Page 78

“Because you’ll be leaving?”

Taylor sighed. “I told her I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Is it a good offer?” he asked.

“It’s pretty much everything I’d want. More input. More trust in my designs. A small staff.” She’d spent an hour on the telephone interview and it had gone better than she’d hoped.

“Wow,” he said. “That sounds too good to pass up.”

She turned to face him. As usual, his eyes gleamed as blue as a sun-drenched ocean. “I’m not sure what to do.”

“Taye, if it’s what you want, then you should take the offer.”

But it wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was sitting right next to her. But he still wasn’t opening up. He had a battalion guarding his heart, and there was no crack in the armor, that she could see.

She sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”

Coop let out a long sigh too. “We’ll miss you around here, that’s for sure.”

Taylor had no comeback for that. Missing her family and the Coopers was what she feared most. But she couldn’t voice it, because she’d break down. And Coop didn’t need to see her blubbering.

“Well, I’d best go check on Cass. Talk it out with her.”

She nodded and rose too. “I’ll be going now.”

“Yeah, I know.” Coop gave her a long look, as if to say he’d always known she’d be going, but that wasn’t what she’d meant at all. He was just being annoying Coop again.

She stood there a minute ready to plead her case and make him see he had more to lose than to gain, by her leaving. But he wasn’t giving an inch. He’d pretty much told her to take the job and go back to where she’d come from.

Taylor didn’t muster her courage, didn’t fight the good fight, she simply left his house and headed back to Julie’s house.

She had an early dinner date with Blake Charles, and she didn’t want to be late.

*

Coop popped hishead into Cassie’s room and found her lying on her bed looking at her favorite baseball book. Looking at, not really seeing it. Coop knew that numbing feeling too. And part of him was experiencing that now. Because Taylor was leaving.

“Hi, Cass.”

She didn’t look up from her book.

He walked inside and was taken with how his daughter’s room was a mixture of little girl and true-blue baseball fan. She had dolls and furniture sitting in a dollhouse he’d built for her when she was four, one wall decorated with colorings and drawings she’d done since kindergarten. Her baseball mitt, balls and bats sat in one corner of the room with posters of her favorite Texas Rangers taped up on the space over her bed.

“Mind if I sit?” He took a seat on the edge of her bed. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

She sighed. Sometimes his eight-year-old daughter looked like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. “Taylor is leaving.”

“I know.”

“She told you? She didn’t think it would make a difference if you knew.”

That stung. “I just found out, sweetheart. But I always knew she wouldn’t stay.”

“She said she doesn’t live here. But she could. She could live here.”

“She needs a job, Cass. There’s a job waiting for her in New York.”

“You don’t want her to stay, do you, Daddy? I thought she was your friend.”