Road Trip With The Best Man

‘I don’t want to see them.’ She loved her family, really she did. And she knew they loved her. But she couldn’t take the pity in their eyes one more time. That disappointment and—worse—that sense of inevitability. And she really didn’t want to hear her mother’s, ‘Not every woman is meant to be a wife and mother, Dawnie,’ speech. Because she knew that—of course she did. And if she’d chosen to be alone, to forge her own path through life, that would be great. But she hadn’t.

Six times now, she’d thought she’d found true love. She’d thought she’d found forever.

And six times she’d been wrong.

She took another, longer gulp of Prosecco, the bubbles stinging her throat as they went down.

Maybe her mother was right. Maybe it was time to concede defeat. To dedicate her life to being that crazy aunt who was always off on adventures, posting photos of her in exotic places with handsome men she never stayed with long enough for them to let her down.

It wouldn’t be a bad life.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Ruby asked. ‘Just say it, and I’ll make it happen.’

Ruby, Dawn decided, was the best friend a girl had ever had. Life would be so much easier if she could just fall in love with Ruby. Well, as long as Ruby loved her back, which wasn’t at all a sure thing. She wasn’t exactly Ruby’s type—she preferred blondes who played guitar, if her last three girlfriends were anything to go by. So, no, even Ruby couldn’t be her happy-ever-after. Not in a romantic way, anyway.

But she was still the best friend ever.

‘I need to get out of here,’ Dawn said. ‘I need to figure out what happened. What I do next. I don’t want anyone to worry about me or anything but I can’t stay here. I need to go find...closure.’

Ruby gave a sharp nod. ‘Closure it is. Give me five minutes. And finish that bottle while you’re waiting.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE PARTY WAS in full swing, the celebratory spirit apparently undimmed by the fact that there hadn’t actually been a wedding for them to celebrate. Cooper stayed in the bar long enough to make sure that the venue had everything in hand, then grabbed a bottle of beer from behind the bar and headed out into the darkening evening to find some peace and quiet, his best man duties done.

The terrace at the front of the mansion was expansive, elegant and, most importantly to Cooper, empty. Apparently none of the other guests felt inclined to survey the view that Dawn had been so taken with that she’d had to book the venue on sight, despite the fact it was convenient for practically nobody. His mother, at least, had seemed pleased with her choice.

Cooper sighed, well aware that the day had turned his already bitter heart just a little more sour.

Even if the wedding had gone ahead, he doubted he’d have been in much of a mood to celebrate today. He’d given his prospective sister-in-law the benefit of the doubt when the save-the-date cards had come out—in fairness, it was unlikely that Justin would have mentioned that the date she’d chosen was the anniversary of Cooper’s divorce. Chances were that his brother hadn’t even realised or they’d have picked another day. But the fact remained that it was now officially three years since he’d disentangled himself from that messy web of lies and false love and, while his freedom probably should be something to be happy about, it seldom felt like it.

But at least his brother hadn’t made the same mistake. That was something to celebrate. With a small smile, Cooper raised his beer bottle to the sky and silently toasted Justin’s lucky escape.

Then he frowned, peering over the edge of the terrace at the sweeping driveway below. Out there, in the shadows of the swaying trees, he spotted a willowy figure. One in a very distinctive white lace dress.

‘Where is she going now?’ he murmured to himself as he watched Dawn trip over her train and reach out for the nearest tree to steady herself. Was she drunk?

And, more importantly, was she going after Justin?

Without thinking, Cooper put aside his beer bottle and sprung over the edge of the terrace, landing in a crouch on the packed ground. He strode across the driveway to where was parked the vintage robin’s-egg-blue Cadillac convertible he’d hired for Justin to drive away in for his wedding night. It had been his own, personal present to his brother—something far more meaningful than a second toaster, or even the speech he’d written to give to the assembled crowd. The car was a memory that only he and Justin shared. A dream, or a promise, they still had to fulfil.

‘When we’re grown-ups, we’ll be able to do whatever we want,’ he remembered saying when Justin had been only seven to his ten. ‘We’ll get the coolest car ever—’

‘A Cadillac?’ Justin had interrupted.

