you have marketing positions. Gideon can make money grow on trees—”
“Legally,” Gideon murmured.
“And I know the game inside out.” Ty’s chin thrust halfway to Russia. “I could coach.”
The stakes of the bet had increased astronomically. It was what the three of them had dreamed of as boys: escaping Alaska. Only, back then, Coop was going to be Ty’s sports agent and Gideon his financial adviser. When Ty’s dreams had fallen apart, so had Coop’s and Gideon’s.
Coop tried not to look as though he’d swallowed a fish bone. “Is it a bet, Coach?”
“You’ve forgotten one thing.” The older man leaned against the back bar and crossed his beefy forearms. “What do I get when you lose?”
“We’ll swim the Polar Bear Challenge naked,” Ty offered.
Coach shook his gray, grizzled head. “You did that when you were teens.”
“We’ll bartend for you on weekends.” At Coach’s frown Gideon added, “For a month.”
“I like tending bar,” Coach said. “Gets me out of the house. Now...if you wanted to take my wife shopping in Anchorage every weekend for a month...”
They didn’t.
Coop stared at Kelsey’s article, at the suited matchmaker, at Kelsey’s postage-stamp picture. “We’ll take out an ad in the Anchorage Beat. Full page. Stating we know nothing about life or love, just like you said.”
Ty made a noise like a polar bear right before it dived under dark and stormy seas.
Coach’s faded blue eyes narrowed. “I want pictures, too. And an article about why Alaska is the best place in the world to live.”
Everything they stood against. Everything they complained about. Everything that made living in K-Bay as boring and rut filled as Coach had accused Coop of being.
It was one thing to be disappointed in his lot in life, another to be called on it. Coop didn’t hesitate. “Deal.”
They all shook on it and Coach left them to check on other customers. They each stared at their shaggy, bearded reflections in the glass behind the bar.
“Seriously, Coop?” Ty took aim with his hellfire expression. “An ad? This is worse than the time you convinced us to hitchhike to Anchorage our senior year. It’s not as if anyone knows who you are. But me—”
“Coach wasn’t going for a naked swim in the Bering Sea.” Ty’s anger didn’t faze Coop. They’d known each other too long for him to take it personally. “And he wouldn’t have gone for something simple like a case of rare whiskey.”
“It is what it is,” Gideon said, always the peacemaker. “But we can’t tell anyone what it is.”
Coop nodded. They’d be laughed out of K-Bay. “Where do we start?”
“Maybe we can get people to fill out an online survey.” Gideon perked up. He loved anything techish. “I could design a program to pair them up.”
The inner front door opened and a woman stepped in. She was wrapped from neck to snow boots in a reddish-brown parka that made her look like a stuffed sausage. Conversation in the room died away as every pair of male eyes turned toward her. She peeled off her knit cap, revealing shoulder-length, glossy blond hair and artfully applied makeup.
She was pretty, beautiful even. The kind of woman that men stopped and took notice of.
Coop sat up straighter. Noticing. “Here’s our first customer.”
She unfastened her jacket with small, delicate hands, revealing a small, delicate head covered in blond fuzz. A baby. Strapped to her chest.
The room heaved a sigh of regret. Conversations resumed, albeit not at their usual volume.
Slumping, Coop returned his attention to his beer. “And there goes our first customer.”
Boots rang across the oak floor.
Gideon tapped Coop on the shoulder. “She’s coming over here.”
Coop turned back around.
It was the weirdest thing. Coop was used to Alaska’s winters, used to the cold. But as the woman and the baby approached, the room took on a chill.
She stopped in front of him and arched a golden brow. “Cooper Hamilton?”
Coop nodded, rather numbly, because there was something familiar about the woman’s face, about her smooth voice, about the swing of her pretty blond hair across her shoulders.
She gestured to the baby. “I believe I have something of yours.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f7819ca6-cfd7-5bea-b451-698bf23058fa)
“YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME, do you?” Nora Perry couldn’t help sounding angry and embarrassed. She’d traveled more than one hundred miles on a bus. It’d taken six hours instead of two. She was tired. The baby was tired.
And the witty, handsome man she’d met ten months ago with the mischievous smile? He wasn’t witty—he was speechless. He wasn’t handsome—his dark hair brushed his shoulders unevenly and grew from his chin in short, thick stubs. He wasn’t smiling—his lips formed a shell-shocked, silent O.
Coop led Nora to a tall wooden booth in the dimly lit, seen-better-days bar. She hung her parka on a booth hook, dropped her backpack to the floor and sat on the cold wooden bench too quickly, landing on her sit bones.
Zoe fussed, probably overheated from Nora’s resolve-melting mortification.
Coop didn’t remember her? Subtract fifty points from his man-appeal tally.
Last time Nora had seen Coop, he’d had a stylish, clean-shaven jaw, a stylin’ opening line and a styled set of dance moves that would’ve qualified him for a spot on Dancing with the Stars, Alaska edition. They’d met at a bar in Anchorage last spring. Spring being a time when folks got a little nutty in Alaska because everything returned to “normal” for a few months. You didn’t have to wear parkas the size of sleeping bags or shovel as much snow.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Nora repeated when Coop continued to be struck dumb. She was having trouble slipping off the baby-carrier straps. Her lower lip trembled, much like Zoe’s did when her dirty diaper didn’t get changed quickly enough. “Am I that forgettable?” Her pride and her stomach slid to the floor. “Don’t answer that.”
Nora finally got the straps off and settled Zoe in the crook of her arm. “You had no trouble with words that night in Anchorage.” There. A clue. Perhaps the humiliation would end.
Coop couldn’t seem to drag his green gaze from Zoe. “I...uh...”
Or not. More mortifying heat flash flooded her body. And when emotion flooded her hormonal, postpregnancy body, which was often lately, her milk came in.
Could things get any worse? “We met at a bar.”
“Uh...” His gaze stroked her face and then dropped below her chin to the milk-production department.
“I didn’t have these then.” She waved a free hand in front of her now-tingling, melon-size chest and tried her best to glare at him. But it was hard to glare when the father of your child couldn’t remember you.
Zoe squirmed then squinted and made a squishing sound in her pants.
So much for a classy, civilized meeting.
Still, it was hard not to love Zoe. Unless you were Coop. His gaze was still caught on the milk-production department.
“Excuse me.” Nora scootched off the bench seat and rummaged in the backpack that served both as her purse and her diaper bag. Was it just last year she’d carried a budget-busting Dooney & Bourke tote? It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Nora tugged her diaper kit free and shot Coop another deadly glare. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Coop raised his hands slowly, as if in surrender, still in bachelor shell shock.
Nora was having a shock of her own. She wasn’t just a one-night stand. She was a forgettable one-night stand.
Coop was just like her father: a happy-go-lucky drunk going through life in memory-stealing binges.
I’m not going to let Coop hurt Zoe like Dad did me.
Nora was in Kenkamken Bay for one thing and one thing only. Child support. She wasn’t looking for a relationship with her baby daddy. Coop, being a self-centered bachelor, would probably be relieved that all she wanted was money. With direct deposit from his bank to hers, he need never see her or Zoe again. In fact, given who he was, Nora preferred it that way.
The ladies’ room was a pleasant surprise. It was clean and had a drop-down change table. Nora made quick work of the diaper, enjoying Zoe’s cooing nonsensical song. But the restroom lacked a place to sit and breast-feed. And boy, did she need to breast-feed. Given Coop’s stupefaction, her breast-feeding in public would probably send him to an early grave, which—setting aside her own discomfort at the public airing of a private event—would be highly satisfying.
Spirits bolstered, Nora opened the door.
Coop was waiting for her, no longer looking like a man who couldn’t believe he’d plowed his beloved sports car into a tree. His green eyes sparkled. His grin dazzled with straight teeth as white as snow. “Tangerine dress. Yellow heels. St. Patrick’s Day.”
She’d wanted him to remember her. And yet...Nora felt as if the unsalted nuts she’d eaten on the bus were giving her indigestion.
“You ordered white wine.” His grin spread over his now handsome—despite the beard—face. Funny what a smile did to a shaggy man’s looks. “We went back to your place and—”
“Please.” Nora walked past him to the booth. “Not in front of the baby.”
Everyone in the bar stared. She felt their eyes like a field mouse feels a circling hawk’s calculating gaze, almost as if they were protective of Coop, more than ready to join him in rejection of her paternity claim.
Her steps quickened. A woman in a strange town accusing the local golden boy she’d had his baby?
It’d been a mistake to come. A desperate, stupid mistake. She’d find the means to get by without Coop’s money. She’d get a second job. She’d trade babysitting services with other working moms. There had to be a way to raise Zoe without Coop’s help.
He slid into the booth across from her, looking decidedly chipper. “The thing is, Nancy—”
“Nora.” She resented his too-late chipperness and his too-false charm.
“I remember you.” His voice dropped from light and pleasant to dark and repellent. “And I distinctly remember using protection.” His smile never wavered as he tried to back her off from her claim.
Her father had a smile just like it, one that said he never worried about anything. And Dad didn’t worry. Not when he’d lost everything because one of his many get-rich-quick ideas failed. Not when he had a baby with a woman he didn’t remember meeting in a bar.
“You missed your weekend with the kids,” Nora’s mother would say. “It was three weeks ago. And your check—”
“Bounced again? I’ll write you another.” Dad would flash a minty smile meant to cover the alcohol on his breath. “Why waste time arguing? I’m here. And the kids want to have fun with their old man.”
