Once in a Lifetime (7 page)

B
en was halfway down the street with absolutely no destination in mind when his phone vibrated.

“Don’t forget,” Jack said when Ben answered. “Craft Corner starts tomorrow. You need to be at the rec center between the elementary school and high school by three fifteen.”

Shit. He’d completely forgotten. His brain was currently on overload.

Kiss
overload.

And yeah, it’d been a while since he’d kissed a woman, but he was pretty sure a kiss had never fogged up his head the way that Aubrey’s kiss just had.

It was her mouth, he decided. It was a pretty damn great mouth. “And if I’ve changed my mind?” Ben asked.

“I’ll change it back for you,” Jack said.

Ben laughed, because this was just bullshit posturing on his cousin’s part. Probably. Either way, he wasn’t all that worried, since he could fight mean and dirty as a snake when he had to.

But…he’d taught Jack everything he knew. “What the hell am I supposed to do with a bunch of kids at some stupid Craft Corner?” he asked.

“You’ve got a truck full of tools; you’ll figure it out,” Jack said, and then hung up.

Great. He was so
not
busy that he’d been reduced to playing arts and crafts with teenagers. He went home and barely slept—when he wasn’t fantasizing about Aubrey’s mouth.

He got up early and ran a few miles with Sam. “Do I look bored to you?” he asked Sam.

Sam’s lips twitched. “If you’re asking, you’re bored.”

Yeah. Shit. After he got home and showered, he formally applied for the job with the county, just to get Luke off his ass.

That afternoon, he pulled up to the rec center just as the school bus was dumping a load of kids off.

These weren’t high school kids; they were much younger. Elementary school kids. Some looked as though they could be in kindergarten.

Then he saw Pink and Kendra, and he got a very bad feeling. He whipped out his cell phone and called Jack.

He didn’t pick up. Fucker, he thought. Surely the older kids were already here, and that’s who he’d be working with. No one, especially Jack, would think to put
him
in charge of little kids. He walked to the back of his truck. He’d loaded up a crate full of tools, figuring they’d wing it.

Pink squealed at the sight of him and ran up close, dragging Kendra behind her. “Mister! Hi! Whatcha doing here?”

“Teaching Craft Corner.”

She squealed again, confirming all his suspicions before she let out a “Yay! That’s where we’re headed, too!”

They walked into the classroom assigned to Craft Corner, hanging on him like they owned the place because they knew the teacher. Ben set down his crate of saws and hammers and chisels and soldering tools, and one of the grade school teachers—apparently a few of them volunteered here after school—gave him a horrified look. “What is
that
?” she asked.

“Stuff for Craft Corner.” He paused. “For high school kids, right?”

The girls were jumping up and down at his side, clapping their hands in uncontained joy and excitement.

The teacher shook her head. “No. This is Craft Corner for ages five to seven.”

Jack, you bastard
…

The teacher heaved a put-upon sigh, pulled out a set of keys, and went to a closet. She unlocked a cabinet and gestured to it.

“What’s that?” Ben asked.

“Spare materials.”

He stared at the shelves stocked with things like buckets of glitter glue and popsicle sticks. “What do I do with all this?”

“I don’t care, as long as you keep them busy for an hour and a half.”

And then she was gone.

Ben had once been in a remote area of Somalia with two other engineers when they’d been surrounded by a group of starving rebels. They’d rounded up Ben and his two co-workers, stolen everything they had, beaten the shit out of them for good measure, and left them for dead.

That had been less painful than this—being with a group of twenty kids staring at him with excitement and hope that he was about to do something cool. Because he had nothing. To stall, he dumped out the bucket of popsicle sticks, spread them around. Did the same with the glue.

Pink tugged on the hem of his T-shirt. “So what are we doing, mister? Making something really neat, right?”

“Right.” He shoved things around in the supply cabinet, looking for something—anything—to help him.

“Are we going to do it today?” she asked.

He turned to her, but she appeared to be utterly unconcerned over the long look he gave her, the one that would’ve had a grown man cowering in his boots. She just met his gaze straight on and smiled.

