The second staircase was free from smoke, thank God. Allie ran as fast as she could down the steps, passing other, slower people in her quest.
“Jeez, Allie, you’re gonna break your neck,” Cooper called from behind her.
She didn’t respond, just kept going until they reached the first floor. There, a hotel employee herded everyone out an emergency exit.
As soon as she was outside, she gulped several long breaths of fresh air-well, as fresh as air in downtown Houston ever got. She realized she was hyperventilating and forced herself to slow her breathing before she passed out.
“Are you okay?” Cooper was there beside her, sliding a comforting arm around her shoulders. His arm felt nice there, secure and safe, and she did feel better.
She couldn’t talk, but she nodded.
The crowd of people who had evacuated the hotel milled around, dazed and shocked. One poor woman wore nothing but a sheet she’d wrapped around her body, and Allie was glad Cooper had made her get dressed, even if it had taken a few precious seconds to do so.
“Let’s get out of this crowd.” Cooper took her hand and led her across the street, where they found a place to sit on the edge of a planter.
Allie gazed up at the beautiful old hotel, searching for signs of smoke or flames, but the building appeared perfectly normal-except for all the fire trucks with their flashing lights cutting through the night. The firefighters seemed to be working calmly, not panicking, as if this were a routine job.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Cooper asked again.
“Yes, I’m fine.” She forced a smile. “Sorry about the meltdown.”
“That’s okay. Have you been in a fire before?”
“No. But I have a vivid imagination. And we were so high up, so far from the ground, and that stairwell didn’t have any windows…” She shivered.
Cooper rubbed circles on her back. “Come here.” He pulled her close to him, and amazingly she let him. It had been so long since she’d let anyone in. No one had comforted her like this since her father died.
Not that she and Johnny hadn’t been close. But she always felt like she needed to be strong around him. He’d had his reservations about hiring a woman, so she’d had to present a strong front. She’d never shown him her fears, her vulnerabilities.
It felt so good to lean against Cooper’s warm, strong body, to feel his arm around her. She tried not to think too hard about who he really was. Yes, they were involved in a legal battle, and the stakes were very high. But right now it was easy to forget all that. Maybe he was a slick, high-powered lawyer, but his work hadn’t beaten all the kindness and compassion out of him.
Or maybe she was just trying to rationalize the warm tingles coursing through her right now. All she knew was that she liked this closeness, and she didn’t want it to end.
“So why do you hate lawyers so much?” he asked out of the blue.
She should have known he had an angle. She answered him, anyway. “My uncle was a lawyer. My father died when I was sixteen, and Uncle Daniel was executor of his will. Let’s just say, by the time I turned eighteen there was nothing left.”
“Jeez. Where was your mother?”
“She died when I was ten.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“No. Daniel’s the only family I have left, and I haven’t seen him in ten…”
“…ten years,” he finished for her. “Isn’t that what you condemned me for?” His tone was merely curious, as if he truly wanted to understand her logic.
“My situation is different. My uncle wants nothing to do with me, and that suits me fine. He’s a thief and a liar.”
“Hmm.” Cooper was silent for a few moments. Then, “Would it surprise you to know that Johnny is the one who refused contact with me?”
“That’s not how he told the story.” Funny, but just days ago she would have jumped on Cooper accusing him of lying. Now, she felt more as if she’d misunderstood somehow, and she needed more information.
“Oh, I’ll admit my father and my other uncles cut off contact initially,” he said. “I don’t know the details of their feud, but it had something to do with Johnny’s drinking.
“Later, when I was grown, I tried to get back in touch with Johnny. I called the marina and left several messages for him. I wrote him five or six letters. He never returned the calls. I sent him a Christmas card every year, and at first he sent one back, but even that stopped.
“I know I should’ve come down here in person to see him, but I got busy with my life and I figured there would always be time. Johnny wasn’t an old man. At least, not in my memory.” His voice was thick at the end of his explanation, and Allie wanted to believe he was telling the truth.
But her uncle had told her a lot of pretty stories, too. Stories about how he was taking care of her inheritance, making it grow so she could go to college or buy a house when she turned eighteen.
She didn’t want more school or a house. All she wanted was the Ginnie, the one place where she could still feel close to her father. But her uncle had put the boat in dry dock against her wishes, insisting a derelict fishing boat was no place for a young girl.
She never saw the boat again.
The day she had sat in a lawyer’s office and learned there wasn’t enough left of her inheritance to buy a life jacket, much less a boat, she had silently sworn she would never trust anyone again, not unless they earned her trust.
So why did she so badly want to trust Cooper?
They sat on the edge of that planter for about an hour, until a man with a bullhorn announced that the fire had been put out, that it had been confined to only two guest rooms, and it was safe for most of the guests to return to their beds.
“We can check into a different hotel if you want,” Cooper said.
“No, I’m staying here. You’ll protect me, right?” It was a slightly flirtatious thing for her to say and the words felt alien and a little thrilling on her tongue.
“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. I’ve tried to hate you, Allie, but I just can’t. You’re too darn cute.” He leaned in and kissed her quickly on the lips. It happened so fast, Allie thought she might have imagined it. But her lips tingled and her whole body thrummed with electricity as they walked across the street and back into the hotel, holding hands.
Allie didn’t want it to end. She had no desire to return to her lonely bed, luxurious though it might be, and go to sleep by herself. She wanted to stay up talking with Cooper, sharing bits and pieces of themselves. She wanted to know more about his memories of Johnny and why he had suddenly decided he wanted to chuck a lucrative legal career and become a professional fisherman.
They rode up the elevator in silence, and Allie wondered what he was thinking. Probably that she was a silly girl. “Cute,” he’d called her. Did that mean anything? Why couldn’t he think she was beautiful or sexy?
Probably because she wasn’t either of those things.
He used his key to open the door to their suite. Everything looked just as they’d left it. No telltale smoke lingered in the air.
“We have to get up in three hours,” Cooper said.
Allie paused in the living area. “Hardly seems worth going back to bed.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“Love one.” Did she sound too eager?
Cooper opened the minibar and took stock. “We have Scotch, gin, vodka, and wine. I’m afraid there’s no bourbon-I drank that earlier.”
That surprised her. “You did? When?” She didn’t remember him mixing a cocktail, and he’d headed into his bedroom at the same time she had escaped to hers.
“I couldn’t sleep. Too keyed up about the trade show, I guess. I thought a bourbon might relax me.”
Funny, she’d had trouble going to sleep, too. “You would think on these huge, soft beds, with all those pillows, we wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping.”