A Fallow Heart (Tommy Creek #2)(26)

Leaning her head on her husband’s shoulder, Em glanced at Coop with that same proud, excited smile. “Coop, meet Branson Thornbrockmore, my wonderful, handsome, successful, and intelligent husband. Bran, this is Coop, my bud from back when.”

“Congratulations, man,” Cooper greeted as he extended his palm to Branson Thorn-whatever-the-hell-his-last-name-was. Branson politely shook with Cooper. He had a nice sturdy grip Coop respected.

“Over here is Bran’s sister, Lexi, with her baby.” Emma Leigh paused to rub Lexi’s belly, as if it was a good-luck Buddha doll, before motioning to the second man. “And you might remember Lexi’s husband, Dex. He’s my cousin from Reno. He came down to stay with us a couple of summers when we were young.”

After sending Lexi a gracious dip of the hat, Coop took the cousin’s hand as well. “Yeah, I think I remember you.”

“I might remember you too,” Dex answered, frowning thoughtfully as he studied Coop. “You look familiar anyway.”

The quartet seemed friendly enough. They didn’t leer at him as if he was some kind of lowlife, though he hadn’t exactly spiffed himself up before heading out this evening. There were enough holes in his jeans to warrant them sacred. But Emma Leigh’s crew gathered around him with ease as they spoke to each other in teasing affection.

Em turned back to him with an expectant grin. “So, what’s been going on with you, Gerhardt? I don’t think I’ve seen you for…”

“Ten years,” he supplied.

Rolling her eyes, she grumbled, “Well, yeah. That’s why I’m back.”

He frowned. “Come again?”

“Our ten-year class reunion is this Saturday,” she prompted. “I wanted to show Bran and these two where I grew up, so I thought this was as good an excuse as any to return.”

“That’s right,” Coop said, a strange, apprehensive sensation swirling through his chest as he remembered opening the invitation he’d received a few weeks back. “I’d forgotten about that.” He had no idea why dread welled inside him, but with Em here and announcing she was going to attend the reunion then maybe…maybe her twin might show up too.

He could only hope—

God, what was wrong with him? He hadn’t even thought of Jo Ellen in, well, two weeks. Not since he’d received the stupid invitation and wondered if maybe she’d come back for it.

Not that he cared. He hadn’t seen her since the night he’d tried to claim her baby as his.

And what a disaster that had been. But after she’d cried all over him, confessing how Untermeyer had reacted to his upcoming fatherhood, then how her parents’ had reacted, she gazed up at Cooper with something akin to hope.

“Daddy wants to send me to my aunt’s until it’s born so no one around here will know. But they’re talking about putting the baby up for adoption. With me being so young and Travis not helping in any way, I could lose my child, Cooper. I can’t move out and support it by myself.”

He knew exactly what she was asking. Her eyes begged him with a desperation he couldn’t deny.

“No.” He took her hands, promising, “You won’t lose anything,” Her cold fingers wrapped tight around his as he added, “Because it’s not Untermeyer’s baby. It’s mine.”

No way would his parents let the Rawlings suggest getting rid of the baby if he claimed it as his. They took care of their own and would find a way to fight Jo Ellen’s mighty family to help her keep her child.

Her eyes had widened with disbelief and even more hope. “So, we…we…”

He nodded and lied, “Yes. We did.”

Air rushed from her lips in a soundless gasp. She shook her head slightly as if to argue. “I…but I don’t remember it at all.”

He gripped her hands tighter in a supportive squeeze. “That’s okay.”

After they’d talked about what they were going to do from there, he’d walked her inside and stood supportively by her side as he told her parents he—not Travis Untermeyer—was the true father.

He had expected fireworks, and he got them. But not the kind he’d expected. Not one member of the Rawlings family believed him, not Emma Leigh, not Grady, not even Jo Ellen’s parents. He’d opened his mouth to argue with them, but Jo Ellen had turned to him, her eyes searching and confused. He folded like a goddamn house of cards, and she saw the lie in his gaze.

“We didn’t have sex, did we?”

He winced but refused to give in. “I can still help you with the baby, Jo Ellen. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it.”

He’d meant those words from the bottom of his heart. Hell, he still would’ve meant them to this very day if she found herself in the same situation.

But she had shaken her head, refusing to let him throw away his future because she’d done something stupid, as she called it, and gotten herself into trouble. He tried to argue, telling her he didn’t care whose baby it was, he’d love it and raise it as his own.

In response, Jo Ellen doubled over in pain, clutching her abdomen as she moaned an un-human sound of misery.

He still felt guilty about that, worried he’d been the one responsible for upsetting her into having the miscarriage.

“Man, you’ve really buffed up in the past ten years,” Em said, drawing him back from a conversation that had potentially induced the girl of his dreams to lose her baby, and to the conversation in Tommy Creek’s bar ten years later.