Last year in Thailand, he’d had a group of local teenagers assigned to assist him on a project. They’d been quick studies, smart as hell, and, best of all, resourceful. During their off time, they’d shown Ben how to weave. Baskets, hats, even shoes. An engineer to the bone, Ben had taken their weaving techniques one step further. He’d taught them how to extract lumber from the piles and piles of debris that lay everywhere. What had worked in their favor was the humidity, which made the wet scraps they found thin, malleable, and easy to work with. They’d been able to weave effectively with no tools at all. Using building skills they learned from Ben, they’d made a bunch of aesthetically pleasing baskets. What had started out as a fun project to cure boredom and stimulate the teens had turned into a viable way for them to actually make a living—to trade the baskets for the things they needed to survive. Ben had left there knowing that he’d truly given something back.

He held no such illusions here. These kids weren’t going to remember him or these stupid sticks. But he still had an hour and twenty-eight minutes on the clock, so he had to do something. “Okay, we’re going to make a picture frame.”

“What will we put in the frame?” Pink asked, her cute little face upturned to his.

Good question. They didn’t care about getting a photo printed. These kids had cell phones and iPads and all sorts of shit on which they could bring up a picture at the touch of a thumb. “I meant a collage,” he said. “We’re going to make a collage.”

“What’s that?” someone wanted to know.

“Stuff you collect.”

“What’ll we collect?” another kid asked.

He smiled as the idea came to him.

Five minutes later, he had all the kids in the rec center parking lot, finding “treasures” from his truck. Kendra was cradling a few quarters and Oreos. Another girl had claimed all the chocolate-kiss candy wrappers he’d tossed in the back. One of the other kids had found a baseball cap and a pair of flip-flops; Ben had no idea whom they belonged to. Yet another kid went through the glove compartment, making Ben damn glad he no longer kept condoms in there. But his maintenance records were now officially someone’s art project. Several of the boys had gathered up the rest of his change and were making a mint off of him. One of them held up a ten-dollar bill with a whoop. Ben winced over the loss.

“Hey, this is a pretty napkin,” Pink said of the—surprise—
pink
napkin she’d found. It had seven digits on it. A few weeks back, a waitress had scribbled down her number and shoved it in Ben’s pocket, and he’d forgotten about it. “Uh…” he said, but Pink was cradling it as though it were gold, so he let it go.

Someone else had found several coffee cups and a parking ticket. Ben winced again. He’d forgotten about that ticket…

An hour and twenty-six minutes later, they were done. Each kid had a frame made by hand out of popsicle sticks, and inside each one was an assemblage of things they’d collected—from his now-clean truck.

Win-win, he thought.

When he’d been relieved by Ms. Uptight Teacher, he headed back to his blissfully empty truck. He slid behind the wheel and started to turn the key when he saw two familiar little redheads walking down the street.

Alone.

Shit
. “Don’t do it,” he said to himself. But he put the truck back into park, pocketed his keys, and got out. “Hey.”

Pink, holding her sister’s hand, whipped around. When she caught sight of him, she beamed. “Mr. Teacher!”

“You’re walking home,” he said.

“Well, yeah. But on the next block we run, ’cause that’s where Kelly and the mean dog live.”

He sighed grimly. “Get in.”

She beamed.

Kendra beamed.

And the next thing Ben knew, he’d put them both in his truck, cinched down by seat belts, legs swinging, smiles across their faces.

He pulled up to their foster home and idled a minute. “How long have you lived here?”

They both shrugged. “A while,” Pink declared. “Since all the bad stuff.”

He was afraid to ask, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to. Pink didn’t have a filter. “Our grandma died,” she said. “And our daddy’s up for the big one, so he couldn’t take us to live with him.”

Ben craned around to stare at her. “The big one?”

She shrugged again. “I’m not real sure what that means, but he’s very busy doing it because he hasn’t come to see us.”

Ben was pretty sure he knew exactly what it meant. The guy was in prison for murder. Not that Ben was going to explain
that
to a five-year-old. He got out of the truck, unbuckled them, and waited until they were both inside their house.

While he was still sitting there, Jack called him.

