Fierce at Heart (The Kincaids of Pine Harbour)

by Zoe York

  Before she could pop smoke and disappear, Jackass was pulling her front door open and stepping inside.

  Into her space.

  Isla’s breath caught in her throat, a tangle of fear and anger. What the fuck was he doing there? He looked the same as he had the last time she saw him, slick and handsome and an absolute snake.

  She didn’t greet him politely. She didn’t greet him at all. She went straight for the obvious what the fuck question. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

  She’d noticed, and ignored. She didn’t owe him her time anymore. “Why?”

  He dragged out the pause before he told her, going for maximum effect. “I’ve recently moved to the area.”

  “You have to be kidding me.”

  “You know how the Army is.” He shrugged. “They move you unexpectedly.”

  They hadn't moved her, even after she begged. If he was telling the truth, and she had no reason to think he was being honest with her—he never had been before—it was an ironic twist that he’d ended up here.

  Had she known the army would move Jackass to Meaford, she would have stayed put in Pet. And then she never would have tapped out, never would have gone to culinary school and become a baker. Probably wouldn’t have ever reconnected with Adam and landed here in Pine Harbour, only to end up face to face with her ex all over again.

  But even so, it wasn’t like Meaford was the next town over. “How did you find me?”

  “Someone sent me the link to your Instagram account when I moved to Meaford. Thought it was a small world we landed in the same part of the province again. I thought I’d come check it out.”

  The way the answer rolled off his tongue, all slick and practiced, she had a gross feeling the someone was himself, but she didn’t want to accuse him of something she couldn’t prove. “You drove an hour out of your way to check out my bakery?”

  “It just…” He looked around. Snake snake snake. “This seems like an odd place for you to land.”

  Her heart pounded in her chest. “What would you know about that? You don't know anything about me. You never did.”

  That wasn't exactly true. He had known enough about her to push all of her buttons. He had known what got under her skin. What made her doubt herself. What made her feel weak and scared and vulnerable. And maybe he still did, because the gleam in his eye and the knowing smirk on his face said he did have her number.

  He knew she was here for her own selfish reasons.

  At that moment, the back door to the bakery slammed open.

  She glanced behind her, grateful to be saved by the dairy delivery. “Excuse me a minute,” she said as professionally as she could muster. Then she turned around and stomped into the kitchen, only to come face to face with Adam, wearing his uniform t-shirt and pants.

  “You are a sight for sore eyes,” she whispered, her heart pounding.

  “Hey. I was hoping to grab—”

  She threw her arms around him before he could finish that statement. Right now she needed him to grab her, and she’d have to explain later.

  Without waiting for him to catch up, she kissed him full on the mouth.

  He froze, then slowly wrapped his arms around her, his hands spreading wide across her back. “Well, this is a nice greeting.”

  “My ex is here,” she whispered urgently and for his ears only.

  That immediately changed the feel of his hands on her. He tightened his grip on her waist and kissed her right back, deeper this time.

  This kiss felt different, possessive. It was an act, she knew that. But one that Adam was very good at. And for a moment, that scared woman who had just been confronted with her absolute worst fears gave into it and let him take her away from the threat of her ex and the worry about what might happen should the truth of her own selfishness be known.

  None of that mattered. Not when Adam had her in his arms, with his mouth playing against hers, sure and firm and warm and loving. In her fantasy, this was what a loving, protective spouse did. Adam was as close to that as she was ever going to get. He was head and shoulders above her ex on the other side of the archway. She wanted Adam to know that, too. How much she truly valued him as her partner.

  So she kissed him back. Trying to say with her body that they were in this together and she appreciated him. Oh boy, did she appreciate him in this particular moment.

  She got a little breathless, the way he smiled when he finally pulled back and gave her a secret, little nod. Every single time he looked at her like they were in this together, like they shared these valuable secrets, she felt absolutely invincible.

  She raised her voice. “I thought you were the delivery driver bringing me more butter.”

  He laughed. “I thought I'd bring you some sugar instead.”

  It was absolutely cheesy. And it made her laugh. Which made her feel like she could do anything. So she turned and tugged him into the front of the store, where Jackass stood looking a little less slick than before—or at least she wanted to believe that to be true.

  “Adam, this is my ex-husband. Apparently he's moved to the area.” She took a deep breath. “Brett Jackson, this is Adam Kincaid. My husband.”

  She felt Adam react, physically, to the revelation of Brett’s last name. Jackass had been a fitting nickname in her phone for more than one reason.

  Brett narrowed his eyes, and didn’t say anything.

  Adam gave him a smile colder than anything she’d ever seen before. “Welcome to Pine Harbour. I didn’t catch where you were living now?”

  “I’m in Owen Sound. I'm working at the base in Meaford.”

  “That’s a decent drive from here. But I guess it’s understandable you wanted to check in on Isla. She's doing great. She's loved by this community.” He put his arm around her shoulder. Another possessive act Isla appreciated with all of her heart. “Was that the only reason you popped in here?”

  It was a clear peacock-y posturing. Time for you to leave.

