To Cooper he said, “Your construction company is successful, is it not?”
Cooper tucked his thumbs in his back jeans pockets, drawing her attention unwillingly to the hard contours beneath the snug denim. She jerked her eyes upward, but landed on the muscular chest beneath his chambray work shirt before making it to his remarkably handsome face. That she noticed such things added to her growing frustration and incredulity. How could Joseph believe him over her?
Cooper said, “It’s not just my company. I have a partner, Ted Orson, who fortunately can handle things while I’m…otherwise engaged. But yeah, we’ve operated in the black for some time now, doing custom residential and small commercial remodels.”
They were already aware of as much. In the few days since the reading of Marcus’s will, Joseph had employed a local private investigator he trusted to be unquestionably discreet to augment his lawyers. Their goal had been to learn everything possible about those now referred to as the Lost Millionaires.
Joseph nodded again. “So you know how to implement a viable and sustainable business model. You’ll be doing the same thing at McCoy Enterprises, only on a much larger scale, of course.”
Cooper’s smile was tight. “By a few billion.”
Sara shook her head. She was not going to let this happen. “No, that’s not what he meant—”
Joseph cut her off. “You can’t fault a man for nerves. But he doesn’t give himself enough credit. That’s become plain in the short amount of time he’s been here.” A look of pride softened the wrinkles on Joseph’s face. “Humility is a very admirable quality in a businessman.”
Sara’s jaw went slack. In the space of, at most, twenty minutes, Cooper Anders had completely snowed Joseph McCoy, founder and chairman of the board of one of the most stunningly successful enterprises in the history of retail business.
Her heart started pounding hard enough to drum in her ears. Had he forgotten they’d begun the day with a phone call from the private investigator about the youngest of the Lost Millionaires landing himself in jail the night before? “But—”
Cooper spoke. “My grandfather is right, Sara.” His already deep voice dipped further, and intimately, at her name.
He was trying to mess with her. Judging by her current state, he was succeeding.
He lowered his chin. “You misunderstood me.”
She gaped at him, her earlier empathy disappearing as the anger and frustration rose like a tide of acid inside of her. “Misunderstood?” she choked out. “Why, you two-faced, lying—”
“Sara!”
The sharp edge to Joseph’s voice brought her up short, especially since she’d never heard that tone directed toward her before. Yet, she’d never lost her cool in front of Joseph, either.
Joseph’s slow rise to his feet wasn’t a sign of age—he’d turn seventy-five in a matter of weeks—but rather a reminder that he expected to receive the respect he’d rightfully earned. “Cooper is a McCoy now. I want you to treat him as such.”
She nodded curtly and kept her mouth tightly closed against all the reasons, heard straight from the source, that Cooper should not be given the same devotion she’d never questioned giving Joseph, Alexander or even Marcus on the rare occasions he’d been around before his unpleasant death. Joseph was grieving for Marcus, and she understood his need to embrace a grandchild he hadn’t known he had.
Even if that grandson had the heart of a snake.
She looked at Cooper. He’d cocked an eyebrow and watched her with a casual—no, make that innocent air—but the shadow of pain in his eyes made her feel for him despite what she was thinking.
Okay. So she did empathize with him. She would acknowledge that and then get over it. She refused to fall under his spell. He was a snake with the ability to trick unsuspecting women into aching for what he’d gone through as a child.
Or so he thought, she forcefully amended. While what he’d threatened was far more serious than a little game-playing, she had his number and would do everything in her power to stop him. And she knew of one person who wouldn’t be so blinded by grief to not hear what she had to say.
Remembering his shock over one of the details of Marcus’s will, she gave Cooper her sweetest smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I just remembered I have something important to discuss with Alexander McCoy. Your brother,” she added, launching a parting salvo of her own.
She left the study, her smile now one of grim satisfaction, certain his wide-eyed, slack-jawed look of surprise was more impressive than hers must have been after he’d dropped his bomb.
COOPER CLOSED HIS MOUTH with a snap.
Alexander McCoy was his brother?
He looked away from the door that Sara, the pretty piece of fluff who had to be old man McCoy’s personal secretary, had just sashayed through. He met Joseph McCoy’s gaze. “I myself must be having listening problems, because I could have sworn she just said that Alexander McCoy, your youngest son, is my brother.”
Joseph blew out a breath and slouched back in his chair, something that didn’t look quite right on the old man. “Marcus turned more than a few lives upside down in his time.”
Shock rocked Cooper back on his heels yet again that day. “Are you saying it’s true?”
Joseph ran a hand over his face, for the first time letting on that he wasn’t taking all the recent events in stride. “Yes. It’s true. Alexander is actually Marcus’s son. Your half brother.”
His knees unsteady, Cooper took a seat in one of the chairs facing the big desk. “Tell me everything.” He’d spent his entire life with so many questions, so many doubts, he wasn’t surprised his voice sounded strained.
Joseph rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and tented his fingers in front of him. “Marcus never really displayed the best judgment. Especially when it came to women.”
Cooper involuntarily thought of the wet one he’d wanted to plant on Joe’s secretary, and the fact that he still wanted to do it. Heaven help him if bad judgment around women was hereditary.
Joseph continued, “He was only nineteen when he seduced a young maid of ours. After the girl realized she was pregnant, everyone concerned felt it would be best if my wife, Elise, your grandmother, and I adopted the baby as our own rather than force Marcus and Helen—”
“Whoa, wait a second. Helen? The lady who showed me in here said her name was Helen. And that she’s the housekeeper.”
“Yes, Helen is still with us. By her choice, I might add.”
Cooper had to physically shake off his disbelief. He did not get these people.
“As I was saying, we decided not to force Marcus and Helen to wed. And we would have had to. Marcus did not want to marry. A sentiment he never outgrew. So Helen and Elise went to Europe for an extended holiday—”
“And returned with Marcus’s new baby brother, thus avoiding any messy scandal that would have trashed your image.”
Joseph met his gaze steadily, all trace of sentimentality gone. “We did what we thought was best.”
Cooper remembered what Sara had said, as well as the earnestness in her vivid green eyes, and echoed, “The right thing.”
Joseph inclined his head in agreement, apparently not picking up the sarcasm in Cooper’s tone. “We really believed that Marcus had learned from his first…indiscretion. But his irresponsibility apparently wasn’t hampered by the threat of being disowned.”
The burner simmering Cooper’s anger kicked up a notch, making him boil. “He simply learned how to keep it under wraps by buying the women off.”