She turned and gazed toward the woods and river. Brown stalks of corn rustling in the breeze marked the far boundary of his garden. “Your family has lived here for years.”
“Generations.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Wild onions, roses, and pine scented the air. The evening heat drove insects into hiding, leaving a poignant silence. “Sometimes I hear them, like ghosts walking the land, the wind whispering their stories.” He opened his eyes. She stared at him, her expression unreadable. “That made me sound a little creepy, didn’t it?”
“No. It’s lovely. The only family I ever felt close to was my ma-maw.”
“Don’t you have a sister? Not that being siblings means you have to get along.”
She picked a rose off the bush and sniffed. “She’s a few years older than me and beautiful.”
“
You’re
beautiful.” He said emphatically for the second time that evening.
A lighter shade of rose stained her cheeks, her gaze on the flower she twirled between her fingers. “Thanks, but I mean, she’s like, literally Miss Virginia beautiful. Like, runner-up for Miss America beautiful. Thin, blue-eyed, blonde perfection.”
She was halfway through shredding the flower one petal at a time. He covered her hands with one of his, running his thumb over hers. “For the record, thin, blue-eyed blondes don’t do it for me. Now, green-eyed redheads with killer legs? Shot to the heart.”
The smile she wore said she didn’t really believe him, but her shoulders went back and her chin rose. “Nice of you to say. Shouldn’t we see about dinner?”
She led the way up to the screen door. The warmth and aromas of the kitchen enveloped him, and his mouth watered. Heat barreled out of the oven when he checked the thermometer. “Venison roast. Almost done. How about helping me with the carrots?”
He handed her one of Ada’s old-fashioned frilled aprons. He expected a protest, but she slipped it on.
She held her hands up. “I look silly, don’t I?”
He looked her up and down, making her wait. “Actually, you look pretty darn cute.”
A small smile accompanied another flush of her cheeks, but this time she seemed more pleased than embarrassed.
“Here, peel these. Straight from my garden.” He handed her the carrots and a peeler.
As she finished each one, he chopped. They worked in a comfortable silence. He grabbed a labelless jar of honey from the counter, the comb inside.
“Do not tell me you’re a beekeeper too.”
“Not me. Lilliana’s aunt Esmerelda took up beekeeping a decade ago. She supplies honey to Adaline’s. We source local as much as possible.”
While he honeyed the carrots and sugared the water to boil the corn, he and Jessica discussed intricacies of the food supply chain for a large restaurant. He regaled her with funny stories about local farmers. By the time he’d pulled the venison roast out of the oven, she was pressing her hands against her face. “My cheeks hurt. I can’t believe one offered to sell you marijuana to add to your desserts.”
He paused from cutting the roast. She was a woman made for happiness, not the anxiety and stress he sensed tumbling under the rigid control.
“We’ve hardly scratched the surface of the bizarro in this town. Time to eat.” With a flourish, he set two heaping plates at the kitchen table.
Her first bite of venison was tentative, but her eyes widened and her next bite was bigger. “This is really good.”
“I’m not sure if I should be pleased or offended by your surprise,” he said dryly.
She smiled around another bite. “Lilliana said you played college ball?”
“A little, but I didn’t work hard enough to be a star. I was rudderless, no ambition, resentful. A typical eighteen-year-old, I suppose, but I didn’t have a father around to hold me accountable.” He fiddled with his fork, poking at the venison. “The boys on the team … I hold them to certain expectations, push them to be better men. Some of them are fatherless. Some of them have fathers who just don’t care. I want them to avoid my mistakes.”
“Are they troublemakers?”
“Naw. Mischievous, sometimes boneheaded, but nothing like me.”
“What were you like?” She fingered the frill running down her borrowed apron and leaned forward, fully focused on him.
More than simple curiosity reflected back at him. He was used to women chasing him because they wanted a bad boy, wanted a temporary thrill, and normally he played the part with pleasure. He would typically give a teasing answer filled with innuendo. But, this was different. She was different.
