by Jill Shalvis
Which was silly. Jack could date whomever he wanted, and did. Often.
“And anyway,” Aubrey went on, “that’s what batteries are for.”
Ali laughed along with Aubrey as they all continued to watch Jack, who’d gone back to the griddle. He was moving to his music again while flipping pancakes, much to the utter delight of the crowd.
“Woo hoo!” Aubrey yelled at him, both her and Ali toasting him with their plastic cups filled with orange juice.
Jack grinned and took a bow.
“Hey,” Ali said, nudging Leah. “Go tip him.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?” Aubrey asked.
Leah rolled her eyes and stood up. “You’re both ridiculous. He’s dating some EMT flight nurse.”
Or at least he had been as of last week. She couldn’t keep up with Jack’s dating life. Okay, so she chose not to keep up. “We’re just… buddies.” They always had been, she and Jack, through thick and thin, and there’d been a lot of thin. “When you go to middle school with someone, you learn too much about them,” she went on, knowing damn well that she needed to just stop talking, something she couldn’t seem to do. “I mean, I couldn’t go out with the guy who stole all the condoms on Sex Education Day and then used them as water balloons to blast the track girls as we ran the 400.”
“I could,” Aubrey said.
Leah rolled her eyes, mostly to hide the fact that she’d left off the real reason she couldn’t date Jack.
“Where you going?” Ali asked when Leah stood up. “We haven’t gotten to talk about the latest episode of Sweet Wars. Now that you’re halfway through the season and down to the single eliminations, the whole town’s talking about it nonstop. Did you know that there’s a big crowd at the Love Shack on episode night?”
Yes, she’d known. At first, she’d been pressured to go but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t watch herself if anyone else was in the room.
“You were awesome,” Ali said.
Maybe, but that had been the adrenaline high from being filmed. Leah had pulled it off by pretending she was Julia Child. Easy enough, since she’d been pretending that since she’d been a kid. After the first terrifying episode, she’d learned something about herself. Even as a kid who’d grown up with little to no self-esteem, there was something about being in front of a camera. It was pretend, so she’d been able to break out of her shell.
The shocking truth was, she’d loved it.
“And also, you looked great on TV,” Aubrey said. “Bitch. I know you were judged on originality, presentation, and taste but you really should get brownie points for not looking fat. Do you look as good for the last three episodes?”
This subject was no better than the last one. “Gotta go,” Leah said, grabbing her plate and pointing to the cooking area. “There’s sausage now.”
“Ah.” Aubrey nodded sagely. “So you do want Jack’s sausage.”
Ali burst out laughing, and Aubrey high-fived her.
Ignoring them both, Leah headed toward the grill.
Bad girl Aubrey Wellington has a plan to make all of her past wrongs right.
Ben McDaniel doesn’t know it yet… but he’s on the top of her list!
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Once in a Lifetime.
Chapter 1
It was early when Ben walked out of Lucky Harbor’s deliciously warm bakery and into the icy morning. His breath crystallized in front of his face as he took a bite from his fresh bear claw.
As close to heaven as he was going to get.
He glanced back inside the big picture window to wave his thanks, but pastry chef Leah currently had her arms and lips entangled with her fiancé, who happened to be Ben’s cousin Jack.
Jack looked to be pretty busy himself, with his tongue down Leah’s throat. Turning his back to the window, Ben watched the morning instead as he ate his bear claw. Tendrils of fog had glided in off the water, lingering in long, silvery fingers.
After a few minutes, the bakery door opened behind him, and then Jack was standing at his side. He was in uniform for work, which meant that every woman driving down the street slowed down to get a look at him in his firefighter gear.
“Why are you dressed?” Ben asked.
“Because when I’m naked, I actually cause riots,” Jack said, sliding on his sunglasses.
“You know what I mean.” Not too long ago, Jack had made the change from firefighting to fire marshall, and no longer suited up to respond to calls.
Jack shrugged. “I’m working a shift today for Ian, who’s down with the flu.” He pulled his own breakfast choice out of a bakery bag.
