Once in a Lifetime

Ben turned to Big Bob and got sucker punched in the eye.

It was the only punch Bob landed.

Five minutes later, both Bob and Ed were on the ground, Bob holding his ribs and Ed holding his jaw. Ben brushed off his hands. Ed had landed a good blow to the kidney, but Ben was okay. Still, he should probably get back to a gym. Breathing a little hard, he turned to Dan.

Dan, eyes wide, raised his hands. “Hey, I warned you. I told you they were protective of me.”

“Yeah.” Ben touched his already aching eye. “Thanks.”

“You’re pretty f**king badass,” Dan said, impressed. “You were in prison, too?”

“No. I was in hell. Go see your kids.”

Chapter 16

Aubrey woke up to a grumpy Gus staring her down. She got up, fed the demanding cat, and then went to work. She unpacked and shelved her new stock. She placed next week’s order and spent an hour on hold with her phone company to complain about having Internet only in the western half of the store.

Afterward, a customer came in and spent half an hour walking the aisles and occasionally lifting a book up and looking to Aubrey. “What’s this one about?”

Aubrey had ceased to be surprised about the fact that people actually assumed she’d read every book in the store. She’d also learned that the people who browsed the way this woman did almost always left without actually buying a book at all, so she’d started amusing herself by making up plots on the spot. Still on hold with the phone company, she covered the receiver and said, “That one’s about an alien who comes to the Wild, Wild West.”

The woman nodded and put the book back. One aisle later, she picked up another.

Aubrey searched her brain’s database. After half an hour, she was beginning to run out of material. “That one’s about a guy who goes a little crazy after a failed marriage and ends up in a dancing contest with another woman.”

The woman put that book back, too, and Aubrey told herself she really needed to find a new hobby. But finally the woman came to the front. “Do you have anything like that Fifty Shades?” she asked.

“Now, that I do have,” Aubrey said, and led her to the romance section.

After the woman left—without buying anything—Aubrey began doing what she’d put off doing all day yesterday: searching for a mechanic. Her selection was limited, as there were only a few in Lucky Harbor, and most likely she couldn’t afford any of them. At that thought, she went to her brand-new coffee nook, which she’d already stocked. There was a small flask there for Lucille, who liked brandy in her tea. Aubrey preferred a little tea in her brandy, but she didn’t touch either one of them now. No, she went straight for the box of sugar cookies she’d put away for a high-stress day.

Breakfast of champions.

“Hey.”

At the sound of Ben’s voice behind her, she jumped. “Where did you learn to walk so quietly?”

“Work.”

She thought about what that might mean, given that he’d been working in places far more dangerous than she could possibly contemplate. She craned her neck to look at him and gasped. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing gave you a black eye?”

He shrugged.

She went to the freezer beneath the counter and pulled out a small bag of frozen peas.

He looked at the bag. “Why do you have frozen peas in a bookstore?”

“They’re for cramps.” She placed the bag over his eye, smiling when he sucked in a breath at the cold. “Baby,” she said.

His look might have had another man wetting his pants and any woman on the planet licking her lips, but she told herself she was unmoved.

But she wasn’t. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he repeated. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t answer questions for people who answer a question with another question.”

He smiled. “How about we each answer a question?”

She opened her mouth, but he put a finger to her lips. “With a twist,” he said.

Her stomach fluttered. “What’s the twist?”

“If you don’t answer, you get a dare.”

Her brain went off the rails at the thought of what a dare might include. But curiosity won over self-preservation. “Deal. Tell me what happened to you.”

“I went to talk to Pink and Kendra’s dad.”

“So…he punched you?”

“Nah. He’s just a little guy.”

“Then who punched you?”

“Dan and I were having a private little chat and his two linebacker buddies decided they didn’t like me much.”

“So they punched you?”

He shrugged. “One of them got a shot in before.”

“Oh, my God, you are the worst storyteller ever,” she declared, tossing up her hands and making him smile. “Before what?” she demanded.

He watched her, still clearly amused. “Before they decided they were done tangling with me,” he finally said.

“Yeah?” she said, eyes narrowing. “And what made them decide that?”

He just kept looking at her.

“You took them both down?” she asked, horrified.

“Your turn to talk,” he said enigmatically.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I had to dig that story out of you. You owe me a dare by default.”

“Sure,” he agreed too easily in that low, gruff voice that made her ni**les harden. “Anything.”

She nearly swallowed her tongue. “You can’t promise me ‘anything,’” she said, annoyed to find she sounded breathless.

He didn’t look worried. “Why? Are you going to take advantage of me?”

Her entire body tightened at the thought of all she could do to take advantage of him and the pleasure they could both get out of it.

He took in her expression and laughed softly. “Hold that thought. Now answer my question or face a dare.”

“I’m hiring a mechanic.”

“Thought you couldn’t afford one.”

“I can’t,” she said, trying not to notice that his hair was still wet from a recent shower, and that he smelled really good. Guy good, like soap and deodorant and Ben. She wanted to press her face to his throat. Especially since he’d clearly skipped shaving that morning—and maybe the day before, too—and had the exact right amount of scruff on his face to make him look hot as hell.

He came closer, giving her a better view of the way his broad shoulders stretched the material of his shirt and how his long legs were encased in denim worn to a buttery softness by myriad washings, lovingly cupping certain parts—

He shut the laptop she still had open on the counter.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hay is for horses.” He hauled her close, making her breath catch in her throat as her gaze drifted to his mouth.

