The Off Limits Rule: A Romantic Comedy (It Happened in Nashville Book 1)

It’s been a few days since Levi’s surgery, and thankfully, he is recovering quickly. I have barely left the house since we got home from the hospital, but since he’s feeling more like himself today, I left him with Drew and headed for Cooper’s house to finally put together his new furniture.

“Hellooooo,” I call out as I struggle to shove the front door open. It feels like a sumo wrestler is on the other side, and when I get through, I see why.

My eyes widen at the enormous wall of brown furniture boxes piled up all around the entryway, and I can’t help but feel a little guilty at the sight. Did I really order this much stuff for him? Felt like a lot less in the online cart.

“LUCY!” Cooper yells from somewhere past the cardboard tower. “You got some ‘splainin to do!”

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are looking for Cooper’s fault, I have found it. He uses this I Love Lucy joke more times than anyone ever should. I forgive him his faults, though, when his handsome faces peeks up over the row of boxes and I can tell he’s not wearing a shirt. Suddenly, I’m in a ninja warrior competition and scaling these boxes because I WILL WIN MY PRIZE.

I crest the top of the tower and spot Cooper on the other side. He’s wearing black gym shorts slung low on his waist and no shirt. He is sort of a nudist, I’ve learned. If he’s home, that shirt is coming off.

He takes my hand and yanks me down off the box wall, and I land in his arms. He smiles down at me, nose to nose, and then his eyes drop to my mouth. That—the moment where his gaze settles on exactly what it is he’s after—never fails to make my stomach leap. The freshly showered, damp-hair look he has going on doesn’t hurt either.

“Hi,” he says in this low, delicious, grumbly way. “How long do we have until you have to get back?”

“A few hours.”

He lifts a brow, his smile turning devilish. Maybe Jessie was right about how little furniture we would actually end up putting together. “Hmm, well, we’re going to have to get to it, because we have a lot of work to do in the bedroom.”

Cooper bends down and hauls me up over his shoulder like a brute. I love it. I especially love the view of his back as he carries me through his living room and down the hall. My stomach is buzzing with nerves, and I’m anticipating a lovely evening—until Cooper finally sets me down and makes a sweeping gesture with his hands toward the frightening number of boxes stacked against the walls in his room.

That’s when I remember the extent of my late-night shopping spree. Cooper told me he was ready to commit to furniture but wanted me to pick it all out for him. The gesture was not lost on me since he once told me he would wait until he’d found the woman he wanted to marry to make all the big purchases, and oh boy did I! I don’t think he meant to buy everything for the house at once, but that’s on him. He should have been more specific.

I make a hissing sound and turn my eyes to a glowering Cooper. He folds his arms, which is really unfair of him because it makes his biceps bulge out and the sexy veins in his forearms pop, but judging by the look on his face, it would be ill-advised to touch him at this moment. Or maybe it would be the perfect time to touch him?

“So…just to be clear, you actually meant we have work to do back here?” I say, pouting.

He shakes his head slowly like a disappointed parent. “I thought you were ordering a few things for each room.”

“Well, it started that way.” I take a step away from his grumpy look and bump into a box. “But then I saw a lamp I thought you would really love and would go great with your wall color…which then reminded me that you didn’t have a bedside table, so naturally I had to order you one.”

“Naturally. So where does the…” He trails off to read the tall slender box in front of him. “…faux fiddle leaf fig with matte blush planter come into play?”

I widen my eyes like he’s absolutely stupid for not seeing the answer on his own. “Once we get the new drapes hung on this side and put your new dresser over here, that corner would have looked ridiculously bare.” I put my hands on my hips and lift a brow. “You don’t want to look ridiculous, do you?”

“Tell me now, woman—are you a compulsive shopper?”

“No, but I just couldn’t stand how empty it was in here—and I already know you make tons of money, so you’re not hurting from the extra expense. I hated the thought of you living in here all by yourself with no furniture or things to make it a home. Don’t be mad. Are you mad?”

He takes a step closer. And then another. His hands drop to his sides, and his head tilts as he takes yet another step forward. His hand flexes like the sexiest scene ever filmed (aka the Darcy hand flex from Pride and Prejudice…you know what I’m talking about) and the room heats to 80 million degrees. My skin is ready to melt off my bones from the intense look he’s giving me.

When he gets close enough to touch me, he stops. I can feel the heat rolling off his chiseled chest like waves, and I imagine if I were wearing thermal goggles, he would look like a ball of fire. I want to place my hand in the center of his abs and burn.

He leans down, and I tilt my head back, exposing my neck, ready for my favorite trail of kisses. Instead, his lips brush, soft as a paintbrush, all the way up my neck, barely touching, so he can whisper against my ear, “Until all of this is put together, no kisses for you, Miss Shopaholic.”

My mouth falls open as I watch Cooper’s retreating back. “Ugh! You’re kidding, right?”

He smirks at me over his shoulder. “Afraid not. You order, you assemble. Get to work, Bob the Builder.”

“But where are you going?”

“To put together my new dining room table and EIGHT matching chairs for my imaginary giant family.”

“WHICH YOU LOVE, RIGHT?!” I yell because stupid Cooper has already left the room.

Frankly, I think he’s being ungrateful of my very thorough design services. Then again, as I look around the room and sigh, this does look like a lot.

An hour later, Cooper comes to find me. I’m lying on the floor, holding my phone above my head, watching TikTok dance videos, and when I spot him, I chuck it across the room and pretend to be tinkering with something under the bed. “AH—there we go. Much better.”

He stands above me. “Whatcha doing?”