Ben took one look at the cheese croissant and shook his head. “Pussy breakfast.”
Unperturbed by this, Jack stuffed it into his mouth. “You’re just still grumpy because a pretty lady tossed her drink in your face last night.”
Ben didn’t react to this because Jack was watching him carefully, and Jack, unlike anyone else, could read Ben like a book. But yeah, Aubrey had nailed him—and not in a good way.
Not that he wanted the sexy-as-hell blonde to nail him. Well, okay, maybe she’d occasionally done just that in a few of his late night fantasies, but that was it. Fantasy. Because the reality was that he and Aubrey wouldn’t mix well. He liked quiet, serene, calm.
Aubrey didn’t know the meaning of any of those things. “It was an accident,” he finally said.
“Oh, I know that,” Jack said. “Just checking to see if you know it too.”
Ben looked at his watch. “Luke’s late.”
The three of them had been tight since age twelve, when Ben’s mom, unable to take care of him any longer, had dropped him on her sister’s doorstep—Jack’s mom, Dee Harper. Luke had lived next door. The three boys had spent their teen years terrorizing the neighborhood and giving Ben’s aunt Dee lots of gray hair.
“Luke’s not late,” Jack said. “He’s here. He’s in the flower shop trying to get into Ali’s back pocket. Guess that’s what you do when you’re engaged.”
Ben didn’t say anything to this, and Jack blew out a breath. “Sorry.”
Ben shook his head. “Been a long time.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But some things never stop hurting.”
Maybe not. But it really had been forever ago that Ben had been engaged, and then married. He and Hannah had had a solid marriage.
Until she’d died five years ago.
Ben went after his second bear claw while Jack looked down at his vibrating phone. “Shit. I’ve gotta go. Tell Luke he’s an asshole.”
“Will do.” When he was alone again, Ben washed down his breakfast with icy cold, chocolate milk. You drink too much caffeine, Leah had told him all bossy and sweet at the same time, handing him the milk instead of a mug of coffee.
He planned to stop at the convenience store next for that coffee, and she’d never know. It was early, not close to seven yet, but Ben liked early. Fewer people. Quiet air. Or maybe that was just Lucky Harbor. Either way, he found he was nearly content—coffee would probably tip the scales into all the way content. The feeling felt… odd, like he was wearing an ill-fitting coat, so as he did with all uncomfortable emotions, he shoved it aside.
A few snowflakes floated lazily out of the low, dense clouds. One block over, the Pacific Ocean carved into the harbor, which was lined by three-story-high, rugged bluffs teeming with untouched forestland. The Olympic Mountains. Around him, the oak-lined streets were strung with white lights, shining brightly through the morning gloom. Peaceful. Still.
A month ago, he’d been in South America, elbows-deep in a project rebuilding a water system for the war-torn land. Before that, he’d been in Haiti. And before that, Africa. And before that… Indonesia? Hell, it might have been another planet for all he remembered. It was all rolling together.
He went to places after disaster hit, whether man or nature made, and he saw people at their very worst moments. Sometimes he changed l
ives, sometimes he improved them, but at some point over the past five years, he’d become numb to it. So much so that when he’d gone to check out a new job site at the wrong place, only to have the right place blown to bits by a suicide bomber just before he got there, he’d realized something.
He didn’t always have to be the guy on the front line. He could design and plan water systems for devastated countries from anywhere. Hell, he could become a consultant instead. Five years of wading knee-deep in crap, both figuratively and literally, was enough for anyone. He didn’t want to be in the right hellhole next time.
So he’d come home, with no idea what was next.
Polishing off his second bear claw, Ben sucked the sugar off his thumb. Turning to head toward his truck, he stopped short at the realization someone stood watching him.
Aubrey, and when he caught her eye, she said, “It is you” and dropped the things in her hands.
Her tone of voice had suggested she’d just stepped in dog shit with her fancy high-heeled boot. This didn’t surprise Ben. She’d been a few years behind him in school. In those years, he’d either been on the basketball court, trouble-seeking with Jack, or with Hannah.
