Once in a Lifetime

The night was a dark one. It’d stopped raining now, but the ground was soft and wet and smelled earthy. The trees were still laden and heavy with water, and whenever the wind kicked up, more water fell from them. “You warm enough?” he asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“Up for a walk?”

“Here? In the dark?” She looked around. “Where are we?”

“You’ll see.”

She stared at him for a long moment and then put her hand in his. He led her to what looked like a thirty-foot rock, then pulled his keys from his pocket and flicked on a small penlight he had attached to them. “Watch your step,” he told her, but quickly realized that was impossible in her high-heeled boots. “Never mind.” Taking her arm, he lifted her and twisted himself around so that he was carrying her piggyback.

“Ben,” she gasped, throwing her arms around his neck so she didn’t fall. “Put me down.”

Ignoring that, he took the steep hill in front of them.

Her breathing hitched. “I’m wearing a skirt!” she said, sounding panicked.

“I know,” he said. His fingers were intimately wrapped around her thighs, which were in turn wrapped around his waist. Mmm. He let his hands slide northward until she squeaked.

He laughed, but stopped moving his hands.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “I’m flashing my goodies to the world back here.”

“It’s dark, and there’s no one out here but us. But if you want me to keep you covered…” Once again his hands went on the move, sliding upward until he squeezed her sweet ass. The only thing between his palms and her skin was her panties, which—God bless them—felt thin and skimpy. His very favorite kind.

“Ben!” She squirmed, nearly climbing over his head. “I’m serious!”

“So am I. Are these lace?”

“Stop it!” She wriggled some more, still trying to climb out of his reach, which only made him crack up again. But he stopped copping a feel. Mostly because he was going straight down the incline now, and concentrating was a good idea.

Worried noises were still sounding in his ear from the anxious Aubrey, who was gripping him for dear life. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, dropping her head to his shoulder. “Oh, my God.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I hardly ever fall here. Of course I haven’t done it while sporting a hard-on before…”

She bit his ear, and he groaned. “I like that,” he said. “A lot.”

She blew out a breath.

“And that…”

“Oh, for God’s sake. You like everything.”

“True.”

A few minutes later, he let go of her legs, letting her slowly slide down his back.

She quickly straightened her skirt. “You’re impossible,” she said.

“So I’ve been told.” Taking her hand, he tugged her close, showing her the view in front of them. They stood on the top of the bluffs, on the far east side of the harbor. From here they had a perfect postcard view of the little Washington State beach town, cozily nestled in the rocky cove. The main drag—a quirky, eclectic mix of the old and new—was lit up. Looking at it from here never failed to be a comfort for him.

No matter how far and wide he’d traveled, this was home.

He could see the pier, also lit, jutting out into the water, lined with more shops and outdoor cafés. And the Ferris wheel. He’d loved that damn thing as a kid.

He and Aubrey sat side by side. Eyeing their scenic view of the Pacific Ocean, swirling and pounding the rocky shore three hundred feet below, Aubrey shook her head. “It’s so gorgeous. I’ve never been up here.”

“Never?” He found this hard to believe. “You’re telling me through all your teenage years here in Lucky Harbor, no guy ever brought you up here to make out?”

She smiled. “I wasn’t as easy as I looked.”

“I found that a lot with girls back then,” he said on a disappointed sigh that made her laugh.

He loved the sound of her laugh. Her eyes lit and her face softened. Not that she wasn’t always beautiful, because she was. But when she smiled like that, she relaxed and…let him in.

He knew she wasn’t good at it. He got that he was one of the chosen few. He had to admit he liked that and found himself wanting even more.

“How did you ever find this spot?” she asked.

“Luke found it years ago, out of necessity.”

“Necessity?”

He smiled. “You were never a teenage boy.”

“That is an accurate statement.”

He laughed. “As a whole, the breed tends to need a lot of unsupervised time away from authority of any kind. It makes it easier to get in all sorts of trouble, which is incredibly attractive to the breed in general.”

She smiled. “What did you all do?”

“Probably best to ask what we didn’t do. For one thing, we’d steal Luke’s sister’s stash of pot. Or booze from Jack’s dad. We weren’t choosy. Whatever we could get our klepto fingers on. Then I’d tell Dee that Jack and I were going to spend the night at Luke’s, and Luke would tell his grandma he was going to Jack’s.”

“Ah,” she said. “The switch and bait.”

“Yep.”

“And then you would…” She arched a brow.

“Hike up here. We’d make a campfire—also illegal—and then get drunk or high and sleep out beneath the stars. We were complete idiots.” But those times, just the three of them against the world, were vivid in Ben’s mind. They were some of his fondest memories.

“You ever get caught?” she asked.

“Bite your tongue.” He smiled. “Nope, we never got caught.”

She shook her head, smiling a little bit, too, enjoying the story. “Hard to picture Detective Luke Hanover and Fire Marshal Jack Harper being juvenile delinquents,” she said.

“But not hard to imagine me as one?” he asked mildly.

Now she laughed outright. “Benjamin McDaniel, you were born a delinquent.”

This was true enough, and he smiled at the sight of her relaxing a little bit, enjoying herself at his expense. “Some things are in the blood, I guess,” he said.

Her smile slowly faded. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” He couldn’t help the genes he’d come from—he got that. And most of the time he never even thought about it, about his real parents. He’d honestly been kidding. But Aubrey shocked the hell out of him when she put her hands on his jaw and stared fiercely into his eyes. “We’re not our parents,” she said. “We’re self-made.”

He dropped his forehead to hers. “Is that why you’re killing yourself with that list?”

