It Had to Be You (53 page)

Six months later

I
can’t believe we’re doing this.” Jake turned over once, and then again, in a useless attempt at comfort. Max, one of Tiger’s soft brown puppies, took advantage of the moment to lick his face. Laughing, he pushed the not-so-little-anymore puppy away.

Callie smiled and stroked the excited puppy. “You promised if I made it through your firefighter training course, you’d try camping again.” She spoke patiently, even lovingly, but she had a wide grin on her face, assuring Jake she was enjoying every moment of this.

This being Jake inside a small tent, inside an even smaller sleeping bag with a wild puppy, trying to get comfortable. “I think there’re a thousand rocks right beneath me.”

“Big baby,” she teased.

Back in Arizona after a training session in San Diego, she’d dragged him out here in the Dragoons with far too much glee. With a wicked smile, she picked up Max, set him right outside the tent, attaching his collar to a long lead. “Be good for a few minutes,” she said, and zipped the tent shut. Still smiling, she pulled off her sweatshirt. Her T-shirt went next, leaving her in a leopard push-up bra. While Jake’s mouth went dry, she shimmied off her jeans.

Her panties matched her bra.

“I charged them,” she said a little breathlessly, and climbed into the sleeping bag with him. On top of him.

His hands went on a tour of her body. “I love your Visa.”

“Actually, it was yours.”

He laughed. “Why don’t we just get one Visa together, dedicated to your lingerie issues. I have no problem donating to the cause.”

“One Visa?” She eyed him carefully. “That sounds…serious.”

“Uh-huh.” He swept the hair from her face and just lay back soaking up the incredible feeling of having her warm, soft body draped over his. “And while we’re at it, why don’t we use the same last name?”

She looked at him, her eyes huge. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

He traced her jaw. “How about it, Callie? You’re already my lover, my best friend, and most definitely my better half. What do you say you make an honest man out of me and make me a husband as well?”

Her eyes shimmered brilliantly, but her voice, when she spoke, was light with teasing. “I’m not sure. I want a husband who can appreciate the finer points of the life out here—including camping.”

“Make you a deal.” He rolled with her, until she was tucked beneath him. “We sleep like this, and I’ll camp every single night.”

“Now there’s a deal I just can’t pass up.” She laughed and rolled again, and they tangled for a while, somehow losing all of Jake’s clothes as well, which worked for the both of them.

“So, the future Mrs. Rawlins…”

She touched his face. “Yes, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I love you.”

“Love you too, Jake.”

S
aying that she went to the Firefighters’ Charity Breakfast for pancakes was like saying she watched baseball for the game—when everyone knew that you watched baseball for the guys in the tight uniform pants.

But today Leah Sullivan really did want pancakes. She also wanted her grandma to live forever, world peace, and hey, while she was making wishes, she wouldn’t object to being sweet-talked out of her clothes sometime this year.

But those were all issues for another day. Mid-August was hinting at an Indian summer for the Pacific Northwest. The morning was warm and heading toward hot as she walked to the already crowded pier. The people of Lucky Harbor loved a get-together, and if there was food involved—and cute firefighters to boot—well, that was just a bonus.

Leah accepted a short stack of pancakes from Tim Denison, a firefighter from Station #24. He was a rookie, fresh from the academy and at least five years younger than her, which didn’t stop him from sending her a wink. She took in his beachy, I-belong-on-a-Gap-ad-campaign appearance and waited for her good parts to flutter.

They didn’t.

For reasons unknown, her good parts were on vacation and had been for months.

Okay, so not for reasons unknown. But not wanting to go there, not today, she blew out a breath and continued down the length of the pier.

Picnic tables had been set up, most of them full of other Lucky Harbor locals supporting the firefighters’ annual breakfast. Leah’s friend Ali Winters was seated and halfway through a huge stack of pancakes, eyeing the food line as if considering getting more.

Leah plopped down beside her. “You eating for two already?”

“Bite your tongue.” Ali aimed her fork at her and gave her a pointed
don’t mess with me
look. “I’ve only been with Luke for two months. Pregnancy isn’t anywhere on the to do list yet. I’m just doing my part to support the community.”

“By eating two hundred pancakes?”

“Hey, the money goes to the senior center.”

There was a salty breeze making a mess of Leah’s and Ali’s hair, but it didn’t dare disturb the woman sitting on the other side of Ali. Nothing much disturbed the cool-as-a-cucumber Aubrey Wellington.

“I bet sex is on your to do list,” Aubrey said, joining their conversation.

Ali gave a secret smile.

Aubrey narrowed her eyes. “I could really hate you for that smile.”

“You
should
hate me for this smile.”

“Luke’s that good, huh?”

Ali sighed dreamily. “He’s
magic
.”

“Magic’s just an illusion,” Aubrey said, and licked the syrup off her fork while managing to somehow look both beautifully sophisticated and graceful.

Back in their school days, Aubrey had been untouchable, tough as nails, and Leah hadn’t been anywhere even in the vicinity of her league. Nothing much had changed there. She looked down at herself and sucked in her stomach.

“There’s no illusion when it comes to Luke,” Ali told Aubrey. “He’s one hundred percent real. And all mine.”

“Well, now you’re just being mean,” Aubrey said. ”And that’s my arena. Leah, what’s with the expensive shoes and cheap haircut?”

