“Just that for someone who’s not interested in dating, you sure seem to be doing a lot of it. Apparently, your anti-dating rule doesn’t apply to Dr. Wells. I’ve had community members saying they’ve seen the two of you together a lot.”
That was the excuse she’d used way back before she’d even met Logan. It had to sting Paul’s pride. “There’s nothing going on between me and Logan, Paul. He’s dating Tess.” She’d seen the evidence of that barely an hour before.
“Neither one of you are acting like that’s true.” He cleared his throat. “So you’re not going to sell me the desk?”
She didn’t have to think about it twice. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m not.”
He stalked off, a petulant toddler who’d been given a broken cookie, and Frankie whirled around to see if Brooke had overheard any of the conversation. “Ugh, Brooke, what do I do?” Frankie tried to convince herself she had no responsibility in Paul’s hurt; she hadn’t meant to be leading him on. But that wasn’t the worst of it. “I’ve made such a mess of things with Logan. Is there any way to salvage things?”
Brooke pulled Frankie over to the two folding chairs behind the table and urged her to sit. “I’m sure it looks that way, but I want you to step back and think a second.” Brooke paused, and Frankie concentrated on breathing, trying to relax. “What do you always tell me when you make a mistake on a project?”
Frankie searched her memory for a project she’d messed up so bad it couldn’t be fixed. “I can’t think of one I messed up.” Her brain was tired and she gave up quickly. “You’ll have to be more specific. What project are we talking about here?” She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Exactly, my friend. Every once in a while, when something doesn’t go the way you think it’s going to on a project, you find a way to change the plan and make it work.”
“That’s right: There are no mistakes, only opportunities to make it even better. But not this time, I’m afraid. Logan’s with Tess.” Frankie buried her face in both hands. “Next time I try to set someone up, please tell me no.”
“You got it, captain.”
Chapter 17
The two weeks since the close of the Cobble Creek Art Festival had been both an eternity and the blink of an eye. It took at least a day, maybe two for Frankie to fully recover, and by then her YouTube hits and online orders had skyrocketed. Curious if it had anything to do with Andre Devereux and his article, she clicked on the magazine’s website to find a short feature on the home page. Thank you, Logan. The photographs of the recycled gear bunny and owl she’d created looked fabulous and also explained why she had more orders than ever.
Knowing she should, in fact, thank him face to face deflated a bit of her joy. They had successfully avoided each other since the festival, but it was hard to believe they weren’t going to be friends after all. Gone were the teasing texts they shared a couple times a day. Gone were the after-school hours she worked with Harper, singing along with the music and brainstorming future projects. Harper would have been a whiz at coming up with more gear creatures. Gone was their entire relationship—as if there’d never been anything between them—but if that was necessary for his relationship with Tess, then that was how it would be. It made sense, but it still hurt.
But Frankie had decided that today was going to be a good day. She’d worn her favorite outfit—the ivory lace dress and denim jacket with her mom’s black boots and her new leather and turquoise bracelet from Bonnie Dumont’s latest collection. It made her feel pretty, no matter what Paul said. She had also chosen to start a project she was especially excited about. Anna Dumont, an online customer in Eureka, Utah, had sent a picture of a roping steer for Frankie to construct from tractor parts. It would be bigger than the miniatures she usually crafted, and the challenge of coming up with something different intrigued her. This was going to be a fun project.
It was creating the tiny horns that caused a problem.
The bulk of the bull’s head was formed with one cog, followed by hex nuts Frankie welded on one at a time, each diminishingly smaller hex nut building out the cone of the nose. At the tip, she finished with two tiny nuts side by side for nostrils. The horns would be crafted from horse nails, brazed with oxy-acetylene. It was when Frankie blunted the second nail to mimic the pictured horns that she felt the sting like lightning in her eye.
“Ow!” Frankie dropped everything and covered her face with her hands.
