Page 69 of Cooper’s Passion

“Hmm,” he grunted.

Virginia spoke for the first time. “Coop, why don’t you take Sheriff Diaz to see Chief Donnelly at the police station?”

Anita nodded at Virginia. “I think that’s an excellent idea. That’s the only way to get past his boneheaded, stubborn—”

“I heard that!” her father proclaimed loudly.

She shot him an annoyed look. “You were supposed to!”

“Now I can see from whom you get your doggedness,” Cooper said with a smirk, before he looked back at her father. “I’ll call the chief to let him know that we’re coming to see him.”

Shaking her head at her father, Anita walked toward the door. “I’ll get my jacket and handbag from upstairs.”

She pushed the door open and walked into the hallway. Her father followed.

“You’re staying here?”

“Yes, if you must know.”

But she wasn’t going to tell him about her misfortune with the Airbnb, or he would only use that as another example that she was gullible or naïve. It was bad enough that he had accused Cooper of being a conman, when Cooper had been the first to believe in her and support her in her theory—a theory that had turned out to be correct.

“Anita, I’m just looking out for you,” her father said as he walked up the stairs next to her. “I was worried about you, so I tried to call Mr. Montgomery to ask him how you’re doing, and then found out that he’d lied to me about who he is.”

Anita snapped her head toward him. “He didn’t lie to you. He’s a private investigator the police hires for…uhm…” She couldn’t very well tell him vampires existed. “…difficult cases.”

She marched toward Cooper’s room, where she’d left her things.

“Well, what was I supposed to think, huh? Put yourself into my shoes.”

Anita entered the room and glanced at the unmade bed. There was no evidence that she’d not been the only one sleeping there. Cooper had tossed his dirty clothes into a hamper in the bathroom, and the closet that held his clothes was closed. Before she’d taken a shower this morning, she’d brought her suitcase and anything she’d unpacked into Cooper’s room, leaving the other guestroom as pristine as it had been before.

She snatched her handbag and her jacket and turned on her heel, when she noticed that her father looked around the room as if it was a crime scene.

“It’s a nice place, this house.”

Surprised at his complimentary assessment, she nodded. “It is.”

“Why are you staying here? Didn’t you book a hotel?”

There it was, the question she’d been dreading, so she decided to lie. “Only for the first week. But when I identified Janet’s body and Cooper asked me to work with him on this case, I decided to stay longer. But the place I’d stayed was booked solid.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. “So he offered me a place to stay.”

“Hmm.”

“Sort of for compensating me for my help. Hotels are expensive here.” She thrust her chin up.

“Still odd that he would offer you a place with his relatives.”

Her father was fishing, but she wasn’t going to volunteer more information. If he wanted to know why Cooper had really offered her a place to stay, then he’d have to find the courage to ask her directly.

“Shall we go?” she prompted and left the room.

* * *

“Lookslike your future father-in-law is quite stubborn,” Wes said grinning.

Cooper didn’t even make an effort to dispute Wesley’s assumption that he wanted to make Anita his. The fact that he hadn’t wiped her memory when she’d discovered that he was a vampire, made it clear to everybody that his intentions were serious.

“Can’t choose family,” Cooper said instead.