That scenario had loomed in the back of her mind from the moment he’d left this morning. But every time it had crept to the forefront, Meg had chased it away with the thought of being where she was at that moment—here, alone with him. And because she hadn’t wanted to think about anything but being here alone with him, she hadn’t.
“It isn’t as if the sneaking-around element hasn’t occurred to me,” Meg admitted even as she was breathing in the clean scent of him and reveling in the fact that she was finally in his arms again, where she’d wanted to be every minute of today. “You’re right, that isn’t a good thing,” she conceded, “I just didn’t want to think about it…”
“Well, I did think about it and I came to some realizations—first and foremost that that is not how I want things to be. That I want what we have out in the open, for anybody and everybody to see.”
“So anybody and everybody can gossip about how we’re sleeping together?”
“I don’t want us to just be sleeping together, Meg,” he announced.
That seemed like what he’d been leading up to but still Meg was so surprised that she didn’t know what to say.
“I thought this through,” he continued. “I thought about how I feel about you, how I feel when I’m with you, how I hate every minute that I’m not with you because it’s like a part of me is missing—that’s how I felt the whole damn time I was away last week. I thought about how I have this overwhelming sense that you and I are like two pieces of some grand-design puzzle that have finally come together. That isn’t something we should have to do in any way that needs hiding. And when I put Tia into the mix, I realized that what I want is the whole package with you—the whole family package—”
“Oh, slow down!” Meg said, not confused anymore, but definitely alarmed.
Logan’s arms tightened around her. “That’s just it—I don’t want to slow down. I don’t see a reason to—”
“There are a whole lot of reasons to. Reasons why neither of us can make a decision like this right now—”
“I know it’s quick—”
“It isn’t only that it’s quick,” Meg insisted. “Decisions made in times of upheaval can be desperate attempts to regain control and not the right decisions at all.”
“I’m not in upheaval.”
“In the last few years your whole life has changed,” Meg said, refuting that. “You became a father at a time when your marriage was crumbling, you got a divorce and ended up a single parent, you’re in the process of moving your life and your business cross-country, and now you’ve just found out your ex-wife is getting married—”
“Desperation is not what I’m feeling,” he said firmly and with conviction. “And this isn’t some reaction to Helene getting married again—I couldn’t care less about that, she’s history for me. History I’m glad to have behind me.”
“But that kind of thing can still throw you—”
“Maybe it can, but it hasn’t. It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you and I.”
“Everything has an effect, Logan.”
“Well, the effect this time is that my marriage to Helene and my divorce from her let me know how right things are between you and I. And not only by comparison, but also because when I started to think about us having a future together I didn’t freak out and think I’d rather be shot in the foot than go through anything like that again. I know you’re different, I know what I feel for you is different, I know what we have is different.”
He pulled her closer to him when he said that. But in the midst of shaking her head in denial Meg broke his hold and spun away from him to put some distance between them instead, facing him again only when she was several feet away where she hoped she could think more clearly.
“It may only seem right because it feels better than the rejection and disillusionment and whatever else you’ve been feeling,” she said then. “The same as this feels so much better to me than all the anxiety and fear and discontent I was feeling before. But that doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“Jeez, don’t do the psychologist thing,” he said, sounding impatient. “I’m not a complicated person, Meg. I’m just an everyday guy who knows who and what he is. Who knows what he’s feeling. And none of it needs to be analyzed or scrutinized for what it’s masking. I’m just feeling what I’m feeling.”
“I have to do the psychologist thing—”
“Because this freaks you out and when you get nervous you use it as armor. But don’t. Not this time. This time just go with what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want!” Meg said with an edge of panic to her own tone. “That’s why I came back to Northbridge in the first place—to sort things out. That’s one of the reasons I can’t make this kind of decision.”
“Sure you can,” he coaxed. “Just go with your instincts—think about last night, think about this morning when you kept pulling me back to bed, think about a couple of hours ago when we were with Tia and how it is every time the three of us are together—you can’t tell me that you aren’t already invested in us both. That it isn’t so great you just want it to go on, too.”
“It is great…” Meg said, wavering because what he said was true. More than he knew.
“You can argue down anything, Meg,” Logan went on. “And yeah, what I’m proposing is built for it. But don’t do it. Don’t put the weight on the reasons why not, put the weight on what you feel, on what we have here.”
An unfamiliar, foreign part of Meg urged her to just say okay. After all, more than once last night she’d pictured herself spending the rest of her life with this man. She’d wished for it.
But she’d also known that despite its appeal, the idea of actually trying to make that fantasy into reality at this point shouldn’t even be entertained.
And even if she accepted Logan’s claim that he knew himself and his feelings enough to trust that he could make a decision like this now, what Meg knew about herself was that at a time when she was questioning so many other things, making a decision of this magnitude was not wise. It was something she just couldn’t do.
