Forever and a Day (6 page)

Chocolate is good for three things. Two of them can’t be mentioned in polite company.

G
race closed her eyes to enjoy the feel of a man’s mouth on hers. Yep, just as heavenly as she remembered. Maybe even more so. She definitely felt a spark.

Actually, she felt a full fireworks display.

When Josh pulled back, she opened her eyes to his dark brown ones and caught his own flash of surprise before he masked it.

“We have a deal, then,” he said. “For today.”

He hadn’t worded it as a question, of course, which was just like a man. But he looked even more exhausted today than he had yesterday, and that both intrigued and worried her. She was extremely aware of his proximity, that his big, bad self wasn’t in wet, sandy ER scrubs today. He wore cargo pants and a fisherman’s sweater, both in black, both casual but expensive-looking, like he’d walked right out of an ad.

But she was even more aware that the entire art class was watching them.

Avidly.

Her phone buzzed. The incoming text was from Lucille:
Honey, I don’t mean to rush you but it’s rumored that the good doc has got the best hands in all of Lucky Harbor. Go for it.

Grace lifted her head and sent Lucille a look.

Lucille smiled innocently.

Grace rolled her eyes and nodded to Josh. “Fine. We have a deal.”

He handed her a key to his house and left.

Grace watched him go, thinking that his hands weren’t even his best part. “Excuse me a minute,” she said to the class, before running to catch up with Josh in the hall.

He turned to face her, and she shook her head, her body still humming from his kiss. “What was that?” she finally managed. “Back there.”

“You know what it was.”

Yeah. Yeah, she did. Chemistry. Holy Toledo, some damn
hot
chemistry. “But it shouldn’t be like this, not between us.” They were night and day. Oil and water. He might not know it, but she did. “It was a fluke.” That was all she could think, that it was a complete fluke. But his eyes darkened, and in response, her nipples got hard. “Okay, so maybe not,” she muttered, and crossed her arms over herself and her fake triple Ds.

He stepped closer, his voice low. “I’d prove it to you, but I’m not into kissing by committee.”

She looked over her shoulder and found Lucille and the entire art class leaning out the classroom door, unabashedly eavesdropping. She gave them the “shoo” signal, and they vanished.

“Impressive,” he said. “Be sure to use that level of authority on Tank today and try to avoid another swim.”

“I really thought he was in the water.”

“He likes to play hide-and-seek.”

“Good to know.” And she still had to take that crazy puppy out for another walk…

“Interesting T-shirt,” he said.

She looked down at herself, eternally grateful that she hadn’t gone the full Monty route after all. “It’s not as good as the real thing, but as it turns out, I’m pretty selective about who sees the real thing.”

His smile softened. His eyes crinkled in the corners, and the laugh lines on either side of his mouth deepened, stealing her breath. “Good to know,” he mirrored back at her.

It was a genuine smile from a man who didn’t appear to do it too often, and it left her a little dazed. Or maybe it was the crazy amount of testosterone coming off him in waves.

“Let me know if you have any trouble today,” he said.

“For what you’re paying me, there’ll be no trouble.” And if there was, he’d be the
last
man she’d call, amazing kisser or not, because they had a connection, and she knew the power of it now.

Grace wasn’t in Lucky Harbor to make a connection with a man she knew wasn’t her type. She was looking for
fun
, that was it, and in spite of Josh being sex-on-a-stick, she wasn’t sure he had a lot of fun in him. Steering clear was her smartest option here. And no matter how good he was with his hands, she was going to be smart, if it killed her.

A few hours later, Grace headed to Josh’s house. As she parked, she noticed she had an unread text from Mallory.

Hey, head’s up. The hottest doctor in town just came by and coerced me into telling him where you were. I folded like a cheap suitcase. Sorry, but he’s hard to say no to. Don’t be mad. I owe you a cupcake.

Yeah, an entire batch. Grace shook her head and let herself into Josh’s house without incident. This time, she carefully leashed Tank
before
she opened his baby gate, and then as a double precaution, she just as carefully picked him up and carried him outside.

She might not be a blood-born Brooks genius, but she was quick on the learning curve.

