by Jill Shalvis
“What’s going on?” Amy asked.
Matt was staring at the lot. “I have no idea.”
They got out looking like a ragtag team from The Amazing Race. Matt was still shirtless, the sling in place. Amy’s clothes were torn from her breathless, in-the-dark climb down to where Matt had fallen. She was disheveled and glowing.
Not from the climb.
Just looking at her warmed Matt from the inside out.
“Mallory’s car is here,” Amy said, pointing it out. “And Grace’s. And isn’t that Josh’s car? And Ty’s truck? And Sawyer’s cop car? What—Why is everyone here? Do you think they’re all here supporting you?”
Yeah, that’s exactly what he thought.
Proving it, the station door opened, and people filed out, his coworkers, and then Jan, Lucille, Lucille’s entire posse… half the town.
“What the hell?” Matt said.
Sawyer reached him first. “Got Riley’s assailant in custody. The idiot showed up at the diner last night with a knife, threatening everyone in sight if they didn’t produce Riley, and Jan beaned him with a frying pan. She’s pressing charges, and Riley will do the same.” Sawyer looked at Amy. “Jan told Riley that they were even now. The slate was cleared, and Riley could rent out that little hole-in-the-wall studio apartment above the diner if she wanted.”
Ty and Josh reached them. Josh’s attention narrowed in on Matt’s makeshift splint. “Ah, hell,” he said, sliding the torn shirt aside, examining the shoulder until Matt hissed in a breath. “You did it again, didn’t you?”
Lucille pushed her way between the two big men, barely coming up past their elbows. “Well?” she demanded of Matt. “I came out here and missed my morning talk shows. The least you can do is give me an exclusive quote on the situation.”
Matt shook his head. “I don’t know the situation.”
Lucille went brows up, looking as if she’d just swallowed the canary. “So if I told you that we all came here to see your sexy tush fired, you’d believe me?”
Matt slid a look to Josh and Ty, both of whom were wearing dark sunglasses and matching solemn expressions, giving nothing away. Some help.
Lucille smiled and patted him on the chest like he was a sad puppy. “Aw, you’re too cute to tease. We all came this morning to plead your case. Ty and Josh here told your boss that you couldn’t be here because you were busy saving a woman who’d gone into the forest alone.” She turned to Amy. “Did you need saving again, honey?”
“Actually,” Matt said, holding her tight to his good side. “She saved me.”
“Sweet,” Lucille said. “I saved you, too, don’t forget.” She elbowed Ty. “See, Facebook isn’t completely evil.” She beamed with pride. “Oh, and you’re cleared of any inquiries or blights on your record,” she said to Matt casually. “Those Facebook pics were pretty damning.” She turned to Amy. “I was thinking an exclusive show.”
“Show?”
“Your art. You came to Lucky Harbor to follow your grandma’s decades-old adventure, hoping for the same life-changing experiences, right? Do you have any idea what a great story that makes to go with the art? It’s fantastic. I can’t even make that stuff up. You’re going to sell like hotcakes. We’re going to make buckets of money.”
“How did you know all that?” Amy asked. “About my grandma and everything?”
“Honey, I know all. The question is, did you get your life-changing experience?”
Amy looked at Matt and smiled. “I did.”
Matt’s entire heart turned over in his chest. “Damn,” he said, pulling her in. “Damn, I love you.”
“Watch the arm!” Josh warned.
“He’s not watching that arm,” Ty said as Matt kissed Amy again.
“Christ,” Josh said.
Matt ignored them all and kept kissing Amy. A surge of emotion rocked him to his core when she responded with everything she had, and the kiss got even a little more heated. He was vaguely aware of everyone cheering and hooting and hollering, but he didn’t give a shit. He had everything he ever wanted, at last.
Raising his head, he looked down at the woman whose smile made it seem as if she were lit up from within. She was filthy, exhausted, probably half starved, and a complete mess. But she took his breath and owned his heart, and he’d never seen anything more beautiful. “Be mine, Amy.”
