Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Harper
“ Y our brother?” This was the first good news she’d had all day, and she smiled brightly, which only made his frown deepen. Strange.
“So, can you take me to him?” She asked eagerly, but the hulking bear of a man next to her pressed his lips together and didn’t answer.
They were still sitting in the truck near her wrecked car. The man might be huge and a bit intimidating with the scowl he was giving her, but he had given her a blanket and retrieved her bags from the car.
Should she trust him?
Harper was torn. She needed to find West’s house, but she didn’t know anything about the man in the driver’s seat. He said he was West’s brother, but she knew nothing about either of them to know if it was a lie or the truth.
Harper’s shoulders tightened. How was she ever going to get through this if she didn’t know who she could trust?
She chewed on her thumbnail, thinking it over.
She promised to write an album’s worth of songs in three weeks. If she had to find another place to stay, it would eat into the precious little time she had left.
She shot him another look. If Logan told the press—or even just mentioned her to someone who did—it might force her to move on anyway, even if he really was West’s brother. She looked down the road. Not a single car had passed since she’d driven through Cape Wilde, and this was clearly a remote area. It wasn’t as if she had many choices.
“Can you take me to him?” she asked again.
Logan narrowed his eyes at her. “It depends. What do you want with my brother?”
“Isn’t that my business?” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest. The wet sweater clung to her breasts and quickly uncrossed her arms, grabbing the blanket’s edges and pulling it around her instead.
“If you don’t tell me, I won’t take you to him.”
Harper glanced out the window at the rain, which was still coming down heavily. Damn the man, he knew she had to tell him something. But should she tell him the truth? Deciding that a half-truth was better than nothing, she looked back at him and sighed.
“A…friend of mine said West would let me stay for a few days.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “A friend.”
“Yeah. Someone who served with West.”
“So you’re not…” He cleared his throat and looked out the window.
Harper’s brows knit in confusion. “I’m not what?”
He cleared his throat again, and though it was hard to tell in the dim truck interior, she thought his cheeks had reddened slightly.
“You’re not seeing Mason,” he said, as though stating a fact, but looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Seeing him?” Harper blinked. If she had seen Mason, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
Unless… oh.
“You think I’m dating your brother?” she asked, incredulous.
His fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “Well, are you?”
She burst out laughing. Of all the things on her mind, finding a boyfriend was the last thing she wanted.
“No. I’ve never even met West…err, Mason.”
Logan gave a small nod but didn’t meet her eyes. “Alright.”
He turned the truck around once more, heading away from her wrecked rental.
“So you’ll take me to him?” she asked.
“No.”
She scowled. “But I thought?—”
“I can’t take you to him because he’s not home. And you’re not even on the right road.”
Logan guided the truck down a gravel path where the paved road ended.
“But the sign said Beaver Lane,” she protested.
Logan’s mouth curled into a grin. “A mistake people make every summer. This is Beaver Road. Beaver Lane is on the other side of town.”
Harper groaned. She had driven past the right place and wrecked her car for nothing.
“And he’s not home? When is he coming back?” If it was only a few days, she might find a quiet holiday rental in the meantime. It was risky, but what other option did she have?
“Who knows? Could be a few days, could be a few weeks.”
“Sorry, what?” She stared at him, stunned. How could anyone just take off like that? The thought of being out of touch with her family for so long made her shiver. It hadn’t even been 24 hours, and she already felt sick. She couldn’t imagine being gone for weeks.
“Yeah, I know. He takes these wilderness hikes with other veterans and stays out there as long as they need to.”
Harper stared out the window at the rain and muddy road. “In this?”
Logan snorted. “I know, right? Madness. I’d rather have my feet up by the fire with a book.”
Harper shot him a skeptical look. This guy looked like a linebacker. Him? With a book?
“Really?”
He grinned, the cheeky expression softening his features and making him look years younger. How old was he, anyway? Over thirty, judging by the wrinkles around his eyes? Or younger, with the roughness of outdoor work giving him a rugged look?
Why do you care how old he is?
“Sure. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that,” he said, still grinning.
Harper’s cheeks heated, and she wished she could disappear. How many times had she wished people wouldn’t judge her based on her family or appearance?
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“Don’t worry about it. Most of the time, I just let people think what they want.”
They shared a smile, and for the first time since what she had come to call the bathroom incident, the tight band around her chest loosened a little.
Maybe everything was going to be okay?
She pulled the blanket closer around her and gazed out the window at the trees. Through the rain, she could see glimpses of what looked like water beyond them.
“Is there a hotel in town where I can stay?”
It wasn’t ideal. The more people she was around, the greater the chance of being recognized. She wasn’t as famous as her sister, but enough photos of her had appeared online to make her cautious. In fact, it would be a terrible idea.
He shook his head. “At this time of year, everything’s booked. And there’s usually a waitlist for cancelations.”
Oh.
“There’s nowhere I can stay?”
Harper twisted the wet blanket in her hands, pulling it back and forth. She stopped when she realized what she was doing. One day at a time.
If only she believed it. If every day was as bad as this one, she was in for a rough ride.
“Well, not quite,” Logan said. “You can stay here.”
He slowed the truck, navigating down a narrow track.
Harper swallowed hard. She was alone with a man she had just met—a very strong, intimidating man—and now he was taking her…where, exactly?
But he had been nothing but kind and courteous, even when he’d been protective of his brother, and he could get her to Mason when he returned to town. Whenever that was.
She took a deep breath.
She was just going to have to trust Logan. She had no other choice.