The mouth she’d been dreaming about.

Damn him.

Then she realized that mouth was moving, and the words sank in. “I sabotaged your car,” he said.

She blinked. “What?”

“Yeah. I removed your coil wire. It’s back in now, though. Your car’s fine, Aubrey.”

When this computed, she went from the good kind of hot to the very bad kind of hot in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t even speak. All she did was sputter. A minute ago, she’d wanted to press herself to him like white on rice. She still wanted that. But she wanted to smack him more. She settled on giving him a good shove.

He didn’t budge.

“I wanted to see what you were up to,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“It was none of your business!”

He shrugged, and that just pissed her off even more. “Why?” she managed. “Why does anything I do even matter to you?”

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. The sound of his palm scrapping over several days’ worth of whisker growth had her belly quivering. Keep it together. “Why, Ben?”

He shook his head.

“Not good enough,” she said. “Tell me why what I do matters to you.”

“It shouldn’t,” he said, meeting her gaze steadily.

She just stared at him. “You’re incredible, you know that? You’re an insensitive, first-class jerk, and—”

He leaned in. “And what?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.

“And…” Stymied at her ridiculous and invariable reaction to him, she put her hands to his chest to give him another shove, but somehow her wires got crossed and she fisted his shirt instead.

“Dare me,” he said softly.

“Dare you to what?”

“Dare me, Aubrey.”

Oh, how she hated how well he knew her. “I dare you to kiss me,” she whispered, and then to make sure he did, she put her mouth on his first.

He yanked her in hard, so that she fell into him. It was crazy, but she slid her hands up his chest and into his hair to hold him to her. He had one hand up the back of her sweater on bare skin, his fingers spread as if he wanted to touch as much of her as possible. His other hand slid down, cupping her bottom, which made him groan.

“You drive me crazy,” he said against her mouth. “You taste so f**king good. You always taste so f**king good.”

She might have said ditto, but then his tongue stroked hers, and they both moaned. Then he was trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses along her jaw to her ear, which he nipped, and her knees melted. “Damn it,” she sighed.

She felt him smile against her skin before he kissed the spot just beneath her lobe. She shivered and knew she was a goner. She was even hearing a ringing in her head—

The store’s phone.

She must have missed four rings, because it clicked over to the machine, and they heard her own voice saying, “Book and Bean. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

And then came Mr. Wilford’s voice.

“Listen, missy. You dug this pumpkin garden; you need to get your skinny ass out here and water it. I’m too old for this. You hear me?”

“Why does everyone call my ass skinny?” Aubrey asked the room.

“It’s a good ass,” Ben said, hands on it. He squeezed. “Really good.”

There was a knock at the door, and she pushed free. “Oh, my God. I have work.” She poked him with a finger. “Stop distracting me with your mouth!”

“I could distract you with another body part instead. Say the word.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. You’re done distracting me. I don’t sleep with guys who sabotage my car. And why did you do it?”

At the second, more persistent knock, he gestured to the door. “You’re ignoring a paying customer.”

“We’re not done with this,” she warned him.

“No doubt.”

Chapter 17

Mornings were easier these days, thanks to the new routine of hitting the bakery before opening the bookstore.

Aubrey was sitting on Leah’s back counter, inhaling powdered doughnut holes left over from the day before. She’d just told them how Ben had pulled her coil wire and had paused, expecting a suitable level of outrage from her friends.

Instead, Leah laughed. She laughed so hard she slid down the cabinet and ended up sitting on the floor.

Ali laughed, too, though she managed to remain upright. “So cute,” she said.

“Cute?” Aubrey repeated, outraged all over again. “How in the world is that cute?”

“He likes you,” Ali said simply, and popped another doughnut hole in her mouth.

“What is this, high school?” Aubrey muttered, reaching for another doughnut hole, too. “And he doesn’t like me. And I don’t like him. He just did it so he could figure out what I was up to.”

Leah nodded. “No doubt. But I bet this entire box of doughnut holes that he also did it because he has a protective streak a mile long regarding people he cares about.” She smiled when Aubrey didn’t have a ready retort. “And in any case, you could just tell him what you’re up to, you know. Or tell us.”

Aubrey let out a breath. “I haven’t told anyone.”

“All the more reason to tell us,” Leah said. “This”—doughnut hole in hand, she gestured to the kitchen around them—“is the cone of silence. Nothing you say here can be repeated outside this room without permission from the tellee.”

“Tellee?” Aubrey said.

“You,” Leah said.

Aubrey looked at Ali. Ali nodded and held up two fingers, as though she were making an oath.

“Were you a Girl Scout?” Aubrey asked.

“No,” Ali said. “But I totally could’ve been. I can make all kinds of knots in ropes. And I look pretty good in khaki.”

Leah nodded. “This is true.”

Aubrey sighed. “Okay, fine. It’s my karma. It’s…shaky at best. I needed to fix some things from my past, so I made a list.”

“A list?” Ali asked.

“Of people I wronged.”

“Well, hell, Aubrey,” Leah said. “We all could make a list.”

“Really?” Aubrey asked. “Did either of you sleep with your married professor in college? Because he’s number seven.”

“Okay, that’s pretty bad,” Ali said after a moment of silence. “But I’ve made some pretty damn spectacular mistakes myself, so there’s no judgment here. Would you like my opinion?”

“Could I stop you?” Aubrey asked drily.