Forever and a Day (Lucky Harbor) Read online

  “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