I slap my hand against the bottom of the bed. “Oh, you know, just tending to a few other things while I’m here. I noticed your bed screws were loose, so I thought I’d give them a little tightening.”

“With your bare hands?”

“Don’t be jealous of my strength.”

He glances around the room. “Lucy, it’s been an hour.”

“And?”

“You put together the lamp.”

“It was difficult to screw the shade on.”

He bends down to grab my ankles and slide me out from under the bed, a knowing smirk on his mouth. “You’re not going to put anything together, are you?”

“No, I am! I really am. I just got distracted.” I crack my knuckles. “I’m ready to get down to business so I can get those kisses. Here, hand me a Jerry.”

Cooper’s eyebrows rise quizzically. “A what?”

“A Jerry. You know, one of those little doohickeys they include with the furniture so you can tighten the bolts up.” I’m miming the gesture of screwing something in, and Cooper is looking at me, dumbfounded. How is he not getting this? “You know, it’s a right angle. It looks like a flat star on each end?”

Cooper rubs the back of his neck, and I have made a POOR choice not getting this stuff built because, honestly, he looks so good it hurts. Dang those distracting TikTok videos. “Do you…do you mean an Allen key?”

“What’s an Allen key?”

He bends down (hello, fantastic backside) and then picks up the exact tool I was talking about. “Allen key.”

“Ohhh, is that what it is? Yeah, I call it a Jerry.”

He frowns, looking torn between amusement and horror. “Why?”

I shrug. “Because I can never remember Allen.”

“But you can remember the name Jerry?”

“Mmhmm. Why are you laughing like that? Seriously…do you really need to double over so dramatically? Oh, you’re going to slap your thigh now. Okay, yeah, laugh it up, Mister Chuckles. Lucy doesn’t know the names of tools because she’s not Mrs. Fixit! Hardie-har-har.”

Cooper finally controls his laughter enough to come over to me and yank me up off the ground. His arms go around me, and he hugs me tightly to him. “Lucy, you’re the craziest person I’ve ever met.”

“Rude.”

“I love you.” He cups my jaw, and his lips crash into mine. Just like that, he caved on his own no-kissing rule. I knew this would happen, which is why I didn’t take the furniture assembling too seriously. Cooper always tries to withhold physical affection from me when he wants me to do something, and it never works. It does the opposite. It makes him twice as passionate when he gives in, but I’m impressed, because an hour is definitely the longest he’s made it.

“Would you say yes if I asked you to marry me right now?” he says in a gruff voice with an intoxicating smile.

I freeze and meet his gaze. “Are you asking me?”

“Maybe. Give me your answer first and I’ll tell you.” The way his eyes are twinkling almost has me complying. It’s very difficult to not give in to Cooper right away.

“That’s not how it works.”

“Allen keys are also not called Jerrys.”

“That’s different…those are tools. This is a proposal we are talking about!”

He grins and drops his hands away. “We don’t do anything the normal way. Tell me—would you say yes?”

My breath constricts in my lungs, but I have to be honest with him. “I don’t think I could. We’ve only been seeing each other for, like, two months.” I say it casually like I don’t know exactly how long and I’m not the kind of girl to tick off every single day on the calendar and mentally celebrate things like week-iversaries. “And some of those days, we weren’t even official! Imagine what people would say if we got married. They would think we’re insane. You haven’t even known me long enough to really decide if you want to spend every day for the rest of your life with me. We need more time together so you can realize I stick my stray hairs to the side of the shower wall so they don’t go down the drain and then forget to clean them off.”

It’s terrible that I’m not saying yes right away, especially given the fact that his last relationship ended because his girlfriend didn’t want to marry him. But it’s not that I don’t want to marry him—it’s that I’m scared to.

I’m preparing for a fight or for Cooper’s shoulders to sag and him to walk away, Charlie-Brown style. He doesn’t, because like he said, we’re not normal, and that’s mainly because he’s an extraordinary man. He does, however, do something unexpected.

Cooper smiles, scoops me up, carries me through the house and out the back door, marches to the pool, and dumps me in without so much as pausing.

I come up, gasping for air, mouth wide open and disbelieving as I stare up at him grinning from ear to ear beside the pool. I swear, if his freaking abs didn’t look so incredible, I would break up with his sorry butt right now. “What was that for?!”

Cooper dives in next and surfaces beside me, eyes dark as the night he first brought me out here to his pool. Seeing that look has me sucking in a sharp breath. Cooper’s strong shoulders hover above the water as he swims closer, grabs my hips, and picks me up to wrap my legs around his waist. He smiles and kisses me softly, and I feel disoriented. What’s happening right now? Should I be mad? Because that’s definitely not the feeling I’m experiencing.

“Lucy,” he says, pushing my wet hair from my face as I cling to him like a little koala. “In this pool is when I first decided I wanted to spend forever with you. I knew it perfectly then, and I know it perfectly now. You are unique and a little strange at times, and I love that about you. I don’t need more time, but it’s okay if you do. I’ll wait for you until you’re ready, but I just wanted you to know I’ve been crazy about you from day one.”

I sniffle and wipe my eyes. “These aren’t tears,” I say, shaky voice betraying my lie. “It’s just water from the pool dripping off of my lashes.” Cooper wipes away the “water” with his thumbs. I stare into his eyes and feel what I know is crazy but also completely right settle over me. Sometimes life is kooky and happens out of order. Sometimes it’s a rollercoaster and you can either buckle down and hold on or throw your hands up and scream your heart out as you soar around the loop-de-loop. Honestly, I think both reactions are necessary, but for this particular loop, I’m throwing my hands up.

“I love you, Cooper. Let’s get married.”

And I’ll tell you one thing: we will not be assembling any furniture tonight.