Always On My Mind Read online

  “Oh,” Elsie said, startled. “You’re still up?”

  Leah turned on the light. “Are you okay? Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “Oh, you know.” Elsie let out a little laugh. “My old bones creak and wake me up.” But Elsie didn’t look old. She looked…guilty. “Okay, so I was out. I…had a meeting.”

  “At midnight?”

  “Is it that late?” Elsie asked. “Huh.”

  “Who did you meet?”

  “Max Fitzgerald.”

  Elsie was on the Historical Society board with Max. She’d complained about him for years and years, calling him a liver-spotted, tight-lipped, tighter-assed renovation nazi.

  The name fit. “Why did you have such a late meeting? You forget to pay your dues or something?”

  Elsie grimaced and pulled her coat tighter around herself, but it didn’t miss Leah’s attention that Elsie was wearing her good “going out” shoes. Leah, once the master sneaker, felt her eyes narrow. “Grandma, what’s going on?”

  “Okay, but just remember, this all started out with me trying to surprise you,” Elsie said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You’ve been working so hard and without a single word of complaint.”

  “Grandma,” Leah said, both touched and irritated, “I love being here with you. I have nothing to complain about.”

  “But you’ve taken over so beautifully, and the place is such a mess. I know it is, Leah; don’t even try to deny it. I just wanted to see what kind of renovations we could make. Cheaply, of course. Something to help you.”

  “I’m good with how things are,” Leah said. “Other than wanting new ovens.” She meant this, one hundred percent. In fact, the truth was that she actually loved the bakery’s slightly antiquated setup. It made her work hard, made her think, made her concentrate. She liked having little brain power left over for anything else.

  Like what the hell she was going to do in two weeks when the Sweet Wars finals aired and the gig was up? Or why she was happier here, back in the place that had once upon a time been the bane of her existence, than she’d been anywhere else.

  Although she suspected this was because of a certain big, bad, gorgeous firefighter who, thanks to her own doing, was now her pretend boyfriend.

  And a hell of a kisser.

  “Well, you’re a doll for putting up with everything,” Elsie said. “Anyway, I wanted to see what I could do and ran the thought by Max first.”

  “Oh, Grandma,” Leah said softly. “You give him way too much power.”

  “And he said I was absolutely welcome to make any renovations.”

  “Yes, because you have every right to,” Leah pointed out. “Grandma—”

  “And so I was just having a drink to thank him, and he…invited me to the firefighter’s ball next month,” she ended in a rush.

  Leah opened her mouth again, but Elsie cut in before she could speak. “No. Don’t say whatever it is that you’re going to say. I was wrong about him. Okay, yes, he can be a fuddy-duddy, but he’s also very conscientious about our town’s history and takes his job seriously. And actually, he’s a very nice man. I’m sorry if I let you think otherwise, especially because I know you don’t think all that highly of the male race in general. And maybe that’s my fault too, for not correcting your notion that they’re all temperamental horse’s patoots. That was just your daddy, honey.”

  “Well, I know that.”

  Elsie smiled a little sadly. “Do you? Because you’re quick to judge a man, and even quicker to cut one out of your life.”

  This threw Leah off her game a little. “Of course I know it,” she said. “I like men, Grandma.” She’d been on her own a long time. Twelve years, actually, since the day she’d driven out of town at age eighteen and not looked back. She’d had relationships. Granted, nothing that had lasted, but as she’d told Dee, it only took one…

  But did she really believe that? “I’ve had boyfriends.”

  “Had? Past tense?” Her grandma’s eyes were sharp. “Don’t you have a boyfriend right now?”

  Well, she’d walked right into that one, hadn’t she? “You mean Jack.”

  “Do you have more than one?” Elsie asked with a laugh.

  Jack woke up before his alarm thanks to a sensation of being crushed. Sitting up, he turned on the light.

  At some point in the night, Kevin had climbed onto the bed with him. The dog lay on his back, all four legs straight up in the air as if he were roadkill, snoring loudly enough to rattle the windows.

  He had nearly the entire bed.

  “Hey,” Jack said and nudged him.

  Kevin stopped snoring but didn’t move a single muscle.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  Kevin slit open one eye.

  Jack pointed to the floor.

  With a sigh, Kevin heaved himself up and stepped off the bed. He sent Jack one soulful look over his shoulder before heading out of the room. Two seconds later Jack could hear the sound of Kevin slurping water out of his bowl, and no doubt drooling everywhere while he was at it.

  Jack rolled out of bed as well, showered, and then hit the road. He’d hired a day nurse for his mom, both to keep her company and to make sure she was getting everything she needed, especially when Jack was on shift and couldn’t help her himself.

  But when he stopped by his childhood home on the way to the station, Dee was already up and dressed and sitting at her kitchen table.

  Kevin bounded into the room and would’ve taken a flying leap at her, but Jack grabbed his collar just in time.

  “Gak,” Kevin said, eyes bulging, tongue hanging out.

  Ben stood behind the stove cooking a big spread of bacon, eggs, and french toast. “I thought you were home, still in bed,” Jack said.

  “You thought wrong.”

  Kevin, desperate to get at Dee, whined.

  “Sit,” Jack told him.

  Kevin barked. His bark was loud enough to pierce eardrums, and everyone in the room winced.

  “Not bark,” Jack said. “Sit.”

  Kevin offered a paw.

  Jesus. “Kevin. Sit.”

  Kevin turned in three circles and plopped down to the floor, which shook like an earthquake under the one-hundred-and-fifty-plus pounds.

  Dee laughed. “Such a sweet boy.”

  Kevin smiled at her.

  “Sweet, my ass,” Jack muttered.

  Ben began loading a mountain of food onto a plate, which he then brought to Dee.

  Dee, who always ate less than a bird whenever Jack had tried to feed her, beamed at Ben. “Thanks, sweetheart.” She gestured to Kevin, who all but scrambled his circuits trying to get up at the speed of light. Like a cat on linoleum, his paws fought for purchase as he raced to her side.

  “Now you be a very good boy,” Dee said to him, patting him on the head, which was level with hers. “Be a very good boy and sit for me. Can you do that, Kevin? Can you sit for me?”

  Kevin sent her an adoring smile and sat.

  Jack shook his head. “Fucker.”

  “Such a good boy,” Dee cooed. “So much better than my potty-mouthed son.”

  “He’s not a good boy,” Jack told her. “He’s a menace to society.”

  Kevin sent Jack a glare of reproach.

  “What are you doing here?” Jack asked Ben.

  “It was your turn to stock the fridge.”

  By “fridge,” Ben meant Jack’s fridge, as Ben didn’t use his own. “Yeah? So?”

  “So you bought beer, cookie dough, and peanut butter and jelly.”

  “Oh, Jack,” Dee admonished.

  “Hey,” he said in his defense, “I got the basic necessities.”

  Ben shook his head. “No wonder you’re single,” he said in the tone that they both knew would rile Dee up, which in turn would effectively get Jack in trouble. Ben’s favorite thing to do.

  “He’s not single,” Dee corrected. “He’s got Leah.”

  “Right,” Ben said dr