Changing the Rules (Richter Book 1)(29)

“No problem.”

Claire didn’t pull her hand back immediately, instead it kind of slid off and onto the center console. Cooper glanced over to see her eyes unfocused on the road in front of them. “We scored a party invite for Saturday.”

Jax groaned. “Lewis is gonna be ticked.”

“If he doesn’t understand your work, you might wanna get rid of the guy.”

Cooper felt a bit like a chauffeur listening in on the paying clients who were both half-asleep and half-drunk.

“He’s getting clingy. I didn’t think that would happen until he finished law school.”

“Your boyfriend is a lawyer?” Cooper asked.

Jax lifted a hand, eyes still closed, and yawned. “Almost a lawyer.”

“He’s not the guy for you, Jax. We’ve talked about this.” Claire took that moment to open her eyes. When she did, she pulled her hand away from his side of the car as if she didn’t realize it was there.

Cooper turned off at their exit and drove through the dark streets to their home. One look in the rearview mirror suggested Jax had fallen asleep.

With Claire quiet at his side, he didn’t think she was far behind.

He lowered his voice. “I take it you don’t like the boyfriend.”

Claire leaned her head against the window. “He’s fine. Just not the right guy. Jax has adventure inside of her, and he has an agenda.”

“What agenda?”

“My family has money and connections,” Jax said from the back seat.

Claire laughed, pointed a thumb toward her friend. “What she said.”

“And he wants those things?” Cooper asked.

“According to Claire.”

Cooper met Claire’s eyes.

She nodded.

“What do you think?” Cooper asked Jax.

Jax sighed. “Claire’s right.”

Okay, now he was confused. “Then why are you with him?”

Both Claire and Jax offered tired laughs.

“The sex is good,” Jax confessed.

Ooookay then.

Cooper pulled into their driveway, and Jax pushed out of the back seat. “’Night, Cooper. Thanks again.”

“No problem.”

When Claire didn’t follow her friend’s lead, his nerves started to fire. He watched as Jax walked up the path to the front door, and Claire twisted in her seat and looked straight at him.

Getting the hint, Cooper turned off the engine.

“You’ve been different since you’ve been back,” Claire started.

Was he ready for this conversation?

“Well, I’ve put on a good five pounds.” He smiled and patted his stomach.

Claire reached out and stopped his hand.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

Did she understand how warm her fingertips felt on his skin?

He took a deep breath, blew it out slowly. “Damn it, Claire.”

“See, right there. That’s different. Where’s ‘Yearling,’ or ‘Sasha wannabe’? You never say my name, and now you have to take a massive breath before you talk.”

They were sitting in a car, in the dark . . . in a driveway. “Maybe we should go inside.”

She shook her head. “You know as well as I do that the house is completely wired with eyes and ears everywhere. You can’t sneeze without someone from headquarters phoning in to say gesundheit.”

He laughed, despite the feeling of his gut stirring.

“Talk to me, Cooper. I thought we were buddies.”

God, he hated that word. “You’re wrong.”

“About what?”

He looked her in the eye, pulled the humor out of the conversation. “I say your name. I said it a lot when I was in London. Even more when I visited Berlin the first time.” He remembered standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate. “I asked myself, ‘What did Claire think the first time she saw the Berlin Wall?’ ‘What did it feel like to be Claire escaping the prisonlike walls of Richter with no money and no plan?’” Cooper saw understanding seep into her eyes. “But most of the time I’d say your name when I asked myself what you were doing. Were you kicking ass in America, or breaking hearts?”

Her jaw dropped, but no words came. Her breathing increased, and the rapid rise and fall of her chest told him exactly what her heart was doing.

“We’re friends. You could have called and asked me those questions.”

He shook his head. “No, Claire. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have it in me.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer . . . “Remember when we were in Texas and you told Neil you needed some trigger time so you could think?”

She blinked. “Yeah.”

He smiled at the memory of that day. “You walked into the weapon room determined. I tried to hold you back, told you all the weapons were loaded. You marched past me, grabbed an AR, did a weapons check, tossed it over your shoulder, and moved on to the next.”

Claire smiled all the way to her eyes. “Yeah. And you stepped back and told me, ‘That was hot!’”

It had been. “And do you remember what you told me?”

“I told you to put it away, I was too young for you. I said that a lot back then.”