by Dana Corbit
“Parked it on the street. I, uh, didn’t expect to see you here tonight. Why are you here?”
“You know me, the workaholic.” Caroline shifted. She didn’t want to admit she didn’t have anything better to do on a Saturday night. “The only way you can keep me out of the workplace is to bar the windows and doors.” She cleared her throat. “Or downsize my job.”
“Tried to do that here. It didn’t work out so well.”
He kept messing with what appeared to be a stack of magazines until he had them in a pile at the edge of the desk, but when he turned to face her, the copies on top of the stack slid to the floor.
Caroline took a few steps forward and bent to stare down at the magazine covers. Where she might have expected National Geographic or The Outdoorsman, she was surprised to see American Cake Decorating and Indiana Bride.
With a frustrated breath, Logan bent to grab the magazines, stacking them back on the desk with a whole collection of similar titles.
“Reading up for your stint as the best man?”
Logan turned back to her, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s the best you’ve got?”
“Well, I was going to ask you about your take on the cathedral-length-train-versus-chapel-length controversy. Or maybe get your opinion on Miss Manners’s reception seating chart for step-siblings.”
Logan shot his hands into the air as if she held him at gunpoint. “Stop. Stop. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Come on,” Caroline said, chuckling. “I haven’t even gotten to the nosegays or boutonnieres yet.”
“Nose whats?”
She waved away his question. “Never mind. Okay, I’ll bite. What are you doing in your mother’s office on a Saturday night, surrounded by bridal and cake magazines? Giving up being Ranger Logan in favor of a new career as Logan the wedding planner?”
“I’ll pass.” He glanced at the desk and shrugged. “Since I’m working here, I figured I should learn something about the wedding business.”
“I think that’s a great idea.”
He tilted his head, his gaze narrowing.
“I’m serious,” she told him. “Your mom will be proud, too, when she finds out all you’ve done for her business.”
Now didn’t seem like time to tell him she suspected that Mrs. Warren would never return to the shop. Somehow she doubted the time would ever be right.
“Thanks,” he said finally.
She noticed that he shifted more uncomfortably because of her praise than he ever had from one of her wisecracks.
“I probably would have known a lot more about the wedding business before if I’d been paying attention.” He brushed his hand over the slick cover of one of the magazines. “Mom made the cakes, and Matthew planned all the wedding music at our church. I could have gleaned a few things from them.”
“So, you’re like everyone else. You learn on a need-to-know basis.”
“I guess. Well, do you want to look at these with me?” As he waited for her answer, he gathered the magazines and motioned with a turn of his head for her to come with him.
“Why are we going out here?” she asked as she followed him through the kitchen and out into the dining area.
“A couple of reasons. First, don’t you agree the light is better out here?”
Caroline lifted her head to stare at the series of hanging lamps that offered little more than ambience. A lot of light wasn’t necessary, though, because daylight usually poured in from the windows, and even now glare from the streetlamps filled the room.
“I also get claustrophobic in that office,” he said. “It’s too cramped in there.”
“Yeah, it is.” You have no idea. But then every room seemed uncomfortably close when she and Logan were in it together. She decided not to share that bit of information.
He used his thumb to indicate the front of the shop. “But mostly, I came out here because I ordered a pizza, and the guy prefers to deliver to the front door after dark.”
“You often order here in the evenings?” It was a sneaky way of asking how often he’d been working there at night, but she couldn’t help being curious. Not about his overtime work, either. If he was at the bakery, he couldn’t have been on all those dates she’d imagined.
“Sometimes.” He was watching the street, waiting for the driver, but he glanced back. “The people at The Pie know my phone voice now, so they ask if I want my regular.”
“What’s your regular?”
“Not deluxe the way you and Matthew like to order it. Just pepperoni and black olives.”
Caroline covered her eyes with her hand. “Oh, I’ll never forget that night when our moms tried to push Matthew and me together at The Pie. It was so embarrassing. Mom had this crazy idea Matthew and I were perfect for each other just because we liked the same stuff on our pizza.”
“Well, you did have an awful lot in common.” The side of his mouth lifted. “Same goals. Same books. Same—”
“But could you ever picture Matthew with anyone but Haley? Me especially. That would have been like marrying myself.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
She had been chuckling as she stared out the window, but Logan’s words and his reflection in the glass quieted her. When she would have expected him to be smiling, his jaw was flexed instead. By the time that she could turn to take a better look at him, the expression was gone. Still, she was sure she hadn’t mistaken it. He might not have been able to imagine her with his oldest brother, but something else was bothering him.
She was trying to come up with some pithy comment to lighten the mood when a car pulled to the curb, a lighted sign for The Pie on its roof.
Logan reached in the back pocket of his well-worn jeans and pulled out his wallet. “I was going to offer to share, but since it’s not deluxe, I guess I’ll get the whole pizza to myself.”
