They set up the gaming table and began to lay out the game.
“Mom, you’re leaping to conclusions. He’s a good man. He’s conscientious. I don’t like the rodeo thing, either, but he doesn’t do it anymore. And he told you, when he was in that world, he took care.”
“But he defends it. He knows—what did he call it—'dark practices’ go on, but he doesn’t try to stop it.”
Honor thought Logan had had good answers when her mother had challenged him at the table. She didn’t want to fight the fight all over again, now that she’d been herded into a corner. “Do we have to agree on every single thing?”
“Where ethics are concerned? I should hope so.”
“Our ethics are aligned, Mother. He’s honest. He’s decent. He’s brave. He’s not perfect, but nobody is. It’s easy to say you disagree with something. It’s harder to see if you can understand it even though you disagree.” She set the empty box aside and put her hands on her hips. “And he called out some of your shortsightedness today, too, didn’t he? All the lessons you and Dad like to give to make us see the world more completely, but you don’t see all the nuance, either. You tried to give a lesson on Native American foods to a man with Shoshone heritage. You were surprised because you made an assumption about who he was based on how he looks.”
She’d rendered her fierce, argumentative mother speechless, and she couldn’t help but bask in that for a second. Then she let her up. “Please, Mom. Give him a chance.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like him. I only asked if you were sure.”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
There was a lot yet she wasn’t sure of. But her love for Logan was the one constant in her sea of change.
*****
Settlers could get pretty cutthroat, and Honor had expected Logan to be competitive once he understood the game, but he turned out to be a mellow game-player. He didn’t get antsy when he fell behind, or smug when he pulled ahead. He picked up the rules and spirit of the game quickly and played shrewdly, but he didn’t attack, or—unlike Justice—crow when he got over on someone else.
By their third game, Honor understood that he played exactly as she should have expected, exactly in tune with his personality: quietly confident, cooperative and friendly, but keenly attentive, too, and astute. He charmed the game, and the players. He won that third game, much to Justice’s consternation.
She could tell by the vibe in the room that her parents liked him—maybe despite themselves, but still, they liked him. He was impossible not to like.
And then it was late enough that they could claim exhaustion and go to bed.
It had been so long since Honor’s childhood bedroom had actually been her room that it no longer bore any mark that it ever had been. Her wallpaper with the tiny pink tossed tulips had been stripped long ago, and her matching pink rug pulled up. Now, the room was a simple guest room, with a décor that bordered on beachy—kind of odd in Madison, Wisconsin, though there were lakes, and thus beaches, nearby. She and Logan lay in a white-washed four-poster bed that had never been hers, cuddled together under crisp white sheets and fluffy European-style pillows.
“Thank you for being here.” She brushed her nose over his chest and settled her head again. Her fingers found the raised line of his new scar. They always found that place; its shape was etched into her fingerprints.
He kissed the top of her head. “Thank you for wanting me.”
“I do, Logan. I really do.”
When he didn’t reply, Honor focused on the sound of his heartbeat. Steady, so steady and sure.
“I bought a second ticket for the flight back. For you.”
Those softly spoken words broke the peace between them in half. Honor pushed away and sat up. As she scooted to the side of the bed, before she could stand, Logan’s hand was around her arm.
“Don’t go away, darlin’. Don’t stay away. You just said you wanted me. Well, I want you, too. So come home.”
She looked over his shoulder and found his eyes on her, showing her his worry. “This is home.”
“It’s where you came from, yeah. And I’m glad to get to know it. But I don’t see you here, counselor. You’ve moved on from here.”
Shaking his hand away, she stood and walked to the windows a few feet away. There wasn’t much space to put distance between them, and if she left the room, they’d have an audience; Justice and their parents were downstairs watching a movie. “To what? My life is still a mess, Logan. I’ve squandered all the success I worked so hard to achieve. I came home to figure things out, and I’m not finished. There’s too much I don’t know how to fix.”
