Chapter 22
Emery
I clutch a bottle of wine as I face Logan framed by the Landry doorway, and a fresh wave of illicit memories from two nights ago bowls over me.
But it’s how little Macy hugs his neck that stirs my heartbeat.
She’s always been skittish around strangers, but I guess her larger-than-life uncle isn’t a stranger anymore.
“I didn’t think you were coming.” His deep voice grates as his eyes scour over my face.
“Neither did I,” I admit too freely, tucking a bothersome strand of hair behind my ear. “Is there still room for one more at the dinner table?”
He tracks the subtle move. His chest lifts with a deep inhale and then he steps back to allow me inside. “I’m sure there is.”
The house smells of roasted turkey, stirring my hunger. It’s a far cry from the coffee and protein bars I’ve been living off these past two days.
The older boys linger in the living room, the twins huddled over a checkerboard on the coffee table. It’s a rare sight—they’re usually either glued to their tablets or tormenting their siblings.
“Hey, Uncle Logan, can we play poker with you too?” one of them asks.
“Depends on if you’re still shitheads after dinner,” Logan says, shutting the door behind me.
“Shitheads,” Macy parrots in a soft, childish whisper that earns my gasp. I struggle not to laugh.
Logan shushes her with a chuckle. “Don’t get me in trouble with your mom. You’re not allowed to say that until you’re older.”
“Who was at the door—oh, Emery!” Annie’s eyes light up as she appears from the direction of the kitchen, her signature braid slung over her shoulder, wiry strands slipping out, her apron smeared with flour and grease. “You changed your mind!”
“If that’s okay with you.” I hold out the chilled bottle of white.
“Oh, don’t be silly.” She collects the wine in one hand while squeezing my biceps affectionately. “I’m so glad you came. Just in time too. We’re about to sit.” Annie’s always cheerful but she’s especially so this year. I have to assume it’s because of Logan.
Sarah sweeps in then with a ceramic dish filled with mashed potatoes. “Hey, Em. Glad you could make it.” Her eyes dart to Logan, a knowing twinkle in them.
I stifle my groan. Apparently, Jon tells his wife things. “Thanks. It’s been a long weekend, and I could use some friendly faces.” It’s not a lie, even though it’s not my motivation for seeing Logan again so soon.
Annie’s brow pinches. “Any news on that poor girl?”
I shake my head. “We had a lead that fell through. We’re looking, though.” Not hard enough for Brad Whitley, but I can’t fault him for pushing. If it were Isla, they wouldn’t be able to get rid of me.
“Get these damn dogs outta here!” Holt booms from the kitchen.
“I’d better get in there before there’s an incident. Thomas, set another place at the table, please.” Annie whisks away as quickly as she came, hollering back, “You’re the one who let them inside!”
I smile at the familiar commotion.
“Is Isla coming too?” Thomas holds a fresh plate that he fished out of the antique buffet—Logan’s great-grandmother’s—that has miraculously survived the generations of rambunctious children.
“No, she’s with her father tonight.”
His shoulders sink with disappointment. I think everyone’s figured out that Thomas has a crush on Isla, except for Thomas.
“Yeah, thanks for sending Dillon here yesterday, by the way. That was fun,” Logan says, his tone dry.
“I didn’t have a choice.” And I didn’t anticipate Isla having her phone on Do Not Disturb. That’s unheard of. “Hopefully he was civil?”
“Yeah. We had a very civil conversation.” Logan’s smirk tells me a different story.
But none of that matters today. “Listen, can I talk to you for a moment?” I don’t think I need to add the “in private” part.
His chest heaves with a reluctant sigh. Turning to Macy, he says, “I gotta put you down now, kid.”
After a brief pause and with her thumb stuck in her mouth, she nods.
He sets her on her socked feet, tousling her fine blond locks with his hand. “Go and wash up.”
I’m hit with a visual of what Logan would look like as a father and my heart aches. Will he ever have kids? I’m sure he’ll find someone who doesn’t care about his record, where his past doesn’t limit their future.
I wish that for him.
And yet the thought of him with another woman, of sharing a life with someone, opens a wound deep inside me.
His Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow. “Okay, let’s talk about that awful mistake some more.”
I’m about to nod toward the front porch when Annie sweeps in with a heaping platter of turkey. “Sit! Before the mashed potatoes get cold! Nothing worse than cold potatoes.”
“Or cold gravy.” Sarah follows closely with a ceramic boat brimming with it.
Everyone descends upon the table as if starved, and our window of opportunity is gone.
“Can we please do this after?” Logan asks quietly.
This isn’t what he thinks it is, but I don’t want to hold up dinner. Knowing Holt and Annie, they’ll skewer anyone who touches their fork before everyone’s seated. They stand on that tradition. “Yeah. Okay.”