“My dad was—is—in the military. When he was stationed in Germany, there was a car accident. That’s how my mom died. I was too young to remember it. Once he was transferred back to the states, he dumped me with Ada.” He grabbed his glass and took a gulp, wishing for the first time in a long time it was whiskey instead of water. Some things were easier with the numbing effects of alcohol. Excising festering wounds was one of them.
Her words treaded between them as if tiptoeing through land mines. “Maybe you were a painful reminder of your mother? Maybe he felt guilty?”
He hummed and nodded, circling a finger around the edge of his glass. “Yeah. I told myself that for a while too. Except, he remarried within a year, and the new wifey didn’t want to take care of her predecessor’s brat. I was barely three years old. The asshole didn’t even warn Ada.”
Even after all the years, the rejection brought an embarrassing sting of tears to his eyes. It was his first memory. Standing in red Alabama dirt, clutching his black stuffed bear and sucking on its ear as adults argued over his head, the words confusing and scary. He remembered the heat, the smell of the earth on the gardening gloves Ada slapped against her overalls, the intimidating trees that stretched to forever.
The transfer probably hadn’t taken long. But to him that moment lasted an eternity. His stepmother hadn’t even gotten out of the car, her belly big and round with a baby. A half-brother he’d never met.
Jessica’s hand skated up his forearm. “You were lucky to land here with family, no matter how cobbled together.”
He dropped his gaze to her hand, her nails painted a pale pink. A clog of tears jammed in his throat, roughing his voice. “Eventually, I came to the same conclusion, but not before I tried to get my dad’s attention by getting into a heap of trouble. I thought my teenage transgressions would force him to notice me.”
“Did they?”
“He made a call to the judge. Got the drug charges reduced to a misdemeanor, which sent me to the youth camp instead of jail. He never called me though. Not even to yell or express his disappointment. Years later I realized it was his reputation, not my future or well-being, that prompted him to intercede.”
Her hand tightened on his forearm, her nails biting into his skin, her voice thick with mirroring emotion. “I’m so sorry, Logan.”
He’d legally changed his surname to Wilde the day after he returned from the youth camp, although he’d insisted everyone call him Logan Wilde since kindergarten. No doubt, Lilliana had heard of General Graham Wethersfield, but Logan never mentioned his father unless asked outright about it. He didn’t lie, but most people never put it together.
“I have two half-brothers I’ve never met.” As much as he tried to bury his resentments, he periodically found himself trolling the internet and staring at smiling pictures of his father and half-brothers, noting similarities and differences.
“Your father is a fool not to be proud of you. And trust me, I know a little something about foolish fathers.” The hint of self-mocking humor erased a portion of his long-held resentment with a blink of her deep-green eyes.
“Did you really quit?”
“Yep.” She popped the word and stabbed a bite of venison. “I can’t quite believe I did it.”
“Why did you?”
“It’s … complicated. Being here, away from Richmond and my father and the culture of Montgomery Industries, is like having my blinders removed. I’ll be fine though.” Even wearing a homemade flowery apron, she exuded a confidence that would be at home in the most austere boardroom.
“I have no doubt you will.” He rose and stacked their plates, but when she scooted her chair back, he said, “Sit tight. Darcy dropped off a cobbler. That girl can make a mean dessert, I’ll give her that.”
He doled them out good-sized portions of cobbler and topped each with a scoop of ice cream.
“I really shouldn’t.” She acted as if the berries were poisonous.
“No, you really should. You’re too skinny.” He shoveled a huge bite in his mouth. The cobbler was still warm, melting the ice cream. He gestured with his spoon. “Go on, try it.”
For a long moment, she stared as if he’d spoken a foreign language, but eventually she took a small bite. “Ohmigoodness.” She took a bigger bite, tilted her head back, and licked a dab of blackberry off her bottom lip.
His gaze travelled from her berry-stained lips down the long, pale column of her neck. His stomach jumped. Uncommon nerves stole his appetite. She finished most of her bowl, while he only managed a few more bites.
This time, she stacked their bowls and carried them to the sink. “I’ll help you clean up.”
“Not a chance. It’ll keep.” Damn, she looked pretty with her hair tousled and her legs stretching for miles from the edge of the frilly apron. What would she do if he swept her up and carried her to his bed?
