Always on My Mind

“Pretty fancy handiwork,” a woman said.

Leah.

Jack turned and found her standing next to Kevin, holding a plate.

Jack gave Kevin the stay gesture 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 as if he were 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 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 black leggings emphasized a willowy body made lean by hard work or tough times—knowing Leah, it was probably both. Her silky hair was loose and blowing around her face. He’d have called it her just-out-of-bed 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.

Not your problem…

But though he told himself that, repeatedly in fact, old habits were hard to break. His friendship with her was as long as it was complicated, but she’d been there for him whenever he’d needed her, no questions asked. In the past week alone she’d driven his mom to her doctor’s appointment twice, fed and walked Kevin when Jack had been called out of the county, and left a plate of cream cheese croissants in his fridge—his favorite. There was a lot of water beneath their bridge, but she mattered to him, even when he wanted to wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze.

“You have any sausage ready?” she asked.

At the word sausage, Kevin practically levitated. Ears quirking, nose wriggling, the dog sat up, his sharp eyes following as Jack forked a piece of meat and set it on Leah’s plate. When Jack didn’t share with Kevin as well, he let out a pitiful whine.

Falling for it hook, line, and sinker, Leah melted. “Aw,” she said. “Can I give him one?”

“Only if you want to sleep with him tonight,” Jack said.

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Trust me, you would.”

Coming up beside Jack to help man the grill, Tim waggled a brow at Leah. “I’ll sleep with you tonight. No matter how many sausages you eat.”

Leah laughed. “You say that to all the women in line.”

Tim flashed a grin, a hint of dimple showing. “But with you, I mean it. So…yes?”

“No,” Leah said, still smiling. “Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow night?”

Jack spoke mildly. “You have a death wish?”

“Huh?”

“Rookies who come on to Leah vanish mysteriously,” Jack told him. “Never to be seen again.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “Yeah? Who?”

“The last rookie. His name was Tim too,” Jack deadpanned.

Leah laughed, and Tim rolled his eyes. At work, he reported directly to Jack, not that he looked worried.

“I’ll risk it,” he said cockily to Leah.

Jack wondered if he’d still be looking so sure of himself later when he’d be scrubbing down fire trucks by himself. All of them.

Leah yawned and rubbed a hand over her eyes, and Jack forgot about Tim. “Maybe you should switch to Wheaties,” Jack said. “You look like you need the boost.”

She met his gaze. “Tim thought I looked all right.”

“You know it, babe,” Tim said, still shamelessly eavesdropping. “Change your mind about tonight, and I’ll make sure you know exactly how good you look.”

Jack revised his plan about Tim cleaning the engines. The rookie would be too busy at the senior center giving a hands-on fire extinguisher demonstration, which every firefighter worth his salt dreaded because the seniors were feisty, didn’t listen, and in the case of the female seniors, liked their “hands-on” anything training.

Oblivious to his fate, Tim continued to work the grill. Jack kept his attention on Leah. He wanted her to do whatever floated her boat, but he didn’t want her dating a player like Tim. But saying so would be pretty much like waving a red flag in front of a bull, no matter how pretty that bull might be. She’d give a stranger the very shirt off her back, but Jack had long ago learned to not even attempt to tell her what to do or she’d do the opposite just because.

She had a long habit of doing just that.

He blamed her as**ole father, but in this case it didn’t matter because Leah didn’t seem all that interested in Tim’s flirting anyway.

Or in anything actually.

Which was what was really bothering Jack. Leah loved the challenge of life, the adventure of it. She’d been chasing that challenge and adventure as long as he’d known her. It was contagious—her spirit, her enthusiasm, her ability to be as unpredictable as the whim of fate.

And unlike anyone else in his world, she alone could lighten a bad mood and make him laugh. But her smile wasn’t meeting her eyes. Nudging her aside, out of Tim’s earshot, he waited until she looked at him. “Hey,” he said.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll vanish mysteriously, never to be seen again?”

“I’m not a rookie.”

She smiled, but again it didn’t meet her eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Always.” And then she popped a sausage into her mouth.

Jack got the message loud and clear. She didn’t want to talk. He could appreciate that. Hell, he was at his happiest not talking. But she’d had a rough year, first with the French culinary school disaster, where she’d quit three weeks before graduation for some mysterious reason, and then Sweet Wars.

Rumor had it that she’d gone pretty far on the show, outshining the best of the best. He knew she was under contractual obligations to keep quiet about the results, but he’d thought she’d talk to him.

She hadn’t.

Jack had watched each episode, cheering her on. Last night she’d created puff pastries on the clock for a panel of celebrity chefs who’d yelled—a lot. Most of Leah’s competition had been completely rattled by their bullying ways, but Leah had had a lifetime of dealing with someone just like that. She’d won the challenge, hands down. And even if Jack hadn’t known her as well as he did, he’d have pegged her as the winner of the whole thing.

But she wasn’t acting like a winner.

Had she quit that too?

Because the truth was that she tended to run from her demons. She always had, and some things never changed.

She met his gaze. “What?”

“You tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She shook her head, her pretty eyes surprisingly hooded from him. “I’ve learned to fight my own battles, Jack.”

Maybe. But it wasn’t her battles he wanted to fight, he realized, so much as he wanted to see her smile again and mean it.

Chapter 2

The next morning, Leah walked to the bakery. From her grandma’s house, downtown was only a mile or so, and she liked the exercise, even at four in the morning.

Maybe especially at four in the morning.