Nora and her brothers hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. Not when he drank beer until he passed out and practically forgot their names.
“Protection?” Nora wanted to be sick. She swallowed back the memories and held on to her resolve because the bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for another hour. “As my doctor told me...ninety-nine percent effective means one lucky woman in one hundred gets a golden ticket.” She angled Zoe’s sweet, innocent face toward Coop. “Here’s mine.” Not his. Never his. She’d never raise a child with this loser.
The wattage on Coop’s smile never dimmed. “Why wait so long to tell me?”
“Since you didn’t call me afterward, I figured you were just a beer-swilling guy looking for a good time, and I assumed I could afford to raise a child on my own.” Diapers. Day care. The dollars added up far too quickly. “One of my assumptions was wrong.”
His eyes narrowed, but that smile... “I’ll want a paternity test.”
She nodded, unfazed. “I brought one.”
* * *
“SHE’S GOT YOUR nose, Coop.”
Coop couldn’t see what Gideon saw, maybe because a demoralizing thought kept buzzing in his brain. You’re going to lose your second opportunity in the NHL, even if you win the bet.
It can’t be mine.
The baby swaddled in neon pink in Nora’s arms seemed like any other to him: round cheeks, tufts of blond hair, squinty eyes. Maybe the eyes looked like his after one too many beers the night before, but those days were few and far between now. As were his days of picking up women in bars.
A change made too late, it seemed.
He’d retreated with sluggish steps to the bar when Nora told him she was going to breast-feed. “It might not be mine,” he said to his friends. His words didn’t sound convincing.
Nora’s words sounded convincing.
“Congratulations on a baby girl.” Coach guffawed and set a shot of whiskey on the bar in front of Coop. “She’s got the Hamilton nose. Won’t be long before you’re having tea parties and playing with dolls.”
“Taking her to tap-dancing lessons,” Ty said slyly, clearly enjoying this too much.
“Laying down the law with the guy who takes her to prom.” Gideon grinned.
“Jumping the gun, as usual.” A band of disappointment tightened around Coop’s chest. If he was a dad, he had an obligation to stay where his child was. “Let’s wait for the results of the paternity test. In the meantime, back to the issue at hand. Matchmaking.”
Mary Jo, the bus-route driver, banged into the foyer and through the second door, shaking off snow that covered her boots and parka. She’d been a couple years ahead of Coop in school, but she looked as old as truck-driving Derrick, a crony of hers and ten years her senior. Lines had made permanent inroads on her forehead and from the corners of her frequently frowning mouth. Her divorce battle had aged her.
Nora waved to Mary Jo, buttoning up her yellow blouse. “Is the bus ready to leave?”
“The bus isn’t going anywhere.” Mary Jo clomped across the wood floor, tugging off her gloves. “That darn weatherman was wrong again. It’s a blizzard out there. Service is cancelled for the day.”
“But...I’m stuck?” Nora’s horrified gaze bounced around the bar and landed on Coop. “Here?”
She’d taken the bus. She’d implied money was tight. There were hotels and motels in town, but could she afford a room? And how would she get there? Mary Jo wasn’t offering a ride. Helio’s Taxi was closed for the day. He was in the back on his fourth beer. Between the drifts of snow on the ground and the severity of the storm, it wouldn’t be safe for Nora to walk anywhere with a baby.
Coop felt paralyzed.
Next to him, Ty was lost in thought, staring at the Anchorage Beat. Gideon asked Mary Jo if her divorce was final. Derrick tugged on a gray streak in his beard and made a joke about the fragility of buses on Alaskan highways. Trucker humor. Mary Jo gave Derrick a smiling gesture of disrespect. Bus-driver humor.
Just another Friday night at the bar.
A dark and stormy night. Near whiteout conditions. A woman alone. With a baby.
A baby that could be his.
He dropped his booted feet to the floor.
Ty’s head came up. He assessed the situation with goalie-like speed. “Don’t do it. Don’t ask her to stay at your place.”
“Why not?”
Gideon stepped into Coop’s path, keeping his voice low. “Even the Moose Motel is better than your place.”
Coop had expected advice about keeping his distance from Nora until he knew that baby was his. He hadn’t expected criticism of his home. “Are you kidding me right now? Free accommodations? She’ll be grateful.”
“She’ll think you’re incapable of looking after yourself.” Ty made a sweeping gesture that encompassed Nora, the baby and then Coop. “Look at her and then take a good, long look at your scruffy, backwoods self.”
“If that’s a commentary about my beard—”
“Who cares about your weak attempts at facial hair?” Gideon had on his banker face, which was also his poker face, which was also his don’t-be-a-doofus face. “Your place is a dump. Duct-taped carpeting, leaky faucet, creaky floors.”
“It’s warm and dry. I can sell it or abandon it if I ever get out of this town.” That’d been the reason he’d taken it in trade for an RV he’d been unable to move on the car lot. “My place is free for Nora. Don’t forget free.”
“You’ll be amazed at what a woman won’t forget.” Ty’s gaze drifted back to the Anchorage Beat. “Whatever. That’s the second bad decision you’ve made tonight. Let’s just hope you don’t make a third.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e00882ea-c03e-5a80-97e2-8ae5d0a44467)
“HOME SWEET HOME.” Coop opened the door for Nora and stepped aside.
Nora had been giving Coop points for a nice truck. No rust-eaten side panels. No dented fenders. No crumpled fast-food wrappers. And he’d driven competently on the snowy roads and through the storm.
But the house...
A dark and dated mobile home. Subtract ten points.
Duct tape across the foyer carpet and on the transition to kitchen linoleum. Subtract twenty points.
The shabby, sagging furniture and dreary lighting, the bigger-than-big-screen television, the mess of boots and shoes by the door, the stack of empty soda cans next to the sink. Subtract forty points.
Her backpack dropped to the ground. If Coop lived like this, how could he afford child support?
“That you, Cooper?” A scratchy, sleepy male voice erupted from the back at loudspeaker volume.
Zoe startled, jerking against Nora’s torso beneath her parka. Nora slid the zipper down, preparing to get settled in. What choice did she have but to stay?
“Yeah, Pop. I brought home a guest,” Coop shouted. He shoved a workout bag beneath a storage bench, nudged a jumble of shoes and boots against the wall, hung up his jacket and another that was on the carpet. “My dad moved in a couple years ago. He couldn’t live alone after the accident.”
The floor creaked in a back room. Coop’s father appeared in the hallway, leaning heavily on a cane with a hand that had no fingers.
Nora gave Coop all his dark-mobile-home, worn-living-room and bad-housekeeping points back.
The older Mr. Hamilton had short, peppery hair and the spotted, leathery complexion of a fisherman. His steps were stilted—he walked with his gaze on the carpet in front of his feet—and he spoke like a ringmaster whose microphone had died. “If it’s Gideon, I didn’t get the dishes done today and the week’s recycling is still on the counter. Got busy watching my shows and—”
“Pop—Brad, this is Nora,” Coop said at baby-waking volume. He stopped cleaning. Stopped moving. Stopped looking like a man who made the world go around with his smile. He looked like a boy about to tell his father he’d been in a playground fight and broken his best friend’s nose. “She’s, um...”
Nora tried to shrug out of her parka so she could remove a stirring Zoe from the baby carrier. Coop helped her get free, allowing Nora to slide the carrier straps to her elbows and cradle Zoe.
“Well, I’ll be,” the older man said as he slowly worked his way to her. He laid the hand with a complete set of fingers on Zoe’s head. “She’s got the Hamilton nose.” His sharp green gaze turned on Coop. “Haven’t seen these two in K-Bay before.”
“Me, either.” Coop managed to sound both rebellious and repentant at the same time.
Nora resented them talking about her as if she wasn’t standing there holding the next generation of Hamilton genes. “I’m from Anchorage.”
“Forgiving my son and movin’ here, I hope.” Brad smiled, making Nora realize where Coop had gotten his forgive-me-any-sin smile. For some reason on the older man it didn’t seem so slick. “Family should stick together. It’s hard to raise a child on your own. I should know.” He moved with a hitching gait toward a recliner.
“Paternity hasn’t been proved.” Coop cinched the bag of kitchen trash and tossed it out a side door.
“Have you seen this baby’s nose?” Brad waved his arms, sending the chair rocking.
Nora gave Coop twenty bonus points for having a decent dad. But she had to be firm about things. “It’s his, but I’m not moving here.” She had a life in Anchorage: a secretarial job at a high school, benefits, brothers, friends.
“It’s too early to say that. Newborns are easy. Wait until she’s two.” Brad sat in a grubby tan recliner with a breath-stealing, free-fall backward style. “Prepare the extra room, Cooper.”
Coop had already disappeared down the hallway.
“Sit, Nora, and tell me all about my grandchild.” Brad spoke so loud that Nora suspected he was hearing impaired.
She took a seat on the couch near him, placing the carrier next to her, and said in a loud voice, “This is Zoe. She’s five weeks old.”
“Wait a second.” Brad held up his fingerless hand and bellowed, “Cooper?”
“Yeah?”
“I had a phone call earlier. What’s this nonsense I hear about you being a matchmaker?”
Coop? A matchmaker? Shades of her father.
“It’s not nonsense, Pop.”
“What you know about love could be written on a postage stamp.” Brad turned to Nora, his expression apologetic. “Best you know the truth, missy.”
“Preaching to the choir,” she murmured.
