“No, I’m spending it with my lover, who I’ve skillfully lured back to my place in the middle of the afternoon. That’s already improved my birthday considerably.”
“Ah, now it all becomes clear.” Cooper smiled.
Felicity headed toward the open-plan kitchen. “Drink? I’ve got something from the Barossa Valley in South Australia.” She opened the cupboard that contained her wine rack. “Maddie insisted I’d enjoy it. It was a thanks for finding her a loan dress for some awards event in Sydney last December.”
“So for all your protestations, I find out you got her a dress and she got you wine. You two really do like each other, don’t you?”
“It depends on what day you’re asking.” Ah. She withdrew the bottle of Rockford’s Eden Valley Riesling 2015.
“Felicity,” Cooper drawled, “this sounds perilously close to friendship, which you claim not to do.”
“Fine. I admit that I like Maddie well enough—if pressed, under torture, and with the fewest witnesses possible. We’re not exactly friends, but we’re not not friends. I wouldn’t take a bullet for her, but I’d stop someone shooting her, all right?” Felicity rolled her eyes. “But you know the rules: never quote me.” She hunted for a corkscrew. “Well? Feel like trying it? I hear the Barossa makes beautiful wines.”
“Love to.”
Felicity brought out filled glasses a few minutes later.
Cooper, now curled up on the luxury butter-soft leather couch, accepted the glass. “I think my dog’s much better at coping with all this than me.”
“All this?” Felicity sat beside her.
“It’s one thing you saying what you do. It’s another seeing”—Cooper waved at the multi-million-dollar view—“all of this.”
Brittany plopped down off the armchair, padded over to the couch, and jumped on it, squeezing herself between them. She curled up in a ball, head on her paws, looking like she was in heaven.
“Is this going to be weird?” Felicity asked, deciding to ignore the fact a dog was now on her nine-thousand-dollar designer settee. “Because it’d be unfortunate if it was. I had hoped to celebrate my birthday, after figuring out what’s up with Harvey, by taking you slowly in my bed half the afternoon and all night. And trust me, my bed is every bit as impressive as this room.”
Cooper’s eyebrows shot up in interest. “Is that so?”
“It is.” Felicity took a sip of wine, never taking her eyes off Cooper. “So are you done freaking out yet? Can we move on?”
Brittany placed her head on Felicity’s thigh. Felicity gave her an absent pat and then froze. Brittany was as soft and warm as she’d imagined. Better, even. It was too tempting…and she was only human. She thrust her fingers deep into her fur, played with her ears, and scritched and scratched her back. The dog gave a happy sigh. Her heart matched it.
Cooper watched her wordlessly, lips curling, and quietly sipped her wine. “This is lovely.”
“Yes, Maddie’s taste in wine is exceptional. But as I say, she is on the world’s longest winning streak right now, so I’d expect nothing less.”
Cooper smiled. “You might be on a bit of a winning streak yourself. I mean, come on, you’re nailing the career, and then there’s this place… Christ!” Her gaze swept the room again. “My family would go nuts over this.”
“Where are they from? You said ‘all over’ the first time I asked, and I know your father’s military, but where’s home for them and you?”
“I sort of call New Jersey home, even though I live in New York.”
“I’ve never once heard you order cawwwfee.” Felicity smiled.
Cooper laughed. “Well, I never picked up the accent. I think it’s because I’d traveled too much before then, following Dad around from posting to posting.” She sighed. “As a kid, I really hated it. Always a new school, leaving my friends behind. Mom hated it, too. So when I was fourteen, she left Dad and took me with her. My brothers stayed with him—they were both over eighteen by then.”
“So just you and your mom? Was that when you ended up in New Jersey?”
“Yes. We stayed with Mom’s mom for a few years. I got the stability I wanted, and I got to look after my nana’s dogs, too. Through them, I found my calling.”
“Do you see the rest of your family often?”
“Oh sure. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and so on. My brothers have families of their own now. They’re over in Normal, Kentucky.”
“Normal?” Felicity eyed her skeptically. “Are you for real?”
“I can’t believe you of all people are asking me that when you’re one step away from Hell.”
Felicity threw up her hands in mute surrender.
“Yep.” Cooper laughed. “Dad’s still in the military—he’s got a desk job at Fort Bragg these days. Mom remarried a few years ago and moved to Indiana with her husband, who sells medical devices. She helps him around the office. Nan still lives in the same old rickety house in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, so I visit her and her latest dogs a lot.”
“So when I was wringing my hands over being from the Midwest, it turns out most of your family is, too?” Felicity lifted an eyebrow.
“I might be from the same stock as you, Simmons,” Cooper said with a grin, “but I think we can both agree our paths seriously diverged.” She waved at the apartment. “Uptown girl.”
Felicity’s lips curled a little. “You know I don’t really hate the Midwest. Parts of it are beautiful. And I don’t hate that my family’s from there, either. I just wish my mother and sister had more ambition than living, working, and dying in the same place. On that score, I think my father was right to leave.”
“To each their own, though?” Cooper suggested. “It’s their life and all that?”
Felicity sighed in frustration. “I suppose. If they must.”
Cooper laughed at her long-suffering expression.
“Anyway, most of my embarrassment about being from Pinckney comes from when I first started out in New York. There was all this baggage. I had to contend with ridiculous yokel assumptions and bad jokes, comments on my accent, and the belief that I wouldn’t be cutthroat enough for their business.”
“I’m sure no one thinks that about you now.”
