Charming Cupid Page 7

  It had taken me a good fifteen minutes to pull myself together after breakfast. Coop had taken me completely by surprise and it had thrown me for a loop. When I agreed to eat with him, I had one goal: find out why he was at the resort. Had I accomplished that goal? Nope. He’d started asking me questions about my next book, my podcast, my career, everything.

  He’d sidetracked me. By the time he told me that he’d listened to every episode of my podcast, I’d completely forgotten to ask him why he was here this weekend.

  Coop wasn’t what I’d expected. He was attentive. Funny. Sweet.

  Being with him was the first time, in a long time, that I’d felt like my world slowed down and I wasn’t juggling twenty balls in the air. My mind hadn’t been racing. I wasn’t thinking about my to-dos. I wasn’t mentally jumping to tomorrow, next week, or next month.

  I’d gotten lost in the moment.

  Even Sierra jumping on my lap hadn’t snapped me out of the bliss of being totally present. But when Sierra had pointed out how I was smiling at Coop, her statement served as a cold splash of water on my face and it had been just what I’d needed.

  In the short time I’d spent with Coop I’d let my guard down and completely forgotten who I was dealing with. He might seem interested in me, but I had to remember that he would also seem interested in Mary, Sara, and Laura if he had the chance. It hadn’t felt like that but thankfully I knew better than to trust a feeling.

  I’d gotten out of there and shaken off my temporary lapse of judgment. I’d reinforced the walls around my sanity AKA heart and refocused on the seminar. I’d been doing okay and was tenuously back in the zone when Madison rushed in and informed me that my mother had called. She wanted to have lunch tomorrow so I could meet her new boyfriend.

  She has a boyfriend.

  It had been five years since my father had passed away. It’s not that I thought it was too soon. Actually, I never expected her to stay single that long since she always put so much value on a woman being in a relationship. It was one of the things that disappointed her so much about my life. Every time I spoke to her, the conversation was always directed to if I’d met any nice men, or if I was dating someone, or if my biological clock was ticking.

  She’d even created profiles for me on dating sites after seeing the movie Because I Said So with Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore. In the movie, Diane’s character does a similar thing and meets with men unbeknownst to her daughter, played by Mandy, to screen them and then sets her up with the one she thinks is the most suitable.

  My mom’s plan was foiled when my publicist’s brother happened to be on the site, found my profile, and asked his sister to put in a “good word.” At first I thought it might be someone impersonating me, although for the life of me I had no idea why anyone would do that. But once I read the profile, I could tell instantly from the bios that my mother was behind them and not some internet troll or catfisher. In “my” interests section it said that I loved cooking, cleaning, dancing, and laughing. My mother had always maintained those were the four pillars for keeping a man interested. Which was ironic considering my father’s philandering ways.

  I called to ask her about it and she admitted she’d set up the profile. Her defense was that she was uniquely qualified to find me the perfect match because she knew me and knew how to find a good man.

  While the first part of that statement might be true, the second was not. If we were going on track record, her good-man-identifier didn’t exactly have a gold star rating. And even putting her romantic history aside, she didn’t exactly have the life experience to qualify her.

  Celia Cupid was beautiful. Stunning, even. Probably more attractive now in her fifties than she’d been in her twenties, and that was saying something. At 19 she was Miss Colombia and at 20 she was first runner up for Miss Universe.

  But that beauty tended to attract men that only saw her as a trophy. That’s how my father treated her, and the men that had pursued her during her marriage and since my father died all had that trait in common. They viewed her as something that would make them look good. Having a woman that beautiful on their arm gave them instant status and credibility.

  There was no way that someone who had her life experiences as a goddess, a muse, a woman that was constantly pursued could possibly understand what us mortal women experienced. If she’d gone through with meeting the men that had contacted “me” on the app, they’d probably just ask her out instead. It had happened more than once to me in the past. Guys were interested in me until they met my mom. And I couldn’t blame them, her beauty and appeal was unmatched.

  As I heard myself coming to the end of my spiel it dawned on me what the next portion of the seminar was. It was a practical exercise to build intimacy. The singles in the group were paired up and the couples worked with their partners.

  I scanned the crowd of sixty wondering who my partner would be. Madison always pre-selected my match from a compatibility worksheet that all of the attendees filled out. When she’d first suggested that I participate in the exercise, I thought she was crazy. But I listened because she was brilliant and I knew that she’d never suggest anything for no reason. After she’d explained that in her work on her doctorate in behavioral sciences she’d found through her research that the data collected was much more powerful when it was personal. Somehow, she convinced me that getting practical experience with what I was teaching would be an invaluable tool. I respected Madison, but I had to admit, in the back of my mind I still had a niggling voice telling me it was her attempt to set me up, just like a slew of other people in my life.

  The first time I agreed to do it, it was merely to humor her. But it went over so well with the attendees and did in fact give me a perspective that I hadn’t had before so I continued. This would be the fifth time I was doing it and I’d met some nice guys, unfortunately none that I felt attracted to.

