by Gina Wilkins
His phone rang several times, then the call was sent to his terse, no-nonsense voice mail. He didn’t have a landline, only the cell, so she left a message. “Um, Logan? Hi, it’s Alexis. I just found Ninja at my front door. I’m bringing him home now and I’ll turn him over to Bonnie and Paul if you aren’t there. I thought you might be worried about him.”
Disconnecting the call, she pulled out her car keys again. “Okay, pal, let’s go,” she said to the dog, taking hold of his collar. “But you’d better prepare yourself. You’re likely to be grounded without TV or video games for a week for this stunt.”
The dog made a chuffing sound she’d have almost sworn was a laugh, but he accompanied her willingly enough outside to her car.
* * *
Logan prowled the grounds of the inn long after he’d sent Paul and Bonnie inside, futilely waiting for his dog to return, scanning the drive and the hiking path for any sign of the mutt. He’d tried settling in for the night in the cottage, but he couldn’t relax. Nothing on TV could hold his interest, he couldn’t read, couldn’t just put up his feet and chill. Every time he tried, his eyes were drawn to the rug where Ninja would usually be lying at this point. So he could sit there brooding about Alexis and Ninja, or he could go out looking for the dog again. Of the two options, the latter had sounded more appealing, so here he was, restlessly pacing the paths. Maybe he’d go inside again soon. Not that he expected to get much sleep that night, for lots of reasons.
Would he be making his nightly rounds alone in the future? He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair, more miserable than he could remember being in a very long time.
He had just turned halfheartedly toward his home when he heard Ninja’s funny growl behind him. Drawing a sharp breath of relief, he turned just as the dog bounded up to greet him joyously.
“Damn it, Ninja, you scared the hell out of me.” Thinking there was no one to see his momentary display of weakness, he dropped to his knees to give the wiggling, whining dog a rough hug. “Do not do that again, you got it?”
He turned his head just in time to avoid being licked right on the mouth.
With a tired laugh, Logan pushed himself to his feet, wiping his face with the back of one hand. “Okay, we’re going back—”
Something made him stop talking and look around. He was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. “Alexis?”
For a moment, he thought he saw a pale figure standing behind her—one of his sisters, perhaps. But then she stepped forward into a pool of light and he saw that she was alone.
“I tried to call you,” she said. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
Automatically he groped for his belt, then realized he must have left the phone in his living room when he’d gone in earlier. “Uh, left my phone inside. What are you doing here?”
“I brought Ninja home. I found him standing outside my house when I got home from having dinner with my mother and stepfather this evening.”
“How the hell did he get to your house?” Logan asked in bewilderment.
“I think he walked. He was panting and very thirsty when I found him.” She sounded as flabbergasted as he was by the dog’s inexplicable behavior. “He didn’t give me any trouble at all when I put him in the car and brought him back.”
Squeezing the taut back of his neck, Logan stared down at his deceptively innocent-looking pet. “Have you lost your mind?”
Ninja yawned, then walked over to rub his head affectionately against Alexis’s leg.
“Look, I’m sorry you had to go to this much trouble so late. You should have called Bonnie and had her send me to get him.” Logan shook his head when Ninja strolled back to nuzzle his hand. “You’re lucky she didn’t call the dog collector,” he said, though both he and Ninja knew Alexis would never do such a thing.
“It wasn’t that much trouble.”
He pushed his hands into his pockets and drew a deep breath. At almost the same time as Alexis, he blurted, “I was going to call you tomorrow.”
“You were?” she asked, even as he said, “Wait. You were going to call me?”
He shook his head. “You go first.”
He saw her moisten her lips. “I panicked.”
“I know.”
His blunt response took her aback for a moment, but then she surged on. “We had such a perfect time in Seattle. And your sisters are happy newlyweds and you’re surrounded by weddings and honeymooners all the time. I was afraid you were suddenly seeing me through, you know, sort of a romantic haze. I guess you know, in my experience, that sort of emotion doesn’t last. I’ve seen it over and over again, couples who fall madly in love—or lust—who declare each other perfect, and then later they can’t even stand to look at each other. I can’t live up to an idealistic image you might have formed of me. And when the magic wears off—”
He heard her swallow before she finished, “I suddenly realized how much you could hurt me. How much I’ve come to care for you. And...I panicked.”
This night had become one disconcerting shock after another. “Let me get this straight. You decided I was being too romantic? Me?”
She had the grace to look sheepish. “Not in the typical, poetic sort of way, of course. That’s not your style. But, well, all of a sudden you wanted to make our relationship public. And you...well, you hinted that maybe our relationship could lead to...you know.”
She couldn’t even say the word.
He could. “Marriage.”
“Yes,” she whispered, turning her face so that shadows fell across her features.
