Besides that… never.
And then another voice came.
“Happy birthday, Ripley,” came the feminine voice that I knew belonged to Mr. Cooper’s wife.
If I wouldn’t have moved my gaze back over to Rip, I would have missed the way that, with each word that came out of Mrs. Cooper’s mouth—Lydia was her name—the harder Rip’s face became. It had gone from pleasantly blank while we had been making arrangements to an instantly guarded expression when Mr. Cooper had spoken… and then with Mrs. Cooper’s words, his jaw became more defined. The tendons at his neck became more pronounced. Then he slowly sat up in the chair he had just begun relaxing into.
Ripley had never been a comfortable, easygoing person.
But he had never looked the way he did right then either. At least never in front of me, and I had seen him pissed off and angry with the other shop guys before.
Not even when I had made him mad about screwing up the color on that Thunderbird had he made a face so cold.
But this… this wasn’t anger. It wasn’t fury or disappointment. At least not exactly. I was familiar with those expressions.
It looked like a million different emotions wrapped inside a body ready to burst at the seams.
He had never looked at Mr. Cooper like that before, even when he didn’t know I was watching.
There was no way Mrs. Cooper had ever done anything to him. She was one of the nicest women I had ever met. She was loving and caring and warm. She had given me countless hugs and mademea birthday cake every year we had known each other.
Mr. Cooper had called her a saint before, and I believed it. I had lived with her for years. I’d spent almost every holiday together with her since I’d started working for CCC.
If he was wonderful, she was just as wonderful, and I loved them both.
So when I heard the deep breath that Rip let out, I didn’t know what to think. He sounded… he sounded like he’d seen a storm and decided to put down shutters all over himself. From us.
I watched as his eyes went from Mr. Cooper to Mrs. Cooper and then back to the older man, his Adam’s apple bulging more than I had ever seen. Then he said, “Thank you” like someone was torturing him to get the words out.
I didn’t need to glance at the Coopers to feel the tension on their end.
It became even stronger as Ripley grabbed his drink from the table, put it up to his mouth, and tossed it back, not even wincing as he did.
In one swift move, he shoved his stool back and muttered, “Thanks for the birthday cake, Luna. I’ll see you at work,” talking to me and Mr. Cooper, obviously.
But he didn’t look at either one of us.
He didn’t look at Mrs. Cooper either.
One exhale later, he was gone.
Well.
Thatwas freaking weird.
Chapter 6
I couldn’t sayI wasn’t relieved when I got to work the next day and only found Rip’s truck in the lot. Without Mr. Cooper’s car, I knew I wasn’t going to head inside and overhear them arguing after what happened the night before.Awkward.I wasn’t sure what was going on with him and Mr. Cooper lately, but things had seemed more tense than normal, and they hadn’t beenthatgreat to start with.
On the way over to CCC, I had considered trying to avoid Rip so that I wouldn’t give him a chance to tell me he’d changed his mind about going to San Antonio. Then I decided I wasn’t going to be that much of a chicken. Because if I was nervous, then he’d begin wondering why that was the case.
I made my way inside, dropped off my things like normal, then headed upstairs to start making coffee. I hadn’t spotted my boss slash future bodyguard on the way in, but I didn’t think anything of it. I couldn’t hear him in his office either, but there were a half-dozen places he could have been. I made both of our coffees then made my way down, finding him bent over the opened hood of the GMC truck he’d been working on. From what I could see, he wasn’t wearing a white shirt under the navy blue coveralls he had on. I was pretty sure it was… a gray one. Gray wasn’t a great color for his mood, but it wasn’t white.
So.
Act normal.
Don’t give him a reason to think twice about it.
