07 It Had to Be You Read online

  “Forever,” Aubrey repeated emphatically. “I’m off men forever,” and Leah felt herself relax a little.

  Which was silly. Jack could date whoever he wanted, and did. Often.

  “And anyway,” Aubrey went on, “that’s what batteries are for.”

  Ali laughed along with Aubrey as they all continued to watch Jack, who’d gone back to the griddle. He was moving to his music again while flipping pancakes, much to the utter delight of the crowd.

  “Woo-hoo!” Aubrey yelled at him, both she and Ali toasting him with their plastic cups filled with orange juice.

  Jack grinned and took a bow.

  “Hey,” Ali said, nudging Leah. “Go tip him.”

  “Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?” Aubrey asked.

  Leah rolled her eyes and stood up. “You’re both ridiculous. He’s dating some EMT flight nurse.”

  Or at least he had been as of last week. She couldn’t keep up with Jack’s dating life. Okay, so she chose to not keep up. “We’re just…buddies.” They always had been, she and Jack, through thick and thin, and there’d been a lot of thin. “When you go to middle school with someone, you learn too much about them,” she went on, knowing damn well that she needed to just stop talking, something she couldn’t seem to do. “I mean, I couldn’t go out with the guy who stole all the condoms on sex education day and then used them as water balloons to blast the track girls as we ran the four hundred.”

  “I could,” Aubrey said.

  Leah rolled her eyes, mostly to hide the fact that she’d left off the real reason she couldn’t date Jack.

  “Where you going?” Ali asked when Leah stood up. “We haven’t gotten to talk about the show. Sweet Wars. Episode one aired last night, and you were awesome.”

  “And also, you looked great on TV,” Aubrey said. “Bitch. I know you were judged on originality, presentation, and taste of product but you really should get brownie points for not looking fat. The show runs once a week for a month, right? Do you look as good for the next three episodes?”

  This subject was no better than the last one. “Gotta go,” Leah said, grabbing her plate and pointing to the cooking area. “There’s sausage now.”

  “Ah.” Aubrey nodded sagely. “So you do want Jack’s sausage.”

  Ali burst out laughing and Aubrey high-fived her.

  Ignoring them both, Leah headed toward the grill.

  Jack flipped a row of pancakes, rotated a line of sausage links, and checked the flame. He was in a waiting pattern.

  The status of his life.

  Behind him, two fellow firefighters were talking about how one had bought his girlfriend an expensive purse as an apology for forgetting the anniversary of their first date. The guy thought the present would help ease him out of the dog house.

  Jack knew better. The purse was a nice touch, but in his experience a man’s mistakes were never really forgotten, only meticulously catalogued in a woman’s frontal lobe to be pulled out later at her discretion.

  A guy needed to either avoid mistakes entirely, or get out of the relationship before any anniversaries came up.

  “Wuff.”

  This from Kevin, trying to get his attention.

  “No more sausage,” Jack called to him. “You know what happens when you eat too much. You stink me out of the bedroom.”

  Kevin had a big black spot over his left eye, giving him the look of a mischievous pirate as he gazed longingly at the row of sausages. When Jack didn’t go get him, the dog heaved a long sigh, and lay down, setting his head on his paws.

  “Heads up,” Tim called.

  Jack caught the gallon-sized container of pancake batter with one hand while continuing to flip pancakes with his other.

  “Pretty fancy handiwork,” a woman said.

  Leah.

  Jack turned and found her standing next to Kevin, holding a plate.

  Jack pointed just as the dog would have made his move. Great Danes had a lot of great qualities like loyalty and affection, but politeness was not one of them. Kevin lived to press his nose into ladies’ crotches, climb on people’s laps like he was a six pound Pomeranian, and eat…well, everything.

  And Kevin had his eyes on the prize—Leah’s plate.

  Jack gestured Leah closer with a crook of his finger. She’d shown back up in Lucky Harbor with shadows beneath her forest green eyes and lots of secrets in them, but she was starting to look a little more like herself. Her white gauzy top and leggings emphasized a willowy body made lean by hard work or tough times—knowing Leah it was probably both. Her silky auburn hair was loose, the choppy layers blowing around her face. He’d have called it her just-had-sex look, except she wasn’t sleeping with anyone at the moment.

  He knew this because one, Lucky Harbor didn’t keep secrets, and two, he worked at the firehouse, aka Gossip Central. He knew Leah was in a holding pattern too. And something was bothering her.

  Not your problem…

  But though he told himself that, repeatedly in fact, old habits were hard to break. His relationship with her was as long as it was complicated, but she’d been there for him whenever he’d needed her, no questions asked. In the past week alone she’d driven his mom to her doctor’s appointment, twice, fed and walked Kevin when Jack had been called out of county, and left a plate of cream cheese croissants in his fridge—his favorite. There was a lot of water beneath their bridge, but she mattered to him, even when he wanted to wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze.

  “You have any sausage ready?” she asked.

  At the word sausage, Kevin practically levitated. Ears quirking, nose wriggling, the dog sat up, his sharp eyes following as Jack forked a piece of meat and set it on Leah’s plate. When Jack didn’t share with Kevin as well, he let out a pitiful whine.

  Falling for it hook, line and sinker, Leah melted. “Aw,” she said. “Can I give him one?”

  “Only if you want to sleep with him tonight,” Jack said.

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Trust me, you would.”

  Coming up beside Jack, Tim waggled a brow at Leah. “I’ll sleep with you tonight. No matter how many sausages you eat.”

  Leah laughed. “You say that to all the women in line.”

  Tim flashed a grin, a hint of dimple showing. “But with you, I meant it. So…yes?”

  “No,” Leah said, still smiling. “Not tonight.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  Jack slid a look to Tim. “You have a death wish?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rookies who come onto Leah vanish mysteriously,” Jack said seriously. “Never to be seen again.”

  Tim narrowed his eyes. “Yeah? Who?”

  “The last rookie. His name was Tim too.”

  Leah laughed, and Tim rolled his eyes. At work he reported directly to Jack, but he’d already been marked as having authority problems and he didn’t look chastened in the slightest.

  “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 happy, but that didn’t mean he wanted