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Chapter Eight
It was well past midnight when they rolled out the sleeping bags.
‘Thanks for bringing these. I’m not much of a camper. You probably could have guessed that. Just imagine how I’d be in a tent with no lock and all ma
Jeanie smiled as she held onto the edge of the bag and shook it out. Logan was relieved to see only a few pine needles fall out. It had been a long time since he’d used these. He was glad she didn’t shake out a family of mice.
‘Although, I did camp with the girl scouts as a kid. But I was mostly in it for the s’mores. Once I learned you could make those in the microwave, that was the end of my camping days.’
Logan nodded. He’d already learned that most of Jeanie’s stories didn’t require a response, and since she’d eaten half her weight in candy and washed it down with enough cups of coffee that he’d lost count, her stories had increased in quantity and speed. No time for a response, anyway.
‘I could see you camping,’ she went on, settling onto her sleeping bag. ‘You’re that type of guy.’
He sat across from her on his own sleeping bag. ‘What type is that?’ he asked, too curious about what kind of guy Jeanie thought he was to stop himself.
She tipped her head, studying him. Her thick black hair swung over her shoulder. ‘You know...’
He shook his head. He absolutely did not know, but was now embarrassingly desperate to find out.
Jeanie blew out a sigh like he was being difficult. ‘The rugged type, outdoorsy, fla
‘Fla
‘Yeah.’ She gestured to the general area of his fla
Logan frowned. Was beardy bad? He ran a hand down his face self-consciously. Did Jeanie not like fla
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said, leaning closer. ‘It’s totally working for you.’
Oh. Oh ... it was working for him.
Her cheeks flushed pink in the warm light of the café. She blew out another breath and pushed her hair behind her ear. ‘I just mean that fla
Practical. Right. That was him. Sturdy. Like a reliable piece of farming equipment.
You’re a really good guy, Logan. The memory of Lucy’s goodbye rang through him. You’ve built yourself a nice, comfortable life here, but I just can’t do it. I can’t stay in this little town forever. I need more than this.
He let his beard grow in after she left. Lucy hated a beard.
‘I’ll go grab us some pillows.’ Jeanie jumped up and clambered up the backstairs to her apartment.
Damn it. He was probably scowling at her, all his Lucy-induced anger misdirected toward Jeanie. He glanced at his watch. 1.07am and still no weird sounds, no ghostly chill in the room, nothing out of the ordinary at all. This was absurd.
He toed off his boots and stretched out on the sleeping bag, his hands behind his head. He was positive at this point that these noises were nothing more than Jeanie’s nerves about being in a new place. Which was totally understandable, but at some point she was going to have to get over it.
It might have been Nana’s voice in his head, telling him he absolutely should not tell Jeanie to get over it. But even he wasn’t that dumb. He would just hang out with her until she was feeling better. And he would not be a jerk. Even when her i
The stairs creaked on Jeanie’s way down, and she was standing over him with an armload of pillows before he could get up to help her.
‘Here you go,’ she said and dropped a pillow on his face.
He took it and stuffed it behind his head. ‘Gee, thanks.’
Jeanie giggled and dropped the remaining pillows on her sleeping bag. Logan stared at the ceiling while Jeanie got herself settled, suddenly aware of the intimacy of lying next to someone in the middle of the night. Even if that was all it was.
They’d turned off the main lights in the café, leaving them in the soft glow of the night lights behind the counter. Moonlight streamed in through the big front window and the trees outside cast shadows on the ceiling. The room smelled like coffee and pastries.
‘Now, we can’t get too comfy,’ she said. ‘Or we might fall asleep and miss it.’
‘Well, we wouldn’t want that,’ Logan murmured even as he let himself relax into his pillow. It smelled like Jeanie, like her shampoo, and he resisted the urge to roll over and breathe in.
Jeanie’s sleeping bag rustled as she rolled over to face him. He stayed on his back, feeling safer staring at the ceiling instead of looking into her dark brown eyes.
‘I know you think I’m crazy.’
‘I don’t.’
Jeanie let out a little disbelieving ‘harumph’, her breath skating across the side of his face. Logan closed his eyes at the sensation, so soft, so warm.
‘I’m fully aware of how crazy all this is. I just wanted everything to be ... perfect here, for this new ... endeavor. And I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Like something is trying to get rid of me.’
Logan rolled toward her, and she was so close, he could hear the hitch in her breath. His need to make her happy here rose to the surface before he could stop it, that same damn instinct that hurt him every time.
‘You’re doing great.’
Her eyes widened like she wasn’t expecting that, and that hurt him too. Was she not used to hearing that she was doing a good job?
‘I just had this vision of how it would be to live here and run my aunt’s café.’
‘And?’
She wriggled deeper into her pile of pillows, her eyes big and dark. ‘And it’s been different than I thought.’
And there it was. The reason he needed to stay away from this woman. She expected Dream Harbor to be something it wasn’t, and she would expect the same from him.
‘You need to settle in. It’ll be fine.’ His voice was gruffer than he intended, but her words reminded him of why he shouldn’t be with her in this darkened café, smelling her pillow, wishing she was lying closer to him. It was like that first weekend with Lucy all over again, when he thought he could sell her Dream Harbor. And himself.
At least everyone still had their clothes on this time.
Jeanie’s hair rustled against the pillow as she nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
‘My boss died on his desk. And I found him,’ she blurted out.
‘What?’ His feelings for her shifted violently again, and the little crease between her brows nearly killed him. ‘Shit, Jeanie. That’s awful.’ No wonder she was so unsettled. Finding her dead boss. She wasn’t just here for a little change of scenery. She was ru
‘Yeah.’ Tears pooled in her eyes. ‘It was pretty awful.’ Her voice was so small, so hurt. Damn it, damn it, damn it. He couldn’t handle crying women. Every instinct in his body was clamoring at him to fix it, make it better.
He cleared his throat. ‘What did you do there – at your old job, I mean.’
‘Administrative assistant to the CEO.’
‘Wow. Impressive.’
‘Not really.’ The slight change in subject kept the tears from falling. Thank God. ‘I mostly ran around making sure everything went smoothly. Scheduled meetings, filed paperwork, got coffee. Things like that. But it ended up taking up my whole life. I never meant it to.’
She took a deep breath and rolled onto her back, so Logan did the same. Safe from her intense gaze again.