Lucky Harbor sat nestled in a rocky cove between the Olympic Mountains and the coast, the architecture an eclectic mix of old and new. She’d been to a lot of places since she’d left here, but there’d been nowhere like this small, cozy, homey town.

The main drag of Lucky Harbor was lined with Victorian buildings painted in bright colors, housing everything from the post office to an art gallery. At the end of the street was the turnoff to the harbor, where a long pier jutted out into the water with its café, arcade, ice cream shop, and Ferris wheel.

Right now, everything was closed. Leah was the only one out on the street. She loved the look of Lucky Harbor on sleepy mornings like this, with the long column of fog floating in from the ocean, the twinkle of the white lights strung along the storefronts and in the trees that lined the sidewalks.

Like a postcard.

And all of it, right down to the salty ocean air, evoked a myriad of memories. So did the bakery as she unlocked it and let herself in. It was warm already, and for now, quiet. Later, Riley would show up. Riley was a Lucky Harbor transplant who’d made her way to town as a runaway teen and then had been taken under the wing of Amy, a friend of Leah’s. Riley had grown up a lot in the past few years and was now a part-time college student who worked a few hours a week at both the local café and the bakery. At the moment, though, Leah was alone. She flipped on the lights, and as always, the electricity hummed and then dimmed, fighting for enough power before settling. The cranky old building needed a renovation in the worst way, but Mr. Lyons was so tight with his money he squeaked when he walked.

So tight that he had the building in escrow. No word yet on what the new owner might be like, though he’d promised everyone that he’d honor their leases. This left them safe for the rest of the year at least.

Leah turned on the ovens. They were just as temperamental as the old building. She had to kick the broiler plate twice before hearing the whoomp of the gas as it caught. One more day, she thought with some satisfaction. The bakery was going to hold together for at least one more day.

Her grandma Elsie had been baking for fifty-plus years, but she hadn’t experimented much in the past few decades. Leah had pretty much taken over, updating the offerings, tossing out the old-fashioned notion of frozen cookie dough, taking great joy in creating all new, all fresh every morning.

It was a lot of work, but she welcomed it because there was something about baking that allowed her to lose herself. Several hours later, she might have had to kick the ovens no less than twelve more times, but the day’s offerings were looking damn good. Bread, croissants, and donuts…not exactly the fancy fare she’d gotten used to creating at school or on Sweet Wars, but she loved it anyway. And she’d done it all in spite of the equipment.

After that, she shelved her freshly made pastries in the glass display out front and dreamed about finishing culinary school someday. She stopped daydreaming when the bell over the door chimed for the first time that morning. Forest Ranger Matt Bowers strode in mid-yawn.

Leah automatically poured him a Dr. Pepper on tap and bagged up two cheese danishes—his morning special.

“Enjoyed Sweet Wars the other night,” he said. “You’re the best one.”

If you can’t be the best, Leah, don’t bother being anything at all.

Her father’s favorite sentence. His second-favorite sentence had been Christ, Leah Marie, don’t you ever get tired of screwing up? And then there’d been her personal favorite. You’re going to amount to nothing.

She knew there were people who’d had it far rougher than she had growing up, but his words had always sliced deeply, and her mother’s halfhearted attempts to soften the blows with “he means well” or “he loves you” hadn’t helped. Instead, they’d left her confused, hurt, and feeling like she could never please.

As a result, she wasn’t very good with praise. It made her uncomfortable, like there was a standard that she couldn’t possibly live up to.

“Tell me the truth,” Matt said. “You won the whole enchilada, right?”

She handed him his breakfast. “I can’t say,” she told him. “Contractual promises.”

Matt took a big bite of the first danish and sighed in pleasure. “Oh yeah. You totally won.”

When he was gone, Leah sampled her danish and had to admit he was right about one thing at least. The danish was good.

The bakery door opened again, this time to one of the finest-looking cops in all the land—Sawyer Thompson.

“You’re pretty good on that show,” he said while she bagged up his favorite, a chocolate chip roll. “You win?”

“Not allowed to say,” she said, starting to feel grateful for the contract she’d signed, the one that said keep her mouth shut or else. She handed him his bag.

He took a big bite of the roll and sighed. “You so won.”

In spite of herself, Leah flushed with pleasure as he smiled at her, paid, and left.

“Seriously,” Ali said from behind Leah, having come in the back door, undoubtedly for her midmorning donut. “You get all the hot guys. It’s so unfair.”

“You sell flowers,” Leah told her. “I sell sugar. Do the math.” She gave Ali a bag of donut holes to go and put it on her tab.

And so went the morning. People coming in, buying her stuff—which was good—and asking about Sweet Wars—which was bad.

If you can’t be the best, Leah, don’t bother being anything at all.

“Get out of my head,” she said and went back to work. By noon she was ready for a nap, and she still had two more hours to go before Riley would show up. Leah still had to take her grandma for her physical therapy appointment, then grocery shopping for dinner, and then, if Leah was very lucky, she’d catch some sleep. She was going to be thirty this year, and she was already fantasizing about naps. Maybe she should try to get into the senior center…

But she knew it wasn’t the hours making her tired. She was used to hard work. Nor was it being displaced, living on a futon in her grandma Elsie’s tiny house for the duration of her rehabilitation. Leah was good at the wanderlust, nomadic lifestyle. She should be. She’d hit four colleges in four years, trying out premed, poli-sci, even journalism before going back to her first love.

Baking.

But coming back to Lucky Harbor had thrown her a bit. Elsie’s knee surgery had been unexpected. Leah was grateful for how well her grandma was getting around, but the meds made it hard for Elsie to get up early in the morning and handle the baking. So Leah had come to help out for a week or so.