So she summoned every portion of her that was anything like her grandfather, stood straight and stiff, and said, “I can’t do it, Logan. I just can’t.”
“You can do anything, Meg,” he said as if he were encouraging her to take a dive off the high board. “There isn’t a rule book here—”
“Don’t use what I told you about Randy against me!”
“You said yourself that he was right, that you had played things too much by the book with him, that you disconnected from your own emotions. I’m just saying don’t do that now, with us.”
She hadn’t thought she’d regret that he listened so intently to what she said but at that moment she did.
Logan continued, his voice lower. “You did this disconnecting thing with that other guy because you weren’t really in that relationship with him wholeheartedly, because deep down you didn’t have the kind of feelings for him that you should have had in order to marry him. Is that what you’re telling me now? About me? About what we have together?”
“No!” she said without having to think about it. “I’m just telling you that we can’t ignore—”
“We can ignore anything we want to ignore. There’s nothing here but you and me and what we want and what we don’t want. That’s it. That’s all there is. So either you want a future with me, or you don’t.”
“It isn’t just black and white, Logan!”
“It is if you let it be.”
“I can’t let it be.”
“You can if you let go of the rest, Meg. That’s what you came here to do—to let go, to loosen up. So do it.”
But everything she knew screamed at that unfamiliar impulsive portion of her that was tempted, screamed that to make a life-altering decision on a whim was just asking for trouble. Screamed that there was a child involved. A child who could get caught up in this. Who could get hurt…
“I can
’t let go of the rest because I know there’s validity to it. And I also know that with Tia involved…” She shook her head. “There’s all the more reason not to just let ourselves get carried away.”
“Too late for that!” Logan nearly shouted.
But Meg merely shook her head again.
Logan sighed, jammed his hands into his rear pockets and slung his weight to jut out one hip. “So what do we do? This?” he demanded with a nod to the space around them. “Play we-just-work-together all day and then sneak up here for the nights?”
She knew that would never work. She’d known it before, which was why she’d avoided thinking about it every time it had weaseled its way into her head today. But now that he’d forced her to confront it, she had to.
“That isn’t what you want to do and it isn’t what I want to do, either,” Meg nearly whispered.
But she also knew that there was no way she was going to be able to rewind the clock and take this back to a time when she could maintain even a semblance of control with him. If she stayed, this was where they would end up. If she even found somewhere else to live and just came out to be Tia’s nanny, this would still be where she and Logan would end up because she wanted him too much for this not to be where they ended up…
“I think I just have to leave, Logan,” she nearly whispered. “I’m sorry. I hate that you’ll be left hanging when it comes to Tia—”
“Then don’t do it,” he said as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying, as if everything in him wanted not to.
But Meg merely shook her head again and continued with what she’d been about to say. “I’ll pack up tonight and talk to Tia in the morning so she’ll have some closure before I go.”
Logan’s pale blue eyes bored into her as he took a turn shaking his head. But the longer he went on looking at her, the more anger appeared in his handsome face.
Then, as if he couldn’t trust himself to say another word, he stormed out of the apartment.
And even though Meg was convinced that she’d made the choice she needed to make, the emptiness that flooded her once he was gone left her sorrier than she’d ever been in her life that she’d had to make it.
Chapter Twelve
By eight o’clock the next morning Meg’s things were stacked beside the apartment door waiting for her to load them into her car.
She’d showered, pulled her hair into a geyserlike ponytail at her crown, and applied some makeup to conceal what a miserable night she’d spent packing and crying. She wore jeans and a plain gray hoodie that zipped up the front.
But now the time had come for her to take her final walk across the yard to the main house to say goodbye to Tia.
And as much as she wanted to get it over with, somehow she couldn’t force her feet to move.
Instead she was standing at the window that allowed her to look in that direction, wondering how she was going to get through this.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t said goodbye to any number of kids—some she’d done lengthy work with and become very attached to. But no matter how difficult it had been, she’d always managed to buck up and do it.
And yet with Tia, she just couldn’t make herself.
Of course she hadn’t been Tia’s therapist, she’d been her nanny. And while she was always careful not to blur the line between therapist and parent, she knew she’d allowed that to happen to the line between being the nanny and being the mom.
Now she was paying the price for that.
And what if Tia did, too?
She hated that thought. Tia already had a mother who had abandoned her, who couldn’t even visit her without being cold and critical. The last—the very last—thing Meg wanted was to be the second person in the three-year-old’s life to leave her behind.
But that was what she’d opted to do and she knew she had to do it.
She just didn’t want to. She didn’t want to leave Tia. She most certainly didn’t want to leave Logan…
Tears threatened again but Meg blinked them away. It wasn’t as if they helped. This whole thing was tearing her apart and nothing made that any better.
Nothing except the thought of not following through with it.
Just go with what you want this time…
Logan’s words kept repeating themselves in her mind, haunting her, tempting her.