  “Okay, everyone was given a number on their registration packets, that will be your station. Couples, you’ll be working with your partners and singles, you’ve been matched with someone using the data from your personality profiles. There are questions at each station and a timer. When you sit down, I ask that you set the timer for sixty seconds and just look into one another’s eyes before beginning. I know that that might sound scary to some of you, but don’t worry, you’re not alone, I’ll be joining you in this exercise.”

  Applause swelled, my joining in really did seem to go over well.

  “We’ll have one round in this session and another round in the evening session. The person with the envelope that says morning session will ask the questions this round and the person that has the evening session envelope will read theirs later. I ask that you have an open, judgment-free mind as you do this work. There are no right or wrong answers, I just ask that you don’t lie. To create intimacy of any form you must be honest. There is no way to build a healthy relationship if it is based on lies. And I want to be clear: this is not a dating seminar. You are not being paired up with any romantic expectation. This is purely an exercise to give you a path toward creating intimacy. It’s basically a road map you can use to make a deeper connection with whomever you choose. Okay, everyone find your stations.”

  The energy in the room instantly changed as people migrated to the small tables with numbers on them that lined the room. There was electricity in the air. I loved this moment. There was so much anticipation from the people that were here as a couple and so much hope from the singles.

  I turned off my mic pack and walked the few feet to table one and sat down in front of the morning session envelope. I liked to be the one leading the exercise first. As soon as my butt hit the chair, Madison was at my side whispering in my ear.

  “We have an issue. Tom, your partner, was unable to attend.”

  “What? When did you find that out?” I spoke as quietly as possible while the participants found their stations.

  “At breakfast. That’s the text I got. I left to go speak to him. I was
going to tell you before the seminar started but then your mom called and I was dealing with that.”

  That was fair. Celia could be a lot to handle.

  “Oh, okay.” I stood back up. “It’s probably for the best that I’m not doing the exercise. My head’s not really in it.”

  “Actually…” Her expression grew nervous. “Um…I found a volunteer.”

  “A volunteer?”

  “A replacement,” she rephrased.

  “Hi.”

  I knew that deep rumble anywhere. The tiny hairs on my arm stood on end as I turned my chin to the left and saw Cooper Briggs looking somehow even better than he had at breakfast just a couple of hours ago.

  “No!” My response was more of a knee-jerk reaction that came out as my stomach did the roller coaster dip.

  The word flew from my mouth and the sound carried in the large room. Heads turned our way and I wanted to crawl beneath my chair.

  My reaction didn’t seem to faze Cooper but it certainly took Madison by surprise. She flinched and stared in shock. In the two years I’d worked with her, I’d never raised my voice or snapped at her or anyone that we worked with.

  I could feel my cheeks heat with embarrassment. I knew that I was being ridiculous. I had two options I could either politely thank Cooper for his offer and then decline it or accept Cooper’s offer with grace and class.

  As tempting as option one sounded, I knew that it wasn’t the right call. The feedback we’d gotten was overwhelmingly in favor of my participation. For some reason, my involvement gave people the license to be more vulnerable and more breakthroughs were made.

  That’s what this was about. It was about giving the people that paid money, found childcare, traveled from their homes the best, most fulfilling, life-altering experience. This weekend wasn’t about me.

  Since my first job as a babysitter when I was twelve years old I’d prided myself on being professional. I took my work very seriously.

  But that was part of the problem. I didn’t trust myself to remain professional when it came to Cooper Briggs.

  CHAPTER 11

  Vanessa

  I covered Madison’s hand with my own and assured her, “Its fine.” Then I turned to Cooper. “Thank you for stepping in to do this on such short notice.”

  He smiled and butterflies took flight in my stomach. They flitted around as I stared into his eyes. It truly wasn’t fair that so much beauty was packed into one person or that said person was a man. Those cheekbones, eyelashes, and lips were so pretty he looked photoshopped. It’d been difficult enough to make it through breakfast with the man without drooling, but at least then I’d had a napkin.

  “Are you sure?” Madison stared at me.

  No! my brain screamed.

  “Yes.”

  I lowered back down into my seat and motioned for Coop to sit as well. When he did, his long legs brushed against my knee beneath the table. It was barely a touch but it was all my body needed to light with fire. Tingles spread through me and I could feel my skin break out in goosebumps. I hoped that Coop didn’t notice. I was doing my best to disguise the affect he had on me but it was getting more and more difficult.

  “Okay…” Madison’s blue eyes searched mine for the answer to her implied question. I smiled and she clapped her hands together. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  Madison hurried away and although we were in a room filled with people, I wasn’t thinking of any of them. The only person I could think about was Cooper Briggs. My mind was like a broken record skipping on how disarming and charming he was. How funny and smart he was. And most of all, what a lethal combination all of those things were.

  I just needed to get through this as quickly and painlessly as possible. I’d do my best to keep my emotional distance, and I would try to ignore the hormonal surge that occurred in my body every time I was in the same vicinity as Cooper Briggs.

