by Sylvie Kurtz
Logan got up and came back with a serving of kibbles for Max. She took one sniff and crowded Jamie once more, watching every mouthful in hope some would fall her way.
As they ate, Logan seemed to relax a bit. He listened to the conversation Jamie and she kept alive. He distractedly petted the dog once and gently shooed her away from his plate a few times. And if she didn't know better, she might have thought he was trying to stretch out the evening with his slow, measured bites.
"Coffee?" Logan asked, after their meal.
There was that silent plea again, not in his voice so much as in his eyes. Yet she was willing to bet that if she asked him what he truly wanted, he would have no answer. Or maybe she was just projecting her own disjointed feelings onto him. She didn't want the evening to end and didn't quite know how to rationalize the longing.
"No, thanks. I won't be able to sleep if I have coffee this late. Jamie, stop running around. Why don't you put these dishes in the garbage?"
Jamie stopped sliding after a panting Max and did as he was asked with minimum grumbling. She put what little was left of the casserole in the fridge. It really wasn't enough for a lunch unless she could convince him to make a sandwich to go along with it, or some soup. It's not your problem, Beth. She shut the fridge door firmly, then didn't quite know what to do. So she wiped the tablecloth clean, then bent to pick it up and refold it.
"Let me help you." He took one end and led the folding operation. "What's with you and food, anyway?"
"What do you mean?" She was much too aware of the piercing quality of his gaze tonight. What was he seeing? Was it pleasing? Come on, Beth, what does it matter? It's not like you're interested or anything.
"Your life seems to revolve around feeding people."
She shrugged. "Old habit."
"Tell me about it."
The genuine interest in his eyes made her throat feel parched.
"There's not much to the story. My father was Rockville's general practitioner for years. My mother was his nurse. They always got home late. I hated eating dinner right before going to bed. So, sometime during seventh grade, I got into the habit of making dinner for my parents."
"They were too busy for their child?"
She frowned at the pointedness of the question. "No, they loved me, and I knew they loved me. And we did spend a lot of time together."
"But..."
He walked his end of the cloth to hers. Her body seemed to hum at his closeness. His gaze was intent, concerned, as if she were still a child in danger of neglect. What had happened to him? The question went round and round in her mind, yet she couldn't bring herself to ask it out loud for fear of shattering the small bit of progress she'd made with him.
"But, I was a bit lonely all alone after school, and cooking made me feel useful and needed and creative. I was good at it and I enjoyed it."
"Experimenting even then?"
She thought she saw the beginnings of a grin quirk one end of his mouth, and she her heart warmed. Having him smile as genuinely as he had in the picture she'd seen of him and his daughter didn't seem quite as daunting a task now.
"Even then," she agreed, smiling widely. She'd often experimented with recipes and come up with delicious variations. That eventually led to the dream of owning her own gourmet catering business. But she'd had to put her plans on hold after Jim's death. Soon, she'd have enough saved to try to make a go of it.
"Where are your parents now?" he asked, taking the cloth from her hands. Their fingers touched, zinging something needful inside her. She tried to shove her hands in the pockets of her corduroy pants, but the bandage made the task awkward, so she hooked her thumbs in the belt loops.
She shrugged. Searching for something else she could do, she spotted the almost empty water bottle and reached for it. She turned the cap one way, then the other, and finally took the last gulp of water. "They died. A long time ago. On a Doctors Without Borders mission. Plane crash."
"I'm sorry."
"What about you?"
Logan was quiet while he put the cloth back into the packing carton. Would he ever trust her—anyone?—enough to open up?
"I never knew my father," he said as if he were chewing gravel. "My mother died a long time ago, too."
Had he ever known any kind of happiness? Then she recalled the picture of him and his daughter at the skating rink. Yes, he'd loved that child, and she's brought him a great measure of happiness.
A detail. It wasn't much, but he had shared something. It was a start. She tossed the empty bottle in the garbage bag. Now she had nothing to do again and felt on edge. Jamie and Max slid up and down the hallway. "Jamie stop running and come back in here." She turned to Logan. "We should get going. Jamie needs a bath tonight."
