One More Time Read online

  One More Time

  #3 of The Coxwells

  by

  Deborah Cooke

  Can you know what you want before you have it?

  Or do you have to lose it to know for sure?

  Mild-mannered Matt Coxwell has finally found something worth fighting for. In fact, it’s only after he’s left his marriage that he realizes he hasn’t fought this hard for anything since he fell like a ton of bricks for his wife Leslie. How did their marriage shift from idyllic into idle? And is there any way back?

  Leslie Coxwell, long rumored to be the most organized working mother alive, is suddenly having a tough time coping. Her job’s in jeopardy, her teenage daughter has attitude to spare (well, that’s not new), and her formidable mother-in-law has moved in unexpectedly…with two very large poodles.

  She could juggle it all with the right motivation. Unfortunately her husband, Matt—the motivation for everything Leslie has ever done—turned into a sexy enigmatic stranger right before he walked out the door. Even better, he’s gone to stay with his free-spirited ex-fiancé, the one woman who makes Leslie feel as sexy as dirty dishwater.

  The only good news is that Leslie still has the greatest lingerie collection known to womankind and she’s prepared to use it. After all, to give her marriage one more chance, to take the chance on falling in love one more time, she’ll need all the support she can get…

  Dear Reader;

  One More Time is the third story in my Coxwell series of contemporary romances, a series that tells the stories of four siblings who have grown up in a household filled with conflict. Being a romantic, I knew that they would find healing and happiness in their relationships. In Third Time Lucky, Philippa manages to start anew with Nick, her high school crush. In Double Trouble, James corrects the mistakes of the past and finds a future with Maralys. In One More Time, Matt and Leslie fight for the survival of their marriage.

  One More Time is a story that became far more serious in the writing than I’d expected at the outset. While I’d intended to write the story of the quiet Coxwell brother, Matt, and knew that his marriage would be in trouble when the book began, I had expected the story to be a bit lighter. I’m not sure why this was. A marriage in crisis isn’t a funny thing—even if there are poodles, an opinionated (and slightly drunk) mother-in-law, and an equally outspoken teenage daughter. I personally found this a very powerful story, and it was every bit as emotional for me to revisit it again.

  One of the challenges of seeing this series published originally was that of the cover art. My editor and I had many discussions, trying to decide upon the best image to portray the books. At the time, chick-lit was popular and often had cartoon covers. Although my editor was insistent that the Coxwells weren’t chick-lit, in the absence of any other strong ideas for branding, the first three were given cartoon covers. While these cover illustrations are beautifully done, there was quite a dissonance between the final story of One More Time and its playful cover. I suspect that many people who might have enjoyed this story passed it by, thinking that it was a different kind of book because of the cover illustration. I love the new covers done by Kim Killion for this entire series, and I particularly adore the cover for One More Time. It conveys the fact that everything does come out well for Matt and Leslie in the end, without making the book appear to be more funny than it is.

  I haven’t made any major changes to One More Time and have republished it essentially as it was published in the first place. I did choose to republish the Coxwell series as Deborah Cooke books, since I now publish contemporary paranormal romance under my own name. I continue to write historicals as Claire Delacroix, so my Claire Cross time travel romances have been republished as Delacroix books.

  I’m very excited to make my first contemporary romance series available in these new editions, in both print and digital formats.

  Currently, I’m working on a new contemporary romance series, as well as writing more paranormal romance featuring dragon shifters. I continue to write medieval romance as Claire Delacroix, too. To keep up to date on my news and new releases, please follow my blog or subscribe to my monthly newsletter. If you prefer to receive a single email whenever I have a new book published, please subscribe to my new release alert.

  I hope you enjoy reading Matt and Leslie’s story.

  All my best –

  Deborah

  The Coxwells

  Third Time Lucky • Double Trouble

  One More Time • All or Nothing

  Copyright

  One More Time was originally published under the pseudonym, Claire Cross. Deborah Cooke also writes as Claire Delacroix and as herself.

  This re-release has had only minor corrections from the original text. It is essentially the same as the original print edition, although there are minor variations.

  Copyright © 2006, 2012 Claire Delacroix, Inc.

  Published by Deborah A. Cooke

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover by The Killion Group, Inc.

  Digital formatting by Author E.M.S.

