Good Girl Complex(Avalon Bay #1)(51)

“You just … bought it?” Bemused, Cooper rakes a hand through his dark hair.

I’m momentarily distracted by his tanned forearm, his defined biceps. He’s wearing a black T-shirt. Jeans that hang low on his hips. It feels like I’m seeing him for the first time all over again. I hadn’t forgotten what the sight of him does to me, but it’s more potent now that my tolerance has waned. My heart beats faster than usual, my palms are damper, my mouth drier.

“Well, there’s paperwork and due diligence. But if that goes well …”

I’m more nervous now than when I made the offer to Lydia. Than when I showed Preston. For some reason, I need Cooper to be happy for me, and I didn’t realize how much until this moment.

“Can we look around?”

He gives nothing away. Not boredom or disapproval. Not excitement either. We barely said hello and didn’t mention a word about our kisses or our fight. Just Hey, so, um, I’m buying a hotel. What do you think? I have no idea why he even showed up to meet me here.

“Sure,” I say. “The inspector said the ground level is stable. We shouldn’t go upstairs, though.”

Together we tour the property, stepping over storm-tossed furniture and moldy carpets. Some interior rooms are in nearly perfect condition, while beach-view rooms are little more than empty carcasses exposed to the elements, where the walls have collapsed and storm surges long ago sucked everything out to sea. The kitchen looks like it could be up and running tomorrow. The ballroom, more like a setting of a ghost ship horror movie. Outside, the front of the hotel facing the street belies the damage inside, still perfectly intact except for missing roof shingles and overgrown foliage.

“What are your plans for it?” he asks as we peek behind the front desk. An old-fashioned guest book, with the words The Beacon Hotel embossed on its cover with gold lettering, is still tucked on a shelf with the wall of room keys. Some scattered, others still on their hooks.

“The previous owner had one demand: Don’t tear it down and put up an ugly high-rise.”

“I came here all the time as a kid. Evan and I would use the pool, hang out in the beach cabanas until we were chased out. Steph worked here a few summers during high school. I remember all the old hardwood, the brass fixtures.”

“I want to entirely restore it,” I tell him. “Salvage as much as possible. Source vintage antiques for the rest of it.”

He lets out a low whistle. “It’d be expensive. We’re talking about cherry furniture that’ll have to be custom replicated. Handmade light fixtures. There are stone floor tiles and countertops in here they don’t even make anymore except in small batches.”

I nod. “And I already know the electrical is out of code. All the drywall has to come out.”

“But I see it.” He wanders through the lobby toward the grand staircase, where he runs his hand over the intricately carved bannister. “With the right touch, and enough money, it’s got potential.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Teeming with potential.”

“I know this sounds dumb,” I say, taking a seat at the foot of the stairs, “but when I first set eyes on this place, I had this image in my head. Guests sitting on the veranda in rocking chairs, sipping wine, and watching the tide roll in. I saw it so clearly.”

“It’s not dumb.” Cooper sits beside me.

I feel no animosity from him, as if we’re almost friends again. Except for the same magnetic tug begging me to run my fingers through his hair.

“When I put a salvaged piece of wood on my bench, I don’t have a plan for what it’ll be. I just sit with it. Wait for it to express itself. Then it practically builds itself in my mind, and I’m following along.”

I bite my lip. “My parents aren’t going to be happy about this.”

Lately it doesn’t take much to set my father off. Most of it is work stress, but it seems as if he’s engaged in constant battle about one thing or another. Probably where I get my combative side. Thing is, when the battles end badly, his frustration tends to manifest in being loudly disappointed in me.

“Who the hell cares?” Cooper scoffs.

“Yeah, easy for you to say.”

“I mean it. Since when do you care about what anyone else has to say?”

“You don’t understand how hard it is to get out from under their thumb. They run practically every part of my life.”

“Because you let them.”

“No, but—”

“Look. In the time I’ve known you, you’ve mostly been a stubborn, opinionated pain in the ass.”

I laugh, admitting to myself that most of our conversations have devolved into stalemate arguments. “It’s not my fault you’re always wrong.”

“Watch it, Cabot,” he says with a playfully threatening glare. “Seriously, though. You’ve got your shit together better than most people I know. To hell with your parents approving. Be your own person.”

“You don’t know them.”

“I don’t have to know them. I know you.” He turns to face me fully, leveling me with serious eyes. “Mac, you are a force to be reckoned with. You don’t take shit, you take names. Don’t forget that.”

Damn it. Fucking damn it.