As she pushed the drapes open and looked down on the snow-smoothed back yard, she heard Logan leave the bed. A floorboard creaked; she saw him in the wedge of window she’d exposed. He stood behind her, and she watched his arms reach out and envelop her.
“What’s success for you, Honor? Is it pretty shoes? I can buy you pretty shoes.”
Offended, she shoved out of his hold. “I’m not that shallow. I don’t care about the shoes. Or the car, or any of that.”
She didn’t care. She liked pretty things, yes. She’d enjoyed being able to afford luxuries. So did he. Those scuffed-up boots cost every bit as much as her Louboutins. And every one of his hats was a Stetson. But she wasn’t having an existential crisis over shoes.
“Yeah, you do. I was there when you got the insurance check for the Porsche. It was my shoulder you cried on. You care about that stuff. And you can have it.”
Sidling around him, avoiding his reach, Honor crossed to the other side of the room. “That stuff mattered because I earned it. They’re … I don’t know … symbols.”
As he always did, Logan followed her. This time, he faced her. “Of what?”
“Of my success. Because of what I’d accomplished in my career, because I was so good at my work, I could afford those things. It’s not the shoes. It’s the success I’ve lost.”
“While you had all that, what else did you have?”
“What?”
“What else was in your life, Honor?”
“Plenty. My life was full.”
“Of?”
Not love. Before Logan, she hadn’t had a boyfriend in a long time. She’d sort of unintentionally stopped trying. It always got too complicated. But she hadn’t been lonely. “Friends. My friends.”
“And don’t you still have them? Or were they part of your benefits package at Bellamy White?”
“Don’t be an asshole.” She tried to step away, but he caught her arm and kept her.
“I’m not. I’m trying to talk this out.”
“What do you want me to say, Logan?”
“I don’t want you to say anything in particular. I want you to think. Loving you, it’s made me face up to some hard truths about myself. I built my whole life trying not to let anything or anyone get closer to me than my family, and I never saw what I was doing for what it was—I was afraid to change, afraid I couldn’t do it, that I’d lose something, maybe everything, if I tried. Well, counselor, you need to face up to some hard truths, too. That success you built up in your penthouse office and your loft apartment and your pretty shoes, that was pretty damn empty, wasn’t it?”
This was far too frightening a conversation to be having in their underwear, and yet here they were, Logan in nothing but grey boxer briefs and Honor in boy shorts and a camisole. She was more bare even than that; she might as well have been holding her heart out on her open hands.
“It wasn’t an empty life. I was content in it.”
“Behind three locks and an alarm. You were hiding in it. You made ‘lawyer’ the only thing you are so you didn’t have to make a real life.”
“Fuck you.”
He flinched, and Honor watched the comprehension of the line he’d crossed dawn on his face. “I’m sorry. That was out of line.” He took a breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “The only thing I want to say is, don’t you think ther
e’s any other way to be successful than the way you had?”
“What do you want me to do? Hang a shingle in Jasper Ridge and fix parking tickets?”
He took a step back, and Honor again walked away, back to the window. The snow was starting up again; they were getting much more than predicted.
It was just as frosty in this room, and in Honor’s chest. Nothing had been resolved in her life. Love was not enough, and they wouldn’t find a way for things to work out. Not now, and not someday.
“Would that be so bad?” he asked, and for a second, Honor thought he was responding to her thoughts and not the words she’d last said.
She turned to face him again. He was standing where she’d left him: before the chifforobe that was part of a matched set with the bed. “What?”
Walking to her, he answered, “We already got a ticket-fixer. But would it be so bad to set up on Ridge Road? You could do some real good there. Think what you did for Natalie. Without you, she’d be facing hard time in a Fed prison. Or she’d be dead.” He was standing right in front of her again, and he brushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear. “There are people at home who need what you can do, counselor, and they can’t get it without you.”
An office in Jasper Ridge? But it was a small town—a couple thousand people, about a thousand more on the reservation. She’d had two substantial defense cases out of Jasper Ridge in a year or so, but that had to have been an aberration. So few people wouldn’t keep a defense practice going. Could they even keep a general practice afloat?
