“The print showed heavy tread loss,” Jack said. “Especially on the outside of the shoe.”
“Yeah? So our guy is a runner. So what?”
“So that’s also an unusual wear. It’s a guy who doesn’t roll his ankles inward enough, tending to stride on the ground with the outside edge of his feet. Walking or running on the outside of the foot like that puts a lot of pressure on the legs. Possibly causing shin splints or stress fractures.”
“So we’re looking for a big-footed runner with a shin splint or stress fracture. Perfect. That narrows it down.”
“It’s a start.” Jack moved to the door, then looked back. “We didn’t find any prints at the auto shop fire.”
“Not size thirteen, no. And nothing to lead to a perp. Just the bucket of rags.”
Jack stood up. “I’m going back to the convenience store site. Check the grounds with a fine-toothed comb.”
“You’re off duty.”
“I have the time.”
Ronald took off his glasses and swiped at them with the hem of his shirt. “How’s your mom?”
“Better. A lot better,” Jack said.
“I asked her out. She tell you that?”
Jack sat back down. “No.”
“She said she wasn’t ready,” Ronald said.
“It’s been twenty years.”
“Maybe you could put in a good word for me,” Ronald said. “Tell her I have a lot more time these days because there’s some big, fancy hotshot on my heels, trying to take over my job.”
Jack rolled his eyes and strode out the door.
A few nights later, Jack watched the next episode of Sweet Wars. The challenge was to create a tart. Jack found himself soaking up the sight of Leah working on a rum sponge tart, once again working calmly and efficiently while everyone else was running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
“How’s she doing?” Ben asked, letting himself in and plopping onto the couch next to Kevin, who immediately crawled into his lap.
“You’re looking right at her,” Jack said.
“I mean here. In Lucky Harbor.” Ben had brought another bag of popcorn and smelled like a movie theater. “With her boyfriend.”
“You know it’s not real. And if you plan to feed that shit to Kevin, you walk him. The last time you gave him popcorn, it required three doggie bags.”
Ben tossed Kevin a kernel just to be an asshole. “Not real, huh? I guess that’s why you bought condoms.”
Jack slid him a look.
“Your receipt’s right here, man.” Ben nudged the piece of paper on the coffee table with his foot. “A twelve pack, which is either a really impressive one-night stand, or you’re thinking long term.” He cocked his head and squinted to read that far. “Yep, twelve extra-large condoms For Her Pleasure. Aw, that’s real considerate.”
Jack rolled his eyes and went back to the show.
“So which is it?” Ben asked.
“What?”
“An impressive one-night stand or long term?”
“Shut up.”
“Long term,” Ben decided. “Quite a commitment, a twelve pack…”
Jack snatched the popcorn and shoved some into his mouth, his gaze on Leah. Which did he want? Hell, all he knew for sure was that he craved her. She was easy on the eyes. And easy to hang out with. She was smart and funny and kind, and he never got tired of being with her.
This thought brought him up a little since it was entirely different from any thought he’d ever had about a woman. But it was true. When he wasn’t with Leah, he thought about being with her again. And when something cracked him up or made him think, or anything really, he wanted to tell her about it.
Like now. On screen, she was talking, smiling, and kicking ass. No one on the cast came even close to her easy talent. And he wanted to tell her so.
“See that?” Ben asked, pointing to the screen. “That host guy—the one who dated that hot chick from Big Brother last year—he’s into Leah big time. You notice?”
Jack watched as Rafe Vogel kept finding excuses to end up at Leah’s station, twice bumping up against her.
Leah didn’t seem to mind all that much, smiling up at him, laughing into the camera while everyone around her was sniping and yelling at each other as the clock counted down.
“You think Leah’s two-timing her fake boyfriend?” Ben asked casually.
Jack slid him a look. “Why are you here?”
Ben grinned and grabbed back the popcorn. “You have the bigger TV.”
The next morning, Jack got up at the crack of dawn and nudged Kevin. “Let’s go.”
Kevin did his imitation of a dead dog.
“We’re running to the station, dude. Gotta work off all the shit we ate last night.”
Kevin squeezed his eyes shut tighter, and Jack shook his head. “If you stay here, I’m going to let the little girls next door dress you up like their pony again.”
Kevin opened a single eye and assessed Jack for his level of seriousness. With a loud sigh, he lumbered out the door with Jack.
Kevin wasn’t a great running partner. In fact, he was a downright horrible running partner, trotting along at best, stopping to smell every flower, rock, and imaginary foe between home and work. Halfway, he was nearly unmanned by a cat that popped out of the bushes and snarled at him. Kevin, always a lover, not a fighter, tried licking the cat’s face, which earned him a bitch-slap. Bewildered and hurt, he ducked behind Jack, where he stayed until they got to the station.
There, Jack grabbed the first hot shower of the day. The first guy to shower always made out because the building’s plumbing was cranky. If you didn’t get the first shower, you weren’t guaranteed hot water. They were a family at the station, and they did as family did—they bugged the shit out of each other. Normally, it was acceptable for the first one up to use as much of the hot water as possible, just because. But today Jack hurried, dressed, and then grabbed the keys to the supervisory unit, heading out the door only to bump into Tim, who’d clearly just come in from his own run. In shorts and a damp T-shirt, he reached for keys as well. “Hey,” he said with a nod to Jack. “Going for donuts.”
They typically took turns going to the bakery every morning, grabbing a box of whatever Leah had fresh, and bringing it back for the other guys. And it was definitely Tim’s turn.
But Jack didn’t want Tim to go to the bakery. Jack wanted to go to the bakery. He’d told Leah that nothing would change between them, but that’d been before they’d had the hottest sex of his life up on a mountaintop.
