by Kate Aster
“Logan.” Standing, my brother looks concerned. “I don’t think you’ve stepped foot in this complex since…”
“Since a long time ago, Ryan,” I cut him off. “I’m well aware. Let’s just cut the bullshit for a minute. Does the name Newton’s Creek Boarding Kennel ring a bell?”
He looks at me, apparently confused, as he sits back down. “No. Do you need a boarding kennel for Kosmo?”
I lean back on my heels, a hint of relief seeping into my gut. “It’s a boarding kennel that went bankrupt a while back. Did I happen to mention it to you ever?”
I need to know. I need to know if I slipped about something that ended up causing Allie pain. It would kill me, but I need to know.
“I don’t think so. Why would you be telling me about a bankrupt kennel?”
“You just bought one, Ryan.”
Cocking his head, he frowns. “You mean the company did?”
“Yes, dammit, the company you’re CEO of.” My voice is thick with venom as I approach his desk.
His eyes narrow at my tone and he leans forward. “Do you have any idea how many acres we buy up every week, Logan? Oh, that’s right. You wouldn’t know, would you? Because you don’t give a shit about our family business. So don’t you dare come marching in here insinuating that I don’t know what’s going on in my company. It’s all land to me, Logan. I don’t give a damn if there’s an old kennel on it or an abandoned motel or a tree house. We’re after the land, not the buildings.” He pauses, checking his temper as he leans back in his chair again. “So are you going to tell me what the hell is going on, or are you just going to interrogate me some more?”
I square my shoulders toward him, still on the offense. “Allie put a bid on a foreclosure. An abandoned dog kennel. She wanted to turn it into a brick-and-mortar presence for her rescue organization so that she could save more dogs.”
Ryan’s face sags noticeably as he nods. “I remember you told me she was trying to buy something. But you never mentioned where.” He emits a quiet curse. “So I take it we outbid her?”
I nod. “By a sizable amount, I’m sure.”
“I didn’t know, Logan.” He moves his mouse, waking up his computer. “Where is it?”
“About three miles down Tyland Road. Two acres near the intersection with Birch.”
He taps at his keyboard and frowns at what he sees on his monitor. “In between two farms,” he says it under his breath, as if it’s more to himself than to me. “Yeah, we bought it and the two adjoining farms. We’ve got plans for forty homes there. A clubhouse with a pool. It’ll be a nice community, Logan.”
I raise an eyebrow. “It’ll be just as nice with a dog rescue on it.”
Ryan heaves a sigh. “I’m sorry about Allie’s plans. But there are other places where she can build a dog rescue.”
“You’re so detached from reality, aren’t you, Ryan? She doesn’t have the money for that. That’s why she bid on that old kennel. She had enough money to fix it up, not to start fresh. Why the hell can’t you just let her keep it?”
“I’m detached from reality? You’re the one asking me to keep an old dog kennel smack dab in the center of our newest seventy-acre housing development. The barking alone will drive people away. It’s not going to happen, Logan. I’m sorry. I feel horribly for Allie, but it’s nothing personal. It’s business.”
“Maybe it should be personal, Ryan. Maybe we have gotten too damn big if we’re buying up land without even thinking of the people it affects.”
“We build houses, Logan. We’re always thinking about people. We’re providing affordable houses in safe, family-oriented communities.”
“Affordable? That’s such bullshit, Ryan. Half the guys I served with can’t afford the homes you build, and they’re protecting your freedom, for God’s sake. You sit here in your slick new office with your Armani suit and build your houses for people in your world, not mine.”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen. That little piece of land was Allie’s dream.”
He stares at me, his eyes seeming almost sympathetic. “Shit. You’re in love with her.”
“Yes, dammit.” I know it’s the first time I’m admitting this, and it annoys me that I’m telling it to my brother, not her. I should have said it a long time ago. But it’s the last thing she wants to hear from me right now. “She’s everything to me. And you’ve fucked it up, dammit.” I give the chair I’m leaning on a shove, fighting back the urge to send it soaring across the room.
My breathing is tense and I need to get out of here.
“Where are you going?” I hear my brother over my shoulder as I head to his office door.
“To try to fix this.”
Chapter 22
- LOGAN -
Allie is packing.
I watch in quiet disbelief as she neatly folds freshly washed clothes into the same suitcase that was on a flight home from Annapolis just two days ago, and it cuts my heart open.
How much things can change in the course of two days.
“This is crazy, Allie. You can’t just leave.”
“Logan, I need to get away.”
“You were just away.”
“Away from you.” Her eyes widen, like she hadn’t intended to say it.
“Okay, well, I’ve always asked for honesty,” I say through my teeth. The fact is, she’s been nothing but away from me the past couple days, always claiming to be busy, barely speaking to me. I know she’s hurt and I don’t blame her. But silence isn’t going to fix anything.
I’ve been busy, too, trying to come up with a plan to make this right. I tell her that, and all I ever hear is that she doesn’t want my help.
“Look, you didn’t outbid me. So it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Yeah, but it has everything to do with my family,” I admit.
