Two
RENéE
The guy was so freaking hot.
Like stupid hot.
My type exactly.
Blond, blue eyes, tall, broad shouldered and fucking smart to boot.
I was tired of going for the sexy idiots who could barely carry on a conversation, but were pretty to look at. But Logan Conroy checked every one of my boxes, and yet, he didn’t see me as anything more than a friend.
Could I be anymore of a flirt?
Not really.
Which meant, he just wasn’t interested in me that way.
We sat there at the bar, him with his burger, fries and beer, and me with my cider and fries. Penny ordered herself a personal sized veggie pizza and was on her second cider, since I was driving her home.
Logan had worked at the pub for six weeks now, and not once had he asked me out, or even showed me he was interested in me as more than a friend.
I nearly had a stroke when the Sewing Circle ladies started going off about how cute of a couple we would make, and how pretty our babies would be.
Duh!
I’d already thought about that.
Too many times to call it normal.
Ugh.
“I’ll be right back,” Logan said, standing up from his stool. “Need to run to the restroom.”
Once he was out of earshot, I turned to Penny and frowned. “Am I ugly, Penn?”
My bestie rolled her brown eyes. “Shut up.”
“Why doesn’t he like me, though? Am I not flirting obviously enough?”
Penny picked up her second to last slice of pizza and took a bite. “Maybe they do flirting differently on the East Coast. Maybe you need to throw a lobster roll at him? Or ask him to teach you how to make baked beans?” She shrugged and chewed. “I don’t fucking know.”
Chloe glanced at us and smirked as she poured a pint of ale. “Or,” she said, placing the full pint on the bar, “you could just ask him out?”
“But what if he says no? Then that will make working together super awkward?” I grabbed another fry and glumly shoved it into my mouth. “I don’t want to lose him as a friend because I went and made things weird.”
Logan came around the corner and walked in front of the bar. His cheeks flushed in that sexy way I liked as he caught my eye and smile.
“Hey Logan,” Chloe said, grabbing another ticket from the machine.
He jerked his chin at her. “Yeah?”
“You and Renée should go on a date. You want to go on a date with her?”
What the actual fuck?
I dropped the fry in my hand back into the basket as I gaped at my boss’s pregnant girlfriend, who was also the bar manager.
Logan’s cheeks turned from pink to red as his jaw went slack. He glanced at me, then back to Chloe. Then at Penny.
Penny simply shrugged and sipped her cider. “I think you guys should.”
I swallowed.
Shoving his hands into his pockets, Logan shrugged, then smiled shyly as he broke eye contact and stared at the wood floor for a second before glancing up at me again. “I mean … yeah. I’d like to go on a date.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue.
Penny nudged me. “See,” she whispered.
“I … o-okay,” I stammered. “S-sure. I’d love that.”
Logan lifted his head, and a big grin curled up the corners of his mouth.
“You’re both off tomorrow night. Go out tomorrow night. To The Thatch Pub.”
I blinked.
Logan blinked.
“He’ll pick you up at six,” Chloe said with a sigh and an eye roll. “He can use my car.”
Butterflies, with absolutely no flight plan, took off at the same time in my belly and went apeshit.
Penny nudged me again. “She’ll be ready.”
I nodded. “Uh … yeah. That sounds great.”
“It’s a date,” Chloe said. “And about damn time.”
At that point, it would have been really nice if a hole spontaneously opened up in the floor and swallowed me.
Just me. Nobody else. But it didn’t. The floor remained level and intact, and Logan grabbed his barstool beside me again because, of course, he did.
He still had half a beer and half a burger to finish.
If this were anybody but me, he would have finished those things already and just taken his leave, so we didn’t have to sit beside each other in excruciating awkwardness.
“Well, this is awkward,” Penny remarked, earning a sharp glare from me.
Logan chuckled. “Maybe a little. But it doesn’t have to be.” He picked up his burger and took another bite. “Is The Thatch Pub any good? I haven’t really explored the island much since moving here.”
“It’s not bad.” Penny shrugged. “I mean, I might be a little biased because I work here, but the food here is better. But the Thatch has karaoke night, and music bingo. Dom refuses to have those things here.”
Logan snickered. “Well, he didn’t really have a choice about the karaoke machine that Vica bought.”
“No. But have you noticed that it hasn’t come out since the Christmas party?”