Zoe blew out a frustrated breath, perhaps sticking up for her father but more likely demanding Nora’s attention since her little arms waved with rock-concert fervor.
“I’m not as clueless about love as you think.” Coop appeared in the hallway, arms loaded with folded sheets and bed pillows. “I know you and Suzy Adams have a thing for each other.”
“That’s not a thing.” Brad wrestled with the recliner’s footrest handle, moving nothing. “It’s a weekly lunch and occasional movie.”
Coop cocked one dark eyebrow. “Do you pay?”
“What kind of a man do you think I am?” Brad let go of the handle long enough to shake his fist at the heavens. “Of course I pay.”
“It’s a thing.” Coop went into the other room.
“It’s not a thing,” Brad shouted louder than usual, finally moving the footrest out.
“It kind of sounds like a thing,” Nora said apologetically.
Zoe made excited puffing noises of agreement.
“I can’t have a thing. Just look at me.” Granted, Brad was reclining, but he looked fine to her. He looked more than fine when he pulled out that Hamilton smile. No wonder he and Suzy Adams had a thing.
The heater kicked on with a house-shaking, window-rattling thud, reminding Nora of her father’s run-down home and that, no matter how charismatic the Hamiltons were, this was no place for her baby.
* * *
“WE NEED A game plan,” Ty said to Coop and Gideon the next morning at the Bar & Grill.
Coach was open for Saturday breakfast to the citizens venturing out in the inclement weather. The blizzard had abated to heavy snowfall and the town’s sole plow had been busy since the early morning. Many people in K-Bay regarded snowstorms as no more than an annoyance in their otherwise regular routine. Businesses that were open—including matchmaking—were going to get customers.
Coop and Gideon had wisely waited for Ty to finish his first cup of coffee before beginning the matchmaking strategy session. But that left Coop thinking about Nora and her baby.
Nora, who’d gotten more attractive since he’d last seen her, was nice to Pop and watched over that baby like a mama polar bear over its cub. She’d made a face when he’d first brought her home, but she hadn’t complained or put down the place. Still, Nora hadn’t said a word about what she wanted from him other than a reference to money. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to be looking for a wedding ring. Because marriage didn’t fit with Coop’s lifestyle; the one that made it easy for him to pick up and leave.
Just last year, Becky Riney had turned up pregnant and demanded Wally Spitacker marry her, even though they’d never been serious about each other beyond being friends with benefits. That marriage lasted about two seconds and cost Wally a used minivan sold to him by Coop, a couple grand for the wedding reception and a couple grand in legal fees. Until Coop was 100 percent certain it was his kid, he didn’t want to talk child support or his visitation or...well...anything.
“I think we should ask people questions about what they want in a mate.” Gideon tugged the buttoned collar of his polo shirt down as if he missed his uptight banker’s tie.
“Can we not use the word mate?” Coop said, thinking of Nora.
“Significant other? Person of interest?” Gideon sounded testy and looked as if he hadn’t slept well.
Coop couldn’t cast stones. He hadn’t slept well, either. Was he finally getting out of town? Or was this chance going to slip through his fingers?
“We need six matches.” Ty’s eyebrows had a grim slant. “Six, not three. For the life of me, I can’t come up with a plan.”
“Your plans weren’t always good ones.” Coop referred to choices Ty had made at eighteen that had scarred him for life. “When I want to get a sales boost at the car lot, I park the flashiest, most expensive car right next to the street. Doesn’t matter if they don’t buy it. Chances are if they come to look, I can get them to buy what they need. And the flashiest woman in town is—”
“Tatiana.” A slow grin appeared in the depths of Ty’s beard.
Tatiana Michaels was just back from college and in training to be the town queen bee. Men either ran to please her with the knowledge she’d chew them up and spit them out, or they ran from her because they valued their wallets and their pride. Either way, she was the flashiest, most notorious single woman in K-Bay.
Coach slid three plates loaded with campfire scramble specials in front of them. “Tatiana isn’t going to ring that bell.” The bar owner called out a greeting to Derrick before disappearing into the kitchen once more.
“Coach is right.” Gideon peppered his food. “Isn’t using Tatiana bait and switch?”
“If Tatiana agrees to sign up for matchmaking, who’s to say one of our male clients wouldn’t be the perfect match for her?” Coop really needed to believe his own sales pitch. “Once we let it be known Tatiana signed up, men and women will come to us in droves.”
“K-Bay doesn’t have droves of singles.” Ty set down his egg-loaded fork, back to looking grim. “At least not singles I’d consider eligible.”
“Work with me here.” Coop needed his friends to jump on board. Granted, Ty had more of a reputation at stake than Coop or Gideon, but they needed to choose a direction and go for it, not snipe at each other. “Once they sign up, Gideon can give them his love survey.”
“I wouldn’t call it a love survey,” Gideon mumbled. “Or even a survey at this point.”
“Regardless—” Coop shot them with a look that had sent many a new hire racing out to sell a car “—we need to make a list of all the singles in town and get them down here. Now. Today, while nothing else is going on.”
“Does Mary Jo count as single?” Ty nodded toward the door where the bus driver was entering. “Her divorce isn’t final.”
“Put her on the list.” They needed all the single and nearly single females they could recruit. “How soon can you print up a survey, Gideon?”
“I need to do a little research.” Gideon reached down and produced a stack of magazines from his computer bag. “These seem like a good place to start.” He dropped them on the bar. “But if Nadine at the grocery store gives me any more grief about buying them, I’m going to say I was shopping for you two.”
“I hope you told her what we’re doing. She’s single.” Ty picked up the magazine on top. His grimness disappeared behind a wide grin. “Five Things He Wants You to Do in the Bedroom. Are you sure this is the right research material?”
“I’ll work on it.” Gideon swiped the magazine back.
“I have complete faith in your vision and geekiness.” Ty’s grin gave Coop hope. Short-lived as it was, because Ty excelled at poking holes in a plan. “Let’s just assume we have a list of singles interested in finding The One and a survey that helps us match them to potential soul mates. How do we get our clients to realize they’ve found true love in the same dating pool they’ve had available for years? I mean, they have only three weeks to fall in love and ring the bell.”
“Impossible.” Coach cheerfully refilled their coffee mugs. “You boys are going to lose.”
The three fell silent. Gideon pushed eggs around his plate. Ty sought answers in his coffee mug.
Coop clutched his fork, refusing to go down without a fight. Matchmaking couldn’t be harder than selling cars. With the right vehicle inventory, he could sell anything to... “We’ll draw from the neighboring towns and the university.” People drove for miles to find the vehicle they wanted. Why wouldn’t they drive miles for true love? “And then we’ll have the dates take each other for a test-drive.”
Ty nearly choked on his coffee. “We’re not running an escort service.”
“I don’t mean that kind of test-drive. I mean forcing them to spend time together.” That didn’t sound romantic at all. Coop squished his eggs into a chunk of potato.
The bar was slowly filling up.
“People lead busy lives,” Gideon said. “Arranging these dates could take more time than we have. Unless...”
Ty and Coop turned to their friend expectantly. Being buddies since elementary school meant they knew better than to interrupt Gideon’s thought process.
“We organize group activities. Preplanned. Pair people up in advance.” Gideon had a gleam in his eyes that indicated he was on to gold. “Activities like a... I don’t know. A boat trip?”
“It’s dead of winter,” Ty said before Coop could.
“Hiking? The views from the mountains are romantic.” Gideon’s cheeks colored slightly. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“Again, dead of winter.” Ty, Mr. Glass Half Empty.
“A test-drive...” Gideon’s gaze turned distant. “Of course! An ATV excursion. Who doesn’t love riding through the mountains on an ATV?”
Tatiana came to mind. But someone on the team had to be positive or they might just as well start listing reasons why they loved Alaska. “Awesome idea, Gideon. We could come to the bar afterward for—”
“If you say karaoke, I’ll slug you.” Ty pushed his plate away, scowling.
“A mixer.” Coop gave Ty’s shoulder an encouraging shake, hoping to get rid of some of his own doubts. “You said you wanted a plan. Now we have one.” When Ty’s scowl didn’t lessen, he added, “We’ve always said we can do anything together.”
“Coop’s right.” Gideon raised his coffee cup for a group toast. “Here’s to our sunny, snowless future in the Lower 48.”
Coop raised his mug. “What do you say? Are you in, Ty?” They’d be sunk without him.
“This is crazy.” Ty blew out a breath. “Okay, I’ll try not to let you down.”
They clinked mugs.
“We’re all in.” Coop took a sip of strong black coffee, feeling more confident than he had since they’d made the bet. “Now, about that list of singles...”
* * *
“I’M RALLYING THE TROOPS!” Pop entered the Bar & Grill with an unsteady shuffle, a gust of wind and Nora. “Since the snow’s not letting up, I decided it’d be easier to create a baby command center here.”
“Pop.” Coop made a turn-down-the-volume gesture with both hands. “What is a baby command center?” And why did Nora show up every time Coop felt as if his dreams were within reach?
“The storm ain’t moving. And my grandchild needs things.” Pop tottered to a booth and claimed it with his usual fast, plunk-his-butt-down MO.
Almost immediately the door to the bar opened and married women began streaming in as if it was Black Friday at the mercantile. The invasion silenced the bar’s regulars. They brought clothes for Nora and the baby, bassinets and car seats, curiosity and advice. Lots and lots of advice, which quickly turned to stories that made Coop’s stomach turn.
“My baby had the worst colic,” one woman said. “He screamed so loud the neighbors thought we were torturing him.”