“You’re a shithead,” Ben said in lieu of a greeting.

“You made them clean out your truck?” Jack asked incredulously. “Seriously?”

“So I’m fired, right?” Ben asked hopefully.

Jack laughed. “You’re going to have to do a lot worse than that. And don’t even think about it. I need you there. The kids loved you. But Jesus, figure out a craft that doesn’t involve cleaning out your truck.”

Ben hung up on him and put the truck in gear. On the next street he saw a teenage boy slouched against a fence, a huge mutt on a leash in his hand. He pulled over and rolled down his window. “Kelly?”

The kid sneered. “What’s it to ya?”

Ben smiled at the size of the balls on the little idiot. Then he got out of his truck.

Kelly gulped but stayed in place, straightening, trying to add some height.

Height wasn’t going to help him. Only brains could save him, and Ben had his doubts about even that. “We need to talk.”

Kelly gulped again. “’Bout?”

“Your dog,” Ben said. “You let it terrify any more little kids, especially redheaded ones, and I’ll introduce you to
my
dog. And my dog eats your dog’s breed for lunch.”

Kelly lost a whole lot of his belligerence but tried to keep his bravado up. “Who are you, the dog police?”

“Worse,” Ben said. “I’m not the police at all.” He leveled the teen with the same stare that hadn’t intimidated Pink much.

It worked on Kelly. The kid nodded like a bobblehead. Ben got back into his truck and called Luke. “What’s up with the girls’ parents?”

“What girls?”

“The two sisters from the foster home. Kendra and…” Shit. He still didn’t know Pink’s real name. “The one who wears pink all the time.”

Luke laughed softly. “The one who wears pink?”

“Yeah,” Ben said impatiently. “From head to toe. You can’t miss her. What’s their story?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said.

“But you could find out.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Call me back when you do.”

Luke paused. “You do remember you don’t like kids, right?”

“It’s all Jack’s fault.”

“Of course,” Luke said without missing a beat. “It’s always Jack’s fault.”

Ben disconnected and then, in need of fortitude, drove to the diner. He hadn’t even gotten out of the truck when he saw the flash of a willowy blonde standing in front of the beauty salon.

Aubrey.

As he watched, she stuffed that damn notepad into her purse, turned, and walked away. Quick, sure steps. Determined. She walked the same way she’d kissed him.

A woman on a mission.

He couldn’t imagine what she was up to, but he’d bet his last dollar it involved her list. The one with his name on it.

Aubrey stopped short, said something to herself, and walked back to the salon. She strode inside, back ramrod straight.

Fascinated, knowing he’d seen this game before, Ben waited. While he did, Luke called back.

“Records on the kids are sealed, so I went to the source,” he said.

“Child services?” Ben asked.

“Lucille.”

Ben had to laugh. If anything had happened in Lucky Harbor that Lucille didn’t know about, it wasn’t worth knowing. “And?”

“She knew their grandmother. The kids’ mom is gone. Their grandmother died, too, in a car wreck. The girls were four at the time and in the car. Minor injuries only. Father’s a mechanic in Seattle.”

“What?” Ben asked. “He’s not in prison?”

“Not according to Lucille.”

Ben absorbed the unexpected shock—and the anger. Also a shock. But he
was
angry. He was furious. The girls had lost a mother and grandmother, and their prick of a father was working less than two hours away while letting them think he was in prison?

Aubrey came out of the beauty shop. “Gotta go,” he said, and disconnected. He studied Aubrey. She didn’t look devastated this time. She looked…well, he wasn’t sure. He looked her over again and then realized what it was.

She was relieved. There was a lightness to her carriage, and damn if she wasn’t almost smiling as she got into her car, without even looking his way, and drove off.

He had to try damn hard not to follow her.

W
hen the alarm went off several days later, Aubrey had trouble getting out of bed, and she hit
SNOOZE
on her alarm clock about four times. Finally, Gus sat on her chest and refused to budge until she promised to feed him immediately.

She’d gone to her mom’s the night before and stayed late. They’d had dinner, and then Aubrey had helped paint Tammy’s bathroom a sunshine yellow for “cheer,” as her mom had called it. Aubrey thought it was okay, but if it’d been her bathroom, she’d need sunglasses to take a shower every morning.

