Author: Jill Shalvis

There were flowers in a bouquet on his table. “You brought me flowers?” he asked inanely.

“No. They were on your doorstep. I just brought them in. There’s a note,” Dee added. “It’s sealed, or I’d have totally sneaked a peek. Although I can guess.”

Ben could, too, but he didn’t want to go there. “You going to the senior center today?” he asked Dee.

“Yes. It’s bingo lunch.”

“Take the flowers with you.”

She gave him an assessing look. “Okay. Did you want to go get dressed and eat, or would you rather kick my butt for intruding?”

“I’m still trying to decide.”

She smiled. “Go on. Find some clothes. I’ll be done here by the time you’re back.”

“Done with what?” he asked.

“Breakfast, silly.”

“Breakfast,” he repeated, stunned into stupidity by heartache and lack of sleep.

“Yes.” She beamed at him. “Remember all those mornings you got up at the crack of dawn to come make me breakfast after my chemo? Well, I’m returning the favor.”

He didn’t want breakfast. He wanted…Aubrey. He wanted her sated and boneless in his bed, with one of those smiles on her face that was just for him, as though he were the best thing she’d ever seen.

At the thought, emotion swamped him. He told himself it was all anger, because she’d ruined it. She’d ruined everything. But the truth was, it felt more like sadness and regret than anger.

Dee’s smile faded, and she set down the orange juice and eggs and came to him, wrapping her arms around him. “Rough morning?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged.

Just as he’d done for her all those mornings when she’d been sick and exhausted and scared and hurting, she didn’t ask a bunch of questions. She accepted that some days were just shit. “You look like hell,” she murmured.

He let out a low laugh. “Thanks.” He went to his room to yank on a pair of jeans and then came back to the kitchen.

“Sit.” Dee gestured to a chair with her wooden spoon. “You’ll eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Did I ask you if you were hungry? No, I did not.” Again she pointed to the chair and when he didn’t budge, she shoved him.

“Bully,” he said without heat, and let the five-foot-two woman push him down to the chair.

She smiled and patted his shoulder. “I learned from the best, you know.”

“I wasn’t this mean,” he said.

“Oh, please,” she said on a laugh and affected his low baritone as she imitated what he’d said to her whenever she’d resisted him. “You will sit there and shut up and eat, Aunt Dee, and if you don’t, I’ll force it down your throat.”

“I didn’t say it like that,” he said, but surprised them both by laughing.

She smiled. “Aw, that’s better. You probably want to know why I’m here.”

“You’re here because you’re nosy.”

“Yes, well, there’s that.” She came over with a loaded plate and the juice. She set them both down in front of him and hugged him.

“Again?” he asked.

“Hug me back or I’ll keep at it.”

Because she looked so worried, he let her boss him around. He hugged her back, letting her hold on for as long as she wanted, which was about a year. “I’m getting gray hair here,” he finally said.

She pulled back and smacked him upside the head. Then she cupped his face and stared into his eyes. “I’m here because I got the mom feeling that something is wrong. Is it hard being back here?” she asked quietly. “In Lucky Harbor? With us? Is that it? You’re going to leave again?”

“No. And it’s not hard being back. I like being back,” he said, no longer surprised to find that it was absolutely true. He might have started out a true city boy, but he’d also been a lost one, without people who cared. And then he’d landed here in Lucky Harbor, where everyone cared. He liked that—a lot. The place fit him; it always had. “I’m not leaving,” he promised.

“Is it Hannah?” she whispered. “The memories of her?”

“No,” he said, and when she just kept looking at him, he said, “I miss her. I’ll always miss her. But it’s not her.”

“Then it’s Aubrey,” Dee said. “Damn. I told you that one was going to be trouble.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Dee paused, still hovering. “Can I just say one thing?”

“Could a freight train stop you?”

She smiled and cupped his face once more. “It was lovely to see you putting yourself out there again. I hope that whatever happened between you two doesn’t change that.”

He gave her a look. “You’re fishing.”

“Yes.” She paused, and when he didn’t fill in the silence, she sighed good-naturedly. “I love you, baby. You know that, right?”

“I know it. I’ve never doubted it.”

Her eyes looked a little damp as she looked him over again, but she nodded firmly. “You’ll get through this.”

She was right about that; he would get through this. He didn’t see much of a choice. Life was funny that way. When it threw him a curveball, sometimes it hit him between the eyes and sometimes it hit him in the gut, but he always kept coming back to bat.

That afternoon, Ben stood bleary-eyed in front of the Craft Corner gang. He was teaching the kids how to make the kite he’d learned to build from some kids in Haiti, when what he really wanted to do was something far more physical.

Like night surf. He was feeling more than a little out of control, but he knew he needed to keep it together, because he still had to go back to work after this. He could have sworn he was keeping his bad mood from the kids, but just as though he’d projected it out there, a fight broke out over a roll of twine between Pink and a scrappy, tough little girl named Dani. “Hey,” he said, striding over and breaking it up. “Cool it. There’s enough twine to go around.”

