Carlos. The kid often came by looking for extra work in spite of the fact that he already worked at the inn and also bussed at the diner, on top of going to school and being head of his grandmother’s household.
A situation that Ford understood all too well. “Hey. Need some hours?”
“No, I’m good,” Carlos said. “I’m on at the inn today. Maddie sent me into town to get some stuff. She asked me to come by and tell you that tonight’s the night.”
Ford nodded. “Tell her to consider it done.”
“Consider what done?” Jax asked.
“The inn’s appliances were delivered today,” Ford told him. “Maddie asked me to stock their kitchen tonight, as a surprise for Tara.”
Jax raised a brow. “Really?” he said, his tone suggesting that he found this little tidbit fascinating.
“Like you don’t know that Maddie burns water,” Ford said. “And Chloe would probably booby-trap the place just to irritate Tara. So Maddie asked me to do it. It’s no big deal.”
“I just find it interesting that you’re helping the woman that you claim to not be interested in,” Jax said in his annoying, lawyerly logical voice.
Ford had never claimed not to be interested, and Jax knew it. He’d simply refused to talk about it.
“Maddie said to remind you that it’s a surprise,” Carlos said. He grimaced and shuffled his weight, looking uncomfortable now. “She said I should mention that twice, since you don’t always take direction well.”
Jax grinned proudly at this. “That’s my woman.”
“And she said you’re to stay out of it,” Carlos said to Jax in apology. “She said… ah, hell.” The kid pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “You’re not to poke at Ford,” he read. “You’re to leave him alone or else you can forget about tonight.” Carlos carefully folded Maddie’s note back up and didn’t look at either man directly.
“That’s your woman,” Ford said to Jax dryly.
“Let me see that.” Jax snatched the note from Carlos, unfolding it again to take a look. “Damn, she really did write that.” He handed it back.
“So the inn will be empty?” Ford asked the kid.
Carlos nodded. “Maddie said she has plans with Jax-assuming he doesn’t mess with you over this. Chloe’s giving a yoga class at the rec center. And Tara will be out.”
“Out,” Ford said. “Out where?”
Carlos hesitated and went back to his notes, even turning the paper over, but apparently there was nothing there to help him.
Ford thought of all the things that “out” could mean. She could be out bossing people around at the diner. She could be out shopping for more of those fantasy-inducing, uppity clothes she favored. Hell, maybe she was out making a list on how to further stomp on his heart.
Nah, she’d already done that.
“She has a date,” Carlos finally said.
“A date?” Jax looked surprised. “Tara?”
If things had been different, Ford might have laughed. As it was, suddenly he couldn’t breathe very well. Captain Walker to Air Traffic Control, we have a fucking problem. “A date,” he repeated.
Carlos was edging his way back to the gate. “Yeah, that’s what Maddie said.”
Huh. Ford should like the idea of her dragging some other guy’s heart through the mud instead of his, but Tara on a date. Nope, he could roll it around in his head as much as he wanted, he still hated it.
Tara’s blind date had made dinner reservations for them at a sushi joint in the next town over.
Probably for the best.
She’d asked Boyd to pick her up at the diner because one, she didn’t want to have to go back to the inn to change after her shift, and two-and she really hated to admit this even to herself-she didn’t want Ford to be at the marina and possibly see her getting picked up. She couldn’t explain that one even to herself.
What she hadn’t expected was for Boyd to be several inches shorter than her, fifty pounds heavier, and dressed in a suit. “Do you eat here for free?” Boyd asked. “Because we could stay here tonight if that’s the case.”
“Wow,” Jan whispered as Tara walked by her perpetually grumpy boss. “He’s a catch.”
Tara ignored her.
“Do you have flats?” Boyd asked. “Because looking up at you makes my neck hurt. No offense.”
Perfect. Because now they were going to have to go back to the inn after all, so she could change into flats.
It wasn’t as if she was an Amazon, she thought to herself as they walked the pier to Boyd’s car. Most men seemed to be okay with her height. Sure, once in a while she wished she was shorter so she could actually feel… petite. Protected.
Just right.
But the truth was that only one man had ever made her feel that way.
“I just really hate having a neck ache,” Boyd said.
He hated a neck ache, and she hated a headache, which she could feel coming on. This did not bode well for the evening ahead. For a moment, she looked past the Ferris wheel, eyeing the way the pier jutted from the beach into the ocean almost as far as she could see, and wished she was…
Sailing.
Ridiculous. She got into Boyd’s car. He kept his eyes on the road as he drove slowly toward the inn. Slowly, as in a-herd-of-turtles-stampeding-through-peanut-butter slowly. The guy didn’t pass a single indent in the road that didn’t require a nearly complete stop. When they finally pulled up before the inn, Tara checked for gray hair while Boyd took a good look at the place.
Tara looked, too. She was so damn proud of what she and her sisters had done here. It’d been a long haul but the beach inn looked warm and welcoming, and she couldn’t wait to see it filled with guests.
“Are you going to paint it?” Boyd asked.
“Yes.” In fact, the painters were due tomorrow. She’d been waiting for a week. If they didn’t show, she was going to get out a paintbrush and do it herself.
“Because it really needs to be painted if you want to make any money.”
“We’re aware,” Tara said as mildly as she could. “Thanks. I’ll change my shoes and be right back.”
“No, offense,” he said, getting out of the car with her. “But in my experience, letting a date out of my sight never works out well for me.”
Surprise. And if he said “no offense” one more time tonight, living wasn’t going to work out well for him.
Boyd smiled grimly. “I don’t think I make the best first impression.”
“Maybe if you didn’t require them to be shorter than you, that would help,” Tara said.
He nodded. “That’s good advice.”
They walked up the steps to the inn. “Hey,” Boyd said. “You could cook for us here; I wouldn’t mind. Grandma said you were an amazing chef. What do you suppose you could whip up?”
A major attitude, that’s what she could whip up. Bless his heart. And to make it worse, she was craving comfort food for some reason, hankering for hot fried chicken and cold potato salad like nobody’s business. Which proved that while you could take the girl out of the south, you couldn’t really take the south out of the girl. “I haven’t stocked the kitchen yet,” she said. Not to mention that she’d just spent the past eight hours on her feet cooking at the diner. “Our appliances were just delivered. I haven’t even unpacked the dishes.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.” He followed her inside, right on her heels, taking the whole not-letting-her-out-of-his-sight thing very seriously. As she moved through the bottom level on the brand new wood floors, Tara drew in a deep, satisfied breath at the scent of fresh paint and polished wood. More pride filled her, as well as something more, that sense of…
Home.
She was still basking in the surprise of that sensation when she realized someone was rattling around in the kitchen.
The place was empty tonight, or was supposed to be, but there was a light beneath the double kitchen doors and from the other side she heard the low, unbearably familiar voice that she’d have recognized anywhere.