“I’m not threatened, darlin’. I was that first time, yeah. I saw you so happy and light with them, when you were conflicted and shaky with me, and I thought it meant that I wasn’t as close as I wanted to be. But I get it now. It’s right that they get a different side. You have a different story with them.”
“I like that way of thinking of it. Isn’t it like that with your friends?”
“I don’t have friends.”
Now she came up on her elbow so she could really see him. “Sure you do. Reese and Victor, and Paul. And Emmett.”
“Those are Heath’s friends. They’re mine, too, yeah. But not the same way. I never let anybody in close enough to be a best friend. I didn’t really see it until you. I thought I was living my life light, without baggage, but I think it was just empty. Except for family. I always had that, but it was all I had.” He smiled and chucked her gently under the chin. “You’re my best friend, counselor.”
She didn’t know whether to be sad that he’d lived so long without a best friend or pleased that he’d offered that gift to her. So she felt them both. “I love you.” She kissed him.
He put his hand on her head and made the kiss more than comfort. Honor straddled him and went along for the ride.
PART SIX
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Another round?”
Logan grinned. “You know it. And vodka twist for my lady.” Honor didn’t drink bourbon. She’d told him that early on and then confessed that she’d never tried it but didn’t like the smell. He’d pushed her to give it a chance, and she had, taking a sip from his glass. She’d shuddered and had made the absolutely most adorable little pinched-up face he’d ever seen.
Reese draped his bar rag over his shoulder and turned to grab the Jim Beam and Absolut from the back of the bar. While Logan waited for him to pour out the round, he cast an eye around the Jack. The place was packed, so full of people reveling in the holiday spirit that the noise of their enjoyment almost drowned out the jukebox, where Elvis was singing about his ‘Blue Christmas.’
There was a tradition in Jasper Ridge that just about the whole town came together at the Jack on the night of the twenty-third. Logan didn’t know where it had started or why, but he guessed that was the way traditions worked. They just happened. This wasn’t a party, nothing planned or particular, but everybody in town knew to show up at the Jack on Christmas Eve Eve and share a drink with their people.
This was a good town. They didn’t all get along all the time, they didn’t all like each other, and some people were downright bastards. There were feuds and fights and petty disagreements, just like anywhere. He’d been in the thick of his share. But right now, all that had been set aside. They did the same for the Founders’ Festival, the other time of the year that Jasper Ridge’s citizens came together to enjoy what they had. But the Founders’ Festival was like a negotiated peace, a time when people made an intentional effort to get along during the organized festivities that celebrated their town’s beginnings.
This night, people just were. No organized festivities, no planning committees, no good face to put on for the Ridge Review or Idaho Statesman cameras. People came together because they wanted to be together.
It was the only time of year that Reese decorated the Jack, too. He fancied himself a curmudgeon and resisted most town efforts to celebrate itself. In the summer, he didn’t complain when the town council put up bunting across the front of the building, but inside, there was nary a flag or a banner. For Christmas, on the other hand, he and his barmaids draped the bar, inside and out, in lights and live garland and glittery red balls. He changed out the juke so it offered a healthy dose of country Christmas classics. He even let Linda, his head barmaid, spray snow scenes on the windows.
The tinkling music of Honor’s laughter reached Logan, and he turned to look over at their table. Paul had leaned close and said something to her, and her head was back, and her hands covered her belly, as she laughed. She wore a glittering red sweater, the color so intense it seemed to make her face glow and turned the pearls around her throat ruddy. In that moment of comfortable joy, Honor was Christmas spirit.
Of the happy people at that table—Honor, Paul, Victor, Emmett, Heath and Gabe, Emma and Wes—Heath sat at the center of that circle. As quiet and serious as his little brother was, he was the only of the siblings who’d pulled a true circle of friends into his orbit. Logan and Emma, both far more gregarious than their brother, had spread their friendliness more widely and less deep.
A few nights earlier, lying together in a hotel bed in Boise, Logan had told Honor that he didn’t really have friends. That was true, as he’d meant it then. He knew everyone in town, and he liked most of them. But he’d never had anyone outside his blood family with whom he would have considered sharing a confidence. And no one, including his blood family, to whom he would have felt comfortable exposing a weakness. Honor truly was his best friend. His first.
On the other hand, he could sit down at any table in this crowded bar and be welcomed into its conversation. When he walked down Ridge Road, everyone greeted him by name. People knew him, trusted him, relied on him. Understood him. Yeah, he had a reputation with the ladies, but no one held his formerly dickish, wayward ways against him—mainly because he’d learned early not to be a fox in his own henhouse. He’d kept his attentions on the dude ranch wives, and the people of Jasper Ridge didn’t much care for them anyway. Besides, being grist for the gossip mill was practically a public service.
In some ways Jasper Ridge itself was his best friend.
He’d thought that was enough, but he’d been wrong. These months with Honor, spending so much time away from home, he’d felt the same conflicted pull she had. Home was where he needed to be, but Honor was where he needed to go.
Somehow, though, he’d managed to have both, to keep the thing that made him who he was and have the woman who’d shown him who he could be.
