Chapter 5
Logan toed off his muddy boots at the door and went into the house in search of coffee. He’d downed a cup before heading out for morning chores, but it hadn’t been high-octane enough to make up for the restless night from having Athena under his roof and not in his bed. His brain had been all too happy to keep him awake with alternate scenarios in which he hadn’t clung to his status as a gentleman. Alternate scenarios that would’ve left them both extremely satisfied. But he wasn’t an asshole who’d take advantage of an inebriated woman. And as much as he wanted to revisit things with Athena, he didn’t have any interest in being her rebound guy.
The dogs bumped at his knees in their haste to race over and assume the position beside the treat bucket.
“Yeah, yeah. I got it. Morning treats.” He lifted the lid and dug a couple of biscuits out. “Wait,” he ordered.
They both sat, perfectly still but for the swishing of their synchronized tails, as he carefully balanced the biscuits on the bridges of their snouts. Peep’s eyes went a little crazed, but she didn’t break the hold until he said, “Okay.”
The coffee pot hadn’t been touched since he’d left it, so he could only assume Athena wasn’t up yet. Maybe he’d just take his coffee upstairs and check to make sure she was still among the land of the living. With visions of a full country breakfast—made by his hands, not hers—scrolling through his head, he climbed the stairs. Bacon, fried eggs, toast… Biscuits would be better, but he wasn’t sure he had that kind of time. Either way, she’d need something to help combat the hangover, and he’d learned in his college years that a big, greasy breakfast usually did the trick.
The door to the guest room hung ajar. He lifted a hand to knock on the doorframe, and realized the room was empty. So was the adjoining bathroom. Logan frowned, wondering if she’d gone exploring. But she wasn’t anywhere in the house and her purse and shoes were gone. She’d apparently snuck out while he’d been in the fields.
Maybe she’d been embarrassed? Why else wouldn’t she leave some kind of note or something? But how the hell had she left? Had she called somebody else for a pickup now that it was morning? He hadn’t heard a vehicle, but then he’d had the tractor cranked up.
It should’ve relieved him. He wasn’t responsible for taking time out of his work day to get her back to the inn or her car. But given her emotional state the night before and the likelihood of the mother of all hangovers, he couldn’t just let it go. What if she didn’t have a ride and had gotten a wild hair to walk back to town? She was just stubborn enough to do it.
He poured his coffee into a travel mug and climbed in the truck before he could think better of it. She wasn’t trudging down the side of the road, which didn’t make him feel a whole lot better. How much of last night did she remember? Did she think something had happened between them? Was that why she’d bolted? At least he could put that fear to rest. If he could find her.
The inn was the obvious first stop. Judging from the cars lining the drive, everybody had shown up for breakfast. This would be boatloads of fun. He let himself in, heading straight back to the kitchen.
“Logan! What a lovely surprise.” Pru beamed at him from the griddle where at least two pounds of bacon sizzled and popped.
From his place at the long, kitchen table, Xander lifted his coffee mug in greeting. “Hey man, what brings you over this way?”
Logan needed to decide fast what he was going to say here. A quick scan of the room showed his quarry wasn’t present. Which left the truth or some kind of bald-faced lie. He’d never been any good at prevarication. “Is Athena here?”
“What do you want, Logan?”
He turned to see her standing in the doorway. She’d showered and looked about two steps above warmed-over death. The smudge of shadows deepened the gray of her eyes and only served to highlight the pallor of her skin. Her chin held a defiant tilt, and her stance said all shields were up. But her arms told a different story. They were crossed over her middle in a self-protective gesture that belied her fierce stance. Without a word, he took a step closer, studying her eyes. It wasn’t anger he saw there, but devastation. This wasn’t about the boyfriend or the cheating. That had been all temper last night, more a wound to her pride than her heart. What had happened?
“I came to check on you.”
“I’m fine.” Her tone was as hard and implacable as steel. But she wasn’t nearly as sure of herself as she wanted them to believe. Beneath all that bravado, she was shaking.
“I don’t think you are or you wouldn’t have snuck out this morning without a word.” He ignored the gasps from the table and continued walking toward her. “Nothing happened. You passed out on the couch with the dogs, so I took you up to the guest room to sleep it off.”
