Forever and a Day (Lucky Harbor)

by Jill Shalvis

  “No!” she cried. “Oh no, not inside!” She fumbled with the front door, which scared Tank into stopping mid-poo. He ran a few feet away from the front door and hunched again. He was quicker this time. Grace was still standing there, mouth open in shock and horror as little Tank took a dainty step away from his second masterpiece, pawed his short back legs on the wood like a matador, and then, with his oversized head held up high, trotted right out the front door like royalty.

  Grace staggered after him, eyes watering from the unholy smell. “Tank! Tank, wait!”

  Tank didn’t wait. Apparently feeling ten pounds lighter, he raced across the front yard and the street. He hit the beach, his little legs pumping with the speed of a gazelle as he practically flew across the sand, heading straight for the water.

  “Oh, God,” she cried. “No, Tank, no!”

  But Tank dived into the first wave and vanished.

  Grace dropped the purse off her shoulder and let it fall to the sand. “Tank!”

  She dashed closer to the water. A wave hit her at hip level, knocking her back a step as she frantically searched for a bobbing head.

  Nothing. The little guy had completely vanished, having committed suicide right before her eyes.

  The next wave hit her at chest height. Again she staggered back, gasping at the shock of the water as she searched frantically for a little black head.

  Wave number three washed right over the top of her. She came up sputtering, shook her head to clear it, then dived beneath the surface, desperate to find the puppy.

  Nothing.

  Finally, she was forced to crawl out of the water and admit defeat. She pulled her phone from her purse and swore because it’d turned itself off. Probably because she kept dropping it.

  Or tossing it to the rocky beach to look for drowning puppies.

  She powered the phone on, gnawed on her lower lip, then called the man who’d trusted her to “be on time, be responsible, and not be a flake.” Heart pounding, throat tight, she waited until he picked up.

  “Dr. Scott,” came the low, deep male voice.

  Dr. Scott. Dr. Scott?

  “Hello?” he said. “Anyone there?”

  Oh, God. This was bad. Very bad. Because she knew him.

  Well, okay, not really. She’d seen him around because he was good friends with Mallory’s and Amy’s boyfriends. Dr. Joshua Scott was thirty-four—which she knew because Mallory had given him thirty-four chocolate cupcakes on his birthday last month, a joke because he was a health nut. He was a big guy, built for football more than the ER, but he’d chosen the latter. Even in his wrinkled scrubs after a long day at work, his dark hair tousled and his darker eyes lined with exhaustion, he was drop-dead sexy. The few times that their gazes had locked, the air had snapped, crackled, and popped with a tension she hadn’t felt with a man in far too long.

  And she’d just killed his puppy.

  “Um, hi,” she said. “This is Grace Brooks. Your…dog walker.” She choked down a horrified sob and forced herself to continue, to give him the rest. “I might have just lost your puppy.”

  There was a single beat of stunned silence.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  More silence.

  She dropped to her wobbly knees in the sand and shoved her wet hair out of her face with shaking fingers. “Dr. Scott? Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  She waited for the rest of his response, desperately gripping the phone.

  “You might have lost Tank,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she said softly, hating herself.

  “You’re sure.”

  Grace looked around the beach. The empty beach. “Yes.”

  “Well, then, I owe you a big, fat kiss.”

  Grace pulled her phone from her ear and stared at it, then brought it back. “No,” she said, shaking her head as if he could see her. “I don’t think you understand. I lost Tank. In the water.”

  He muttered something that she’d have sworn sounded like “I should be so lucky.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I’m two minutes away. I got a break in the ER and was coming home to make sure you showed.”

  “Well, of course I showed—”

  But he’d disconnected.

  “Why wouldn’t I show?” she asked no one. She dropped her phone back into her purse and got up. Two minutes. She had two minutes to find Tank.

  Chapter 2

  Okay, so maybe chocolate doesn’t make the world go around, but it sure makes the trip worthwhile.

