“It’s Grandma’s bakery. Not mine.”
“I’ve been at the house. There’s nothing of you there either.”
“Again,” she said. “Not my place.”
“Yeah? Well then, where is your place, Leah?”
“You know I don’t have one right now. I’ve been a little busy. And now I’m leaving anyway, so—”
“Bullshit.” He caged her in with a hand on either side of her hips. “I’m calling bullshit, Leah.”
“No, it’s true. I leave tomorrow night.”
“Not that,” he said. “Yeah, you’re leaving. No one knows it better than me. I’m talking about you not letting anyone too close or they’ll see your flaws.”
Her breath hitched. Dammit. He knew her far too well.
He ducked a little to look into her eyes. “But I’ve always seen you, all of you, flaws and all. I know you, so I can say this. You’re not perfect. But you’re perfect for me. And it pisses me off that you won’t let that happen. Let us happen. I’m tired of watching you implode, Leah. Tired and done.”
“Then get the hell out,” she said. “I’ve asked you twice now.”
He did just that. He got the hell out.
Leah covered her face and tried to tell herself he was an ass. A pushy, unforgiving ass. But she knew exactly who was at fault here.
“Knock, knock.”
Leah jerked and opened her eyes.
Aubrey stood in the doorway holding a flask and a bag of potato chips. “Thought one of these might be of some help about now.”
“Alcohol and chips?”
“It’s my emergency ‘Just Fucked Up Again’ kit.”
Leah sighed. “You heard.”
“Everything,” Aubrey agreed. “Thin walls.” She came in and helped herself to two glasses. She poured a splash of something amber into each and then handed one to Leah, keeping the other for herself. “Cheers.”
“Cheers?” Leah choked out.
“You’re right,” Aubrey said. “How about…to f**king up? I mean, let’s face it, we’re both pretty good at that.”
“What have you ever f**ked up?”
Aubrey laughed a little coldly, and yet somehow the sound held volumes of loneliness. “You grew up here. You know my rep.”
“You have a rep for being unflappable and gorgeous.”
Aubrey took another shot. “And…”
“Okay,” Leah said. “And maybe a little untouchable.”
“Bitchy,” Aubrey corrected. “Mean. Cold.”
“I don’t think you’re mean or cold,” Leah said.
Aubrey laughed again, this one much more real. “Just bitchy? Okay, I can live with that.”
There was a soft knock, and Ali appeared at the doorway. She saw the glasses and immediately her mouth went into a pout. “Hey. I want to join.”
“Can’t,” Aubrey said. “You aren’t a fuckup.”
Ali paused a beat, taking this in, clearly thinking hard. “You’re wrong. I’ve been a fuckup before.”
Aubrey smiled. “Is that the first time you’ve ever said fuck?”
“Maybe,” Ali said. “Let me join the club and I’ll say it as much as you want. Look— fuck, fuck, fuck—”
“Stop,” Aubrey said on a laugh and got out a third glass, filling it with a few fingers straight up.
Ali knocked it back, coughed, and swiped at her mouth. “So are we drinking to the Sweet Wars final or something else?” She divided a gaze between them, clearly assuming it could have been either of them equally to be the screwup.
Leah raised her hand. “The finals. I’m this week’s idiot.”
“No you’re not,” Ali said, loyal to the end, but she bit her lower lip because she loved Jack too. “It can’t be unfixable, it can’t. You both care so much about each other.”
“And isn’t that just it,” Leah said softly and scrubbed her hands over her face. “How can you fall for the person who knows you better than anyone else?”
“The question is,” Aubrey said just as quietly, “how can you not?”
“He knows everything about me,” Leah said. “All my secrets. There’s no hiding with him, no holding back.” She stood up, restlessly turning in a circle before coming back around to stare at her friends. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to be laid bare before someone like that?”
Both Ali and Aubrey were looking at her with eyes that assured her that they knew exactly, and she sighed. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.