She’d planned to beg off early, but then Carla hadn’t showed up, which had saddened her mom. Carla was invited every week and rarely, if ever, showed up, but it still got to Tammy. So it’d been midnight before Aubrey had gotten home, and she’d been shocked to discover that in her absence, the renovation fairy had finished demolition of the closet area.

Ben had come back and worked, and standing there alone in her dark store, in the middle of the night, she’d smiled. And been so grateful.

And confused.

How was it she only liked Ben when he wasn’t here, or when he had his tongue in her mouth?

Now, in the light of day, standing in the same spot, she looked around again. Already so many changes had been made. There was little left of Aunt Gwen’s store—except the heart. The heart was here in spades.

Meow
.

And Gus the cat.

Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her purse. It was Leah.

“Why are you starting your day without stopping in?”

Leah and Ali had a morning ritual that involved Leah feeding Ali breakfast and Ali putting up a fresh bouquet in Leah’s bakery. “I didn’t know I was part of the equation,” Aubrey said.

“Well, you are. So get your skinny ass over here. I’ve just created a brand-new batch of raspberry Danishes, and Ali’s going to eat them all if you don’t hurry.”

“I don’t have anything to give you in return.”

Meow
, Gus said.

“Well, except the cat,” Aubrey said. “And I don’t think you can have a cat in a bakery.”

“I’d take that fat sweetheart in a hot minute if I could,” Leah said.

Aubrey looked down into Gus’s annoyed green eyes and felt her heart squeeze. Nope, even she couldn’t give up the grumpy old man.

“And anyway,” Leah said, “it’s not about what you can give us in return, though you do have books now. I can download right from your website to my e-reader, right?”

“Right,” Aubrey said.

“Well, then, that makes you my new crack. Hurry.” And then she disconnected.

One of the things Aubrey was most proud of was her website, where people could download books to read on any digital device. They could do it from right inside her store or from the comfort of their own homes. She walked out her back door, down the alley about fifteen feet, and into the back door of Leah’s bakery.

Inside the kitchen, Ali was leaning against the workstation, double-fisting Danishes.

“See?” Leah said. “Oh, and be careful when you take one from the box. Sometimes she bites, and I don’t know if she’s had her shots.”

“I’ve totally had my shots,” Ali said. “And anyway, I only bite Luke.”

Aubrey carefully took a Danish, keeping an eye on Ali just in case Leah wasn’t kidding. She took a big bite and then realized both Ali and Leah were looking at her.

“Now,” Ali said to Leah. “Ask her now. While she’s sugar-loading. It’s hard to dodge people when you’re on a sugar high.”

Leah nodded and turned to Aubrey. “So…you’ve been busy.”

“Very,” Aubrey said warily.

“Busy kissing Ben.”

And just like that, Aubrey choked on the Danish.

Leah pushed away from the counter, went to the refrigerator, and poured Aubrey a tall glass of milk.

She drank down the milk. She was no longer choking. Mostly she was stalling for time. “Went down the wrong pipe,” she said.

Ali and Leah were both watching her, waiting, and she sighed and set down the remainder of her Danish. “So this wasn’t really about including me as part of your morning ritual. You wanted to hear the gossip.”

“Actually,” Ali said, “we were hoping for both.”

Leah nudged the Danishes back toward Aubrey. “You always going to be so defensive?”

“Maybe,” Aubrey said, and then caved. “Okay, probably.”

“Listen,” Leah said. “You’re a friend. I think you’re going to be a really good friend. But…”

“But Ben is family,” Aubrey finished. “You’re marrying his cousin. I get that. You’re worried about him.”

“Always,” Leah said. “Even though he’s a big boy, and he’s going to do whatever he wants to do.”

She’d noticed.

“Actually, to be totally honest, we’re a little more worried about you,” Ali said.

This surprised her. “Why?”

“Ben’s not exactly a long-term bet right now,” Ali said.

“And you think I am?”

“Of course,” Ali said. “You had a rough patch and an unfair deal over Asshat Teddy. We both did.”