“I’m not picky,” she was quick to say. “I like all kinds of pizza.”
As soon as he nodded and crossed to open the door for the delivery guy, who carried both pizza and a two-liter bottle of soda, Caroline’s hands started to sweat. It was just pizza, she reminded herself. That and the chance to look at a bunch of bridal magazines. But the reality struck her that it was the closest thing she’d had to a date in years.
Logan set the pizza box on the floor beside him and patted his full stomach as Caroline finished her last slice of pizza and wiped her fingertips on a napkin.
“You didn’t say you were starved.” He was grinning as he said it. They’d split the pizza right down the middle, and she’d polished off her half almost as quickly as he had. She was such a refreshing change from the women he’d known—women who ate like birds as if that was supposed to impress him or something.
“You didn’t ask.”
“Next time I’ll ask.” He took a drink from one of the foam coffee cups they’d used for the soda and then reached for the magazines stacked on the floor next to him. “And maybe order two pizzas.”
Next time. That sounded a little too good to him. Not only was he having more fun on this nondate than he’d had on any date in years, now he also was trying to set up a second nondate. He never had second dates.
Logan was relieved he’d had the good sense to bring her out into the dining area instead of spending more time alone with her in that postage-sized office. In there, he could smell jasmine on her hair every time she moved, and she was close enough to touch no matter where they stood or sat. The dining area offered not only the space for him to keep a safer distance, but it provided a chaperone of sorts, as they were under the watchful eyes of the streetlamps and passing cars.
“You do that and I’ll never fit in my maid-of-honor dress unless Jenna picks a dome tent.”
He wanted to tell her she would still look amazing, even dressed in a tent, but that would have only made the dining area feel as small as the office had. As Caroline grabbed a cake magazine and started flipping through the pages, he couldn’t help watching her.
&
nbsp; “So how do you feel about the upcoming wedding?”
She shrugged, not looking up from the pages. “It’s great, I guess. I hope they’re not rushing the wedding just to give your mom something to look forward to.”
“You don’t think they’re doing that, do you?”
“Not really. But you know how my mother can get what she wants out of my sisters.”
“But not you,” he said with a laugh.
Leaning forward and resting her forearms on the table, she smiled. “No, not me.”
Her smile was so sweet and potent that a weaker guy would have been tempted to be drawn in by it. He had to glance out the window to refocus his thoughts and keep from becoming that guy.
“I wouldn’t worry about Jenna getting pushed into anything, either,” he told her. “Look at how long she made Dylan wait for her. Stubbornness is definitely a Scott family trait.”
“You’re right about that.”
“At least with them planning the wedding right now, you’ll be around to help Jenna with the details instead of just flying in from Chicago at the last minute.”
Logan wondered if it could be any more obvious that he was fishing for information about her job search. She would surely jump to the conclusion that he was counting down the days until she left. She would be wrong.
“For a while, I guess,” she said vaguely. But then she leaned forward as if to offer some solid information. “Are your bosses nagging you yet about getting back to your Ranger Logan job?”
He frowned, but only partially because she hadn’t given him a single clue about her plans. It was time he cleared up her confusion about him.
“You know that’s a nickname, don’t you?” Her confused expression didn’t surprise him. “The Ranger Logan thing. It’s just what my brothers call me.”
“I don’t understand. You don’t work at Boyton County State Park?”
“No, that part’s right. It’s the title that’s wrong. I’m a state park biologist—or wildlife specialist—for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.”
“But I thought—” She stopped herself, clearly at a loss for words.
“Matthew and Dylan just thought Ranger Logan sounded a lot more fun than Park Biologist Logan or Wildlife Specialist Logan. Those names don’t have the same ring to them.”
Caroline’s hand went to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to offend you.”
“Now don’t get me wrong.” He shook his head. “I believe that park ranger is an honorable job. It’s just not my job.”
She must have recovered her embarrassment because she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “So how does one end up working as a park biologist?”
“I started with a forestry degree from Purdue, and a minor in wildlife sciences.” He couldn’t help grinning as he warmed to the subject. “It’s great. Instead of sitting behind some desk all day, I get to be outside, overseeing food-plot plantings, conducting wildlife population surveys and managing the walleye stocking program.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“It’s the best.”
She shook her head. “And you think you know someone.”
Logan didn’t look back at her, but he could feel her gaze on him.
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
“Well, sure, but here is where I need to be right now. Mom needs me.”
“You gave up a lot to be here.”
Strange, she’d said things like this before, but for the first time, he believed she really meant her praise. He couldn’t help feeling flattered by it. “Not as much as my mother has always given up for me. Anyway, it’ll only be for a while.”