‘Yeah, a Caddy. And we’ll drive it all the way across America together. Just you and me. It’ll be the best adventure ever.’

They’d never done it, of course. Life had got in the way. But renting the car for Justin for this day, the start of the rest of his life, had felt like a reminder never to give up on his dreams, just because he’d been tied down by love, family and the business.

Except now he wasn’t, of course. Justin had run and left him to clear up the mess.

Like a drunk woman in a wedding dress trying to break into his incredibly expensive hire car.

‘Do you really think you’re in any condition to drive that?’ Cooper crossed his arms and leant against the far side of the car, glaring over to where Dawn was trying to unlock the driver’s side door.

‘Do you really think it’s your place to try to stop me?’ Dawn asked, eyebrows raised. She didn’t sound drunk, but Cooper was hard pressed to think of another reason she’d be stealing his car.

Yeah, okay, so he was thinking of it as his. Since Justin clearly wouldn’t be using it for his planned honeymoon road trip with Dawn, it seemed stupid not to make the most of the already paid-for rental. He could take it up the coast, maybe, for a couple of days, until he needed to be back in the office.

Once he’d evicted the woman in white who was trying to steal it.

‘Since it’s my name on the rental agreement, I think it’s exactly my place.’ Cooper was gratified to see that his statement at least gave her small pause. ‘Where are you planning on taking it, anyway?’

‘To find some answers,’ Dawn said, her head held high. Her long, pale neck rose elegantly up from the white lace monstrosity of a dress to where her dark hair was curled and braided against the back of her head, tilting her chin up with its weight. She looked every inch the English aristocrat—rather than the low little gold-digger Cooper knew she was.

Her words caught up with him. ‘Answers? You mean you’re going to find Justin?’

Dawn slammed her hands against the unyielding metal of the car door. ‘Of course I am! Did you even read the letter he left for me? Could he have been any more vague? So, yes! Yes, I’m going to go find him, and figure out what the hell happened so I can get my life back on track!’

As it happened, Cooper had read the letter—if only to be sure that his brother wasn’t leaving things open for a blissful reunion with his gold-digging bride. Which meant... ‘Except, of course, Justin didn’t tell you where he was going. Don’t you think you should take that as a hint that he didn’t want you chasing after him?’

Dawn’s eyes narrowed. ‘No, he didn’t tell me. But I’m willing to bet he told you. So, spill, Cooper. Where is your brother?’

Damn.

* * *

She didn’t really expect him to tell her outright, but maybe she’d get lucky. Maybe there’d be a clue or something that would lead her to Justin.

Cooper’s expression went blank, obviously trying to avoid giving anything away. Dawn sighed. Still, Justin couldn’t have gone far, right? Not if he’d left those notes for Cooper and her that morning. Especially since their bags for the honeymoon, according to the carefully planned and laminated schedule for the day, should be in the boot of the very car she was trying to unlock. Stupid vintage cars and their stupid vintage locks. Why couldn’t Cooper have hired them something with central locking, at the very least?

Wait. Were the bags in the car? She hadn’t checked.

Ignoring Cooper’s lack of reply to her question, Dawn hurried around to the boot of the Caddy—trunk, she supposed, since it was an American car—and fiddled with the key Ruby had pinched from Cooper’s bag for her until the boot popped open.

Empty.

The boot, trunk, whatever you wanted to call it, was empty.

‘Where’re my bags?’ she asked in a whisper.

Cooper followed her round to stand beside her, and they stared at the lack of suitcases together. ‘There should be bags?’

‘Yes!’ Dawn could feel the desperation leaking out in her voice. ‘We packed all the bags for our honeymoon and put them in Justin’s car yesterday.’ They’d had a late lunch together back at Justin’s hotel before Dawn had headed off to spend the night with her sisters at their hotel across town. Justin had been a staunch believer in the ‘bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding’ thing and, quite honestly, Dawn hadn’t wanted to tempt fate either. Which seemed doubly stupid now. ‘He was supposed to transfer them to this car this morning. I figured he’d have at least left mine when he dropped off those bloody letters earlier.’

‘He didn’t.’

‘Well, I can see that!’ Dawn’s voice was getting high and squeaky now, and she didn’t even care.