As soon as she’d felt it, she knew what a fool she was. Goggles, you idiot. She’d planned to don a pair before buffing because she knew small slivers would be kicked off by the rotating head. It was always a balance between being able to see clearly and staying protected, but who could have anticipated the random kickback of a single snip?
Unable to open her eye without tears streaming down and pain ricocheting through her eye socket, Frankie made sure the welding gas was turned off and felt her way out the front door. Clamping her hand over the eye, she squinted her other eye to find her way through the blinding sunshine and into the lobby of Logan’s office.
“Frankie?” In seconds, Lucy was at her side, guiding her by the elbow. Lucy steered her into a small exam room and helped Frankie into the exam chair. “I’ll get Dr. Wells in here right away. You sit tight.”
Frankie leaned her head back into the headrest, the hurt eye weeping in the semi-darkness of the room, and purposely slowed her breathing. Logan would take care of it; she’d be all right.
The moments it took for Logan to come felt like forever, but she heard the door open and footsteps approaching. “I hear we might have a situation.” His voice was calm, soothing Frankie’s panic. “How about you tell me what happened?”
“Snipping a nail … it must have hit my eye. I’m sure it’s too big to still be in there, but it feels like it scratches every time I blink.”
“Ah, so you weren’t wearing even one of your three pairs of glasses?” Logan’s teasing was light as he wheeled his stool over to her. His warm fingers removed her hand from her eye. She’d forgotten it was there; it had kept her eye from blinking, and the slight pressure lessened the pain. “Let me see what we’ve got.”
Frankie tried valiantly to open her lid, but the fire inside made it impossible to give him a chance to look.
“You can let me do that.” Logan slipped his thumb, first over her cheek, and then lifted her eyelid by her lashes. With her eye forced open, the bright light from a penlight blinded her, and her eye fought to close of its own accord.
Logan let go, allowing her to close for a moment, and snapped off the light. The next time he opened it, she saw his own gorgeous lake blue eyes magnified behind his special goggles, in between times her eye blinked again. “It looks like I’m going to need to numb it for a closer look.”
After rummaging through a cabinet, Logan handed Frankie a tissue and then stood behind her, tipping her head into his shoulder. He held her eye open and guided a couple of drops in. He screwed the cap back on the bottle and lifted her head, walking back to his treatment stool to sit in front of her again.
“You may not be aware of this, Miss Lawson,” he said in a serious tone, “but ocular nudity in a workshop is illegal in the state of Wyoming.”
“That sounds totally bogus.” Frankie chuckled and dabbed at the corner of her eye. The tissue wrinkled yellow with the moisture.
“Section 2.3.456 of the Wyoming ophthalmological code, subsection 7.8.9-10-11.” He could have pulled back while they were waiting for her eye to numb, but if anything, he moved closer.
“Baloney.” Her heart skipped as his knee grazed against hers. She was in danger of losing her heart completely to this man. “Tess isn’t going to like that I’m here.”
“Probably not, but that’s okay.”
Of course, because Frankie was here as a patient. He smelled so good, his aftershave something she had the desire to explore close up.
“How does that feel?” He inched closer, and for a second she thought he meant how it
felt with him that close.
Gingerly, Frankie blinked and found it no longer hurt. “Better. Can I just use that stuff all day?”
Logan laughed. “Let’s make sure you didn’t do any serious damage.” Logan instructed her to rest her chin on the machine. He met her halfway, looking through his side. “Look past my ear.” He tapped his right ear with his finger. “Tess isn’t super happy with me either—now look right—and I don’t see that changing anytime too soon—now look left.” He paused, and not explaining himself was almost as much torture as her eye. “Look up. Tess and I are not seeing each other anymore. Look down.”
“What?” Frankie pulled back and tried to stare him down, but was caught off guard when she recognized one of the reclaimed wood coat hangers she’d made hanging on the far wall.
Logan sat waiting to continue the exam, so Frankie settled back with her chin where it was supposed to be. In anticipation of the answer, Frankie’s heart exerted extra pressure in her chest. “But I saw you talking at the festival, and that’s not how it looked.”
