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If I’d had even the slightest bit of doubt, it was gone.
Cooper Spade didn’t just want me.
He needed me.
And when he pulled back, his gaze taking me in, every thought I had was confirmed in his expression.
“Rowan …”
I knew the look that followed. It was one that told me he wanted more.
That made two of us.
But not tonight.
This moment was the finale of the evening. A memory that would end with the most perfect kiss.
While his hands dropped from my face, mine rose from his shoulders and cupped his handsome cheeks, his prickly scruff tickling my palms. It was then, as I held him near me, that I gave him one final glance.
I wasn’t analyzing. I’d done plenty of that already.
I wasn’t memorizing. I could draw Cooper with my eyes closed even though I wasn’t an artist.
I was silently telling him that I’d heard him.
That I understood.
And that I was ready to see his fight.
But just as that thought began to leave my mind, scattering into pieces that were the size of dust, it was replaced with another. One that I hadn’t even considered until now.
“How long have you been at the bar?” I asked.
He didn’t immediately reply, but when he did, he said, “About ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Did you stop somewhere before you came here?” I focused on his eyes. “A door of a suite perhaps? Maybe one that you didn’t knock on, but you were there long enough to make noise?”
He took his time licking his lips. “Maybe …”
So, I hadn’t been hearing things.
That was Cooper outside my room, his weight shifting just enough to make the floor creak, putting the right amount of pressure against my door to cause the air to crack.
There was a reason he’d halted at my door. That he got close enough to press a part of himself against it. That he hadn’t been ready to give in to his vulnerability and knock.
What he didn’t realize—or maybe he did—was that his lips had just told me everything he would have said outside my door.
“Thought so.” I swiped his mouth with my thumb, and I took a step back, moving out from between his legs to stand in front of my barstool.
When the bartender had delivered our food, I’d asked for ketchup, which he’d brought in a small metal bowl, delivering it without me even realizing.
I set that bowl on top of the fries, and lifted my plate, smiling at Cooper as I said, “Enjoy your dinner.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m going to my room.”
He tried to reach for me, but I wasn’t close enough. “You’re going to make me eat alone?”
