by Jill Shalvis
“The significant other?” she asked.
“I don’t have one, but if I did, yeah, I’d be crappy at that too.”
Something crossed her face. Disappointment? That couldn’t be. She’d been the first one to say that they weren’t going there.
“Toby’s got a project at school,” she said carefully.
Josh felt a fishing expedition coming.
“A family tree,” she said.
Yeah, definitely a fishing expedition.
“He said he couldn’t fill in the mom because he didn’t have any pictures.”
“Toby has a picture of his mom,” Josh said. “It’s just an older one.” He paused. “We split when he was a few months old. He doesn’t remember her.”
“You have full custody.”
“Yes.”
She waited, clearly hoping for more. But he didn’t have more, and he was too tired to even try.
“He hasn’t seen his mom since he was a few months old?” she asked.
“She isn’t from this area.”
“Aw. That’s rough.” She softened, clearly feeling sorry for him.
He hated that, both for Toby and himself. They’d done just fine on their own. Well, mostly. He rubbed at the beginning of a headache right between his eyes.
“You’re tired,” she said softly. “Try to get some sleep.” And then she patted him on the arm like he was a pathetic loser.
He stared down at her, torn between showing her just how not tired he was and wanting her to leave before he did exactly that.
She patted him again, and he caught her hand.
She stared at his fingers on hers, sighed, then dropped her forehead to his chest. “Do you have to smell good?” she asked, voice muffled. “Like, always?”
“I—”
“No, don’t answer that.” She lifted her head and kissed him on the cheek. Her breath was warm, and she still had that cupcake scent going, and damn if her lips didn’t linger. Not one to need an engraved invite, he turned his head and look at that, his mouth lined right up with hers.
Oh yeah. This was what he’d needed. All damn day long. His tongue teased the corner of her lip. When she opened for him, hunger took over, setting him on fire. Hauling her up against him, he took control of the kiss, deepening it. She rewarded him with a soft moan that said she was right there with him, and he felt a whole hell of a lot better.
Finally, Grace stepped back, smacking up against her car. Laughing at herself, and him, too, he suspected, she got into her car.
Josh watched her drive away, turning only when he heard Anna’s wheels hit the porch behind him.
“Where are you going?” he asked her.
A truck pulled up to the curb and honked, answering his question.
“He should come to the door for you,” Josh said.
“God, you’re old,” she said. “And he has a name.”
They all had names. Josh had discovered it was easier to just think of each of them as the Boy. Still, Devon had staying power. Not surprising, since Anna was coming into her settlement. He snagged a quickly escaping Anna by the back of her chair. “First, tell me about today.”
“There were no casualties, and your girlfriend managed to stay the whole day without quitting on you.”
Josh knew better than to let her engage him in a semantics war, so he let the “girlfriend” comment slide. “You were on your best behavior, then.”
Anna smiled.
Hmmm…
“Like I said, she stuck it out,” Anna said.
“Maybe tomorrow you can resist doing your best to make me look like an ass,” he said.
“Maybe tomorrow you could not be one.”
“Anna—”
Devon honked again.
Josh slid Anna a look and she shrugged. “He’d come in, but you scare him.”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay, you don’t,” she agreed. “But he’s got authority issues. Anyway, he did some research and came up with a European itinerary. I e-mailed it to you.”
“What about school?”
“School’s dumb,” she said.
“No. Dumb is quitting school.”
“You don’t understand.”
The family therapist had told Josh not to pretend to understand. That he was never going to know what it was like to be a hormonal teenage girl who’d lost her parents at a critical age, not to mention the use of her legs.
What he did understand was that, as usual, he was the bad guy.
Anna pushed off toward the truck, and when she was gone, Josh went inside. “Just you and me,” he said to Toby. “Ready for bed?”
“Arf.”
Chapter 10
Einstein was eating chocolate when he came upon the theory of relativity. Coincidence? I think not.
Grace went back to her room at the B&B that night and sat on the bed watching TV while she eyeballed the balance of her checking account on her laptop. Five hundred dollars cash. That’s all she had left to her name, unless she broke into her saved-for-a-rainy-day investments. But it wasn’t raining, not quite yet. She’d gotten a call for a second interview on the Seattle banking position, and tomorrow morning was the Skype interview with Portland. An offer from either of them would change everything.
Until then, she could stay here in the B&B and watch her balance dwindle further away or she could go to Josh’s guesthouse.
It was no contest, really. Besides, by this time next week, she’d probably, hopefully, have one of the jobs.
And a direction.
There was a knock at the door, and she opened it to one of the B&B owners. Chloe was wearing little hip-hugging army cargoes, a snug, bright red henley, and matching high-tops. Her glossy dark red hair cascaded down her back in an artful disarray that Grace might have hated her for if it hadn’t been for Chloe’s friendly smile and the plate of chocolate chip cookies in her hands.
“Tara had extra,” Chloe said. “I tried to steal ’em but Tara said I had to give them to our guest.”
Grace tried to take the plate and laughed when Chloe didn’t let go of it. “Want to come in and share?”
“Hell, yeah.” Chloe stepped inside. “For a minute there, I was afraid you weren’t going to ask me.”