Aubrey had been the Hot Girl. He didn’t know why, but there’d always been an instinctive mistrust between them, as if they both recognized two like souls—troubled souls. He remembered when she’d first entered high school, she’d had more than a few run-ins with the mean girls. Then she became the mean girl. Crouching down, he reached to help her with the stuff she’d dropped.
“I’ve got it,” she snapped, squatting next to him, pushing his hands away. “I’m fine.”
She certainly looked the part of fine. Her long, blond hair was loose and shiny, held back from her face by a pale blue knit cap. A matching scarf was wrapped around her neck and tucked into a white wool coat covering her from chin to a few inches above her knees. Leather boots met those knees, leaving some bare skin below the hem of her coat. She looked sophisticated, and hot as hell. Certainly perfectly put together. In fact, she was always purposely put together.
It made him want to ruffle her up. A crazy thought.
Even crazier, she smelled so good he wanted to just sniff her for about five days. Also, he wanted to know what she was wearing beneath that coat. “Where did you come from?” he asked, as no car had pulled up.
“The building.”
There were three storefronts in this building, one of the oldest buildings in town, the floral shop, the bakery, and the bookstore. She hadn’t come out of the floral shop or the bakery, he knew that much. He glanced at the bookstore. “It’s not open yet.”
The windows were no longer boarded up, he realized, and through the glass panes, he could see that the old bookstore was now a new bookstore, as shiny and clean and pretty as the woman before him.
She scooped up a pen and a lipstick, and he grabbed a fallen notebook.
“That’s mine,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to take it, Aubrey,” he said, and then, with no idea of what came over him—maybe her flashing eyes—he held the notebook just out of her reach as he looked at it. It was small, and like Aubrey herself, neat and tidy. Just a regular pad of paper, spiral bound, opened to a page she’d written on.
“Give it to me, Ben.”
The notebook was nothing special, but clearly his holding on to it was making her uncomfortable. If it had been any other woman on the planet, he’d have handed it right over. But he didn’t.
She narrowed sharp, hazel eyes on him as she waggled impatient fingers. “It’s just my grocery list.”
Grocery list, his ass. It was a list of names, and there was a Ben on it. “Is this me?”
“Wow,” she said. “Egocentric much?”
“It says Ben.”
“No it doesn’t.” She tried to snatch at it again, but one thing that living in Third World countries did for you, it gave you quick instincts.
“Look here,” he said, pointing to item number four. “Ben.”
“It’s Ben and Jerry. Ice cream,” she informed him. “Shorthand. Give me the damn notepad.”
Hmm. He might’ve been inclined to believe her except there was that slight panic in her gaze, the one she hadn’t been able to hide quick enough. Straightening, he skimmed the names and realized he recognized a few. “Cathy Wheaton,” he said, frowning. “Why do I remember that name?”
“You don’t.” Straightening as well, Aubrey tried to crawl up his body to reach the pad.
Ben wasn’t too ashamed to admit he liked that. A lot.
Frustrated, she fisted a hand in his shirt, right over his heart. “Dammit, Ben—”
“Wait… I remember,” he said, wincing since she now had a few chest hairs in a tight grip. “Cathy… She was the grade in between us, right? A little skinny? Okay, a lot skinny. Nice girl.”
Keeping her hold on him, Aubrey went still as stone, and Ben watched her carefully. Yeah, he was right about Cathy, and he went back to the list. “Mrs. Cappernackle.” He looked at her again. “The librarian?”
With her free hand, Aubrey pulled her phone from a pocket and looked pointedly at the time.
He ignored this because once his curiosity was tweaked, he was like a dog with a bone, and his curiosity was definitely tweaked. “Sue Henderson.” He paused, thinking. Remembering. “Wasn’t she your neighbor when you were growing up? That bitchy DA who had you arrested when you put food coloring in her pool and turned it green?”
Aubrey’s eyes were fascinating. Hazel fire. “Give. Me. My. List.”
Oh hell no, this was just getting good—“Ouch!”
