A Knights Bridge Christmas

by Carla Neggers

  Still a little taken aback, she followed him up the stairs.

  Owen squealed in excitement both at having Logan there and at the sight of the Christmas tree. “Our own Christmas tree,” he said in amazement, as if he’d never had one before.

  “I have a stand in the car, if you need one,” Logan said, turning to Clare as he leaned the tree against the wall.

  “I do need one,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He went back out for the stand. She sank onto the couch, smelling the evergreen, regaining her composure.

  Owen fingered a branch. “Where should we put it?”

  “I thought maybe in front of the window.”

  “No one will see it,” he said.

  “That’s because we live in the country. But we’ll see it, and Mr. and Mrs. Frost will see it—and the animals in the forest will see it.”

  That perked him up. “Animals like Christmas, too, don’t they, Mom?”

  “I’m sure they’ll appreciate a Christmas tree twinkling in the window.”

  Logan returned with the stand. “I dried off the tree as much as possible, but you’ll want to give it a day or two before you decorate.”

  He enlisted Owen’s help and got the little tree set up in front of the window. Clare watched them, Logan patiently instructing Owen, Owen listening carefully. Don’t let yourself get attached, she told herself. More important, she couldn’t let Owen get attached. Logan was spending time in Knights Bridge because helping his grandmother move had fallen to him, and he’d agreed to decorate her house. After that, he had no reason to stay. Given the emotions of his grandmother’s situation, it was no wonder he had latched onto a widow and her young son.

  But as they finished setting up the tree, Clare found herself inviting Logan to stay for dinner. “It won’t be fancy—whatever I have in the freezer.”

  “What if I told you Maggie Sloan brought over a pot of her homemade chili as I was leaving to take Gran back to her apartment?”

  “Maggie’s chili is legendary.”

  “So I hear. I just happened to put the pot in my backseat and strap it in as I headed out.” He slung an arm over her shoulders. “Chili for dinner, and then tomorrow you and Owen can help get the tree we cut this morning into a stand. I think it’ll take all three of us, don’t you, Owen?”

  “Yeah,” he said, already heading for the door. “I can help carry the chili.”

  As if Logan needed help, but he smiled. “There’s salad and corn bread, too.” He winked at Clare. “We owe Maggie. She loves to cook and help out, but maybe between now and Christmas we could have her boys for an overnight at my grandmother’s house. Give her and Brandon a chance for a date night.”

  “I’m sure they’d like that,” Clare said, keeping her tone neutral.

  “How would you like it?” he asked, his gaze settling on her.

  “I’d love to do something for Brandon and Maggie. The boys would be able to spread out at Daisy’s house. It gets cramped fast here, but I’m sure they’d manage to find something to do. And you’d be there?”

  “I’d be there.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “Let’s see how good Maggie’s chili is.”

  * * *

  Clare didn’t know which she liked best—the chili, the salad or the corn bread. After her intense day, she appreciated the substantial, simple meal and not having to cook. As she cleaned up in the kitchen and Owen showed Logan his latest Lego project, she texted Maggie to convey her thanks.

  Maggie replied immediately. Is our ER doc still there?

  Yes.

  Say the word, and I’ll spirit Owen away.

  Clare felt blood rush to her face, but she smiled as she typed. Maggie!

  Consider me your new best friend.

  The chili is amazing.

  Clare returned to the living room. Owen had gone to his room to play and Logan was sitting on the rug in front of the couch. “I can hear the water running over the dam,” he said. “Must be soothing in warm weather when you can open the windows.”

  “I think it will be. I keep a close eye on Owen with the brook and dam right there.” Clare sat on the couch, her left knee inches from Logan’s shoulder. “There are cookies if you want one, but I couldn’t eat another bite. The corn bread was like a dessert.”

  “Maggie’s good at what she does.” He leaned back against the seat cushion next to her. “If I hadn’t already had a couple of the cookies, I’d be into your stash now. Tramping through snow, sawing, dragging Christmas trees, loading them onto the car—that’ll earn you a few extra goodies.”

  “You’re used to a frenetic pace, aren’t you?”

  “Not every day is hectic. A lot of them are, though.” He looked up at her. “What about you? Are you getting your feet under you at the library?”

  “It took a while just not to get lost. I can see why people think the building is haunted.”

  “More ghosts. Just what I need.”

  “Are you going back to Boston tonight, or are you spending the night at your grandmother’s house?”

  “Spending the night. We have trees to decorate.”

  “Here?” Owen asked as he shot into the living room.

  “Not here,” Logan said. “At my grandmother’s house.”

  “I like it there.”

  “Good. I hope your mom will let you help decorate the big tree we cut.”

  Owen tugged on her hand. “Can I, Mom?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  He dragged Logan back into his room to show him another toy. Clare collapsed against the back of the couch and blew out a breath at the ceiling, getting herself under control. She needed to tread carefully. She couldn’t let Owen get too close to Logan and then have Logan disappear. She needed to protect her son from disappointment.

