The Rebel (The Millionaire Malones Book 3) (6 page)

Cooper got a huge kick out of the fact that Evan seemed to be in awe of everything about him. Hell, he could fix him up scrambled eggs on toast and the kid thought he was Jamie Oliver.

‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters.
I’m a lonely child.’

‘I think you mean
only
child, sweetie.’ Maggie tousled his hair, not looking at Cooper, not even to share a secret smile about the mispronunciation.

Evan shrugged. ‘Lots of my friends at school have big brothers and little brothers.’

Maggie checked her watch and stood up, reaching for Evan’s hand. ‘And I bet they all have the same bedtime as you. C’mon mister. It’s time
to brush those teeth and go to bed.’

‘Aw, Mommy. Can I watch one more cartoon with Cooper? Please?’

Maggie looked at Cooper and he understood the plea in her eyes. She was tired. Her shoulders slumped and there were shadows on her face. He hadn’t quite realised before how hard being a single mom must be for her, combined with working from home and everything else that came her way. He had always
been around for the fun bits—the outdoor barbeques, the swimming with Evan, the cartoons, the soccer games and the bike rides—but there was routine and order and organisation about having a kid that had always been hers to handle alone. He wondered if Maggie was ever lonely, doing this all by herself. Sure, she had her mother and they were close, and he did whatever he could when he was in town,
but at night, when Evan was in bed, she would have spent many nights sitting on this sofa alone.

And something seemed wrong with the universe when a woman like Maggie Mac was all alone on a Saturday night. If only he was around more he could make sure she wasn’t, but his life was on the road.

Cooper patted Evan on the shoulder. ‘You know what, mate?’

Evan turned his rapt attention to the big
man sitting next to him. Cooper leaned down to whisper in his ear.

‘See this sore leg of mine? If I want to get better, I’m going to have to spend a lot of time right here on the sofa. And you know what that means?’

‘No?’ Evan whispered back so fiercely that Maggie heard every word.

‘Lots more time for you and me to watch Pepé Le Pew and Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil.’

‘What’s the
Tasananium Devil?’

‘I’ll show you tomorrow, but right now, you need to do what your mom says and scoot off to bed.’

‘But Cooper Cooper Cooper? Will you be here when I wake up tomorrow?’

‘Sure will, mate.’

Evan jumped off the sofa, landing with a little boy thud, and ran off to the bathroom, his voice echoing in the hallway. ‘Cool!’

Maggie rubbed her eyes and sighed a big, sleepy sigh. ‘Thank
you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘I’ll just get him to bed and I’ll be back. Can I get you anything … another water?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said and he watched Maggie walk to her son with a strange feeling lodged in his throat.

His own mother had been dead a long time, so long that the sound of her voice was now a distant memory. When she’d died, Cooper’s world had shifted and split apart. His father
was cold and distant and spent most of his life in boardrooms or airplanes and couldn’t fill the void of a mother’s love, not that he tried too hard. Cooper barely made it through high school because he sought solace for his loss in the waves and in the surfers he met. His own family had fractured, so he’d searched for a new one.

But there were things he did remember about family, about his mother,
that came back to him every now and then: being tucked in every night, a kiss on each eyelid and then each cheek. A loving, ‘Night night, Coop’. The smell of her perfume and her silky soft hair. And that great, huge indefinable thing a boy feels for his mother. That mother love—constant, applied in good times and bad, without judgement. Evan was lucky to have that. And while the kid had no
clue now, it would shape him and make him the man he was bound to be. Maggie was doing an amazing job with the little grommit.

Cooper struggle to his feet, mindful of the doctor’s orders to keep moving. He wasn’t expecting miracles after only a couple of days, but he hadn’t sensed any improvement. Those glass shards were still grinding behind his knee and the heavy throb in his lower left leg
still made it feel like a dead weight instead of a limb. But he put some weight on it and walked. Or hobbled. Slowly, unevenly, he managed to make it to the kitchen to fill his glass from the tap. He heard footsteps. When he looked over his shoulder, Maggie was there, a frown on her tired face. She’d pulled her hair into a twisted knot on top of her head and she looked like a young ballerina. Except
for the Converse sneakers.

‘I could have done that,’ she admonished.

He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Relax, Maggie, I can get a glass of water.’

Cooper drank up and put his glass on the sink. ‘The little dude’s asleep already?’

‘Out like a light,’ Maggie said, sighing in response. The sigh became a yawn pretty quickly. ‘He’s had a huge day.’

‘He’s not the only one. You look exhausted.’

Maggie
raised her eyebrows. ‘Why, thanks.’

‘Seriously.’ Cooper turned and backed up against the sink, his hands propped on either side of him to carry some of his weight. He leaned towards her to get a closer look. It was a face he knew well. That smart mouth. Those big brown eyes and that button nose. Her lips seemed to be a ripe peach colour most of the time. ‘You’ve got bags under your eyes. Big
black smudgy bags.’

‘I always have big black smudgy bags under my eyes, Cooper, but I usually get the time to cover them with concealer. See this?’ She lifted a finger and pointed to her face. ‘This is single mommy working face.’

And then Cooper felt bad in about ten different ways. ‘You know what Maggie Mac?’

‘What?’ She looked at him with a question in her eyes.

‘You are something. I’ve
watched you all these years, handling this all by yourself, year in year out. Raising Evan and always doing right by him.’

