Chapter Three
Jack sat on the couch while Logan packed yet another box of books. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me.”
“I’m literally moving three minutes away.”
“Yeah, but still.” Jack pouted.
“You can visit me anytime, you know. And I’ll come drink your beer anytime you invite me.” Logan taped the box closed and added it to the growing stack.
“You’re not going to be next door, though. And you’re taking my buddy.” He gave Kiwi, who’d fallen asleep paws up on his lap, a belly rub. “She’s spent more nights with me than you lately.”
Logan’s expression changed to one of worry, laced with more than a hint of guilt. “That has been super selfish of me. Do you want me to leave her with you?”
The fact that Logan would even entertain it was a testament to how much she loved him. And probably her guilt over ending the shared bachelor existence that had been their duplex over the last seven or so years. “She’s your baby. Just because I’ve grown attached doesn’t change that.”
Logan abandoned her packing to scoop the sixteen pounds of poodle mutt fluff into her arms. “She is. And I’m not going to lie, I’ve missed the crap out of her.”
As Logan started spending more and more time at Kathleen’s, Kiwi’s time at Jack’s had increased. Mostly because she was fourteen and hated going in the car. But now that Logan was moving in with Kathleen, he had no doubts that Kiwi belonged there. “She’s going to love that big yard.”
Logan laughed. “At least after the snow melts.”
Truth. Kiwi hated the cold almost as much as she hated the car. Little old dog prerogative. “Maybe it’s time I take a trip to the shelter myself.”
“Yeah?” Logan looked pleased at the idea.
He’d been thinking about it more and more.
He’d wanted some time after his old beagle mix passed, and then Kiwi was around enough to take the edge off.
Now, with both Logan and Kiwi moving out, the prospect of endless quiet left him with a sort of restless, empty nest feeling.
And Lord knew he was better suited to a canine companion than a human relationship, at least of the romantic kind.
“I’m sure there’s some sweet girl who’s a little sad and a little scruffy who wouldn’t mind hitching her wagon to me. ”
Logan raised a brow. “So you can be sad and scruffy together?”
“Exactly.” The description suited him more than the alternative—a chick magnet.
“Even if I don’t approve that message, I’m a fan of the plan. If you want me to go with you so you don’t come home with six, I’m all in.”
He laughed, mostly because it tracked very close to legitimate possibility. “I hereby name you my adoption chaperone and voice of reason.”
Logan offered a salute. “Position accepted.” She returned Kiwi to his lap and surveyed the room.
“Ready to call it quits for the day?” He gave her the out since he already knew the answer.
She nodded. “I need beer and food.”
“I made chili last night,” he said.
“And jalape?o cornbread?”
He feigned offense. “Your question implies I might not.”
Logan feigned remorse. “Sorry.”
“Finish packing this room and we’ll eat.”
Logan made a face but didn’t argue, shoving a dozen paperbacks into a copy paper box she’d pilfered from the Barrow Brothers office. “Tell me about Hampstead House.”
He sucked in a breath and blew it out, debating where to start. “It’s a big job, but I’m excited for it. I’ve never seen so much knob and tube in my life.”
Logan laughed. “Heaven.”
“It is. So much easier to be working from the original and not decades of patchwork replacements. The only part of the house with cobbled upgrades is the kitchen and the back rooms where the caretaker used to live.”
“I’m with you. I understand why people do work piecemeal, but what a mess.”
Jack nodded. The work itself would be the easy part. Well, not easy, but squarely in his wheelhouse. Work he could happily do for weeks on end without getting bored. It wasn’t the work he was worried about.
“Why are you frowning?”
Ellie Lancaster’s chipper smile popped into his mind, front and center. “I’m not thrilled to be working with a bunch of people I don’t know.”
“Poor curmudgeon. Are you going to have to socialize?”
Rather than resist a lip curl, he indulged in an exaggerated one. “Some of us aren’t born with the gift of gab.”
Logan pressed a hand to her chest in mock offense. Probably because their mother had used the phrase to describe Logan from the age of five. “I don’t think you mean that in a nice way.”
“Maybe you should come to the site with me. You can talk to people while I work.” Though, he realized grimly, he didn’t love the idea of Logan turning on her flirty charm with Ellie. Not that anything would come of it. Logan was smitten as a kitten when it came to Kathleen. But still. “Never mind.”
Logan, who’d picked up another box but had yet to put anything in it, set it on the coffee table. She pointed at Jack and made accusatory little circles with her finger. “There’s a story you haven’t told me. Spill.”