‘No, I mean he didn’t bring the letters here. I found them both this morning—they’d been slipped under my hotel room door in one envelope, with my name on it. I thought they were the notes for my speech I’d asked my secretary to drop over and just shoved them in my jacket pocket. I only checked them once we realised that Justin still wasn’t here...’

‘So he never even came here this morning,’ Dawn said softly. ‘So all my things...they’re still in his car. Which is probably wherever he is.’

Her clothes. Her ridiculously expensive wedding-night lingerie. Her toiletries. Her honeymoon reading. Her passport. All she had with her here was a tiny clutch bag with some face powder, a dull nude lipstick she’d never wear in everyday life, a spare pair of stockings, her phone and her credit card, in case there was a problem with the open bar at the venue. Even last night she’d borrowed things from her sisters and had worn the ‘Mrs Edwards’ pyjamas they’d bought her—which she hoped they burned as soon as they got back to the hotel.

She had nothing. Not even a husband.

‘I’m sure your family can—’

‘No!’ Dawn cut him off before he could even suggest she crawl back to her family, broken and in need of help. Again.

She’d done that too often in the past. This time, she needed to fix things herself.

Yes, she had nothing. Yes, this was basically the worst she’d ever felt in her whole life.

But that just meant that things could only get better from here on. Right?

At least, they would if she made them better. If she took charge of her life for once and stopped waiting for a happy-ever-after to save her.

‘Okay, I need you to tell me where Justin is,’ she said as calmly as reasonably as possible. ‘He has my belongings. My passport was in his travel wallet with his, ready for our honeymoon. If he’s not going to marry me, then I need to check out my visa, figure out what I do next, and in order to achieve that I need my stuff.’ And she needed closure. She needed Justin to look her in the eye and tell her what had gone wrong. What had changed since lunch time yesterday that had made him run?

She needed him to tell her what was wrong with her so she could fix it and bloody well make her own happily ever after, with or without a man.

But, somehow, she suspected Cooper would react better to the more practical approach.

‘Look,’ she said when he hesitated. ‘You want me out of your brother’s life, right? I mean, that much has been obvious since you called to not congratulate us on our engagement.’ Are you sure about this? was what he’d actually said. Isn’t it a bit fast?

She had no idea where that instant dislike for her had come from, but Justin had told her he was like that with any girl he got serious about, so she was willing to bet it was more of a Cooper problem than a Dawn one.

‘It’s not what I want that matters,’ Cooper said. He left the fact that Justin obviously wanted her out of his life unsaid, which was possibly the nicest thing he’d ever done for her.

‘My point is, it’s quite hard for me to, say, up and leave the country to start over somewhere else while Justin has my passport.’ Never mind that she had no intention of leaving the States if she didn’t have to, especially since it would involve her traipsing back to Britain and her parents with her tail between her legs. If Cooper needed to believe that she was on her way out of Justin’s life to tell her where he was, then he could believe that.

He didn’t need to know that her passport wasn’t the only thing Dawn wanted from Justin. The answers she needed were none of his business.

Cooper sighed, his broad shoulders sinking slightly as he realised she wasn’t going to give up. Dawn stood firm, staring him down, not giving him a second to rethink that realisation.

‘Listen, Dawn, Justin said in his note that he needed to get away, he needed time to think. To refocus himself, he said. He needs to be away from everyone right now—family, friends and especially you. You need to give him that time.’

‘Time to think,’ Dawn echoed, a thought of her own crystallising in her brain.

‘Exactly.’ Cooper sounded relieved. He shouldn’t. ‘Why don’t you spend some time with your family, while they’re over here, try and relax too? I mean, this must have all been very stressful for you.’ The disbelief was strong in his voice on that last point, but it didn’t matter. He’d already told Dawn what she needed to know.

There was only one place Justin went when he needed to get away from everything and think. He’d told her on their third date at that hot new restaurant that served everything with kale.

She knew where she needed to go.

‘I could do that,’ she said agreeably. ‘Or I could head over to your family’s beach house in the Hamptons and find Justin.’

Cooper’s eyes widened, just enough for her to know she’d guessed right.