Leah nodded, and Aubrey realized that what they’d said was true: They were worried—for her. Touched, she set aside her glass. “It really was just a kiss.” Even saying it made her wince a little bit on the inside. First of all, it
hadn’t
been just a kiss. It’d been the kiss of all kisses. And second, she shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. No matter what she’d told Ben, he
was
on her list. This meant she had to try to make amends with him, not kiss him. Because when he found out why he was on her list, he wasn’t going to want to kiss her. He was going to want to never see her again…

“I saw the kiss,” Ali said. “I just happened to be outside, on the front sidewalk, talking to Olivia, who runs that very lovely vintage clothing store down the street. And bee-tee-dub, that was no ‘just a kiss’ kiss,” she said. “That was a…wow kiss. I went home and jumped Luke’s bones.”

Aubrey had to laugh. Ali was right: It
had
been a wow kiss. But it’d also been a fluke. “It’s not happening again,” she insisted, and faced both their doubt and her own. “It can’t.”

A few minutes later, Aubrey was back inside the Book & Bean. She unlocked the door, turned on all the lights, and flipped over her
OPEN
sign.

Gus, asleep in his bed beneath the stairs, cracked open one eye and meowed at her. The nocturnal creature was annoyed by daylight.

Aubrey went to stand in what would soon be her little service niche. Ben had cleaned up after the demolition, but she went over it, sweeping and dusting to keep the store spotless. When she was done, she stood looking at the place where Ben had pressed her up against his long, leanly muscled, warm body.

At just the thought, her lips tingled in memory of their kiss. And if she was being honest, other parts tingled, too. In the bright light of day, she couldn’t imagine what the hell she’d been thinking to slide her hands up his chest and into his silky hair and pull his head down to hers for more.

Okay, so she hadn’t been thinking…

It’d been a mistake, albeit a delicious one, and she needed to move on. She was good at that—moving on. And she’d proven it with the first success on her list. Smiling just thinking about it, she pulled the notebook from her purse, then took out a pen.

And then, with a smile she couldn’t contain if she’d tried, she very carefully, very purposefully, crossed off number three.

Melissa.

Back in high school, the two of them had been rivals who’d gotten off on one-upping each other. Melissa had been pretty and funny and incredibly charismatic, and whenever she’d set her mind on a guy, she’d gotten him.

Even when Aubrey had wanted him.

Aubrey’d had the fattest crush on one guy in particular. Ben, of course. It didn’t matter that he had a longtime high school sweetheart; she’d still yearned and burned for him. Secretly, of course. She hated to remember those days, when she’d been a lowly freshman, garnering a lot of unwanted attention from the junior and senior boys because of her looks. This had, in turn, made her a target for the popular girls, of course. Hannah being one of them. One time Aubrey had been in the school parking lot, surrounded by a couple of aggressive, obnoxious boys. Ben had chased them off, and Hannah had been with him.

“She asks for that attention, Ben,” Hannah had said when a grateful Aubrey had started to walk away.

The humiliation of that had burned deep, but it was chased away by Ben’s defense of her.

“No girl asks for that, Hannah,” he’d said.

Aubrey had never forgotten it. It’d been the start of her terribly painful crush, that one moment of kindness, and she’d hated,
hated
, that he’d been with Hannah.

In any case, Melissa had sensed Aubrey’s crush and loved to torment her about it. One summer night Melissa had a bonfire on the hidden beach past the pier, a spot only teenagers and the homeless ever bothered to hike to. Melissa had brought some alcohol that she’d pilfered from her parents and had plied Hannah with it until she’d fallen asleep by the fire. Melissa had then sat down next to Ben and pulled out every trick in Aubrey’s own arsenal. The
I’m-so-cold
accidental snuggle. The
scared-of-the-dark
accidental snuggle. The
wow-you’re-really-strong
accidental snuggle. By the time Melissa had moved on to the
there’s-a-big-bug!
accidental snuggle, Ben was cranky from fending Melissa off, and Aubrey was cranky knowing she wasn’t going to get a shot at Ben herself.

