Chapter 5
Logan
“What are you doing here?” I say as the spitfire from the clinic says the same thing. My eyes jump to the house behind her, panic rising in my throat. “Do you live here?”
She grips her phone tighter, and I don’t miss the numbers nine, one, and one glowing brightly on the screen. “Who’s asking?”
I fold my arms to hide my shaking fingers. This can’t be happening. “Obviously I am.”
As her eyes slip to the red lines still etched into the skin of my forearm, bright spots of pink appear on her cheeks. “Logan, right?”
Now I wish I could remember her name. Sarah?
Sammy? It’s been a couple of weeks, and I only thought about her…
every time I saw the cuts on my arm. But in my head, I’ve been calling her Spitfire.
Not a name I think she’ll take kindly to.
“I’d be insulted if you didn’t remember, considering you sicced Beef Wellington on me,” I say instead of possibly getting her name wrong.
Not that the alternative was any better.
Her stance softens the slightest bit, though her thumb slides closer to the green ‘call’ button on her phone.
Does she know her screen is on? I haven’t done anything wrong, but I have no plans to test the respectability of my citizenship if the cops decide to focus on the Australian part of me instead of the “born in the US of A” part.
Plus, there are too many doorbell cameras on this street for me to argue that I wasn’t sitting in front of this house for over an hour as I psyched myself up to knock on the door.
It’s a headache waiting to happen, one I really don’t need.
“Okay,” Spitfire says, jutting out a hip. “I did not sic my cat on you. You came barrelling into the room with your big muscly body and scared the living daylights out of him, so he responded accordingly.”
I clench my jaw, taking a breath before I speak. I need to stay calm. “You threatened to murder my friend.”
“No!” She points at me indignantly, a vivid reminder of her fiery personality. “I threatened to murder my cat.”
“How do you reckon I’d know that?”
“By taking a minute to use your head instead of your impressive muscles to assess the situation.”
“For someone a few millimeters away from calling the coppers on me, you’re praising my muscles an awful lot.” And I don’t know what to do with that.
Her eyes jump to the phone in her hand, opening wide before she deletes the three numbers and lowers her hand. “You have muscles,” she says with false nonchalance as her face turns a bright scarlet. She shakes her hair out of her face and lifts her chin. “I was simply stating a fact.”
“How about you simply answer my question. What are you doing here?” I nod at the house behind her.
Spitfire looks back, then meets my gaze again. “What’s it to you? And no, I don’t live here.”
I exhale with a modicum of relief. That’s one complication I can toss out, though it doesn’t make this situation any less stressful. The last thing I want is to spend more time on this walkway than I need to. “Do you know the woman who lives here?”
Her eyebrows pull together, one lifting slightly higher than the other. “Do you?”
“Answer the question, mate.”
“I will if you ask nicely, mate.”
Grinding my teeth, I take a few deep breaths and remind myself that I have time. A few months, anyway. I don’t have to do this today. “Forget it.” Turning on my heel, I head back to my car.
“Why were you watching the Shafers’ house?”
My steps pause. I look back. So I do have the right address… Okay, so I was never questioning my research, but a part of me liked the uncertainty. The excuse to stay in my car and pretend I wasn’t a few dozen meters from the whole reason I left Australia.
“I was…” I curse under my breath. There’s no good way to explain. I should just walk away and hope I don’t run into this woman a third time because she’s starting to feel a bit like a curse. Then again, if she knows Lola… Swallowing, I fold my arms again. “I was curious.”
Spitfire wrinkles her nose like I’ve said something disgusting. “Are you some kind of perv?”
I groan. “No, of course not.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ in this situation, buster.
There are kids in that house, so you’d better explain yourself before I call the cops on you.
” She fumbles with her screen lock for a few seconds, then pulls up the phone app and shows me the keypad with the numbers typed in again.
Except, I’m pretty sure she opened her calculator.
I’d laugh at how ridiculous all of this is if my mind didn’t get stuck on ‘kids.’ As in more than one.
