Lucky in Love (27 page)

She understood his appeal, even felt the tug of it herself, but that was her body’s response to him. Her brain was smarter than the rest of her and resisted.

He wore dark, wraparound Oakley sunglasses, but she happened to know that his eyes were light brown, sharp, and missed nothing. Those eyes were in complete contrast with his smile, which was all laid-back and easy-going, and said he was a pussy cat.

That smile lied.

Nothing
about Matt Bowers was sweet and tame. Not one little hair on his sun-kissed head, not a single spectacular muscle, nothing. He was trouble with a capital T, and Amy had given up trouble a long time ago.

She was still sitting on the rock outcropping, nearly out of sight of the trail, but Matt’s attention tracked straight to her with no effort at all. She sensed his wry amusement as he stopped and eyed her. “Someone send out an SOS?”

She barely bit back her sigh.
Dammit, Mallory. Out of all the men in all the land, you had to send this one…

When she didn’t answer, he smiled. He knew damn well she’d called Mallory, and he wanted to hear her admit that she was lost.

But she didn’t feel like it—childish and immature, she knew. The truth was, her reaction to him was just about the furthest thing from childish, and that scared her. She wasn’t ready for the likes of him, for the likes of any man. The very last thing she needed was an entanglement, even if Matt did make her mouth water, even if he did look like he knew exactly how to get her off this mountain.

Or off in general…

And if
that
wasn’t the most disconcerting thought she’d had in weeks…

Months.

“Mallory called the cavalry,” he said. “Figured I was the best shot you had of getting found before dark.”

Amy squared her shoulders, hoping she looked more capable than she felt. “Mallory shouldn’t have bothered you.”

He smiled. “So you
did
send out the SOS.”

Damn him and his smug smile. “Forget about it,” she said. “I’m fine. Go back to your job doing…” She waved her hand. “Whatever it is that forest rangers do, getting Yogi out of the trash, keeping the squirrels in line, etc.”

“Yogi and the squirrels do take up a lot of my time,” he agreed mildly. “But no worries. I can still fit you in.”

His voice always seemed to do something funny to her stomach. And lower. “Lucky me.”

“Yeah.” He took another leisurely sip of his soda. “You might not know this but on top of keeping Yogi in line and all the squirrel wrangling I do, rescuing fair maidens is also part of my job description.”

“I’m no fair maiden—” She broke off when something screeched directly above her. Reacting instinctively, she flattened herself to the rock, completely ruining her tough-girl image.

“Just the cry of a loon,” her very own forest ranger said. “Echoing across Four Lakes.”

She straightened up just as another animal howled, and she barely managed not to flinch. “That,” she said shakily, “was more than a loon.”

“A coyote,” he agreed. “And the bugling of an elk. It’s dusk. Everyone’s on the prowl for dinner. The sound carries over the lakes, making everyone seem like they’re closer than they are.”

“There’s elk around here?”

“Roosevelt elk,” he said. “And deer, bobcats, and cougars, too.”

Amy shoved her sketch book into her backpack, ready to get the hell off the mountain.

“Whatcha got there?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She didn’t know him well enough to share her drawings, and then there was the fact that he was everything she didn’t trust: easy smile, easy nature, easy ways—no matter how sexy the packaging.

T
ired, edgy, and scared that she was never going to get her life on the happy track, Grace Brooks dropped into the back booth of the diner and sagged against the red vinyl seat. “I could really use a drink.”

Mallory, in wrinkled scrubs, just coming off an all-night shift at the ER, snorted as she crawled into the booth as well. “It’s eight in the morning.”

“Hey, it’s happy hour somewhere.” This from their third Musketeer, Amy, who was wearing a black tee, a black denim skirt with lots of zippers, and kickass boots. The tough girl ensemble was softened by the bright pink Eat Me apron she was forced to wear while waitressing. “Pick your poison.”

“Actually,” Grace said, fighting a yawn. She’d slept poorly, worrying about money. And paying bills. And keeping a roof over her head… “I was thinking hot chocolate.”

“That works too,” Amy said. “Be right back.”

Good as her word, she reappeared with a tray of steaming hot chocolate and big, fluffy chocolate pancakes. “Chocoholics unite.”

Four months ago, Grace had come west from New York for a Seattle banking job, until she’d discovered that putting out for the boss was part of the deal. Leaving the offer on the table, she’d gotten into her car and driven as far as the tank of gas could take her, ending up in the little Washington state beach town of Lucky Harbor. That same night she’d gotten stuck in this very diner during a freak snow storm with two strangers.

Mallory and Amy.