‘Oh, stop it, Cooper,’ she said with a dismissive wave. ‘I haven’t handled this all by myself. I don’t know what we would have done without Mom … and you, you big dope.’

‘I wish I could be here more to help out, to hang with Evan.’

Yeah, because it was all about Evan, right?
Who was he kidding? It was about Maggie, too. She was easy, uncomplicated, fun. When he was continually surrounded by people more interested in what he did than who he was, he knew he could always came back to Maggie and their no-bullshit deal. So he’d just won a major pro competition in South Africa? It didn’t absolve him from having to stack the dishwasher when he came around for his celebratory
dinner with Maggie and Evan. That was their deal. She cooked and he cleaned up. Evan was getting pretty good at stacking. Cooper made sure the kid was learning that boys had to do chores, too. The history they shared, and her friendship, was important to him. He was a long way from the family he was born into and this, right here, with Maggie and Evan? It was the next best thing. It was what
he craved, after so many years of his own family’s dysfunction and so many years on the road in lonely hotel rooms, with women whose names he didn’t remember.

‘Well, the universe seems to have granted you that wish, hasn’t it, because you’re stuck here with us until that knee is better.’

‘There could be worse things than being stuck with you.’

‘But I’m bossy, remember?’ There was a hint of
vulnerability in her smile, which tugged at him.

‘How could I forget that?’

She looked up at him, the tiredness in her face transforming into something else, then chuckled on a sigh. ‘Evan’s fast asleep now but he’ll be up early. Like six o’clock early. So, I’m heading off to bed. I might read for a while if I can keep my eyes open.’

He reached for her, stroked his fingers up and down her arm,
so soft. ‘Thanks for dinner.’

She glanced at the spot where his fingers were on her skin and then met his eyes, her smile cynical and so, so Maggie. ‘Toasted cheese sandwiches. My gourmet specialty.’

He reached for the hem of her T-shirt, his fingers grazing her hip. ‘Hey. They were excellent toasted cheese sandwiches with just the right bread-to-cheese ratio.’

Then he stopped touching her
and put his hands in his pockets where they belonged.

She glanced down at his left leg. ‘Will you need a hand with anything? Clothes, getting into bed …?’

‘No. Thanks. I’m good.’

‘Well. Goodnight,’ Maggie turned and walked to her office with the small sofa bed.

‘Night night, Maggie,’ Cooper said quietly as he watched her go.

*

Maggie stripped off
her clothes, tugged on a camisole top that accidentally matched her sensible white knickers and got into bed. She pulled up the blankets to her chin and lay there in the dark, on the slightly uncomfortable mattress, willing sleep to come.

It had been the only decent thing to do, to invite Cooper to stay so she could make sure he looked after himself and didn’t do anything stupid
with that knee. More stupid than he’d already done, that is. It was the least she could do because if she was honest, she knew she could never repay him completely for what he’d meant to Evan over the years.

It had been a hard decision to make, to have a baby on her own. As a young woman with the travel bug, Maggie had already decided she didn’t want to have children because it would keep her
tied down. She didn’t want anything to keep her from the next adventure or the next experience. But once she’d found she was pregnant, completely unplanned and unexpected, everything within her changed. In a flood of hormones and with a million possibilities swirling in her head, she allowed herself to imagine what being a mother would be like, and she found herself unable to contain the joy she
felt at the prospect of becoming a mother.

Everything about her life from then on had been her choice, and she was happy with it. She really was.

But sometimes … sometimes she still wondered where she and Cooper might be now if she’d walked into that bar in Bali on her own that night six years ago. She’d noticed him as soon as she’d seen his blond hair above the crowd and when he’d turned to
her, as if he’d known the second she’d walked in, his blue eyes shone and something had shivered up her spine. But then Vance appeared at her side, snaking his arm around her, and Marion arrived with a loud laugh, and she’d ended up pregnant and on her own, with Cooper as a friend instead of a lover.

What if Cooper hadn’t set his sights on Marion and had turned his attention to her instead? Oh,
she could understand why anyone would fall for Marion. She was loud and so full of Irish
craic
that everyone was drawn to her.

She asked herself the question once again: what if Cooper had chosen her that night?

She turned on her side and shoved her face into her pillow. It was no use going back, she knew that. Things happened because they happened. And maybe she hadn’t ended up with Cooper
then was because Evan needed a father. Cooper was that person to him, always had been and, in the years since, he’d been the man of the family without being the man in her bed. Oh, the universe worked in mysterious ways.

Which was exactly how she wanted it, right?

*

Hours later, half
asleep, Maggie tossed and turned and gave in to
being awake. She felt the familiar pressure in her stomach and groaned. Since having Evan, her bladder had never been the same. She glared at her bedside clock, one eye barely open. Of course it was three a.m. On autopilot, she pulled herself upright, planted her feet on the rug and shuffled to the bathroom. Every morning, three a.m. It was such a habit now that she could almost do it in her sleep.
No lights necessary, she knew her way around her compact house, illuminated by the glow of moonlight through the open curtains and Evan’s night light spilling dimly into the hallway.

Pee, don’t flush in case it wakes Evan, and tiptoe back to her bed. She passed the spill of light from Evan’s room, turned left, crossed the room, felt the familiar shag pile of her rug under her feet, turned back
the sheets, climbed in, and fell back to sleep in seconds.