Forever and a Day
Page 7

“Yeah. Do you see the key? It’s in the metal hide-a-key.”
Yeah, she saw the metal hide-a-key. She also saw the spiderweb. The massive spiderweb. She toed it and a big, fat, hairy brown spider crawled with badass authority into her line of sight, giving her the evil eye. He was ready to rumble. Gulp. Not much truly terrified Grace. Well, aside from clowns and glass elevators. But spiders? Spiders topped her list, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
“Grace?”
“Yeah?” she whispered. Was it her imagination or was the spider giving her a “bring it” gesture with two of its spindly legs?
“There’s a pool out back,” Josh said. “You can’t get to it from the side yard where you are. Toby can swim, but…”
Oh, God. The image of Toby running outside and into the pool on his own was too awful to bear. She closed her eyes, plunged her hand into the sprinkler box while silently chanting “pleasedon’tbitemepleasedon’tbiteme,” and pulled out the hide-a-key.
Without getting bitten.
She ran to the back door and let herself in, racing through the kitchen, skidding to a halt in the living room, where Toby was standing on the couch, lightsaber once again in hand, whipping it around.
Whoosh, vrrmm-whoosh.
Grace nearly collapsed with relief. She’d handled millions of dollars of other people’s money without breaking a sweat, and yet at this, just one little boy and a puppy, she needed a nap. “Well, that was a fun fire drill.”
“Toby?” Josh asked in her ear.
“All in one piece.” She sank to the couch and put her head between her knees. “Your house is a little crazy, Dr. Scott.”
“You must feel right at home, then.”
She heard herself let out a weak laugh. “Hey, you’re the crazy one.” She fingered the money in her pocket. “You can’t go around paying people so much money for menial work. They’ll take advantage of you.”
“I’m not easy to take advantage of.”
Okay, so that was undoubtedly true, she thought. “But—”
“Did you lose Tank?”
Only for a minute… “No.”
“Did he shit in the house?”
“No.”
“Then you’re worth every penny,” Josh assured her. “Listen, I’m sorry about Anna. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“But—”
But nothing. He was gone. She lifted her head and found Toby standing there, a lock of dark hair falling across his forehead, lightsaber still in one hand, a squirming Tank in the other.
He really was pretty damn cute, she thought. This would be okay. She could totally do this for an hour. It’d be like the time she had to babysit the guys in payroll.
Toby wrinkled his nose like something was stinky, then hastily set Tank down.
The puppy was panting, and his stomach looked uncomfortably full. Uh-oh. “Tank,” she said, trying to get him outside.
Too late. Tank hunched over and horked up all the trash he’d eaten.
On her feet.
“Arf,” Tank said, looking like he felt all better.
“Arf,” Toby said.
Chapter 6
There are four basic food groups: plain chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate.
One painfully long hour later, Grace was exhausted. This was nothing like babysitting the guys in payroll. First of all, Tank never stopped moving.
Or barking.
He’d found a forgotten stethoscope from somewhere and had dragged it around and around the living room. Around the couch, up and over the coffee table, until he’d inadvertently trapped the end on a chair leg and been caught up short. A sound like air leaking out of a balloon had come from his throat, and he’d fallen over, legs straight up in the air.
Grace had thought he’d killed himself and had gone running toward him, but before she’d gotten to him, he’d rebounded.
Good as new, he’d been chewing on her sandals five minutes later.
And five minutes after that, the wooden kitchen chairs.
And the wooden banister poles.
And someone’s forgotten hat…
She was considering giving him an electrical cord to chew on next when she heard the front door open. Josh stepped inside wearing a white doctor’s coat over his sexy office clothes, a stethoscope around his neck like a tie. He picked up Toby and flung him over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, making the kid squeal with abandon.
Josh gave a tired smile at the sound and turned to Grace, Toby still hanging upside down behind him. “Anna?”
“Present,” Anna said, rolling in the front door. The driver of the pickup was with her. Twentysomething, with an insolent smile, he slouched against the doorjamb.
Josh nudged the guy back a step until Slacker Dude stood on the other side of the jamb. Josh then shut the door in his face.
“Josh!” Anna was horrified and pissed. “You can’t do that to Devon!”
“Just did.”
“You—”
“Later,” he said curtly.
Anna whirled in her chair and sped off down the hallway. Two seconds later, her bedroom door slammed hard enough to shake the windows.
Josh ignored this. “Thanks,” he said to Grace, who felt as rattled as the windows. Five-year-old boys, as it turned out, were aliens. They owned battery-operated hamster pets called Zhu Zhus that chirped and whistled and skittered randomly, terrifying pug puppies and temp babysitters alike.
Josh reached into his pocket and pulled out some cash.
“Oh no,” she said, backing away. “You don’t have to…”
“We didn’t negotiate for babysitting fees.”
“It’s okay.”
He gave her a speculative gaze. “Is this one of those ‘I would have done it for a kiss’ deals?”
She laughed, even as her tummy quivered. “I just meant that this one’s on me.”
“No,” he said softly. “I owe you.”
The air between them did that snap-crackle-pop thing again, like static electricity on steroids, and Grace’s breath caught. “Okay,” she said, just as softly. “You owe me.”
Two days later, Grace entered the diner, still thinking about kisses, deals, and sexy doctors named Josh.
And oddly enough, her résumé. She supposed she could add dog walker to it. She’d done it four days in a row now with no mishaps, at least no major ones. She didn’t count Tank biting the mailman’s pant leg yesterday, because Tank didn’t actually break skin. Nor did she count Toby dumping his bottle of bubbles into the pool because, hey, she’d always wanted to see what would happen too. And the pool guy had come right out and fixed everything, so all was okay.