“That’s not what this is about,” Pink said, still glaring at Dani. “She’s being mean.”

“Am not,” Dani said.

“Both of you knock it off,” Ben said.

But the girls continued to stare each other down, neither one of them speaking.

Jesus, Ben thought. Girls really were aliens. “Kites,” Ben said. “Make your kites.”

Neither backed down until Ben gave them each a nudge.

Three minutes later the fight was back on.

“Okay,” Ben said. “That’s it. You have two seconds to tell me what’s going on, or we’re done here.” He looked down at the insistent tugging on the hem of his shirt and found Kendra staring up at him, her eyes filled with anxiety.

“You aren’t going to quit, right?” she asked in a small voice.

Ah, shit. Guilt swamped him, and he crouched down to look into the eyes of the little girl who hadn’t spoken once in all this time—until now. Apparently her abandonment issues trumped her social anxieties. “I’m not going anywhere,” Ben promised. “We’re all going.” He took Kendra’s hand in his and rose to his full height, staring at the entire class. “Get your hammers.”

Ben had asked Sam for advice on what to do with the kids. Sam built boats by hand and knew his way around tools. On his suggestion, Ben had ordered and bought thirty-five small hammers from the hardware store, along with work aprons and some other tools for the kids. He figured they’d go out to the railroad ties surrounding the yard and hit the shit out of the wood until aggressions were released. It’d always worked for him. “Field trip,” he said.

They got halfway down the hall before Ms. Uptight Teacher stuck her head out of the office. “Where are you going?”

“Field trip,” the kids yelled excitedly.

The teacher shook her head. “No permission slips.”

“We’re not leaving the yard,” Ben said.

The kids all sighed in disappointment.

The teacher didn’t look relieved. “Why are they all carrying hammers?”

“Anger management,” Ben said.

Ms. Uptight Teacher was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “No.”

He wondered if she practiced saying no to everything, or if it just came to her as naturally as her pinched expression did.

“If you all need a time-out,” she said, “there’s a basket of kick balls in the yard.”

Fine. Ben took the kids to the yard, marching them to the far end. “Okay,” he said, lining them up. “New lesson. Anger management.”

“What’s that?” several kids asked.

“It’s when you expel your pent-up negative energy through physical exertion,” he said.

They all blinked in collective confusion.

“You know how sometimes you just want to hit someone?” he asked them.

“You mean like when someone tells a lie about you?” Pink asked, glaring at Dani.

“Or when they steal your string for your kite?” Dani asked, glaring back at Pink.

“Yes,” Ben said, stepping between them. “Just like that. But we’re not going to hit anyone. Instead we’re going to hit something. Something that won’t get you in trouble. In this case, the fence.” He set a kick ball in front of each kid, separating them widely enough so that no one could level anyone else, accidentally or otherwise. There he stepped to an empty spot with his own ball. “Go,” he said.

Everyone kicked their balls at the fence, which made a very satisfactory sound as it was hit. The balls went flying, and the kids raced after them. They lined up again.

And again.

Ten minutes later each and every one of them was panting in exertion and…smiling.

Except for Ben. He drove Pink and Kendra home and finally found something that did make him smile.

Dan was sitting on the front steps of the house, waiting for his kids.

Chapter 26

Aubrey hadn’t had very many shitty days lately, not since Ben had come into her life. But the past few days had been real doozies. It was horrifying, demoralizing, devastating to realize how badly she’d messed up. Earlier she’d opened the bookstore determined to hold her head up high. What was done was done. She’d had the best of intentions when she’d confessed her misdeed to Ben, and though she still had to somehow make him understand that, she also had to go on.

She had a lot to look forward to, she reminded herself. For one thing, her store was doing okay. And for another, her grand-opening party was only four days away. She’d do even better after that, or so she hoped.

The bell over the door jangled, and her first customers of the day walked in. Lucille and—oh, crap—Mrs. Cappernackle, the retired librarian.

Mrs. Cappernackle gave Aubrey an indecipherable look down her long nose. “Lucille informs me you came by my place some time ago.”

“Yes,” Aubrey said. “I did.” She paused. “You don’t remember?”

“I’ve had some health problems,” she said, still snooty. “Affects my short-term memory.”

Behind her, Lucille swirled her finger by her right ear, making the sign for “crazy.”

Mrs. Cappernackle didn’t catch this, thankfully. “My long-term memory, however,” she went on, eyes eagle sharp and on Aubrey, “remains perfectly intact.”

Terrific. Not daring to meet Lucille’s gaze, Aubrey bent down to the cabinet beneath the cash register and pulled out the book she’d been saving to give back to the retired librarian.

Mrs. Cappernackle’s eyes narrowed. “So you did have it.”