Paradise Cove

by Jenny Holiday

  “You don’t do Thanksgiving with your family in Toronto, dear?” Jamila jolted Nora from her dirty imaginings. She was bent over basting the turkey as she spoke, which gave Nora a moment to get her act together. Don’t look at Jake. Don’t look at Jake.

  “Well,” she said, hoping her face wasn’t reddening, “my brother, my father, my grandma, and I are doctors. And my mom’s a nurse. My sister is the only one who doesn’t work in a hospital. It’s impossible for everyone to get the holiday off, so we don’t even try. We used to celebrate it on American Thanksgiving in November—my mom was born in the States, so there was a connection there—but everyone always thought that was too close to Christmas. So we do it on an alternate weekend, and now it’s a full-on tradition.” Which she wasn’t going to say too much about, because their “alternate weekend” was always the weekend after Thanksgiving, which meant she was going to miss “Walsh-giving” this year. She was signed up to cover the inn for Eve and Sawyer’s vacation—which she’d done without realizing the conflict. And she wasn’t about to renege on the folks who were giving her free housing. Her family was mad at her, but they’d get over it.

  “Sounds eminently logical,” Eve said.

  “So how have you been finding Moonflower Bay?” Jamila asked.

  “Great,” Nora said. “Everyone’s been very…welcoming.” Don’t look at Jake. Don’t look at Jake.

  Jake had been very welcoming just this morning. And the day before that. And before that. They were doing a really good job with third base. Or home base, or whatever.

  They were like teenagers in heat, basically.

  In the week since their dinner at the cove, they had been jumping each other every chance they got. Going out of their way to jump each other.

  Which was all fine. It was good.

  It was great.

  She just hadn’t spent any time in proximity to him with other people around, much less his dad.

  “Okay, everyone, I think we’re finally ready.” Jamila shooed them into the dining room. She started pointing to spots and naming who she wanted where. “Nora, you go there, next to Jake.”

  Nora obeyed, despite the fact that her body was mutinying. It was confused. It had been conditioned to respond physically to Jake when he was nearby. It had not been conditioned to sit quietly next to him through what, judging by the enormity of the feast laid out on the table, was going to be a very long dinner.

  Nora laid her napkin in her lap and looked to Jamila for a cue to begin eating.

  Jamila held up her hands and said, “Grace!”

  Oh no. This wasn’t a fold-your-hands-in-your-lap kind of grace. It was a hand-holding grace.

  She tried to concentrate on Clara’s hand, which was small and cool, rather than on Jake’s, which was, as had been well established in recent days, big and hot and the perfect mixture of rough and gentle.

  “Lord, we give thee thanks for what we are about to receive, today and every day. Bless those at this table as well as those who are absent from us, may they rest in peace. Bless this circle of family and friends. Bless our newcomer, Dr. Walsh, who is so very needed in our community. In thy name, amen.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” Art said.

  Everybody dropped hands. Except Jake didn’t let go of hers. He was holding it under the table—so no one could see, which she supposed was a small mercy. She tugged as subtly as she could. He did not let go. He appeared unmoved as he picked up his fork with his left hand—he was seated to her left, so his right hand was joined with her left. The dude was right-handed. She knew that for a fact. Completely unruffled, he speared a roast potato and popped it in his mouth.

  Oh hell no. They were not going to spend the whole meal secretly holding hands. What happened to “I don’t do romance”?

  Forget subtle. She yanked.

  Success! But it did cause everyone’s attention to shift to her. Her not-subtle yank had had the effect of tugging Jake toward her before it managed to sever their connection, so they were face to face in a way that probably looked weird.

  “Did you grow up in this house, Jake?” she asked, trying to make it look like she’d turned to him to ask him this totally innocent question.

  “Nope.” He picked up his fork with his right hand.

  So he was going to retreat into his Mute Jake persona. She refrained from rolling her eyes, but only just.