In fact, she could probably now add babysitter to her new and constantly changing résumé as well, since it went nicely with dogsitter, model, and floral delivery person.
Not that any of that went with being a banking investment specialist.
She did finally get calls for interviews. She had a Seattle appointment tomorrow morning. The Portland interview was the following day, early, and would be conducted by Skype. This worked out in her favor because this way she wouldn’t miss modeling for Lucille’s class. The budding artists were drawing feet this week, so Grace had no wardrobe worries, at least from her feet up.
She tried to imagine her mother or father modeling their bare feet, but couldn’t. Because they took life much more seriously than that. They were the real deal.
And Grace was a poser.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Lucky Harbor. She did. It was just that what she could find here in the way of a career wasn’t…big enough. Important enough. She plopped into the back booth next to a waiting Mallory. Amy showed up two minutes later and dropped a shoe box onto the table. She untied her pink apron, tossed it aside, and sank into the booth, propping her feet up by Grace’s hip. “Off duty, thank God.”
“What’s with the shoe box?” Grace asked, nudging it curiously. “New boots or something?”
“Or something,” Amy said. “Somehow, I’m selling like crazy.” She was a sketch artist, and she’d found a niche for herself creating color pencil renditions of the local landscape. Lucille’s gallery was selling out of everything Amy created nearly as fast as she brought it in. “I can’t keep up.”
“Keep up?” Grace asked.
“Yeah. At first, I just took people’s cash or checks and shoved the receipts into my purse or pockets or wherever.”
She was talking about her accounting, Grace realized with horror. She might not be a bean counter anymore, but she still had a healthy respect for the process. “You said at first. What are you doing now?”
“Well, I decided I was being irresponsible,” Amy said, “so I started a file.”
“That’s not a file,” Grace said. “That’s a box.”
“Yeah, whatever. A box worked better.” Amy pushed it toward her. “For you.”
Grace opened the box. It was full of…everything. There were napkins with numbers and dates scrawled on them, little pieces of paper with more numbers and dates, bigger pieces of paper, receipts, some folded, some crumpled, some not. Grace lifted a round cotton pad with a number scratched onto it in what looked like eyeliner and stared at Amy in disbelief.
Amy shrugged. “So bookkeeping isn’t my thing. It’s yours, right?”
“Well, yeah, I suppose.”
“And?” Amy looked at her expectantly.
“And…?”
“You going to help me or what?”
“How?” Grace asked in disbelief. “By getting you a bigger box?”
“No, by keeping track of my shit.” Amy waved her hand. “You know, create a system so I don’t look like just another idiot with a box come tax time.”
Grace looked at Mallory, who laughed. “Better do it,” she told Grace. “Before the IRS takes her away.”
Grace pulled the box near her and sighed. “Fine. I’ll do the damn books. But it’s going to cost you.”
“Big bucks?”
“Chocolate cupcakes. Tara’s cupcakes.” Tara was Grace’s landlord at the B&B, and there was little that compared to the exquisiteness of Tara’s baking. Not that Grace could afford her.
“Done,” Amy said. “But I’m going to pay you as well, so be sure to bill me.”
“On what, a napkin?”
“Funny.”
Over chocolate cupcakes—not Tara’s, unfortunately—they discussed the latest and newest. Amy was moving in with her sexy forest ranger, Matt Bowers. Mallory was planning to elope with Ty, a local flight paramedic, to a beach somewhere in the South Pacific—though she wanted a big reception here in Lucky Harbor when they got back. And Grace told them about dog walking for Josh, laughing a little because dog walking hardly compared to relationships. “I didn’t realize it would be an ongoing thing,” she said. “But the good doctor has this odd ability to get his way.”
“Yeah, you know who else is like that?” Amy asked. “All men. Is his pug’s name really Tank?”
“His sister brought the puppy home for the kid,” Mallory said, knowing much more about Josh than any of them since she and Josh worked together at the hospital. “Without asking, I should add. It’s Anna’s life mission to drive Josh insane.”
“Why?” Grace asked.
“I don’t know. I think she’s trying to make him pay for her being in a wheelchair, which of course isn’t his fault. Between her, Toby, and the hospital board all up Josh’s ass about selling them the controlling percentage of his practice, he’s got to be close to losing it completely.”
Actually, every time Grace had seen Josh, he seemed perfectly calm, perfectly in control, and perfectly…yum.
If not entirely too exhausted. “Why would he sell the controlling percentage of his practice?” Grace asked.
“People don’t realize how much work a sole practice is,” Mallory said. “If something happens to a patient, it’s his fault. If a billing error’s made and a procedure’s wrongly claimed, that’s fraud—also his fault. The list is endless, and he’s responsible for all of it. That doesn’t even count the med school loans, the license requirements, insurance bills, office costs, support systems…” She shrugged. “People think doctors have it easy, but they don’t. Josh inherited the practice from his late father, but his first love is the ER. If he sold, he could spend more time there. Or with Toby.”
“Then he should sell,” Grace said.
“Not that easy,” Mallory said. “His father was very popular around here, and he built that practice out of love. People come from all over to go see Dr. Weston Scott’s son, out of loyalty and affection. It’s a huge obligation on Josh’s shoulders.”
Grace nodded. Oh boy, did she understand family obligation. Hers was to become Someone Important. Instead she was walking dogs and delivering flowers and kissing sexy doctors named Josh…She realized conversation had lagged and that Amy and Mallory were staring at her. “What?”
“You tell us what,” Mallory said. “Miss Staring-Dreamily-Off-into-Space.”
“I wasn’t,” Grace said. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something,” Amy said.
“Oh, it’s something all right,” Lucille said helpfully, getting out of the booth to their right. “She left out the kiss.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Here.”