That…hurts more than I thought it would.
Obviously I knew there was a possibility that my birth mom would have more kids after me, and I saw the boys walk in not too long ago.
But I was busy trying to figure out what I would say once I worked up the courage to go up to the door and didn’t connect the dots until now.
They were teenagers. Older teenagers. Maybe only a decade behind me in age, which isn’t all that much time in the grand scheme of things.
I have brothers.
Why did she want them but not me?
“What’s wrong with you?” the spitfire in front of me demands. “You’d better start convincing me that you’re not a creep before I get you registered on all sorts of lists.”
I blink as my gaze shifts from the house back to her.
She’s frowning again, but there’s less protective fury and more concern on her wrinkled forehead.
“I’m pretty sure Lola’s my mum,” I say before I can think better of admitting the truth.
I’ve always been a firm believer in honesty, but this might have been a good time to lie.
Her eyebrows jump high. “What? What do you mean pretty sure?”
My arms slowly unfold as exhaustion hits me, and I tuck my hands into the pockets of my joggers while my eyes fall to the pavement under my feet.
I played a tough match last night—one we lost—but I don’t think that’s why my legs feel like jelly.
“I mean I was adopted as a kid and recently found strong evidence suggesting I am biologically Lola’s son.
DNA test,” I add when she keeps staring at me.
All of Spitfire’s anger dissolves in an instant as she looks from me to the front door. “Whoa. Does she—”
“No, she doesn’t know. At least, she hasn’t met me before.”
“So you thought it was a good idea to show up on her doorstep?”
I take a slow, steadying breath as my mind flits back to a pitiful text conversation from a week ago. My first attempt at making contact.
Logan:
Is this Lola Shafer?
Lola:
Yes, who is this?
Logan:
This is going to sound mad, but I think I’m your son. You gave me up for adoption twenty-seven years ago in August.
Lola:
How did you get this number?
Logan:
I’m not asking for anything. I just want to meet.
Lola:
You have the wrong number.
Don’t contact me again.
Logan:
Please.
I have some questions to ask you, and then I’ll be out of your life again.
You owe me that much.
That went about how I expected it would, given my lack of tact, and I shouldn’t have sent that last message when my frustration boiled over. But because I couldn’t leave well enough alone, I hunted down her address. And here I am.
Blocked by a woman half my weight and twenty centimeters shorter than me. She and her giant bag are the only things standing between me and knocking on Lola’s door.
Well, and my cowardice, which is admittedly the stronger contender.
I still need to figure out how Spitfire knows Lola, and right now that’s an easier task than facing the woman who abandoned me and apparently still wants nothing to do with me.
“What’s your name?” I ask instead of answering her question about coming to the house.
Spitfire takes a step back, as if surprised. “What?”
“Your name, love.”
“I’m not your love, Logan. I don’t know you.”
My lips lift in a smirk I can’t hold back. “But you know my name.”
“Clearly I have a better memory than you do. I’m Savannah.”
Right. I knew that. “And how do you know Lola, Savannah?”
She folds her arms. It’s cute how she tries to look intimidating, but without her monstrous cat, she has no claws here. Plus, she looks like she’s liable to fall over if she holds that bag on her shoulder for much longer. What is in there? “I work for her.”
“What kind of work?”
“Meals.”
I perk up at the same time my stomach growls. “Meaning what?”
Her head tilts to one side. “Meaning I prep the family’s meals for the week and give them instructions on how to cook them.
Mrs. Shafer and her husband both work, so they don’t have a lot of time for making nutritional home-cooked meals.
” Red blossoms across her skin as she adds, “That’s, uh, more than I should have told you. ”
Probably, but I’m glad she did. I can see her being useful in multiple ways. One, she could get me face-to-face with Lola. Two, she could solve my dietary problem and save me from drinking all my calories. The second is the less intrusive one, so I start with that.
“Cook for me.”
She scoffs, jutting out a hip again and showing off the sass that was so attractive the first time I met her. “Excuse me?”
