Chapter Eighteen
I t had occurred to him that he might run into her here. He knew from Jeremy that she often visited them on Sundays, or vice versa. So he’d known, and mentally prepared himself. He told himself if he had to speak to her, he could always ask where her Saturday expedition had taken her, and that should get him past the rough spot.
But somehow, even with that, he hadn’t been prepared to look up and see her standing there, looking straight at him.
He was sure he’d probably stood there gaping like a fool for far too long before he pulled himself together enough to realize he’d not answered Mrs. Baylor.
“Thanks,” he said a little awkwardly. Then, because it was Mrs. Baylor he managed to go on. “I think he’ll be a good horse, maybe even a great one, but he’ll keep you on your toes. And he’ll teach Jeremy a lot about horses, when the time comes.”
“And Jeremy will love every minute of it,” Tris predicted as she walked into the barn, with that smile that spoke volumes about her love for her brother’s little boy.
He’d never known a connection like that. Like the one she had with her brother, either. He looked away, knowing he could never explain to her why that jabbed at him, not without sounding like some kind of jealous idiot.
Fortunately that brother rescued him by showing up with Jeremy in tow, who had the golden retriever at his heels. And the boy’s excitement over the new arrival quashed every other emotion in the barn, from human to canine to equine. It would take a true emotional dud not to smile at his enthusiasm, and he wasn’t quite that far gone.
“I still love Pie,” Jeremy stated unequivocally.
“Of course you do,” Tris said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t love this one, too.”
“And you’re going to be too big to ride Pie one day,” Jackson said. He reached out and tousled the boy’s hair. “Maybe sooner than you think.”
Jeremy’s smile widened. And suddenly Logan had to turn away. This kind of casual, loving, familial affection was something he’d never known, and he didn’t know quite how to react. But then, no one here needed or wanted his reaction, so it didn’t matter, but still, the ache it raised in him put him on edge. Enough so that he muttered to Mr. Baylor that he had to get going and started to walk toward his truck before the man even answered.
But he hadn’t counted on Mrs. Baylor, who stopped him at the barn door.
“You must stay for lunch, Logan. We’re having barbecue beef sandwiches, with some of Richard’s famous sauce.”
He started to shake his head, but Jeremy piped up, “You ever had it, Mr. Logan? It’s really good.”
He could hardly be rude to the boy. “I haven’t. But I’ve heard about it.”
“That’s settled then,” Mrs. Baylor said, and spun her chair around.
He stood there for a long, silent moment, picturing himself running after her and saying no, he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t make it work, not with this woman he admired so much for her tenacity and determination.
And so he ended up seated at the big Baylor picnic table amid a crowd. Well, a crowd to him. Mr. and Mrs. Baylor, Jackson, Jeremy and Nic, who had arrived just as they were leaving the barn.
And Tris.
He’d figured he’d be safe enough, with seven of them at a table that seated eight, he’d be the odd one out at one end. He wouldn’t be hemmed in and could maybe even make an early escape.
But it didn’t quite work out that way, because Mr. Baylor wheeled out a cart with various necessities, including the big pile of napkins needed for handling those huge and delicious beef sandwiches. And he placed it at the end of the table he’d staked out in his mind as a safe place to sit. So somehow Logan ended up sitting in the middle on one side, with Jeremy on his left, across from his father, and…Tris on his right, between him and Mrs. Baylor at the other end.
He was almost relieved when Jeremy started chattering at him, talking about Pie, and the new colt, and how long it would be before he would be old enough to ride, and “How did you do that whispering thing with him?”
This he could handle, he thought. Tris was talking quietly with Mrs. Baylor, which meant she was turned partly away from him. He could deal with this.
Nic came out of the house with a tray of what looked to him like sandwiches big enough to feed twice this number. He could already smell the tang of the barbecue sauce that he’d heard so much about.
“We keep trying to get Dad to bottle this stuff and sell it,” she said as she set the tray down in the center of the table.
Mr. Baylor snorted. “No thanks. Some things shouldn’t go beyond family.”
Then why am I here?
He groaned inwardly at his own thought. Sometimes his gut reactions annoyed even him. They’d invited him, in fact insisted he stay, so clearly they didn’t mind sharing the secret sauce, as it were. He just wouldn’t get the recipe if he asked. Which he wouldn’t.
He reached out for a slightly smaller sandwich he guessed was for Jeremy, and handed the plate to the boy. Tris had taken her own, so he took the one that was left on that side. Everybody else was already digging in, so he took his first bite. Chewed. Slowly, his eyes widening.
Then he swallowed, looked down at the sandwich in his hand, then across the table at Mr. Baylor. “Wow,” he said.
The other man grinned at him. “That’ll do.”
He couldn’t even begin to isolate the number of flavors he could taste. The natural taste of tomato, the perfect touch of spice, some honey sweetness, and a dash of something deep and smoky. It made already delicious beef impossibly luscious, which was not a word he used often.
“Told ya it was good,” Jeremy said, oblivious of the trickle of sauce down his chin.
“And you were right,” Logan told the boy, liking the way Jeremy smiled at him even while chewing. He focused on his own chewing until, with a speed that surprised him, he was wiping his fingers on one of the pile of napkins.
“Hand me one of those, would you?”
Tris’s smile as she asked him made him feel entirely different. He reached out and grabbed the top napkin, realizing she’d have had to lean across him to get one herself. And realizing, he wasn’t sure he’d have minded. He handed it to her, and her fingers brushed his as she took it, thanking him more warmly than he thought the simple act deserved. It was all he could do not to jerk back and away at the contact. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it. It was that he liked it too much.
He shifted his gaze to the man across the table, sitting next to Nic. Tris’s brother. The famous, fawned over and gossiped about Jackson Thorpe. Even after he’d walked away from a career most actors would kill for, he was still headline news, for Thorpe’s Therapy Horses if nothing else.
As if he’d felt Logan looking at him, Jackson tore his gaze away from the woman beside him. “Been meaning to thank you,” he said. “Sorry is doing great with the kids.”
Logan smiled at that. The sorrel horse that hadn’t been cut out for Hollywood work, with a little coaxing and explanation, had turned out to be the perfect horse for the therapy project. And that Jackson had rescued the horse when he’d been dumped after the powers that be on the show, Stonewall , decided he wasn’t worth saving, told him all he really needed to know about the man.
But never in a million years would he ever have expected to be sitting down having lunch with the megastar, let alone talking with him so…easily. It was unsettling.
Almost as unsettling was the unmistakable sense of love that fairly radiated between all of these people. Nic, her parents, and now Jackson, Jeremy and Tris. They were so clearly, so obviously already a family, and the wedding he had no doubt would be forthcoming soon would only put the official seal on it.
Odd, he supposed, that he who had never really had a family, could recognize one so easily. Odder still that he could still feel the faint echo of that long-ago ache, the ache he’d felt as a child even younger than Jeremy, for what he was missing.
For what he would never have.