  “I moved here after my first wife—Jake’s mom—died,” Art said. “We lived just a block over. I wanted to stay in the neighborhood, but I didn’t need that big a house anymore.”

  Jamila smiled at him affectionately. “We thought about upsizing after I came on the scene, but Art has this idea that we’re going to buy an RV and live like vagabonds after I retire, which is at the end of this school year.”

  “You say ‘idea’ like you’re not into it, but you know you’re into it,” Art teased. Nora thought back to the way they had bantered at the flu clinic.

  “Oh, hush.”

  “She’s even designed the interior,” Art said. “She’s a pretty serious antiques collector.” He beamed with obvious pride. It was adorable. “This is going to be the best-looking RV in the history of RVs.”

  “If this place is anything to go by, I suspect you’re right,” Nora said. “Your home is beautiful.”

  “You have any luck finding a new place?” Jamila asked. “Don’t forget I can lend you furniture.”

  Nora winced. She hadn’t even started looking. She was too busy working to make time to go on the hunt. Okay, no, that wasn’t true. She was too busy getting it on with Jake to go on the hunt.

  “I haven’t.” She glanced at Eve. “I really need to get on that.”

  “Not on my account, you don’t,” Eve said. “It’s been awesome having you at the inn. And you’re making it possible for us to go on vacation.”

  “Well, thanks. You really saved me there.”

  “I like the idea that my old room is being put to good use.”

  Jake coughed. “Yeah, it’s good to…put things to use.”

  She knew he was thinking of the same thing she was—hitting “first base” in that room the day of the Anti-Festival.

  Everyone looked at Jake curiously, probably in part because it was a cryptic thing to say. But no doubt also because Jake was not one to make observations, cryptic or otherwise, unprompted.

  He was messing with her again.

  And it was working. Her cheeks heated. They were probably as pink as the room. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  “That was delicious,” Eve said after they emerged from Art and Jamila’s. She looked around. “Do you have your truck here, Jake? We can take you to the end of the beach.”

  “Nah, I walked, and I think I’ll walk back, too, but thanks.” Jake eyed Nora. She was still annoyed about the hand-holding, he was pretty sure. And she had come in the car with Eve and Sawyer and Clara. So this was probably goodbye for the evening.

  Which was more than a little disappointing.

  “A walk sounds good, actually,” Nora said. “Walk off some of that dinner. If you don’t mind company.”

  Jake had to tamp down a smile.

  Nora waited until Sawyer’s car was out of sight to whirl on him. “What the hell was that?”

  He played dumb. “What the hell was what?”

  “Oh, come on, Jake. Holding hands under the table?”

  “Eh, it’s fine.” She did not understand how deeply ingrained his reputation was in town. People saw what they expected to see. “No one noticed.”

  Except maybe Sawyer. He was starting to worry that Sawyer was onto him. But that was more of a long-standing worry, predating the evening’s renegade hand-holding.

  But Sawyer aside, people did not expect Jake to be holding the new town doctor’s hand under the table.

  “What happened to not doing romance?” she asked. “Because I”—she stopped and smacked her chest. It was a quiet, still night, so it echoed across the dark stre
et. “I am not interested in romance.”

  “That wasn’t romance.”

  “Then what the hell was it?”

  Good question. All he knew was that every once in a while—or, okay, a lot of the time—he was seized with the absurd desire to grab her hand.

  He always resisted. Because she was right. They weren’t doing the relationship thing. Grasping hands while they were having sex was one thing. While they were walking along the beach? No.

  So he always managed to resist. But when suddenly thrust into a situation where he was already holding her hand, he just…hadn’t let go.

  But Nora was right. What they were doing was not romance. Luckily, there was another explanation.

  “That was me trolling you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said it yourself. We’re friends with benefits, but we’re also friends. Sometimes I like to prank my friends.” Which had been true. Like fifteen years ago. “One time in high school when Law’s parents were out of town and he was supposed to be minding the bar—he’s a few years older than I am—Sawyer and I drained one of the kegs and filled it with water.” Never mind that that was the last “prank” he could think of.