She rests her hand on a stack of shirts filling her suitcase. I hit the nail on the head.
“It was a business decision,” she says, sounding reminiscent of my brother. “I don’t blame your family.”
“You just don’t want to have to see them again.” I say it matter-of-factly because it’s what I’d feel. My family means a lot to me, and if she sticks with me, she knows she’ll have to face the people who pulled the rug out from under her. There’s no joy in that.
“You have a lovely family. I care a lot about them. But I’m not feeling too warmly about JLS Heartland right now, to be honest.”
“Neither am I.”
“Besides, I really have been needing to spend some time with my mom. I’ve let too much time pass. I was able to rehome Juniper and Sandy yesterday, and Cass took Rex off my hands because her spaniel should be placed next week.”
“I could have taken the dog.” It stings that she wouldn’t even ask. I feel like she’s cutting ties with me as quickly as she can. “You know I would have taken him.”
“You’ve done enough for me.” She looks up at me, tears in her eyes. “I really mean that, you know, Logan. You’ve done so much for me, and I—” She stops, pressing her lips together tightly into a thin line. “All of this would have happened anyway. I would have sold my condo and been sleeping on Cass’s sofa all this time. You’ve only made my life better.”
But I couldn’t stop this from happening. “You’re going to get your shelter, Allie. I’ll see to it.”
Shaking her head, she presses her hand against my chest. It’s the first touch I’ve had from her in a while, and it makes me want to pull her toward me, hold her close, and never let her go. But she steps back again before I can. “No. I’m not getting it that way. I’ve been skating along on your generosity enough. I mean it, Logan. Enough already.”
I want to tell her I do it because I love her. But tossing the word at her right now would seem more like manipulation, a way of getting her to forgive my family and me, a way of making her want to stay.
“I won’t be gone that long. Nancy doesn’t care where I work from, so lo
ng as I have my laptop. And I’ll figure out where I’m going to live while I’m away. I have the money from my condo now that it’s not wrapped up in the bid.”
“You don’t have to move.”
“Your renovation is almost done anyway. It’s time for you to sell this place and move on.”
Move on?
I have to remind myself that was ever my plan.
She extends her hand with her set of keys to the townhome. “I’ll get my furniture out of here as soon as I can.”
I close my fingers over her hand, trapping the keys back in her grasp. There’s no way I’m letting her give those back without a fight. “Allie, I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about us. Us,” I repeat, hoping she feels the weight of the word.
Staring at my hand still enclosed around hers, her shoulders shudder. “I just need some time, Logan. Time to let it all soak in. I’ll still be around if you need me.” Two tears trickle down her cheeks. “So if you can’t sleep, you know who to call.”
I pull her close, whether she likes it or not. “I won’t sleep. Because I’ll be finding a way to make this right.”
~ ALLIE ~
I’m taking the coward’s way out, I figure as I flick on the turn signal at my mother’s exit. It’s childish; the bank didn’t want to play nice with me, so I’m grabbing my dollies and running to my mommy.
How did I even think I was ready to take on a run-down kennel and turn my fledgling nonprofit into something bigger, more effective? I’m too young—just like Logan used to tell me.
And it stuns me that he was right. I am too young for him. He’s a SEAL—faced down more tragedy in his 32 years than most people do in their lifetime. I’m just a silly woman with a useless degree and a dream that is bigger than my bank account. He knew the world would cut a person like me down to size, and he was right.
I just didn’t think it would be his family taking the first slice of me.
I turn onto my mom’s street and am greeted by rows of two-story colonials, each with the same stone and siding façade. It’s a newer community. I’d almost wonder if it’s a JLS Heartland development, but I think the houses are smaller here than is their norm.
My mom swings open the door only seconds after I pull into the driveway, not even giving me a chance to take a breath or prepare myself to see her again in this house that isn’t my home. It still feels awkward to me.
She wraps her arms around me in an embrace that could only come from a mother. As I fight the tears, I’m reminded of Logan’s mom—how welcoming she was to me, how truly excited she was about my mission with the dogs. Did Logan tell her what happened, I wonder?
I’ll probably never know.
My mother pulls back from me only inches and touches a finger to the dark circles under my eyes. “Honey, you look exhausted. Have you been sick?”
“No. Just tired.”
“Come on in. I’ll make you some chicken soup, anyway,” she says. Chicken soup can save the world, or at least my mother believes that. And truly, when she makes it up the way she does, I’m pretty convinced of it, too.
“New car?” she notes, glancing at the silver SUV as I pull out my bags.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “A donation to my organization from someone.”
“They donated a new car?”
She’s checking out the leather seats and eyeing the dashboard that, to me, still looks more like it belongs in a sci-fi movie than in a car.
“You must be doing some things right for those dogs if you’re getting donations like this, Allie.”
Yeah, or spreading my legs for the right guy, I think, feeling a knot of disgust with myself.
“I’m so proud of you,” she continues, oblivious that her words are rubbing salt in my wounds, and proving to me that I shouldn’t have come here. I should have just crawled into a hole for a month. “You’re saving lives, Allie. It’s your dream and you’re making it happen.”