She nodded though her eyes were filled with doubt. He’d been having some doubts himself, but he couldn’t say them aloud. That would be admitting he was giving up, and there was no way he would give up on his mother’s recovery.
“In the meantime, I think it’s great how hard you’re working to learn your mother’s business.”
“I’ve definitely learned that violet is the new pink in bridesmaids’ dresses.” He flipped to an article with a headline saying that exact thing and turned the magazine around so she could take a look. “And that the majority of wedding cakes are made with fondant now though my mother still prefers to work with buttercream frosting.”
He pointed to the cover of a second magazine where a bridal shower cake was shaped to look like a blue purse, complete with dark blue stitching accents.
“Those are both very important wedding business tidbits.”
“I’m going to learn a lot more here.” Pulling out a community education brochure he’d stacked on the bottom of the pile of magazines, he pointed to a class description.
“Cake decorating? Are you thinking about taking that class?”
“Depends on whether you’ll make fun of me about it.”
Caroline folded her arms and frowned at him. “Are you telling me that you would let my opinion determine whether you take a class you’re interested in?”
He shook his head, grinning. “Never said that. I just figured if you’re going to make fun of me about it, I won’t tell you I’m already registered for that class. I’m not trying to become a decorator or anything. I just want to have a basic knowledge of the lingo and the skills.”
“Well, good, then.” She smiled back at him. “You would have disappointed me if you caved in so easily.”
“Wouldn’t want to do that.”
As soon as he said it, Logan realized how true it was. He didn’t want to disappoint Caroline any more than he wanted to let down his mother. That it mattered so much to him what she thought was just another signal that he needed to put some space between them. Otherwise, he might be tempted to care about more than her opinions. He couldn’t risk becoming involved with her unless he wanted to find out if he was really like his father and take a chance at hurting her. Ignorance was bliss, and he needed to embrace it.
For a few minutes, they sat across from each other, both flipping through magazine articles without the need for conversation. He glanced up when Caroline cleared her throat.
“I don’t know what you’ll think about this, but would you mind if I took that class with you?”
“Do you really want to?”
“I mean, I don’t even know if I can still register, but…”
Her words fell away as she looked to him, waiting for some kind of response. She probably thought he was hesitating because he was worried that she was looking for another way to run the show at the bakery. How could he tell her he was torn between wanting to stay as far away from her as possible and finding any excuse to be near her?
“It sounds like great idea to me,” he said finally.
A chill scrambled up his spine as he anticipated studying with her. He needed to make more excuses to spend time away from her, not near her.
Battling his attraction to her felt like swimming upstream in river rapids, and he was tired, but, worse than that, part of him was tempted to turn and swim with the current right to a woman who might not even want him.
Chapter Eight
“Are you sure they’re supposed to look like this?”
Caroline started at the sound of Logan’s voice, but she still managed to keep the rosette she’d been forming close to the same size as its sister flowers on the wax paper in front of her. It was tough enough concentrating with him sitting right next to her without him interrupting her all the time.
“What’s wrong now?”
She expected to see a splat of frosting on his sheet of wax paper like the mess Logan had made after he’d first tried out the pastry bag, but she what she found shocked her. Three perfect rows of rosettes lined one side of the paper and scallop edging with uniform peaks decorated the other side.
“All those wildlife surveys had to teach me something,” he said with a chuckle.
“It looks like they did, but obviously creating five-year business plans didn’t help me out at all.”
“Gives you a lot more respect for what Margie and Kamie do, doesn’t it?” he said.
She studied her work again, frowning. “That bad, huh? And I thought I was helping you out so much by coming to work in the bakery. You don’t need my help at all. Didn’t even in the beginning.”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have survived that first day without your help. But I’ll never admit I said that, even under torture, so don’t bother telling my brothers.”
“Thanks, and I’ll remember it’s our secret.” She grinned at both the image of Logan braving torture and his confession about needing her help. She appreciated knowing she was needed somewhere.
“Don’t worry. With a little practice, we’ll both get good at this.” He indicated the rosettes in front of him.
“If you get better, you’ll be on the cover of American Cake Decorating.”
“Now I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, though he seemed pleased by her praise.
Caroline went back to squeezing her pastry bag, carefully shifting her wrist so she could form the pink petals of the rosette. It was the best one she’d made so far. Maybe Logan was right about practice.
She was glad they’d signed up for this class together, even if she’d had to invite herself to join him. She enjoyed spending time with Logan. Was that a crime? And if she’d happened to join him a few times this week when he was working late at the bakery, that wasn’t some telling statement, either.
He was one of the few people their age she knew in Markston, besides their siblings, and she was tired of feeling like a fifth wheel with the two couples. With Logan, she just laughed and had fun. There was something to be said for that.
Glancing back over to him, she found him bent over his practice sheet, concentrating as he used his pastry bag to form another scalloped edge.