Her face went impossibly paler. “I know exactly where I woke up this morning,” she snarled.
“Okay, forgive me for interrupting, but exactly why are you biting Logan’s head off?” Kennedy asked. “Because, from where I’m sitting, it sounds like you drank too much, and he picked you up and took care of you.”
He saw the momentary flash of pain before her temper ignited.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “Why didn’t any of you think to tell me?”
Okay seriously, what the hell was going on? “Tell you what?” Logan asked.
But she wasn’t looking at him. Her glare seemed to be divided between her sisters and Xander, who looked as baffled as Logan felt.
Xander winced as realization struck. “Aw shit. I didn’t even think.”
For the love of…“Somebody want to tell me what’s going on?”
Pru rescued the bacon and switched off the griddle. “Your farm is where Athena grew up.”
Given everybody’s chastened expressions and Athena’s palpable fury, this was a big thing. Obviously the news had blindsided her, but for the life of him, he didn’t understand why it was a big deal. A surprise, sure. One of those random, small-town coincidences. But not a reason for the raw emotional wound he saw on her face.
“I’m taking a walk.” Without another word, she stalked out the back door and slammed it.
Pru jumped into the ensuing silence. “I’m sorry about that. She’s?—”
Logan just held up a hand. “Stop apologizing. If she wants to tell me, she’ll do it herself.” Without waiting for further commentary or questions, he followed her out.
She didn’t have that much of a lead on him. Following her down the trail to Opal Springs was a helluva lot easier in the daylight than it had been last summer. A few times she paused to toss fulminating glares over her shoulder. Everything about her shouted at him to go the hell away. But he wasn’t ready to leave her just yet. He had a feeling people were too inclined to leave her alone when she had these outbursts because they didn’t see the pain underneath the anger.
At the springs, she climbed up on one of the flat rocks, fisting her hands and staring at the water as if she was contemplating jumping in. He just took a seat and waited in silence. He was a farmer. He knew patience.
“Why are you here, Logan?”
“Because you’re upset, and it’s something to do with me. Maybe if you tell me, I can do something to fix it.”
Bitter laughter scraped over his skin like sandpaper. “Got a time machine?”
He wondered if she wished she could go back in time to stop herself from getting involved with the douche who cheated on her.
“Can you go back and stop my mom from leaving or my dad from the drug overdose that institutionalized him when I was twelve?”
Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t that. As the question was rhetorical, he waited to see if she’d elaborate or tell him to go to hell.
She heaved a heart-heavy sigh.
“My parents were high school sweethearts. Got married right after graduation. Dad’s grandparents were getting on in years, so they retired and gave my parents the farm as a wedding present. My mom wasn’t what you could call excited about this development. She wanted bigger things than Eden’s Ridge. But it was a roof over their heads and a living. Daddy wanted so much to be a farmer. He had this whole deal about wanting to be connected to the land. But he was just…bad at it. I think it was okay for the first few years. But farming is hard, risky work.” She shot him a glance. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
He shook his head.
“I came along about the time the new wore off on their marriage. Then came the drought. It burned everything to a crisp and cracked the land. The next year was incessant rains that drowned and rotted the crops. And on and on it went. Every year was a new disaster. Every year they went deeper into debt.”
That was pretty much Logan’s worst nightmare. The idea that everything he’d built would be yanked away by the vagaries of Mother Nature.
“Eventually, when I was about eight, my mother gave him an ultimatum. Sell the farm and go get a more stable job or she was leaving. He wasn’t willing to give up what he saw as his family legacy. So she left. And it was…well, it was what it was.” She jerked her shoulders, shrugging off her mother’s defection as just another one of those things. “I was Daddy’s girl and he worked his ass off to make sure I didn’t feel the loss too much. I took on too much responsibility too soon, but we got by. Just the two of us.”
She went quiet, her throat working, the muscles of her face tightening as she fought not to cry.
“He had some good years. And then he had some more bad. He had to let some of the farm hands go, do more of it himself. What I didn’t know at the time was he’d started using amphetamines to get through all that extra work. Just to keep him going because he couldn’t bear to let go of the land that was slowly killing him. I got pulled out of class and talked to by the school counselor. She was concerned about the fact that I was falling asleep in class. Missing school. She wanted me to talk to somebody about the stress. So I did. And the next thing I know, a social worker’s telling me to pack a bag and taking me away from my dad.”