“I’m gonna marry that woman,” Logan said aloud.
Reese chuckled. “So you say. And that’s a fuckin’ miracle. Linda made six hundred dollars off that bet.”
“What?” Logan turned back. “She bet on me getting married?”
“Man, there’s been a pool going on you since, shit, since you and Catherine had that big blowup.”
“That wasn’t a blowup. That was nothing.” But it had been enough for him to turn his attention from Jasper Ridge women completely. Way too complicated. “Linda won six bills on me getting married?”
Reese’s laugh was sly. “No, Loge. She won six bills on you getting engaged. The bet that you’ll get to the altar is still on the table.”
Logan’s Christmas spirit took a direct hit at that. “Fuck off.”
“Hey, now. Don’t kill the messenger. My money’s on it happenin’.” Reese glanced toward the table, where Honor sat, still smiling and talking, perfectly comfortable in that group of friends. “You’d be a damn fool to lose that.”
“I’m no fool.”
“Oughta put a ring on her finger, though.”
“That’s what Christmas is for.” Logan picked up the tray of drinks. “And pardon me if I don’t take romantic advice from a guy who hasn’t had a relationship last more than six months in ten years.”
Still reeling from the knowledge that the people of his town were betting on his love life, Logan had retorted without thinking. He’d hit below the belt. Reese’s expression took on a sudden storm. “Now you can fuck off.”
“Sorry, man. That was low.”
“Yeah, it was.” Then Reese waved it off and nodded at the table of Logan’s family and friends. “You’d better get back to your table before Paul lands in your lady’s lap.”
It was a joke, Paul wouldn’t make a move on a friend’s woman, but Logan took the hint and took the tray of drinks back to the table.
*****
Honor didn’t have a ring yet because Logan wanted it to be special. Not some plain solitaire or some piece you could bu
y at a mall. He wanted a ring that represented what Honor was to him—he’d found his fullness with her, his past and present and future all complete. No TV-commercial ring was going to show all that.
Though he was the eldest sibling and should by rights have had first dibs on their mother’s ring, he’d set that privilege aside when he’d had no interest in marrying, while Heath and Emma had both leapt out of one nest and into another. Gabe had the Cahill ring, handed down through the generations from Annabelle Cahill, the woman who’d first made a home on this claim.
Their mother had had plenty of other jewelry, and what Emma hadn’t claimed for her own, their father kept in his bedroom safe. Logan had gone through it all and found nothing that seemed right.
He was bad at jewelry. So he’d finally grabbed Emma and made her go through the trays with him. They’d sat together on the floor of their father’s bedroom and combed through all that gold and silver and platinum, diamonds and gems, and found not a single ring that was right.
Then Emma had asked about the necklace Honor almost always wore. That plain strand of pearls. Logan had told her the story of her grandma. A French resistance spy in pearls.
She’d picked up a single earring—a large pearl encircled in diamonds—and told him to have it made into a ring. When he’d resisted, thinking there was something sacrilegious in remaking a piece of their mother’s jewelry, undoing what it was, she’d said something beautiful.
On Christmas morning, after all the chaos of opening presents was done, amidst the vast tumbleweeds of discarded wrapping paper and ribbon and skyscraping stacks of boxes, while Kendall spread out his new LEGO set and Anya pranced her toy ponies around in their plastic paddock, while Matthew sat at his father’s feet and banged a plastic hammer on a plastic tool bench, while Logan’s father and brother and sister-in-law and sister and brother-in-law sipped coffee and watched the children’s joy, Logan went down on a creaky rodeo knee before Honor and held out a red velvet box. Everybody was so stunned that he was getting married, he might as well embrace the whole package, go all out and do it the old-fashioned way.
She’d been chatting with Gabe. She stopped and smiled at him, her eyes going soft and glittery at once. She hadn’t asked for a ring, and he hadn’t suggested it was on his mind. Logan was good at secrets when he wanted to be.
When he had her attention—and that of all the adults in his family—he cleared his throat and said, “I had a real hard time figuring out what I wanted your ring to be. I almost gave up and asked you to pick one for yourself, but that felt wrong, and lazy. So instead I asked Emma. We went through all Mama’s jewelry and couldn’t find anything important enough. But then Emma had an idea, and she said something beautiful when she showed me it was right, so I want to steal her words and give them to you.”
He opened the box and showed her the ring that had been made—the large pearl wrapped in diamonds and set in platinum, now bedded on a platinum band adorned with more diamonds. Honor gasped. Even Emma gasped, and she’d seen the design specs. “I wanted something that meant the past, present, and future, because you bring all that together for me. This was one of Mama’s earrings, and that’s my past—it was Mama’s. But a pearl is your history, for your grandma’s pearls. Now, it’s yours, a brand new thing from something old. And it’ll be an heirloom in the future, just like the ring Gabe wears. Someday, after we’re gone, our life will be somebody else’s history. A Cahill who comes after us will want to give the person they love a piece of their history, and this ring will be ready.”
Logan took the ring from the box and set the box aside. “So will you wear this ring and make history with me?”
