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Chapter Ten
Cooper mentally scolded himself as he watched Jo Ellen follow her pregnant cousin into the ladies room. After ten years, he should’ve been able to control his helpless attraction to her. His pulse shouldn’t be racing from merely talking to her. His emotions weren’t supposed to be a scattered mess.
But damn, as soon as he’d seen those succulent little berries popping out the front of her blouse, his unrequited fascination had sprung back to full awareness. He told himself she’d just been cold. But from the way sweat gathered on his brow, he couldn’t any further removed from cold if he was sitting in an oven. It wasn’t the least bit chilly in Rio’s muggy bar.
Then they’d moved past the initial awkwardness, and their conversation had progressed so smoothly. It felt almost comfortable, as if they were meant to share their life experiences with each other. He’d been tuned in to even the most mundane thing she’d said. He could’ve talked to her all night; he still wanted to talk to her all night.
With one eye on the bathroom door, he prayed she came back to sit next to him again when she returned. But about as soon as the three ladies disappeared into the bathroom, her brother-in-law whirled to glare at Coop. “What the hell, man?”
Startled by the attack, Coop lifted an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
As Jo Ellen’s cousin, Dex, ignored them, too busy polishing off his wife’s ribs and licking the sauce from his fingers, Branson narrowed his gaze on Coop. “I was looking forward to scoring with my wife tonight. But then you just had to come along with your rock-hard, pure-steel muscles, didn’t you? Now if I get her on her back, I’m going to be freaked out the whole time, worried she’s picturing your perfect face the entire time. So…thanks a lot. Jerk.”
Coop sputtered out a laugh as he watched Em’s husband pout. “I don’t think you have to worry,” he assured, patting the other man’s back. “Em never thought of me that way.”
Bran eyed him up and down before narrowing his gaze. “But you thought of her that way, right?”
His amusement only growing, Cooper shook his head. “No. Sorry.” To make some kind of amends for inadvertently offending Emma Leigh’s husband, Cooper waved Rio over to buy both Branson and Dexter a beer.
“Oh!” Bran looked surprised as Cooper handed the frothy mug over. “Well…thanks.” He took a hesitant sip, then smacked his lips and sighed, refreshed. “Nice and cold.” Then he sat next to Coop as if all unintentional insults were immediately forgiven. “So, yeah. What was all that between you and Em’s sister then?” He twirled his fingers around, motioning to where Jo Ellen had been sitting.
Cooper coughed and cleared his throat, then shifted in his seat. “That… that was nothing.” He took a big gulp of beer.
“No, that was definitely something,” Bran insisted.
“Yeah,” Dex agreed, leaning their way to join the conversation. “That was definitely something.”
“Which confuses me,” Branson said, eying Cooper. “I thought Em said Jo Ellen dated some guy named Trevor all the way through high school.”
“Travis,” Coop corrected him with a teeth-clenching mutter.
Both Dexter and Bran lifted their eyebrows at him.
“See. There’s the history,” Dex decided, elbowing Bran with a knowing poke.
Branson nodded sagely. “Oh yeah.” He drained the rest of his mug and slammed the empty glass onto the bar. “Some good and juicy history too, from the looks of it.”
Coop shook his head and tried to ignore them both.
Not that they let him.
“Well, that actually relieves me,” Bran announced on a contented sigh. He reached over and slugged Coop companionably in the elbow with his forearm. “I’m glad your thing was for Joey, because you really seem like a likable guy and I’d hate to have to hate you for lusting after my wife.”
When he sent Coop a sloppy grin, Coop frowned and glanced skeptically toward Dex, silently asking what was up with Bran’s suddenly loopy behavior.
Dex shrugged as if to apologize, then shook his head. “He’s got a low tolerance for alcohol.”
Cooper frowned and glanced at Bran’s glass. “But that was only his second beer.”
“Okay,” Dexter revised, “so he has, like, zero tolerance for alcohol.”
“Hey, it’s my third. Had one before we came over.” Bran’s face looked bright and flushed as he ordered another draft and wiped a sheen of sweat off his brow.
Coop couldn’t keep from laughing. “That is so ironic. I remember how Em used to win all the drinking contests when we were—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bran cut him off moodily. “My wife’s more of a man than I am. Zip it already.” But his scowl just as quickly morphed into a proud grin. “She’s so amazing. I am the luckiest man on earth.”
Deciding he liked Em’s husband, Coop shook his head and grinned. That was until Branson decided to press the Jo Ellen subject. “So you’re into Jo Ellen, not Emma Leigh, right? Because you seem like a good guy,” he repeated, and then paused to hiccup; “…and I’d say Joey really needs to get laid one of these days. Like soon. Hell, I doubt she’s had any fun since I met her, which was, what, ten years—”