“What you saw were two people saying goodbye to a relationship and hello to being just friends.” She felt his minty breath as he spoke, and she wished there wasn’t a machine between them.
“Oh, is that how that looks?” She should feel sorry for Tess, but she couldn’t. “What happened?”
“I don’t think Tess ever particularly liked me. She liked that I was a doctor, brought that up all the time, and seemed to think I was her ticket out of this small town and into a big city.”
“But?”
Switching off the machine and moving it to the right, Logan ran a hand through his hair, looking far more attractive all tousled. He leaned back. “I like it here. I like the hiking and the huckleberries, I like the stars and the aspen leaves, I like …”
He left that unfinished, changing subjects seamlessly. “I don’t see a foreign body, but I can see the abrasion. It’s not bad and will heal in a day or two.” He walked to his cabinet and rifled through until he pulled out a small package and another small bottle and held them up for her. “An antibiotic and a bandage contact lens, and you’ll be good as new.”
Relief swept through Frankie, leaving her exhausted all of a sudden. It was nice to know she hadn’t done any serious damage to her eye, but she suspected his relationship news had more effect on her than the prognosis of her eye.
In the short couple of minutes it took for him to administer another drop of medicine and apply the contact lens, Frankie sat quiet, absorbing all that he’d said. With her eye feeling tons better and the visit almost over, it was time to take her own advice and make her feelings known. Frankie took a quick breath. “Hypothetically, how does a girl get a guy to ask her out?”
Frankie bit her lip in anticipation of Logan’s reaction to that. It wasn’t that she couldn’t ask a guy out, but as she’d already asked Logan out twice—for other women—she rather preferred this obvious hint dropping instead. If he responded as she hoped.
Logan pushed back the machine that had been between them, tucking it next to the wall. With a barely concealed smile, Logan turned away to rummage in a drawer, and came back with an eye patch. “Hit him over the head with a frying pan?”
Frankie tried not to laugh as she pictured the barbarity of the idea. “Hmm … that might hurt.” Silence echoed in a heartbeat of panic. “But I might have to think about it.”
Back on his stool, Logan rolled over, giving Frankie a serious look. “I forgot the most important part.” He gently slid the patch over her eye. “You need to wear this as well.”
Frankie didn’t let the ridiculousness of how she must look interrupt their conversation. “What do you think I should make that would get the point across? Especially since I think I’ve been friend-zoned.” She tried to pout, but almost laughed, and sucked on her bottom lip to keep from smiling.
Logan inched forward, threading his knees on either side of hers. “Those cranberry-orange scones are top-notch amazing. You might have a shot if you took him those.” He cocked his head and made a show of giving her the once-over. “And if you wear this. You’re always pretty darn good-looking anyway, but this outfit …” He whistled long and low. “Let’s just say it could help a man forget about a pirate eye patch.”
The pounding of her heart at her own boldness and his reciprocation thrummed in her head. “You think?” Her words came out in a whisper.
Logan reached out and threaded his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck in a very un-doctor-like way. He was going to kiss her for real this time. They met in the middle, and with nothing to keep them apart, his lips covered hers, soft but full of all the right sparks.
The kiss that made everything all better. She sighed softly when he pulled back.
“Can I tell you something?” he whispered on her lips.
“Since when do you ask?” she whispered back, her knees weak with their nearness.
“You’re really good at fixing things …” His hands found hers in her lap. “But fixing people up, not so much.” He rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands.
She could answer that he was probably right, but talking wasn’t what she wanted to do. Frankie took a moment to touch his smooth-shaven face with both hands, and then she leaned in to claim at least one more kiss. It started hungrily, but then she remembered it was the middle of a workday, and Logan probably had patients waiting for him. She ended the connection with one last soft, brief kiss.
“What was that you said one time about not wanting people all up in your business?” She tried to raise her eyebrows at him, but he probably couldn’t tell with the patch. “You’re kind of all up in mine right now.”
