Sweet Little Lies: Heartbreaker Bay Book 1

by Jill Shalvis

  Two puppies, even three, were manageable, but six was bordering on insanity. “Okay, listen up,” she said to the squirming, happily panting puppies in the large tub in her grooming room. “Sit.”

  One and Two sat. Three climbed up on top of both of them and shook, drenching Willa in the process. In the meantime, Four, Five, and Six made a break for it, paws pumping, ears flopping over their eyes, tails wagging wildly as they scrabbled, climbing all over each other like circus tumblers to get out of the tub.

  “You little ingrates,” she said, unable to keep from laughing at their antics. “Rory!” she called out. “Could use another set of hands.” Or three . . .

  No answer from her employee. Either the twenty-one-year-old had her headphones cranked up to make-me-deaf-please or she was on Instagram and didn’t want to lose her place. “Rory!”

  The girl finally poked her head around the corner, the tips of her ears red with embarrassment.

  Yep. Instagram.

  “Holy crap,” Rory said, eyes wide at the sight of Willa, prompting her to look down at herself. Yep, her cargo pants splattered with suds and water and a few other questionable stains, at least one of which included cat yak from an earlier incident.

  It didn’t take a mirror to tell her that her short strawberry blonde hair had rioted and probably resembled an explosion in a mattress factory. “Give me a hand here?”

  Rory dug right in, not shying from getting wet or dirty. She took on half of the wayward pups, and in a few minutes they had all of them out of the tub, dried, and back in their baby pen.

  One through Five had fallen into the instant slumber that only babies and the very drunk could achieve. Six stayed stubbornly awake, climbing over his siblings trying to get back into Willa’s arms.

  Laughing, Willa scooped up the little man. His legs bicycled in the air, tail wagging faster than the speed of light, taking his entire hind end with it.

  “Not sleepy, huh?” Willa asked.

  He tried to lick her face.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she said. “Don’t think I don’t know where that tongue’s been.” She carried him out front to the retail portion of her shop and set him into a baby pen with some puppy toys. “Now sit there and look pretty and bring in some customers, would you?”

  The puppy pounced on a toy and got busy playing.

  Willa shook her head and moved around, flipping on the lights out here. As she did, the shop came to life, mostly thanks to the insane amount of holiday decorations she’d put up the day before.

  “It’s only the first week in December and it looks like Christmas threw up in here,” Rory said, coming into the room behind her.

  Willa looked around at the shop that was an absolute dream come true for her. “But in a classy way, right?”

  Rory sucked on her lower lip as she eyed the myriad of strings of lights and more boughs of holly than the North Pole could ever have. “Um . . . right.”

  Willa ignored the doubtful sarcasm. One, Rory hadn’t grown up in a stable home. And two, neither had she. For both of them, Christmas had been a luxury that, like three squares and a roof, had usually been out of their realm of possibility. They’d each dealt with that differently.

  Rory didn’t need the pomp and circumstance of the holidays.

  Willa did, desperately. So now at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, when after five years she finally had her shop in the black—well, mostly in the black—she went just a tad bit overboard for the holidays.

  “Ohmigod,” Rory said, staring at their newest cash register display. “Is that a rack of penis headbands?”

  “No!” Willa said on a laugh. “It’s reindeer antler headbands for cats and small dogs.”

  Rory stared at her.

  Willa grimaced. “Okay, so maybe I went a little crazy—”

  “A little?”

  “Haha,” Willa said, picking up a reindeer antler headband. It didn’t look like a penis to her, but then again it’d been awhile since she’d seen one up close and personal. “These are going to sell like hotcakes, mark my words.”

  “What are you doing—don’t put it on,” Rory said in sheer horror as Willa did just that.

  “It’s called marketing,” Willa said, rolling her eyes upward to take in the antlers jutting up above her head. Huh. “Do they really look like penises?” She paused. “Or is it peni? What’s the plural of penis?”

  “Pene?” Rory asked, and they both grinned.

