Always On My Mind Read online

“I’ll risk it,” he said cockily to Leah.

  Jack wondered if he’d still be looking so sure of himself later when he’d be scrubbing down fire trucks by himself. All of them.

  Leah yawned and rubbed a hand over her eyes, and Jack forgot about Tim. “Maybe you should switch to Wheaties,” Jack said. “You look like you need the boost.”

  She met his gaze. “Tim thought I looked all right.”

  “You know it, babe,” Tim said, still shamelessly eavesdropping. “Change your mind about tonight, and I’ll make sure you know exactly how good you look.”

  Jack revised his plan about Tim cleaning the engines. The rookie would be too busy at the senior center giving a hands-on fire extinguisher demonstration, which every firefighter worth his salt dreaded because the seniors were feisty, didn’t listen, and in the case of the female seniors, liked their “hands-on” anything training.

  Oblivious to his fate, Tim continued to work the grill. Jack kept his attention on Leah. He wanted her to do whatever floated her boat, but he didn’t want her dating a player like Tim. But saying so would be pretty much like waving a red flag in front of a bull, no matter how pretty that bull might be. She’d give a stranger the very shirt off her back, but Jack had long ago learned to not even attempt to tell her what to do or she’d do the opposite just because.

  She had a long habit of doing just that.

  He blamed her asshole father, but in this case it didn’t matter because Leah didn’t seem all that interested in Tim’s flirting anyway.

  Or in anything actually.

  Which was what was really bothering Jack. Leah loved the challenge of life, the adventure of it. She’d been chasing that challenge and adventure as long as he’d known her. It was contagious—her spirit, her enthusiasm, her ability to be as unpredictable as the whim of fate.

  And unlike anyone else in his world, she alone could lighten a bad mood and make him laugh. But her smile wasn’t meeting her eyes. Nudging her aside, out of Tim’s earshot, he waited until she looked at him. “Hey,” he said.

  “Aren’t you worried you’ll vanish mysteriously, never to be seen again?”

  “I’m not a rookie.”

  She smiled, but again it didn’t meet her eyes.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Always.” And then she popped a sausage into her mouth.

  Jack got the message loud and clear. She didn’t want to talk. He could appreciate that. Hell, he was at his happiest not talking. But she’d had a rough year, first with the French culinary school disaster, where she’d quit three weeks before graduation for some mysterious reason, and then Sweet Wars.

  Rumor had it that she’d gone pretty far on the show, outshining the best of the best. He knew she was under contractual obligations to keep quiet about the results, but he’d thought she’d talk to him.

  She hadn’t.

  Jack had watched each episode, cheering her on. Last night she’d created puff pastries on the clock for a panel of celebrity chefs who’d yelled—a lot. Most of Leah’s competition had been completely rattled by their bullying ways, but Leah had had a lifetime of dealing with someone just like that. She’d won the challenge, hands down. And even if Jack hadn’t known her as well as he did, he’d have pegged her as the winner of the whole thing.

  But she wasn’t acting like a winner.

  Had she quit that too?

  Because the truth was that she tended to run from her demons. She always had, and some things never changed.

  She met his gaze. “What?”

  “You tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She shook her head, her pretty eyes surprisingly hooded from him. “I’ve learned to fight my own battles, Jack.”

  Maybe. But it wasn’t her battles he wanted to fight, he realized, so much as he wanted to see her smile again and mean it.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, Leah walked to the bakery. From her grandma’s house, downtown was only a mile or so, and she liked the exercise, even at four in the morning.

  Maybe especially at four in the morning.

  Lucky Harbor sat nestled in a rocky cove between the Olympic Mountains and the coast, the architecture an eclectic mix of old and new. She’d been to a lot of places since she’d left here, but there’d been nowhere like this small, cozy, homey town.

  The main drag of Lucky Harbor was lined with Victorian buildings painted in bright colors, housing everything from the post office to an art gallery. At the end of the street was the turnoff to the harbor, where a long pier jutted out into the water with its café, arcade, ice cream shop, and Ferris wheel.

  Right now, everything was closed. Leah was the only one out on the street. She loved the look of Lucky Harbor on sleepy mornings like this, with the long column of fog floating in from the ocean, the twinkle of the white lights strung along the storefronts and in the trees that lined the sidewalks.

  Like a postcard.

  And all of it, right down to the salty ocean air, evoked a myriad of memories. So did the bakery as she unlocked it and let herself in. It was warm already, and for now, quiet. Later, Riley would show up. Riley was a Lucky Harbor transplant who’d made her way to town as a runaway teen and then had been taken under the wing of Amy, a friend of Leah’s. Riley had grown up a lot in the past few years and was now a part-time college student who worked a few hours a week at both the local café and the bakery. At the moment, though, Leah was alone. She flipped on the lights, and as always, the electricity hummed and then dimmed, fighting for enough power before settling. The cranky old building needed a renovation in the worst way, but Mr. Lyons was so tight with his money he squeaked when he walked.

  So tight that he had the building in escrow. No word yet on what the new owner might be like, though he’d promised everyone that he’d honor their leases. This left them safe for the rest of the year at least.

  Leah turned on the ovens. They were just as temperamental as the old building. She had to kick the broiler plate twice before hearing the whoomp of the gas as it caught. One more day, she thought with some satisfaction. The bakery was going to hold together for at least one more day.

  Her grandma Elsie had been baking for fifty-plus years, but she hadn’t experimented much in the past few decades. Leah had pretty much taken over, updating the offerings, tossing out the old-fashioned notion of frozen cookie dough, taking great joy in creating all new, all fresh every morning.

  It was a lot of work, but she welcomed it because there was something about baking that allowed her to lose herself. Several hours later, she might have had to kick the ovens no less than twelve more times, but the day’s offerings were looking damn good. Bread, croissants, and donuts…not exactly the fancy fare she’d gotten used to creating at school or on Sweet Wars, but she loved it anyway. And she’d done it all in spite of the equipment.

  After that, she shelved her freshly made pastries in the glass display out front and dreamed about finishing culinary school someday. She stopped daydreaming when the bell over the door chimed for the first time that morning. Forest Ranger Matt Bowers strode in mid-yawn.

  Leah automatically poured him a Dr. Pepper on tap and bagged up two cheese danishes—his morning special.

  “Enjoyed Sweet Wars the other night,” he said. “You’re the best one.”

  If you can’t be the best, Leah, don’t bother being anything at all.

  Her father’s favorite sentence. His second-favorite sentence had been Christ, Leah Marie, don’t you ever get tired of screwing up? And then there’d been her personal favorite. You’re going to amount to nothing.

  She knew there were people who’d had it far rougher than she had growing up, but his words had always sliced deeply, and her mother’s halfhearted attempts to soften the blows with “he means well” or “he loves you” hadn’t helped. Instead, they’d left her confused, hurt, and feeling like she could never please.

  As a result, she wasn’t very good with praise. It made her uncomfortable, like there was a