  She shook her head. “You are the worst.”

  But she wasn’t saying it like she meant it.

  They walked on in easy silence until they turned onto Main Street. The inn was a few storefronts up.

  “I’m fine from here,” she said.

  “You say that like you don’t want me to blow your mind this evening.”

  She snorted.

  “Well, okay then. If you’re fine…” He started walking backward. “Good night.”

  “Jake.” She stopped with her hands on her hips, shaking her head like she was a schoolteacher trying to cover her amusement by faking annoyance.

  “Nora.” He kept walking backward, but he slowed down. God, she was so easy to tease. She was fun to tease. Which was, for him, rather extraordinary.

  “Come on, Jake.” She crooked her finger at him.

  He jogged back to her. “I’m not sure I understand. Your words aren’t making sense. You might have to use body language.” He held out a hand. “You might have to take my hand and show me what you want me to do.”

  “Jake.” With that single syllable, her tone shifted. Lurched, really, from light and bantery to low and needy.

  He shifted to accommodate it. They were done playing.

  This happened to him, with her. They’d be cruising along just fine and suddenly there would be this giant swerve. She would do something or say something, or even just look at him the wrong way—the right way?—and lust would just…slam into him.

  It happened to her, too, he was pretty sure. She walked briskly and purposefully up the sidewalk, but she radiated need. He did, too, he suspected, because taking her hand or not taking her hand was suddenly the least of his worries. His entire body felt like it was pulsing to an unseen rhythm. It was an invisible force that was bigger than he was. All he could do was obey it. It wanted him to touch her, and not just her hand. It wanted him to be inside her.

  “Nora,” he bit out as she kept going, past the Mermaid. He sounded like he was mad at her, which wasn’t quite right, but where was she going? They hadn’t talked about it overtly, but they seemed to have entered into an unspoken agreement to keep the fact that they were hooking up to themselves. Which meant no hooking up at the Mermaid, where they would risk Eve and Sawyer finding out. So they’d been spending a lot of time at his place.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. It was a good twenty-minute walk to the cove from here. He should have driven.

  She stepped into Main Street, cutting across it midblock. He followed her automatically—the pulsing inside him made it impossible not to—and his mind spun up, assessing the situation. The gazebo? No, too cold—the pixie doctor got cold easily—never mind too risky in their town full of busybodies. He eyed the street. Lawson’s was closed for Thanksgiving, but Law lived upstairs. If he was home, maybe Jake could—

  He’d overshot her. She’d stopped, and he’d kept going. He turned back to look at her.

  “Jake.”

  There it was again, that yearning, borderline desperate tone. He was powerless against that tone. It lit a fire inside him. Lust burned, but also, alongside that, a fierce need to answer. To act. To do whatever she wanted.

  She was standing in front of her clinic, pausing with the keys in her hand.

  Her clinic. Of course.

  What was the matter with his brain?

  He took a deep breath. Clearly it wasn’t getting enough blood or oxygen or whatever, because all the stuff required for rational thinking had flooded into his dick. His poor, beleaguered dick that hadn’t seen this much action, this kind of intensity, in years. Maybe ever.

  He worried momentarily that his legs wouldn’t work. That in the continuing cascade of his body shutting down everything but his most animalistic needs, they literally wouldn’t be capable of carrying him back to her.

  But then she turned the key, clicked the door open, and looked at him. Just looked at him. Like her eyes commanded his legs or something. Whatever, he was there. Standing right next to her but not touching her, which was something somebody should give him a goddamn medal for.

  She pressed her hand against his back and shoved him inside. As much as he wanted to press her up against the door as she shut it behind her, the front of the clinic was a waiting area with a big plate-glass window looking over the street.

  She pushed him again. He might have laughed, had the whole thing seemed less urgent. Instead he hustled across the dark waiting area and through the open doorway next to the reception desk.