“Jack wouldn’t hurt you,” Ali rushed to say. “He’d rip off his own arm first.”
Leah nodded. She knew this, she did. “It’s just that I’ve never needed a man before to make my life complete. Never. But…”
“But what?” Ali demanded when Leah trailed off, a little overwhelmed by her own epiphany. “But what?”
“But…I need that man,” Leah said. “I need Jack.”
Jack lost himself in his drug of choice—work. It was late, and he was off duty, and yet he was at his desk staring at his computer screen. Around him, the station was quiet and dark.
Inside him, there was no quiet to be found as he picked up the phone.
“Do you know what time it is?” Ronald grumbled.
“And do you know that Mr. Rinaldi, that new developer in town, isn’t new at all?”
Ronald blew out a long breath, sounding like he was struggling to come awake. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s Max Fitzgerald’s brother.”
“Well, hell,” Ronald said.
“Yeah. Well, hell.”
The next morning, Leah was surprised to find her grandma already up and dressed to go to work.
“I’m baking with you this morning,” Elsie said. “Our last day. No sadness,” she said at the look on Leah’s face. “And anyway, yes it’s an ending, but it’s also a new beginning as well. I’m feeling great. Turns out, having a man’s better than Metamucil.”
“I’d have to agree,” a man said, and to Leah’s utter shock, Mr. Lyons walked into the kitchen using his cane, looking as dapper and cheery as Elsie. He gave her a smacking kiss on the lips, winked at Leah, and then limped to the door. “I’ll see you soon, chickie,” he said to Elsie, and was gone.
“Isn’t he the sweetest thing?” Elsie asked.
Twenty minutes later, they were at the bakery. And Leah had a bitch of a headache, which she tried to ignore. It was her last day, and she was stressed. That was all.
It had nothing to do with the hole in her damn heart.
An hour passed and she was elbow deep into the early morning baking when it happened.
The power flickered and went out.
“Dammit,” Leah muttered. She had a searing hot poker of pain behind one eyeball. Her headache had upgraded to migraine level, and she was feeling lightheaded to boot.
Not enough sleep.
Dawn hadn’t quite broken, so she felt for the junk drawer and fumbled for the flashlight and some new fuses. “Grandma,” she called to the front room, where Elsie had been cleaning the display shelves for the new day’s goods. “Have a seat for a few minutes; I’ll get this.”
“Already sitting,” Elsie called back. “I might have been a little overzealous on the knee.”
“You shouldn’t be bending down and cleaning those displays.”
“That’s not what I got overzealous about,” Elsie said.
Leah winced and rubbed her temples. “TMI, Grandma.”
Elsie laughed in delight. “Go. I’m fine.”
Leah paused to flick the beam of light into the little glass window of the new oven.
Her soufflé was going to be ruined. And hell if it hadn’t been one of the most amazing batches ever too. Frustrated, she left the heat of the kitchen and stepped outside, closing the door so she didn’t let out the bought air.
Ali wasn’t in yet, and the bookstore was closed like always. Dawn was breaking, the light a brilliant kaleidoscope of oranges, reds, and purples. The air was chilly and seemed to clear her head. There was a tang of salt from the ocean and…
She went still and sniffed again.
Sulfur?
In the alley, she turned in a slow circle, something crunching beneath her shoe.
A scattering of cigarette butts.
That was odd. Extremely odd. The only reason for anyone to be back here was if he belonged in one of the three shops that made up the building.
But no one who did belong here smoked.
She glanced at the back door to the bakery and at the glass window there. Right now, with the sun’s rays stabbing through the early morning, the reflection on the glass nearly blinded her, and she couldn’t see in. But as of only a few minutes ago, it would have still been dark outside. Inside the kitchen, she’d have been like a fish in a fishbowl to anyone in the alley, and knowing it, goose bumps rose on her skin.
Someone had stood right here in this spot, smoking and watching her.