‘I think I know which I’d rather do, don’t you?’ Dawn smiled triumphantly and enjoyed seeing Cooper’s face fall.

At least she’d come out on top once today.

* * *

‘I didn’t say he was at the beach house,’ Cooper said as soon as he gathered his wits again. How could she possibly know that? He felt in his pocket to make sure the letter Justin had written him was still there. He wouldn’t have put it past Dawn to have pickpocketed it from his jacket when they were investigating the trunk of the Caddy. She’d obviously already stolen the car keys from his bag, so thievery wasn’t beyond her. Not to mention the millions of dollars she had hoped to take his brother for.

Dawn slammed the trunk closed. ‘You didn’t have to. I know my... I know Justin.’

For a moment there, Cooper almost thought he heard sadness in her voice as she failed to find a word to describe his brother in relation to her. He wasn’t her husband, that was for sure. And she couldn’t possibly still think of him as her fiancé, or even boyfriend, now, could she?

Except he had a very bad feeling that if Dawn went to the beach house to find him she’d go out of her way to convince Justin to be exactly that once again. That was what a gold-digger would do, right? She’d invested too much time and energy in Justin as a prospect to give up now. She’d probably even try and talk him into eloping to Vegas and making things official as soon as she had her passport back.

Her passport. She didn’t have her passport. And she wasn’t a US citizen or a permanent resident, so she would need it to fly across the country to the Hamptons where Justin was holed up.

He would have flown, Cooper realised. Anything else would have been crazy. Which meant he’d probably already be there, and Dawn’s belongings were in some long-stay car park at the airport, locked in his car. Even if she had the keys, she’d have to hunt through several thousands of cars to find his. But that, he suspected, wouldn’t stop Dawn from heading to New York State to find Justin.

‘Even if he is at the beach house—and I’m not saying he is,’ he added quickly, off Dawn’s smug smile. ‘Say he is there. How, exactly, are you planning on joining him, given that he has your passport?’

That wiped that smile off her face. But only for a moment.

Grinning widely, she held up the keys to the Caddy. ‘I’ll drive.’

Since she hadn’t been able actually to open the door a few minutes ago, Cooper doubted that she was capable of driving forty-eight straight hours or so across the entire continental US, but the determined gleam in her eye still gave him pause.

‘Really. You, all on your own. Across the whole of America. Alone.’

‘If I have to,’ Dawn said stubbornly. ‘If that’s the only way to get to Justin, yes.’

Yeah, this wasn’t about her passport at all, was it? She wasn’t setting off on this absurd road trip to get her stuff and hightail it back to Britain.

She was doing this to get Justin back. And he simply could not allow that.

‘Give me the keys.’ He held a hand out across the bonnet.

‘No!’

‘The car is hired in my name,’ he said patiently. ‘If I call and report it stolen, the cops will have caught up to you before you even get out of the state. Besides, how much have you had to drink?’

‘Not much,’ she mumbled, sounding less certain. ‘Fine, then I’ll hire another car.’

‘With what proof of ID?’

‘I’ll take my dad’s rental.’ She was getting desperate now, he could tell. And that was bad. Desperate people did desperate things.

‘No,’ he said, making what might possibly be the worst decision of his life. ‘We’ll take this car. Now, give me the keys.’

‘We?’ Dawn asked, dropping the keys into his open palm.

Cooper crossed to the driver’s side and unlocked the car.

‘We,’ he confirmed. ‘And I’m driving.’

CHAPTER THREE

DAWN WOKE UP as they drove through what she thought must be San Francisco.

They.

She and Cooper.

How the hell had that happened?

She kept her eyes closed, so Cooper wouldn’t know she was awake, while she tried to figure it all out.

It might be Ruby’s fault. These sorts of things—crazy, unpredictable, ridiculous things—usually were. If she hadn’t forced that Prosecco on her then Dawn would have been clear-headed enough not to get into this position. Possibly. Okay, fine, but at least she’d have been able to open the car door the first time and drive herself away from her nightmare of a not-wedding.

Of course, if Cooper hadn’t intervened, she wouldn’t have known where she was going, and who knew how long it would have taken her to figure out that Justin had run off with her passport and suitcase?

Justin.