With no electricity and a downed tree blocking their escape, the three of them had spent a few scary hours soothing their nerves by eating their way through a very large chocolate cake. Since then, meeting over chocolate cake had become habit—until they’d accidentally destroyed the inside of the diner in a certain candle incident that wasn’t to be discussed. Jan, the owner of Eat Me, had refused to let them meet over cake anymore, so the Chocoholics had switched to pancakes. Grace was thinking of making a motion for chocolate cupcakes next. It was important to have the right food for those meetings, as dissecting their lives—specifically their lack of love lives—was hard work. Except these days Amy and Mallory actually
had
love lives.

Grace did not.

Amy disappeared and came back with butter and syrup. She untied and tossed aside her apron and sat, pushing the syrup to Grace.

“I love you,” Grace said with great feeling as she took her first bite of delicious goodness.

Not one to waste her break, Amy toasted her with a pancake-loaded fork dripping with syrup and dug in.

Mallory was still carefully spreading butter on her pancakes. “You going to tell us what’s wrong, Grace?”

Grace stilled for a beat, surprised that Mallory had been able to read her. “I didn’t say anything was wrong.”

“You’re main-lining a stack of six pancakes like your life depends on it.”

“Because they’re amazing.” And nothing was wrong exactly. Except…everything.

All her life she’d worked her ass off, running on the hamster wheel, heading toward her elusive future. Being adopted at birth by a rocket scientist and a well-respected research biologist had set the standards, and she knew her role. Achieve, and achieve high. “I’ve applied at every bank, investment company, and accounting firm between Seattle and San Francisco. There’s not much out there.”

“No nibbles?” Mallory asked sympathetically, reaching for the syrup, her engagement ring catching the light.

Amy shielded her eyes. “Jeez, Mallory, stop waving that thing around, you’re going to blind us. Couldn’t Ty have found one smaller than a third world country? Or less sparkly?”

Mallory beamed at the rock on her finger but otherwise ignored Amy’s comment, unwilling to be deterred. “Back to the nibbles,” she said to Grace.

“Nothing to write home about. Just a couple of possible interviews for next week, one in Seattle, one in Portland.” Neither job was exactly what Grace wanted, but available jobs at her level in banking had become nearly extinct. So here she was, two thousand miles from “home,” drowning beneath the debt load of her education and CPR because her parents had always been of the “build character and pave your own road” variety. She was still mad at herself for following that job offer to Seattle at all. But she’d wanted a good, solid position in the firm—just not one that she could find in the Kama Sutra.

Now late spring had turned to late summer, and she was
still
in Lucky Harbor, living off temp jobs. She was down to her last couple of hundred bucks, and her parents thought she’d taken that job, that she was in Seattle counting other people’s money for a living. They believed in hard work and achieving greatness. Since they were both esteemed in their respective fields, it was safe to say that they’d accomplished their goals there.

Grace had strived to do the same, strived to live up to the standards of being a Brooks, but there was no doubt she fell short. In her heart she belonged, but her brain—the part of her that understood she was only a Brooks on
paper
—knew she’d never really pulled it off.

“I don’t want you to leave Lucky Harbor,” Mallory said. “But one of these interviews will work out for you, I know it.”

Grace didn’t necessarily want to leave Lucky Harbor either. She’d found the small, quirky town to be more welcoming than anywhere else she’d ever been, but staying wasn’t really an option. She was never going to build her big career here. “I hope so.” She stabbed a few more pancakes from the tray and dropped them on her plate. “I hate fibbing to my parents so they won’t worry. And I’m whittling away at my meager savings. Plus being in limbo sucks.”

“Yeah, none of those things are your real problem,” Amy said.

“No?” Grace asked. “What’s my real problem?”

“You’re not getting any.”

Grace sagged at the pathetic truthfulness of this statement, a situation made all the worse by the fact that both Amy and Mallory
were
getting some.

Lots.

“Remember the storm?” Mallory asked. “When we almost died in this very place?”

“Right,” Amy said dryly. “From overdosing on chocolate cake, maybe.”

Mallory ignored this and pointed her fork at Grace. “We made a pinky promise. I said I’d learn to be a little bad for a change. And Amy here was going to live her life instead of letting it live her. And you, Miss Grace, you were going to find more than a new job, remember? You were going to stop chasing your own tail and go after some happy and some fun. It’s time, babe.”

“I
am
having fun here.” At least, more than she’d ever let herself have before. “And what it’s time for right now is work.” With a longing look at the last stack of pancakes, Grace stood up and brushed the crumbs off her sundress.

“What’s today’s job?” Amy asked.

When Grace had first realized she needed to get a temporary job or stop eating, she’d purposely gone for something new. Something that didn’t require stuffy pencil skirts or closed-toe heel, or sitting in front of a computer for fifteen hours a day. Because if she had to be off-track and a little lost, then she
was
going to have fun while she was at it, dammit. “I’m delivering birthday flowers to Mrs. Burland for her eightieth birthday. Then modeling at Lucille’s art gallery for a drawing class.”

“Modeling for an art class?” Mallory asked. “Like…nude?”