They ate cookies and watched a dog training class on TV. The instructor was saying that there were no bad dogs, just bad dog owners.
“Huh,” Grace said, thinking of Tank.
And Tank’s big, bad, gorgeous hunk of an owner.
“You think an alpha guy can be trained as easily as a dog?” Chloe asked.
Chloe was engaged to Sheriff Sawyer Thompson, definitely an alpha guy, and Grace laughed. “Good luck.”
After Chloe left, Grace spent a couple of hours on Amy’s shoe box, enjoying the task more than she thought she would. She knew accounting was dry to most, but somehow the numbers soothed her. By the time she went to bed, she had Amy shockingly organized.
The next morning, Grace showered, dressed, and paid up for her stay at the B&B. She’d be sorry to leave the very lovely inn, even more so since they gave her an extra plate of chocolate chip cookies as a going-away gift.
She drove to Josh’s place. It was early but she had that interview, and she wanted to make sure she was set up somewhere with Internet.
The front door opened before she knocked. Josh was dressed in a T-shirt and basketball shorts, a messenger bag slung over one shoulder and a duffel bag over the other. To the gym and then to work, she figured. He was also carrying the cupcakes on a tray and had Toby, with his Star Wars backpack, by the hand.
Both man and boy looked at her from twin chocolate gazes, and her heart did a little somersault in her chest. She smiled at Toby. “Enjoy the cupcakes.”
Josh eyed her own big duffel bag. “You’re going to stay in the guesthouse.”
“If that’s still okay.”
“Very. Give me a minute.” He walked with Toby to the end of the block just as a yellow school bus pulled up. Th
ey both disappeared onto the bus, and then after a few minutes, Josh reappeared without the cupcake tray.
“The bus driver’s a friend,” he said to Grace when he’d walked back to the house. “She’ll make sure Toby gets into school without getting mobbed on the bus for the cupcakes.” He took in Grace’s interview suit. “You have an interview today.”
“Yes, in an hour.”
“I e-mailed you the file of nanny applicants so far.”
She nodded. “I’ll get on that today and hopefully help you find someone perfect for Toby.”
“Thanks.” He dropped his bags and took hers. “I’ll show you the guesthouse. Whatever you do, don’t let me come in with you.”
“Why not?”
His gaze ran over her body, tingling and heating every inch it touched, and it touched a lot. “It would be a bad idea,” he said in a voice that scraped over her erogenous zones. “For both of us.”
She checked her clothes to make sure they hadn’t gone up in flames. He was right. It would be a very bad idea.
But at the moment, very bad was sounding really great. Because once again, he smelled amazing. His T-shirt strained over his biceps and pecs but was loose over his flat, hard abs. When he turned to lead her through the house, the material stretched tight over his athletic-looking back. And then there was his butt in those basketball shorts. Edible. That’s how it looked, and she wanted to sink her teeth into—
He turned to say something and caught her staring. She quickly pretended to be watching her own feet. Look at that, her heels were looking a little worn. “Pretty hardwood floors,” she said.
“You weren’t looking at the floor. You were looking at my ass.”
Giving up, she sighed. “Okay, yes,” she said as primly as she could. “But it’s impolite of you to point it out.”
He laughed.
She walked past him so that she was in the lead, thinking at least now he couldn’t see her face.
“Grace?” he said from behind her.
“Yeah?”
“Your ass is ogle-worthy too.”
She bit her lower lip to try to keep her smile in and kept walking. “We’re being inappropriate again.”
“You started it.”
Going out the back door, he led her around the pool to the small guesthouse. There he pushed open the door, dropped her bags inside, and very purposely remained in the entryway.
He was right—the place was tiny. But cute. The living room, kitchen, and bedroom were all open to each other, done in soft blues and neutral colors.
“The bed’s behind that screen,” Josh said, pointing. “The kitchen’s minimally supplied. You’ve got wireless, but the electrical is crap. Can’t run the toaster and the heater at the same time. I’ll work on that this weekend.”
Grace turned to him in surprise. In her experience, men were either cerebral or good with their hands. And never the two shall meet. She’d pegged this “late-bloomer nerd” as the cerebral type. Not too much of a stretch, given that he was an MD. “You do electrical?”
He gestured to himself. “Not just a pretty face.”
This made her laugh. “I just meant because you’re a doctor. Doctors usually can’t do anything other than…well, doctor.”
“Hey, don’t judge us all by our pedigree.”
She met his gaze, knowing she’d just done exactly that. And she of all people knew better. “Are you really not coming in?”
His eyes darkened, and her body reacted with feminine predictability. “If I come in, you’re going to miss your interview.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh.”
His mouth curved very slightly. “Not in our best interests,” he said softly, giving her another of those searing looks that made her knees wobble. “Lock the door behind me, Grace.”
When he was gone, she let out a shaky breath and locked the door. She looked over her new place and felt…right at home. She’d had a lovely childhood home back East but she hadn’t lived there in years. She’d gone to college, then on to her own places, none of which she’d stayed in too long. She’d attributed that to restlessness, the need to climb the ladder of success. But it’d never mattered what size her place had been or how much it cost; she’d never really found home.