“I can’t keep a practice running with clients who can’t pay.”
He picked up her hands. “Yeah, you can. If you let me help.”
And there it was. What Logan always wanted. “And you get what you want: me dependent on you. Forever.”
With a growl of frustration, he threw her hands away. “Honor, stop. We already litigated my issues. I had some trouble sorting all that out, but now I am all in. I love it when you need me, yeah. I love being there for you. Because I love you. But I’m not afraid of your independence. Not anymore. I want to help because I want to make us work. Now that I know what it is to love you, I don’t think I can do without it. I need you right back.”
Honor stared at the floor, trying to study this idea. Did it have merit? Could she build a practice that way? In that tiny town, so far from the city and everything she’d worked for? Could she give up all she’d made?
Give it up? She’d already lost it.
Again, Logan took her hands. “Look at me, darlin’.”
She looked up. Oh, how she loved him. With this, she could have him. And not give up herself. What had her father said? See more of yourself.
“Can I do this?” she murmured, to herself, but aloud.
“Of course you can. And I’ll be wherever you need me to be.” He pulled her into his arms. “Put a stake down in Jasper Ridge. Make a career that lets you have a life, too. A life with me.” That seductive smile of his, the one that balanced on the the blade between confident and vulnerable, sloped up his cheeks. “I’m askin’ you to marry me, counselor. In case I didn’t make that clear.”
He hadn’t. “What?”
“I want all the things I ever wanted in my life, but without you there, too, there won’t be much point. Marry me.”
“But what if my practice fails in Jasper Ridge, too?”
“Then you’ll find something else to try. And I’ll be right there, however you need me.” He bent close, so his breath danced over her lips. “When you need me, wild horses couldn’t keep me away. Marry me, Honor.”
In this very conversation, Honor had thought they were breaking up. Again. For all of their relationship, one of them had been leaving the other, a perpetual cycle of giving up and trying again. For Logan to propose now, with so much unsettled—that was crazy. It was exactly that kind of impulsive decision that had sent her life hurtling downhill.
“Logan …”
“No, darlin’. Don’t lawyer this. I love you. You love me. Whatever’s up ahead, we’ll deal with it together. Marry me.” His lips brushed hers, his hands smoothed over her back, his strong body engulfed her. “Marry me, marry me, marry me.”
It was crazy. Totally insane. But she wanted him—she wanted to face her future with him at her side. Her love for him was the only thing she felt sure of.
She wound her arms around him and said, “Yes. I will.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Honor had moved to Boise straight from law school and lived there continuously since, but she’d never really gotten to know Idaho beyond the city limits. She’d gone skiing in Sun Valley a few times, but Sun Valley was a famous ski resort town and not much more like Idaho than Disney World was like Florida. And maybe Boise was no more like Idaho than New York City was like New York State.
She’d lived in sight of the Sawtooth Mountains and had always cherished that distant view, especially the way the setting sun painted the spiky range. But she’d never really known those mountains. She’d never really known this place she’d chosen as her home.
Maybe she’d never really thought of it as her home after all.
Now, with Logan, after spending so much time at the ranch and in Jasper Ridge, she had a fuller understanding, she thought, of what Idaho really was. Entirely different from the world she’d grown up in, and almost quaint in its simplicity. At the Twisted C, in Jasper Ridge, she did feel at home. Even before Logan had proposed, that had been true.
In fact, maybe that was why she’d been so afraid to let go of Boise and the life she’d had. Logan’s life felt like home, and she’d thought that meant she was being swallowed up in it.
“It’s something to see, isn’t it?” Logan said at her side. “My whole life, this has been what I know, and it still takes my breath away. It’s impossible to take it for granted.” Ranger, his horse, shifted under the saddle, and Logan patted his neck. “This is why we still do all we can on horseback here. Trucks cut up the land too much.”
