Danielle Steel - The Cottage

“I'm not sure I have those virtues either,” Alex said easily, sensing that it had been an uncomfortable moment for him. “I can't cook to save my life. But I make a mean peanut butter sandwich, and I order a great pizza.”

“That'll do it. I'm a much better cook than my wife was.” Damn. He had done it again. She could see him retreat behind a wall after he made the comment, and he lapsed into a distracted silence as she chatted with Jason, and then the boy wandered off to see his sister and her friends.

“They're nice kids,” Alex said, hoping to put him at ease again. She could see what a hard time he was having, and she wanted to tell him she was sorry, but she didn't want to upset him more than he already was.

“Mark is out of his mind with joy to have them out here. He really missed them,” Jimmy said, trying to drag himself back from the precipice. He was constantly falling into an abyss of grief. Everything he said or did reminded him of Maggie. “How's our landlord handling it?”

“He's in deep therapy, and on mood-altering medication,” she said solemnly, and Jimmy burst into laughter. It was a wonderful sound, and in sharp contrast to what she suspected he was feeling most of the time.

“That bad, huh?”

“Actually, worse. Last week, he almost coded.” It was hospital-ese for a code blue, when all of a patient's systems failed, their heart stopped, and they stopped breathing. But Jimmy seemed to understand. “I think he might make it, but I had to brush up on my CPR training. We've got him on a respirator now, speaking of which, I'd better get back. I came out here to ask them to turn down the music.”

“What's it going to be?” Jimmy asked casually.

“It's been rap up to now, with some pretty juicy lyrics.” She grinned at him.

“No, breakfast, I mean. Peanut butter, or pizza?”

“Hmmm…now that's an interesting question. I hadn't thought about it. Personally, I'd opt for pizza, used, leftover. I live on it. With doughnuts for dessert, preferably stale. I think Coop has more mundane taste, maybe eggs and bacon.”

“Can you handle it?” Jimmy asked solicitously. He liked her, he got a sense of enormous warmth and compassion from her. He wasn't sure what she did, but he remembered it was something with babies. And he suspected she was good at it. She was obviously smart, and seemed like a very caring person. He hadn't figured out yet what she was doing with Cooper Winslow. It seemed like an odd match to him, but there was no accounting for people's choices of partners and playmates. They never seemed to follow the path you'd expect them to. Coop was old enough to be her father and then some. She didn't look like the kind of woman to be lured by celebrity or glamour. It made him wonder if there was more to Coop than he suspected, or maybe, bad news, less to Alex. In spite of the evening Jimmy had spent with him, he didn't think much of Cooper. Charming and handsome without a doubt, but not a lot of substance or depth.

“Can I call 911 to deliver breakfast?” Alex asked, continuing the banter. He was a sweet guy, and she felt sorry for him.

“Sure, just have Coop sign for it,” he said unkindly, and then was instantly apologetic. He had no reason to be nasty about the guy, and he knew it. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“It's okay, he has a great sense of humor, even about himself. It's one of the things I like about him.”

It made him want to ask her what else there was to like, other than his looks, but he didn't.

“Well, I'd better get back. I guess we won't be using the pool today. Coop definitely couldn't handle this scene. We'd have to restrain him.” They both laughed, and she waved at Mark and went back to the main wing, where she found Cooper looking petulant, and struggling with breakfast. He had burned muffins to a crisp, and had broken the yolks on all four of the eggs he was frying. The bacon was burned beyond recognition, and he had spilled orange juice all over the table.

“You can cook!” she said with amazement, and a broad smile as she took stock of the chaos. She couldn't have done much better. She was far more skilled in the ICU than in the kitchen. “I'm impressed.”

“Well, I'm not. Where the hell were you? I thought the aliens had taken you hostage.”

“They're nice kids, Coop. I don't think you need to worry. I was just chatting with Mark and Jimmy, and Mark's son, Jason. All the kids out at the pool look polite and wholesome and well-behaved.” He turned to stare at her then, with a spatula in his hand, as the eggs burned.

“Oh my God… it's the pod people… they've exchanged you…you're one of them…who are you really?” He had the wide-eyed look of horror you only saw in science fiction movies and she laughed at him.

“I'm still me, and they're fine. I just thought I'd tell you so you don't worry.”

“You were gone so long, I figured you'd run off with them, so I made my own breakfast… our breakfast,” he corrected, and then looked around him with dismay. “Do you want to go out to eat? I'm not sure any of this is edible.” He looked a little discouraged.

“I guess I should have ordered a pizza.”

“For breakfast?” He looked appalled, and rose to his full height with a look of indignation. “Alex, your eating habits are dreadful. Don't they teach you anything about nutrition in med school? Pizza is not an appropriate breakfast, even if you are a physician.”

“Sorry,” she said humbly, and put two more muffins in the toaster, and then cleaned up the spilled orange juice and poured two more glasses.

“This is women's work,” he said with a look of chauvinistic relief. “I think I'll leave you to it. Just give me orange juice and coffee.” But five minutes later, she produced scrambled eggs, bacon, muffins, juice, and coffee, and brought it to him on a tray on the terrace. She had used his best plates, Baccarat crystal for the orange juice, and folded paper towels in lieu of napkins.

“The delivery is excellent You need a little work on table service Linen is always a nice touch when you're using good china,” he teased her, but he smiled at her as he set down the newspaper.

“Just be grateful I didn't use toilet paper. We do that at the hospital when we run out of napkins. It works fine, so do paper plates and Styrofoam cups. I'll bring some for next time.”

“I'm enormously relieved to hear it,” he said grandly. She had a way of refusing to be pretentious no matter where she'd grown up, or what her last name was. When they finished the excellent eggs she had prepared for them, it led to a question he'd been meaning to ask her. “How do you suppose your family would feel about me, Alex? About us, I mean.” He looked worried, and it touched her. She had a growing feeling that he was serious about her, and she didn't really mind. So far at least, she liked everything about him, but it was early days yet. They had been going out for barely more than a month, and a lot of things could change, problems could come up, as they got to know each other better.

“What difference does it make? They don't run my life, Coop. I do. I decide who I want to spend time with.”

“And they have no opinions on the subject? That seems unlikely.” From everything he'd read about her father, Arthur Madison had opinions about everything on the planet, and surely about his daughter. And from what Coop knew, most of what Arthur Madison thought and did was not overly warm and cozy. He would be the perfect candidate to object to her being involved with Cooper Winslow.

“My family and I don't get along,” Alex said quietly. “I keep them at a very healthy distance. That's one of the reasons why I'm out here.” Her parents had criticized her all her life, and her father had never had a kind word for her. Her only sister had run off with her fiancé the night before their wedding. There was very little she liked about any of them, if anything. And as far as Alex was concerned, her mother had ice water in her veins, and had given up on life years before. She let her husband do and say anything he wanted, even to his children. Alex had always felt she had grown up in an entirely loveless household, where everyone was out for themselves, no matter who it hurt in the process. And no amount of money and history changed that. “They are actually the aliens you talk about. They came here from another galaxy, to stamp out life on Planet Earth, as they see it. They have a tremendous advantage in doing so, they have no hearts, medium-sized brains which process only the obvious, and they have an embarrassing amount of money, which they use almost exclusively to their own advantage. Their plot to take over the world has gone relatively well. My father seems to own most of it, and he doesn't give a damn about a single human being other than himself. To be perfectly blunt with you, Coop, I don't like them. And they don't like me much either. I won't play the game with them, and I don't buy their bullshit, never have, never will. So whatever they think about us, if they eventually hear about it, and I assume they will, I really could care less what they think about it.”