by Alexa Davis
Heidi glanced at me in surprise. “I’m not dying. I don’t hate you. And even if I did, you’d replace me in minutes. In fact, I’m not sure what we’re doing right now, at all.”
“Look. I need you to stop assuming I’m like your father. I need it, Heidi, and I know I’m asking you to move fast, and you aren’t sure of me. But I know what I want, and I can’t make myself slow down because I’ve already learned that we never have as much time as we think.” I breathed deep and stared through the windshield, unable to make myself meet the disappointed look in her eyes.
“Hey. Hey, now, Logan. Just relax, okay?” I heard the snick of her seatbelt and felt her warm hand on my arm. She moved her hand up to my hand and pried my fingers painfully from the stitched leather of the steering wheel. “Relax, Logan. I’m not going anywhere. For one thing, we’re miles from anywhere, and I wore the wrong shoes for a comfortable hike.”
I scoffed and placed my hands in my lap before looking at her. Her brow was creased with worry, and I felt another stab of guilt for distracting her from being mad at me. But it was drowned in a tidal wave of relief, and I let her reassure me when I should’ve been making her feel better.
“Look, I know you want to get back to your life and figure out if I have a place in it. But can you please come with me one more time and let me show you where I come from? Please?”
She sighed and nodded. “Just tell me this. Did she give you her number?”
“Possibly,” I replied, wishing that I’d actually looked at it so I could answer her questions properly.
“No games, Logan,” she huffed.
“No games, Heidi. I threw it away without looking. However, I’ve received notes from women before, and usually that was the way they went. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in getting to hang out with Honey one last time, I swear I would’ve noticed the boob job hovering in front of my face at least long enough to move away from it.” I sounded like a grumpy old man, even to myself, and Heidi’s laugh told me she agreed.
“Thanks for the honesty. I probably wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said I had made you blind to other women, but Honey distracting you? That I get.”
I sighed and stretched my fingers. “I’m not the rat you think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re a rat, Logan, or I would’ve told you to take a hike before I let you teach me all those cool sex moves,” she teased and ran her fingers through my hair. “My dad screwed me up pretty badly as a kid. Deacon Adams made me wish I was a lesbian in the tenth grade, and Eli… Eli was the worst. We bonded as friends, true friends. Then he turned on me because I was a girl, and he assumed that meant I owed him something. You’ve done none of those things.”
I touched her jaw with a finger. “And if I had, would you believe that love could pull us through?”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Hell, no, Logan. I am not that girl. No forgiveness from me for being a horrible sexist.”
I laughed and restarted the truck. “Let’s get Honey back together with his mother, then you and I can drive the hour and a half to my side of the woods. You’ll like it; there’s a lake and everything,” I wheedled.
She smirked. “Fine. But, tomorrow, I’m back home so I can get some sleep and get back on my schedule. I can feel myself getting fatter and softer every day that I spend with you.”
I pulled back onto the road and played with the radio. Heidi still didn’t want to talk, but now the silence was comfortable and my stomach slowly unraveled. The homestead was the place to cure all ills. I’d learned that long ago. Heidi needed Lago Colina Ranch. There was healing power in the land my family had protected and watched over for almost a hundred years that I couldn’t explain. No matter how many times I left, it always welcomed me home. Even when my family was less than excited to see me.
The park entrance was to the left before I knew it, and I heard a bump as Honey started to move around in his kennel.
“Wow, did you feel that?” I laughed as Honey kicked again.
“Do you think he smells his momma?” she asked, sitting straighter in her seat. “Oh, how amazing would it be to be the ones who did a study on that?”
“You just want an excuse to live in the wilderness and commune with nature instead of people,” I accused her.
“People are hard, Logan. There’s always something you have to guess, or pretend you care about, or don’t care about, or worry will be brought up a hundred years later.” She sighed.
“And then there’s surprise parties, romantic evenings, and sitting around watching old movies together,” I countered. “Neighbors who help you when your car breaks down, strangers who smile and tell you to have a good day.”
