Intercepting Love (Second Chances #5)(65)
Gently, she lowered herself onto my body, keeping her gaze on mine the entire time. She closed her eyes for only a second, but when she opened them they were shiny and bright with tears.
“What’s wrong, Kate?”
Keeping up her pace and clenching her body tight all around me, she shook her head and let the tears fall. “Nothing’s wrong, everything actually feels right. For once I feel … complete.”
“So do I, love,” I told her. “So do I.”
I wiped away her tears and lifted her in my arms, our bodies still connected. Outside on our private deck there was a large hammock-style bed that swung in the breeze. It was the perfect place to make love to her; to watch the moonlight as it grazed across her skin and shone in her eyes. Before, I never cared where I had sex with women. Hell, give me a bathroom counter and a condom and I was ready to roll. Not with her, though … not with my Kate. She deserved to be made love to under the stars with someone that would do absolutely anything for her. I would walk through the fires of hell just to be with her one last time.
I laid her down on the hammock and covered her body with mine, entering her slowly. The hammock rocked back and forth, swaying in the breeze as I made love to her, and kissed every inch of her body. When she let go, her body tightened all around me and she screamed out my name just as I released inside of her, letting my own self go. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day. We won the game, Scott’s psycho mother had been found, and I just made love to the one woman who saw past my flaws and chose me.
Things were finally looking up for me … or so I thought.
Mine and Cooper’s peaceful night of sleep felt like it ended abruptly when the pounding on the door woke us up. We were still outside—naked and in the hammock—swinging back and forth.
“I guess we better get up and get some clothes on,” I murmured, chuckling as I tried to get out of the swinging bed. “We’re not running late, are we? Our flight doesn’t leave until lunch time.”
Cooper yawned and crawled off the hammock. “No, it’s still early. It’s probably Derek or your brother. Let me throw on my clothes and I’ll get it.”
Even though we had a private deck, it still felt weird walking around outside naked. Rushing inside, I grabbed my phone, noticing that I had several missed calls and the time was only seven o’clock in the morning. How did I not hear the phone ring?
Another loud bang sounded on the door, making me jump. “Damn, whoever that is they’re going to piss off the people around us. It’s only seven in the morning,” I groaned.
By the time I threw on a pair of my flannel pajama pants and slipped on one of my camis, Cooper opened the door. In rushed Joel, wearing a wrinkled white T-shirt and jeans with a Carolina baseball cap … and in his hand was a newspaper of sorts. With his lips set in a firm line, his face was bright red and angry as hell. I’d seen him like that before at practice when one of our team members got arrested for a DUI.
Cooper watched him cautiously and so did I, afraid to speak. Thankfully, Cooper was brave enough to go head to head with his uncle. “What’s wrong, Joel? You don’t look so good.”
Joel threw the paper on the small kitchen table and pointed to it. “Why don’t you take a look? I don’t think you or Kate are going to be happy with what I saw this morning. Not to mention, the whole goddamned world is going to know the reason why I got rid of my last quarterback for you.”
I gasped and rushed toward the table to pick up the paper, but Cooper beat me to it. His gaze was on fire, his body coiled like a snake. With his teeth clenched tight, I waited on him to explode just like Joel, but all he did was close his eyes and carefully put the paper back on the table.
“Cooper,” I whispered, “what’s going on?”
He sighed and covered his face with his hands before running them angrily through his hair. “I’m sure you’ll figure that out when you read it. I have to get out of here for a while.”
Turning on his heel, he stalked off toward the door without acknowledging me. I immediately rushed to follow him, but Joel sidestepped in front of me and stood in my way. “Kate, let him go. He’s going to need his space to cool down after this. Trust me, he’s a Davis … I know.”
“Cool down? What the hell is going on?”
When my gaze finally found the article on the table, I didn’t need to ask any more questions. It was all staring at me right in the face. The paper wasn’t even a reputable one, like New York Times or anything … no, it was one of those gossip magazines that liked to talk shit about anyone and everything in the celebrity world. It was like porno for gossipers that wanted to get the down and dirty scoop on who was cheating on who, or who was secretly dating who. The article on Cooper, however, wasn’t anything like that.
“I’m assuming it was Scott’s mother who took all of these pictures?” Joel asked.
There were pictures of me and Cooper at Joel’s house when we were invited over there for the dinner before we left in haste. The article exposed every dirty secret about Cooper imaginable. Now the world would know about Joel being his uncle, the deal he made with the doctor, and what he did to supply his drug habit. It was all there for the taking and now everyone would know. Setting the paper down, I couldn’t even stomach to read the rest.