I burst into tears at the mention of my dream.
“Oh, honey, what’s wrong?” she asks.
I tell her then. I tell her everything, first leaning against my car in the driveway till she leads me inside the house and sits me down at the kitchen counter. I’m so grateful that her husband isn’t home now, and I can have a little time with my mom by myself.
I tell her about the wedding, Logan’s family, and what happened with the foreclosure. I even tell her about the damn SUV, as she browns some chicken in olive oil to ready it for the soup. The loud sizzle and the smell of paprika and pepper soothe me as I pour my heart out to her in a way I haven’t done since Devin dumped me back in college.
She slices an onion and the scent wafts my way, giving me a good excuse for the tears in my eyes.
“It sounds like you really love him, Allie.”
The lump lodged in my throat almost blocks my admission. “Yes.”
“Have you told him that?”
“No. Neither one of us has said it,” I answer begrudgingly. “And why bother? We were doomed from the start.”
“Why is that, do you think?”
“He’s never going to stay in Newton’s Creek. I think he regrets ever moving there—did it on impulse and now he’s just figuring out his next move. He belongs on the coast somewhere.”
“And you think you belong in Newton’s Creek?”
I nod firmly.
“Why?”
I really don’t want to tell her the truth. “I miss Dad,” I say vaguely instead.
She nods, turning down the heat on the stove and sitting beside me. “And what else do you miss?”
“I miss our house. I miss being able to feel close to him around every corner.”
She lowers her head. “I moved from that house for all the same reasons you wanted to stay.”
“What do you mean?”
“We watched you grow up in that house, Allie. Together. All the milestones you reached were with your dad at my side. You remember racing down the staircase to see the tree on Christmas morning, but I remember sitting with your dad watching you race down those stairs. You remember the swing in the backyard, but I remember putting it together on the hottest day of the summer with your dad. You remember riding your bike in the neighborhood Fourth of July parade that ran in front of our house, but I remember sitting with your dad on the front porch as you rode by. He was always there for me. For us. And it was such a blessing. I couldn’t face another moment in that house without him.”
“You really loved him, didn’t you?” I’m remembering what Logan said now, how he thought my mom might have married so soon again just because she couldn’t stand the idea of being alone after being with someone she loved for so long.
“I loved your dad in a way I could never love another man. He gave me you. He gave me my best memories. He gave me the best chapter of my life.” Tears are pooling in her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my husband now. He’s a good man, Allie, and he showed me that I really can laugh again and feel a warmth in my heart again. But it’s a different kind of love for a different phase in our lives.” She takes my hand as it rests on the counter. “What kind of love do you feel for Logan?”
I shake my head, trying to find words. “Something so powerful. I know it hasn’t been that long that we’ve even been together, but when I’m with him, things feel so right I can’t even put it into words.”
“Do you picture your life with him?”
“It’s hard not to.”
“In Newton’s Creek?”
I shrug. “Anywhere.”
“Then it sounds to me you found your home. Your home is with Logan.”
I sigh. “I don’t know how I’d face his family again. It’s even worse that they didn’t know. Now I’ll be poor, pathetic Allie. I don’t want to be that to them.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re a capable young woman who is saving the lives of countless dogs. There is nothing pathetic about you.”
“I don’t want their sympathy.”
�
�Then tell them that.”
“And I don’t want their charity either. I know it’s crazy, but I feel like Logan throws his money my way too quickly, like it’s nothing to him. I know him, Mom. His last words to me were that he was going to fix this.”
“So, let him.”
“That’s not what I want though. I can’t even stand driving that car because it reminds me of him. I don’t want more things that I depend on to be somehow attached to him. I’d be just like you with the house, you know? Unable to get away from his memory after he leaves.”
“You’re assuming he’ll leave then.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
“Allie, you are a passionate person. You’ve always felt things so deeply. You find a mission and you think you’re the only one who can accomplish it the right way simply because you feel its weight so deeply in your heart. You’re so much like your father in that way. I’ve seen all that you’ve accomplished and it amazes me. It makes me proud. But you’re wrong to think you’re the only one who feels things so deeply. That you can’t share your load with someone else.” She pats my hand as she stands. “Take some time. Cry it out. Lick your wounds. But promise me that you won’t go through life thinking that you have to do things alone.”
She kisses my forehead, and glances at her watch. “It’s 5:00 in some part of the world right now,” she says with a smile. “How about a glass of wine?”
Chapter 23
- LOGAN -
Sitting in my car, staring at the unassuming house with its terracotta tile roof and stucco exterior, my heart rate is doing double time.
I want to call Allie. I need to call Allie. I haven’t heard from her since she texted me to tell me she arrived at her mom’s, and I know that hearing from me right now is the last thing she needs.
What she needs is for me to fix what my family’s company did to her dream. But everything my brother has been telling me the last three days is right. I can’t expect him to build an entire development around a rescue kennel to satisfy a girl I’ve known for a matter of months. And as much as I’d like to swoop in and buy a couple acres and build her a new kennel, I know that throwing my money at this problem isn’t what she wants.