“That’s how you ended up with Joan.”
“Yeah. It was supposed to be temporary. But Daddy…he ended up in the hospital from an overdose. Whatever he took that last time wasn’t pure. It was mixed with…God knows what. The doctors never did. Whatever it was essentially destroyed his brain. I was left without a father, the bank took the farm, and I never got to go home.”
Until he’d taken her there.
Every instinct he had urged him to cross over and take her into his arms. But he didn’t move. He understood her well enough to know she wouldn’t want to be touched. But God, he ached for the little girl she’d been. He didn’t know how to feel about her confession. There were too many layers to process just yet. He just knew he wanted to help, wanted to banish those shadows from her eyes and make her feel…better. Which was precisely the reason he’d gone into psychology in the first place.
And that turned out so well.
She finally turned to face him, her expression dialed somewhere between surprise and confusion. “I don’t know why I just told you all that.”
No way in hell was he admitting he’d gone to grad school to be a therapist. Athena Reynolds was the type who wouldn’t trust shrinks. Why should she? They’d helped take her away. “I get that a lot.” He hesitated. “That was your room with the stars.”
She gave a jerky nod. “I’m sorry I flipped my shit.” On a heavy sigh, she folded down to the rock beneath her, as if she simply couldn’t stand anymore beneath the weight of what she carried. “Thanks for coming to my rescue last night.”
Deflection. She didn’t want to talk about her past anymore, and he couldn’t blame her. He suspected that was more than she’d said about it to anyone, except probably her sisters, since it had happened.
“Anytime.”
“What exactly did I say to you? Because it’s all kinda fuzzy.”
“It was pretty rambling, but the gist I got was that your boyfriend cheated on you with your sous chef and somehow that imploded your career.”
She closed her eyes. Obviously that was another sore point. “Please don’t say anything to my family. I haven’t told them yet.”
He lifted a hand. “I’m sorry, I have to document this momentous occasion. You actually said please.”
The corner of her mouth twitched.
He sobered. “Of course, I’ll keep it to myself. Are you okay? Or as okay as you can be right now?”
“Yeah.”
She wanted solitude, and he wasn’t the one to deny her.
“All right then. Unless you need anything else, I need to be getting on back to the farm.”
“Go. Work. Thanks for listening.”
“I’ve got two good ears and a shoulder if you ever need them.”
She nodded and laid her head on her up-drawn knees.
He left her there, reluctantly climbing back up the ridge to his truck and work. But he couldn’t help but wonder the whole way back about the fact that he was the one she’d confided in.
* * *
Athena heldout for two days, recovering from the mutant hangover and the simple, earth-shattering shock of finding out Logan now owned her family’s farm. She’d pulled out impressive avoidance tactics, even for her, to keep from discussing anything about him, the farm, or the mess in Chicago with her sisters. But by the time Maggie’s name flashed across her phone—again—she understood her time was up. The options were to talk to Maggie or become the object of a family intervention.
She answered the phone. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Color me surprised. Pru told me about the farm. How are you feeling about all that?”
Her shoulders hunched up around her ears. “You know I hate the F word.”
“Don’t make me come out there.”
She would, if she thought it necessary. But Maggie had already flown back to Tennessee so many times the past year—in the aftermath of Mom’s death, all the insanity around custody of Ari, Kennedy and Xander’s wedding, Ari’s adoption, the holidays, and Pru and Flynn’s wedding. Athena knew she’d be in hot water with her boss if she took more leave anytime soon.
She blew out a breath. “I’m…I don’t know what I am.”
“The word you’re probably looking for is ‘upset’. That thing you like to pretend you never are.”
“Okay, fine. I’m upset. It really threw me for a loop.” Understatement of the year. But she wasn’t about to admit she’d been shaken to her very foundation by something so simple as waking up in her childhood bedroom.
“What’s bothering you the most about this? You had to know it would’ve been sold to someone, the land worked by someone.”
“Of course I knew that. On some level, anyway. But knowing and seeing are two different things.” All that effort she’d spent not to see, not to look, undone.