  Logan came back out to the living room while Owen went into the bathroom to wash up. It was getting close to his bedtime. “What’s on your mind?” Logan asked as he sat next to Clare on the couch.

  “What makes you think something’s on my mind?”

  “Years of training and experience in the ER. I’ve developed a sixth sense for when people are keeping something from me that I need to know versus something I don’t need to know but they still want to withhold. I’m guessing yours is the former.”

  “I don’t need stitches or a cast.”

  “I see that.”

  “Owen is becoming attached to you,” she said, blurting it out before she could stop herself.

  Logan was silent for a moment. “From my point of view, that’s a positive,” he said finally.

  “From my point of view, it’s an unknown. I’m the only parent Owen has. I’ve been careful about...” She considered her next words before she continued. “I’ve been careful about men in my life.”

  “I have roots in Knights Bridge. I’m not going anywhere. Owen’s getting attached to Brandon Sloan, too.”

  “If you’re implying he’s missed out because he never knew his father—that I haven’t done enough—” Clare stopped herself, horrified at how blunt she was being with him. No filters. He seemed capable of hearing anything she had to say. She bit down on her lip, forcing herself to think. “I haven’t done this in a long time,” she added, her voice just above a whisper.

  “You’ve experienced how unfair and unpredictable life can be, and you want to protect your son from that as much as possible. And yourself.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe. You turned pale when you mentioned the brook. How many times have you had Owen falling into it in your mind?”

  “Not as many as you might think but more than I’d like. I used to jump into things without looking, without thinking—like you do.”

  “Like I do, huh?”

  “I saw it today. You grabbed that bow saw without hesitating. It never occurred to you that you might not be able to handle cutting down a Christmas tree.”

  He settled back against the couch. “As it turned out, I was right.”

 
; Clare couldn’t help but smile. “You could have been wrong, but that’s not my point. It’s easy to dive in without looking when it’s just you. I remember what that was like. There are things that come up all the time for me now and I think...I could do that.”

  “But you stop yourself,” he said.

  “Sometimes. Not always. I’m a single mother with a six-year-old son who never knew his father. I can’t not be that for five minutes. But it’s not a burden. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  Logan put an arm around her and pulled her toward him. “Clare,” he said. “Clare, Clare. I see you as brave and kind and intelligent, as a woman who loves her son. I don’t see you as weak. Not for a second.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I know you want to protect him. I do, too. But does protecting him mean I should walk out of here right now and not ask you to come by tomorrow to help me decorate that gigantic tree that’s on my grandmother’s front porch?”

  “Owen’s counting on helping you decorate,” she said.

  “And you?”

  “I’m counting on it, too.”

  He took curls that had strayed into her face between two of his fingers and tucked them behind her ear. He kissed her softly on the lips. “I do things fast,” he said, kissing her again, as if to confirm his words. “I know that about myself. If I’m going too fast for you, I can slow down.”

  “You’re not going too fast,” she whispered.

  “Good, because I already have slowed down.” He sat up straight. “If it was up to me right now, I’d be spending the night on your sofa bed instead of back at Gran’s with the ghosts.”

  “Have I mentioned the six-year-old in the bathroom brushing his teeth?”

  “He’s already told me I can sleep here.”

  “He wasn’t thinking about where,” Clare said.

  “Actually, he told me I could sleep in his room with him.”

  “You’ll be better off with the ghosts. Owen’s a wiggle worm.”

  Logan smiled. “Does he remind you of his father?”

  “He does, definitely,” Clare said without hesitation. “Stephen was younger than I am now when he died. It took a long time to accept his death—that he wouldn’t see Owen grow up, that Owen would never know his father. I’m the same person I was when Stephen and I married but at the same time I’m not. I don’t take life for granted the way I once did. I try to remember that every day is a gift.”

  “A good thing to remember this time of year.”

  “Does your work affect you at all?”

  “I can go too far in the opposite direction and live only for today. Take risks because—well, what the hell, right? You can obey all the rules, do everything right and a house falls on your head. I see it if not every day, a lot.”

  “And how often do you think about it?”

  He grinned. “Only just now.”

  “Because you’ve got my sofa bed on your mind.”

  “Would it hold two people?”

  “I think so. It’s never had to.”

  “Now there’s a thought,” he said in a rough, sexy voice as the bathroom door creaked and Owen came into the living room, wanting Logan to read him a book.

  “You bet, my friend. Pick one out. If it’s too long, I’ll skip parts.”

  Owen giggled, and Clare gave up the couch to the two of them and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Logan smiled at her as she went over to her little Christmas tree. She knew he’d gotten her point. She was attracted to him, and she wanted to go further—but she wasn’t a one-night stand. She wasn’t going to amuse him while he dealt with his aging grandmother and her old house in small, out-of-the-way Knights Bridge.

  But as Clare checked the water in the tree stand, she could still feel his lips on hers, the aftereffects of their kiss enough to make her want more. If not for her son, she wondered if she’d be another of Logan Farrell’s conquests right now, and if that would be so bad.

  Not an appropriate thought while he was reading a Christmas book to her son.