“I already am.”
The Chocoholics’ Brownies-to-Die-For
Ingredients
4 large eggs
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of butter (2 sticks)
1 1/2 cups of sifted cocoa powder
2 tsp of vanilla
1/2 cup of sifted flour
1/2 tsp of salt
Use the mixer to beat the eggs on medium speed until they turn light yellow. Add both sugars and salt. Mix well. Then gradually add the rest of the ingredients: vanilla, butter, cocoa powder, and flour. Keep mixing until it is all combined but the batter is still lumpy.
Pour into an 8" x 8" greased, nonstick pan and place it in the oven at 300 degrees. After 45 minutes, use a toothpick to check the brownies. Check every five minutes for a total cooking time of up to 60 minutes. When the toothpick comes out clean, remove brownies and let them cool before you cut them.
Voila! Your chocolate fix.
ER doc Josh Scott has his future all mapped out. But Grace has a different plan…
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Forever and a Day
Chapter 1
Chocolate makes the world go around.
Tired, edgy, and more than a little scared that she was never going to get her life on the happy track, Grace Brooks dropped into the back booth of the diner and sagged against the red vinyl seat. “I could really use a drink.”
Mallory, in wrinkled scrubs, just coming off an all-night shift at the ER, snorted as she crawled into the booth as well. “It’s eight in the morning.”
“Hey, it’s happy hour somewhere.” This from their third musketeer, Amy, who was wearing a black tee, a black denim skirt with lots of zippers and kick-ass boots, the tough girl ensemble softened by the bright pink Eat Me apron she was forced to wear while waitressing. “Pick your poison.”
“Actually,” Grace said with a yawn. “I was thinking hot chocolate.”
“Or that,” Amy said. “Be right back.”
Good as her word, she reappeared with a tray of steaming hot chocolate and big, fluffy chocolate pancakes. “Chocoholics unite.”
Four months ago Grace had come west from New York for a Seattle banking job, until she’d discovered that putting out for the boss was part of the deal. Leaving the offer on the table, she’d gotten into her car and driven as far as the tank of gas could take her, ending up in the little Washington State beach town of Lucky Harbor. That same night she’d gotten stuck in this very diner during a freak snowstorm with two strangers.
Mallory and Amy.
With no electricity and a downed tree blocking their escape, the three of them had spent a few scary hours soothing their nerves by eating their way through a very large chocolate cake. After that, meeting over chocolate cake became habit—until they’d accidentally destroyed the inside of the diner in a certain candle incident that wasn’t to be discussed. Jan, the owner of Eat Me, had refused to let them meet over cake anymore, so the Chocoholics had switched to brownies for a while. Grace was thinking of making a motion for chocolate cupcakes as the next dessert. It was important to have the right food for those meetings, as dissecting their lives—specifically their lack of love lives—was hard work. Except these days Amy and Mallory actually had love lives.
Grace did not.
Amy disappeared and came back with butter and syrup. She untied and tossed aside her apron and sat, pushing the syrup to Grace.
“I love you,” Grace said with great feeling as she took her first bite of delicious goodness.
Not one to waste her break, Amy toasted her with a pa
ncake-loaded fork dripping syrup and kept eating.
Not Mallory, who was still carefully spreading butter on her pancakes, her diamond engagement ring catching the light with every movement. “You going to tell us what’s wrong, Grace?”
Grace stilled for a beat, surprised that Mallory had been able to read her. “I didn’t say anything was wrong.”
“You’re mainlining a stack of six pancakes like your life depends on it.”
This was a true statement. But nothing was wrong exactly. Except… everything.
All her life she’d worked her ass off, running on the hamster wheel, heading toward her elusive future. Being adopted at birth by a rocket scientist and a well-respected research biologist had set the standards, and she knew her role. Achieve, and achieve high. “It’s nothing really. Except I’ve applied at every bank, every investment firm, every accounting firm between Seattle and San Francisco.”
“No nibbles?” Mallory asked sympathetically, reaching for the syrup, her ring flashing again.
