Chapter Four

Nash

It was noon on a Tuesday, and Nash was at St. George’s Park on a mission for his mom instead of meeting with a cosmetics buyer with the biggest luxury retail store in Australia. The buyer was interested in stocking Beckett Cosmetics’ products, a deal that would improve the company’s bottom line by 15 percent. That wasn’t just a lot of zeroes, it was the kind of growth that could take Beckett Cosmetics to the next level in the international market.

It was a fucking massive deal.

That’s why he should have told his mom “no” when she’d called last night, instead of rearranging his entire schedule to accommodate this “teeny tiny little favor,” as she’d put it.

But he hadn’t.

Now, here he was freezing his balls off as the first snow of the season fell, looking for a woman his mom had said needed his help.

Fuck. He was such a sucker.

Grumbling to himself, Nash rounded a bend in the treelined asphalt path and stopped a few steps beyond the reach of an eighty-pound lab testing its leash and its owner’s strength while doing its best to get to a squirrel that was staring down at it from a just-high-enough branch. The dog’s owner, meanwhile, was searching one-handed through the pockets of her thick wool coat while standing next to a giant, steaming mound of poop that only a dog of the lab’s size could produce.

“Damn it,” she grumbled.

After switching his to-go cup of coffee to his right hand, Nash reached into one of the inside pockets of his coat and pulled out one of the plastic poop bags he’d stuffed in there, because his mom would forget hers every time she went on a walk with her demon Jack Russell-chihuahua mix. “Need one of these?”

“Oh my God, yes,” the woman said with a relieved smile. “Thank you!”

“No worries.” He handed the bag over. “You know, they make these poop bag holders that clip right onto the leash so you don’t have to worry about forgetting them when you leave the house for a walk. Or you could leave some right next to the leash as a visual cue. Or you could—”

The woman lifted her hand in the air, the one holding the now-full poop bag, and glared at him. “I think I got it.”

That look. He knew that look. Narrowed eyes. Set jaw. I-have-had-enough tension in the other person’s shoulders.

Okay, she was pissed.

“Of course you do,” he said, trying to explain it so that she saw he wasn’t meaning to be an asshole. “It’s just that there are tricks you can use—”

“I’ve had dogs my entire life,” she nearly growled out, causing her dog to forget about the squirrel and move closer to her, doing a lab’s best version of a doggie glare, which—to be honest—wasn’t very intimidating. “Trust me, I got it.”

Way to go, Beckett. You couldn’t just keep your big-ass mouth shut like everyone tells you?

“Yeah, okay,” he said, already moving away. “Sorry.”

Nash took a swig of the lukewarm coffee and continued down the path, crunching on the last of the season’s red-and-yellow leaves scattered across the asphalt getting dusted with snow.

Why had he agreed to meet this woman in a dog park, of all places?

It wasn’t like he had a dog. There was no room in his life for that. He was too busy making sure his amicably-living-apart parents didn’t drown in overdraft fees, since his father, who had given up all of the money and business connections to Beckett Cosmetics before retiring to a commune upstate, and his mom relied on “the universe” to take care of all of life’s mundane tasks. They weren’t bad people. They just didn’t do well with the daily business of life.

Then there were his younger brother and sister, who he insulated from having to deal with any of their parents’ laissez faire disasters as much as possible. Bristol and Macon had their own lives that didn’t need to be centered around making sure their mom didn’t live in the dark and their dad didn’t go to jail for bouncing too many checks.

Nash was the oldest.

Keeping everyone on top of things and out of trouble was his job.

And that’s why he was here, in a dog park, searching for his mom’s friend—because she needed help, and that’s what he did.

The fenced dog run was up ahead, along with an open-air café that offered human and dog snacks. His mom had told him that Chelle Finch would be waiting for him there and that he’d know her when he saw her. When he’d pressed for more details—even hair color—his mom had said the universe would let him know and promptly hung up the phone.

Scanning the people sitting outside the café, he spotted a couple with matching mustaches take turns feeding a Pomeranian with a pink bow, a woman in enough outerwear she looked more at home on the tundra than Harbor City on a thirty-degree day like today, and a waitress in a cat-ear headband, telling a Doberman that looked like it might eat a small child that he was the most handsomest good boy in the whole dog park.

There wasn’t any lightning strike of recognition, no smack to the back of the head from the universe, and definitely no ah-ha moment. Instead, there were only a blustery late-November day and a handful of people and their dogs.

“Oh my God!” a woman screeched from behind him. “Sir Hiss! Stop!”

Nash felt the piercing jabs on his back a half second before their meaning sank in half as deep as the cat’s claws had. Then it was just straight-up shock as the cat climbed up Nash’s back, using its claws as spikes to pierce his coat and sink down to his skin. It didn’t stop until the feral animal was perched on top of his head like some kind of demon cat mountain climber. Nash didn’t move. He couldn’t. He could barely breathe without the cat sinking its claws deeper into his scalp. The excited, high-pitched yaps of two small dogs and the woman still calling out after “Sir Hiss” got closer. He would have turned, but any sudden movement seemed like the worst of all possible ideas.