  “I’m looking at land in the area,” Brett said slowly, and Isla’s heart sank.

  It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. He had spent all of their money—his, hers, and a lot of the bank’s, too—so he had to be in the same rough financial position she was.

  But just the thought of him crowding into her new town made her skin crawl. She couldn’t respond to that.

  Luckily, Adam was there, so she didn’t have to. He squeezed her tight against him. “Might be hard. Won’t it, babe?” He looked down at Isla, and she was grateful for the excuse to look away from her ex. “Lots of restrictions on purchasing land up here. Buyer beware. Something to keep in mind.”

  Adam tried and failed to unclench his jaw as they watched Isla’s ex stroll across the street to Catie’s Cuts.

  He had to get back at the station soon. He only left to come and pick up some of Isla's day old cookies to take back for his crew. Now he wanted to stay firmly rooted at the bakery. Unless his radio went off, he wasn’t leaving until this fucking asshole was on his way out of town.

  But where he felt impotent rage, his beautiful wife suddenly kicked into action. She grabbed her phone and, as he watched on with wonder, she texted Catie.

  Isla: ALERT. The slimey fucker who’s walking in now is my ex-husband. Don’t sell him land.

  Catie: Roger. I only have swamp land available for one million dollars. I’m guessing he doesn’t want that?

  Isla laughed, but it had an edge to it that cut Adam to the quick.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered. A part of him was still reeling from the way she’d thrown herself at him—all of him had enjoyed the hell out of that until he realized why she needed him to kiss her—but mostly he just wanted her to feel better for real. Hug, kiss, or kicking someone’s ass. He was up for whatever would achieve that. “Do you want me to follow him to the town limit in the firetruck?”

  She patted him on the chest. “No. But thank you for that. I appreciate
it.”

  He wanted to talk to her about the kiss. To tell her it was okay, he knew it didn't mean anything.

  But there wasn't time to talk about that properly. So instead, he gave her another hug, a gentle one, and then he asked her if he could take cookies with him back to work.

  It killed him that he couldn't be at home with her that night, to make sure that she was safe and that the guy didn't come back. But when she texted him at the end of her workday to say she wasn’t going back to the house, but was going to Catie’s for a workout and dinner instead, he breathed a little easier.

  “I think you misrepresented yourself as a fitness newbie,” Isla gasped as she lay on the floor in Catie’s basement. All of her muscles burned, and they still had one more tabata on her planned workout.

  “Endurance has never been my problem.” Catie laughed. “That sounds wrong. But I’ve been an off-and-on runner my whole life. I can keep going. It’s the heavy lifting stuff I worry about.”

  “A lot of lifting is working smarter, not harder. You won’t be rescuing someone alone, you’ll be part of a team, and a group of people working together can easily accomplish what seems impossible for just one.”

  “When you say it like that, I believe you.”

  Isla smiled at the ceiling above her. “I spent a long time being paid to motivate people with words like that.”

  Catie didn’t reply right away, and then the timer went off. They dragged themselves through the last set of exercises, then collapsed again.

  “My shoulders,” Catie moaned.

  “That’s where the change happens.”

  “The pain? The burning?”

  Isla chuckled. “Yep.”

  “Great. I’m changing like a mofo, then.” Catie sighed. “All right. Food next.”

  They dragged themselves upstairs and Isla offered to help cook.

  Catie waved her to sit at the island in the middle of the kitchen. “You’re my guest. Sit.” She poured them each a glass of water. “Can I ask about being in the army?”

  “Sure. It was my entire life for a long time. And a good part of my life. I was really proud of my work, but all it takes is one bad experience for things to go sideways, and I had a couple in a row. So it was time to move on.”

  “Your ex…” Catie held up her hands. “And feel free to tell me if I’m being too nosy. But he said he’s in the army today. Did you serve together?”

  “Sort of. We didn’t work in the same unit, but we served on the same base. We met there, after my last tour overseas. I came home, and I was at a vulnerable place—in hindsight—so he moved in. Literally and figuratively. We were living together two months after we met, and he convinced me to buy a house three months after that. I thought it was a whirlwind romance. I fell head over heels in love with a promise, not a man, if that makes sense.”

  “He seemed like he makes promises easily.”

  Catie was a better reader of people than Isla. “I didn’t see that at all, but yes, exactly. Things started to fall apart just before our first anniversary. Well, they had never actually been good, but I didn’t know that. I baked him a cake, a really fancy one, and a handmade card. And he told me I was a disappointment as a wife. He told me I should be more like one of his colleagues—and that was when I realized he was sleeping with her already. On our anniversary, everything clicked into place, and I realized what a mistake I’d made.”

  That was the briefest slice off the surface, but Isla wasn’t going to dig into the past any deeper than that. The repeated infidelities she discovered, the gambling, the credit card bills that didn’t make any sense. She’d locked away that part of her life forever. She blinked quickly, not interested in hot, sad eyes tonight. Brett didn’t get to have that effect anymore.

  Catie was gripping her spatula like it was an eight-inch cleaver she wanted to whack into Brett’s neck. “And Adam didn’t lay him flat out when he saw him today?”