She avoided the beach entirely, instead setting Tank down to walk alongside the quiet street. Tank sniffed every single rock, every last tree, and then finally chose a spot to hunch and do his business.

“Hey!” A man stuck his head out of a window of the house. “Don’t think I don’t see that you’re not carrying a doodie bag! You come back with a doodie bag and clean that up!”

A doodie bag?
Grace had seen a stack of plastic baggies by Tank’s leash. Guess she knew what they were for now. She scooped Tank back up. “I hope you’re done.”

Tank snorted and licked her chin.

“I mean it!” the man yelled at her. “Make sure you take care of that mess or I’ll call the cops on you.”

Grace took Tank back to the house, securing him in the laundry room. Then she reluctantly grabbed a bag to go do her “doodie” duty. As she turned to the door, she nearly tripped over a young woman in a wheelchair. She was twentyish, petite, dark-haired, her eyes as dark and alluring as the man she had to be related to.

“Anna,” she said, introducing herself. “The crazy sister. And you must be the nude girl he kissed.”

Grace choked. “
What?
”

“Yeah, you haven’t seen?” Anna pulled her phone from a pocket and thumbed a few buttons, then turned the screen for Grace.

It was Lucky Harbor’s Facebook page, and a picture of Grace in the bikini T-shirt that was going to haunt her for the rest of her damn life. And her lips were indeed connected to Josh’s. The kiss had lasted only a heartbeat, but one would never know it by the picture, which had been captured at just the right nanosecond, showing Grace leaning into Josh with her entire body, both hands on his chest.

She hadn’t realized she’d touched him so intimately, but now she could remember the heat radiating through his shirt, the easy strength of him beneath. And he’d smelled delicious.

But God, had she really looked at him so adoringly?

Josh hadn’t been so innocent either. He had one big hand cupping her jaw, his thumb clearly stroking her skin in a way that seemed both tender and yet somehow outrageously sexy.

“Cozy,” Anna said dryly.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Grace said, giving her back the phone.

“No?” Anna asked, looking down at the screen again. “Because it looks like you’re kissing. You’re not kissing?”

“Okay, so we’re kissing, but that’s only because the day before he’d said he’d kiss me if I lost the dog and then…” Grace trailed off, unable to remember exactly how it was that she’d ended up with Josh’s mouth on hers.

On the Internet.

Anna arched a brow.

Grace sighed. “Well, this is embarrassing. We’re not…I mean, he and I aren’t—”

“Oh, no worries,” Anna said. “I know you’re not his girl toy. He wouldn’t have hired you if you were.”

“Girl toy?”

“Yeah, Josh doesn’t bring his women home.”

Well ouch. “Okay, good.”
Great.
Because, hey, she’d already decided that the two of them weren’t going to do this. This being anything. So yeah, this was really great.

“Hang on,” Anna said. “I just want to share the link with everyone I know…” She hit a few keys, then smiled. “There. God, how I love it when he does something stupid. It’s so rare, you know? And then when he finally does it, he really does it right.” She unlocked the baby gate, freeing Tank just as a young boy came tearing into the kitchen. He was waving a lightsaber and making some sort of war cry as he ran circles around the kitchen table.

Tank took off right on his heels, barking so hard his back legs kept coming off the floor. Quite the feat, given that his belly swung so low.

The kid was wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. His jeans were streaked with dirt and low enough on his narrow little hips to reveal his underwear waistband, which was also Star Wars. His battered athletic shoes lit up with each step he made, and the right one was untied. He was maybe five, with dark hair that definitely hadn’t seen a brush that morning, and his melting, dark chocolate eyes matched Dr. Josh Scott’s. He stopped short at the sight of Grace, and Tank plowed into the back of his feet, then fell to his butt and gave out a little startled yelp.

“Toby,” Anna said. “You’re going to stay here with Grace. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Wait…what?” Grace shook her head. “No, I’m just the dog babysitter.”

“Yeah?” Anna asked. “Are you babysitting the dog right now?”

“Well, yeah, but—” She broke off at Anna’s amused look and whirled around to find the puppy chewing on the kitchen table leg.
Crap.
“Hey,” she said. “No chewing on that.”

Tank kept chewing. Grace went over there and pried him loose but she was too late. He’d left deep gouges in the beautiful wood.