She’d twisted the grip she had on his shirt, yanking out the few hairs she’d fisted. She also got a better grip on the pad so that now they were tug-o-warring over it. “You could just tell me what this is about,” he said.
“It’s none of your business,” she said, fighting him. “That’s what it is.”
“But it is my business when you’re carrying around a list with my name on it.”
“You know what? Google the name Ben and see how many there are. Now let go!” she demanded, just as the door to the floral shop opened and a uniformed officer walked out.
Luke, with his impeccable timing as always. Eyeing the tussle before him, he raised a brow. “What’s up, kids?”
“Officer,” Aubrey said, voice cool, eyes cooler as she jerked the pad from Ben’s fingers. She shoved it into her purse, zipped it, and tugged it higher up on her shoulder. “This man”—she broke off to stab a finger in Ben’s direction, like there was any question of which man she meant—“is bothering me.”
“Lucky Harbor’s beloved troublemaker Ben McDaniel is bothering you?” Luke grinned. “I could arrest him for you.”
“Maybe you could just shoot him?” she asked hopefully.
Luke’s grin widened as he gave Ben a speculative glance. “Sure, but there’d be a bunch of paperwork, and I hate paperwork. How about I just beat him up a little bit?”
Aubrey seemed like this idea worked for her.
Ben gave her a long, steely look, and she rolled her eyes. “Oh, never mind.” Still hugging her purse to herself, she turned, unlocked the bookstore, and vanished back inside it, slamming the door behind her.
“I thought the store was closed,” Ben said, absently rubbing his chest where he was missing those few hairs.
“It was,” Luke said. “Mr. Lyons is her uncle, and she rented the place from him and reopened the store. She’s gone with a soft opening for now because she needs the income from the store, but she’s wants to have a grand opening when the renovations are finished.”
“How do you know so much?” Ben asked.
“Because I know all. And because Mr. Lyons called. He needs a carpenter so I gave him your number.”
“Mine?” Ben asked.
Luke shrugged. “Everyone in town knows you’re good with a hammer.”
“Yeah.” Ben’s phone rang, and he looked at the unfamiliar local number
.
Luke looked too. “That’s him,” he said. “Mr. Lyons.”
Ben resisted the urge to do his usual and hit ignore. “McDaniel,” he answered.
“Don’t say no yet,” Mr. Lyons immediately said. “I need a carpenter.”
Ben slid Luke a look. “So I’ve heard. I’m not a carpenter. I’m an engineer.”
“You know damn well before you got all dark and mysterious and broody that you were also handy with a set of tools,” Mr. Lyons said.
Luke, who could hear Mr. Lyons’s booming voice, grinned like the Cheshire cat and nodded, pointing at Ben.
Ben flipped him off. An older woman driving down the street rolled down her window and “tsked” at him. He waved at her in apology but she just waggled her bony finger at him. “Why not hire Jax?” he asked Lyons. “He’s the best carpenter in town.”
“He’s got a line of customers from Lucky Harbor to Seattle, and I don’t want to wait. My niece Aubrey needs help renovating the bookstore, and she needs someone good. That’s you. Now I know damn well she can’t afford you, so I’m paying, in my sweet Gwen’s memory.”
Well, shit.
“Oh, and don’t give Aubrey the bill,” Mr. Lyons said. “I don’t want her worrying about it. She’s going through some stuff and I want to do this for her. For both my girls.”
Ah, hell, Ben thought, feeling himself soften. He was such a sucker. “You should be asking me for a bid,” he said.
“I trust you.”
Jesus. “You shouldn’t,” Ben said firmly. “You—“
“Just start the damn work, McDaniel. Shelves. Paint. Hang stuff. Move a few walls, whatever she wants. She said something about how the place is too closed in and dark, so figure it out. I’m going on a month-long cruise with my new girl, Elsie, and I need to know before I leave. You in or not?”
Ben wanted to say no. Hell no. Being closed up in that bookstore with the beautiful, bitchy Aubrey for days and days? The reality of that didn’t escape him. If he did this, surely one of them would kill the other before the work was done.