  “Adam doesn’t know that part. He knows the broadest strokes,” she hastened to add. “But I’ve never told him the details. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Or at least it hadn’t until Brett showed up.

  And Isla still didn’t know the real reason he had come to Pine Harbour looking for her, which meant he might be back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  That night’s shift stretched on forever. All Adam wanted was to be at home with Isla. He settled for texting with her before she went to bed. He made sure that she was locked up tight for the night, that she was feeling okay. And he told her to call him in the morning before she headed to the bakery. As soon as he got off shift the next morning, that was where he went. He headed back in that same door he had headed in the day before.

  This time she didn’t kiss him on the mouth with any kind of urgency, but she gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek when he told her he just needed to see her again before he went to sleep.

  “I’m feeling better about what happened,” she said. “You can go home. Get some rest.”

  He searched her face, then nodded. “Hey, how about I have a bubble bath waiting for you when you get home this afternoon?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her eyes lit up. “I was actually going to ask you if I could use your bathroom. I ordered some fancy bath stuff. It’s sitting in a box in my office.”

  Something about how she said that hit him squarely in the chest. She didn’t need to ask him if she could use the upstairs bathroom. They needed to revisit the terms of how they shared the house. The only reason he didn’t use her shower was because it was actually inside her bedroom. The bathroom upstairs didn’t have that same privacy limitation, and he wouldn’t care if it did.

  He didn’t want to invade her personal space. She was welcome to twirl through his all she wanted, but he could hardly say that. It didn’t feel right, some murky boundary that felt dangerous and forbidden. He wasn’t sure what would be worse, if she started to spend more time in his space and things stayed platonic between them, or if he invited her to tromp on those boundaries and she politely declined. Those were the two options. It wasn’t like she was going to magically fall head-over-tits in lust with him after all this time. He didn’t do it for her, and the deal they had was that he accepted that in order to have the rest of her, which was pretty fucking wonderful.

  The door opened and a customer came in. Isla nodded her head to the back. “Can you grab the bath stuff on your way out? It’s sitting in a Sephora box on my desk.”

  “Yep.” He headed through the open archway that led to the kitchen. Because Isla preferred her customers to be able to see the baking magic in progress—and smell it, too—she kept the kitchen absolutely pristine, but her little cubbyhole of an office was jammed full of papers and plans, a bit of a rabbit’s warren of long-ranging plans that may or may not ever happen.

  Adam liked the way Isla thought of everything, mapping out many different potential outcomes. She planned way down the road, nothing left to chance, because there was always another plan to pivot towards. The more he got to know her, the more he realized just how deeply her divorce rocked her—in part because she would have had long-term plans with her husband, too.

  He groaned to himself at the obviousness of the thought. Of course she did. That was what marriage was. Nothing but long-term plans with the love of one’s life. It would have rocked anyone to realize that wasn’t a mutual feeling.

  But he would bet that Isla had had it all planned out. Kids, maybe. Little blond toddlers with homemade cookies in their fists, saying thank you ever so politely before shoving the crumbly perfection into their sweet little mouths. How many would she have wanted?

  She’d never said a word about that.

  He wouldn’t ask. It seemed off limits—for now. Down the road, though, he wanted to know. He hoped they were building the kind of relationship where they might share confidences like that.

  The door chimed, another customer coming in, and he grabbed the brown cardboard box.

  At home, he had a quick
shower, then cleaned up the bathroom so his stuff wasn’t all over the counter, and then he fell into a deep, dream-filled sleep.

  When his alarm went off six hours later, he sent Isla a text letting her know he was up, and asked her to give him a heads up when she was coming home so he could run the bath for her.

  In the meantime, he assembled everything she might need to pamper herself. Her fancy bath items, two fresh towels, a candle for mood lighting, and a waterproof speaker that hooked up to his iPad, which he set on the counter.

  As soon as she texted back, he put the plug in the tub and started running the water, only to realize he didn’t know her preferred temperature. So he called her.

  “I’m just leaving the store now,” she said to a backdrop of street noise.

  “Great. Uh, how hot do you like your baths?”

  “Super hot. Boil me like a lobster hot.”

  Good thing he had asked, because that sounded painful, and wouldn’t be what he’d have done by default. “Got it.”

  “You don’t need to do this,” she said, her breath chopping a bit like she was walking quickly.

  “I want to. You’ve been working hard.”

  “Well, I’m lucky then. And I’m two blocks away now.”

  He adjusted the water temperature, then let it keep filling while he went downstairs.

  When she came in, she gave him a tired smile. “You’re a gem.”

  I want to be more than a gem. But there was no point in thinking like that, so he shoved that thought deep down where it belonged. “The tub is filling. I’ve set out everything you need.”

  He felt awkward following her upstairs, so instead of retreating to his own room, he grabbed a book and stretched out on the couch. He was well into chapter two when suddenly the quiet of the house was pierced by a panicked shriek from upstairs.

  He was halfway up the stairs when she screamed his name, and he skidded to a stop outside the bathroom door.

  “Are you okay?”