Leah put a hand to her choppy layers and Aubrey smiled at Ali, like See?
That’s
how you do mean…

Most of Leah’s money went towards her school loans and helping to keep her grandma afloat, but she did have one vice. Okay, two, but being addicted to Pinterest wasn’t technically a vice. Her love of shoes most definitely was. She’d gotten today’s strappy leather wedges from a street fair in Paris, and they’d been totally worth having to eat apples and peanut butter for a week. “They were on sale,” she said, clicking them together like she was Dorothy in Oz. “They’re knock-offs,” she admitted.

Aubrey sighed. “You’re not supposed to say that last part. It’s not as fun to be mean when you’re nice.”

“But I am nice,” Leah said.

“I know,” Aubrey said. “And I’m trying to like you anyway.”

The three of them were an extremely unlikely trio, connected by a cute, quirky, old Victorian building in downtown Lucky Harbor. The building was older than God, currently owned by Aubrey’s uncle, and divided into three shops. There was Ali’s floral shop, Leah’s Grandma Elsie’s bakery, and last but not least, a neglected bookstore that Aubrey had been making noises about taking over since her job at Town Hall had gone south a few weeks back.

Neither Ali nor Leah were sure yet if having Aubrey in the building every day would be fun or a nightmare. But regardless, Aubrey knew her path. So did Ali.

Leah admired the hell out of that. Especially since she’d never known her path. She’d known one thing, the need to get out of Lucky Harbor—and she had. At age seventeen she’d left and had rarely looked back.

But she was back now, putting her pastry chef skills to good use helping her grandma out with the bakery while she recovered from knee surgery. The problem was, Leah had gotten out of the habit of settling into one place.

Not quite true
, said a little voice inside her. If not for a string of spectacularly bad decisions, she’d have finished French culinary school. Or not embarrassed herself on the reality TV show
Sweet Wars
. Or…

Don’t go there
.

Instead, she scooped up a big bite of fluffy pancakes and concentrated on their delicious goodness rather than her own screw-ups. Obsessing over her bad decisions was something she saved for the deep dark of night.

“Jack’s at the griddle,” Ali noted.

Leah twisted around to look at the cooking setup. Fire station #24 was one of four that serviced the county, and thanks to the Olympic Mountains at their back with their million acres of forest, all four stations were perpetually busy.

Lieutenant Jack Harper was indeed manning the griddle. He was tall and broad shouldered, and looked like a guy who could take on anything that came his way. This was a good thing since he ran station #24. He could be as intimidating as hell when he chose to be, which wasn’t right now since he was head-bopping to some beat in his headphones that only he could hear. Knowing him, it was some good, old-fashioned, ear-splitting hard rock.

Not too far from him, leashed to a bench off to the side of the cooking area sat the biggest Great Dane Leah had ever seen. He was white with black markings that made him look like a Dalmatian wannabe, and his name was Kevin.

Kevin had been given to a neighboring fire station where he’d remained until he’d eaten one too many expensive hoses, torn up one too many beds, and chewed dead one too many pairs of boots. The rambunctious one-year-old had then been put up for adoption.

The only problem, no one had wanted what was by then a hundred-and-fifty pound nuisance. Kevin had been headed for the Humane Society when Jack, always the protector, always the savior, had stepped in a few weeks back and saved the dog.

Just like he’d done for Leah more times than she could count.

As far as it went for Kevin, it’d become a great source of entertainment for the entire town that Jack Harper II, once the town terror himself—at least to mothers of teenage daughters everywhere—was now in charge of the
latest
town terror.

Another firefighter stepped up to the griddle, apparently to relieve Jack because Jack loaded a plate for himself and stepped over to Kevin. He flipped the dog a sausage, which Kevin caught in midair with one snap of his huge jaws. The sausage instantly vanished and Kevin licked his lips, staring intently at Jack’s plate as if he could make more sausage fly into his mouth by wish alone.

Jack laughed and crouched down to talk to the dog, a movement that had his shirt riding up, revealing low-riding BDUs—his uniform pants—a strip of taut, tantalizing male skin, and just the hint of a perfect ass.

On either side of Leah, both Ali and Aubrey gave lusty sighs. Leah completely understood; she could feel her own lusty sigh catching in her throat but she squelched it. They were in the F-zone, she and Jack.
Friends.
Friends didn’t do lust, or if they did, they also did the smart, logical thing and ignored it. Still, she felt a smile escape her at the contagious sound of Jack’s laughter. Truth was, he’d been making her smile since the sixth grade, when she’d first moved to Lucky Harbor.

As if sensing her appraisal, Jack lifted his head. His dark mirrored sunglasses prevented her from catching exactly where his eyes landed, but she knew he was looking right at her because he arched a dark brow.

And on either side of her, Ali and Aubrey sighed again.

“Really?” Leah asked them.

“Well, look at him,” Aubrey said unapologetically. “He’s hot, he’s got rhythm, and not just the fake white-boy kind either. And for a bonus, he’s gainfully employed. It’s just too bad I’m off men forever.”

“Forever’s a long time,” Ali said, and Leah’s gut cramped at the thought of the beautiful, blonde Aubrey going after Jack.

But Jack was still looking at Leah. Those glasses were still in the way but he didn’t have to remove them for her to know that his dark eyes were framed by thick, black lashes and the straight, dark lines of his eyebrows. Or that the right one was sliced through by a thin scar, which he’d gotten at age fourteen when he and his cousin Ben had stolen his mom’s car and driven it into a fence.

“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.