Hugging herself against the chill that raced down her spine, she reentered the kitchen and shut and locked the door. And then bolted it. “Grandma,” she called out. “Make sure the front door’s still locked, okay?” Her headache was killing her, and adding that to the exhaustion of not sleeping was making her dizzy. All this broken heart stuff was hell on her immune system, she thought, realizing she felt weak too. And…sick. Dammit. She sat. Just for a minute, she told herself, and set her head on her arms. Whew. She was seriously woozy. In the back of her mind, it occurred to her that her grandma had never responded to her.
She heard footsteps. Not her grandma’s uneven, shuffling gait but someone with a more steady stride. A man, she thought. But her head was too heavy to lift, and her eyelids wouldn’t open…
Chapter 27
Jack was deeply asleep, dreaming of being smothered when someone started banging on his door. By the time he sat up and shoved Kevin off his chest, Ben had let himself in and stood in the doorway in a pair of unbuttoned jeans. “Get up,” he told Jack, shrugging into a shirt. “Now.”
There was little that ever made Ben rush, and knowing it, Jack immediately rolled off the bed and reached for pants.
“Luke called,” Ben said. “There’s a problem downtown.”
Jack knew damn well that Luke wouldn’t call about just any problem. “What is it?”
“The bakery. Someone called in a report of seeing an older woman unconscious inside the closed bakery. He didn’t know more; the call had just come in. Let’s go.”
Jack was already out the door, calling dispatch while Ben drove. Emergency responders were just arriving on scene. Nothing to report yet.
Jack ended the call and leaned forward in the passenger seat, like that could get them to the scene faster.
“You think it’s Elsie?” Ben asked.
“Don’t know.” Jack hit Leah’s number.
No answer.
If it was Elsie in trouble—and who else could it be—then he wondered what she’d been doing alone at the bakery. Where was Leah? Under different circumstances, she might have been in Jack’s bed, but he’d screwed that up pretty good.
He tried her cell again but it still went straight to voice mail. “Leah,” he said. “Call me.” He disconnected and stared at the road. Had she avoided a good-bye altogether and left town early? He had to work on not having heart failure when Ben went straight instead of left at the pier. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Driving you to the bakery,” Ben said.
“By way of Africa? Why the hell didn’t you turn on Harbor Boulevard?”
“They’re tearing up Harbor. Repaving.”
When they got caught at one of the only three stoplights in town, Jack could actually feel a stroke coming on and had to put a finger to his twitching eye. “There’s no one in the intersection. Go through it.”
Ben didn’t move.
“Ben.”
“You already have a ticket this week.”
“But you don’t!”
The light turned green, so in the end Jack didn’t have to kill his cousin. And twenty-five hundred years later, Ben pulled up behind the ambulance and fire unit. Both men got out of the car and ran toward the scene.
Luke stepped away from a group of uniforms and into Jack’s path. “Tim was driving by before dawn and saw the front light on in the bakery,” he told them. “He said he got excited that Leah had opened early and parked. But the door was locked, and through the window he could see Elsie slumped at a table. He knocked but got no response. He broke in and hauled her out. She’s come to briefly, but she’s woozy and confused. Incoherent. It’s a possible CO2 poisoning, so we’re testing for that now.”
Carbon monoxide poisoning was known as a silent, viciously fast killer, and he got cold to the bone. “Leah?”
Luke shook his head. “Haven’t seen her, but you’re literally only two minutes behind us. Still clearing the building.”
Hunter and Cindy were rolling the gurney toward the ambulance, where an agitated Elsie struggled with Hunter, who was trying to fit her with an oxygen mask. Her hands were fluttering, her eyes wide with confusion and shock.
“Shortness of breath and chest pains,” Hunter told Jack.
Jack leaned over a confused Elsie, taking her hands in his. “You’re safe, Elsie.” Gently he placed the oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. “Lie still a minute. Just breathe.”