Of course. It was Justin’s fault. All of it.

She felt a little better for deciding that, so risked opening her eyes.

‘Sobered up yet?’ Cooper asked without looking at her. ‘There are some painkillers in the glove box.’

‘I had, like, two glasses of Prosecco, Cooper.’ Even if they hadn’t actually been in a glass. And probably not as good as the champagne Mrs Edwards had ordered to go with the wedding breakfast her guests would be sitting down to eat around now. ‘I wasn’t drunk.’ Was that the only reason he’d insisted on driving her? Because he thought she was too drunk to do it herself?

Cooper sighed. ‘Well, there goes the only justification I could come up with for this crazy road trip.’

‘What’s crazy about it?’ Shifting in her seat, Dawn tried to get comfortable and work out the kink in her neck from sleeping with her head against the window. How long had they been on the road, anyway? If the bright lights around them really were San Francisco, it must have been about an hour since they’d left the venue.

‘Everything,’ Cooper said flatly.

Dawn ignored him. Clearly he didn’t understand about closure. He didn’t understand her. And that was fine—why should he? In a day or so she’d have what she needed and he’d be out of her life for good. Right?

Wait. Frowning, Dawn tried to pull up a mental image of the map of the USA she’d had on her wall as a teenager, when she’d planned to escape the stifling perfection of her family and run away to her mother’s homeland, the States, as soon as she was old enough.

She couldn’t exactly remember all the particulars of the interstates and roads, but she did remember one crucial thing: America was big.

Really big.

And the Hamptons were right on the other side of it from where she’d planned to get married today.

She shuffled around in the leather passenger seat of the Caddy again, trying to get her skirt into something resembling a comfortable position. American cars might be bigger and arguably better than the rest, but no car was truly comfy when wearing several thousand dollars’ worth of lace and silk. The voluminous skirt would have looked wonderful walking down the aisle, or dancing the first dance, but Dawn felt it was rather wasted being crammed into the front seat of what was clearly Cooper’s dream car.

‘How far exactly is it to the beach house, anyway?’ she asked as nonchalantly as she could. However far it was, it was where she needed to go.

But she had a nagging feeling it might take a little longer than the day or so she’d imagined when she’d suggested driving there.

‘About three thousand miles,’ Cooper replied, equally casually. ‘Give or take.’

‘Three thousand miles.’ Dawn swallowed. Hard.

‘Give or take,’ Cooper repeated. ‘About forty-eight hours of solid driving, mostly along Interstate 80.’

‘You’ve done this before?’ That was good. If he’d driven this way before, then it was clearly doable and not quite as insane as it sounded in her head.

‘Never,’ Cooper said, and Dawn’s spirits sank again. ‘Justin and I always planned to do a coast-to-coast road trip one day, though. Had it all planned out and everything. We were going to do it over a couple of weeks one summer. Hire a vintage Caddy like this one, really make the most of it.’

And instead he was making the trip with her—his sister-in-law who wasn’t. Dawn wanted to ask why he and Justin had never taken their trip, but the closed expression on Cooper’s face stopped her.

Well, that, and the phrases ‘a couple of weeks’ and ‘forty-eight hours of solid driving’ echoing around her head.

‘We’re going to need to stop overnight, then,’ she said.

‘Over several nights,’ Cooper corrected. ‘Even if we split the driving, we’ll both need to rest. Plus this car is a classic, vintage model. It’s been refurbished, of course, but still. It’s not exactly covered for non-stop cross-country travel.’

‘How many days do you think it will take us?’ Dawn asked, staring at the hard planes of his face, the set jaw. Two days ago, she’d never even met this man. Yesterday she’d realised he seriously disliked her. And now it looked as though they were going to be spending an awful lot of time together.

Maybe this wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had.

Cooper shrugged, never taking his eyes off the road. ‘Maybe four or five. If we really push it.’

And longer if they didn’t. Possibly a lot longer if anything went wrong with the car.

Dawn tried to remember how much space she had left on her credit card. Motel rooms for a week were going to add up fast. Not to mention food, petrol and everything else. She forced herself to take deep breaths and stay calm. The last thing she needed was Cooper figuring out how much she was freaking out.