She closed her eyes and laughed softly.

“Tell me about the professor,” he said.

Sighing, she pulled back from him and stared out into the water. “I met him when I was in college in Seattle. He taught English there, my favorite subject.”

Having hated English, Ben made a face, and she laughed again. “He brought it all to life,” she said. “And it dazzled me. He dazzled me.”

Ben had a feeling he knew where this was going, and he wasn’t going to like it. “Tell me.”

“I slept with him,” Aubrey admitted out loud for the first time, glad for the dark. “It was against the rules, of course, not that I cared. All I cared about was how this smart, funny, amazing man found me attractive.”

“He looks like he has twenty years on you,” Ben said.

His voice was low and not nearly as calm as usual. He was mad at the professor on her behalf. But what had happened had been one hundred percent Aubrey’s own doing and all her fault. “Forty didn’t look so bad,” she said. “Not on Professor Bennett.” She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, suddenly a little chilled. “He gave me the attention I’d been seeking, and for one whole, glorious quarter, it was really great.”

Ben slid close and rubbed his hand up and down her arm, as if trying to warm and soothe her. “What happened?”

This was the hard part. “One day I heard a couple of the other professors talking about him, how he liked to pick a pretty blonde every semester to be his pet, in spite of the fact that he was a married man. They said someday someone was going to turn him in and he’d lose his job.” She paused, remembering the agony and humiliation. “So that’s what happened. The college got a tip that he’d been screwing a pretty blonde, and he was fired, a year before he would’ve gotten tenure.”

“Tenure doesn’t mean shit when you break the rule and f**k around with an underage minor,” Ben said harshly.

“I wasn’t underage. I was twenty.”

“And he was forty,” he said. “You were twenty and this guy was forty, and you think this is your fault? Hell, no, Aubrey, it doesn’t work like that. Jesus. You were just a kid. He took advantage of you.”

“You’re missing the point,” she said. “I called in the tip.”

He turned her to face him and ducked down a little to look her in the eyes. “You were a kid,” he repeated.

“I got him fired, Ben.”

“Good.”

She stared at him. He was sitting there, vibrating tension and being pissed off on her behalf. And then it hit her, why she felt so…moved. No one had ever been pissed off on her behalf before. “I wasn’t a kid. I was an adult,” she said. “And on top of that, I knew the consequences of sleeping with a professor.”

“Did you know he was married?”

“No,” she admitted. “Not until I heard those other professors talking about him. I reacted with temper and hurt feelings. I shouldn’t have made that call.”

“So you went to his place tonight to apologize?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, actually,” she said, and then hesitated. “Until I saw him with his wife.” She shook her head. “He’s still married. Or maybe she’s a new wife. It doesn’t matter; she was wearing a big fat diamond ring. I’m not going to mess with his life for a second time just to assuage my guilty conscience.”

“How about I go mess with his life by rearranging his face?” Ben muttered.

She laughed, but Ben’s expression was carved in granite, and her smiled faded. “You aren’t serious.”

He just looked at her, eyes flat, mouth flat.

He was dead serious.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I want you to forget everything I’ve told you tonight.”

Testosterone pouring off him in waves, he looked away, out at the water, noncommittal. The queen of noncommittal herself, Aubrey cupped his face and pulled him back around. “I mean it,” she said. “Put it out of your head.”

“How do you suppose I should do that, Aubrey—put it out of my mind?”

Oh, listen to him, all alpha and furious with it. The man who’d made sure she knew that he didn’t want a committed relationship with her. She was beginning to suspect he was full of shit about that, but who was she to tell him so? Lots of people hadn’t wanted to be with her, including her own father.

But there was a lot of room between nothing and a committed relationship. “We should fill your mind with something else,” she suggested, making her voice soft and sultry.

His gaze immediately went all heavy-lidded, and his voice lowered as well, to that sexy drawl that did her in every time. “Such as?”

Her gaze dropped to his mouth. “Well, to be honest, a few things come to mind.”

“Tell me,” he said huskily.

“Hmm…I’m more into show. Maybe we should go back to my place.”

“Or…” He pulled off his jacket and spread it out behind her on the rock.

“Here?” she whispered.

“Yeah.” Laying her back, he towered over her, rocking his pelvis to hers, letting her feel how hard he was. “Here.”

Already breathless, her body betrayed her by quivering in anticipation. “Someone might come.”

“That would be you,” he said, and lowered himself down to kiss her.

Chapter 21

At the next Craft Corner, Ben worked to keep his patience but he was quickly losing the battle. Within fifteen minutes, he was already having to resist the urge to bang his head against the wall. He’d made the spectacularly stupid mistake of asking the kids last week what they wanted to make, and they’d voted for a birdhouse, of all things. He’d cheated by buying the materials himself ahead of time and precutting all the plywood, effectively making “birdhouse kits.” All the kids had to do was fit the pieces together like a puzzle and then glue and paint. “Right there,” he said to Pink, pointing to a spot on her wood. “Glue right there.”

“Why?” she asked.

He had twenty-five kids today, and every single one of them had asked him at least a million questions. A billion. Surely they all had sore throats from talking so much. “To hold the roof on the birdhouse,” he said for the fifth time.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. She’d lost both of her top front teeth this past week, and she liked to press her tongue into the vacancy. She beamed at him, a toothless grin, and damn if he didn’t feel his heart squeeze. Finding himself utterly helpless in the face of her sweetness, he ruffled her hair.

Her smiled widened. “You’re awfully good with this stuff, Mr. Teacher.”