Now he wasn’t so sure that everything hadn’t changed. Because now he knew how she kissed, how she tasted…the sexy little sounds she made when she came. “I’m going to get the donuts,” he said.
“It’s my turn,” Tim said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Yeah, don’t you remember? Sam went last time and—”
“I got it,” Jack said.
Tim stared at him, then let out a slow smile. “Right. Because you and Leah are a thing. You see the show last night? Her and that Rafe guy? Some serious chemistry there.”
“The show was filmed six months ago.”
“So they’re not together?”
Jack headed to the door. “Let it go.”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe you’ve been dumped and you don’t even know it.”
“Tim?”
“Let me guess. The senior center?” But Tim was cracking his ass up as Jack slammed the door and stalked to the truck. An idiot. He was a f**king idiot.
And he didn’t mean Tim.
Chapter 16
Jack tied Kevin’s leash to the bench in front of the bakery. “Stay.”
Kevin immediately hopped up onto the bench like he owned the thing.
“Down,” Jack said.
Kevin indeed went down. He laid down, across the entire bench.
Since there was no one else around, Jack shook his head and walked into the bakery. The bell above the door tinkled, and the usual delicious scents assaulted his nose. Vanilla, sugar, cinnamon, and a hundred others that made his mouth water and his brain go straight to Leah.
And his other body parts as well.
Like Pavlov’s dog, he thought, with a shake of his head.
There were people seated at the tables, and a few more at the counter still eyeing their selections, among them Lucille and Mrs. Burland. Mrs. B had been Jack’s second-grade teacher, and he still twitched whenever she gazed at him with those hawklike eyes that saw everything.
Leah came out from the back carrying a huge tray. She was wearing two tank tops layered over each other, a short denim skirt, and high-heeled ankle boots that had a bunch of cutouts in them and were so damn sexy it made it difficult to put a thought together. Her arms were tanned and toned, carrying her burden with ease as she bent and began reloading the shelves of her glass-front display.
She served a couple of customers before glancing his way. Lucille and Mrs. B were down at the other end of the counter, and Jack scrambled for something clever to say but the only thing he could think of wasn’t clever at all.
He wanted to ask about the “fuck me” shoes.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut. Or he tried. He blamed his caffeine-deprived brain. “Nice shoes.”
He heard Lucille chuckle, but when he glanced at her, she was busy looking at donuts.
“What’s this new thing you have about my shoes?” Leah asked.
“I don’t know.” But he wanted to see her in those boots and nothing else. He leaned over the counter and caught a whiff of whatever she’d washed her hair with. Something with coconut, which made him hungry and not for food. “You smell good too.”
“You’re in a bakery,” she said dryly. “Everything smells good.”
He was a little stymied by her tone, but before he could ask her about it, someone tapped him on the arm. Turning, he looked down at all four feet of Mrs. Burland.
“Hey, you hoodlum, no cuts.”
There’d been a time when her voice had struck terror in his heart. And he supposed that if she was still judging his character on his “little hoodlum” eight-year-old self, the one who’d painted her desk chair with superglue and let the hamsters free in the ventilation system, then she had good reason to call him a hoodlum.
“He’s not a hoodlum,” Lucille said.
“Really?” Mrs. B asked snidely. “I take it he didn’t rearrange your Christmas reindeer lawn ornaments every year so they were…copulating.”
Lucille fought a grin and lost. “No, he didn’t.”
Jack sighed, gestured Mrs. B ahead of him, and waited while she curtly snapped her order at Leah.
“And make sure the cannoli is vanilla,” Mrs. Burland told her. “You don’t make good chocolate cannoli.”
“Yes she does,” Jack said.
Mrs. Burland turned an eagle eye on him. “She’s already yours, Harper. No one likes a kiss-ass.”
“I’m not his,” Leah said. “I’m my own woman.” She thrust a bag of baklava at Mrs. Burland. “It’s made with phyllo dough, which is much lower in fat than the cannoli.”
“I want cannoli. I am paying you for the cannoli.” Mrs. Burland waved a few bills.
Leah pushed them away. “And Dr. Scott paid me to give you something low-cholesterol instead.”
Mrs. Burland snatched the baklava and huffed off.
Leah turned to Lucille, who smiled. “Jack can go first,” she said.
Leah gave Lucille a look. “So you can eavesdrop?”
Lucille grinned. “Well, of course. But also the good men don’t wait around. You don’t know that yet because you’re still a spring chicken.”
“You’re not worried about him waiting around for me,” Leah said. “You want your daily dose of gossip.”
Lucille had the good grace to look slightly guilty. “People like to know what’s going on, that’s all.”
“What’s going on,” Leah said, “is that you’re both holding up my line.”
Both Lucille and Jack turned and looked behind them.
There was no one else in line.
Lucille looked up at Jack. “Seriously,” she said. “You can go first.”
“Seriously,” he said. “No thank you.”
“Because you and Leah have to talk?” Lucille asked hopefully.
“If I say yes, will you get the hell out?”
“Jack,” Leah said admonishingly.
Lucille didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. She pointed to a coffee éclair. “Anyone ever mention that those look like a one of them toys you can buy at the dirty stores? What are they called, dildos?”
Jack laughed, but Leah looked horrified. “Lucille!”
“Hey, this is the modern ages, honey,” Lucille said. “Women don’t have to hide the fact that they buy devices for themselves. After all, that’s what a nightstand drawer is for, right?”
Jack didn’t want to know what Lucille kept in her nightstand drawer, but the thought of looking in Leah’s was giving him a whole bunch of fantasies.
Leah packed up a bag and thrust it at her.
Lucille just grinned. “You’re my favorite,” she said to Jack.
“Favorite?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, you’ve got some competition, you know.” At Jack’s expression, she laughed. “So you don’t know…”
Jack looked at Leah. “That host guy?”