  “Clearly I’m in more need of caffeine than I realized,” Willa said. “Tina’s caffeine.”

  “I’ll get it. I caught sight of her coming through the courtyard at the crack of dawn this morning wearing six-inch wedge sneakers with her hair teased to the North Pole, making her like eight feet tall. Can’t wait to get a closer look at the perfection up close.”

  Tina used to be Tim, and everyone in the five-story, offbeat historical Pacific Heights building had enjoyed Tim—but they loved Tina. Tina rocked.

  “I’ll take one of her It’s-Way-Too-Early-For-Life’s-Nonsense coffees,” Willa said, pulling cash from her pocket. Puppy treats bounced on the floor.

  “And to think, you can’t get a date,” Rory said.

  “I can get a date, I just pick the wrong ones. Hence the man-embargo. You know what? Tell Tina to make mine a double, I’m bonking already and the day hasn’t even started.”

  Nodding, Rory headed toward the back door, where she’d run through the courtyard to Tina’s coffee shop.

  “Oh, and grab us each one of her muffins too.” Willa paused. Tina made the best muffins on the planet. “Wait, make it two each. Or three. No. Shit, that’s like the entire day’s calories. One,” she said firmly. “And make mine blueberry so it counts as a serving of fruit.”

  Rory was grinning. “So a coffee and a blueberry muffin to go, and a straitjacket on the side then?”

  “You’d be in it right alongside of me, babe,” Willa responded and Rory laughed in agreement.

  When she left, Willa’s smile faded. Each of her four employees were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, and they all had one thing in common.

  The foster system had churned them up and spit them out, leaving them alone in the world.

  Since Willa had been one of those lost girls herself, she collected them. She gave them jobs and advice that they only listened to about half the time.

  She figured fifty percent was better than zero percent.

  Rory had been with her the longest. The girl put up a good front of being wry and stoic, but she was struggling. She still had the faded markings of a bruise on the right side of her jaw where her ex-boyfriend had knocked her into a doorjamb.

  Willa clenched her fists. Sometimes at night she dreamed about what she’d like to do to the guy. Castrating him was high on the list. She had a deal with one of the local vets so she could afford it too.

  In any case, Rory deserved better. The girl was tough as nails on the outside but a tender marshmallow on the inside, and she’d do anything for Willa.

  It was sweet but also a huge responsibility because Rory looked to Willa for her normal.

  A daunting prospect on the best of days.

  She checked on Six and found him asleep sprawled on his back, feet spread wide to show the world his most prized possessions.

  Just like a man for you.

  Next she checked on his siblings and found them asleep as well. Feeling like the mother of sextuplets, she tiptoed back out to the front and opened her laptop, planning to inventory the new boxes of supplies she’d received late the night before.

  She was knee-deep in four different twenty-five-pound sacks of bird feed—she still couldn’t believe how many people in San Francisco had birds—when someone knocked on the front glass door.

  Damn. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only a quarter after eight but it went against the grain to turn away a paying customer so she straightened, swiped her hands on her thighs, and turned to the front.

  A guy st
ood on her doorstep, mouth grim, expression dialed to Tall, Dark, and ’Tude-ridden, and unbelievably, her nipples stood up and took notice. This annoyed the crap out of her because her brain and body weren’t in agreement on the no-man thing.

  But damn, he was something, all gorgeous and broody and . . . she paused. There was something familiar about him. She headed to the door and froze as she got a closer look, her heart just about skidding to a stop as she realized . . . she did know him. “Keane Winters,” she murmured. The only man on the planet who could make her feel good about her decision to give up men.

  And in fact, if she’d only given them up sooner, say back on the day of the Sadie Hawkins dance in her sophomore year of high school when he’d stood her up, she’d have saved herself a lot of heartache in the years since.

  On the other side of the door, Keane shoved his dark sunglasses to the top of his head, revealing dark chocolate eyes that she knew could melt when he was amused or aroused, or turn to ice when he was so inclined.

