Montana Creeds: Logan

Briana was in her robe by then, belt pulled tight. “You can open your eyes now, Alec,” she said. “I’m decent. Go back, tell ‘the guy’ we’re not interested and hang up.”

Alec dragged off to the kitchen to do as he was told—Briana hoped—and she slipped into her bedroom to put on clean underwear, cut-off jeans and a white tank top. She slipped her feet into sandals, pinned up her hair, applied a spritz of the drugstore perfume the boys had given her for Christmas and examined her reflection in the blurry mirror above the bureau.

She definitely needed mascara and lip gloss, she decided.

The savory scent of the casserole filled the kitchen when she made her entrance. She drew up, a little thrown, when she saw Logan sitting at the kitchen table, with Josh seated at his right side and Alec at his left.

“I’m early,” he said, looking apologetic as he rose from his chair. He’d brought wildflowers in a canning jar and a bottle of light wine, both of which were sitting on the table.

She gave him credit for good manners. But he looked too fine in his new jeans and pressed white shirt, open at the throat. His dark hair was still damp from a shower, and there were little ridges where he’d run a comb through it.

The back door was open, and through the screen, Briana saw Sidekick sleeping contentedly on the porch. She’d had to look away from Logan for a moment, in order to steady her nerves, but now she made herself look back.

“That’s okay,” she said, too brightly and a beat too late. “Supper’s ready.”

“Smells good,” Logan said. He sounded shy.

She knew he wasn’t.

Was he putting on an act?

“It’s Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza,” Alec announced proudly, evidently over his earlier fixation about serving steak.

Logan, sitting down again at a nod from Briana, raised an eyebrow, and a slight grin quirked one corner of his mouth. “Who’s Wild Man?” he asked.

“Our Grampa,” Josh answered. “He was a famous rodeo clown.”

“Oh,” Logan said, his eyes never leaving Briana’s face. “That Wild Man.”

“You knew him?” Alec asked, hyperintrigued. This, his expression seemed to say, was even better than “winning” a free trip to Lake Tahoe. Even his freckles were jazzed.

“I saw him perform a few times, when I was about your age,” Logan answered, shifting his gaze to Alec, somehow managing to pull Josh into his orbit, too. “I wanted to be Wild Man McIntyre when I grew up. Turned out to be myself instead.”

Briana busied herself setting the table. Logan had probably eaten off the same dishes they’d be using that night, she thought fitfully, back when he and Dylan were like regular brothers. If indeed they’d ever been regular brothers.

“We’ve got a whole album full of pictures of him!” Alec said.

“After supper,” Briana interjected, her smile a little tight-lipped.

The boys missed it.

Logan didn’t. His eyes lingered on her face, making every single cell in her body throb before going back to Alec. “I’d like that fine,” he said. “When the time is right.”

Briana gave herself strict orders to calm down, stop being such a ninny, but herself didn’t listen. This was just supper with a neighbor, that was all, but it felt like more.

It felt like some kind of beginning.

Briana didn’t like beginnings, because they inevitably turned into endings. Given her druthers, she’d have spent the rest of her life somewhere in the middle, between major events. The present, for all its problems, was a terrain she knew.

She had her boys, and a place to live, and a job that paid the bills.

And that was enough—wasn’t it?

The casserole went over big. Logan had two helpings, though he didn’t touch the wine. Since he’d opened the bottle at some point, Briana accepted a glass, took a couple of jittery sips and decided she’d be better off without a buzz. Even a very mild one.

The truth was she had enough of a buzz going in her nerve endings already, without adding alcohol to the mix. Maybe Vance had been right, when he’d accused her of being sex-starved.

She went weeks without thinking about sex.

Now, with Logan Creed sitting at her table, looking ruggedly handsome in his cowboy dress-up clothes, something primitive was streaking through certain parts of her anatomy.

It simply wouldn’t do.

As soon as everybody was finished eating, Briana jumped up and started bustling around, cleaning up. Usually, she made Alec and Josh do the dishes, but tonight she needed to be busy.

So she bounced around that kitchen like a bumblebee trapped in a sealed jelly jar. Even Wanda regarded her with curiosity.

Logan tried to help with the dishes, but she sort of elbowed him aside. All she needed was that man standing hip-to-hip with her in front of the sink, or anywhere else. The scent of his cologne—if that was what it was—made her feel light-headed. He smelled like sun-dried sheets, fresh-cut grass and summer.

Josh fetched the photo album from its honored place in the living room, and opened it on the freshly cleared table. “This is him,” he told Logan, tapping at a faded black-and-white image with one index finger. “This is my Grampa, Bill ‘Wild Man’ McIntyre.”

Briana had long since come to grips with the fact that her boys would never actually know their grandfather. Just the same, her eyes were suddenly scalding, and her throat was tight.

The angle of Logan’s head, bent over the album, touched something tender inside her. She wished he’d just get up and leave. Wished even more that he would stay.

She was losing her mind.

As if he’d felt her watching him, Logan lifted his eyes.

“Mom says the clowns are the bravest men in rodeo,” Alec said, preening a little.

“She’s right about that,” Logan said, still watching her. “They’ve saved my… life a time or two.”

Briana tried her damnedest to look away, found she couldn’t.

“See?” Josh chirped, delighted to be right. “I told you Logan was a cowboy!”

Briana’s cheeks stung. Look away, she pleaded silently, because I can’t.

As if he’d heard her, Logan averted his eyes. Fixed his attention on Alec and Josh. “I was a cowboy, once upon a time,” he told the boys quietly. “Gave it up to join the service.”

“Were you in the war?” Alec asked, impressed again. Or still.

“Yeah,” Logan said. His voice came out sounding hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “Didn’t care much for that.”

Didn’t care much for that.

The very way he’d said the words marked them as the understatement of the ages.