  Josh’s day had started at five that morning in the gym. Matt and Ty, his workout partners, spent the hour sparring in the ring, beating the shit out of each other while Josh lifted weights. The three of them worked hard while retaining enough breath to sling ongoing insults and taunts. It was what friends were for.

  By six-thirty, he was in the ER, patching up a guy who’d gotten in a bar fight in Seattle hours before but had been too drunk to realize he was bleeding profusely as he drove down the highway. From there, Josh had moved on to a heart attack victim and then to a two-year-old who’d swallowed a few pennies and was having understandable trouble passing them.

  By noon, Josh wasn’t even halfway through his day, and he’d already been overloaded and overworked and was quite possibly teetering on the edge of burnout. He could feel it creeping in on him in unguarded moments, like now when he was parking his car between his house and the beach to deal with Grace Brooks.

  He knew who she was. He’d seen her around. Blue eyes, a quick smile, long, shiny blond hair, and a willowy yet curvy body that could drive a man right out of his mind if he gave it too much thought.

  As he walked across the sand toward the water, doing his best not to give it any thought, he caught sight of her in the water. She was facing the waves, her hands on her head in a distraught pose. With a frown, he picked up the pace, just as something dashed toward him in his peripheral vision.

  Something small.

  Something evil.

  Something named Tank. Josh scooped up the sand-covered puppy and held him away from him. The pug wriggled intently, running in the air, trying to get closer to Josh. Finally giving up, Tank refocused his attention on the woman in the ocean.

  “Oh, I see her,” Josh said. “And what the hell have you done now?”

  Grace was panicked. It was one thing to lose a job. It was another thing entirely to lose the job. Damn. Her parents had always told her “keep your head down and work hard” and she’d done her best. She really had.

  But she’d still screwed up. And it wasn’t like she could call them for advice on this. Neither of them could possibly understand the thought process that had led her to a dog walking job, much less why she’d placed fun as her newest, highest priority. “Tank!” she yelled at the waves. “Tank?” Wading back in up to her waist, she turned in a full circle to rescan the beach, then went utterly still.

  Standing on the sand was a man. His tall, broad stature implied strength and control, and he was rocking a pair of navy blue scrubs and dark wraparound Ray-Bans.

  Holding her archnemesis.

  Tank.

  The puppy was panting happily away, and Grace could have sworn he was smiling. Forget the pig or alien theory—Tank was a rat. Relief at seeing the thing alive nearly brought her to her knees, but she’d have drowned, so she locked them—just as the next wave hit her from behind.

  She was very busy fighting a full-facial, saltwater cavity wash when two big hands gripped her arms and hauled her upright.

  Dr. Scott, of course.

  She coughed and choked some more—very attractive, she was quite certain. Then she realized that she was up against her rescuer, held there firmly as the water swirled around their calves. “I’m okay,” she gasped.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes,” she said, but he didn’t let her go. “Really,” she promised. “I’m good.”

  He nodded and continued to hold her against hi
m.

  Except…he wasn’t holding her at all. She was clinging to him, soaking up the warmth and strength of him radiating through his now-wet scrubs. Well, crap. Forcing herself to loosen her grip on him, she stepped back, working on searching for a different grip entirely—the one on her fast-failing dignity. Hiking her dress up to her thighs, she frog-marched out of the water as fast as she could so as to avoid being flattened by the next wave. By the time she hit dry sand, she was feeling a little bit like a drowned kitten. One glance down assured her that she didn’t look like a drowned kitten. She looked like she was trying out for a wet T-shirt contest.

  Yikes.

  She decided not to look at herself again and made the mistake of looking instead at her rescuer. He was close, close enough to force her to tilt her head up to see his face, close enough to ascertain that he clearly hadn’t shaved that morning.

  The dark stubble on his jaw was incredibly disconcerting. And sexy.

  “Arf!” Tank said from his perch, which was her purse, still lying on the sand. The little shit was standing on it like he owned it, wet, sandy paws and all. “Arf, arf!”