  They were ice now. Catching her gaze, he lifted a cat carrier. A bright pink bedazzled carrier.

  He had a cat. Her body wanted to soften at this knowledge because that meant on some level at least he had to be a good guy, right?

  Luckily her brain clicked on, remembering everything, every little detail of that long-ago night. Like how she’d had to borrow a dress for the dance from a neighbor girl in her class who’d gleefully lorded it over her, how she’d had to beg her foster mother to let her go, how she’d stolen a Top Ramen from the locked pantry and eaten it dry in the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to buy both her dinner and his, as was custom for the “backwards” dance.

  “We’re closed,” she said through the glass, knowing he’d be able to hear her just fine.

  Not a word escaped his lips. He simply raised the cat carrier another inch, like he was God’s gift.

  And he had been. At least in high school.

  Wishing she’d gotten some caffeine before dealing with this, she blew out a breath and stepped closer, her eyes apparently caught in some sort of spinning vortex because they couldn’t be torn away from his as she unlocked and then opened the door. “Morning,” she said, determined to be polite. Yep, he was just another customer . . .

  But when his face showed no sign of recognition at all, she found something even more annoying than finding this man on her doorstep.

  He didn’t remember her.

  “I’m closed until nine,” she said in her most pleasant voice, although a little bit of fuck-you might have escaped.

  “I’ve got to be at work by then,” he said. “I needed to be there fifteen minutes ago. I want to board a cat for the day.”

  Keane had always been big and intimidating. It was what had made him such an effective jock. He’d ruled on the football field, the basketball court, and the baseball diamond. The perfect trifecta. The perfect all-around package.

  Every girl in the entire school—and also a good amount of the teachers—had spent an indecent amount of time eyeballing that package.

  But just as Willa had given up men, she’d even longer ago given up thinking about that time, inarguably the worst years of her life. While Keane had been off breaking records and winning hearts, she’d been drowning under the pressures of school and work and basic survival.

  It wasn’t his fault that the memories were horrific. Nor was it his fault that just looking at him brought them all back to her. But emotions weren’t logical. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m all full up today.”

  A muscle in his jaw clenched. Probably he wasn’t used to being turned down. “I’ll pay double.”

  He had a voice like fine whiskey. Not that she ever drank fine whiskey. Even the cheap stuff was a treat. And maybe it was just her imagination, but she was having a hard time getting past the fact that he was both the same and yet had changed. He was still tall, of course, and built sexy as hell, damn him. Broad shoulders, lean hips, biceps straining his T-shirt as he held up the cat carrier.

  His T-shirt invited her to BITE ME.

  She wasn’t going to lie to herself, she kind of wanted to. Hard.

  He wore faded ripped jeans on his long legs and scuffed work boots. His T-shirt only enhanced all those ripped muscles and every move he made exuded raw, sexual power and energy—not that she was noticing. Nor was she taking in his big, hard, toned body and expression that said maybe he’d already had a bad day.

  Well, he could join her club.

  At the thought, she mentally smacked herself in the forehead. No! There would be no club joining. She’d set boundaries for herself. She was Switzerland. Neutral. No importing or exporting of anything including sexy smoldering glances, hot body parts, nothing.

  Period.

  Especially not with Keane Winters, thank you very much. Which would make this easy because she didn’t board animals for the general public anyway. Yes, she sometimes boarded as special favors for clients, a service she called “fur-babysitting” because her capacity here was too small for official boarding. If she agreed to “babysit” overnight as a favor, she had to take her boarders home with her, so she was extremely selective.

  And handsome men who’d once been terribly mean boys who ditched painfully shy girls after she’d summoned up every ounce of her courage to ask them out to a dance did not fit her criteria. “I don’t board—” she started, only to be interrupted by an unholy howl from inside the cat carrier.

  It was automatic for her to reach for it, which Keane readily released with what looked to be comic-like relief.

  Turning her back on him, Willa carried the carrier to the counter, incredibly aware of Keane following her through her shop, of the way he moved with an unusually easy grace for such a big guy.