Crying softly, she nodded and held her hand out. It shook. So did Logan’s as he slid the ring on her finger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Honor stood at the windows and looked down on Ridge Road. “God, I hope this works.”
Logan went to her side and swept his arm around her waist. The street was quiet for a Monday morning. They got a lot of snow every winter, but this January had seen particularly strong storms and high accumulation. The whole town had gone into hibernation.
“It will work, counselor. You’re needed here, you’ll see.”
When she’d come home with him after Thanksgiving, they’d both thrown themselves fully into her new plan. To make this work, to show her that there was room for her in Jasper Ridge and in his life—room to be, and room to grow—he’d have done anything she needed. As always, the only thing she’d really needed was steadiness. She needed him to be standing there when she had to rest and regroup.
He didn’t know much about boats—he’d hardly ever been on one—but he’d begun to think of himself as her mast. The sail was the thing that made the ship move, its power; she had that in spades. The mast was the thing that let the sail spread out.
Without a sail, a mast was just a big stick. Without the mast, a sail was just a sheet.
What it came to: she needed him to be there. Not to save her, but to support her. Now that they’d both figured that out, things had been smooth sailing between them.
He should probably leave the poetry to people who knew what they were doing.
Once she’d embraced this new plan, she’d attacked it wholeheartedly. She’d put her Boise place on the market, moved in completely with him at the big house, and leased this charming old office space on a prime block of Ridge. Logan’s father, learning that his eldest son was finally settling down—and noting as well that he was doing so at the precise age he himself had been when he’d married—had celebrated that news by offering to pay the lease on her office for her first full year. Not a loan, a gift. She had a year to make this practice work.
And it would work.
He really believed that, but today wasn’t the most auspicious day to open her practice, after a fresh fall of eight inches over the weekend. They’d probably not have anyone come in or even call. But her small office was ready to go, and she didn’t want to put off getting her new assistant on the payroll, so they’d opened the office on this dreary, quiet Monday.
Not to be deterred, Logan went back to her desk and popped the champagne he’d brought.
Honor turned at the sound. “It’s nine o’clock in the morning, Logan.”
He poured three glasses and handed one to Krysta, her new assistant. “This is a day to celebrate. Think of these as juice-free mimosas.”
“I can get down with that,” Krysta said, then sent a worried look Honor’s way. “I mean, if that’s okay.”
“Of course it is.” She came over and took a glass from Logan’s hand. “You’re right. We should celebrate. If nothing else, it’s a new start.”
“Yes, it is. And, you know, this building is two stories high, and you’re on the second floor. You know what that means.”
Honor frowned lightly and canted her head, confused.
He leaned down and kissed her. “Penthouse office, darlin’.”
Her laugh when delight caught her off guard was the best sound in the world. “You’re ridiculous!”
“No, I’m an optimist.” He lifted his glass. “To the first day of many. This little practice is going to be something special someday.”
Krysta and Honor clinked glasses with each other. When Honor touched her glass to his, she smiled and looked him dead in the eye. “It already is.”
Before either of them put their glasses to their lips, the main door opened, out in the waiting area, where Krysta’s desk was. Still eye to eye with Honor, Logan saw fear ripple through her blue eyes, and he thought of the things, the people, she’d had cause to fear before.
But not here.
“Hello? Ms. Babinot?” The voice was strongly familiar, but Logan needed a second to shift gears.
“That’s Mr. Thomas,” Krysta said and headed to the front room. Frank Thomas—Natalie and Victor’s father, and Logan’s father’s dear friend.
Honor let go of a breath and followed Krysta. Logan followed her.
Frank stood in the waiting area with his wife, Naomi. They were both bundled warmly against the cold.
“Hi,” Honor said and lifted her untouched glass of champagne. “We were just toasting our first day. Would you like to join us?”
“We don’t drink,” Naomi said. “But thank you. And congratulations.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Thank you.” She looked lost about what she should do and turned awkwardly, looking around the room. Krysta had seated herself at her desk, prepared to be professional, and that seemed to get Honor’s mind in gear. “Is there something we can help you with?”
“We were wonderin’,” Frank answered, “you did such a good thing for Natalie, you were so good to us, and there’s no repaying that debt. But we were wonderin’, now that you’re here in Jasper Ridge, if you could help us write a will. We don’t have much, just a bit of land. How much do you charge for that?”
The Thomases didn’t need a will. The only real asset they had was that piece of land, and it would go to Victor, their son and eldest child. They were doing what they could to help the woman who’d helped their family. Logan took a quiet step back, meaning to return his glass to Honor’s desk and make himself scarce.
Frank nodded as if he’d just noticed him. “Logan.”
He nodded back. “Frank, Naomi. Good to see you. Don’t mind me. I’m just here for a kiss for luck.” He went to Honor and kissed her cheek. “And it’s already working, I see. I’ll pick you up after work, counselor.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you right back.” He set his glass on Krysta’s desk instead, grabbed his coat and hat off the rack by the front door, and left Honor to begin her work.
“Well,” he heard her say as he closed the door, “why don’t you come back and we’ll see what we can do.”
Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2) Page 29