“Look, what you’re doing is nice,” Reese said. “In fact, you’re both very nice, but the only reason Logan slept with me at that hotel in San Antonio was because of what happened with Helene. And the only reason I slept with him was because I thought I was dying.”
No surprise whatsoever on their faces. Zilch. And that’s the reason Reese looked at Jimena.
Jimena shrugged. “So, I might have mentioned it to them, all right? But for the record, you’ve been with Logan since then, and it didn’t have anything to do with mistaken brain tumors and clown sex.”
No, it hadn’t, but that didn’t mean it was more than just sex.
“So, you really thought you were going to die?” Cassie asked. She no longer sounded just nice now. She sounded like a therapist.
“I did.” Since Claire and she seemed to be waiting for more, Reese added, “I did a whole bucket-list thing. Ate what I wanted, gave away my money, quit my job.”
“And Logan was on that list?” Claire said.
“A hot cowboy was.” Sheez, Reese suddenly felt like a slut. A hot cowboy—any hot cowboy.
“Wow.” Claire again. “So, it was like fate when you met Logan. I mean, what are the odds that you’d be looking for a hot cowboy—which he is—at the exact moment he was nursing a broken heart?”
Cassie nodded. “Logan’s not the one-night-stand type.”
Heck, he wasn’t the broken-heart type, either, so Reese wasn’t going to read much into this. For her own self-preservation, she needed to get her mind on something else.
“Let’s look at the rest of the place,” she insisted.
They got moving, but she also heard Jimena whisper to Cassie and Claire. “Reese has a tough time trusting men. Old man-baggage stuff.”
Great. Now they’d moved from bucket lists to man-baggage. With all this revealing going on, she might as well strip down and show them her tattoos.
Cassie made a sound of agreement. “It’s hard not to have man-baggage once you’re past twenty-one, but all it takes is one good man to help you put that baggage away for good. Did you have to deal with any lingering depression after learning you didn’t have a tumor? I mean, did you have survivor’s guilt?”
“Yes,” Reese admitted.
Jimena admitted even more. “Reese didn’t know the other woman who really did have the tumor, but she was worried she might be a mom or someone who’d be missed.”
Reese was still worried about that.
“That’s a natural reaction,” Cassie went on. “But you seem to be handling it well now.”
Reese ignored them and started opening doors. Some contained even more bizarre collections of building memorabilia. White Styrofoam wig heads. Disassembled cribs. The only reason Reese spent even a second glancing at them was so she wouldn’t be looking at the other women. Eye contact might just encourage them to keep talking. All she needed to do was finish this tour and then get the heck out of here.
She opened one of the doors and had a serious wow moment.
“It’s a kitchen.” Reese went in, her gaze taking in the very high-end appliances.
“That’s right,” Cassie said. “About ten years ago, it was a bakery.” She pointed to the sign that was propped up in the corner. Shirley’s Sweets. “But it didn’t last long. Only a couple of months.”
Claire nodded. “That was the baker from Abilene, but she wasn’t very good at business. One day she just up and left.”
“You sure she wasn’t murdered?” Reese asked. That got their attention. “I mean, because this isn’t the kind of kitchen a baker would just leave behind. There must be twenty grand worth of appliances and equipment in here.”
At the mention of that, all of their shoulders straightened. Because maybe there was a body in the oven. As if to prove that theory wrong—hopefully it was wrong—Reese opened the oven door.
And burst a lung screaming when spiders came scurrying out.
The four of them went scurrying out, too, some faster than others. Claire practically sprinted out of the room.
“Maybe that’s why the baker left,” Claire said, shuddering.
Cassie shuddered, too, and Reese was shuddering right along with them. Finally, this was something she had in common with the pair.
But Jimena didn’t leave. She squished a few spiders, and as if this were the most mundane part of her morning, she strolled out of the kitchen. “I can clean that out for you if you decide to buy the building,” she offered.
The spiders seemed to be the least of the problems, or maybe they were some kind of omen. Still, Cassie continued to look around as if she hadn’t completely gone off the notion of putting her office in here.
“I have an idea,” Cassie finally said. “I could buy the building, and the two of you could rent space from me.”
It took a moment for Reese to realize Cassie was talking to her. “What?”
“You could open a bakery, and Claire could use a couple of these rooms for a photography studio. That’d still leave plenty of room for my office and for the apartments on the second floor,” she added to Jimena. “Which I’d redo, of course. The whole place needs a face-lift.”
“And a good exterminator,” Claire added. She was still shuddering.
“Yeah, it sounds great,” Jimena piped in. “You could call the bakery Reese’s Lemon Thingies.”
“No, it doesn’t sound great.” Reese hadn’t meant to say that so loud—it was practically a shout—but she was still stunned that Cassie was making plans. Long-term plans. Plans that included her.
“I’m not the ‘opening a bakery’ kind of woman,” Reese explained when they all just stared at her.
“So, you want to keep working for other people?” Jimena asked. But she didn’t just ask it. She was on board with this, too, though Reese wasn’t sure how.
“You know I move at least every six months,” Reese reminded her.
The three women made varying sounds that they did know that. And that they disapproved. Worse, they looked at her with those looks of disapproval.