“Talk about screams.” Another built upon the building drama. “My Frank had an impacted tooth. Ruptured his gums like a seam ripping on my husband’s pants. I thought he’d bleed out before we made it to the doctor.”
Nora’s smile looked strained. And who could blame her? This was just like the time Coop hired Bobby Evans to help him sell cars. Bobby knew a lot about cars and engines and manufacturer reliability records. He knew nothing about when to shut up. The only car Bobby had sold in his four-week tenure was to his mother.
The tension in Nora’s expression, combined with the way she held the baby protectively to her chest, unleashed boundary-making, protective instincts Coop didn’t know he had.
He crossed the bar and began negotiating a path through the crowd of perfumed women in parkas. They barely budged. At this rate he’d reach Nora by Valentine’s Day.
There was nothing like a baby to attract a lot of women. It was like flies being drawn to honey. “Ladies, please step back. I’m a man who needs to see a baby.” He very carefully didn’t claim Nora’s child as his own.
Worked like a charm. The crowd melted away like room-temperature butter for a hot knife. The women oohed and aahed and patted Coop’s shoulder as if he’d done something truly wonderful.
Kind of made him feel like a cad.
“Cooper wants to hold his baby.” Mrs. Begay topped her statement with a romantic sigh. She’d bought a SUV from him last summer and, on his advice, had special ordered the expensive snow tires that had no doubt carried her here.
Mrs. Harrison, who’d never bought a car from Coop, was a grandmother of five and had been his third-grade teacher. She moved slowly out of his way, watching him from behind cat-eye glasses as if he was still a troublemaking third-grader. “About time someone caught you doing something naughty.”
Feeling kindly, Coop said, “You were right, Mrs. H. I was the one who replaced your glue with mayonnaise.”
That brought a smile to her plump cheeks. “I knew it! Do you know? No little boy has caused as much mischief in my classroom as you did.”
“I take that as a compliment.” And he expected her next car purchase to be from him.
Mrs. Tsosie, who ran the local newspaper almost single-handedly and had purchased her last truck from Coop, produced a serious-looking black camera with a lens the size of a bourbon bottle. “I want a picture of this reformed bachelor holding his baby.”
Reformed? That meant he’d be stuck in Kenkamken Bay forever.
“Oh, no.” Coop’s laughter sounded as hollow as his forgotten dreams. “We’re not taking out a mortgage or anything.”
In the booth, Pop frowned. Across from him, Nora rolled her eyes. Someone in the back of the group said, “I told you so.”
Coop clung to his smile and his bachelor’s shallow pride.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Tsosie said. “Now that you’re a dad, we’ll be seeing more of you in church and less of you in the bar.”
Coach’s laughter penetrated the crowd, penetrated Coop’s car-salesman-thick skin, penetrated his normally unshakable smile. Coop resented the implication that his whole way of life would change with fatherhood, resented it with patience-snapping intensity.
But before he could say fatherhood wouldn’t change him, Mrs. Tsosie said, “Go on. Hold your daughter.”
Your daughter.
A small tremor passed through Coop’s biceps and headed toward his hands. Probably, he’d lifted weights too hard yesterday morning. There was no way that tremor and the one that started in his quads and moved behind his knees had anything to do with nerves about trying something new. Coop was always the first one to jump off a bridge on a bungee cord or to test-drive a new vehicle in bad weather.
And yet...the baby in Nora’s arms waved a tiny fist. It was the first time he’d seen the baby move.
Coop’s step faltered. He grabbed on to Mary Jo’s shoulder.
The almost divorced mother of two met his gaze with weary brown eyes. “You’ll be fine.”
Coop’s gaze moved to Nora’s. Her soft blue eyes were also dark rimmed, but there was something else in her gaze, something that caused Coop’s hand to drop and his feet to move forward. That gaze said, “Stay away from me. From us.”
Who was she to keep him away? Kids needed parents. If the baby was his...
Regret did a gut-stomping two-step with defeat, dancing right over his big plans.
Coop took a deep breath, trying to slow the dance, trying to keep the dream alive, trying to shut up the annoying, upstanding side of his character that whispered about accepting responsibility for his actions. Finally, he reached the booth where Pop and Nora sat. “I want to hold her.”
There was reluctance in Nora’s eyes. He hadn’t asked to hold the baby at all yesterday and now she didn’t trust him. That look. She’d almost shot him down with it the night they’d met. She’d been hard to get—no playing. She’d made him work at winning her over, claiming at first that she only wanted to share some laughs and dance. But the more they’d laughed and danced, the more Coop had wanted. More conversations, more kisses, more Nora.
“Sit.” She nodded toward the bench beside her. “If you must.”
He sat, feeling weak and light-headed once more. Had to be the press of bodies and the four-inch-wide camera lens aimed his way. “I’ve never held a baby before.”
“I’m beginning to think I raised you wrong,” Pop announced loudly, as if Coop sat at the bar and not four feet away. “Playing the field all the time and not even knowing how to care for one of your own.”
“Pop, please shut up.”
Nora’s cheeks were as pink as the baby’s blanket. “It’s easy. Bend your arms as though I’m handing you a football. Hold them a little higher than your breadbasket.” Nora jiggled the baby so he could see how to position his arms. Her instructions were softly spoken, but her eyes... Her eyes warned of dire consequences if he dropped the ball—er, baby.
Mrs. Tsosie snapped a picture.
Coop held out his arms. “Football metaphors?”
“Two older brothers.” Nora slipped the small pink bundle into his arms. “I could switch to truck engines or hockey if you prefer. I also throw a mean knuckleball.”
Well, what do you know? Despite how she’d filled out her dress when they’d first met, Nora was grow-on-you gorgeous and a tomboy.
Coop couldn’t seem to look away from her pert nose, her delicate mouth or her painfully truthful eyes. They were as blue as an Alaskan summer sky. Despite her tomboy declaration, she wore jeans and a yellow blouse that had style. She wasn’t intimidating in her femininity, like Tatiana. She was approachable, like the girl you asked to help you with algebra homework.
The proverbial football he held squirmed and waved a tiny fist toward his chin, demanding he give her some attention. The baby’s tiny head rested in the crook of his elbow. Her body fit the length of his forearm, the pink blanket soft against his skin. Everything about her seemed like a perfect miniature of her mother. She opened dark blue eyes over a now familiar-looking nose and stared up at him, huffing and waving her fist once more.
“I didn’t mean to ignore you,” he whispered in a voice that was suddenly husky.
The women oohed and aahed again. Mrs. Tsosie snapped more pictures.
When he made eye contact with her, Zoe wiggled and blew spit bubbles.
“Show off.” Coop felt something in his chest shift. He was used to women wanting his attention. What Coop wasn’t used to was the feeling that this woman, this small female, was his. His to love by right. His to love by responsibility. His to love because she was so flippin’ adorable.
“Dang, women,” Pop said in his nearly shouting voice from the other side of the booth. “Give the man some space.” He shooed them away.
Coop didn’t see where his audience went. He only had eyes for the baby in his arms. His baby. He stroked her velvety cheek with the back of one finger and then traced the familiar Hamilton nose.
Zoe wrapped her tiny digits around his knuckle, blew out an I-wish-I-could-roll-my-eyes-at-you breath and squeezed.
Coop felt a corresponding pressure in his chest. In his heart. In the twisted strand of DNA that had passed on the good-parent gene from Pop. He had no idea what his daughter wanted, but whatever it was, he planned on giving it to her. “You don’t need to pay for a paternity test. She’s mine.”
Nora reached for Zoe but Coop held her off with one hand.
Nora gathered herself, as if preparing for a score-stopping tackle. But when she spoke, her voice lacked its usual strength. “Don’t get used to this. We’re leaving as soon as bus service resumes. And then we’re done.”
Bachelor Coop... Car salesman Coop... Those parts of him felt relief.
But there was a new Coop in town. And that Coop felt a breath-stealing depression at the thought of never seeing Zoe again.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ba18a8bb-926e-59cd-957f-9cd432996108)
THE WAY COOP had been giving Zoe a wide berth, Nora would never have predicted he’d fall in love with her.
But there was the proof in his lovesick gaze. In the way he held Zoe close. In the way he whispered, “That’s a great grip for a hockey stick.”
Fifty points for having a heart.
The crowd of mothers standing in the middle of the bar laughed and exchanged stories of moments when their men had realized being a father wasn’t the end of the world. It was much preferable to their stories of sick, bleeding babies.
“Hey, Ty,” Coop said. “Come check out my kid’s grip.” He spoke with pride, as if no other baby could possibly hold on to his finger as tightly as Zoe.
Nora wanted to snatch her baby back. She wasn’t here to share Zoe with an irresponsible drunk. Coop had come to the bar before noon!
“She’s just a normal baby.” Nora brushed her hair behind her ear and tried to ignore the bitter taste of fear at the back of her throat. She wasn’t about to let Coop get visitation and hurt Zoe with promises he never intended to keep and hopes that were constantly dashed. “That’s enough.”
But Coop had the new-daddy bug. He stood and walked around the bar, showing off Zoe to whoever would let him. And many did. The bar was filling up.
Nora cradled her forehead in her hands, staring at the scratched and scuffed tabletop. Fifty points for being a proud dad. Another fifty because he was acting on faith by claiming Zoe as his. Despite the positives, tension gripped her forehead with a vicious pound-pound-pound. She wanted to be taking points away, not giving them.
“Let him have his moment,” Brad said at an abnormal—for him—normal volume.