“Is it that it’s different than you remember? Home but not really?”
That trod far too close to the psychobabble she’d been avoiding since she went into the foster system. Her hands automatically fisted. “I don’t know.”
Maggie ignored the snappish tone. “Maybe you should go out there again to see it without hangover goggles. Nobody’s their best when the entire percussion section of an orchestra is pounding away in their skull.”
“Maybe.” Maybe she really did need to face the past in a way she’d never had the chance to do. But facing the past meant facing Logan after she’d spilled her guts about all that emotional…crap. Was she ready for that?
“What was that about, anyway? You haven’t been that drunk since right after Mom died.”
She hadn’t been that drunk even then.
The temptation to tell Maggie everything about Jayson and losing Olympus and the damned video—well on its way to a million views by now—was almost overwhelming. Her sister was a champion problem solver. Hell, it was what she did for a living out there in California. She’d have some kind of action plan put together inside a week.
But Athena simply wasn’t ready.
“I’m going through some stuff.”
“You know I’m here for you. For anything. Always.”
“I know.” And she did know, deep down in her soul. They’d been through hell together as kids. She could count on Maggie for anything. “I’ll get around to telling you. I’m just not there yet.”
Her sister drew in a slow, audible breath and let it back out. “Okay. But no more trying to solve problems with vast quantities of alcohol.”
“Promise. The temporary payoff was not worth the consequences.”
“Whatever this is, take care of yourself, Sis.”
“I will. I love you.”
“Love you back. Talk soon.”
Before she could lose her nerve, Athena grabbed her purse and headed downstairs. Flynn was in the office, updating information on the latest bookings. He looked up when she stuck her head in.
“Are you feeling better, then?”
She didn’t think she’d ever quite get used to hearing her brother-in-law’s smooth Irish brogue in East Tennessee. “Back among the land of the living. I thought I’d pick Ari up from her riding lesson this afternoon.” It was the perfect excuse to head out to the farm.
One dark brow winged up. “Wanting to have a chat with Logan?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I just thought I’d save you the drive.”
His lips quirked as he tried and failed to suppress a smile. “So that’s the way of it. All right, then. I’d appreciate the help. I’ve some paperwork to catch up on around here.”
With every mile closer to the farm, Athena’s stomach curdled just a little bit more. What was she even supposed to say to Logan? She still couldn’t quite believe she’d told him everything. But she was so used to people here knowing. What had happened to her father had been a topic of conversation for everybody in town when she was a child, and memories in Eden’s Ridge ran long. Everyone had looked at her with pity or judgment after that, just waiting for her to follow in her father’s footsteps and get into drugs because the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, after all.
Her teen years had been marked by total desperation to escape the pitying looks and be something other than “that poor Bryson girl.” Her drive for success had been as much about wanting to give them something else to talk about as it was the food. And it had worked. People liked being able to say they knew a rising star. Somebody who was sort of famous. Somebody who’d made the Ridge proud.
Now all that was gone and she’d be “that poor Reynolds girl.” New last name. Same backstabbing gossip.
And dammit, she’d told Logan everything. A huge part of her attraction to him had been that he wasn’t from the Ridge and didn’t know any of her past. Now he knew and he’d look at her differently. With pity or judgment or whatever the hell, just like everybody else. And that was her own damned fault.
It shouldn’t matter. He’d been a wedding fling. A helluva one at that. But she genuinely liked him. Enough that they’d actually talked when she’d gone back to Chicago. That had kind of fallen away when she’d started dating Jayson. She realized now that she’d missed those conversations. Missed him. They’d been…almost friends. Now he’d be just another one of the things she’d lost.
On that dismal thought, she rolled to a stop in front of the brightly-painted barn. Hating the feeling of vulnerability, she put on her favorite I-don’t-give-a-shit armor and walked around the barn to the corral, where her niece was circling on a chestnut horse, her smile brighter than the afternoon sun. Athena softened, just a little. Ari’s enthusiasm made hanging on to her bitch persona a challenge.
“Athena! Look! Look what I can do!” She nudged the horse into a trot and began to post.
Athena kept her eyes on the girl as she crossed over to lean on the paddock fence beside Logan. “Looking good, kid.”