“Okay, okay,” she consented. “People can be really great. I just haven’t seen much of that. I liked Callie, though. And little Lily-Jade? Oh, my God. How cute can a baby be?”
I handed her my phone. “Text George for me. Tell him I’m bringing you up and ask him to send the baby.” She gasped, and I chuckled. “Or you could tell him it’s you and let him know you’ll be up at the ranch. But he won’t be expecting me to say anything nice to him.”
She typed quickly and sent the text, then handed me my phone back.
“Well, we’re here, and we have our next plans. How about we make Honey’s day and return him to his momma?”
We both jumped out of the truck. I motioned for Eli to come help when I saw him near the door. Soon, Honey was safely in the pen with his mom, and we watched as she sniffed him and started bathing him vigorously.
“Bambi doesn’t like the way you smell, Logan,” I teased, using the name the guys had given the doe while I was gone.
“Good thing I wasn’t trying to attract a doe with my masculine animal scent,” I drawled.
“Nice,” she snickered. “I’m coming up to meet your family after less than the socially acceptable month of dating. Just remember that when your animal charisma centers in on another bottle-blonde with silicone-augmented assets.”
“Remember, Heidi, there’s no requirement to remember the things that piss you off. In fact, I think a shitty memory is the best way to have a great relationship.” I took her hand and threaded my fingers through hers. “I think, if this is going to work out, you need to develop one hell of a memory loss issue.” I felt an itch between my shoulder blades and shot a look over my shoulder. Eli stood a few feet away, staring at our clasped hands.
I leaned over and kissed her on the temple, making sure he saw me. His face colored, and he stormed off. I kissed Heidi again and told her she had a few minutes alone with Honey, then I went to find her ex-best friend-zone friend.
I found Eli as he was climbing into his rig. The burly man glared at me and tried to drive past me, but I put a hand on his mirror. I didn’t know what to say to the guy whose face I wanted to punch in for making Heidi’s life miserable, but after he’d seen us holding hands, I was afraid he’d make it worse when she got back.
“I hear you and Heidi have a bit of history, Eli.” I didn’t mean to sound as angry as I did, but the moment Eli paled in reaction, I decided to go with it. “You betrayed her trust and her friendship. You were the most important person in her life, and you threw it away because all she was to you was a piece of ass. If I hear you did anything to make her regret staying when I asked her to leave, I will come for you.”
“Yeah, right. Heidi’s so innocent. That’s why she turned me down, and now she’s with you,” he sneered.
“No, she’s with me because I care about her. If you want to find out exactly how much, you go ahead and pull something. I will find out, and I will come after you.”
Without waiting for a response, I pivoted and strode away. I felt the sharp sting of gravel as he spun out pulling away, but I ignored it and kept walking back to Heidi. She hadn’t agreed to leave, and I didn’t know if I had it in me to stay. I wanted to spend real time with her before either of us declared our minds made up. Once I decided I had to go, and she decided she had
to stay, all my happy fantasies about making love to her on a mountain top would disappear like smoke.
But, tonight, she’d be an honorary Hargrave. It was neutral ground for us. Even though they were my family, they’d take her side. It wasn’t everything I hoped to offer her, but if she fell even a little in love with Lago Colina, I knew I could make her fall in love with me.
16. Heidi
I had butterflies in my stomach the entire ride to the far side of Austin, where Logan’s family had a ranch by the lake. He told me stories about the terrible pranks he and his brothers played on each other, like the time he nearly drowned as a kid because his brothers convinced him the Lady in the Lake from his King Arthur stories would save him if he swam out to the middle of the lake and dove to the bottom.
“I really wanted Excalibur, Heidi. I can’t even begin to tell you how stupid I was over those myths,” he’d confessed.
I smiled again, thinking about the longing in his voice. I half believed he still believed Excalibur was out there somewhere.