Honor was mounted on Hank, the white horse that had become hers by default. Everybody called him ‘good ol’ Hank,’ because he was a gentle old man who’d served as tutor for Anya and Kendall as they’d transitioned from ponies and learned to manage a full-size horse. He didn’t mind that Honor wasn’t yet wholly confident on horseback—especially not when there was snow on the ground.
She surfaced from the depths of her thoughts but didn’t turn from the view: an unbroken blue sky, the Sawtooth range, so close she felt she could reach out and touch the peaks; the ice-shimmered ribbon of Cahill Creek binding the edge of the frost-coated forest; and a wide expanse of the Twisted C, quiet fields covered in snow, untouched by man or herd, only a zigzag of fence cutting through their white, diamond-kissed calm.
Logan was right; it was something to see. So beautiful, so quiet. This natural wonder was Logan’s home, and no wonder he never wanted to leave it.
It was her home now, too. There was still a lot of work to do to build a new life here, but she could do it. She thought she could.
“Hey.” He leaned over and set a gloved hand on her thigh. “What’re you thinking?”
She turned to him. Oh, look at him. The bright sun shone high over their heads, and the brim of his Stetson cut a dark shadow across his face, but his smile was so bright and happy that his eyes sparkled inside that shade. Astride his big horse, he was as much a part of this magnificent view as the mountains themselves. He belonged right where he was.
The cold was deep enough that the clouds of their breaths lingered between them in curling wisps. “I’m thinking that I’m glad I’m here.”
That gleaming grin spread wide across his handsome face. “Oh, me too, darlin’. Me too.”
An arctic gust kicked up from the fields below, and Honor shivered. Brought up in Wisconsin, she knew cold, but there was something particularly frigid about being astride a horse in the middle of nowhere when the temperature was below twenty degrees. “I’m also thinking m
y toes are going to freeze and break off.”
Logan laughed, and the rough, bourbon-soaked sound went a fair way toward warming her up. “Let’s get you back to the warm, city girl.” He turned Ranger, and with a nudge of his heels and a click of his teeth, headed toward home. Good ol’ Hank followed with dogged docility.
Honor felt a real calm. There were still things to work out, but they would be worked out. Someday, she’d have the right life. She’d already made the first step.
*****
By the time they arrived back at the heated stable, Honor had been second-guessing how at home she really felt on the frozen tundra Logan called home. Even good ol’ Hank seemed very pleased about the end of the arctic adventure.
Logan jumped off Ranger as if it were July and not December, as if his legs weren’t full of old rodeo aches and pains, as if he hadn’t been stabbed only two months before. Since they’d come back from Wisconsin together, he’d been lighter all around. His contentment was contagious.
Just now, however, Honor’s legs didn’t want to move. “I think maybe they’re actually frozen.”
“Aw. Poor baby. Here.” He dropped Ranger’s reins and came to her with his arms up. Honor leaned down and let him lift her off Hank’s back. When he set her on her feet, he held on until they were both sure her legs would hold her.
Cole, one of the ranch hands, came over from the cattle barn. “Hey, Loge. You want me to put the horses up?”
To Honor, Logan asked, “Can you lead Hank in?”
She enjoyed brushing Hank, so she took a trial step. “Yeah, I think I’m steady.”
“We’ll make a country girl out of you yet. Come on—let’s get you warmed up.” He turned to Cole. “No thanks, hoss. We got ‘em.”
They tethered their horses in the aisle between the empty stalls—the rest of the horses were having some free time in the pasture—and unsaddled and groomed Ranger and Hank. Though she still didn’t feel quite at home in the saddle, not in comparison to the Cahills, she’d spent enough time riding to understand how to put a horse up after. Ranger was a high-spirited horse who didn’t like to be still, and Logan cooed and chattered at him as he worked, to keep him focused and quiet. Hank, on the other hand stood at ease, his head drooping sleepily, and let Honor do whatever she wanted. He enjoyed getting his rear end curried, and he always nickered and moved that half closer, canting one leg to tip his ass toward her, when the brush neared his tail.
Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2) Page 27