“She’s been a quick study.”
Under the weight of his gaze, she braced herself to look at him. But it wasn’t the expected pity she saw. Surprised pleasure lit his hazel eyes, along with an undeniable flash of interest as he took her in from head to toe.
“I’ve never seen you in jeans before.”
She hadn’t given a thought to her outfit before coming out here. The ancient jeans and green t-shirt in ultra soft cotton were nothing to write home about. Comfortable. But he was looking at her exactly as he had the satin and lace she’d worn beneath her bridesmaid dress. Heat crawled up the back of her neck and into her cheeks as her brain flashed back to that night at Opal Springs.
She shrugged. “I guess you’ve mostly seen me at holidays and special occasions.”
“Jeans suit you.”
He did pretty amazing things for a pair of jeans himself. Not that she was going to go ogling his butt again with Ari mere yards away. And why was she even thinking about this right now? She’d broken up with Jayson not even two weeks ago. But standing here now, able to feel Logan’s eyes on her like a caress, it was hard not to be all Jayson who?
“How’s the head?” he asked.
“Better.”
“Good.”
She tensed, waiting for him to ask about the rest. Instead he shouted instructions to Ari. They watched her ride for another few minutes, standing in companionable silence. He didn’t pry, and some of her tension unraveled. That was why she’d told him, she realized. Because he never forced anything. He let her tell him what she wanted to tell him, on her terms. She wondered if that was deliberate or just the way he was.
Her skin prickled with awareness of his proximity. She could’ve tipped her head to his shoulder or leaned to brush her arm against his. She didn’t know what to do with that desire, though certainly it was better than the self-pity she’d been wallowing in on the drive out.
She’d never intended things with him to go further than a one-time thing. An indulgence. She’d seen him and she’d wanted. That should’ve been it. An enjoyable scratching of an itch. But then he’d been more. Turned out, the thoughtful, scruffy-faced farmer totally worked for her. His calm, unruffled demeanor was unarguably appealing. He never let her emotional storms—and he’d been witness to a few of them by now—bother him in the least. That was…oddly refreshing. She could admit to herself now that if they’d been in the same place after the wedding, she’d have pursued him.
We’re in the same place now.
She very nearly lifted a hand to brush that devil right off her shoulder. As gratifying as another fling with him would be, she didn’t need the distraction. There was major life shit to figure out.
Still, it was hard not to engage in a little what if.Her mind conjured up an image of him carrying her through the house as she nibbled along his throat, his jaw, and made his muscles coil tight. He laid her down on the sofa, and she pulled that big, work-hardened body down over her to take what she wanted?—
“Okay, I think we’re done for the day,” he called. “Cool him down, groom him, and put away your tack.”
Ari saluted. “On it.”
Athena gripped the rail hard enough her knuckles turned white. She’d asked him what she’d said to him. She hadn’t asked what she’d done.
He frowned at her. “You okay?”
“Fine.” She forced her lips to curve. Knowing her niece’s penchant for eavesdropping, she asked, “Do you have time to give me a little tour?”
“Sure.”
As Ari began to walk her mount in slower circles, Logan led Athena to a two-seater ATV. At the sound of the engine, the dogs burst free of a field and made a beeline toward them, dancing around the vehicle with happy barks before racing off ahead. They made her smile, reminding her of Samwise, the mutt she’d had growing up. He’d been some combination of hound, shepherd, and collie, made for running, and she’d adored him. He was buried in the apple orchard, beneath his favorite tree.
Logan drove her from one end of the farm to the other, pointing out crops, talking about plans. It was beautiful. Lush with rich earth and new, spring growth. He’d expanded beyond the basic crops and kitchen garden they’d had to include livestock. A small herd of cattle, goats, sheep. She’d seen chickens back by the barn. And, of course, the horses. He’d also added a series of hoop houses to extend the growing season and provide assorted produce year-round for the community supported agriculture program he’d started. He told her about his intention to build a bigger four-season greenhouse to replace the small one he’d experimented with over the winter. He was full of plans and dreams and ways to expand. Listening to him talk, Athena could see it—both what he’d done, what he wanted to do. There was something somehow soothing about seeing the land’s potential unlocked and fully realized. It helped ease some ache to know that it hadn’t gone to waste, hadn’t been ruined.