We find our places, Logan conveniently beside me as if orchestrated that way.
I’m acutely aware of his body heat, of the corded muscles in his forearms, of his hands, remembering how they felt on me.
“Did you hear about Logan’s heroic morning yesterday?” Annie passes a dish of glazed carrots around. “The woman he pulled from Lake Temagami.”
“What? No, I haven’t.” We’ve been so focused on looking for Holly, there hasn’t been much talk of anything else. “What happened?”
“Basically what she said.” Logan stabs at a hunk of turkey breast with the serving fork.
“Went fishing with Jack and Jameson. We saw a woman floating in the lake and I pulled her out. They airlifted her to North Bay. I don’t know if she made it.
She had a pulse, but it was weak.” His answer is factual, unenthusiastic. Reluctant, even.
“That water had to be, what, eight or nine degrees Celsius at most?” Holt chirps. “But Logan didn’t think twice about diving in. He gave her CPR until the paramedics arrived. If she did live, it’s ’cause of him.” His pride is unmistakable.
“That’s … incredible.” I wish my father were here to hear this.
He often mused about what went on in Logan’s head that night to make him complicit and that how people behave when no one’s watching tells you a lot about who they truly are.
It felt like his soft way of telling me that maybe it wasn’t just poor judgment on Logan’s part.
But I knew Logan, and I didn’t buy it.
If not for the focus on Holly, I would have heard about this already. A report would need to be filed, and Logan’s name would have caused a stir.
I reach over to squeeze his forearm—for comfort or simply an excuse to touch him again despite my best senses. Likely both. “I’ll find out what happened to her.”
“You don’t have to. I know you’ve got a lot goin’ on.” His body is tense beneath my palm, but when he meets my gaze, I see the same hopeful longing from last night.
It stirs my pulse and instantly brings me back to the moment I threw all caution aside.
“So, this is your first Thanksgiving dinner in twenty years, huh, big guy?” Jon says, breaking the spell.
Logan refocuses on his plate. “Yup. Thanks for constantly reminding me.”
But Jon is oblivious, ladling squash to his overflowing plate while Sarah monitors Egan in a high chair on one side of her and Macy on her other, the little girl on her knees in an adult chair, attempting to serve herself potatoes.
For all the positive he’s done to renew and grow the Landry ranch, Jon is equally incompetent when it comes to rearing children and keeping his foot out of his mouth.
Thomas grimaces. “They don’t have Thanksgiving in prison?”
Logan chuckles. “Not like this. It’s deli turkey and instant mash, frozen peas and carrots. Runny gravy.”
“Nothing runny here,” Sarah announces as she pours a helping of her homemade version onto Macy’s plate.
Carson leans over to Egan’s high chair and whispers with a wicked smile, “Gobbles.”
The little boy’s bottom lip quivers for one … two seconds and then he lets out a shrill scream that has forks clattering.
“Not this again,” Jon exclaims with exasperation.
Sarah rests her forehead in her hands, looking seconds from crying herself.
“That’s it.” Holt tosses his napkin on the table and shoves his chair back, the grating sound against the wood abrupt. “Carson, get up.”
Sarah’s eyes dart from Holt to Jon and back to Holt. “Dad, what are you doin’—”
“What should have been done already.” He rounds the table and snatches up Carson’s plate of food. “On your feet, boy. Now.”
This is the Holt I remember from childhood—the one with no soft edges and discipline waiting around every corner.
Carson’s gray-blue eyes widen like saucers. Even Egan’s cries have muted, either from fear or curiosity.
“Dad?” he says feebly.
“Nope, sorry. Can’t help you now, bud,” Jon says solemnly. “Better listen to your Grampa.”
Carson rises and, head bowed, follows Holt through the kitchen and out the back door.
“I guess the dogs are gonna get their turkey after all.” Annie tsks.
“He’s feeding Carson’s dinner to the dogs?” Thomas exclaims, horrified for a second time tonight.
“He used to do that with your mom and your uncles when they were misbehaving at the dinner table too.” Annie waggles her fingers between Sarah and Logan.
“Not me,” Sarah corrects haughtily, her hands pressed against her chest. “It was always Jay. Logan, once or twice maybe.”
“I forgot about that.” Logan’s smile is wistful. “I don’t think Jay ate Thanksgiving dinner for, like, three years straight.”
A memory strikes me then. “My mom always said the Landry dogs ate like kings around the holidays.”
Logan laughs, and the deep sound brings a giddy smile to my face.
“And here you two thought losing your gaming time was the worst thing that could happen today,” Jon muses before inhaling a forkful of stuffing.