  ISBN: 978-1-927477-17-5

  Digital Edition

  Excerpt from All Or Nothing

  Copyright 2007, 2012 Claire Delacroix, Inc.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright preserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Copy

  Dear Reader

  The Coxwells

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Excerpt from ALL OR NOTHING

  About the Author

  More Books by the Author

  Chapter One

  “Ladies and gentlemen, step right this way!” It’s Leslie’s father, who had never been a barker anywhere other than Leslie’s dreams, his voice as familiar as her own name. In life, he’d said little and never been an entertainer, though he’d always drawn attention to his darling daughter.

  This is her recurring dream and she fights it, although she knows that she will lose the battle.

  “Step right this way. Put your money down and see the Monkey Boy, raised in the jungle by chimpanzees. See the Snake Man: watch him eat live mice. See the Tattooed Lady with the map of the world on her skin—find your hometown.” His voice falls to a hush. “See the amazing Leslie Anne, my own daughter, as she walks the tightrope for the first time.”

  The crowd gasps in anticipation. There is a flurry of activity, the clink of coins changing hands, then Leslie abruptly is standing on a platform high
above the crowd. This is always her first vision of the dream: before that it’s all sound. She’s on the tiny platform, the wire stretched out in front of her. Her father is beside her, she can feel his presence, but she can see only the wire that is her destiny.

  It bobs slightly, as if promising to toss her to her death. It is perhaps fifteen feet above the ground, a little more than the height of two men, but it might as well be a mile high. The crowd whispers then falls silent in anticipation of her feat.

  Leslie is maybe six years of age in this dream, wearing her favorite pink swimsuit and a tutu that her mother had made her once for a recital. She wears pink leather ballet slippers, the ones she always wanted, the ones she never got outside of this relentless dream, the ones she would never have paid this price to possess.

  “Go on,” her father says, giving her a little push. “You can do it.”

  There is no arguing with him. Leslie knows this. She is his child, his possession as surely as his favorite hat. It’s not her place to question him.

  Much less to defy him.

  She doesn’t look at the ground or at the crowd. She swallows, watches the wire, then carefully places one foot on it.

  “You can do it, Leslie,” her father urges when she hesitates. “You’re the one who can do it. We’re all counting on you.”

  Trembling, feeling the weight of the audience’s stare, Leslie slides her weight out onto the wire. The wire wobbles and she sticks out her arms, stiff, panicked. The crowd gasps, but the wire settles. Leslie’s heart is thundering, a trickle of sweat eases down the center of her back, but as she steadies, she feels a surge of triumph.

  She’s done it!

  She glances back, sees the look in her father’s eyes and knows that this accomplishment is not enough.

  No accomplishment is enough.

  Even at six, she knows that he will add another challenge before he congratulates her, that he never will express pride in her triumphs, at least not to her. The price of success is always having the ante upped.

  He frowns. “You’ve got to carry something, to make it look better.”

  Leslie has only a moment to form an expectation, that maybe he will give her a pink umbrella to carry, before he conjures a box. It looks like a gift, all wrapped in fancy paper and topped with a fabulous bow. It’s big and shiny and when he puts it into her arms, she can barely see past it.

  “Perfect!” he says, then adds another. And another and another and another, until there is a pile of boxes in Leslie’s arms. “Now, go! Remember, you’re our last hope!”

  Leslie takes a step, sliding her foot along the thick wire that isn’t nearly thick enough. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then pauses to catch her breath and her balance. The crowd exhales a long low “oooooooo”.

  Maybe she can do this.

  Maybe her father is right.

  She swallows the lump in her throat. She eases one foot forward again, feeling the curve of the wire through her slipper, calculating how soon she can shift her weight.

  And just when she’s sure she’s found the perfect moment, just when she begins to slide her weight to the front foot, she feels the top box begin to slip. She glances up in fear, sees the shiny foil-wrapped box sliding quickly to her right. She snatches for it, then loses her own balance.

  And falls.

  * * *

  The alarm clock rang insistently. Leslie bolted upright before her eyes were open. Her heart was hammering and there was a bead of sweat on her upper lip. She looked around herself, half-expecting to find glittering boxes of various sizes scattered on the floor around the bed.

  But no. It was just that stupid dream again. She braced her hands against the mattress, reassuring herself that she wasn’t falling, and took three deep breaths.

  Stupid dream. A portent of failure was not what she needed.

