Not needing to be told twice, Aubrey moved toward the bakery box and helped herself to a mini chocolate croissant. No one made them like Leah. “Oh, my God,” she said on a moan after her first bite. “So good. I’ve been tearing up that back wall and am starving.”
“I hate you,” Leah said.
Aubrey felt herself go still and, out of a lifetime habit of hiding her feelings, schooled her features into a cool expression that she knew was often mistaken for bitchiness. “What?”
“You just worked for hours without getting a speck of dirt on you?”
Aubrey looked down at herself. “Well—”
“And your hair is perfect,” Ali broke in, taking in Aubrey’s appearance. “I hate that about you.”
Leah nodded.
Both of them had businesses running in the black, hot-as-hell boyfriends who loved them madly, and their lives on track. And they were jealous. Of her.
It was just about the nicest compliment they could pay her, and she went back to breathing. She should have known they weren’t being mean—neither of them had a mean bone in her body. “Lifelong habit,” she said. “Being perfect.”
Leah laughed and offered another goody from the bakery box. “You could at least get chunky. Or a little dirty, just once in a while.”
“I don’t usually get dirty.”
Ali shook her head. “Back to hating you, Wellington.”
Aubrey smiled now and reached for the last mini croissant at the same time as Ali. “I’ll totally fight you for it,” she said.
Ali grinned. “I could kick your skinny ass, but since the croissant will just go straight to my hips, it’s all yours.”
Aubrey took a bite of the croissant, licked her fingers clean, and then pulled her laptop out of her bag. “I finally got Internet, and I’m trying to decide what to name my Wi-Fi. I’m torn between FBI Security Van and Guy in Your Tree. Any opinions?”
Leah snorted chocolate milk out her nose.
“How about Pay for Your Own Effing Wi-Fi, You Cheap Ass?” Ali asked.
They laughed for a few minutes, cleaned up their croissant crumbs, and then Leah dropped the bomb. “Heard about Ben,” she said.
Aubrey nearly dropped her laptop. “Um…what?” Her heart was thundering, but she was telling herself that they couldn’t know. No one knew. Not even Ben himself.
Leah was looking at her oddly. “The whole tossing-your-drink-in-his-face thing at the Love Shack the other night,” she said.
Oh, that. Aubrey relaxed. “It was an accident. I was aiming for Ted.” She took a side look at Ali because one of the most weaselly, shitty things Ted had done was sleep with both Ali and Aubrey while letting them each think that he was single. And they hadn’t been the only women he’d done that to, either.
Aubrey had recovered quickly because…well, she knew men were jerks.
Ali had been thrown for an emotional loop, and, clearly remembering just that, she smiled grimly. “I hope you ordered a second drink and corrected your error.”
Aubrey shook her head. “I got…discombobulated.”
“You?” Ali asked. “Pissed off, yes. But discombobulated? That’s not like you.”
Yeah, Aubrey was real good at the tough-girl facade. But then again, she’d had a lifetime of practice. “Hard to keep it together when you toss a drink in the wrong guy’s face.”
“And not just any wrong guy,” Leah said with a laugh. “Ben McDaniel. Lucky Harbor’s favorite son. How’d he take it?”
Aubrey shook her head at the memory. “He didn’t even flinch.”
“He wouldn’t,” Leah said. “He’s pretty badass.”
He hadn’t always been like that. In school, he’d been the first to land himself in trouble, but he’d been fun-seeking, not tough as nails and impenetrable. Even through college. Afterward, he’d been an engineer for the city and had led a nice normal life.
Then his wife had died, and he’d taken off like a bat out of hell, living a life of adrenaline and danger as if survivor’s guilt had driven his every move.
“It was his job,” Leah said. “He saw and did things that changed him.”
Ali was watching Aubrey carefully. “Maybe you should try to make it up to him.”
Aubrey could see a certain light—a matchmaking light—in her eyes, so she headed to the door.
“Where you going?” Leah asked.
“Things to do.”
“Or you’re chicken,” Ali called after her with a laugh.
Or that…But the truth was, Aubrey wasn’t chicken. She was realistic. Nothing would, or could, ever happen between her and Ben.
No matter how much she might secretly wish otherwise.
Two minutes later, she was in her car. It was time to face the names on her list. Up first was her sister, Carla.
They weren’t close. Growing up in two separate households had done that. Living with parents who didn’t speak to each other had done that. Carla being told that she had gotten all the brains had done that.
But eight years ago, Carla had needed a favor. She’d found herself needing to be at her job at the same time as she’d needed to sign some documents to accept a very important internship, so she’d asked her look-alike sister to go sign for her.
Aubrey had been working her butt off full-time and trying to keep full-time school hours as well. Busy, exhausted, hungry, and admittedly bitchy, Aubrey had agreed to the favor, even though she’d known it would be a real crunch to get there in time. She’d left a little later than she should have, gotten stuck in traffic, showed up late, and lost Carla the internship.
Carla had been forced to ask their dad to step in, and she still hadn’t forgiven Aubrey.
Sighing at the memory, Aubrey parked at the hospital where Carla worked and asked for her sister at the front desk. Aubrey was kept cooling her heels for twenty-five minutes, though when Carla finally showed up in the reception area in scrubs and a doctor’s coat with a stethoscope around her neck, she seemed genuinely exhausted and surprised. “Hey,” she said. “What’s wrong? Mom?”
“Everything’s fine,” Aubrey said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
Carla nodded but gave her watch a quick, not-so-discreet glance. “About?”
Aubrey drew a deep breath and then let it go. “Remember the time you asked me for a favor and I screwed it up?”
Carla’s gaze was moving around the room, taking in the people waiting to be called by the hospital’s various departments. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, I want to apologize,” Aubrey said, “and find a way to make it up to you.”
Carla looked at her watch again. “Wait—which time was this again?”
“The one and only time I screwed up,” Aubrey said a little tightly.
Carla’s gaze landed on Aubrey then, looking a little amused now. She pulled a protein bar from her pocket and offered half to Aubrey, but since it looked like cardboard, Aubrey shook her head. “It was when I was supposed to sign those documents for your internship,” Aubrey said. “And I got there late.”
Carla chewed her cardboard bar. “Oh, that’s right. You were probably busy with Mom, having your hair or nails done. That was your life, right? Dressing up and being a beauty queen, while I had to go to the toughest school and study all the time.”