“Dee’s been feeling down for a very long time,” Ali said gently. “You know that.”
This Leah already knew. She’d been there in those years right after Jack’s dad’s death. She’d seen Dee slowly fall apart, and she’d watched Jack and Ben—teenagers at the time—have to hold it all together for her; the house, the bills, the memories, everything. Leah had done whatever she could but had still felt so helpless. “Maybe me and Jack being a thing will help.”
Ali shook her head. “Jack would be the first one to do whatever he needed to do to make his mom happy. But pretending to be in a relationship? That doesn’t sound like him at all.”
Leah grimaced. “Yeah, well, that’s because it wasn’t his idea.”
The amusement came back into Ali’s gaze. “You sprung it on him?” She let the smile come. “Would’ve loved to see that.”
“This isn’t funny, Ali.”
“Yeah, it is. You got Jack to actually agree to this pretend relationship?”
“Not exactly.”
Ali stared at her and then laughed. She laughed so hard she nearly dropped her vase. Finally, she straightened and swiped at a few tears of mirth. “Oh God, this is good. Jack in a pretend relationship.”
“A secret, pretend relationship,” Leah reminded her.
“A secret, pretend relationship,” Ali repeated. “The single women in town are going to go into mourning.” She was still grinning. “Luke’s going to love this.”
“You can’t tell him!” Leah said. “Everyone has to think it’s real.”
“Aren’t you cute.” Ali patted her on the arm as if she were a three-year-old. “Leah, it is real.”
Leah gaped at her. “What? No. No, no, no. It’s…not.”
Mostly because she’d already had her chance and blown it.
Big-time.
Which actually put Jack on her ever-growing list of regrets.
Twice.
Ali just smiled and turned, heading back inside her shop.
“It’s not,” Leah called after her. “It’s all for Dee.”
Ali lifted her hand, waved, and shut the door.
“It is!”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Ali yelled back through the wood.
“Well, dammit.” Leah whirled in the other direction and headed to her car. “It is pretend,” she told her rearview mirror. “Completely.”
Chapter 5
Leah picked up her grandma for physical therapy, already mentally calculating the rest of the hours left in the day. She had to work on bookkeeping—her grandma had been extremely lax about that—and then there was the stack of payables about two feet taller than their receivables. But Leah was working hard on all of it and trying to increase business while she was at it, and it was starting to work.
“You’re so sweet to do all this for me,” Elsie said. “But honey, I could have taken the Senior Dial-A-Ride.”
“I don’t mind,” Leah said as they parked at PT. “And I didn’t want you to get stuck waiting.”
“I have my lover,” Elsie said and waved her ebook reader. “I can wait forever with my Kindle fully charged and ready to please me.”
“A lover who can never leave you,” Leah said with a laugh, turning off the engine. “Smart.”
Her grandma’s smile faded some. “Is that what you think of men? That they’ll leave you?”
Since that was far too serious a conversation for the moment—and absolutely one she didn’t want to have—Leah shook her head and reached over to hug her grandma. “You smell like roses.”
Elsie huffed out a low laugh. “That’s code for ‘mind your own business, Grandma.’” Pulling back, she gently patted Leah’s cheeks. “I’m happy to have you back, Leah. So happy.”
“I’m happy to be back.”
Her grandma’s blue eyes held Leah’s for a long beat. “It’s been good for you, right?” she said. “Being here? Being happy here?”
And there it was. The elephant in the room.
Yes, Leah’s childhood had not been happy here in Lucky Harbor. But her parents had retired to Palm Springs, thirteen hundred miles south. And after her dad’s death, her mom had stayed down there. The distance worked for them both, more than it should. “Yes,” she said. “I’m happy here.”
“Your mom says you called the other day,” Elsie said.
Leah made an obligatory call every other week, during which she and her mom had a shallow conversation. Yes, she was fine. Yes, she was still baking. No, she hadn’t found a man to marry her… “I did,” she said to her grandma. “She sounds happy.”
Elsie’s smile was just a little sad and a whole lot knowing. “I’m proud of you, honey.”
“Yeah, well, you might want to change your mind about that when you find out that I ordered not one but two new ovens today.”
“Leah!”
“I’m paying for them,” she said quickly. They’d filled up her entire shiny new credit card, but she’d wanted to do it. “Grandma, it had to be done. You can’t continue with the business you have without new ovens; you just can’t. We’re putting out too much product now. We needed to do this.”
Elsie sighed. “But I don’t want you to pay for them.”
Leah ignored this to help Elsie out of the car, but Elsie grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently, waiting until Leah met her gaze. “I’m so very proud of you,” she said fiercely. “You’ve been a godsend. A perfect godsend.”
“Perfect?” Leah laughed softly. “I have faults, Grandma. Lots of them.”
“Of course you do. Your biggest fault is that you care too much. And you work too hard. But the good news is that I really am starting to feel so much better. I’ll pick up the slack again soon.”
Leah nodded. That was a good thing. A great thing. She’d come home to help, and she’d done that. But it was time to move on soon. She needed to be gone before Sweet Wars got to the finals in three weeks.
Long gone.
“You’re really doing better?” she asked Elsie. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave until she was sure.
“Oh yes. And you have your own life to get back to,” Elsie said, then added with a sly hopefulness, “I’m guessing you have your own bakery to open?”
Everyone knew grand prize for Sweet Wars was $100,000 to open a pastry shop. “You know I can’t tell you—”
“Phooey,” Elsie said. “I hate contracts and rules.”
Leah smiled, knowing damn well she’d inherited that trait. “I want you to just concentrate on enjoying your break,” she said. “Are you? Are you okay with the way I’m running your bakery?”