She was reaching for her coat when a crash banged in the hallway. Jamie cried out. There was a sickening second of silence, then loud, angry sobs.
Before she could react, a white-faced Logan raced into the hallway. Jamie was in a tumble of dog and drop cloth.
"Don't move!" Logan ordered. He rushed at the boy, crouching beside him.
Jamie tried to untangle himself from the drop cloth.
Logan pushed him down again. "Don't move!"
Max cowered in the corner, head bent, tail between her legs.
Logan's movements were frantic as he patted her son up and down. From Jamie's cries, Beth knew he wasn't badly hurt, and Logan's overreaction seemed out of place.
"Where does it hurt?" Logan demanded.
"Mo-om!"
Logan held Jamie's face between his hands. "Where does it hurt, Jamie?"
"Logan?"
"Blood." His hand shook as he showed her the evidence—a smear on one finger. "Call 911."
"Mo-om." Jamie's voice trembled as he looked at her. She reached for him and he climbed into her lap, fear now mingling with his tears. She held him and rocked him.
"He's hurt. The boy's hurt." Logan's voice tore at her with its pained gruffness. The haunted look in his eyes stabbed her with its fierceness. In the starkness of the bright hall light, his features were gaunt, carved with unwarranted guilt and despair.
"No, Logan, look," she said keeping her voice soothing, understanding that Logan needed reassuring as much as Jamie. "He's fine. Jamie's fine. He just split his lip when he fell." She looked down at her son. "Tell Mr. Ward what happened, Jamie."
Jamie sniffed and swiped at his cut lip. "Me and Max were seeing how fast we could slide on the floor, and Max, she cut across, and I tripped over her and bit my lip."
"Does it hurt anywhere else?" she asked.
He shook his head.
She looked up at Logan once more. "He's fine, Logan. He's not hurt."
Logan nodded and got up in slow motion, tension still strung tight in each of his movements. "Go. Now."
She set her son on his feet. "Go get your coat, Jamie."
"But, Mom, I'm not finished playing with Max."
"Max will be here another day."
"Mo-om." He was whining now.
"Now, Jamie."
Kicking at the drop cloth, he headed toward the kitchen.
She got up and reached to touch Logan's shoulder. "What are you running away from?"
As if even a simple touch was more than he could bear, he shrugged her hand away. "Nothing. I'm sorry about Jamie getting hurt."
"He's fine."
"He could have been seriously hurt."
She tried to make light of a situation that had taken much too much importance in Logan's eyes. "Don't worry about it. He's a magnet for trouble."
"How can you be so casual about this?" He frowned, his whole face contorted with the strong emotions he was trying so hard to hold in.
"Because he's a six-year-old boy, and six-year-old boys get bruises and scratches all the time. It's part of growing up."
"Of course," he said, but not a trace of life remained in his voice.
A lump formed in her throat. Jamie's fall had wiped out whatever progress she'd
made over the meal. "I'm the one who's sorry. I never meant to add to your burden."
Jamie reappeared, his coat half on, half off. His boots clomped on the hardwood floor. "Can I come play with Max tomorrow?"
Without a second's hesitation, Logan said, "No."
She zipped Jamie's coat. "Tomorrow's our library day, remember?"
"But, Mo-om."
"One more word out of you and you won't get to see Max for a good long time."
He opened his mouth, then shut it. With careful shepherding, she finally got herself and Jamie out the door and Max to stay inside.
"It's not your fault," she said, reaching for the mittens in her coat pocket.
With the light at his back, Logan's body was a silhouette, hard as rock and unyielding. She could see nothing of his face but the exaggerated play of sharp light and dark shadow on his cheek as his jaw tightened. The wind whipped at her hair, burrowed in the loosened collar of her coat. She shivered.
As she turned away, her mind buzzed with questions, her body bubbled with a host of strange feelings. If she let him, he would bury himself deeper in his guilt and sorrow.
Jamie kicked at the snow. "Why can't I play with Max?"