* * *
For a moment the only sound in the night-shrouded gardens was the whisper of a breeze through new spring leaves, the splash of water from the fountain, Ninja’s happy panting by Logan’s side. No one moved around them; the guests were closed inside the cozy inn, the lights glowing in the bedroom windows the only sign that anyone else was near. Alexis blocked out even those indications, keeping her attention focused solely on this momentous conversation with Logan. As far as she was concerned, they could have been the only two people around for miles.
Logan kept his voice low. “I don’t idealize you, Alexis. Frankly, there are times when you’re as much of a pain in the butt as my sisters.”
She couldn’t bring herself to smile. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth as she listened to him with her hands locked in front of her.
“I know you have flaws,” he said, “but you should know I’m bored by perfection. And by those who pretend to be. I wouldn’t change one thing about you.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, adding gruffly, “I know I’m no prize, myself. I’m grouchy and stubborn and inflexible—and those are just the things my loving sisters say about me. I’ve got scars—inside and out. And those scars put a lot of people off.”
She was sincerely appalled when she released her lip to say with a slight gasp, “Surely you don’t think your scars make you any less attractive to me?”
“You wouldn’t be the first to back away because you heard me use the word cancer,” he said grimly. “That’s a word that stays with you for a lifetime. Makes people wonder if you’ll fall victim to it again, no matter what the annual medical exams show.”
She took a step closer to him and looked straight into his eyes, her voice quiet but firm. “Come on, Logan, you know me better than that. I was shocked, of course, when you told me about your experiences. In all the months we’ve been seeing each other, you’d never mentioned it before and I had no idea. I’d like to hear more about it, because it’s a part of who you are. I want to hear how you felt when you heard the diagnosis, what it was like to go through the treatments, how it affects you now. But the fact that you’re a cancer survivor had nothing at all to do with my reluctance to get more deeply involved with you.”
He blew out a breath.
“I can answer those questions in just a few words. It sucked, treatment was hell and there’s no reason to believe I’ll ever have to go through it again, so it doesn’t affect me at all now. We can talk more about it if you want to, but it’s not something I dwell on. Much. My scars are all hidden by my jeans, and my limp isn’t very noticeable, so the subject almost never comes up.”
She took another step forward, bringing her to within inches of him. She laid a slightly unsteady hand on his chest, just over his heart, which she could feel beating rather hard against her palm.
“I don’t think your leg was the only part of you left with scars,” she said softly. “My childhood left me with quite a few hidden scars of my own. But I suppose mine are part of who I am today, just as your ordeals have forged you into the man you’ve become. ‘Grouchy and stubborn and inflexible,’” she quoted, repeating the words with a shaky smile. “And I wouldn’t change a thing about you, either.”
He reached up to touch her face, his hand warm and work-roughened but oh so tender against her skin when he slowly removed her glasses. “That first night we were together, after we ran into each other at the coffee shop? It was the best experience of my life to that point,” he murmured. “And it’s only gotten better since. Every single time. You don’t have to worry about the magic wearing off when it comes to the way I respond to you. I can’t imagine ever getting enough of you. And I’m saying this as a cynical, very logical guy who never lets himself get swayed by all the romantic nonsense that goes on around this place.”
She placed her other hand on his chest, leaning into him, her heart beating as rapidly as his now. “I’m still scared,” she whispered frankly.
“Me, too,” he said with a crooked smile. “We’ll be scared together.”
“Don’t break my heart,” she warned him, lifting her face to his.
His breath was warm against her lips when he murmured, “I’ll give you mine to hold as collateral.”
“That’ll work,” she said, just before he smothered the words beneath a kiss that went a long way toward healing the pain their split had caused them.
He lifted his head just long enough to say huskily, “I love you, Alexis. I have almost from the start, despite my efforts not to fall for you.”
She smiled through a film of happy tears. “Despite all my best efforts, I love you, too. And suddenly I’m feeling really good about our odds.”
“You should. My sisters swear there’s magic in this place.”
“I’m beginning to believe them,” she said, and drew his mouth to hers again.
They broke apart a long time later when Ninja made a high-pitched whine from a few feet away. They turned together to see him holding a white flower delicately in his teeth, his happy smile gleaming in the soft artificial lighting of the garden. A ribbon of mist swirled around him, almost coalescing into a recognizable shape before slowly dissipating into the night.
Alexis looked quizzically at Logan, wondering if he’d seen what she had. His eyes were a bit wide when he looked back at her, but then he shook his head as if clearing away an errant flight of imagination. Obviously she had been imagining things. She couldn’t even see all that clearly at that distance without her glasses.
Logan kissed her again and she pushed old tales and legends to the back of her mind. She was much more interested in the present, and the happy future she anticipated with Logan Carmichael.
The odds were definitely in their favor here on Bride Mountain.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from GROOMED FOR LOVE by Helen R. Myers.
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Chapter One
“Rylie, sweetheart, you are the best thing to happen to Sweet Springs since they started putting in drive-through windows at pharmacies.”