Nora brought her head up, clasping her hands tight enough to crack a walnut. “This moment won’t last. Coop doesn’t realize that raising a child is about more than showing up on Christmas morning with a gift.”
Brad’s brow furrowed. “Cooper isn’t like that.”
“He is.” Nora unknotted her hands. This visit wasn’t about her. “He doesn’t want to be a dad. He doesn’t even know what that means.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants,” Brad countered, still using that normal-volume voice, which probably served as his whisper. “You’ve had months to get used to the idea of being a parent. Give him time.”
Zoe was becoming fussy, waving her fists and giving an occasional, demanding shout.
Coop hurried back to their table, dodging a bassinet and basket of baby clothes. “What’s wrong with her? Did I do something wrong?”
“She’s hungry.” Nora dug in her backpack for a blanket, feeling her milk let down.
“That’s my cue to leave.” Brad edged out of the booth. “Suzy? When did you get here?”
“I’ll feed her.” Coop held out a hand.
He was clueless. He hadn’t paid enough attention to either of them since they’d arrived. “Biologically, you can’t feed her. She’s breast fed.” Although Nora had been intrigued by a breast pump one of the women had brought. It would be nice to have a spare bottle for those times, rare as they’d been—knock on wood—that Nora had been too tense for her milk to come down.
“Okay.” Coop transferred Zoe into Nora’s arms and sat across from her. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Nora slung the flannel blanket over her shoulder, draped it across Zoe and reached beneath it for the buttons of her blouse.
“You don’t mean to do that here? Now?” Coop’s gaze darted around the room, seeming to log every male in the vicinity. “I mean, you did it last night, but there are more people here today.”
Sensing it was feeding time, Zoe kicked and gave an impatient shout. Coop stared at the undulating blanket and then leaped to his feet to stand in front of Nora, blocking her from the view of most patrons with his broad shoulders.
His Sir Galahad moment gave Nora pause, as did the way his long dark hair brushed his blue flannel collar. She remembered the texture of his hair. It was as soft as Zoe’s. She remembered being held. His arms were strong and steady. Why did he have to be so sigh worthy?
Thankfully, before Nora lost herself to further fantasy, the mood in the bar seemed to shift. Conversation stalled. Footsteps approached their table.
“Hey, Tatiana,” Coop said coolly. “Thanks for coming down. Can you wait for me at the bar?”
A young woman with teased and curled black hair slipped into the booth and sat across from Nora. She was gorgeous, rail thin and seemed entitled, if her intense scrutiny of Nora was any indication. She was just the kind of woman Coop would want at his side. The kind of woman Nora had pretended to be the night they’d met: polished, sophisticated, feminine.
A shaft of jealousy pierced Nora’s chest. Coop had asked Tatiana to meet him at the bar. She couldn’t even subtract points. This wasn’t about following her heart and giving up her body on a believe-in-love-at-first-sight whim. It wasn’t about telling herself in a bar that the earth had shifted and the stars had aligned and by some twist of fate she’d met The One. Coop wasn’t hers to be jealous over.
“A baby from the Heartbreakers’ Trinity,” Tatiana said in a voice as smooth as her cherry-bomb-red lipstick. “I had to see if it was an angel or a devil that brought you down, Coop.”
Nora stopped peeking under the blanket to see if Zoe had fallen asleep or was just taking a break. “Excuse me?”
“The Heartbreakers’ Trinity is what we local women call Ty, Gideon and Coop.” Tatiana’s smile wasn’t lady-killer hateful. It was almost...wistful. “Three gorgeous, unattainable guys. Many have tried. None have succeeded. And yet here you are.” She glanced up at Coop. “I’m disappointed.”
Nora felt every extra pound of baby weight tackle her feminine pride and pound it into the mud. “He’s not mine,” she managed to say, feeling a cold draft swirl around her ankles. Did no one in this town stay home in a snowstorm?
“But you did catch him.” Tatiana’s gaze turned appraising.
“On accident, I assure you.” Nora wished Zoe would finish, wished Tatiana would go away, wished the snow would let up. None of which happened.
Coop glanced over his shoulder. “All right, then,” he muttered and then raised his voice. “Ladies, thank you for coming to the grand opening of Trinity Matchmaking. We’re going to help you find your happily-ever-after. Who wants to sign up first?”
“That depends,” Tatiana said slyly, still appraising Nora. “Are you an eligible bachelor, Coop? Or are you offering someone like Mike Lopes?” She pointed to a long-bearded man near the window. “Because if it’s Mike, I’m out.”
“Agreed,” said a woman wearing the thickest pair of false eyelashes Nora had ever seen.
“Hey, I’m offended.” Mike frowned. Or he might have frowned. Hard to tell behind his bushy beard.
“Let’s not objectify each other based on appearances,” Coop said with a surprising amount of authority. “We’re going to have you take a survey that identifies what you’re looking for in a soul mate and predicts who best fits your dreams.”
“We’re in test mode,” Gideon admitted from the bar, avoiding eye contact with just about everyone. “So we may ask you to take the survey more than once as we refine the algorithm.”
“And to make things less awkward, because we all know how uncomfortable dating can be...” Coop worked that smile of his for all it was worth. “We’re planning group excursions where we’ll pair you up with potential matches. Matches you should know today if you sign up.”
Gideon frowned, looking as if he wanted to take that last sales promise back.
“And during our introductory period, sign-ups are free.” Ty held up a clipboard. “What have you got to lose?”
Nora had the distinct impression that the would-be matchmakers were flying by the seat of their pants. There was something about Coop’s smile that was strained, Gideon’s gaze that was nervous and Ty’s voice with its forced cheer. It was her father all over again. Still, they had some takers. People were moving toward Ty.
“Our first event is next Saturday morning,” Ty was saying. “An ATV trail ride.”
“Tell all your friends.” Gideon smiled like a college intern giving his first sweaty-palmed business presentation.
“All your single friends.” Coop broadened his still-fake smile.
Nora was almost sorry she was going to miss their event. Not the part involving ATVs, but the part involving these three bachelors convincing this group of set-in-their-ways singles that they’d found their perfect match.
* * *
“NORA, CAN YOU fill out a survey for me?” Gideon asked thirty minutes after they’d officially opened for business when, miraculously, they hadn’t been laughed out of the bar.
The question left Coop feeling as though he’d been checked from behind and slammed into a wall. “Not her.”
“Why not?” Gideon glanced up from his laptop.
Coop couldn’t look Gideon in the eye. “She’s not exactly single.”
“I am single and I’d be happy to fill it out.” Nora had Zoe on her shoulder and was walking an imaginary track around the bar with a bounce in her step. She stopped next to Gideon’s bar stool. “But it’s only a test. I’m leaving as soon as the bus is cleared to go.”
“You, too, Coop.” Gideon handed him a sheet of paper.
Coop stared at the survey in horror. “Why do I have to fill one out?”
“Because if my survey matches you with Tatiana, we’ll know the algorithm isn’t working.” Gideon left them to pass out more tests.
“Ah.” Nora’s smile was too knowing. “Tatiana broke your heart.”
“It was more like a head-on train wreck. She’s several years younger than me and sneaked into my bedroom one summer night minus a layer or two of clothes.” He’d reacted to the ambush with horror and a firm rejection. “I haven’t slept with the window open since.” He watched Nora burp the baby the way he’d watched Coach demonstrate a new hockey move back in the day: with a keen desire to learn. “Have you ever had your heart broken?”
“Not by a guy.” Nora must have realized how odd that sounded because she quickly added, “By my dad. He was a charmer, a frivolous dreamer and a drunk like...”
“Like me.” Coop couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. “You were going to say like me.”
She almost looked remorseful. Almost. “What am I supposed to think? We met in a bar. You charmed my heels off and never called me back.” She glanced around. “You hang out in a bar all day. And you probably think matchmaking is an easy way to riches.”
“You don’t pull any punches, do you?”
He almost wished she would. “You haven’t even looked under my hood to see what kind of man I am.” Lately. But it wasn’t an issue of how well they knew each other physically. “First off, there aren’t too many places to hang out in K-Bay, especially in winter. Second, you may have noticed I’m drinking water. And third, if I have anything alcoholic here, it’s one light beer and only a couple of times a week.” He sounded far too serious, as if he cared about her opinion. His habits were none of her business. And yet he didn’t stop there. “As for frivolous dreams and matchmaking, I’ve always wanted to leave Alaska. I almost made it once on Ty’s coattails. And I almost made it away to college.”
“What happened?”
“Ty nearly died in a hockey accident and then Pop nearly died in a fishing accident. I couldn’t leave either one.” And now, when he was on the verge of leaving again, he was a father.
In Nora’s arms, Zoe drew her little legs up and released them like a leaping frog. She made an indelicate grunting noise.
“What’s happening?” Coop was filled with the need to comfort the baby. “Do you need me to take her?”
“She’s about to mess her pants.” The way Nora said it implied he had no idea how to change a diaper, not that he could argue with that. “I’d let you take her, but he who holds the baby when she goes,” Nora said in a soft croon, “changes the baby when she goes.”
Zoe repeated her frog-leg movements and grunted some more.
“Just because I hang out in a bar doesn’t mean I can’t change a diaper.” Brave words for a confirmed bachelor. “I know how to properly strap in a car seat. I know the importance of a favorite pacifier.” He didn’t want to relive the day he’d learned that lesson at the car lot. “And I know moms need breaks.” He held out his arms. “I’ll risk it.”
