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CHAPTERTWO
Rosalie Reynolds had never been happier for her self-imposed dress code when she came to the office. She currently wore a pencil skirt that fell just below her knees, and she felt every inch of herself as Lee Cooper’s gaze moved from her low heels and up along her skirt to the bright candy apple red blouse she’d chosen this morning.
She wasn’t sure why she’d gone with red. Maybe she thought it accentuated her lips, which always seemed a bit too pale pink to her. Or maybe she’d been told a time or two—or twenty—that red complimented her darker skin tone and hair. She wasn’t sure.
What she knew was that her phone blared at her again, the sound of an airhorn she hated but had also set. It was her sister, Natasha, and Rosalie’s heart bobbed in her throat. She’d been texting her sister about perhaps joining a dating app now that James had made the move to California and he was good and truly gone from her life.
The face of her sweet daughter flashed through her mind. James would never be good and truly gone, but Rosalie also wasn’t dealing with him on a daily basis anymore. Part of her languished in indescribable sadness, and the other part kept urging her to move forward with her own life.
Maybe with Lee Cooper, she thought, her face burning as the cowboy’s eyes finally latched onto hers. His were just as foresty as she remembered, and she itched to see some of that deep, red-gold-brown hair.
“Can I help you?” she asked as professionally as possible. After all, he’d shown up—unannounced—at her office. The last time she’d seen a Cooper, it had been his brother, William. He’d been the one to bring back the faulty game and make the trade. “Is everything okay with your new disk?”
Rosalie cocked her head as her phone yelled at her again. She honestly didn’t have time for Handsome’s staring. Her heart told her not to send him away, but she wasn’t sure what else to say. Natasha’s notification went off again, and Rosalie swiped her phone from the edge of her desk. She tapped out a quick,With a customer. I’ll text you right back, and looked back to the gorgeous, if not a little…strange, cowboy.
Strangewasn’t the right word. It almost looked like he’d fallen into a trance.
“Lee,” she said, really snapping out his name.
He blinked a couple of times and looked around the office, as if he’d driven here while asleep and just now realized where he was.
“Are you okay?” Rosalie took a step toward him, but when those delicious eyes came back to her, she paused. “I was just about to leave, so is there something I can do for you?”
He cleared his throat, and praise the heavens, she was going to get to hear that low, growly voice of his again. “Yeah, I was just thinking about something.”
“Okay,” she said.
He folded his arms, something shuttering over his face. “Ford doesn’t really like the game I bought.”
Rosalie blinked now, his statement a complete surprise to her. “Oh,” she said, her brain whirring quickly. She wanted satisfied customers, but her return policy didn’t include “didn’t like it.”
“Well,” she said smoothly, her policies flying into place. “You’re outside of the thirty-day, no-questions-asked refund period. So…I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
Rosalie squared her shoulders against this surly cowboy. “Yes,” she said. “I can’t just refund everyone’s money because they don’t like something.”
“He hardly plays the game.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said, breaking her eye contact with him and returning to stand behind her desk. She looked down at the papers there, but her concentration had broken completely. Handsome had a way of making her feel like the only woman in the world, and Rosalie hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time.
She dared to look at him again, the frown between his eyes making him even sexier. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him when he wore such an unhappy look, and she could imagine a fight ensuing between the two of them for the control ofthatkiss.
She shook her head and muttered, “Keep it together, Rose,” at the image of Lee pressing her against the very wall behind her and kissing her senseless.
“What?” Lee asked.
“Nothing.” She looked up at him again, her phone blaring out at her again.
“What is that awful noise?” he asked. “It’s happened like five times.”
Rosalie could handle her company being insulted. Fine. Not everyone liked her games. She understood that from a consumer standpoint. She could even handle a critique of her personally, though she worked hard to keep her imperfections concealed behind the closed doors of her house.
But no one, not even Handsome, would criticize Natasha.
She took one step toward him, feeling every cell in her body light up with fire. The angry kind. “That is my notification for my sister,” she said, hearing the danger in her own voice. “She has some special needs, and I need to be able to hear my phone whenever she texts.” She had a similar notification sound attached to her daughter’s babysitter, as well as her neighbor, both of whom helped Rosalie with Autumn now that James was gone.
“So if you don’t need anything,MisterCooper, I really have more important things to do than stand here and be insulted by you.” She’d taken several more steps toward him, and he hadn’t backed up an inch.