Jack groaned even though he’d walked right into it. “The project manager looks and acts like he belongs on Queer Eye.”
Logan pursed her lips. “As a queer eye or a straight guy?”
The show had moved beyond hapless straight guys, but the sentiment held. “Queer eye.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Need I remind you that you, too, are queer?”
He was. Between the decade on T and top surgery, he passed, and his attractions leaned exclusively to the female identified.
But he waved the rainbow flag with pride, literally and figuratively—a fact that had earned him more than a few curious stares in the tiny towns he frequented in their corner of Vermont.
And he always cringed when someone said something they’d only say in front of a cis guy. “You know what I mean.”
Logan smirked. “He didn’t threaten to make you over, did he?”
“No, but I bet he was thinking about it.” Jack shuddered at the image of himself in Pablo’s tight pants and form-fitting sweater.
Logan grabbed another stack of books but hovered over the box. “Okay, but surely you’ll find some bros once the whole crew starts work. Grab your crotch and talk about fixing stuff. You’ll fit right in.”
Ellie hadn’t exactly left his thoughts, but she swooped back into prominence. “I did meet one of them.”
Logan abandoned all pretenses of packing and flopped onto the sofa, turning to face Jack with rapt attention. “Do tell.”
“She’s an artist, I think. Specializes in plaster restoration and stuff. She’s been hired to save the murals.”
“Oh, that’s so cool.” Logan’s eyes lit up. “I always wished I had more tactile artistic talent. Did you talk to her? Is she nice?”
Nice wasn’t an inaccurate word to describe Ellie. Yet it didn’t convey the chipper vibe that radiated from her like some sort of homing beacon. “She’s…perky.”
“Perky?” Logan seemed genuinely confused by the descriptor.
The incredulousness only made Jack double down. “Perky.”
“Huh.”
“Like a bohemian.” Jack rummaged for other adjectives. “But, like, full of mirth.”
“Full of mirth?” Logan folded her arms.
He regretted the word choice even before Logan’s response. “Is this where I remind you that even though I didn’t end up using it, I scored higher on the SAT than you did?”
“Low blow, dude.”
“Deserved.” He let out a hmph on principle, even though he couldn’t remember another time he’d used the word. “Anyway, I stand by it. She’s—”
“Sunshine,” Logan said before he could finish.
“Excuse me?”
Logan got excited then, like she’d solved a puzzle. “This woman is the sunshine to your grumpy.”
“Is that a thing?” He leaned into his family calling him a grump, since it got him out of at least a few inane social obligations, but Logan’s juxtaposition of the terms didn’t make sense.
“It’s a trope, like in a book or a movie. When we started dating, Kathleen said her friend teased her about being the grumpy to my sunshine before deciding Kathleen was acting more ice queen than grump.”
“I am so confused right now.” At this rate, he was going to have to start reading Kathleen’s books just so he could keep up with the lingo.
Logan let out an exasperated sigh. “If you and this woman—what’s her name?”
“Ellie,” he said with a grumble, not liking at all where this was going.
“Okay, so if you and Ellie were in a romance novel—”
“We are not in a romance novel.” Which was obvious, but he felt compelled to say so anyway.
“I’m just saying. If you were, that would be your trope. Grumpy-sunshine.”
Jack stood, more irritated than the situation warranted. “I’m going to my house, and I’m taking your dog with me.”
Logan pouted. “Are you rescinding your dinner invite?”
He had half a mind to. But Logan wouldn’t be a front porch away for much longer. “It stands. As long as you don’t try to write me into anymore smutty stories.”
“Who said anything about smut?” Logan asked. “Some of the best romcom movies of all time are grumpy-sunshine, and they’re barely PG.”
He’d totally walked into that and only had himself to blame. “But there’s always kissing and all that happily ever after nonsense. I guarantee there won’t be any of that here.”
Logan’s smirk returned. “If you say so.”
* * *
Ellie lugged in the final duffel bag from the mismatched assortment she’d managed to cram into the back of her Subaru.
She’d probably need to retrieve a few things from storage before her six-week stint at Hampstead House was complete, but she had the essentials.
And living with the essentials would let her know what of the non-essentials she really missed.
All of which would help her decide just how much space—and how much stuff—she’d need when it came time to look for a place of her own.
While the idea of her own place thrilled her, knowing she’d have to make so many and such big decisions made her head hurt.
Buy or rent? In town or out in the country?
How close to her mom’s new place? And that said nothing about how big, how expensive, and what style.
Or how much consideration she should give to where her next job might be.