  Nice. Grace gave herself a big mental thumbs-up for the “fun” that this job had been so far.

  Josh nudged Tank off Grace’s purse, then attempted to brush the wet sand from the leather. Tank gave a pretend ferocious growl and began a tug-of-war with the strap.

  Heathen.

  Josh gave him another nudge and rescued the purse. He was doing his damnedest to concentrate on the situation at hand, but that was proving difficult given the sight of Grace, her clothes plastered to her like a second skin. Half of her hair was in a topsy-turvy knot on top of her head, with the rest plastered to her face. The tip of her nose had gotten sunburned, and her mascara was smudged around her drown-in-me blue eyes.

  And then there was her mouth.

  She had a full lower lip, one that warmed him up considerably and made him think about sex. Actually, everything about her—the oh-shit expression on her face, the way she waved her hands like she was trying to explain herself without words, the delicate clinking of the myriad of thin silver bracelets she wore on her wrist—brought to mind sex.

  Sex and chaos.

  Pure, unadulterated, trouble-filled chaos. The thing was, he’d been there before, in another time and place, and was no longer interested in such things. No matter how hot the packaging was.

  And the packaging was very hot. Grace was wearing one of those flimsy little summer dresses that had a way of messing with a guy’s brain. The tiny straps had been designed with the sole purpose of making him want to tug them down—with his teeth.

  Or maybe that was just him, and the fact that he hadn’t had sex in so long he’d nearly forgotten how it felt.

  Nearly.

  The pulse at the base of Grace’s slender neck was beating a little harder and faster than it should be. As a doctor, he knew these things. Plus, his own pulse was going too. Mostly because that hot little sundress was as sheer as tissue paper when wet, and she was most definitely wet.

  And cold.

  Her underwear was white lace. God bless white lace. And Jesus, he really needed five minutes of shut-eye. And possibly a lobotomy. Or maybe he just needed to get laid.

  Like that was going to happen when he was working 24/7.

  Blowing out a breath, Josh scooped up the puppy that his sister had adopted with the sole purpose of sending Josh over the edge—which was working—and grabbed his shivering dog walker’s hand. He led her to his car and directed her to the passenger seat and put Tank into the back.

  “W-where are we g-going?”

  “Nowhere.” Josh cranked the engine and heater, then twisted around to extract his sweatshirt from the backseat.

  “N-no, that’s okay,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll g-get it all wet and sandy.”

  “Put it on before your teeth chatter out of your head.”

  Grace complied, then wrapped her arms around herself and huddled into the heater vents. “I’m sorry I lost Tank.”

  The puppy perked up at his name and took a flying leap into the front seat, landing in Josh’s lap. Four paws hit the family jewels with precision. Sucking in a breath, Josh scooped Tank up and was promptly licked for his efforts.

  “It’s so great that you found him,” Grace said.

  “Yeah.” Josh sighed in grim resignation, swiping the puppy drool off his chin. “So great.”

  Grace watched Josh set Tank onto the backseat. Again. Tank cried and leaped forward. Josh caught him in midair and dangled him in front of his face so that man and puppy were eye to eye. Tank panted happily, looking thrilled.

  Not so the good doctor, though it was hard to tell what he was thinking behind his sunglasses. “You warmed up now?” he asked.

  “Arf.”

  Grace smiled in relief. The puppy was okay. “I guess that means yes.”

  “I meant you,” Josh said.

  “Oh!” She laughed. “Yes, thank you.”

  He just looked at her, and she realized he was waiting for her to get out. Right. He had to get back to work. She opened the door, and he did the same, getting out with Tank tucked under his arm like a football.

  “Want me to put him away for you?” she asked, thinking it was the least she could do.

  “I’ve got him.”