It was Claire who broke the silence. “You’ve been seeing Logan.” Then she held up a finger. “Excuse me a sec.” And she hurried to the bathroom. A few moments later, Reese heard a different kind of sound—retching.
“Anyway,” Cassie said, picking up where Claire had left off. “If you want to have a fighting chance with Logan, then at least consider my offer. You wouldn’t have to put up any cash until you actually opened Lemon Thingies.”
“Or you could call it Queen of Tarts,” Jimena suggested. She snapped her fingers. “Or how about Dough Play?”
“Or Wants and Kneads?” Cassie added. “Or Sweetie Pies?”
“For Goodness’ Cakes would work,” Claire put in as she came out of the bathroom. “Or Sugar Mama’s.”
Jimena did more finger snapping. “Or instead of Lemon Thingies, it could be Reese’s Thingies.”
For Pete’s sake, that sounded as if she had testicles.
“Or Reese’s Sweet Spot and Thingies,” Cassie went on.
That sounded as if she were horny and testicular.
Reese groaned. Not only were they planning her future, they were planning it with really stupid names.
“I don’t fit in here,” Reese yelled. “And I don’t fit into Logan’s life. For Christ’s sake, I have tattoos.”
“Are they spelled correctly?” Cassie asked, and she appeared to be serious. “Because my grandmother had misspelled tattoos, and it drove Lucky nuts.”
Reese tried not to groan again. Failed. “They aren’t words but a rose and rosebud.”
“Sounds tasteful,” Claire remarked. “I remember my mother had tats that weren’t tasteful at all. Snakes and a spider.” Another shudder.
Of course, Reese had heard bits and pieces of Claire’s a
nd Cassie’s not-so-perfect upbringings, but at least they’d had some semblance of a normal childhood.
“I was raised by con artists. We would have had to come up in status to be called trailer trash.” Reese shook her head. “I’d never fit in here.”
Cassie and Jimena opened their mouths, no doubt to argue that, but both their mouths stayed open. And Reese soon saw why when she followed their gazes and saw what had captured their attention.
It was Logan.
He was across the street in front of the post office where earlier she’d seen Helene and Elrond. Elrond wasn’t there.
But Helene was.
Reese watched as the woman put her hand on Logan’s chest, leaned in and whispered something to him. He didn’t back away. In fact, Logan leaned in and whispered something right back to her.
Before both Logan and Helene exchanged a very intimate-looking smile.
* * *
LOGAN SCOWLED.
First at the stuff the guy had just put on his desk. Then at the guy himself. Logan couldn’t remember his name, but the person he was scowling at was someone Lucky had hired to do maintenance on the company trucks and other vehicles.
The stuff the man had put on Logan’s desk was Reese’s backpack and panties. Red panties that had been visibly ripped.
“Found these when I was cleaning out your truck,” the guy said, and he made the mistake of smiling.
Logan’s scowled deepened. “Shut the door on your way out,” he snarled.
That didn’t lessen the guy’s smile, and he added a knowing wink. A wink that Logan couldn’t deny because he had indeed done some winkable stuff with Reese that had resulted in those torn panties, but there was no reason for someone he barely knew to point that out.
He pressed the intercom button to call Jimena, who should be in reception. Whether she was there was anyone’s guess and whether she was working was another guess entirely. Since it was her first day, Logan didn’t even know if she was at her desk.
And she wasn’t.
That’s because at that exact moment Jimena came in the door carrying a cup of coffee, something he was about to request she bring him. She also looked reasonably dressed for the job.
Of course, he was grading on a curve here since Greg had often been unreasonably dressed.
Jimena was wearing a tiger print dress that fit her like a sausage casing and purple glitter shoes. And she smelled like Cheetos. Since there were some yellow stains on her fingers, Logan doubted the finger stains were a coincidence.
Logan figured the sausage-casing clothes would impress Delbert Clark, his ten o’clock appointment. Delbert had an eye for good Angus cows and questionably dressed women. Since Logan had been doing business with the man for nearly a decade, he didn’t exactly need to impress Delbert, but it was always good to start with a happy client.
“Your coffee,” Jimena said, putting the cup on his desk. “Beans are ground fresh. Two sugars, a teaspoon of half-and-half just the way you like it. Greg left notes about things,” she explained. “Building temperature, how you like your coffee, litter box cleaning, your somewhat persnickety personality. Had to look up persnickety, but I gotta say, I agree with him.”
“I have to say I don’t care for being called persnickety.” Or having his coffee mentioned along with kitty litter maintenance.
“Greg said in his notes that you’d say that if I brought it up.” She slid some papers his way. “That’s the contract for those ugly bulls with the humps. The ones that the fella sent pictures of this morning.”
“The Brahmas,” he supplied. So, evidently Jimena could print out a contract and make coffee even if she didn’t know squat about livestock and referred to him with insulting labels.
She scowled, too, when she saw the panties and backpack, and Logan quickly shoved them under his desk.
“You didn’t give those back to Reese yet?” She sounded more like his sister than his employee.