“It’s a sure thing.” Nora maneuvered Zoe for a transfer, but not before the baby pulled up her legs once more and made a sound that rivaled Pop after Beanie-Weenie night at the bar.
“On second thought.” Coop took a quick step back. “This one’s on you.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_7ad8c4ba-c58b-5e53-b277-b68c6ff99f12)
“WE’RE IN TROUBLE.” Gideon angled his laptop on the bar so Ty and Coop could see.
“What now?” Coop didn’t think his nerves could take any more matchmaking drama. There was enough drama in his personal life.
Gideon tapped the screen with his pencil eraser. “Ty was matched with Tatiana—”
“No, dude.” Ty hung his head. “No.”
“—and Coop with Mary Jo.”
There was a twang of something in Coop’s chest. Disappointment? How could that be? Coop wasn’t looking for love.
He glanced over at Nora, who was eating lunch with Mary Jo. She fit in easily with the crowd, as if she’d always belonged here. Zoe slept peacefully in a portable bassinet at her feet. The snow hadn’t relented. Twenty feet in forty-eight hours. The single population of K-Bay that they’d managed to bring to the bar would be finishing up lunch soon. They’d be expecting to hear who their potential matches were for next Saturday. They’d want to leave, run errands and go home.
“The test was too shallow.” Gideon clutched the placket of his polo as if it was a tie, stretching the fabric downward. “It didn’t discriminate with enough precision.”
“We’re going to be the laughingstocks of the town.” Ty chugged half his water.
“Nobody panic.” Coop ignored the panic flipping through his stomach and removed Gideon’s hand from its stranglehold. “We can say the computer crashed.”
“What?” Gideon sputtered back to life. “That’s like saying I’m incompetent.”
Coop lowered his voice. “Then let’s just announce their matches are a secret until the ATV event.”
Nora brought her plate over to the counter. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. I was matched with Coach.”
The elderly bar owner stopped filling soda glasses with ice and took Nora’s measure. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s a bad thing because—” Gideon lowered his voice “—you’re married.”
“Then, you shouldn’t have had me take the test.” Coach flashed a mischievous grin at Nora. “Keep in touch. Mabel could kick the bucket any day.”
“And so could you if Mabel hears you talking like that.” Ty glanced over his shoulder as if expecting Coach’s wife to be there with a loaded shotgun.
“It didn’t match you with Coach, Nora,” Coop said wearily. It hadn’t even matched her to him.
“That’s a relief,” Nora said with a pained expression. “I hate to tell you this, but your questions read like the ones from a list in a glossy magazine. I don’t think I want to know who I was matched with.”
Gideon snapped his laptop shut and glared at Ty, who did the back-away shrug and said, “They were your magazines.”
“Ah, the sweet smell of disaster.” Coach finished prepping his sodas and hefted his tray, leaving the trinity of matchmakers with Nora.
Nora considered their pathetic mugs far too long before saying anything else. “I told myself I wouldn’t butt in. However... If you want to match people with their soul mates, maybe you need to think longer term than a one-nighter.” At Coop’s blank, shocked look, she added, “You didn’t ask where I saw myself five or ten years from now. You didn’t ask if I enjoyed cooking or gardening or puttering around a garage. Don’t you think it helps if you have common interests?” Her gaze fell away from Coop’s. “Women want fun, but in the end they all fall for a guy who does the dishes.”
Gideon scribbled notes like mad.
“What about kids?” Coop blurted.
Ty stared at him as if he’d eaten a live goldfish.
“You need to be compatible there, too,” Nora allowed. “Small family, large family, open to adoption. Do you want your kids to go to college? That kind of thing.”
Gideon leaned forward, as intent as he’d ever been in Mr. Yazzie’s algebra lectures. “What did you see in Coop when you met?”
Coop held his breath.
Nora surveyed Coop with a cool gaze that made him feel like an overpriced jacket in the midst of the clearance rack. “I went to the bar that night for fun. My mother had died and my father didn’t show up for the funeral. Coop and I talked hockey and NASCAR. We laughed and danced. And I...” Her gaze drifted to Zoe.
Had Nora gone to the bar because she wanted a husband? A baby? Anything that would make Nora seem less than perfect? And ease the ever-increasing feeling that he’d made a mistake by leaving her that morning. “Go on.”
“I wanted to feel special. And he did that.” She met Coop’s gaze squarely. “Until the next morning when he was gone.”
Crap. She was a great person. Coop was the pathetic loser.
He’d given her a night that was exactly what she’d wanted, but he couldn’t help but feel he hadn’t come close to giving her what she’d really needed.
And he was now afraid he didn’t know what that was.
* * *
“I COULD SIT HERE all night with this grandbaby,” Brad practically shouted from his recliner. His volume didn’t disturb a sleeping Zoe, even though he held her in his arms.
Outside, the snow still came down heavily, illuminated by streetlights.
Nora stood in the kitchen doing the dishes with Coop. “You’re surprisingly domesticated for a bachelor.” And she was entirely too comfortable being domestic with him. It was St. Patrick’s Day all over again. There was just something about Coop that hoodwinked common sense. That urged her to trust. That said, “He’s the one.”
“When Pop was first injured, I had to make sure he had good nutrition.” Coop washed dishes efficiently. He’d added the right amount of dish soap and had the proper sponge for the job. “Don’t get me wrong. We eat a lot of meat and we only have a handful of vegetables we like.” He handed her a plate. Their eyes met. Their hands touched.
Her heart beat faster.
Only because she nearly dropped the plate.
Wake up, common sense urged.
Her father was a drunk. He lied to cover his addiction. He lied to earn forgiveness for his insensitivity. He followed every promise of an easy buck, even if he had to spend ten to do so. But... Coop didn’t seem to be a drunk. Sure, she imagined he exaggerated a bit to sell things, like cars and matchmaking services. But he wasn’t an insensitive jerk. People in town cared for him. They watched his back. They wished him well.
Her trip here had seemed so simple. Show up, give Coop the paternity test, state her demands and make the last bus back to Anchorage.
But Coop was nothing like the man her broken heart had painted.
He was...
She was...
His gaze still held hers. “The snow may let up tomorrow.” His eyes were full of promises that had nothing to do with babies and child support.
“And the bus will leave.” She dragged her gaze away. “With us on it.”
He washed the last plate. “How much time is left on your maternity leave?”
“I start back to work a week from Monday.” There was too much longing in her voice. It was time to tell him the truth.
“I only came to find you to arrange for financial support. When my father was sober, which wasn’t often, he felt it necessary to try to be a part of our lives, but he never fulfilled a promise. Not one.” She took the last plate, carefully avoiding his touch. “Even so, every time he showed up, I was hopeful he’d changed. That he’d finally be the father I wanted.” She forced herself to look at him, to make him understand why she couldn’t listen to her heart and stay. “And every time, he broke my heart. I don’t want that for Zoe.”
Coop’s eyes darkened to a stormy green. “I’m not some deadbeat who doesn’t do what he says he’s going to. Is that why you didn’t tell me about Zoe?”
“You dumped me.” She squared her shoulders. “Without so much as a text saying it was great but you weren’t into long-distance relationships.” Her throat was thick with hurt and battered hope, making it hard to speak, hard to be heard, hard to admit, “And then you didn’t remember me.”
“I’m not your father.” Coop held her arms with soapy fingers, turning her to face him. “I’m just a guy who was dazzled by a beautiful woman and woke up scared.”
“You?” The man with the nothing-fazes-me smile? “Scared?” The sharp edge of hurt she’d been carrying around in her heart for ten months dulled somewhat.
“We never talked about the future or our pasts.” Coop lifted her chin with one wet finger. His eyes were soft and apologetic. His voice rough with remorse. “I had dreams of being a sports agent, making big bucks and living large. I had dreams of living in Malibu, driving a Porsche and being a man every woman wanted. And then Ty had his accident.” He paused to clear his throat. “Now I’m a used-car salesman and a struggling matchmaker living in a mobile home with his dad. No woman wants that.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, you’re a good-looking guy—” Overlooking the beard, which was growing on her. “With a steady job. Women give you points for that.” Tatiana certainly did.
“Points? Like keeping score?” A hint of a grin teased the corners of his mouth. “I thought rating the opposite sex was something guys did.”
Her cheeks heated. She stepped back and began putting dishes away. “I’ve heard some men rate women on their appearance at first glance. Don’t even think about denying it,” she said when he opened his mouth to do just that. “I’ve heard them. And...” She sounded guilty already. “Some women keep a running tally in order to judge a man’s long-term potential.”
“You do keep score.” He released the sink plug. The water slurped and gurgled, taunting Nora as his laughter might have. “This is better than Gideon’s survey.”
“It’s just a thing I do. It doesn’t mean anything.” There were no more dishes to put away. No more chores to hide behind.
“What’s my score?” There was a teasing note to his voice, but there was also an underlying platform of seriousness.
Her hands knotted in the tea towel.
He slowly unwound the damp white material and replaced it with his now-dry hands. “Nora.”
She stared at their hands, reminded of that night and of something she hadn’t recalled, something she’d forgotten: his tenderness. “I don’t actually keep score,” she said, still in a place that was half memory, half here-and-now. “I give points when a man does something I like or admire, and I take points away when he does something I don’t.”
“My score, Nora.” Resignation. He knew what was coming.
His deficit shouldn’t have made her feel guilty. He was the one who’d run out on her. But there was his touch, his gentle smile, his broken dreams and his falling in love with Zoe.