At the top of a hill on the far side of the property, he parked. “This is my favorite spot. From here I can see almost the whole farm. The house. The barn. The outbuildings.”
It spread out below them, a picture of pastoral beauty.
“Your spread is bigger than what we had,” she observed.
“The guy before me bought up a fair chunk of the surrounding acreage to add to the original farm. I bought up more. I wanted the room for crop diversification.”
“I still can’t get over what you’ve done here. What you’ve made of this place. This was my father’s greatest dream. Not one he ever came anywhere close to achieving. He struggled so much.”
“I still struggle. As you said, farming is tough. In a lot of ways it’s like playing futures on the stock market. You can do all the right things and Mother Nature can still decide you’re not worthy and destroy everything. I’ve been lucky on that front, so far. My issue’s been a lot more with exposure and making a profit competing against big agriculture.”
This, at least, was something she knew about. “You should make contacts with the restaurant scene in Nashville and the surrounding areas. Olympus has contracts with farmers all over Illinois to get the best of the best.”
“I’ve made some, but a lot of them are put off by the cost of organic produce. Particularly produce that has to come from four hours away, when there are other farms closer. They’ve all gotta deal with the current economy like everybody else. And then there’s the transportation costs and all the rest. I’m doing okay, but I’d like to expand more.”
She knew what it took to work a farm. She couldn’t begin to imagine how much he’d sunk into this place, both in money and blood, sweat, and tears, to make it thrive. She wondered how he’d come to be here, doing this. It wasn’t something she’d asked him in their conversations all those months ago, and she didn’t feel quite like asking him now. She had other things on her mind.
“Logan, I need to ask you something.”
He folded his arms loosely over the steering wheel and shifted to look at her. “Shoot.”
How to put this? “Do I have something to apologize for from the other night?”
“You don’t need to apologize for asking for a ride. I’d way rather you call than try to drive. That was the smart thing to do.”
“No, I mean—” She huffed a breath and took the bull by the horns. “Did I try to jump you?”
He pursed his lips, clearly considering his answer.
Shit.
“You might have made it clear that you were interested in a repeat performance of last summer.”
Not much embarrassed her. She was unapologetically herself pretty much all the time. But this… Covering her burning face with her hands, she wished she could sink into the ground beneath them. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
Spreading her fingers, she peered through them to see his face. “You’re not sorry I tried to maul you?”
“I’m not sorry you’re still interested on some level. So am I. If you’d been anywhere approaching sober, you’d have woken up in a very different bed. But you weren’t, so I stopped.” He shrugged. “I don’t see that as something to apologize for. If you decide you want to go there without the alcohol, I’m ready, willing, and able.”
Direct and to the point. She appreciated that in a person. So she opted to respond in kind. “My life is a fucking mess right now, Logan.”
“Because the asshole broke your heart or because of the imploded career thing?”
“My heart is broken because of the career thing. But I wasn’t in love with the asshole.”
“Does it make me a jackass if I say good?”
Her lips quirked. “It makes you honest. I find I appreciate that even more now than I did before.”
“Then in the name of honesty, let me just say that I want to be here for you. Whether that’s just as a friend or as a naked distraction.”
A shudder ran through her body as she imagined his hands on her skin, stroking, stoking the heat inside her. “You have no idea how appealing an offer that is.”
“An irresistible one, I hope.” The flash of his grin against that close-cropped beard had lust unspooling in her belly.
“I’m probably going to kick myself for this later, but I think, for now, for your sake, I need to avoid the naked. You deserve better than being a rebound guy.”
“While a part of me is inclined to say that rebound sex is better than no sex, the smarter part agrees with you. So no naked. For now. But the friend thing is still on the table.”
She sighed. “I could really use a friend.”
“Then consider me yours.”
His gaze caught hers and held. Tension snapped between them, and for a moment, she thought he’d blow the whole friend declaration all to hell and kiss her. She wanted him to.
Instead, he pulled back on a rueful smile. “This may be harder than I thought.”
“More trouble than it’s worth to try?”
“Hell no. You’re worth the effort.”
As he put the ATV into gear, she decided so was he.