"Because it's late." She reached for her son and hugged him close. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw Logan still looking out at them. After them, she corrected herself. If a dragon were to suddenly materialize from the ether between his door and hers, she had no doubt he would leap into battle to protect them.
A lazy smile curled her lips, and a renewed sense of security almost banished her tension. He wanted her to give up on him—that had been clear from his curt dismissal. But how could she, when dragon-slaying knights were in such short supply these days?
* * *
Logan watched Beth go, until her front door closed behind her and the lights went on one by one in her house. He hadn't asked her to come over, hadn't asked her to feed him. As a matter of fact, he'd done everything he could to discourage her unwanted attention. But she didn't seem to understand the meaning of no.
So how could it be his fault her kid got hurt?
Because he'd gone and asked her to stay for dinner.
He should have known better, should have known nothing good would come of it.
To make matters worse, he'd allowed one impulse to lead to another. He should never have touched her, never have allowed her female desires to awaken his own dormant male needs. Now they plagued him like sirens calling to a lost sailor.
He shut the door, stopping shy of a slam. Just as well. He'd wanted quiet. He'd wanted solitude. Now he would have them both. He wouldn't have to endure her perpetual cheerfulness, her eye-hurting brightness, her emotion-provoking presence. He could work and purge and forget in the isolation he craved.
So why was anger eating him alive?
He stepped into the kitchen and saw Beth's smile, heard her laughter, felt her touch and cursed a blue streak. Swiveling on his heels, a shaking Max at his heels, he headed for the cellar. There he set a cupboard door on a saw horse, donned a mask and fitted the sander with paper—all under Max's watchful gaze as she sat on one step with her front paws on another. The machine's noise couldn't quite cover the stampede of his thoughts, but it did dull them to a mindless buzz. He worked until he could no longer feel his hands, then stumbled into bed with his dusty clothes still on.
The nightmares came in full vivid colors. Samantha, Jamie, dead and dying. Julia, Beth, tears of accusation wet in their eyes. The vignettes twisted one into the other, black, purple and red. Heat. Longing. Beth. He wrapped himself around her, aroused and ravenous, feeding on her, in her, until he awoke, sheets tangled around his legs, sweaty, arms empty and aching.
He swiped a hand across his face and padded to the shower where the icy water did nothing to dispel his desire. The coffee he brewed tasted bitter and jangled his already-raw nerves. He looked at the clock on the stove, then reached for his cell phone.
* * *
The house phone rang. No, no, no. Not this morning. I don't have time, Beth thought as she rushed to put Jamie's lunch together. She hadn't slept well last night, tossing and turning, worrying about that grouchy neighbor of hers. She should leave him alone, logic told her, let him stew in his own misery. But she couldn't get the image of his once-wonderful smile out of her mind. He didn't belong to the world of the dead any more than she had five years ago. Launching the tuna sandwich into a bag with one hand, she reached for the phone with the other.
"Hello."
"Thursday."
She didn't need to ask who was on the other end. She knew only one person so terse, only one person whose voice made her heart leap so treacherously. Logan. "Thursday?"
"Your stitches need to come out."
Was this a simple reminder or something else? "I was going to stop by the clinic after work."
"I'll drive you."
Out of guilt for what had happened to Jamie? "That's not necessary."
"Your hands might be a little sore after."
"I'm sure I'll be fine."
There was a long pause.
"I need to go into town, anyway."
And suddenly she realized why Logan was being so insistent. He needed to know that his assessment of her healing was correct, that he had caused no permanent harm. Someone he'd once loved had been hurt, he'd felt responsible and was paying penance even now. That was why he'd sought hibernation. If he saw no one, then he could not be responsible for anyone's pain. After the incident with Jamie last night, she was as certain of that as she was that Logan's remorse was undeserved.
Last night's indoor picnic might have backfired, but now that she understood why, she would be better prepared in the future. His errands and his need to drive her to the clinic were the perfect distractions to get him out of his self-imposed hibernation and into the world of the living.