“You don’t have a score.” She was a horrible liar.
His thumbs stroked the backs of her hands, an odd contrast to his jaw hardening beneath that scruffy dark beard. “I want a number.”
“You don’t have a score because...” She shouldn’t tell him. They were getting along so well. Civility would help her negotiate child support. But a small part of her wanted him to know—with certainty—that his leaving had hurt her. “Because the amount of points you lost when you sneaked out the door is astronomical. I just can’t trust a man like that.” But she wanted to.
She expected Coop to release her. She expected him to turn away and scoff. She didn’t expect him to pull her close, to look deep in her eyes or to press his whisker-fringed lips softly against hers.
She hadn’t expected him to poke holes in her resolve to raise Zoe alone. But he did, with one too-brief kiss.
His point deficit was erased. Its use invalidated. The point system broken.
Coop stepped back. “I don’t care about points or the past.” He spoke in a low voice, one that set aside pride to make way for truths. “I’m responsible. And I won’t run scared again. I could be responsible for—”
“Don’t say it.” Despite her words, she backed into the corner of the kitchen, waiting to hear what would next come out of his mouth.
“Stay, Nora.” His gaze was guarded. His words as solemn as a wedding vow. “Stay until you’re due back at work. Being a new mom is hard. Give me a chance to...to...spoil you a little.”
To love you a little.
That was what Nora heard him say.
But she wasn’t interested in loving a little. She’d had that with her dad.
And so she turned away.
But she didn’t turn him down.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_11c96ab9-f5c1-5e22-927f-14060128db6d)
“I HAVE AN IDEA for your questionnaire,” Coop said to Ty and Gideon the night after he’d kissed Nora.
The snow had let up but bus service had yet to resume. Nora had said nothing more about staying or going. Coop had told her the short version of his adult life, but he hadn’t confessed the matchmaking was a bet. She’d chalk that up to one more bad behavior he shared with her dad. She’d dock him points. And he needed those points to qualify as dad material.
Coop rubbed his gritty eyes and scanned the bar patrons. “Let’s ask them how they’ve been disappointed in love.”
“Let me count the ways.” Ty stared down a tall glass of ice water. “You’ll blow up Gideon’s program for real this time.”
“I agree with Ty,” Gideon said. “I can’t just ask an open-ended question. I need a check box. A short list of check boxes.”
“Why do you love Alaska?” Coach moved toward the kitchen carrying a tray of dirty glasses and empty snack bowls. “That’s easier to answer than the reasons for a broken heart. And you’ll need to type that up when you lose this bet.”
“He’s right.” Gideon sounded defeated.
“He’s not. We’re not losing.” Coop showed them his phone and an article he’d found online. “Here are ten traits of a heartbreaker.”
Ty leaned in for a closer look. “Too quick to make a connection with you. Doesn’t call back after he scores. Can’t remember your name after he buys you a drink. Doesn’t remember you when he sees you again.” Ty gave Coop an assessing look. “This could be you.”
Coop tried to brush off Ty’s conclusion. “It could be any of us.”
Ty and Gideon shook their heads.
Okay, it was most likely Coop. Self-awareness sucked.
“I can’t predict a man’s behavior,” Gideon pointed out. “And no man will admit to being a jerk.”
“I will,” Coop said, ignoring their dropping jaws. He couldn’t be the only one remorseful about the past. “Where are we with the flyers for this weekend’s ATV social?”
“I put some up at the grocery store and the Laundromat.” Gideon stared at Coop’s cell phone, sounding distracted, which Coop took to mean the wheels in his brain were starting to spin.
“Ice rink. Sporting-goods store,” Ty said. “But they aren’t working other than to bring people in to see what madness we’ll undertake next.”
Coop had no idea what madness they’d do next.
“We’ve had about nine people sign up. Mostly guys,” Gideon lamented. “For this to work, we need bachelorettes.”
Coach came out of the kitchen and stopped in front of them. “I used to enjoy running this place with no one but my cousin Rafe and me. If you’re going to consider this your home base, you need to help out.” He handed Ty a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of disinfectant. “Table four needs a wipe down.”
“Why don’t you hire someone?” The way Ty’s chin was jutting, Coop bet Ty had more to say. He used to trash-talk with the best of them, but the former goalie was being civil.
“Because in three weeks you’ll lose the bet and business will return to slow and steady. You and half the male population in this town will still be single.”
“You might be surprised,” Ty said tightly.
“Highly unlikely.” Coach laughed and returned to the kitchen, but his lack of faith in them hovered overhead like a black rain cloud above Sky Hawk Mountain.
“I’d love to prove him wrong.” Gideon wasn’t one to start a fight. With a scowl and a determined edge to his tone, he certainly sounded ready to finish one.
As did Ty. “And then I’d love the three of us to take over one of his teams.” He pounded a fist on the bar, but he might as well have been pounding his chest. “I’ll make them winners. Gideon will make them solvent.”
“Yep,” Gideon said.
“And Coop will create a plan to sell more tickets than any other professional farm team.” Ty’s fist hit the bar one more time.
Nadine walked by wearing a hot pink sweater, which reminded Coop of Zoe, of Nora, of Pop and what he’d be missing if he left Alaska.
“Together. Right?” Ty slapped Gideon and Coop on the back.
“Right,” Coop said with false enthusiasm.
* * *
“BRAD, WHAT EVER happened to your Mrs. Hamilton?” Nora was settled in the corner of Coop’s couch, a sleeping Zoe snuggled in her arms.
Coop’s father muted the big screen, looking as if he’d smelled one of Zoe’s poopy diapers. “Kathy decided I wasn’t the man for her. Then she decided Alaska wasn’t the place for her. And then she decided being a mother wasn’t the role for her.” There was a coldness in his words that rivaled the below-freezing temperature outside. “I could have forgiven her everything but the last.”
Nora brought Zoe a little closer. Poor Coop. “How old was he?”
“Nine.” The older man cleared his throat. “He’d always been the outgoing, trusting type, but that...that changed him. He was only outgoing after that. Other than Gideon and Ty, he didn’t let people get close.”
“No one?”
“No one.”
And yet he’d asked Nora to stay.
Because of Zoe. It had to be because of Zoe.
But there was that kiss...
The volume on the television went back up. Zoe blew a gentle bubble in her sleep.
And Nora couldn’t stop thinking about a little boy with a broken heart and an infectious smile.
* * *
THE CROWD OF singles for the ATV social was promising: six women and nine men, including the three matchmakers. They had many other candidates that couldn’t make the event. Talk and laughter greeted the dawn.
Gideon moved discreetly between their clients, mentioning names the refined survey had suggested might be their soul mates. With the supplemental test, Coop had been paired with Nora, which gave Coop an annoying feeling of warmth in his chest. Love and responsibility had kept him in K-Bay the last time he tried to leave. He wouldn’t let a third chance pass him by, even if it meant risking a relationship with his daughter. Coop had to take this one last shot at greatness.
He and Nora had fallen into an easy rhythm during the week since she’d come to K-Bay. Coop made coffee in the early morning when Zoe awoke and wanted breakfast. After her feeding, he walked and burped the baby while Nora ate. The snow had let up enough to re-open the car lot. Coop came home for lunch. He cooked dinner. He took Nora and the baby to the bar for an hour or so in the evening for informal mixers. But there’d been no more kisses, no more getting carried away on Coop’s part and nearly promising Nora more than he could give.
Nope. They talked about inconsequential things, as if they worked in the same office together. He didn’t admit he couldn’t stop thinking about fatherhood. She didn’t admit he continued to fall short of her fatherhood standards. And Coop was relieved because he didn’t have to choose between his dreams and responsibility.
“Not him.” The distaste in Tatiana’s rising voice killed the positive energy of the ATV crowd. “I’ve dated beards like that. Never again will these cheeks receive beard burns.”
Almost as one, the men placed hands over their bearded chins, even Coop.
A week. They’d been at this a week and no one had rung the bell. And no one would today if Tatiana kept this up.
Gideon drew Tatiana aside and spoke to her in a low voice. The women tried to pretend there was no tension in the air. The sun was out and the snow was melting, especially on the southern mountain trail they planned to ride today. Everything seemed promising except for Tatiana, who was playing Princess Pouty. And Ty, who was pacing.
Nora stood outside the Bar & Grill, shading Zoe’s eyes from the bright morning sunshine.
Time to get this show on the off-road. “I need everyone in the Suburbans. Ladies, you need to sit with one of the men Gideon brought to your attention.” Coop had taken two large SUVs off his lot and rented two large trailers, which he’d filled with every two-seater ATV he could borrow or rent in town.
The day wasn’t all about matchmaking. He was hoping to sell a Suburban to Mike. It was large enough he could take all his fishing buddies in the eight-seater. Coop was also hoping for a kiss for luck from Nora. One without strings.
He had a better chance of selling a Suburban.
“What time will you be back?” Nora asked when Coop came to say goodbye.
“Worried about me?” The wind whistled between the buildings. Coop adjusted Zoe’s stocking cap more firmly around her little ears.
“I’m a mother. I worry about everything.” At his frown she added, “I worry this matchmaking thing is going to blow up in your face. And I’m worried someone out here is going to get their feelings hurt.”
Mine. When you leave and take Zoe.
He had a thing for her. Couldn’t she tell? The wind reached its cold hands inside his jacket and shook the material, covering up Coop’s shock at the increasingly strong sentiment that he didn’t want Nora and Zoe to go.