Now that my pulse had returned to rest, I faced forward again, avoiding Logan, but not completely turned away from him.
“The Thatch is fine. They’re just a bit more …
casual than here. The food is a lot more basic, and since they’re not a brewery, they carry all the island booze, but none of their own. ”
“Like most restaurants,” Logan replied.
I nodded and sipped my cider, very, very aware of his knee against my thigh.
“Well, I’m done,” Penny said, setting her empty cider bottle down on the bar.
Even though I wasn’t done my fries, I leaped off my stool. “Awesome. Let’s go.”
“You haven’t finished your fries,” my best friend and apparently also meddling enemy pointed out like Captain Obvious.
I glared at her again before grabbing the last handful, which was probably a bit too big of a handful, and shoving the entire thing into my mouth. “There,” I said trying not to choke. “Let’s go.” Then I booked it for the door, not waiting for Penny.
“Bye,” Logan called after me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I tossed a half-assed way at him as I shoved my other hand into the front door, welcoming the frigid slap of winter air against my face.
The door swung open again, and Penny joined me. “What the hell was that all about?” she asked as we headed toward my red Suzuki Tracker, failing to dodge the raindrops.
We climbed in and I immediately put the defrost on full blast. It took more than a minute to warm up since my vehicle was old and had almost as much attitude as I did.
Penny shot me another one of her looks. “You made that way more awkward than it needed to be.”
Ignoring her, I put the vehicle in drive and pulled out of the parking lot.
“I just don’t understand you. You’re crazy-confident. More confident than me. You’re funny, you’re smart. You’re gorgeous. You are a total catch. So why the hell did my amazing friend, who can flirt with customers to get better tips, turn into a bumbling weirdo back there?”
We reached the end of the laneway for the pub, and I turned right to take Penny home.
“Oh, so now I’m getting the silent treatment?” Penny crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.
I exhaled loudly and turned the defrost down to the third level so we could hear each other better.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I don’t know why he flusters me.
I turn into an idiot around him. It was easier when he first got here.
I flirted, I was normal … and now …” I shook my head and turned my wipers onto a faster mode.
“I really like him, Penn. And I’m worried that he doesn’t like me back …
at least not in the way I like him. And what if it doesn’t work out and then things are weird?
He’s related to the McEvoys. He’s their cousin.
He lives on the property for fuck’s sake.
If they need to can one of us, guess who it will be?
” I pointed at myself. “The one who isn’t family. ”
My friend scoffed. “You’re overthinking this.”
“Am I?” I glanced at in the dark cab of my Tracker.
“I love it here, Penn. I don’t want to leave the island.
But jobs aren’t easy to find. Neither is housing.
We both lucked out. You because you’re related to people renting legacy land, and me because Kitty and Grimm Barrington had a one-room tree house on the back of their property that they didn’t think anybody would want to rent.
But they never expected me to rock up and be like, “Tree house? Hell yes!”
“Your place is freaking awesome, dude,” Penny said. “You live on an apiary and look out on a field of wildflowers. Plus, what you’ve done with that little space in the three years you’ve lived there is amazing.”
It was hard not to be proud of what I’d accomplished with the treehouse.
When I first moved in, it had no running water or electricity.
Now, I had a composting toilet, a water reservoir from the gutters, so I had running water in the house, and electricity, as well as Wi-Fi.
A small beer fridge was all I needed, as well as a hot plate and toaster oven.
I didn’t need the ability to cook a turkey dinner with all the fixin’s, just enough to make a nice stir fry or my secret mac ‘n’ cheese.
The secret was six different kinds of cheese, dried mushroom powder for that umami flavor, and sriracha sauce.
Since the place was so small, and in the trees, I got away with a couple of space heaters in the winter, and just opened my windows to allow for the lovely cross breeze in the summer. When the power went out during the winter storms, I just crashed with Penny, so I didn’t freeze to death.
It was all I needed, and it afforded me the ability to save a lot of the money I made at the pub.
“Don’t go into this date tomorrow thinking the worst,” Penny said as I turned onto the road for her house.
“Logan is great. If there ends up not being a spark, I’m sure you two can stay friends.
He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to make things weird.
And if he is,” she lifted one shoulder, “I’ll punch him in the throat for you. ”
That made me smile. “I’d punch a guy—or a bitch—in the throat for you, too.”