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CHAPTERONE
Lee Cooper pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it in the general direction of his bed. It landed short and fell to the floor, but he didn’t bother going to retrieve it. As frenzied as his mind was, the one thought he landed on wasNo wonder Ford is a slob. It’s genetic.
He ripped open the closet doors, everything inside blurring for some reason. Probably because he hadn’t taken a proper breath in the past minute. Maybe two. Fine, ten.
Lee closed his eyes and slowed down. He dropped his hands to his sides and took a long breath in through his nose. He watched a morning affirmation channel online every day, and the woman who led the group did breathing exercises like this.
In through the nose, he heard in her voice.Hold it. Longer. Really take a moment and slow down your mind. Your heart. Release those muscles. Okay, out with me.
Five, four, three, two one, zero.
Lee opened his eyes when he got to zero, and the shirts took on individual form in the closet. “Okay,” he said. “You’re fine. Ford is fine. His teacher just wants to talk to both you and Martha on a weekday evening. It’s not a big deal.”
He’d gotten off the phone with his ex-wife ten minutes ago, and he’d hurried to finish an email that had to go out today. Then he’d dashed home, and he wasn’t any worse off by taking twenty seconds to center himself again.
With a bright red shirt covering his upper half and a peanut butter sandwich in one hand, Lee dashed back out the front door of his cabin and down the steps to his truck. The old girl had started to show her age, with rust wearing through around the wheels and the engine chugging to life like it would rather not.
Lee knew how she felt, and he patted the dashboard. “I’ll let you retire soon, okay? But Ford needs us tonight.”
He had no intentions of buying another truck, though he had plenty of money to do so. Lee rather liked this one, and he saw no reason to spend money on something when he already had one that worked.
The drive to Sweet Water Falls passed in a flash, and Lee had no idea where his mind had wandered. He blinked, and the dark-haired image of Rosalie Reynolds flashed in his mind. Ah, so he’d gone downthatpath again.
He hadn’t been brave enough to drop by the woman’s office, even when she was expecting him to. He’d sent Will instead.Beggedwas a better word. The proper word. Familiar loathing and disgust built within Lee, and it was all directed at himself.
His heart pounded right now, though Rosalie wasn’t anywhere near him physically. He wasn’t sure why she affected him so thoroughly, only that she did. They’d only met the one time. He’d only spoken to her twice, once in person and once on the phone. He’d looked at her picture plenty of times on her website, and he was taking that knowledge with him to the grave.
He didn’t need to add “stalker” to the list of names he’d been called over the years. Grumpy, sure, he could own that. Short-tempered, yes. What Cooper man wasn’t? He could hardly be blamed for that one. It was genetically inbred in him to get angry or frustrated at the drop of a bale of hay or the first sign of oil leaking from a tractor.
Meticulous, he actually counted as a compliment. Anal-retentive was a bit of a stretch, but Lee didn’t even mind that one. He worked with a lot of papers that held a lot of numbers, and someone had to be detail-oriented and obsessive about checking them to make sure things got done correctly.
Money in, money out—Lee took care of that.
Paychecks due, new orders received—Lee took care of that.
New clients and their contracts, established accounts and their renewals—Lee took care of that.
Lee ran Cooper & Co almost single-handedly these days, and most of the time, he let an inch of pride into his heart at how proud Daddy was of him. At how much Daddy trusted him to take over the generational operation that had been supplying milk to the people in Southern Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas for over a century.
He pulled into a spot at the elementary school, spying Martha’s car a few spaces over. She and Ford weren’t in it, which meant Lee was late. His ex-wife would give him the stink-eye for that, but he’d come as soon as he’d been notified of tonight’s meeting.
As he jogged toward the entrance of the building, he tucked in his shirt and he dang near pulled off the door as he opened it.
“Dad,” Ford said, jumping to his feet from a cement bench across from the entrance.
Lee’s whole face lit up, and he couldn’t be mad at his son no matter what. He opened his arms to him, glad when Ford flew into his embrace. He always wanted Ford to be able to come to him for help, for the good, the bad, the anything.
“Hey, buddy,” he said. “What am I doin’ here tonight, huh?”
“Your son got in a fight,” Martha said, and Lee looked over Ford’s head to meet her eye. She didn’t look too terribly upset, and Lee kept hold of Ford in one arm as he leaned forward to touch his lips to Martha’s cheek.
He settled awkwardly back on his feet, even putting another few inches between them. “I got here as fast as I could.”
“We’ve got five minutes still,” she said, nodding down the hall. The three of them started that way at a much slower pace than Lee had used coming inside. He’d loved Martha once-upon-a-time, and sometimes when he looked at her, he only saw the good things they’d experienced together.
It didn’t take long for him to remember the things that had driven them apart, and he certainly wasn’t interested in getting back together with her. Lee simply took a long time to forgive—himself and others—and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get over infidelity.
Something about it just cut him right to the core, and even now, he worked against the feelings of betrayal and mistrust of all women.
