Paradise Cove

by Jenny Holiday

  I wish Nora’s grandma doesn’t die.

  Jake, God bless him, had come to Nora’s rescue again, hustling her sister and nephews off so she could talk to her grandma. By the time they reappeared, she and the family matriarch had had it out.

  She hadn’t won. There was no out-arguing Penelope Walsh when she had her mind set on something. But at least Nora had found out what was going on and had said her piece.

  “Thanks for being a good sport about the surprise, Sis.” Erin hugged her harder than she normally would.

  “Thanks for coming.” Nora hugged Erin harder than she normally would. Erin hadn’t shown her any real estate listings the whole day, which suggested how serious the situation was.

  “Jake!” Grandma called.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He had been hovering in the kitchen doorway, but he stood at attention when she hailed him.

  “I need some help getting into the car.” She winked at Nora and Erin.

  “You got it, Dr. Walsh.”

  They all went out to the street where Grandma, who had somehow managed to get out of the car and into her chair with only Erin and the boys, suddenly needed Jake to lift her out of the chair and install her in the passenger seat.

  “Well, she’s not dead yet,” Erin whispered to Nora. As a family of mostly doctors, they’d always been comfortable with gallows humor.

  “She’s not going to die,” Nora whispered back automatically, as if she weren’t a doctor. As if she were a person who believed in the power of magical thinking.

  Erin didn’t correct her, though. She just squeezed Nora’s hand, sniffed, and got into the car.

  Which left Nora standing next to Jake on the sidewalk and blinking back tears.

  “Jake!”

  She turned quickly so Karl, who was crossing the street after locking up the hardware store, wouldn’t see her. Jake puffed up his chest and stepped in front of her.

  “I think I got you and Sawyer a canoe customer.”

  “Great, thanks.” Jake shifted to better conceal her. It wasn’t like he was actually hiding her, but he was giving her a chance to either flee or pull herself together, and did she ever appreciate it.

  “You know Sadie from the diner? Her sister married some hotshot banker in Toronto. They live on the beach over there. You know where they have those three-million-dollar houses not even directly on the water?”

  Jake made a vague noise of agreement.

  “Oh, hi, Nora. Didn’t see you there. I’m all out of your vaccine flyers, if you want to drop off some more. I heard you’re actually going to get that van on the road?”

  “Hi, Karl.” Nora’s voice came out sounding normal, which was a relief. “Yep. Pearl got Jordan to get the van fixed up enough so it’s working.”

  “Really?” Jake said.

  “Yeah. Obviously, I can’t drive it with all your additions, but I reached out to the high school principal, and I’m going to do a flu-shot clinic there just before the holiday break.”

  “You are?” Jake said.

  “Yeah, assuming the van actually makes it that far.”

  “What about the office here?”

  “No appointments that day. Amber and I will do the flu clinic, and Wynd will hold down the fort for phone calls.”

  She wasn’t sure why he was so interested, but she appreciated the distracting effect of the small talk. She felt better. Well, not better, but more in control. “Anyway, Karl, I’ll definitely get you some more flyers, thanks.”

  Karl headed back across the street. Jake followed her back to the inn. Damn. “Jake. I’m really sorry, but…ugh. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’m not in the mood.”

  “That’s okay, Doc.”

  “Sorry.” Nothing like impending mortality as a libido killer. “I know it’s only seven, but I’m full and tired, and I’m just going to go to bed and watch a zombie movie.”

  “A zombie movie?” He laughed out loud.

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “I find them soothing. Anyway, sorry to uh…not deliver.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He started doing the backward-walking thing. After a few steps like that, he started to turn away from her. But then he stopped. “Hey, Doc? You want some company with the zombies?”

  She opened her mouth to decline. That wasn’t in the friends-with-benefits script.

  “Come on,” he said, somehow anticipating her reluctance. “I watch movies with Sawyer.”

  “You do not.” Jake was not a movie-night sort of guy.