  Clearing my throat, I lifted the envelope and removed the questions.

  Coop’s hand covered mine and I froze. A zing shot straight up my arm, ricocheted off my shoulder blade, and then went straight down to my core.

  I jerked my hand away and looked up to see why he’d touched me.

  His lips curled. “Aren’t we supposed to set a timer and look into each other’s eyes?”

  “We don’t have to.”

  “Yes, we do.” His tone left no room for argument.

  A small thrill ran through me at his insistence. Apparently, I liked a man that took charge. Or maybe I just liked it when Cooper took charge.

  As he reached for the timer in the middle of the table my mouth watered at the sight. During our breakfast, I’d continually found myself being distracted by the sheer mass of his palms and the length of his fingers. They were unusually large, which I supposed might be a prerequisite for a quarterback. Besides the size, the thing I noticed was how masculine they looked. They had scars and were obviously work roughened.

  I’d always lived a fairly academic lifestyle. In college, when Jade and my other friends were going to games, I was in the library. I tended to meet, and I suppose attract, intellectual types. Obviously I knew that the two were not mutually exclusive but finding a jock who also read Ayn Rand was rare. Not impossible, but rare.

  The men I’d been with all had soft, manicured hands. Until breakfast this morning I never knew how hot calluses could be. My imagination had gone a little (a lot) wild fantasizing about how his hands would feel grazing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, or the strength in his grip as he grasped the back of my neck to tilt my head so that he could devour me with a kiss.

  And now I knew what those hands felt like on my skin. Now my imagination needed a lot less help when I thought about how it would feel if he grazed…

  “My eyes are up here,” Coop teased.

  I blinked up and was horrified at the realization that I’d been caught a second time ogling him, first the balcony and now this. Thankfully, he didn’t address either.

  Instead he simply stated, “We’re on the clock.”

  My heart and mind were both racing as I stared into his gorgeous, unique eye-color combination. But soon everything slowed down and I found myself lost in the strands of gold that were woven into his green eye and the navy outline of his baby blue eye. I’d heard of people and animals who had heterochromia, but I’d never seen it in real life. It was downright mesmerizing. As was the man behind the eyes.

  With each second that passed, my awareness of the world around me diminished, and my awareness of Coop grew. I was discovering him on a primal level. My breathing pattern synced with his. I noticed the tiny scar over his right brow and my hand twitched in desire to run my finger across it. His stare shot straight to my soul and the intensity in it caused the tiny hairs on my arms to stand up.

  For the first time in my life I felt vulnerable and exposed and somehow also protected and aroused. It was unnerving and exciting.

  This exercise had always taken a certain level of concentration from me and I’d certainly never had a physical reaction to it. Usually, I had to force my brain to stop thinking about other things and try and connect to the person seated in front of me. With Coop that was not the case. I lost myself in him.

  “Time.” He grinned.

  He broke eye contact to turn off the buzzer and it was only then that I realized the buzzer was going off. If he hadn’t said anything or looked away, I had no idea how long I would’ve continued staring at him.

  I took a deep breath and did my best to collect myself as I picked up the first card. Silently, I read the question written, but decided that before I could continue I had to know something. Normally, I was a rule follower and the rules of this exercise were to read the questions in front of you and have the other person answer them. That was it. But something about this situation brought out the rebel in me.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  He tilted his head slightly and paused for a moment. “You needed someone to—”

&n
bsp; “No,” I interrupted, breaking yet another rule. There was no interrupting allowed during this exercise. “I mean why are you at the resort this weekend?”

  “That’s the question?” He motioned to the card I held.

  “It’s my question.”

  He stared into my eyes as his lips curled up in a half-smile that caused an 8.9 tremor to quake in my core. “I’m doing a soft launch of my therapeutic massage oil line.”

  That tracked. Jade had mentioned the massage oils. She’d tested some and had told me how amazing they were. But it still didn’t answer one thing. “But why here? In New Mexico? Why not launch something closer to home?”

  “I played ball with the owner, Liam Sullivan. He was one of the first to agree to carry the line.”

  So, you’re not here to see me?

  That question pinged around in my head like a little silver ball in a pinball machine but I didn’t voice it. His explanation made perfect sense and it was clear that his being here was not about me. My heart dipped slightly in disappointment but I did my best to ignore it.

  “Okay,” I looked down at the question I held. “Which one of your parents are you most like?”

  His half-smile spread to full-watt status. It was clear by his reaction that he loved his parents very much. “Well, they are both honest, hardworking people who put their family first, so in that respect I would say I’m like both of them. As far as which one I’m most like, I think most people would assume it was my dad. We look exactly the same. We are both athletic and love being outdoors and working with our hands.” He spread his fingers out on the table.

  The sight of his large, tanned hands against the white tablecloth sent tingles through my entire body. Images of all the ways I wanted him to work on me with his hands spammed my brain like a bad computer virus. I shook my head, trying to get my thoughts out of the gutter, and I refocused.