“Maybe you're right. I had a problem with that with my husband too. We built the business together, and in the end, it brought us down. He wanted to take more money out of it than I did. I did the designing so I got the recognition, and he was jealous of that. In the end, he tried to take the business away in the divorce. It was easier to just sell it and move on. And he slept with my assistant, and moved in with her when he left, which damn near broke my heart.”
“See what I mean,” Coop said, nodding, “money and sex. It screws things up every time. We've got neither one between us, and everything's so simple.” And it felt so right. His relationship with her had become precious to him overnight.
“How bad are your debts?” she asked with a look of concern.
“Bad enough. Alex doesn't know. I never told her. I didn't want her to think I was after her money to pay my debts.”
“Are you?”
“I'm not sure,” he said honestly. “It would certainly be simpler than working my ass off, hustling commercials and God knows what else. But she's so decent, I don't want to take money from her. If she were different, I might. And I don't want money from you,” he said pointedly. He didn't want to add that to the mix, or corrupt what they had. He liked things just the way they were. It was clean between them, and he intended to keep it that way. “All I need is a part in a decent movie, a good part, and I'd be back on my feet. But God knows when that will happen, or if. Maybe never again. Hard to say.” He seemed philosophical about it.
“Then what?” She was worried about him. He seemed a little vague about his financial affairs.
“Something always turns up.” And if not, there was Alex, but that seemed wrong to him. That was what he'd been explaining to Taryn, and as they were talking, he suddenly pointed to her feet.
“Is something wrong?” Taryn asked. She'd just had a pedicure, and her nails were painted pink. She thought maybe he preferred red. But she always wore pink. Red polish looked like blood to her.
“You've got my feet.” He stuck his own next to hers and they both laughed. They looked like twins. They had the same long, elegant feet. She stuck her hands out. “And the same hands.” There was no denying her, not that he wanted to. He had been thinking of introducing her as his niece. But as time wore on and he got to know her better, he wanted to introduce her as his daughter, and he asked her what she thought.
“Sounds good to me, but not if it's going to screw things up for you.”
“I don't see why. We can just say you're big for fourteen.”
“I won't tell anyone how old I am,” she laughed, and they had almost the same laugh as well, “that works for me too. It's a bitch suddenly being single again at my age. I'm nearly forty, and suddenly I'm back out in the world. I've been married since I was twenty-two.”
“How boring,” he scolded her and she laughed again. He was fun to be with, and great to talk to. She loved spending time with him, and he with her. They had done nothing else for days, like catching up on an entire lifetime in one gulp. She brought the best out in him, and he in her. “It was time for a change. We'll have to find someone for you out here.”
“Not yet,” she said calmly. “I'm not ready. I need to catch my breath. I've lost my husband, my business, and my mother, and acquired a father all in the last few months. I need to move slowly for a little while. It's a lot to absorb.”
“What about work? Are you going to look for something out here?” He was protective of her now.
“I don't know. I've always wanted to try my hand at costume design, but that's probably a crazy idea. I don't really have to work. We sold the business very well, and Mom left me what she had. My father… my
“That must have been in your mother's genes. I work it the other way round. I take ‘sense’ and turn it into a mess. It works for me. Financial chaos is familiar to me.” He said it with good humor and humility, which she found endearing too.
“Let me know if you want me to take a look and tell you what I think.”
“Maybe you can interpret what my accountant says, although it's pretty plain. He's a one-man band. Essentially he says don't buy anything and sell the house. He's an incredibly boring little man.”
“It's the nature of the beast,” she said sympathetically.
And when Alex was around, they had fun too. The three of them cooked dinner together, went to movies, and talked endlessly. But when the time was right, Taryn always discreetly disappeared. She didn't want to intrude on them. But she enjoyed Alex immensely and had great respect for the work she did.