  “I do.”

  “Name one movie you’ve watched with Sawyer.”

  He paused for a long time but then said, “Avatar. I watched Avatar with Sawyer.”

  “The 3-D thing with the blue people?”

  “Yep.”

  “That came out more than a decade ago! Like, before 3-D was really invented!”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, okay, you got me.” The backward walking started again. “G’night.”

  “Wait.” It turned out she didn’t really give a crap, at this moment, if watching a movie together was in the script. “I could use some company, actually.”

  He stopped walking and smiled. “I’m gonna go home and feed Mick and let him out. You cue up the movie, and I’ll be back soon.”

  She did, and he was.

  She plopped onto the bed and played with her laptop so it was at a better angle. “What do you think? A classic? Return of the Living Dead? Or something more comedic, maybe? Zombieland?”

  “I leave this decision in your capable hands.”

  Soon they were lying side by side on her bed watching Day of the Dead. They were not touching. Which was fine. She’d already told him she wasn’t up for sex. So there was no reason for them to be touching. It wasn’t like they were going to cuddle.

  Wait. Was there a possibility he would think she’d cued up a scary movie so they could snuggle? He could not think that.

  “So zombie movies, eh? What’s with that?”

  Good. Here was her chance to explain. “My whole family is into them. I grew up watching them. I’m not even sure where it started. Probably with my grandma. She always had this joking theory that zombies were actually just exhausted med students or residents.”

  He chuckled. “Remember when you compared my dad getting sucked into Karl’s crowd to zombification?”

  “Yeah. I have zombies on the brain a lot.”

  “Huh.” He sounded thoughtful.

  As the opening credits ran, she said, “She’s not going to treat the cancer.” She wasn’t even sure why she was bringing this up. It wasn’t like Jake could do anything about it. Jake would probably never even see her grandmother again. The thought caused a hitch in her breathing.

  He glanced over but did not touch her—though she wasn’t sure why she was even making note of the absence of a touch. Again, this wasn’t a situation in which he should be touching her.

  They looked at each other in silence for a moment, and he said softly, “I’m sorry, Nora.”

  She sighed and transferred her attention to the ceiling. “I mean, I get it. The prognosis is extremely poor. She’s eighty-seven. Treatment would just be about extending her life, not about curing the cancer.”

  “How long does she have?”

  “They’re saying three to four months, but no one ever really knows.”

  She felt his attention, strong enough to pull her gaze from the ceiling. He was looking at her funny. Like he was mad at her? No, though his brow was furrowed. It seemed more like he suddenly didn’t know her, which clearly wasn’t right, either.

  He recovered himself in an instant, though, making her wonder if she’d imagined that weird face.

  “No one ever really knows,” he echoed, and she realized that, crap, though she’d meant her comment in the sense that doctors could give an educated guess as to prognosis but a guess was all it ultimately was, it had made him think of Jude.

  She opened her mouth to apologize for the insensitivity of t
he statement, but he grinned and hitched his head toward the door. “A herd of rabid zombie mermaids could come through that door right now, and that’s it—we’re toast.”

  She smiled. “Any regrets?”

  He smiled, too. “Not really. You?”

  “Well, if I got killed by rabid zombie mermaids right now, I would probably end up regretting that I didn’t get to spend more time with my grandma before she died.”

  “You can do something about that.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been lying here thinking I might start going back to the city on weekends. It’s a long drive, but…I could even take the odd Friday or Monday off and go for a longer weekend. I mean, shouldn’t that be one of the perks of being your own boss?”

  “You should do that. I’m not…” His voice cracked, and he looked at the ceiling and cleared his throat. “I’m not trying to make light of anything, but in a way, to know that you only have a limited amount of time left with someone is a gift.” He turned back to her with a wry smile. “A shitty gift, mind you.”

  “Yeah.” She had to clear her throat, too. “You’re right.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Jake wasn’t sure what was actually waking him up, some kind of alarm—there was definitely an alarm going off—or Nora letting loose a string of curses.