Anna tugged affectionately on a lock of Toby’s hair. “The dogsitter will make you an after-school snack. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Slugger.”

Grace was still shaking her head. A dog was one thing. But a kid? There was no counting the number of ways she could screw this one up. “Wait a minute.”

But Anna wasn’t waiting. She was actually at the door. “No worries, he’s easy. The regular nanny, Katy, ditched Toby today, so we picked him up from school, but I’ve got things to do, so…”

“We?”

A horn sounded from out front. Grace looked out the window and saw a rusty pickup truck.

“Gotta go,” Anna said, and wheeled out.

“But…” But nothing. Anna was gone, gone, gone. And Grace had just been promoted to a job for which she had absolutely no qualifications. She looked at Toby.

Toby looked at her right back, solemn-faced, his dark eyes giving nothing away.

“Hi,” Grace said.

“Arf,” he said.

“Arf,” Tank said, dragging a running shoe that was bigger than himself. He’d already chewed a hole in the toe. Eyes bulging, tongue lolling out the side of his smashed-in face, Tank sat and panted proudly at the prize he offered her.

It was going to be a long hour. She liberated the shoe and searched her brain for some way to relate to a five-year-old kid holding a toy lightsaber. Who barked. “So are you a Jedi warrior?”

Toby swung the lightsaber wide. It lit up and went
whoosh, vrrmm-whoosh
.

Tank promptly went nuts, so naturally Toby swung again.

Whoosh, vrrmm-whoosh.

Toby hit a home run with a cup of juice that had been on the kitchen table, sending it flying through the air. Luckily the cup was plastic. Not so luckily, the juice was grape, and purple sticky liquid splattered like rain on the table, the floor, the counters, Grace, and both Tank and Toby. Even the ceiling took a hit.

Toby dropped the lightsaber as if it were a hot potato.

Tank scooped it up by the handle in his sharp puppy teeth and began running circles around the table again, both belly and lightsaber dragging on the ground, still lighting up, still making
whooshing
noises.

“It’s okay,” Grace said to a stricken-looking Toby, grabbing a roll of paper towels from the counter, swiping at the kid first. But the sticky clothes didn’t appear to bother him any because he stepped free and headed toward the fridge.

Tank dropped the lightsaber, redirecting his reign of terror to licking the floor.

“Toby?” Grace asked. “Where’s the trash?”

The boy made a vague gesture over his shoulder toward the back door and stuck his head into the fridge.

Grace went to wipe down the table and instead stared at the stack of twenties, underneath a grape-splotched sticky note that had
Grace
scrawled across it in bold print. She picked up the money and started counting. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty…
One hundred and sixty bucks
. It took her a minute to figure it out—forty for yesterday, triple that for today.

It was ridiculous, of course, and yet…the things she could do with a hundred and sixty bucks. Staring at it longingly, she thought of her overloaded credit card, her student loans, and the weekly rent she had coming due at the B&B where she’d been living.

Not to mention the cleaning bill for getting grape juice out of today’s sundress. Shaking her head, she pocketed forty. Nothing for yesterday since she’d screwed up, and forty for today. Because she wouldn’t screw today up. Leaving the rest, she stepped out the back door with the sticky paper towels, which she dumped into the trash can. Now that she had a moment of privacy, she pulled out her cell phone and hit Josh’s number to fill him in.

He picked up, sounding harried. “Dr. Scott.”

Her brain stuttered at the sound of his low voice, the same low voice that had prompted her into a moment of insanity earlier. That kiss…“One hundred and sixty bucks?” she said in disbelief. “What exactly are you expecting for this hundred and sixty bucks?”

There was a beat of silence. She figured he was probably wondering who the crazy lady was, so she decided to clarify. “It’s Grace,” she said, trying for calm efficiency. She was used to calm efficiency, after all. Used to order. Used to things balancing.

Or she
had
been used to those things, back when she’d been gainfully employed, making something of herself, something very big and very important. Back way before she’d come to Lucky Harbor and taken on the first job she’d ever had that was completely over her head.

“You needed the money,” Josh said. “Right?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “But a hundred and sixty dollars?”