Once in a Lifetime(2)

Shaking with fury, she stood. “You know what you are?”

“A great guy?”

Her arm bypassed her brain and capped off her no-good very bad day by tossing her vodka cranberry in his smug face.

But though he was indeed at least twenty-five kinds of an *, he was also fast as a whip. He ducked, and her drink hit the man on the other side of him.

Straightening, Ted chortled in delight as Aubrey got a look at the man she’d inadvertently drenched. She stopped breathing. Oh, God. Had she really thought her day couldn’t get any worse? Why would she tempt fate by even thinking that? Because of course things had gotten worse. They always did.

Ben McDaniel slowly stood up from his bar stool, dripping vodka from his hair, eyelashes, nose…he was six-feet-plus of hard muscles and brute strength on a body that didn’t carry a single extra ounce of fat. For the past five years, he’d been in and out of a variety of Third World countries, designing and building water systems with the Army Corps of Engineers. His last venture had been for the Department of Defense in Iraq, which Aubrey only knew because Lucky Harbor’s Facebook page was good as gospel.

Ted was already at the door like a thief in the night, the weasel. But not Ben. He swiped his face with his arm, deceptively chill and laid-back.

In truth, he was about as badass as they came.

Aubrey should know; she’d seen him in action. But she managed to meet his gaze. Cool, casual, even. One had to be with Ben: The man could spot weakness a mile away. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Are you?”

She felt herself flush. He’d always seemed to see right through her. And she was pretty sure he’d never cared for her. He had good reason for that, she reminded herself. He just didn’t know the half of it.

“Yes, I am sorry,” she said. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was surprised she could hear herself speak. “Are you okay?”

He ran his fingers through a sexy disorder of sun-streaked brown hair. His eyes were the same color—light milk chocolate marbled with gold caramel. It was difficult to make such a warmly colored gaze seem hard, but Ben managed it with no effort at all. “Need to work on your aim,” he said.



“No doubt.” She offered a tight smile. It was all she could do—she hadn’t taken a breath since she’d hit him with the drink. “Again, I’m…sorry.” And with little spots of anxiety dancing in her vision, she backed away, heading straight for the door.

Outside, the night was blessedly cold, tendrils of the icy air brushing her hot cheeks. Lucky Harbor was basically a tiny little bowl sitting on the rocky Washington State coast, walled in by majestic peaks and lush forest. It was all an inky shadow now. Aubrey stood still a moment, hand to her thundering heart. It was still threatening to burst out of her rib cage as she worked on sucking in air so chilly it burned her lungs.

Behind her the door opened again. Panicked that it might be Ben, and not nearly ready for another face-to-face, she hightailed it out of the parking lot. In her three-inch high-heeled boots, she wasn’t exactly stealthy, with the loud click-click-click of her heels, but she was fast. In two minutes, she’d rounded the block and finally slowed some, straining to hear any sounds that didn’t belong to the night.

Like footsteps.

Damn it. He was following her. She quickened her pace again until she passed a church. The building, like nearly all the buildings in Lucky Harbor, was a restored Victorian from the late 1800s. It was a pale pink with blue-and-white trim and lit from the inside. The front door was wide open and inviting, at least compared to the rest of the night around her.

Aubrey wasn’t a churchgoer. Her surgeon father hadn’t believed in anything other than what could be found in a science book. Cold, hard facts. As a result, churches always held a sort of morbid fascination for her, one she’d never given in to. But with Ben possibly still on her trail, she hurried up the walk and stepped inside. Trying to catch her breath, she turned around to see if she’d been followed.

“Good evening,” a man said behind her.

She jumped and looked around. He was in his thirties, average height and build, wearing jeans, a cable-knit sweater, and a smile that was as welcoming as the building itself.

But Aubrey didn’t trust welcoming much.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“No, thanks.” Unable to resist, she once again peered outside.

No sign of Ben. That was only a slight relief. She felt like the fly who’d lost track of the spider.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the man asked. “You seem…troubled.”

She resisted the urge to sigh. She was sure he was very nice, but what was it with the male species? Why was it so hard to believe she didn’t need a man’s help? Or a man, period? “Please don’t take this personally, but I’m giving up men. Forever.”

If he was fazed by her abruptness, it didn’t show. Instead, his eyes crinkled in good humor as he slid his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I’m the pastor here. Pastor Mike,” he said. “A happily married man,” he added with an easy smile.

If that didn’t cap off her evening—realizing she’d been rude to a man of God for having the audacity to be nice to her. “I’m sorry.” It didn’t escape her notice that this was now the second time tonight she’d said those two very foreign words. “My life’s in the toilet today…well, every day this week so far, really.”