  Thank you, Dad, for the vote of non-confidence.

  She felt both jangled and groggy, snared in a shadow world halfway between dream land and real life. Her new blue negligee, an expression of optimism if ever there had been one, was knotted around her waist.

  The sheets on the other side of the bed were smooth, untouched. Matt hadn’t come to bed at all.

  Sex was the simplest and most powerful form of marital diplomacy—Leslie was convinced of this—but all the same, she would never beg. She had believed that Matt would come to bed last night, because bed had always been the one place they could negotiate détente, no matter what was going wrong.

  And there was a lot going wrong right now.

  Maybe that was why Matt hadn’t shown.

  She became cranky at that thought, irritated with him for losing the court case that could have made his career, afraid that they would have to have a fight over it since they hadn’t made love to smooth the marital ripples.

  In fact, the prospect of not talking had finally become even more frightening than that of a fight.

  That was scary stuff. There had been a lot left unsaid over the years, a lot more in these past two years, a lot that could prove explosive if the locked Pandora’s box of grievances was ever opened.

  They weren’t the kind of people who fought. Maybe they were too polite. Their relationship had proceeded directly from “I love you” to “pass the salt”, with nary a glance back. For years, Leslie had been afraid they’d suddenly drown beneath the flotsam and jetsam of unvoiced frustrations and unexplored annoyances.

  What if the time had come and it was right now?

  She growled and flung herself out of bed. What she needed was a cup of coffee, which meant that she needed Matt.

  But then, she’d needed him all night long.

  If not all of her adult life.

  The newspaper hit the front door, seemingly coaxing her to face the day as if it were business as usual. Leslie forced herself to think of practicalities, as if this had been a day like any other. She had a staff meeting this morning, and Annette had a math test. God only knew what Matt would be doing, seeing as he probably didn’t have a job anymore.

  Better not to think about that, at least until she was caffeinated.

  Leslie hurried into the bathroom. She brushed her hair vigorously, making it bounce and shine, then put the brush down slowly to study her reflection.

  Why hadn’t Matt come to bed?

  Her hair was still dark—albeit with a little chemical encouragement—thick and long. She wore it past her shoulders, at least when she left it loose—which was pretty much only at night. She’d never been bombshell material, but the man had known that eighteen years before. The new lace-trimmed blue nightgown suited her, she thought, accentuating the slenderness that cost her so much to maintain. She pulled on the matching robe and shoved her feet into satin mules. She looked from the mules to the smooth sheets on Matt’s side of the bed.

  It was clear that they wouldn’t easily patch this up, not even with the oldest stress buster known to mankind. There comes a point when you can’t just wrap your tongue around the tonsils of a man and make everything better—even when the man in question has been your husband for fifteen years, your lover for three more than that and is the father of your only child.

  Maybe because of that.

  Leslie would have been willing to try, all the same. She knotted the belt firmly, then adjusted the neckline, feeling armed for battle.

  She opened the door and noticed immediately that there was no smell of coffee, as there had been every other morning for their entire married life. Leslie knew a sudden terrifying conviction why Matt hadn’t come to bed.

  He’d left instead.

  Funny, but flotsam and jetsam had a way of making Leslie no longer feel any need for caffeine.

  * * *

  Matt Coxwell could pinpoint the moment he had known he couldn’t do it anymore.

  It hadn’t been when he’d finally lost that court case, against his father’s explicit wishes. It hadn’t been when he had turned in triumph to his wife, certain she would be proud t
hat he had clung to his principles—their principles—and found her visibly disappointed instead. Leslie didn’t show her feelings readily, so the fact that he could read her response across a crowded courtroom had told him more about the magnitude of her feelings than he’d wanted to know.

  But it hadn’t been then. He’d still had a shred of optimism then, a hope that they could work things out.

  It hadn’t been during the silent ride home, the two of them trapped in the Subaru with the air crackling hot between them. It hadn’t been during the painfully polite dinner at home that had followed, the tension so high that even their teenaged daughter had noticed something beyond herself.

  Not then. Even then, he’d imagined that they’d be able to really talk at some point.

  It hadn’t even been when he had left the table without excuse and poured himself a triple shot of Scotch without apology.

  No, not then, either.

  It had been, in fact, several hours later, after he had spent the bulk of the evening alone with the bottle of Scotch, when the phone rang.