“Our bakery, honey. And are you kidding? You’ve doubled business. I’ll sure miss you.”
Leah thought about staying and what that would cost her. Elsie, catching her hesitation, patted her hand. “No worries. I know there’s more out there for you than being back here in Lucky Harbor. You were on the cover of Martha, for God’s sake.”
The nurse came out and called Elsie just as Leah’s phone started vibrating. She pulled it out of her purse and looked at the screen.
Jack.
Her wits deserted her, and with a wince, she dropped the phone back in her purse, where it vibrated for another minute before finally falling into an irritated silence.
Jack wouldn’t let her ignore him for long. She was thinking about that, and how she might explain herself to him, when Mr. Lyons came through the front door leaning on his cane.
“Hey, cutie,” he said, signing in for his appointment. “Saw you on—”
“Sweet Wars,” she finished for him. “I know. I can’t tell you what happens, sorry.” Three more shows. She had three weeks to figure her shit out. “Contractual obligations and all—”
“No, I mean I saw you on Facebook. You’re dating Jack Harper. Good man, that Jack.”
Leah stared at him. “What?”
“Yeah. Now, as far Sweet Wars goes, you’re killing the competition. I’ve got a twenty on you taking it, but I’d go up as high as fifty if you’d give me a little clue…”
“Don’t you even think about giving him a clue,” Elsie said, coming out from the back. “He’ll use it to win against the other, less fortunate seniors.”
“Ah, now that hurts.” Mr. Lyons slapped a hand to his heart and dramatically staggered back a step. “The prettiest babe in town doubts me.”
“Poker night, last week,” she said. “You coaxed everyone into making it strip poker. Then you counted cards and won the pot, which was three hundred bucks.”
“Okay, true.” He winked at her. “Which you know firsthand since you were there.”
“Grandma?” Leah asked, shocked.
Elsie waved her off and continued to glare at Mr. Lyons.
He simply flashed blinding white dentures. “How about I use some of my ill-gotten gain to wine and dine you? The diner’s having a two-for-one special. My treat.”
“I have plans.”
“With that chain-smoking, stuffy, old, stick-up-his-ass Maxwell Fitzgerald?” Mr. Lyons asked.
“Why…” Elsie glanced at Leah. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” She wrapped her arm around Leah. “Good day.”
“Elsie?”
Elsie turned back to Mr. Lyons.
“You know I’m just having fun, right? At our age, it’s all we’ve got. Well, that and pumpkin pie night at the senior center. My offer of dinner stands,” he added more seriously. “Even after the special’s over.”
Elsie looked surprised as Leah led her out the door. They went home, and Leah made dinner. When Elsie had gone to bed, Leah took a long shower until she ran out of hot water. Afterward, she had a text from her self-proclaimed boyfriend.
Squinting her eyes to read it—because that always made things easier to take—she opened the text.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
Chapter 6
Jack’s earliest memory was being four years old and proudly wearing his dad’s firefighter hat to the dinner table. It’d been far too heavy for him, and he’d barely been able to see because it kept falling over his eyes, but his dad had laughed.
And Jack had loved the sound.
There’d never been a question of what he would grow up to be. He’d become a firefighter, like his dad.
Period.
His schedule at station #24 was busy but he didn’t mind the odd hours, or the job, really. No, it wasn’t jumping out of helicopters into massive wildlife fires—which he’d loved—but the work meant something.
And yet there was no denying he was restless as hell.
It was true that city firefighting could be exciting, but Lucky Harbor wasn’t exactly “city.” And if there wasn’t enough of that excitement to suit his adrenaline-junkie soul, he told himself that at the ripe old age of thirty-two, he’d learn to deal with it.
He was still waiting for his brain to do just that.
He and Kevin ran to work, and he had to admit his knee was slowing him down some. He really thought he’d just rehab it himself, but after months of working on it, he wasn’t so sure. And yet he’d been the surgery route before and knew what that would mean—an enforced down period. Since that didn’t work for him, his immediate plan was to ignore it until he couldn’t.
In the meantime, he did his best to fill his time with things that interested him. He’d become the county’s hazmat specialist and had gotten additional certificates in fire management and arson investigation. His off-shift hours were filled with whichever adrenaline rushes he could find. Paddle boarding with Luke. Mountain climbing with Ben. Women.
He’d had a good run there too, he could admit. In fact, he was right smack in the middle of a good run. Or had been—until Leah’s little bombshell.
It’d gotten out overnight that they were “dating,” and he’d already fielded an unhappy call from Kayla, a waitress he’d had plans to see later in the week, telling him not to bother to call her back.
There’d been nothing but radio silence from Danica, a local flight nurse he’d casually seen a few times. It wasn’t anything serious, nor would it be, but he hoped that meant she was on shift and not reading Facebook.
Facebook, the evil incarnate. Or maybe that was Lucille herself. Lucille was older than dirt, shorter than a yardstick, and Gossip Central. She’d posted the “news” of his and Leah’s relationship and then pictures of them together throughout the years. This included one of Leah’s middle school graduation, where his mom had made him wear a suit. Another of them at the pier with Leah clutching a life-sized teddy bear he’d won, with him posturing like a complete idiot.
Jack had been fielding calls and texts all damn day long—except from the one person he wanted to hear from, of course.
Leah, who was still avoiding him like the plague. She’d always been good at lying low when she wanted, and clearly that was her modus operandi at the moment. Unfortunately for him, she was going to get away with it now that he was on rotation for three straight days.
He and Kevin entered the station at seven in the morning to the sound of applause, which startled Kevin into barking like a maniac.
Jack set his hand on the dog’s head and gave his shift crew a long look. “Never mind the assholes, Kevin.”