  “Shit, shit, shit. It’s six in the morning. We fell asleep.” She bolted out of bed, moved to the small dressing table, and started smoothing down her hair, which was sticking up in a way he struggled not to find adorable. He was sorry that he’d missed waking up with her, that she’d gotten out of bed so quickly. Despite the abrupt awakening, he was feeling pleasantly lazy. Content. Which was funny because nothing had happened between them except they’d watched a fairly epic zombie attack on a helicopter—who knew?

  They hadn’t even been touching, initially. They’d just lain there side by side watching as people’s limbs got torn off and so on. He’d started to doze off at one point, and when he startled awake, he’d announced his intention to leave, even though leaving the ridiculous pink zombie cocoon to go home in the cold and dark was the last thing he wanted to do. But she’d rolled over, put a hand on his chest, and said, “Stay till the end?”

  And then she hadn’t taken her hand off his chest. She’d watched the rest of the movie with her head half-turned, nestled in the crook of his arm.

  You couldn’t have paid him to leave.

  This morning, things were decidedly less cozy, judging by the way she’d shot out of bed. She met his eyes in the mirror and said, “I’m going to go for a run.”

  All right. He knew when he was being dismissed. He levered himself out of her bed. “Thanks for…Walsh-giving and zombies.”

  He’d meant it mostly sincerely, but it also made her smile, which had been his other aim.

  “Do you have time to bring Mick over for lunch today? Poor guy spent the night alone because we were so sleepy.”

  “Sure thing.”

  He felt bad about Mick. As he made his way down the stairs, he vowed that Mick was going to get an extra-long lunch break, complete with a stop at Jenna’s General for a fancy, handmade dog treat. Even though he had to roll his eyes at the peanut butter and bacon “Doggie Donuts” Jenna sold for five bucks a pop, Mick had—

  “Jake.”

  Oh, shit. Sawyer.

  Sawyer and Eve were due back today, he knew, but it hadn’t occurred to him that today could mean six a.m.

  He gave a moment’s thought to trying to come up with an excuse. A reason why he would be coming down the stairs of the Mermaid this time of morning. He had nothing. He was fully busted.

  Sawyer didn’t even look surprised. Just stood there with his eyebrows raised.

  Well, whatever. Sawyer might look like a dad busting a kid sneaking around, but Jake was not a kid. He didn’t owe anyone any explanations.

  So he just said, “Hey,” brushed past Sawyer, and got the hell out of there.

  He was going to pay for this later, though.

  The payment came six weeks later. Karl really had gotten them an order for a canoe for the Toronto douchebag, so Jake showed up at Sawyer’s garage on a Saturday morning in early December.

  Though they rented a warehouse space on the outskirts of town for most of their off-site work, they always worked on the canoes in Sawyer’s garage, and they had an unspoken agreement that they only worked on them together. At first they’d worked in tandem because they’d been learning as they went—Sawyer had been building a canoe for Eve based on YouTube videos. But they had it down now, so he wasn’t sure why they persisted, given that they were fine to divide and conquer on all their other jobs.

  But whatever, it gave him something to do. Nora had made good on her plan to spend weekends in Toronto hanging out with her grandma, which was turning out to mean that he was bored out of his skull on weekends.

  Which was a little bit odd. Also a little bit alarming. It wasn’t like he used to require his weekends to be full of distractions.

  It was all the sex, probably. His body had been jolted awake, and now it was no longer content with working on whatever project he and Sawyer had under contract, fixing stuff in town, or making his weekly fishing trip.

  It was also not content with this whole weekend-celibacy thing. Back when they’d first started sleeping together, when Nora was still around on weekends, they’d had a lot of sex. So much that she’d asked him, that one time, if it was too much. But now that she wasn’t here on weekends, they only managed a couple times a week.

  Which felt like not nearly enough.