“Is that when you decided to become a world-traveler, Logan? When you realized that Excalibur wasn’t on American soil?”
“Oh, God. It probably was,” he laughed. “I loved to read, and when I first looked through the lens of a camera, I felt like I was making stories of my own for the first time.”
I tried to think about any time I’d felt like I was living my life as the author, instead of the princess caught in a tower, waiting to be saved. I couldn’t remember a single time I’d felt completely in charge of myself, until I found myself naked with Logan.
“I want to be on top,” I announced abruptly in the silence. Logan shot furtive glances at me out of the corner of his eye, and I smacked his arm. “Not right this second; I just want to be in charge.”
“I have never agreed with anything you’ve said more than I do this very second,” he agreed. The look in his eyes was becoming familiar to me. As his eyes grew dark and possessive, I felt my body respond to him with a burning heat I’d never thought possible.
I clenched my thighs together and stared out the window at the passing scenery. There was a fragrance in the air of gardenia and early summer. I rolled down the window and let the air push against my face. The trees that bent over the country road that led up the hill to the lakeside ranch rustled and spoke in leafy whispers. It was greener up in the hills than I thought it would be, likely from the shelter of the mountains around the land and the nearby lake and streams.
The road turned to gravel, and my heartbeat jumped. The trees on the west side of the dirt road were backlit by the late afternoon sun as it moved to the mountain tops. The dust rose from the ground, and I closed the window when I tasted the metallic dry film of it in my mouth.
“Will they like me? Your family, I mean,” I asked as he slowed the truck down a little more and wound his way around a couple of deeper potholes.
“Yes, they will. You’ll know that they really like you if they warn you away from me.” He snickered, and I rolled my eyes. I hadn’t had anyone take me home to meet their family. Not since elementary school, before the cancer treatments had completely taken over my life and I was first homeschooled.
I didn’t ask any more questions, just watched as a wide arch appeared ahead of in the road. Lago Colina it read in tall iron letters. Lake Hill. But why in Spanish? Hargrave wasn’t a Spanish name. But I glanced at Logan’s dark hair and well-tanned skin, and it made sense that it was in their blood somewhere.
He pulled his truck around the circular drive, passing the house completely and parking across the circle, near a four-doored garage. I could hear dogs barking and yapping before he opened the door, and I decided to wait for him to open my door so that the animals I could hear yipping and begging for his love might settle down before they got to me.
Then my door opened, and a sweet little creature with soft, curly hair and intelligent eyes put her paws on the footboard and stared up at me. Instantly, my heart was lost to her, and I gasped and froze, afraid I’d hurt her if I jumped down. Logan let out a bark of surprised laughter that got the whole pack of canines going again. He helped me down and picked up the puppy, slipping her into my arms.
“Callie says this little girl lost her home just days after her owner purchased her,” he said, rubbing the cotton candy fluff between her ears. “Poor lady had a heart attack or stroke or something.” He shrugged and dropped a kiss on her curly forehead before turning back toward the house.
“I shouldn’t be holding her,” I groused. “I’ll just fall in love, and the next thing I know, I’ll be potty training a… What kind of dog is this?” I asked, glancing down at the lamb-puppy.
“Bedlington terrier. With a ‘D.’ Cute, right?” Logan chuckled and took her from me so she wouldn’t get mobbed and bowled over by the bigger dogs.
“Yeah, she’s very sweet. I can’t do this though. I hope your sister-in-law didn’t bring her up here to send her home with me.” I couldn’t stop glancing over at the little curly-haired puff ball, who was watching me with serious eyes.
“I have every bit of faith that’s exactly what she has in mind for you, but as for bringing her tonight, well, she’s got a little separation anxiety; don’t you?” he asked in a much softer voice as he looked down at her.
In reply, she flicked her tiny pink tongue over the end of his nose.
“I don’t think I can do this.” I felt a swift stab of guilt as I blurted out the words, but Logan just kept talking to the puppy in his arms. “Did you hear me?” I hated the tremble of fear in my voice.