“And exactly where I want you.” Logan leaned so far forward, Frankie thought he was about to kiss her once again, but instead, he slipped the eye patch off. He grinned mischievously. “You don’t really need this,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot against her neck.
Frankie sat back and scowled at him playfully. “Then why make me wear it?”
He shrugged, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “To see if you would.” His eyes searched her face, and he leaned toward her again, his hands on the exam chair’s armrests. “In case you were wondering, this is what it looks like when two friends are saying hello to a new, non-platonic relationship.” He tipped his forehead onto hers.
Reluctantly, Frankie allowed him to pull back. He offered a hand to help her out of the chair, but instantly threaded her fingers through his when she stood.
They started walking to the door, both of them going slower than necessary.
“You have the most amazing eyes, and I should know.” He paused at the closed door, their last moment alone together, and turned so he was facing her. “I love how they see the best in everyone—Brooke and Tess, Harper, even Paul and Kathy. And me.”
Frankie wrapped her arms around Logan and leaned a cheek against his chest. “I can’t believe it took me this long to see what was right in front of me. I mean, obviously I knew you’d be a good catch; otherwise I wouldn’t have been trying to set you up with my friends. What I didn’t realize was that you were the best one for me.”
She could feel Logan’s fingers brushing the ends of her long hair. “Do you know when I first fell in love with you?” With his arms around her waist, he laid a cheek on the top of her head. “It was the first time I saw you wearing three pair of glasses at the same time. I knew then that we could get along.”
Chapter 18
Three Months Later
Frankie brushed her hand over the antique secretary desk. The stain Harper had chosen turned out perfect. Given to Logan as a birthday gift from the two of them a week after Halloween, the desk looked great in Logan’s office at his optometry clinic. In the months since, Frankie and Logan had been using the trick compartment to pass notes to each other, when they got the chance. Frank & Signs’ business had stayed steady since the magazine article, and Frankie was teaching Harper everything she
knew. The girl was wicked creative and pretty dang good at seeing things mechanically … and Frankie wasn’t so bad at this parenting gig, if she did say so herself. She just hoped it would continue when they were living under the same roof full-time.
The white satin of her wedding dress swished as Frankie moved around the desk in her mother’s black cowboy boots. While Brooke had questioned Frankie’s choice of footwear with her gown, the boots made more sense in the Wyoming Christmas snow than the typical sparkly wedding heels. Frankie wasn’t a sparkly high heels kind of gal anyway, and the boots were a way to include her mother on her special day.
Frankie lifted the hinge and slipped the letter and her wedding gift to Logan into the slot when she heard the door open behind her. She whirled around to see Logan with a new letter in his hand as well.
“Wait!” Frankie panicked. “It’s bad luck to see me before the wedding.” She had weighed the possibility of forever cursing them with horrible luck and decided some things were worth the risk.
“That’s why I’m wearing these.” Logan pointed to the funky sunglasses he gave out to his patients with dilated eyes. “I even dilated my eyes as an extra precaution.”
“You did not.” Moving from behind the desk, she went to him, her hand unable to keep from reaching out for his.
“You’re right.” He pulled her into an embrace and nuzzled her neck with his lips, his close shave like velvet on her skin.
Encircled in his arms, Frankie lifted the sunglasses so she could stare deeply into those brooding blue eyes she’d grown to love. “This way I can see for myself that I’m the only woman you’re looking at.”
Logan scoffed. The mischievous set to his jaw and sparkle in his eyes brought that familiar, yet exciting, flutter to her insides. “Even when you were trying to set me up with Brooke and Tess, you were the only one I wanted to see.”
She rolled her eyes, used to his lines. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?” She stepped back, panic tingeing the edge of her excitement. This was their wedding day, the day she, Logan, and Harper had been planning for months, but what if she’d forgotten something? “Or Harper? Who’s doing her hair?” Hopefully not Logan. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
The Inventive Bride: Country Brides & Cowboy Boots Page 14