At this point she had to grasp on to anything she could if she was going to make him smile by Christmas.
"Okay, then. I accept."
* * *
If he thought Beth would never darken his doorstep again after he'd ordered her to leave, Logan had been sorely mistaken. Like a bad case of food poisoning, she'd shown up again that afternoon, casserole in hand, son tagging along. She must have had a talk with Jamie because he behaved more like a boy in a church than a rambunctious six-year-old. Polite, well-behaved, and frankly obnoxious with his formal address and reserved play with Max.
Before he knew it, Logan was dragging a card table and four folding chairs Beth had insisted she was going to give to Goodwill from her cellar to his kitchen. Of course, it couldn't stay bare because of the small stain in one corner, so she'd also talked him into covering it with the red-and-white tablecloth and into unearthing his stainless utensils and stoneware place settings. She'd added a bouquet of yellow-and-purple silk pansies in a white glass vase to the center, even after he'd told her they'd just get covered with dust.
"Dust wipes clean," she'd said and beamed at the result of her effort.
But they hadn't stayed for dinner, and he hadn't asked, and instead of enjoying a review of Beth's day, he'd stared at Max's inane grin across the table while eating his dinner. Max had been a little short on conversation.
An evening of sanding cupboard frames hadn't eased the knot of restlessness knitting into each one of his muscles, nor had a fitful night of sleep. Not when he woke up hungry for Beth—her taste and her touch and the sound of her voice.
On Wednesday Beth sorted the screws and hinges on his counter into empty coffee cans she'd brought along while she rambled on about the town's trouble with the ruined Christmas decorations. After the countertops were cleared, she fussed at him while he hefted the sink out of its hole and into the garage. She'd almost made him drop the thing with all of her fluttering. Then she'd mentioned an emergency meeting set up by the Beautification Committee and had made an early exit, leaving him mildly irritated. Okay, so the irritation had been slightly more than mild. He'd been do
wnright bothered. Bothered enough to finish the priming coat on the cupboard frames and on the walls.
After he'd taken her to have her stitches removed on Thursday, she'd resolutely voted against his driving her home before she helped him pick out tile. First they'd had to stop at the coffee shop along the common, to talk about his design plan for the kitchen. She couldn't make an uninformed decision, she'd said. Warm cup of French vanilla coffee in hand, she'd somehow wormed out of him his plans to paint the cupboards and the walls white, to bleach the floor's maple boards, to tile the counter and backsplash in white with a blue accent border.
He frowned as he picked up a sunny-yellow tile from the box. How in the hell had he ended up with that when he'd gone in with a blue-and-white design in mind? It was the incessant chatter, he decided. She'd confused him until he'd done as she wanted just to shut her up.
But as he added a placer between the two tiles on the counter, he had to admit that the soft yellow did give the space warmth. And though it was only noon, he was already wondering what she would bring over for dinner tonight and how he could talk her into staying for a while.
Chapter 8
Beth and Eve were sharing a Saturday-morning coffee and pastry at the Rockville Diner before yet another meeting of the Beautification Committee. At this rate the Christmas decorations would never go up this year. Beth had purposely chosen the last booth so the kitchen noises would help mask their conversation. She'd waited patiently, too, for Eve to broach the subject of Logan, but Eve seemed immune to Beth's subtle prodding and talked of everything but Logan. Finally Beth caved in and tried the direct approach, knowing she'd never hear the end of Eve's victory.
"Okay, you have chocolate and coffee. Now spill."
Eve pretended to frown and tried to hide her smile with a sip of coffee. "I haven't the foggiest idea what you mean."
"You're not a very good actress."
Eve broke a piece of her giant chocolate-chocolate-chunk muffin and grinned more widely.
Bacon and hash-browns sizzled on the diner's grill behind them. Coffee perked. Dishes clanked. Voices droned around them, spiked now and then with a barked order to or from the cook. Gum-soled shoes squeaked by them as waitresses dressed in jeans and green aprons rushed back and forth. The bell over the door tinkled like a bird's hello with each patron's entrance or exit.