Leah Vale - The Bad Boy

He raised his hand to stop her. “No big deal. Really.” Though a very big part of him would have just as soon kissed her. She was so his type. Great eyes, hair, shapely, and roughly his age. A woman who’d know how and still consider it fun. ’Cause fun was all he was ever after, thanks to what his mother had experienced.

“But you don’t understand—”

“Unfortunately, I understand perfectly.” He stopped her once more, and gestured at her with the letter. “The McCoys send a pretty piece of fluff—a secretary with an eye on moving up, I bet—to be sure I’d realize just how lucky I am, on the off chance that being told out of the blue that I’m a member of one of the richest families in the country isn’t enough.” He winked and smiled tightly. “No offense, of course.”

Obviously offended, anyway, she pulled her chin back and her frown deepened into a scowl. “First of all, please don’t interrupt me. Second, I beg your pardon.” Her tone confirmed it.

While he’d never purposefully ticked off a woman before, finding many more benefits to having them like him, the bitterness that had festered far too long deep inside him gurgled to life and kept him from apologizing.

But since she had saved him the embarrassment of having to call his business partner, Ted, to bail him out of jail, the least he could do was explain. He lifted the letter held in his tightening grip. “The thing is, I already knew about my paternity.”

Her jaw went slack.

He leaned toward her, and despite his surging resentment, the sweet floral scent of her perfume went straight to his head after the bleach-laced stink of the jail and the bar scum he’d tangled with the night before.

“You see, when I was thirteen years old my mother told me—on her deathbed, mind you—that I was a Real McCoy, that Marcus McCoy, the only man she’d ever loved, was my father.” Cooper straightened and grappled for control over emotions that had always been at least an inch beyond his reach. Emotions that had led him to test any and all boundaries placed on him by those who didn’t understand his torment. “And all that time I’d thought I was just another kid whose dad hadn’t cared enough to give him his name. But mine had paid to keep it a secret.”

He pasted on a stiff smile. “Funny how no one would believe me. But my mom didn’t have the best reputation for credibility.”

Shock, empathy—no, make that pity—flared in her eyes, and she opened her mouth as if to say something, but snapped it shut.

He clenched his back teeth against the old, cankered hurt. Only years of practice allowed him to loosen his jaw enough to continue. “And oh, how they tried to talk me out of it.”

He puffed up his chest beneath his light blue denim shirt, mimicking Grandpa Ned’s gravelly voice. “‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy. This town wouldn’t be what it is without the McCoys.’”

Cooper gestured to the large building he’d just exited, built in the colonial style, with lots of brick and white shutters and emblazoned with the words Joseph McCoy Municipal Building. Pretty much all the public buildings in the modest town of ten thousand souls had that name attached to them somewhere. “‘We’d have nuthin’ if it weren’t for the McCoys, so you’d best shut your yap and keep it shut.’” Joseph McCoy had taken a Podunk town with very little going for it but a symbolic name and built it into a heartland postcard.

She blinked several times, obviously unsure what to make of his outburst. Finally, she asked, “Who said that to you?”

“Ned Anders, my mom’s dad. Had the joy of spending five years under his roof.” Cooper looked back at the jail, a place he’d finally grown smart enough to avoid once he’d squeaked his way past high school. Mostly. “That is, when he wasn’t rightly kicking me out for acting up. Something hurt, angry teenagers tend to do.”

Pushing memories of the cause of his hurt and anger aside, he slapped the letter against his jeans, met her stunned gaze and smiled mirthlessly. “I have a sneaking suspicion Marcus didn’t plan on the truth coming out so soon. Though why it did at all is beyond me. To think I owe it all to a hungry grizzly bear. That’s the sort of cosmic justice I really like.”

At the mention of justice, determination surged through him. Cooper turned and started down the steps.

The tap of low-heeled pumps on concrete chased him as she hurried to catch up. “Mr. Anders, please. I’m sure everyone was simply acting for your own benefit.” Her tone was so lacking in conviction Cooper didn’t bother to argue the point. Apparently, she was one of the rare few who “got” where he was coming from. A real pity she was from the enemy camp.

She jumped down a step ahead of him and faced him, blocking his descent. The late-morning sun caught in her hair and set the deep, chestnut-brown strands aglow. Damn, she was a pretty piece of fluff. But nothing was going to distract him from making the most of this little revelation she’d delivered to him.

Regret seared his lungs. His mom hadn’t been lying after all. She hadn’t illegally earned the money they’d lived on as they’d bounced from place to place throughout Missouri, then used to pay for her medical treatment—something he’d secretly feared, thanks to Ned’s implications.

Pointing to the letter in his grip, she said, “Marcus did acknowledge you in his will. There’s no disputing that. You now have the chance to take your rightful place in the family, a family more than worth the admiration they receive.”

“No, what I have is the chance for payback.”

She stilled. “What do you mean?”

Cooper bent toward her, using the opportunity to run his gaze over her perfectly suited features. The extra color he’d put in her cheeks made her even prettier. The fear in her eyes, though, grabbed at his guts. He really shouldn’t have shot the messenger. He knew what it was like when something didn’t go as you’d hoped.

That kinship he felt with her had him explaining gruffly, “Honey, they say revenge is sweet. Well, guess what? It turns out I have a monster sweet tooth.”

With her earnest face turned up to him, Cooper was struck with the strongest urge to kiss her. He brought his face closer still, until he could feel her quick, warm breaths on his lips.

As much as he’d love to stay true to his nature and succumb to the urge, instead he pulled away. “Sorry, honey, but I have to go. I’ve a company to ruin.”

A BOLT OF LIGHTNING couldn’t have stunned Sara Barnes more. The combined force of Cooper Anders’s wholly unexpected and inappropriate behavior and parting statement kept her fused to the spot. She watched him saunter down the rest of the stairs and away from the county-jail facility in a powerful, confident way only a rare few men could honestly claim.

She purposely chose to label the hot, zinging sensation raising goose bumps all over her as discomfort, stubbornly discounting the undeniable sexuality radiating off his big, fit body and black-haired, blue-eyed masculine beauty.

The pain she’d seen in his eyes and heard in his words I’ve a company to ruin replaced the heat with icy cold dread and set her in motion.

“Mr. Anders!” she called as she hurried after him.

This was going all wrong. Joseph had honored her with his trust to handle retrieving Cooper as quickly and as quietly as possible. Joseph had said he trusted her, as he’d trusted her father, to do this for him. He’d even praised her for being her father’s daughter, which allowed him to count on her completely. There was no higher praise in Sara’s mind.

She couldn’t mess up after finally achieving what she’d worked so hard for. Granted, she’d initially been given her current position at McCoy Enterprises because Alexander, the youngest McCoy—at the time—had been needed to fill the role Marcus had rejected, but she refused to let Joseph down. Especially in this.