So she’d one-upped Melissa.

She’d dared everyone to go rock climbing on the cliffs and jump into the water—a stupid, dangerous stunt. She’d been neck and neck with Melissa all the way up to the top. They’d been neck and neck at the jump into the water, too. Aubrey had landed safely.

Not Melissa. A wave had slammed her up against a rock, and she’d broken her arm. They’d dumped her at the hospital and deserted her, not wanting to get in trouble for the illegal bonfire, the alcohol, or the cliff jumping.

Melissa had been treated and then cited for public intoxication and reckless endangerment.

Aubrey had gotten off scot-free.

She’d have written it off as a silly, juvenile stunt, but Melissa had been on course to play softball at a junior college. But with her arm requiring two surgeries, she’d been dropped from the team.

She’d never gone to college.

Aubrey’s path had crossed Melissa’s a few times here and there. After all, Tammy worked at the same salon. But Aubrey and Melissa had never talked about that night, which had changed Melissa’s life forever. But this morning, Aubrey had driven by the salon and got lucky, finding Melissa there early working on stock, and she brought up the past for the first time in all these years.

Melissa had told Aubrey that not too long after she’d broken her arm, her parents had cut her off because of her partying ways. It’d been a wake-up call. She’d gotten herself together, gone to beauty school, and was now running her own hair salon. She swore up and down that she was actually grateful for the path she’d ended up on. And happy.

Happy…

Aubrey shook her head in marvel. But Melissa had been sincere. She’d hugged Aubrey and told her to come in for a cut sometime and they’d talk about old times.

“Wow, she smiles.”

Aubrey stifled her startled shriek. Ben stood in the doorway, propping up the doorjamb with a broad shoulder, arms crossed over his chest. A casual pose.

But there was nothing casual about the assessing look he was giving her. “I smile plenty,” she said, irritated at herself. Just the sight of him used to remind her of her mistakes. Now the sight of him reminded her that he’d kissed her.

And he kissed amazingly…

That knowledge was damned distracting. She needed to find a way to get rid of it, but she couldn’t. She thought about it every waking moment. And also during her sleeping moments, what few there’d been.

Meow
.

Gus had gotten up for Ben. He never got up for Aubrey, but there he was, on all four legs, rubbing up against Ben as though he were catnip.

She was beginning to see how it was that Ben might have gotten cat hair on his pants.

Ben crouched low and gave the cat an allover body rub that had Gus rolling in ecstasy on the floor, the low, loud rumble of his rarely heard purr filling the room.

She rolled her eyes and then realized Ben was looking at her, really looking at her, and she went on guard. “We going to talk about it?” he finally asked, straightening.

“No.” Hell, no.

He gave an almost smile, as if that had been the answer he’d expected, and yet there was a flash of something else as well. She dismissed it, because there could be no way he wanted to talk about it, either.

Another man came up behind Ben in the doorway. “Knock, knock,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the doorjamb. “Am I interrupting?”

“Pastor Mike.” Aubrey immediately looked around herself guiltily, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. She stopped herself and added a mental head slap.
Good Lord, woman, get a grip
. “No, you’re not interrupting anything. How can I help you? Do you need a book?”

“No, I don’t need a book,” he said. “But thank you.”

Aubrey didn’t know what to make of this. People came here for books. Or, in Ben’s case, to drive her crazy.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Pastor Mike said, his smile casual. Easy.

“I’m…” She didn’t dare look at Ben. “Good. Thank you.” She had no idea why he was really here. Were there AA rules she didn’t know about? She hadn’t signed up for anything. She’d been careful not to make any commitments that night. She hadn’t wanted anyone getting into her business.

And she especially didn’t want
Ben
getting into her business.

Mike looked at Ben and held out a hand. “Good to see you home safe. There were lots of candles lit for you. Your aunt Dee lit one every week.”

Ben shook Mike’s hand. “She likes to hedge all her bets.”

The pastor smiled. “It worked. Heard you were sticking around this time. You helping our girl out?”

Ben’s mouth quirked at the “our girl.” “Yeah. So you and Aubrey are close?” he asked Pastor Mike.