Embraced by Love Read Free

her stormy brown eyes.
    As Cooper watched, she marched across the wide, carpeted hallway. Placing the palms of her hands against the wall, she braced herself against it, almost as if she were about to be frisked. Curious, he moved a few feet closer, and realized that she was counting under her breath.
    A man came out of the same office door, and stood several feet away from her, waiting politely until she had counted all the way up to ten. The man was clearly an underling, probably her assistant or her secretary, and she turned to face him.
    “Tell that son-of-a-bitch if he thinks we need his business so badly that we’re going to let him rip us off from here to kingdom come,” she said, “he’s gonna find himself sitting out on the street on his big, fat ass before
he
can count to ten.”
    The assistant grinned. “Shall I quote you or paraphrase?”
    Josie smiled, then snorted and laughed. “Paraphrase please, David,” she said, pushing her brown curls back from her face.
    She had a low, husky voice with a twangy southern accent. It wasn’t a sugary, deep South, Georgia-style accent, but more of a Kentucky drawl, Cooper thought. He’d been close. She was from Tennessee.
    She glanced up, as if feeling Cooper’s eyes on her, and said, “Damn, we need a bigger office. At least something with two rooms so I can have a place to go when I’m losing it.”
    “Keep up these negotiations,” David said, “and we just might be able to afford another room.”
    She glanced at her watch. “I want this over with by lunch time. I’m gonna take my sorry little peanut butter and jelly sandwich into the park and sit in the sunshine while I eat it,” she said. “Nirvana on whole wheat. I may not come back.”
    Her assistant laughed, and turned to go back inside, but when she didn’t follow, he looked back at her questioningly. “Aren’t you coming, Josie?”
    Josie. Her name was Josie. Cooper smiled. He liked it. It fit her perfectly.
    “Not yet,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. “I want that creep to squirm.”
    The door closed behind her assistant and she reached up to rub her neck, closing her eyes briefly and twisting her head to the side, as if trying to get a knot out. When she opened her eyes, she was looking directly at Cooper. Their gazes locked for several long seconds, and then she looked away, as if embarrassed or even shy.
    Cooper knew that dressed as he was in his dark suit and designer power tie, with his hair pulled back into a ponytail, and with his sunglasses on, he cut something of an imposing figure. Standing six feet six inches in his bare feet, he was not a little man. And the muscles he’d gotten from playing college basketball had been maintained, if not added to, over the past six years by his daily workouts at the Y.
    Still, she glanced back at him and smiled. “Wish me luck,” she said, and disappeared behind the office door.
    Cooper excused himself from the group of businessmen and stood for several moments, looking at that door. Taylor-Made Software, it said. He smiled, and hurried home to change his clothes.
    He brought his skateboard to the park, knowing that the wheels would make it easier to find her when she showed up for her lunch. It also gave him a reason to be there, something to do.
    After only a few minutes out in the hot sun, he peeled off his T-shirt. He found himself wishing that he’d kept his hair tied back in a ponytail instead of loose around his shoulders. It seemed as if they’d gone from winter directly into summer this year, completely passing over spring—
    He spotted her, walking down the street.
    He had been a little bit afraid that he wouldn’t recognize her. He’d only seen her for a few short minutes, after all. But he
did
recognize her. Hell, he would have been able to pick her out of a crowd.
    As she moved closer, he braced himself. She couldn’t possibly be as pretty as he remembered. No woman could possibly look that