  The cat was continuously howling now so she quickly unzipped it, expecting the animal inside to be dying, given the level of unhappiness it had displayed.

  The ear-splitting noise immediately stopped and a huge Siamese cat blinked vivid blue eyes owlishly up at her. She had a pale, creamy coat with a darker facial mask that matched her black ears, legs, and paws.

  “Well, aren’t you beautiful,” Willa said and slipped her hands into the box.

  The cat immediately allowed herself to be lifted, pressing her face into Willa’s throat for a cuddle.

  “Aw,” Willa said softly, involuntarily. “It’s all right now, I’ve got you. You just hated that box, isn’t that right?”

  “What the ever-loving hell,” Keane said, hands on hips now as he glared at the cat. “Are you kidding me?”

  “What?”

  He scowled. “My great-aunt dropped her off with me last night. Sally’s sick and can’t care for the cat right now, so I’m up.”

  Okay, so that was a pretty nice thing he was doing but she refused to let that soften her any further.

  “The minute my aunt left,” Keane said, “this thing went gonzo.”

  Willa looked down at the cat, who gazed back at her, quiet, serene, positively angelic. “What did she do?”

  Keane snorted. “What didn’t she do would be the better question. She hid under my bed and tore up my mattress. Then she helped herself to everything on the counters, knocking stuff to the floor, destroying my laptop and tablet and phone all in one fell swoop. And then she . . .” He trailed off and appeared to chomp on his back teeth.

  “She . . .?” Willa prompted.

  “Took a dump in my favorite running shoes.”

  Willa did her best not to laugh out loud and say “good girl.”

  “She’s just upset to be away from home and probably missing your aunt. Cats are creatures of habit. They don’t like change.” She spoke to him without taking her gaze off the cat, not wanting to look into those eyes that didn’t recognize her because she might be tempted to pick one of the tiaras displayed on her counter and hit him over the head with it. “Will your aunt be taking her back soon?”

  “Tonight if there’s a God,” he said.

  “What’s he
r name?” she asked.

  “Petunia, but I’m going with Pita. Pain in the ass.”

  Willa stroked along the cat’s back and Petunia pressed into her hand for more. Then she began to purr, the sound low and rumbly, her eyes slitted with pleasure as Willa continued to pet her.

  Keane let out a breath as the purring filled the room. “Unbelievable. Tell me the truth, you’re wearing catnip as perfume, right?” he asked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that the only reason you think she’d like me?”

  “When it comes to that antichrist?” he asked. “Yes.”

  Okay then. Willa opened her mouth to end this little game and tell him that she was too busy today to board anything, but she looked into Petunia’s deep-as-the-ocean blue eyes and felt her heart stir. Crap. “Fine,” she heard herself say. “If you can provide proof of rabies and FVRCP vaccinations, I’ll take her for today only.”

  “Thank you,” he said with such genuine feeling, she glanced up at him.

  A mistake.

  His dark eyes had warmed considerably. “Do you always wear X-rated headbands?” he asked, gesturing to her head.

  She’d completely forgotten she was wearing it. “It’s not what you think,” she informed him and resisted the urge to yank it off and throw it at him. “It’s reindeer antlers.”

  “Whatever you say.” He was smiling now, the rat fink bastard. At her expense, of course.

  “My name’s Keane,” he said. “Keane Winters.”

  He waited, clearly expecting her to tell him her name but she hesitated. If she told him and he suddenly recognized her, he’d also remember exactly how pathetic she’d once been. And if he didn’t recognize her then that meant she was even more forgettable than she’d thought and she would have to throw the penis headband at him after all.

  “And you are . . .?” he asked, rich voice filled with amusement at her pause.

  You know what? What the hell. “Willa Davis,” she said and watched him very carefully.

  But there was no change in his expression whatsoever. Forgettable then—and she grinded on her back teeth.

  “I appreciate you doing this for me,” he said.