Amy shielded her eyes. “Jeez, Mallory, stop waving that thing around, you’re going to blind us. Couldn’t Ty have found one smaller than a third world country? Or less sparkly?”
Mallory beamed at the rock on her finger but otherwise ignored Amy’s comment, unwilling to be deterred. “Back to the nibbles,” she said to Grace.
“Nothing too noteworthy,” Grace said. “Just a couple of possible interviews for next week, one in Seattle, one in Portland.” Neither job was exactly what she wanted, but they’d both be a steady—and solid—paycheck.
Grace had grown up back east, from toddlerhood through getting her CPA. Drowning beneath the debt load of her education—her parents had been of the “build character and pave your own road” variety—she’d followed that job offer to Seattle, wanting a good, solid position in the firm. Just not one that she could find in the Kama Sutra.
Now late spring had turned to late summer, and she was still in Lucky Harbor, living off the temp jobs she’d picked up. She was down to her last couple hundred bucks, and her parents thought she was still in Seattle counting other people’s money for a living. The pleaser in her was withering daily.
Her parents believed in hard work and rising above the norm’s potential. Since they were both esteemed in their respective fields, it was safe to say that they’d accomplished their goals there.
Grace was still working on doing the same. She’d strived hard for each of her twenty-eight years to live up to the standards of being a Brooks, but there was no doubt she felt the pressure. In her heart she belonged, but in her brain—the part of her who knew that she was only a Brooks on paper—she’d never really pulled it off.
“I don’t want you to leave Lucky Harbor,” Mallory said. “But one of these interviews will work out for you, I know it.”
Grace didn’t necessarily want to leave either. She’d found the small, quirky town to be more welcoming than anywhere else she’d ever been, but staying wasn’t really an option. She was never going to build her big career here.
“So with two interviews lined up, what’s the problem?” Amy asked.
What wasn’t the problem? “Well, let’s see.” She stabbed a few more pancakes from the tray and dropped them on her plate. “I’m still fibbing to my parents so they won’t worry.” She hated that, so very much. She’d done it to make them happy, but that wasn’t making her feel any better. “I’m whittling away at my meager savings. I’m in limbo… pick one.”
“Yeah, none of those things are the problem,” Amy said.
“No?”
“No. The problem is that you’re not getting any.”
Grace sagged at the pathetic truthfulness of this statement, a situation made all the worse by the fact that both Amy and Mallory were getting some.
Lots.
“Remember the storm?” Mallory asked. “When we almost died right in this very place?”
“Right,” Amy said dryly. “From overdosing on chocolate cake, maybe.”
Mallory ignored this and pointed her fork at Grace. “We made a pinky promise. I said I’d learn to be a little bad for a change. And Amy here was going to live her life instead of letting it live her. And you, Miss Grace, you were going to find more than a new job, remember? You were going to stop chasing your own tail and go after some happy and some fun. It’s time, babe.”
“I am having fun here.” At least, more than she’d ever let herself have before. “And what it’s time for, is work.” With a longing look at the last stack of pancakes, Grace stood up and brushed the crumbs off her sundress.
“What’s today’s job?” Amy asked.
When Grace had first realized she needed to get a temporary job or stop eating, she’d purposely gone for something new. Something that didn’t require stuffy pencil skirts or closed-toe heels. Something that didn’t require sitting in front of a computer for fifteen hours a day. Because if she had to be off track and a little lost, then she was going to have fun while she was at it, dammit. “I’m delivering birthday flowers to Mrs. Burland for her eightieth birthday,” she said. “Then modeling at Lucille’s art gallery for a drawing class.”
“Modeling for an art class?” Mallory asked. “Don’t art classes use nude models?”
“That’s not today.” Nope, nude was tomorrow’s class, and Grace was really hoping something happened before then, like maybe she’d win the lottery. Or get beamed to another planet. “I’m a hand model today.”
Amy looked her over. “If I had your body, I’d totally model nude.”