“I heard you. I thought I’d help you out by pretending I didn’t. You’re going to be fine. It’s just dinner, and you already know a couple of people here. You’ve braved so much in your life. Now wouldn’t be a good time to try cowardice on for size.” He nuzzled the puppy and handed her back to me. “Go on, take her. If you’re holding the dog, no one can hug you against your will.”
I felt my face get warm and knew I was beet red. I took the little girl out of his hands and marveled at how silky and wooly she was. She wriggled in my arms until she was upright and could rest her soft face on my shoulder and let out a little sigh. I felt my heart melting out of my ribcage and cursed Callie in my head. There was no way I was letting anyone else take my new baby home.
“You dumb dog,” I sniffled into the top of her head. When I looked up again, Logan and I were alone. I breathed in the cool evening air and finally got to take in the scenery. The farmhouse was big enough to be a mansion, but the brick and rough-hewn timber exterior was too warm and homey for me to call it that. The veranda ran the full length of the front and was deep enough to fit chairs and a big porch swing with what looked to be a covered twin mattress for its seat cushion.
There were sounds of laughter in the distance, but here in the driveway, the sounds of birds and crickets were louder. The sounds of nature around me were as familiar as when I was out in the woods all alone, and I felt the power and healing of the land flowing all around me, like warm water lapping at my ankles.
Logan’s eyes told me that he felt it, too. It was easy to understand why he always returned to his family home, despite how many times he ran away from it. I didn’t bother to put what I felt into words for him; I just moved closer to him, so I could add the scent of his cologne and his skin to the memory I was making.
“Still feel like you don’t want to stick around for dinner?” Logan’s voice was light, but something told me that my answer mattered more than he wanted to let on.
“This is a good place, Logan. You know that?”
He chuckled and tilted his head to the side. “As a matter of fact, that happens to be why you’re here. Trust me; I know nothing kills new romance like rushing a girl to meet your parents before you even know what your relationship is.” He sighed and gestured toward the voices in the distance.
“Something amazing is being grilled back there. It would be rude not to go eat.” I chewed my lip and stared up at t
he windows of the second floor.
“You’re stalling,” he said, reaching out to brush hair off my shoulder.
“I’m appreciating,” I countered, but my arms were getting tired from holding the puppy, and I knew I needed to sit soon. I took a step toward the veranda, and my legs felt too weak to continue. “I’m sorry, can you take this little one? She’s actually getting heavy.” I laughed it off, but my heart was racing as the recent twinge in my back returned.
Logan gave me a long, hard look of concern, but took the puppy from me and held her in one hand while he offered me his other arm. I raised an eyebrow, but accepted it and let him escort me to a seat before my legs gave out.
“Are we going to talk about this?” he asked once we were sitting.
“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about. I just feel tired. Maybe I’m not getting enough sleep or something,” I teased.
“Yes, that’s the second time that you’ve blamed sex for something going wrong with your body.” His voice was gravelly and tight with anger.
“Logan, you’re talking about two totally separate and unrelated sensations. I’m sorry I joked about sex hurting me. That’s not how I meant it. I just mean I’m not used to it. That was thoughtless of me.”
“Please, just tell me you’ll go to a doctor?” He wasn’t meeting my eyes, just staring off at the trees across the driveway.
“Would you be saying that if I hadn’t had cancer?” I felt anger and fear racing through my veins like the chemo drugs had so many times.
“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. But you’re young and fit and take care of yourself. Aren’t you a little worried?” He finally looked into my face as he asked me how I felt, and the anger and hurt slipped away at the concern so clearly written in his eyes.
“Yes. I’m a little worried. But I can’t live my life in fear, can I?” I reached out and ran my fingers through the puppy’s fur.
“I’m a little afraid for you,” he admitted, and I breathed deeply. It wasn’t fair to ask him to stick around, but I also knew he wouldn’t want to raise questions with his family about why I’d left without being properly introduced.