“If you and your friends are serious about matchmaking, you should charge for these things.” She half turned away from him, sheltering Zoe from the wind.
“We’re serious.” About winning the bet and getting out of Alaska. “This kind of work can open doors for us.”
“I hope you don’t mean bedroom doors.” Her smile sparkled as bright as sunshine on a snowdrift.
Would Nora want to leave? To go through that open door with him? “Have you ever thought about moving away from Alaska?”
“No.” Her brow furrowed. “Why would I? My older brothers live here.”
The hopes he hadn’t acknowledged fell. Nora wanted to stay. He wanted to go. Yet he couldn’t quite let loose the idea. “What if there was a job waiting for you in another state?”
Her gaze turned suspicious. “I thought you were serious about the matchmaker business, about building something and...”
“I am, but I’m also not close-minded about better jobs elsewhere.” And then he made a tactical error. “We made a bet with Coach about the matchmaking and if we win...”
“You made a bet involving a job?” Clouds of frost emitted from her mouth and chilled him. “Is this a game to you?”
“No. Keep your voice down.” He took her arm and walked away from the vehicles. “These are my friends. I want them to be happy.”
“But there’s a bet involved.” Her face pinched, and not from the cold.
“Coop, let’s get this show on the road.” Ty climbed into the passenger seat of the lead Suburban.
Suddenly, Coop was all too aware that the clock was ticking on his and Nora’s time together. “You’ll be here when I get back? I’ll explain everything then.”
“Of course I’ll be here. Mary Jo is going with you.”
“Good.” He leaned in and kissed Zoe’s nose.
And then he kissed Nora’s, telling himself it wasn’t a final kiss goodbye.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_297e98ac-6701-5f1f-96d1-8d70327d31b1)
“WE’RE GOING TO LEAVE, Zoe, and that’s that.” Nora fastened the baby’s diaper tabs in the Bar & Grill’s bathroom a few hours after the matchmaking group had left. “Your father may not be exactly like my father, but he’s still a flake.” Matchmaking on a bet? “Who needs him?”
Unfortunately her heart wasn’t on the same page as her declaration. She enjoyed Coop’s company. She wanted to talk about hockey and politics and Zoe’s future with him. She wanted to dance and kiss and laugh and smile with him.
“But I want chocolate, too,” she cooed to Zoe. “And I don’t keep that around the house.”
“I shaved my legs for this?” Mary Jo traipsed into the restroom, followed by a group of women. “I have mud up the legs of my jeans and down my backside.”
Tatiana followed her in, took one look at her reflection in the mirror and shrieked. “I have helmet hair? Why didn’t someone tell me?”
Nora snapped Zoe into her pink, footed jumper. The guys must be devastated. Not that they didn’t deserve some devastation for playing with people’s hearts. “I guess the trip didn’t go well.”
“Go well? Did you see my hair?” Tatiana pointed to the flattened hair above her ears with a comb. She began teasing it back to life. Soon it looked more like a lopsided dove’s nest than a swanky hairstyle.
“Look at my jeans.” Mary Jo showed Nora her mud-covered and unidentifiable-debris-spattered backside. “These were brand-new.”
“My mascara iced over and my eyes nearly froze shut.” Nadine rubbed at her eyes and then did a double take in the mirror. “Forget your hair, Tat. Why didn’t you tell me one of my eyelashes fell off?” She held out her sweater, searching for the missing beauty accessory.
“You sat in the front seat.” Tatiana went to work on the other side of her hair. “I couldn’t see your face.”
“Ah.” Nora bit back a smile as she picked up Zoe. “That’s what’s on Mary Jo’s jeans.”
“Ruined,” Nadine muttered, plucking the lash from her friend’s behind. With a sigh, she carefully peeled off the other eyelash. “Can I borrow your mascara, Tat?” Nadine didn’t wait for approval before digging in Tatiana’s purse. “This was stupid. The point of a social is to look good, be social and talk.”
“With hotties.” Tatiana never paused her mad, fluffing rhythm.
Mary Jo grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped at her butt. “A place where you can hear what a man says.”
The three women stopped what they were doing and looked at each other. And then they all started laughing.
Nora missed out on the joke. “What’s so funny?”
Tatiana edged Nadine out of the mirror space. “It was actually kind of nice not to hear them.”
Nadine pumped the brush in the mascara tube. “All they talk about is fishing and hunting and hockey.”
“And the weather.” Mary Jo gave up wiping. She threw the towels in the trash. “And the road conditions. And...I don’t know. Boring stuff?”
“What would you like them to talk about?” Nora asked, rubbing Zoe’s back.
Silence. More exchanged looks, as if they were afraid to spill some mighty secret.
“Okay, I’ll say it.” Nadine turned to Nora, hand on hip. “I’d like to talk about me. And hear about him. What did he think of a movie we’ve both seen? What does he think about the roof that caved in from snow at the elementary school? It’s like their conversational skills are buried beneath their beards.”
The women nodded. Nora silently agreed. That described a lot of men she knew.
Except Coop.
“What’s the point?” Tatiana gave up trying to fluff her hair. “The men in this town don’t try. They can’t even be bothered to shave beyond once a year. Ty and Mike don’t shave at all. It’s got to be better in the Lower 48.”
Nora wasn’t so sure.
* * *
“THAT WAS A DISASTER,” Ty muttered, meeting Coop’s gaze in the mirror of the men’s room where Coop was cleaning up at the sink so he could hold Zoe.
“A mushroom cloud of disaster,” Gideon added, leaning against the wall.
“I hear you,” Coop said. “I might have salvaged the day if Mike made me an offer for that red Suburban.”
“Are you giving up?” Ty’s beard practically quivered with anger.
“No,” Coop said carefully, unable to ignore the gut-twisting feeling of impending failure. “But have you ever wondered if we were meant to stay here?”
Ty’s expression turned mushroom-cloud dark. “You. Of all people.” He flung open the door hard enough to make it bang against the wall.
“Seriously,” Gideon said. “It’s as though Nora came to town and you lost your edge. We need the shark who can sell a car to a guy who’s got twenty.” He stalked out.
Had Coop lost his edge? He looked in the mirror. Beard? Check. Flannel? Check. Hadn’t he just taken an ATV through sloppy terrain? Yes, he had. There was no issue with his edge or salesmanship. Except...
He washed dishes. He changed wet diapers. He had a car seat in his truck.
It’ll all be worth it if Nora stays.
His Y chromosome banged a protest in his chest, demanding the return of his maleness, of his drive for his dreams. Coop looked in the mirror. Twenty years he’d had this dream. He wasn’t ready to give it up yet. Did that make him a bad dad?
Coop went out to face the music: twelve singles who’d complained bitterly about the cold, muddy conditions all the way down Sky Hawk Mountain and two good friends who deserved his all.
Nora stood by the bar arguing with Gideon and Ty. Zoe lay in the portable bassinet at her feet, cooing softly.
“She might have a point,” Gideon was saying.
Ty had the fingers of one hand splayed upward through his thick beard, covering his mouth.
“What’s up?” Coop draped an arm casually over Nora’s shoulders. She startled, but didn’t shrug him off.
“She wants all of us to shave.” Eyes wide, Ty curled his fingers in his facial hair. “And it’s not even March.”
Nora wanted it?
The urge to say, “Take me to your razor” was almost overwhelming. Instead, Coop said, “All of us?” in a tremulous voice.
“Yes, all.” Nora shrugged off his arm. “The women shaved. And ironed their clothes. And put on lipstick. What did you and your guys do?”
“We gassed up the vehicles,” Coop said matter-of-factly, despite a very small voice in his head counseling him to shut up and shave.
“And?” Nora waited to hear more. When there was no more, she shot them a look of blue-eyed disgust. “My point exactly.” She picked up Zoe and met Coop’s gaze squarely. “Where’s the nearest barbershop? Maybe I can get one of the braver men here to shave, because if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s half measures.”
Translation: Coop had earned the same loser stamp as Nora’s dad. How many points had that cost him?
“You mean, you want us to shave now?” Ty looked as though he might faint. His beard covered the worst of his scar. “That’s not how we do things here.”
“Look around.” Nora gestured to the bar crowd. “The guys are sitting together by the windows and the women are sitting together along the wall. It’s a social. Shouldn’t they be socializing?”
Three men took in the situation. Three men remained silent. Three men who claimed they’d do anything to win the bet were balking over facial hair. And in Coop’s case, it wasn’t even good facial hair.
Mike stood, heading toward the door. Had he heard his beard—the longest in town—was at risk?
“Kiss your matchmaking hobby goodbye.” Nora huffed. “It was all a stupid game to you anyway, but it was serious to your friends. I guess that proves what kind of friends you really are.”
“We already knew about Coop,” Ty muttered.
Gideon didn’t speak or move.
But Nora did. She walked away, carrying Zoe in the bassinet. It felt as if she was leaving for good.
The bet was demolishing Coop’s friendships and destroying his chance at being a father. If Coop didn’t do something, his friends would never speak to him again. And Nora? She’d walk away tomorrow, taking Zoe with her. Forever.
“We’re not losing anything.” Coop found his determination, his pride. “Get your parka, Nora. This was your idea.” He raised his voice. “This social isn’t over. Guys, get your coats. Every man is coming with me. Ladies, you stay here until we return.” Coop was on a mission. “Mike, I need you to open the barbershop.”
“Mike is the town barber?” Nora was flabbergasted. “You’re in more trouble than I thought.”
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