Rylie Quinn, the new groomer at Sweet Springs Animal Clinic, grinned at Pete Ogilvie, the eldest of the four war veterans who conducted a daily coffee klatch in the corner of the building’s reception area. It was she who’d dubbed them the four musketeers after characters in the famous Alexandre Dumas novel, and Pete himself Athos, after the eldest of the adventurers, because the former marine was the boldest yet most complicated of the group. He also had somehow taken Jerry Platt under his wing. At sixty-six, Jerry, whom she called D’Artagnan, was the youngest and had become the fourth member of the veteran group, as D’Artagnan had become the fourth musketeer in the story.
“Why, thank you, kind sir.” Holding out the hem of her maroon smock, as though it was a skirt, she offered a quick curtsy, bemused, even though the comparison was confusing. She suspected he hadn’t meant to imply that she was appreciated because she was a convenience. “All because I asked Mr. Stan if he wanted sweetener in his coffee?”
“That’s right! None of us can tell him that he’s being an old grouch the way you can and still bring a smile to his face.”
Stanley Walsh—aka Porthos, as far as Rylie was concerned—was sixty-nine, the second youngest, and an ex-navy man, as well as a retired master sheet-metal fabricator. Sometimes—like today—his hangovers caused him to grouse a little more than usual, which was saying quite a bit, since Stanley had a dry sense of humor to begin with.
“That, along with being as bright and as pretty as a black-eyed Susan, which is about the only damned flower that can survive the summer like we had with any grace. Whew, can you believe it officially became autumn yesterday?” Pete asked around the room. “If you hold that front door open for too long, I swear those bags of dog food stacked on the shelves over there are gonna pop like popcorn in a microwave.”
As others grunted their agreement, Rylie said, “I’m sorry for the strain it is on animals, but I sure don’t mind it being warm. I was born and raised in the desert country of California. That said, I’m getting seriously partial to your trees here, especially the pines.” She had arrived in this Central East Texas community early in July, in time to attend Dr. Gage Sullivan’s marriage to Brooke Bellamy last month, the niece of the lady who used to be Gage’s neighbor. That neighborhood, as well as several parts of town, was enhanced by pockets of the pines and hardwood trees that had once earned the region its other name—The Piney Woods. She told the men, who had also attended the wedding, “If I had Doc and Brooke’s yard, I’d sleep with the windows open every night to listen to the breeze whispering through the trees.”
“Well, don’t try it here, even if your fancy RV’s windows are high off the ground,” Roy Quinn said from inside the reception station in the center of the room.
As usual, her uncle pretended to have as gruff a personality as any of the old-timers, but Rylie knew the middle-aged bachelor saw her as the daughter he’d never had. “I wouldn’t do that. Besides,” she reminded her only relative in the area, “as far back as those trees are beyond the pasture, it’s easier to hear the highway traffic out front.” The clinic was on the service road of a state highway that ran north to south on the east side of town. The overpass that led to downtown was only a few dozen yards beyond the clinic’s parking lot.
“Good. Keep those miniblinds shut at night, too. What we lack in woods, we probably make up for in Peeping Toms and lechers, an
d word’s getting around about you and that RV being parked in back.”
As he spoke, he glanced over her shoulder to fork his fingers from his eyes to Jerry, who tended to think of himself as quite the ladies’ man. Recently, Jerry Platt had the bad judgment to get involved with a certain widow in town, who had really been angling to get closer to Doc. It had caused quite a stir among the old-timers, who feared losing the congenial atmosphere at the clinic, and they were keeping Jerry on notice, too.
Rylie shook her head, thinking Uncle Roy was being silly. Jerry was more than a decade older than him! Besides, he’d been nothing but a gentleman to her. Noticing Jerry’s embarrassment, she leaned over the counter to whisper, “I’m twenty-five, not fifteen.”
Roy grunted. “You’d have to dye your hair gray to convince anyone. I’ll bet you still get carded when you go out for a beer.”
“My last beer was a week ago with you guys at the VFW hall, and you know they would serve me anything because I was with you.” However, he was right; she did look ridiculously young, but what could you do when you had red hair and a squeaky-clean face that made you perfect for the front of a cereal box but was never going to trigger wolf whistles as a cover girl’s would? Something else she didn’t have going for her was height—she hadn’t grown an inch above her five foot three since the seventh grade. To redirect Roy’s focus, she reached across the counter to straighten his wrinkled shirt collar lying awkwardly over his maroon clinic jacket. “If you don’t like to iron, at least take your clothes out of the dryer before they dry all mangled. Better yet, let me do your ironing for you.”
“Don’t change the subject.” Roy playfully swatted away her hand away. “Just remember that I have to answer to your parents if anything happens to you here.”
She thought about her parents, who were considering becoming foster parents since she, too, had “abandoned the nest,” as her parents put it. Her older, adopted brother had struck out on his own four years earlier, finding his career restoring old homes on the East Coast. “Nothing is going to happen to me, Uncle Roy. I was born under a lucky star, remember?”