“I haven’t seen her since Friday night when I got her out of jail.” And yes, it was Monday, three days later. But he’d had meetings most of the day on Saturday, had gotten a migraine and had spent a good chunk of Sunday in bed.
“You haven’t spoken to her?” Another snap.
“Only for a couple of seconds. I called her, told her I wasn’t feeling well and that I’d go by the café today for lunch.”
She huffed. “Turd on a tire iron,” Jimena grumbled. “I had a date yesterday and didn’t check on her because I thought she’d be with you.”
“Uh, why would you need to check on her?”
“Because of what she saw, you idiot.”
Logan scowled again. There was no reason for her to call him an idiot. Was there? “What did she see?”
Jimena’s hands went on her hips, and either the sausage casing was causing her eyes to bulge, or else she was truly pissed off. “You and Helene carrying on in front of the post office.”
He had to shake his head, and Logan was certain he looked as confused as he felt.
Jimena made a “duh” sound. “Cassie, Claire, Reese and me were all there Saturday, looking at that building Cassie wanted to buy. Did you know it used to have a bakery in it?” But she waved off that question and continued. “Anyway, we saw you getting cozy with Helene.”
“Cozy?” Logan wanted to throw up his hands. “What are you talking about?”
“Post office. Saturday. You. Helene. Whispers. Smiles. In-your-face contact.” She spoke slowly as if he were mentally deficient.
Heck, maybe he was because Logan didn’t remember…wait…yes, he did. “That wasn’t cozy. Helene was just thanking me for getting her out of a sticky situation.” The one with Chucky that could have ended up costing her a fortune. “And I thanked her for getting Chucky to testify against Reese’s mother.”
For all the good that’d done. The police chief had yet to find Vickie, which would only be a good thing if the woman stayed away from Spring Hill and especially from Reese. Logan figured a swarm of bees would have an easier time staying away from something sweet than Vickie did of staying away from Reese.
“You smiled at Helene,” Jimena said like an accusation.
Yes, he had. He remembered that now. Logan also remembered why he’d done it. “Because people were watching, and I didn’t want to seem petty.”
“Well, Reese thought it was more than that. You should have seen the look on her face. I thought she was going to throw up.” She lifted her shoulder. “But that could have been because Claire just threw up, and that was making us all a little queasy. Plus, Reese was spooked because of all those spiders in the oven.”
Logan hadn’t known any of this was going on. And some of it, he just didn’t understand. But one thing was clear; he needed to talk to Reese if she believed he was getting cozy with his ex.
He thought about calling her, only to realize she was working and wouldn’t be able to answer. However, she should be finished with the breakfast shift in thirty minutes or so, and he could see her then in person.
“When Delbert Clark gets here, show him in right away,” Logan instructed.
Jimena didn’t acknowledge that. Didn’t move. “Uh, about that,” she finally said.
The uh couldn’t be good, and the gloom-and-doom look on her face supported that notion. “What’s wrong?”
She took several deep breaths, which no doubt tested the stretch of the dress fabric. “Delbert Clark called about fifteen minutes ago and canceled the meeting.”
“Why didn’t you put his call through to me?”
More deep breaths. “Because he said he didn’t want to talk to you. He said he didn’t want to do business with a man who was boinking a convicted felon.”
Hell. Logan just had to sit there a couple of seconds and take that in. Vickie had obviously gotten to D
elbert, but what surprised Logan was that the man had put gossip over business.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t just gossip.
Maybe Vickie had shown Delbert some kind of proof to back up her claims. Then again, Vickie was a con artist so perhaps she was able to use those conning skills to convince the man.
“I told him no one uses that word—boinking—anymore,” Jimena added. “And then I called him a jackass. Trust me, I could have come up with something much worse to call him, but I kept it PG-rated for your sake.”
“Thanks,” Logan grumbled, and he wasn’t the least bit sincere. He didn’t want his receptionist calling an old business associate any names since this was something Logan was sure he could smooth over.
He scrolled through his numbers and pressed Delbert’s, and the man answered on the first ring. “I told your girl that I didn’t want to talk to you,” he said before Logan could even get out a greeting.
Several different emotions hit Logan. First the shock, then the hurt. Followed by the anger. “She told me that, but I didn’t believe her. I just figured after all the business we’ve done together that you owed me a personal explanation.”
“Well, I don’t,” Delbert snapped. “I don’t care where you dip your wick as long as it doesn’t come back on me.”
Logan had to get his jaw unclenched to speak. “How would that come back on you? And please don’t use any other reference about wick-dipping.”
“Huh?” He sounded surprised that an outdated comment like that would offend Logan. “All right. Then what should I call her—your convicted felon of a lover?”
“You could just call her Reese since that’s her name.”
Delbert mumbled something that Logan was glad he didn’t catch. “I don’t plan on calling her anything because there’ll be no more business between us unless you dump her. The woman… Reese…is a con artist, and I don’t want to risk her getting hold of my bank account number and shit like that.”
“Her mother’s a con artist, not Reese,” Logan corrected, “and her mother is no doubt the one who told you these lies.”
“Lies aren’t lies if there’s proof to back them up,” Delbert snapped.
Blame It on the Cowboy Page 21