  Which, in turn, was a slightly worrying sentiment. And if he avoided thinking about it by filling his weekends with tasks, so what?

  Mick started whining from the passenger side of the truck. Jake had gotten out but had been standing staring into the distance, pondering his newfound devotion to weekend plans, and Mick must have thought he’d been forgotten.

  “All right, all right. Hang on.” He ran around and lifted Mick out. He’d been noticing a slight limp. Nora had said she’d had it checked out a year ago and been told it was arthritis. And it didn’t seem to be bothering Mick particularly. But all the same, Jake set him on his feet gently and gave him an extra head rub. “There you go, old man.”

  “Ahem.”

  Ah, crap. When he stood up, Law and Sawyer were there.

  Law wasn’t usually part of their canoe sessions. He only came around when he wanted to exercise his jaw about something. As if he didn’t get enough time to do that at the bar.

  Jake sighed and followed them around the house to the detached garage where they kept their canoes in progress.

  “Are you dating Nora Walsh?” Law asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What do you call it, then?”

  He didn’t answer, just sat and picked up a sanding block.

  “Probably he’s going to say they’re just sleeping together,” Sawyer said, and Jake shot him an annoyed look. “So I saw you sneaking out of the Mermaid at the crack of dawn that time because you weren’t sleeping together?”

  Jake ran his fingers over a rough patch near the boat’s stern. “We watched a movie the night before, and we fell asleep. That was all that happened.” Which was technically true. Also, this was pretty rich coming from Sawyer. They’d had a version of this exact conversation a year and a half ago when he was “not dating” Eve.

  “So you’re falling asleep watching movies in her bedroom,” Law said.

  “And fixing her deck,” Sawyer said.

  “You told me to fix her deck.”

  “And helping her with her vaccine thing,” Law said cheerfully.

  “I thought we were supposed to make her feel welcome. I thought we wanted her to stay.”

  “We do,” Sawyer said.

  Law smirked. “Maybe some of us more than others.”

  All right. He didn’t need this shit. The Toronto douchebag could make his own damn canoe. He tossed the sanding block aside and stood.
<
br />   “Oh, come on,” Law said. “Don’t run away.”

  “I don’t need you guys to perform an intervention here.”

  “You know what?” Sawyer said. “He’s right. He doesn’t need an intervention. I think he’s doing just fine on his own.”

  Jake wasn’t sure why, but that pronouncement made him more uncomfortable than all their ball busting had.

  “Still waters run deep?” Law said with a smirk.

  Jake picked up the sanding block again. “Shut up.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The morning of the high school flu vaccine drive, Nora, Amber, and Wynd met at the clinic early. It was a Friday, and they always had a staff meeting on Friday mornings to review the week behind them and look at the schedule for the week ahead.

  They were in a nice groove. The three of them had gotten used to each other. They knew each other’s quirks and accommodated them. For example, Wynd always brought Nora “coffee,” and Nora always pretended to enjoy it, when in fact the chicory brew with almond milk tasted the way she imagined wood shavings mixed with dirt would.

  “Mmmm, thanks,” she said when presented with the vile concoction in a travel mug that said, “Nature is the Best Healer.” She pretended to take a sip before saying, “We’ll have to be quick today. What does the schedule look like next week?”

  “We’re pretty heavily booked,” Wynd said, “but I did like you asked and kept two slots a day open.”

  “Great.” Nora was finding herself getting booked up several weeks in advance, leaving no time for people who were unexpectedly sick, so they were experimenting with holding blocks of time for same-day appointments. “I have a couple more items, but we have to be at the high school at nine, so we’d better shelve them for next week.” She turned to Wynd. “You okay here? Anyone comes in with anything urgent, send them to Zurich.”

  “I am, but can I, ah…talk to you before you leave? Just really quickly?”

  Nora’s favorite flower child looked decidedly less sparkly than usual. She glanced at Amber, who said, “I’ll bring the van around and pick you up out front in a few?”