““Cooper’s gaze was locked exclusively on hers, and suddenly it was as if they were the only two people in the room. Everything else fell away, and she felt herself getting pulled in, swallowed up. That was always how he’d made her feel, as if she was this close to drowning…and that maybe she should stop trying so hard to keep her head above water. He stopped a foot in front of her and she lifted her gaze--and her chin--to stay even with his. “Before, when you were there, working, living alongside us, I thought if I gave you room, gave you space, you’d figure out that Cameroo Downs was where you belonged,” he said. His words, the rumble of his deep voice, that accent of his, held her as surely as if he’d put his hands on her. But then, that’s why you left, wasn’t it? So you wouldn’t risk finding out what would happen if he ever did put his hands on you. “When you left,” he continued, “I told myself once you were gone, then you’d realize it--you’d have to--and you’d come back.” She struggled to listen to his words, to take in their meaning, but they were so completely at odds with what she’d thought, back when she was working for him and every single day since. Thinking he’d been business only, that her thoughts, her fantasies, about him, about them, were hers alone--that was the only way she’d kept her sanity intact, kept her yearning from consuming her. “But a full year has gone by. And you haven’t come back. Not so much as a word from you.” “Cooper,” she said, the two syllables not much more than a broken whisper. She cleared her throat. “I never said--you knew I wasn’t coming back. You knew when I started that I wasn’t staying.” “When you started, yeah,” he said, then moved another inch closer, and what little air she seemed to have pulled in deserted her just as swiftly. “But by the time you left…I thought…” She let herself sink deeper and looked into his eyes. “You thought what?” “It’s been a year,” he repeated, and for the first time, she saw something behind that bold, fierce, confident gaze of his, something she’d never seen before, though she couldn’t quite say what it was. “And I realize now that I should have asked then.” “Asked me to stay?” she said, hating the tremulous waver in her voice, hating more that she wasn’t quite sure how she’d answer him if he asked now. “You could have just called.” A titter went up in the crowd and was just as swiftly snuffed out by shushing sounds. It all barely registered wither. “No, not that. I mean, yes, I wanted you to stay. But not as a jillaroo. Or not only as one.” And then she realized what it was she saw. She would have recognized it right off if she’d let herself acknowledge that it was the same thing she’d seen in her own eyes. Fear. What could Cooper Jax possibly be afraid of? Fear of wanting what he can’t have? Of losing what he wanted most? ””