But she had reasons not to go with what she wanted. Legitimate reasons. It was just that those reasons—strong as they were—weren’t strong enough to actually put her into motion. And as a result she was stuck right where she was.
She was stuck to that spot at the window. Not doing what she knew she should be doing. Wondering how it was possible for her heart to be in such total disagreement with her head…
As she went on staring at the back of Logan’s house, Tia opened the screen door, bounding out onto the deck in shorts, a flowered T-shirt and stockinged feet, her blond curls bouncing as if they were on springs. Harry and Max were fast on her heels and the sight of the three-year-old and her puppies almost made Meg cry again.
Did he tell you I’m leaving?
Tia seemed as carefree as ever and Meg was glad to see that. One way or another, the child wasn’t upset.
Glad and also slightly hurt to think that Logan might have told Tia and that Tia cared as little as she cared when her neglectful mother left her behind.
But maybe Logan hadn’t told her…
As Meg watched, Tia took the dogs’ hairbrush out of a basket that held some of the puppies’ things and began to attempt to groom the rambunctious animals. It was comical to see the dogs outwitting the three-year-old, and Meg couldn’t help smiling even as it brought more tears to her eyes. But again she refused to let them fall.
Then Logan came out onto the deck, too.
And there was no stopping the hot, salty grief from trailing down her cheeks.
How could she cry and yearn for him all at once? Or was she crying because she was yearning for him so much and had denied herself?
She was afraid to answer that, instead putting her willpower into staunching the flow before she used a tissue she took from a nearby counter to dab at her face and eyes. All while keeping Logan in view.
He was wearing torn jeans and a blue chambray shirt that he often wore to work. The shirttails were untucked; the sleeves were rolled to his elbows. He was carrying a pair of Tia’s tennis shoes that he took with him when he went to sit on the edge of the deck.
Wearily? Or was she misinterpreting the way he sort of deflated there? Meg wasn’t sure. Although she did know that there had been lights on in his house all night long so she doubted he’d had any more sleep than she had.
But tired or not, a single dad still had duties and he began to use a stick to scrape dried mud off the bottom of the tennis shoes. All the while Tia went on futilely attempting to brush the dogs behind him.
And Meg thought: There they are, and here I am…
Alone with her certainty that she was right. That she knew best. That Logan was wrong…
He hadn’t really been wrong, though, she had to admit.
He’d been right about how terrific the two of them were together. So terrific that Meg had begun to feel as if being with him was the only time she was totally alive. So terrific that every minute she wasn’t with him she’d felt as if she were swimming against the tide to get to him again. So terrific that his every touch had energized her and merely the sight of him stirred a craving for him strong enough to almost make her groan even now.
And he’d been right about other things, too.
He’d been right about how terrific things were whenever they were both with Tia. How much fun it had been to take care of the little girl in tandem. How great it had been to share the joy of her as if she belonged to them both. They’d even been in sync when it came to disciplining and reprimanding her, when it came to parenting styles.
A voice inside of Meg was screaming for her to run to them, to pick up where she and Logan had left off l
ast night before those stupid legitimate reasons of hers had ruined everything…
So he was right but she’d let her reasons ruin things? Was that really what she’d done? she asked herself. Had she overruled him as if she knew more than he did?
Maybe. But she thought her reasons were legitimate.
Things with Logan had happened fast.
She was just coming out of a rough time in her life.
And Logan was just coming out of a rough time in his and making a lot of changes in response.
Those were the facts and they worried her.
Just then Tia gave up trying to brush the puppies, attacked her father from behind with a bear hug around his neck, and a laughing Logan flipped her over his head to lay her across his lap and tickle her.
And the way Meg felt just watching them was enough to make all of her reasons—legitimate or otherwise—drift away like smoke. Leaving her with only her feelings bringing her to a decision.
Yoo-hoo, Logan, could you come up here a minute? she considered calling to him.
But she couldn’t just do that, either.
So how was she going to get him up there?
Hadley?
Maybe she could call Hadley.
And hope that Hadley hadn’t been up all night listening to Logan rehash every detail of what had happened, that Hadley hadn’t spent the night consoling her brother and thinking the worst of her…
But it was the only thing Meg could think to do.
So she picked up her cell phone and dialed the other woman’s number, willing Hadley not to think too badly of her if Hadley did know what she’d done…
Meg wasn’t sure how long it might be before Logan came to the apartment after her phone call to his sister. With that uncertainty, she ignored the urge to try to find a change of clothes and merely took her hair down from its ponytail to brush it, and refined the makeup she’d applied earlier—camouflaging the damage done by her last bout of tears when she’d first seen Logan through the window.
Still, when the knock came on the apartment door half an hour later, she wished she was wearing something sexy and alluring that would aid her cause. As it was, the best she could do was lower the zipper on the hoodie by a few inches, and even then she was careful not to show cleavage because she didn’t want to be too obvious or risk any more of her pride than she already was.
Marrying the Northbridge Nanny Page 16