On the inhale, he started to slowly raise his free hand to get ahold of the feline hissing from its unauthorized spot.

That’s exactly when disaster struck.

Suddenly, two black pugs were running circles around his shins, their leashes tightening with each turn, while the cat angrily yowled from the top of his head. The leashes forced his legs closer together like a wobbly tree trunk as the dogs bounced off of him, making it hard to stay upright. In an effort to keep his balance, he threw out his arms, being careful not to scare the cat into digging deeper with its claws or sending coffee spilling out of his cup and onto the dogs.

From the top of his head, the cat let out a series of angry hisses, slashing at the air with one paw, claws extended.

“Sir Hiss. No!” The woman on the other end of the dogs’ extended leashes rushed closer with every doggie rotation, her full, round cheeks pink from the chilly breeze. She yelled out, “I’m so sorry, I—Groucho Barks! Mary Puppins! Leave it!”

The pugs, their eyes bulgy from excitement and tongues fat from exertion, promptly sat down in front of him, loosening his bonds enough that he could step out. Holding his breath, he lifted one leg. The cat spooked. Body vibrating with fury, it yowled and launched itself off Nash’s head. Its back paws delivered a nasty swipe as it used Nash’s skull as a springboard to fly through the air and land on the woman’s shoulder, like a demented parrot instead of the freaked-out cat that it was.

Forehead hurting like a son of a bitch, Nash let out a grunt of pain. In response to the noise, the dogs still at his ankles started yapping and running around him again, their leashes catching on his right foot. The next thing he knew, he was falling backward. He tossed his coffee cup in the opposite direction from the woman and her personal zoo as he threw his arms outward in a desperate attempt to regain his balance.

It didn’t work.

On the inhale he had the path under his feet, and on the exhale his ankle made a weird popping sound. He had half a second to register the oh-shit moment before he was ass-down in a snowy puddle.

His ass hurt.

His ankle hurt.

His fucking pride hurt.

“Oh my God!” the woman said, squatting down and leaning over him. “I am so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he all but growled, sounding more like his always-surly cousin Griff than himself.

“Here, let me help you.” She reached out right as the cat snarled and the dogs started barking at him as if he had knocked her on her ass.

He planted his palms on the asphalt and started to stand up. “I got it.”

That’s when he finally gave the woman a good look. Tall and extra curvy, with dark, nearly black, thick hair laced with a few gray strands, she was bundled up in a coat, hat, and scarf, like someone about to go on an arctic adventure instead of leisurely walking their animals in the park. She had deep laugh lines framing her eyes and lips that were plump enough to give a man ideas. To put it bluntly, she could be in a modern take on a Rubens painting—curvaceous, sexy, and definitely up to something.

Yeah, that’s exactly what you should be thinking about while you’re on your ass in a puddle in the middle of helping your mom’s friend. Dumb ass.

He pressed against the cement and pushed himself upright, keeping an eye on the pugs that kept their attention focused on the cat, who was ignoring all of them as if he hadn’t started the entire thing.

The small orange tabby wore some kind of vest-slash-harness thing attached to a leash and had tucked up close against the woman’s bright green coat.

Good God, she was the kind of person who walked her cat.

“You know, unless the cat is trained and likes it, walks can be really stressful for them.” He reached back in his memory for the internship he’d done in college with a focus group company that specialized in pet supplies. “They often will act out and can become aggressive. Negligent pet owners who ignore that very understandable response risk their cat getting hurt or labeled a problem pet by animal control. I’d highly recommend you talk with—”

He put his full weight down on both feet, and the sudden blast of pain in his ankle killed the words on his tongue.

“Oh crap, you’re hurt.” The woman rushed to his side, managing to put the cat on the ground and switch all three leashes to her left hand before scooting under his arm and wrapping her right arm around his waist. “I live right across the street. You can put that up and decide if you want to call an ambulance or an Uber or something.”

There was no way going with this woman was a good idea—and yet, when she started leading him toward the park’s exit, he was hobbling along beside her.

“I’m Chelle Finch,” she said, looking both ways before they jaywalked across Jackson Avenue and made it through traffic.

Shocked, he nearly tripped over absolutely nothing as they stepped up onto the sidewalk from the street. “Seriously? I’m Nash Beckett.”

She whipped her head around to look up at him, her brown eyes round as a pair of Oreos. “Oh shit.”

“Exactly.”

Well, his mom would be thrilled he found her, but he really would have preferred if the universe had taken a less painful route to making introductions. At least it couldn’t get any worse.

As they approached Chelle’s building, he reached up and brushed away the sweat beading on his forehead and starting to drip into his eyebrows. But it wasn’t sweat. His fingertips were red with blood. His mouth went dry at the same moment his hands got clammy.

Oh God, not that—anything but blood.

It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough. His gut clenched as the busy Harbor City sidewalk turned hazy and the world wobbled before his eyes.

“Nash,” Chelle called out.

He half turned toward her, moving in slow motion. Then the ground traded places with the sky, and he was on his ass in a puddle of melted snow for the second time in fifteen minutes.