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“I’m sorry, ma’am. There was no answer. I will let him know you were here. Perhaps he can mail you the items. Let me take down your address.”
“He knows where I live,” I shouted back. I slammed my helmet back over my head, latched it tight, ripped around in a circle and flew down the driveway. I refused to be treated like some other whore he had lured back to his place and simply shipped back any personal effects in a UPS box so he didn’t have to actually see her again.
Disgusting.
I made record time back to the city and cruised around a little, still trying to burn off my rage. I went by the bakery shop I had found Cooper at the last time he stopped answering my calls, but he wasn’t there. I didn’t have my laptop, so I couldn’t use the tracking program to locate his GPS signal.
Without planning it, I ended up retracing the route Cooper had taken me on when we left the pastry shop and before I knew it, I was staring up at the enormous tower, home of Brighton Enterprises. As I parked along the street, every fiber in my body rebelled against the idea of going inside, back to his office.
Logically, I knew that he wasn’t trying to steal the money from me. Truthfully, I should feel a little guilty even squabbling with him over a measly five hundred bucks, when he had just donated thousands to my own personal charity fund. But that wasn’t the point. Was it?
No, it wasn’t, I decided. I wanted to see him, face to face, and demand an explanation for his most recent surge of assholery. I wanted to make him feel as awkward and uncomfortable and stupid as I had when he had burst into my place of employment and had caused a scene. D
eep down, I knew that Cooper wasn’t the type to feel awkward or embarrassed, but I was going to do my damnedest.
I abandoned Cherry Bomb and stalked towards his building.
I rode up the elevator and found his office. His assistant was sitting at her desk, typing on her computer, and didn’t even look up when I approached. I cleared my throat and she finally raised her head.
“Can I help you?”
“I need to see Cooper.”
She looked me up and down, a look of disapproval all over her bitchy face. “Mr. Brighton,” she corrected me, “is not in. Would you like to leave him a message?”
Before I could answer, she plopped a pack of sticky notes and a pen in front of me and then went back to typing.
It took a whole lot of restraint to keep my hand from writing “fuck you” on the top sticky. Instead, I wrote, “Call Allison,” and flipped it back to her, knowing the odds of him ever seeing the note were very slim.
“Thank you,” I said, making my voice as sweet as possible.
“I’ll see that Mr. Brighton gets this.”
I nodded and started to walk away, when she called after me. “And just a tip. If you’re trying to attract his attention, you should know he prefers a more…feminine look.”
I turned back, the muscles in my shoulder ready to cock back a fist and let her have it.
“Bye bye.” She waved, giving me a sickly sweet smile.
I couldn’t afford a public brawl on top of all my other problems, so I let my wrist relax and drop to my side as I turned and left the office. I kept my head high as I rode the elevator down and went back out to ride home. I walked down the street towards Cherry Bomb, and checked the windows of the surrounding businesses, hoping to see a glimpse of Cooper, wanting to bull rush him in some hoity-toity coffee shop and make a huge scene and embarrass him in front of “his people.” I reached my parking space without seeing him, so I climbed back on my bike, and ripped out of the city and back to my apartment to crash.
Chapter Eleven
Once home, I changed into some comfortable clothes, made a snack, and went to my laptop to see if I could track Cooper down. After spending nearly the whole day chasing his ghost around town, it was time to stop chasing my tail and go back to something a more accurate. Something I knew. I scarfed down my cup of ramen noodles as the computer powered up. I set the cup down and flexed my fingers in anticipation of the hunt.
I logged into the computer, slid to the floor, and used the coffee table as my desk. Within minutes, I had plugged into Cooper’s cell phone and used his GPS to find his exact location. There was a blue dot on the move, so I waited and watched as it crossed the map, finally coming to a stop. I zoomed in, pulled up the address, and went to search. Seconds later, an image popped up showing a gigantic house up in the hills. I copied the address and went on a new search. It took some digging, but eventually I confirmed who the house belonged to:
Angela McKinnon
The name sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t figure out why. So, I searched the name and gasped when her picture came up. Angela McKinnon was a regular actress on one of the shows I used to watch. I scanned through her work history and there were a few other movies listed that I had seen that had her in them.
“What the fuck is he doing at her house?” I wondered out loud, getting up of the floor and going to the kitchen. I poured a glass of iced tea and started pacing the familiar route around my dining room table, my anger and frustration growing with each step.
“The obvious conclusion is that he either has dated or is dating her, and so tonight he was going to go out with me, probably sleep with me, but then ditched my ass when a better more suitable offer came along. Ugh!” I knew I looked like a crazy person, pacing and talking to myself, but Sam wouldn’t judge me, and for whatever reason, it was the only thing that I could do to think. “Okay, okay, let’s dial it back a notch. Maybe they are just friends? Hmmm…but then why would he cancel on me—ho he knows is a sure thing—to see a friend. Maybe she had an emergency? No, that doesn’t make sense.”
I paced and paced, wracking my brain for a plausible explanation that didn’t involve Cooper sleeping with this woman, but none of my ideas panned out and I was only getting angrier. He was fucking her…And me. Gross.
Eventually, I decided that the only thing to do to make myself feel better would be to go over there and check it out for myself.