Obviously, this wasn’t it either, but the fact that she wanted to unpack and nest reminded her that it had been a damn long time since she’d felt at home like this.
Too long.
“A week,” she said out loud to remind herself what she’d told Josh. “This is only for a week.”
She did her Skype interview and scored a request to come to the Portland offices for an in-person interview in a few days. Then she texted her parents with the news. She wasn’t a complete loser! After that, she left for her modeling job, dropping Anna in town at the girl’s request.
To Grace’s surprise, Anna was waiting by her car when she came back out of the gallery an hour later. “Aw,” she said to the frowning Anna, “you missed me. How sweet.”
Anna snorted and got into Grace’s car, then sat there like a queen while Grace wrestled with getting the wheelchair folded and into the trunk. “You know,” Grace finally said, swiping her brow with her arm, “if you learned how to do that yourself, you could have your own vehicle. One of those adapted vehicles that you could drive yourself.”
“Oh, actually I do usually handle it by myself.”
Grace gave her a long look, and Anna lifted her hands. “Sorry! But people like to help me, you know? Makes them feel better about being with me.” She smiled sweetly.
Grace shook her head. “Don’t give me that crap. You were totally amusing yourself by watching me fumble ineptly with your chair.”
“Or that.” Anna grinned. “You and Josh are the only ones to call me on this stuff, you know that?”
“What else does Josh call you on?”
Anna shrugged. “He says I’m not good at toeing the line. And that he’d get me a special van to drive but that I’m too angry to be on the road.”
“So get unangry. Learn to toe the line. I could teach you. Once upon a time, I was most excellent at toeing the line. At least the pretense of it.”
“He treats me like a child.”
“Then stop acting like one,” Grace said. “And while we’re on the subject, he cares about you very much. You know that, right?”
Anna shrugged.
“I figured you didn’t know, seeing as you treat him the way you do.”
“And how do I treat him?” Anna asked.
“How do you think?”
Another shrug.
“I bet if you treated him nicer, he’d loosen up a bit with the reins,” Grace said.
“He’s not the boss of me.”
“So you can do whatever you want.”
“Exactly,” Anna said.
“And what is it that you want?”
Anna didn’t answer for so long that Grace figured she wasn’t going to get one. But then Anna finally spoke. “I want my mom and dad back.”
Grace kept her eyes on the road but her throat went tight as she nodded. “I can only imagine. But it makes me doubly glad you have other family. Toby, for instance.”
“Yeah, the rug rat’s pretty cute.”
“And Josh,” Grace said.
Anna turned away and looked out the window. “Anyone ever tell you that you drive like a girl?”
“I am a girl. Don’t you have class today?”
“Missed the bus.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“Missed class already.”
Grace looked at her. “Call me crazy, but I’m getting the feeling you don’t like your cooking and writing classes.”
“Gee, ya think?”
“So why don’t you go for something more challenging?”
“Like?”
“Like a degree,” Grace said.
“In what? I’m in a wheelchair.”
“Are your eyes and brain paralyzed?”
Ann
a rolled her unparalyzed eyes.
“What interests you?” Grace asked.
“Getting home to see if Devon’s there.”
“Is he a good guy? Good to you?”
A shrug. “Yeah.”
“What do you like about him?”
“He’s hot.”
“Boys are like drugs,” Grace said. “You’re supposed to just say no.”
This earned her another eye roll. “He doesn’t care that I’m…” Anna waved at her legs. “He thinks I’m pretty. And…sexy.”
There was something about the way Anna said it that made Grace take another look at her. “You are pretty. You’re beautiful. But a guy that age thinks everyone’s sexy.”
There it was again, the odd look flickering in Anna’s eyes. Uncertainty. “Anna. He’s not pushing you for anything you’re not ready for, is he?”
“I’m ready for anything.”
“Sex. Is he pushing you for sex?”
“I’m paralyzed, not stupid. I’m not a pushover, for anyone.”
“Good,” Grace said, not feeling better, because Anna’s posture didn’t match her words.
“Yeah. Good,” Anna said.
Grace sighed and took her home. In the driveway, Anna didn’t make a move to get out, just faced the side window as she spoke. “So how old were you when you first…”
Grace did the math. Anna had been paralyzed and lost her mom at age sixteen, most likely before she’d had her first anything, leaving her without an influential female in her life. And Grace sincerely doubted Anna would go to Josh about these things. “Forty-five.”
Anna snorted.
“Look,” Grace said. “There’s no right age. Just as long as the guy is right. Are you telling me that Devon is right?”
“He’s into me.”
“That’s not enough. You have to be into him. And not just because he’s hot either. You’re so smart, Anna. You need a guy to be into you and be just as smart.”
Another shrug.
“Just promise me you won’t let him rush you.”
Anna went noncommittal on that, rolling inside the house.
Grace went to the guesthouse and opened her laptop, where she began to weed through the interested applicants for the nanny position. First up was a patient of Josh’s, and all she wanted to know was if Josh was still single. Delete. The next applicant was sixty-five and had asked if there was a retirement plan.