Grace shook her head, dropped the last of her pocket money onto the table, and left to make the floral deliveries. At the bank, she’d always had to get up before the crack of dawn, ride a train for two hours to get to work, put in fifteen hours, then get home in time just to crawl exhausted into bed.
Things were majorly different here.
For one thing, she saw daylight.
So maybe she could no longer afford Starbucks. At least she wasn’t still having the recurring nightmare where she suffocated under a sea of pennies that she’d been trying to count one by one.
Two hours later, Grace was just finishing the flower deliveries when her cell phone buzzed. Out of habit, she looked at the screen with her eyes squinted. Because everyone knew that made it easier to hear bad news. But there wasn’t any more bad news to be had, she reminded herself. She’d already pretty much hit rock bottom. Even so, she took a big step back from the large tree she stood near, not wanting to tempt fate to prove her wrong by striking her with a lightning bolt.
She didn’t recognize the incoming number, so she played mental roulette and answered. “Grace Brooks,” she said in her most professional tone, as if she were still sitting on top of her world. Hey, she might have had to give up designer clothes, but she hadn’t lost her pride. Not yet anyway.
There was a brief pause. “I’m calling about your flyer,” the man said. “I need a dog walker. Someone who’s on time, responsible, and not a flake.” The man, whoever he was, had a hell of a voice; low and a little raspy, but she was stuck on his words.
Her flyer? “A dog walker,” she repeated. Huh.
“I’d need you to start today.”
“Today… as in today?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Okay, clearly he’d misdialed. And just as clearly, there was someone else in Lucky Harbor trying to drum up work for herself.
Grace considered herself a good person. She sponsored a child in Africa, she dropped her spare change into the charity jars at the supermarket, and she gave her restaurant leftovers to the homeless. Or at least she used to, back in the days when she could afford a restaurant. In any case, someone had put up flyers looking to get work, and that someone deserved this phone call.
But dog walking… She could totally do dog walking. Offering a silent apology for stealing the job, she said, “Sure, I can start today.”
There was a brief pause. “Your flyer lists your qualifications, but not how
long you’ve been doing this.”
That was too bad because she’d sure like to know that herself. She’d never actually had a dog. Turns out, rocket scientists and renowned biologists don’t have a lot of time in their lives for consequentials such as dogs.
Or kids…
In fact, come to think of it, Grace had never had so much as a goldfish, but really, how hard could it be? Put the thing on a leash and walk, right? “I’m a little new at the dog walking thing,” she admitted.
“A little new?” he asked. “Or a lot new?”
“A lot.”
Another brief pause, as if he was considering hanging up, and Grace rushed to fill the silence. “But I’m very diligent!” she said quickly. “I never leave a job unfinished. And I’m completely reliable.”
“The dog is actually a puppy,” he said. “And new to our household. Not yet fully trained.”
“No problem,” she said, and crossed her fingers, hoping that was true. She loved puppies. Or at least she loved the idea of puppies.
“I left for work early this morning and won’t be home until late tonight. I’d need you to walk the dog by lunch time.”
Yeah, he really had a hell of a voice. Low and authoritative, it made her want to snap to attention and salute him, but it was also… sexy. Wondering if the rest of him matched his voice, she made arrangements to go to his house in a few hours and walk the puppy, where there’d be someone waiting to let her inside. Her payment of forty bucks cash would be left on the dining room table.
Forty bucks cash for walking a puppy…
Score.
Grace didn’t ask why the person opening the door for her couldn’t walk the puppy. She didn’t want to talk her new employer out of hiring her because hello, forty bucks. She could eat all week off that, if she was careful.
At the appropriate time, she pulled up to the address she’d been given and sucked in a big breath. She hadn’t caught the man’s name, but he lived in a very expensive area, on the northernmost part of the town, where the rocky beach stretched for endless miles like a gorgeous postcard for the Pacific Northwest. The dark green bluffs and rock stacks were piled like gifts from heaven for as far as the eye could see. Well, as far as her eye could see, which wasn’t all that far since she needed glasses.