  He’d thought they were heading to her office, which was at the end of the short hallway, but he’d overshot, apparently. She grabbed the back of his T-shirt and yanked, pulling him back and into the first exam room with her. Once inside she lifted the hem of her sweater over her head.

  He slammed the door, and he did press her back against it this time. There was some kind of poster on it, though, and as he reached around to undo the clasp of her bra, it snagged on his hand or her bra or something, and ripped, and the sound ricocheted across the small room. And even though it was not, objectively, a sexual sound, it made his dick even harder.

  It was like they were tearing the world apart to get to each other.

  She shoved her hands up the hem of his shirt. They were cold, but it felt like they were burning him. She paused for a moment with her hands flat on his chest, panting, staring at him. He remembered, suddenly, that night he’d had her to the cove for the first time and his brain had glitched on the image of her hands, pressing against his chest.

  Well, damn. Look at him now.

  The hands weren’t doing any caressing or anything like that, though. They were shoving. He loved the way she thought she could manhandle him. She was always pushing him or pulling his hair.

  But maybe she could manhandle him, because he always did what she wanted him to do, went where she wanted him to go.

  In that spirit he stepped back, let her push him away, but it came with an involuntary growl that surprised him. Even though his higher brain understood that she probably had a plan he would end up 100 percent endorsing, his body was not down with the short-term sacrifice involved in severing their connection.

  “Take off your pants.” Her voice was all throaty and low, and she was shimmying out of hers, too, even as she commanded him. He about fell over trying to do what she said but also watch her. She was wearing skinny jeans, so she was doing a lot of shimmying.

  Once free, she hopped up onto a step stool near the exam table, turned around, and hoisted herself up.

  And spread her legs.

  “Jesus, Nora.”

  “No foreplay, Jake. Just come over here and get on with it already.”

  He stumbled forward, tripping over his own feet to get to her.

  She caught him, grabbed a handful of his T-sh
irt, which she hadn’t managed to get off earlier, and wrapped her legs around him. This was the perfect angle, the perfect height. Taking her at her word, he guided himself to her entrance. She was radiating heat, and she was wet. So wet.

  He slid in on a groan. Was he ever going to get used to how good she felt? It was obscene, almost, that he should be allowed to feel this good.

  She grabbed his hair and forced him into eye contact with her. “If you make one crack about playing doctor, I swear to God, I will come, and I will murder you before you get your turn.”

  “Honestly…” He gave a long, hard thrust that physically scooched her farther back on the table. The paper lining on the table crinkled. She responded by letting go of him with one hand and putting it on the table behind her to brace herself. “That hadn’t even”—he thrust again, and she moaned when he bottomed out—“crossed my mind.” He thrust again and was rewarded with another moan. “But your threat is irrelevant, because…” One more punishing thrust, and he was shooting inside her. Too soon. “Goddammit,” he nearly shouted as he came and came. “You have to stop doing this to me.”

  She wasn’t listening. She’d closed her eyes and let her head fall back, which he had learned was something she did when she was close. So he put his thumb on her clit and his mouth on one breast and a few seconds later, she froze—and shattered.

  “So no playing doctor, huh?” Jake said a few minutes later, after they’d caught their breath. He started to pull out of her, and she had the irrational urge to clamp her legs around him to prevent that from happening.

  She let him go, though—of course she did. Once he found his feet, he grabbed her around the waist and lowered her to the floor.

  “Yeah, pretty much every nonmedical guy I’ve dated—not that we’re dating—has either genuinely wanted to ‘play doctor’ or else not been able to stop making jokes about the concept.” He handed her her bra and sweater. “It gets old, and since it’s my job, it’s profoundly unsexy to me.”

  “Noted.”

  She tried not to ogle him as he bent over to retrieve his own clothes.

  Well, okay, no she didn’t. Because shouldn’t that be one of the benefits of whatever kind of not-dating thing they had going here? In fact…She let loose a wolf whistle, which caused him to wiggle his ass at her as he stepped into his jeans.