“Today they’re drawing hands.” Nude was
tomorrow’s
class, and Grace was really hoping something happened before then, like maybe she’d win the lottery. Or get beamed to another planet.

“If I had your body,” Amy said. “I’d totally model nude. And charge for it.”

“That’s called something different than modeling,” Mallory said dryly.

Grace rolled her eyes at the both of them, dropped the last of her pocket money onto the table and left to make the floral deliveries. When she’d worked at the bank, she’d gotten up before the crack of dawn, rode a train for two hours, put in twelve more at her desk, then got home in time to crawl into bed.

Things were majorly different here.

For one thing, she saw daylight.

So maybe she could no longer afford Starbucks, but at least she wasn’t still having the recurring nightmare where she suffocated under a sea of pennies that she’d been trying to count one by one.

Two hours later, Grace was just finishing the last of the deliveries when her cell phone buzzed. She didn’t recognize the incoming number, so she played mental roulette and answered. “Grace Brooks,” she said in her most professional tone, as if she was still sitting on top of her world. Sure, she’d given up designer wear, but she hadn’t lost her pride. Not yet anyway.

“I’m calling about your flyer,” a man said. “I need a dog walker. Someone who’s on time, responsible, and not a flake.”

Her flyer?
“A dog walker?” she repeated.

“Yes, and I’d need you to start today.”

“Today…as in
today
?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The man, whoever he was, had a hell of a voice, low and a little raspy, with a hint of impatience. Clearly he’d misdialed. And just as clearly, there was someone else in Lucky Harbor trying to drum up work for themselves.

Grace considered herself a good person. She sponsored a child in Africa and she dropped her spare change into the charity jars at the supermarket. Someone in town had put up flyers looking to get work, and that someone deserved this phone call. But dog walking…Grace could totally do dog walking. Offering a silent apology for stealing the job, she said, “I could start today.”

“Your flyer lists your qualifications, but not how long you’ve been doing this.”

That was too bad because she’d sure like to know that herself. She’d never actually had a dog. Turns out, rocket scientists and renowned biologists don’t have a lot of time in their lives for incidentals such as dogs.

Or kids…

In fact, come to think of it, Grace had never had so much as a goldfish, but really, how hard could it be? Put the thing on a leash and walk, right? “I’m a little new at the dog walking thing,” she admitted.

“A little new?” he asked. “Or a lot new?”

“A lot.”

There was a pause, as if he was considering hanging up. Grace rushed to fill the silence. “But I’m very diligent!” she said quickly. “I never leave a job unfinished.”
Unless she was asked how she felt about giving blow jobs during lunch breaks…
“And I’m completely reliable.”

“The dog is actually a puppy,” he said. “And new to our household. Not yet fully trained.”

“No problem,” she said, and crossed her fingers, hoping that was true. She loved puppies. Or at least she loved the
idea
of puppies.

“I left for work early this morning and won’t be home until late tonight. I’d need you to walk the dog by lunch time.”

Yeah, he really had a hell of a voice. Low and authoritative, it made her want to snap to attention and salute him, but it was also…sexy. Wondering if the rest of him matched his voice, she made arrangements to go to his house in a couple of hours, where there’d be someone waiting to let her inside. Her payment of forty bucks cash would be left on the dining room table.

Forty bucks cash for walking a puppy…

Score.

Grace didn’t ask why the person opening the door for her couldn’t walk the puppy. She didn’t want to talk her new employer out of hiring her because hello,
forty bucks
. She could eat all week off that, if she was careful.

At the appropriate time, she pulled up to the address she’d been given and sucked in a big breath. She hadn’t caught the man’s name, but he lived in a very expensive area, on the northern-most part of the town where the rocky beach stretched for endless miles like a gorgeous postcard for the Pacific Northwest. The dark green bluffs and rock formations were piled like gifts from heaven for as far as the eye could see. Well, as far as
her
eye could see, which wasn’t all that far since she needed glasses.

She was waiting on a great job with benefits to come along first.

The house sat across the street from the beach. Built in sprawling stone and glass, it was beautiful though she found it odd that it was all one level, when the surrounding homes were two and three stories high. Even more curious, next to the front steps was a ramp. A wheel chair ramp. Grace knocked on the door, then caught sight of the Post-it note stuck on the glass panel.

Grace stood there chewing her bottom lip in rare indecision. She hadn’t given this enough thought. Hell, let’s be honest. She’d given it
no
thought at all past “easy job.” She reminded herself that she was smart in a crisis and could get through anything.

But walking into a perfect stranger’s home seemed problematic, if not downright dangerous. What if a curious neighbor saw her and called the cops? She looked herself over. Enjoying her current freedom from business wear, she was in a sundress with her cute Payless-special ankle boots and lace socks. Not looking much like a banking specialist, and hopefully not looking like a B&E expert either…