“Thank you,” Beau whispered, accepting the pants but not moving out of the way, so Coop leaned against the dresser and shoved his hands in his pockets, waiting to see what else he had to say. Finally, Beau blurted out, “I’m not usually like this.”
“Okay…”
“I mean… I am, but not to this extent. Or well…” Groaning, Beau rubbed at his eyes, taking in a shuddery breath. With his eyes still covered, he whispered, “I found my fiancé screwing his assistant a few hours ago. So things are kind of terrible right now.”
Some of Coop’s annoyance began to melt away. He knew from experience how easy it was to make dumb decisions when you were hurting from a betrayal like that. “That must have been painful.”
Beau did a weird nodding shrug thing that Coop wasn’t sure how to interpret. “I just… I wanted you to know that I’m not usually so dumb, okay? I should have listened to my dad about the snowstorm, but I just wanted to get as far away from Danny and his stupidly perfect assistant as I could. And with Danny following me through our apartment as I was trying to pack, I didn’t pay attention to what I was grabbing.”
This Danny sounded like a real piece of work.
“You found them having sex in your apartment, or he followed you to your apartment and then inside?”
Beau’s hands dropped to his sides, and he gave Coop a look that said he really didn’t think that question was relevant, but he answered it anyway. “In our apartment. Danny has—had an office in the second bedroom, and he worked out of it sometimes.” He shrugged loosely, his arms flopping around a little, and continued as his eyes traveled around Coop’s bedroom curiously. “His assistant didn’t usually come over, but it wasn’t completely unheard of, so I didn’t even think twice about his car in our guest parking spot. But there they were, right on top of Danny’s desk. His skinny little assistant moaning like Danny actually…”
He trailed off as he bit his lip, meeting Coop’s eyes for only a second, then dropping his gaze to Trucker, cheeks flushing adorably. There was something in his voice, though, that had Coop taking half a step closer.
Fuck. He had to be reading into it, but it almost sounded like cute little Beau was more upset at being cheated on than his engagement ending.
And also like Danny might have been lousy in the sack.
As tempting as it was to offer Beau a shoulder to cry on—or his dick to bounce on in revenge—that vulnerable look in those chocolatey eyes spelled trouble. Coop would bet his cabin and all the land it sat on that Beau wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy.
But one night was all Coop had to offer anyone anymore.
Chapter 3
Beau was such an idiot.
He’d meant to calmly explain to Cooper that he’d had a terrible day and wasn’t always so absentminded or careless, and then he’d blurted out the embarrassing bits and outed himself in the process. Cooper hadn’t seemed to care, even offering a brief shoulder squeeze and a gruff, “He sounds like a piece of shit,” before heading back to the front of the cabin after confirming Beau wasn’t allergic to milk for some reason.
Closing the door to the rest of the cabin, Beau stood in a strange man’s bedroom and wondered what the hell he was doing.
When the snow had gotten so bad he could barely see on the highway, he’d taken the first exit he could and looked for a place to stay, but there’d been nothing. Maybe he’d turned the wrong way at some point, but he’d only seen a gas station, two fast-food places, and a big-box store whose parking lot was mostly empty.
But no motels.
He’d traveled farther down the road and away from the highway, thinking he’d maybe come across an actual town at some point, but the lights became fewer and farther between, and it got so he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of his front bumper. Real fear had clenched his gut.
Then he’d spotted a driveaway, and even though any tire tracks had been filled, he could tell by the mounds on the sides that it had been recently plowed.
So he’d turned down it, praying he’d find help at the end and not just a run-down cabin without heat or a terrifying redneck with a shotgun.
Instead, he’d found Cooper Frances.
The only lucky thing to happen all day. While he was a little… gruff, he’d opened his home to Beau and had the sweetest dog in the world. Trucker had actually sealed the deal for Beau on trusting Cooper not to murder him while he slept or anything. An evil person couldn’t have such a nice dog, right?
Shivering, he realized he was really starting to get chilled. He quickly undid his belt and pants and let his khakis drop to his ankles, stepping out of them. Bending to pick them up, he frowned as he looked around for a place to lay them out to dry. He ended up in the bathroom, draping them over the edge of the tub and hoping Cooper wouldn’t mind.
He scowled at the damp edges of his long sleeves. After everything else, falling in the snow had really been the cherry on top of an absolutely awful day. Sighing, he unbuttoned his sleeves and then down his front, leaving his work shirt with his pants and returning to the bedroom in nothing but his tiny, light blue panties.
Danny had once told him his choice of undergarments was the only interesting thing about him. He’d said it like he was joking, and Beau had laughed it off, but now he knew it was probably the truth. Or, at least, that was how Danny had seen him.
“Well, screw him,” Beau muttered fiercely, grabbing the sweats from where he’d placed them next to his sweatshirt on the end of the bed.
He was bent over, stepping into the sweats, when the door opened behind him. He tried to turn around and pull the material up his legs and step behind the corner of the bed all at the same time.
All he managed to do was fall on his ass.
An awkward throat cleared above him, but he refused to open his eyes. If he didn’t look, then it wasn’t true; he wasn’t lying on the floor at Cooper’s feet in nothing but his underwear, borrowed sweatpants tangled around his feet.
“You okay?”
Sighing, he opened one eye into a slit and peered at Cooper upside down, absently petting Trucker when he lay next to Beau and nudged at his arm. “No. My ego can’t take much more.”
It was hard to tell from the angle and because of Cooper’s short beard, but it looked like he was smiling at Beau a little. “Somehow, I think it can take it. Where are your keys?”
“What?” He sat up and straightened the sweats, pulling them up to his knees, then standing and pulling them up the rest of the way. When he realized Cooper hadn’t explained himself, he turned back to him and saw he was frowning at the sweats. Beau glanced down, tugging at where the material clung to his hips and ass. They were too long but otherwise fit well enough to do. He could feel his face turning red as he tried not to think about what Cooper must be thinking about his underwear. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Cooper rasped, turning away and rubbing at the back of his neck. “Your keys?”
“Um.” He uselessly felt the pockets of the sweats as he tried to remember if he’d brought them inside. “Maybe my pants. Hang on.”
They were still in the pocket of his khakis. He jingled them at Cooper as he returned to the bedroom, smiling triumphantly.