Behind the gorgeous, smart, rich, and ambitious exterior lurked a down-to-earth, passionate woman. No doubt, the sex would be phenomenal. Cowardice, pure and simple, stopped him.
The kick in the nuts was that he didn’t want to just have sex with her. He wanted to explore her body and soul. After years of casual hook-ups, never getting close, never letting anyone get close, the woman who fascinated and bewitched him would probably be gone in a few days.
Logan reached around her.
Dear Lord, was he going to kiss her? She tilted her face up and rubbed her dry lips together.
With a tug on the ties around her waist, he drew the apron away from her body. “I think you can safely lose this.”
She lifted the loop over her head with a too-high laugh.
Idiot.
She chanted the too-familiar refrain in her head as she rocked forward and back in her heels, studying the pointy toes.
“Let’s watch the sun go down.” He pushed open the screen door and waited.
She slipped by him, her heels making staccato taps on the wooden steps. A breeze that carried the promise of fall had chased away the heat of the day. Dusk had fallen, casting a veil over the trees and fields. Fireflies gathered under the lowest braches of the trees while shimmery white fog clumped close to the ground around trunks.
An unearthly aura at once magical and unsettling descended. A loud eerie birdcall from the nearest tree sent a shiver up her spine. Logan’s ghosts seemed immediate and present in the space between day and night.
“We’d best not get too far from the house.” He leaned against the trunk of the nearest oak and stared into the gloom.
Did he sense it too? She joined him, standing so close her arm brushed his. Her voice wavered. “Because of the ghosts?”
“No, because of your shoes. Your feet would be hating life tomorrow.” Laughter threaded his words.
Why did the most embarrassing things continue to come to mind and slip out of her mouth around him? She kept her voice crisp. “I’m used to working ten hours or more in these shoes. They’re comfortable enough.”
He only shook his head, his smile in place. “If you say so.”
She turned to face him. Under the fire-licked sky, they were the only two people on earth. Did it matter at this point why her father had sent her to Falcon? The hurt in Logan’s face and voice when he’d been talking about
his
father nearly had her crawling into his lap for a hug. She couldn’t bear to tell him the job offer was because of his father, yet guilt at the omission had her stepping away from him.
“I should probably be heading back.”
His smile disappeared in the long pause. “If that’s what you want.”
Confusion had her in its grips. Whatever had blossomed between them felt like the start of something bigger, more important than a job, and it scared her. But the situation was ridiculous. She’d only known him a few days and hadn’t even started to stitch together the shreds of her messy life.
She led the way to his low-slung Porsche, her steps sure and confident, opposite of the roiling uncertainty beneath the surface. An uncomfortable silence settled between them in the car.
He turned off the narrow drive and hit the blacktop, shifting gears and throwing her back into her seat with the acceleration. Frustration flavored his jerky movements, and she hung onto the door during the quick turns to Lilliana’s.
He pulled to a stop and turned the car off. She climbed out before he made it around to her. Hyper-awareness of her body stiffened her walk around the car. The call of the katydids and bullfrogs crescendoed. Or maybe it was the sound of her heartbeat whooshing blood to her cheeks.
“Thanks for dinner.” When he didn’t answer, she turned and walked toward the porch. He was at her side, his hands pushed deep into his pockets, his face serious. Their feet hit the steps in tandem. She’d never been walked to her door before. The gesture made her feel special.
A few slivers of moonlight broke under the dark portico. Did he feel the same electric longing shooting from her chest until she thought she might be electrocuted? So what if this attraction was ill-advised and ridiculous? She turned to face him.
Kiss me.
The words threatened to shoot out her mouth, her self-control approaching zero. She darted her tongue over her lips.
As if he was a mind reader, in a husky voice, he asked, “May I kiss you?”
She closed her eyes and reached for him, feeling as if he’d offered her a Big Gulp after days of wandering the desert.
Based on his behavior all evening, she expected a gentlemanly kiss, a soft touch, like his kiss in the woods. Instead, he came in like a tornado, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her against his body, chest to knees. Her back bowed over one of his arms, and his lips came down on hers with a rough edge and a burning intent. Perhaps his intention was her surrender.