  And who was she to say Logan had “conquests”?

  She glanced back at him. He was confident, smart, cocky and successful, and by his own admission, he did things fast.

  Old-fashioned word it might be, but it made the point.

  He’d had conquests.

  Eleven

  “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited...”

  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  LOGAN DID DO things fast. He hadn’t exaggerated when he’d told Clare. He’d been truthful, if not fully open and candid about what was on his mind. He’d always known he would fall in love quickly when the time came—when the woman he was meant to be with walked into his life.

  Why wouldn’t he fall fast and hard, since that was how he operated?

  Turned out he was right.

  He set up the tree stand in his grandmother’s living room. He’d brought in wood and lit a fire in the fireplace. The room glowed with the flames, the floor lamp and the lights he and Clare had strung on the porch. He could hear kids yelling and carrying on across the street on the skating rink on the town common. Apparently a heated hockey game was underway. He almost grabbed skates out of the back room and joined the festivities.

  Even after his active day, he was restless, but it wasn’t the kind of restlessness that playing hockey with fifteen-year-olds would ease.

  Clare had every right and every reason not to trust his intentions with her. He had a busy, fulfilling job in Boston, and his ties to Knights Bridge, while deep, weren’t ones that had ever made him contemplate living here. He wanted to fall in love and assumed he would one day, but he wasn’t in any big rush.

  Clare’s life was the exact opposite of his life. She might be new to Knights Bridge, but she belonged here, taking its small but vibrant library into the next decades and raising her son. Her night out with Maggie Sloan and her friends was proof the locals were accepting her, welcoming her.

  Logan checked the fasteners on the stand. They were in good working order.

  What the hell, he thought. Might as well bring in the tree.

  It would be a quick trip out to the porch. He grabbed work gloves out of the mudroom but didn’t bother with his jacket. Maybe a shot of cold night air would help him regain his sense.

  When he stepped onto the porch, he noticed snowflakes in the glow of the Christmas lights. The hockey game had broken up, the kids were packing up and heading home. Logan stood still, listening. He swore he heard singing. The local drunk singing on his way home?

  No.

  Carolers.

  A cold winter night in a quiet village, and he could hear carolers.

  He couldn’t see them in the dark, but he thought they were across the common, near the Swift River Country Store.

  They finished “Joy to the World” and started on “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

  He’d forgotten that caroling was a tradition in the village. His grandfather would join them from time to time. He can sing like an angel, his grandmother had told Logan. I never could hold a tune.

  What a life his grandparents had lived here in their little town, Logan thought.

  He saw the silhouette of a couple under the lights on the rink, skating arm in arm, flowing over the ice. He heard the pair laugh, and he finally recognized Dylan McCaffrey and his fiancée, Olivia Frost. Olivia, an accomplished graphic designer, had lived in Boston for several years, but she’d always wanted to move back to her hometown—at least according to Audrey, her grandmother.

  Logan’s throat tightened, and he pictured himself skating with Clare. Did she know how to skate? He did, but not like ex-NHL player Dylan. A multimillionaire, Dylan was making a place for himself in Knights Bridge. That he was marrying a local woman and opening businesses in town probably helped his relationship with the locals.

  Of course, Dylan didn’t have to live down a reputation as an arrogant, selfish Boston ER doctor wh
o had neglected his grandmother.

  Logan shivered. Damn, it was cold. All he needed was hypothermia. Some ER doctor.

  The gloves kept the fir needles from pricking his hands, but they nailed him on his cheek as he maneuvered the tree through the door and into the front room. He was breathing hard by the time he propped it into the stand.

  A hunk of melting snow he’d missed on one of the branches plopped off, straight down his back.

  “Clare, Clare,” he said. “Why aren’t you here?”

  Why hadn’t he brought her to the chili instead of the chili to her?

  He tightened the tree into the stand, ignoring more drips and splashes of melting snow. By the time he finished, he had wet hair and a wet shirt, and his face and hands—he’d had to take off the gloves—were covered in red marks from the needles. They stung and they itched.

  He lay back on the rug and laughed, imagining his grandfather getting a big kick out of his only grandson’s machinations with the balsam fir.

  It felt good to miss his grandfather, and right. The rest of Knights Bridge missed him, too.

  Logan sat up, heading to the kitchen for a well-earned beer. As he opened it, he looked at his reflection in the window above the sink. He wasn’t a perfect man. He could be a better man, but he would never be a perfect one.

  He was falling in love with Clare Morgan.

  And he was falling in love with her fast.

  * * *

  An unwelcome visit from Jacob Marley roused Logan early. He didn’t know if he preferred skeletal old Marley warning him to mend his ways or one of Scrooge’s spirits, but he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep. He took a shower, got dressed and walked across the common to Smith’s. He noticed a good scratch on his right hand. Must have bloodied himself hauling in the tree last night. Next up was decorating it. If he was taking another go at the six-foot fir, he needed a good breakfast.

  As he sat in a two-person booth, a few Sloans entered the restaurant.

  “Want some company?” Justin asked.