  Grace watched him head toward his house. He was a big guy. Bull-in-a-china-shop big. But he had a way of moving with surprising grace. He was very fit, and very easy on the eyes. She wasn’t often steered astray by bouts of lust, but she felt it stir within her now. No doubt he would be a very interesting item to add to her list of Fun Things to Do, but he was a doctor. Most would be attracted by that, but not Grace. She knew his world, knew the crazy hours, the life that wasn’t really his own, knew what it was like to compete for even a smidgeon of attention. Fair or not, the initials MD after his name would keep him off her list. “You said you’d kiss me if I lost Tank.”

  The words popped out of her unbidden, and she covered her mouth. Too late. Turning back, Josh shoved the sunglasses to the top of his head and leveled her with a long, assessing look from dark brown eyes.

  He looked exhausted. As if maybe he’d been working around the clock without sleep. “Ignore that,” she said. “Sometimes I have Tourette’s.”

  Some of the tension went out of his shoulders, and for a beat, his features softened into what might have been amusement. “You want me to kiss you?”

  Oh boy. “You were happy I’d lost your puppy?”

  He was looking like he was still thinking about smiling as he glanced down at Tank, tucked under his arm. “No. That would make me an asshole.”

  Right…

  “And he’s not my puppy,” he said. “He belongs to my son, given to him by my evil sister, who I’m pretty sure bought him from the devil.”

  They both looked at Tank, who soaked up the attention as his due. He managed to roll in Josh’s arms, over to his back, showing off his good parts with pride.

  Such a guy. “If you don’t want him, couldn’t you just give him back?”

  Josh laughed softly. “You don’t have any kids, I take it.”

  Or dogs. “No.”

  “Trust me,” Josh said. “I’m stuck with him.”

  “Arf,” Tank said.

  Josh shook his head, then started toward the house again, his wet scrubs clinging to those broad shoulders and very nice butt as his long legs churned up the distance with ease.

  Apparently they were done here. “Uh, Dr. Scott?”

  “Josh,” he corrected.

  “Josh, then.” Since he hadn’t slowed or looked back, she cupped her hands around her mouth. “Should I come by your house at around the same time tomorrow, then?”

  His laugh was either amused or horrified. Hard to tell. “No,” he said.

  Grace paused, but really, there was no way to mistake the single-syllable word. No was…well, no.

  Which meant she was fired. Again. One
would think she’d be good at that by now, but nope, she didn’t feel good at it.

  She felt like crap.

  Chapter 3

  Happiness is sharing a candy bar. Even better is not having to share.

  This is all your fault,” Josh told the wriggling puppy as he walked toward his house.

  Tank didn’t give a shit. He’d caught sight of a butterfly and was growling ferociously, struggling maniacally to get free so he could attack.

  Tank was the Antichrist.

  “Look, we all know you think you’re a badass, but that butterfly could kick your ass with one wing tied behind its back,” Josh told him, tightening his grip as he used his other hand to reach into his pocket for his phone.

  His wet phone, which—perfect—was fried. Seemed about right, given his day so far. “You could have kept running for the hills,” he said. “Or at least stayed ‘lost’ long enough to get me that kiss.”

  Tank stretched his nonexistent neck and oversized pug head so he could lick Josh’s chin again.

  “Yeah, yeah.” It didn’t matter. Grace Brooks was a beautiful woman, but he didn’t have time to sleep, much less time to give to a woman.

  Although, the way she’d hiked her dress up her bare, toned legs had definitely been worth the price of admission…He let himself into his house, trailing sea water and sand with him. No doubt he’d get a dire text from Nina, his pissy housekeeper, but his phone was dead.

  Silver lining.

  Toby had started kindergarten this week, so the house was void of the insanity of Zhu Zhu hamster pets and the whoosh, vrrmm-whoosh of Toby’s ever-present Jedi saber. Anna should be in class—should being the operative word. His sister had yet to consider junior college any more seriously than her choice of fingernail polish.

  Moving toward the kitchen to dump Tank, Josh stopped short in surprise.