Right, that was a bit…abrupt. I clear my throat. “What I meant to say was, will you cook for me? I want to try out your skills before I hire you.”
She scoffs again. “Who said I was looking for clients?” But a light has turned on behind her eyes as she examines me a little more closely, and her shoulders tense up enough that the bag starts slipping from her arm.
I grab it right as it falls, holding it between us. It’s even heavier than it looks. “You’re telling me you don’t have room in your schedule for a dozen meals a week?”
She gasps, all of her attitude slipping away as she looks from me to the bag. “A doz… Um, I’m sure I could fit you in somewhere.”
I haven’t officially hired her, but based on the way relief floods her features, I might have to regardless so I can avoid the guilt of letting her down. “Brilliant.”
“I’m happy to make you a few samples that cater to your nutritional needs and caloric intake, which…” Her eyes trace over me, leaving me feeling oddly warm. “Which is probably pretty high,” she finishes breathlessly. “Um. Let me grab you a card.”
She starts digging into her giant bag, which I hold higher to give her access, and pulls out what looks like a postcard, stuffing it into my free hand. “You can put that down, by the way.”
With my attention piqued by the prime rib recipe on the front of the card, complete with a mouthwatering picture below the words “True Fuel Kitchen,” I lower the bag to the cement and flip the card over.
The back lists a degree in dietetics and a couple different nutritionist certifications next to a professional picture of Savannah that shows none of her spicy personality.
According to the words beneath the QR code, I can scan it to take a questionnaire and specify what I’m looking for from a meal planner.
I’m impressed, and I never would have guessed someone like her would do something like this. Granted, I know nothing about her aside from her owning a demon cat, but still. “Sports nutrition?” I ask, referring to one of her certificates.
She nods eagerly. “That’s my favorite part of my job, figuring out the right meals for different athletes. Los Angeles has about a million pro athletes, and you’d be surprised how complicated their nutrition needs can get.”
“Try me.”
She blinks. “What?”
Though tempted to fill out her questionnaire here and now, I tuck the card in my pocket and fold my arms again. “You’re talking to a pro athlete right now, so I want to see if you know what you’re doing.”
Again, she simply blinks at me like I’m talking nonsense. “But you’re on a team with Moxie.”
“Also a pro athlete.”
“No, he’s a vet.”
I chuckle, still amazed that Moxie hasn’t given this woman any proper attention. If I were in his shoes, I would have led with rugby the day we met. “He’s team captain of the Los Angeles Thunder, love.”
“Thunder?” She gets a thoughtful look, like she’s sorting through all the different teams in the valley. “Wait, is that the rugby team?” She gasps again when I nod, her eyes wide as she grabs my arm. “No!”
Frowning down at her fingers, I try to make sense of her sudden enthusiasm. “Yeah.”
“You play rugby?” She squeezes her fingers around my forearm and waves at the rest of me with her other arm. “That explains all of this!”
“My impressive muscles?”
As her brow drops, so does her excitement level, and she backs a step away from me with a wary look. “Ego much? No one said your muscles were impressive.”
“Literally you did,” I deadpan and roll my eyes. “Five minutes ago.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Biting her lip, she lets her eyes rove over me again, and this time her gaze leaves a burning trail of heat.
There’s something very real and open about this woman, making her impossible not to like when combining that with her spunk.
“Okay, but were you serious about hiring me? Because I will so take you on as a client if you were. I’ll take any of the guys from your team too.
But you get first priority, of course. If you’re really willing to pay me to make meals for you. ”
I glance at the house behind her. For a moment, I forgot why I came here in the first place, and instead of being overwhelmed with irritating nerves, I almost feel hopeful. Savannah could be exactly what I need, for more reasons than one. “Yes, I’ll pay you to make meals for me. On one condition.”
“Anything.”
This is a terrible idea, but it’s bound to be better than marching up to the door on my own like I was about to do. “You get me a meeting with Lola.”