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“Yeah.” Her eyes darted to him and then back to Cooper. Her smile took on a patient tilt he had a funny feeling conveyed some kind of extra message to the young firefighter. “I’m beat.”
“Could I…? I mean, I could drive you home.”
“You’re sweet to offer, but I think fresh air sounds better than a moving vehicle right now”—again with the eyes and the smile—“if you know what I mean?”
Sweet? Hell no, it was not sweet. It was a far fucking mile from sweet to have a fresh-faced firefighter swoop in and take a shot at Roxy while he was standing right there. Like there was some prevailing assumption that he was just a neighbor. A friend. A non-issue. He was a goddamn issue. A big one. And Cooper was about to learn what happened when one assumed. He turned toward the other man—a little fast, as it happened, and had to wait a second for the room to catch up. “I got this, Coop. I’m walking Roxy home.”
“In those shoes?” The guy raised his brows and tipped his head to the side like a damn Labrador retriever.
West squinted at his black dress shoes. “What’s wrong with my shoes?”
“Cooper, you’re so nice to give it a thought,” Roxy said at the same time, “but I was practically born in stilettos.” She angled one leg to the side to show off the high-heeled sandal designed for long rides over a man’s shoulders, not long, uphill walks home.
Shit.
“Besides,” she went on, “a walk always clears my head.”
His was starting to spin. “Well, there you have it, Coop—”
“Y’all headed out?” A hand clasped his shoulder, and another relieved him of Roxy’s guitar. He had no idea where his suit jacket went. The voice he recognized as Shaun’s added, “Need help getting everything loaded into the car safe and sound?”
Josh flanked him on one side, Shaun on the other. Next thing he knew he was moving forward. Tyler held the door for them and pushed a bottle of water and a trash-bin liner into his hands as he passed. “Enjoy the ride, West.”
“I’m walking.” No way was he tagging along like a third wheel while Cooper drove Roxy home. He tried to dig in his heels, but his feet wouldn’t obey the signals his brain attempted to send.
“Don’t make me bust my own officer for public intoxication,” Shaun said. “You did your duty the night of Junior’s party. Now it’s Cooper’s turn.”
“Door-to-door service,” Josh added as they steered him toward the younger man’s Pathfinder.
“We should maybe wait a few minutes,” Roxy said from the other side o
f the SUV while Cooper held the door for her like a kid on a prom date. “For the sake of your interior.”
Tyler laughed as he stowed the guitar in the trunk and then opened the rear passenger door. “You worried my man West will hurl a fifth of bourbon all over this fine, freshly detailed leather?” Before West could open his mouth to tell all of them to go to hell, Shaun and Josh deposited him into the backseat.
“It crossed my mind,” Roxy replied from the front passenger seat and twisted around until she could look at him. It was the kind of look people reserved for swirling storm clouds or a dormant volcano suddenly belching smoke. Cooper got in, turned the ignition, and lowered all the windows.
Bastards. “I’m not going to throw up.”
“My twenty says you don’t,” Tyler said and shot him with a thumb and index finger before closing the door.
“My twenty says you do,” Josh chimed in from the opposite window. “If I had a plate of nachos right now, I’d hand feed them to you for good measure.”
The thought of greasy cheese sauce made his stomach lurch hard enough to put sweat on his face.
Cooper released the brake. “Ah, man. That’s just mean.”
“Mean?” Josh rolled his eyes and then smiled at Roxy. “Why don’t you ask Coop who threw up in the back of my wife’s new Explorer the night of Shaun’s bachelor party, after howling at me to hit the Taco Bell drive-thru?”
Even in the rearview mirror, West could see the younger man’s face turn red. “I paid for the car wash,” he told Roxy.
“Damn right you did,” Josh said. “You paid for a deluxe wash, interior shampoo, and a new baby seat, because the one we had was un-fucking-salvageable. And if he”—Josh pointed at West—“pukes in your car tonight, that, young Simba, is the motherfucking circle of life.”
To get his head out of his churning gut, West turned his face to the open window and focused on Shaun. “What’s your twenty say?”
His boss simply smiled.
Then the car was in motion, slowing backing out of the slot. Cooper probably wasn’t going more than three miles per hour, but West might as well have been strapped into the reel seat of a Tomcat going Mach 10 in a screaming dive. He opened the water bottle and chugged through the three-point turn and the stomach-wrenching g-force of the acceleration.
