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She’d seen a cable TV show featuring people who claimed to be prepared for any emergency, including grab-and-go bags.
“I guess you could call it that.”
“Drew is one lucky kid.”
“Oh?” Bianca grabbed the cables, then slammed the hatch.
“Looks like you’re ready for just about any eventuality, which probably gives him a lot of security if things get crazy.”
A lucky guess? Or had Logan learned a thing or two from his nephew? Might be nice, she thought, interacting with someone who understood what her life was like. How odd that all those articles and news clips showed an entirely different side of him. The negative reports told her Logan had bowed and scraped to garner media attention. What would those correspondents say if they could see him now, tie loosened and shirtsleeves cuffed, ready for—how had he put it?—any eventuality. Still, there was no escaping the fact that he hadn’t just been a top-notch quarterback. He’d costarred in a few box-office hits and earned the moniker “TV’s Commercial King” by making every product he advertised on TV seem too good to be true. Maybe what she was witnessing boiled down to two words: good actor.
A gust of March wind took her breath away. If she’d trusted Marty’s forecast, Bianca would have worn a coat over her blazer.
“Cold?”
“I’ll be fine.” Shoulders up to fend off the chill, she said, “I’ll get started while—”
He reached into his front seat and grabbed his suit coat. “First put this on.”
Tempting as it was to accept it, Bianca said, “No, thanks.” If she got dirt or grease on it, she couldn’t afford to have it cleaned.
But he draped it over her shoulders anyway. Using his chin as a pointer, Logan added, “You sure you know how to use those things?”
“These,” she said, “and every other tool in the shed. Except for the chainsaw.” Bianca cringed. “That thing gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Okay, then....” He got into his car and left the driver’s door ajar.
“Everything turned off?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Emergency brake on?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Bianca connected one red clamp to her battery’s positive terminal, attached the other to the positive terminal on Logan’s battery, then clipped the black clamp to the negative terminal of her battery and connected the second black clamp to an unpainted bolt on his engine block.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m going to start the Jeep.”
She stuck the key into the ignition and hesitated. He probably knew to let her car’s engine idle a minute or two before starting his. Bianca didn’t want to insult him, but she couldn’t afford the time or money to replace their batteries if he didn’t.
“You know not to start your car right way, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She couldn’t see him, thanks to the raised hoods, but if his agreeable tone of voice matched his expression, he hadn’t taken the question the wrong way.
Bianca fired up the Jeep, then hurried to the driver’s side of his car.
Sunshine lit his face, making him squint as he looked up at her. Bianca stepped aside so that her shadow would block it...but not before noticing the pale dots peppering his nose and cheeks. Freckles? At thirty-five?
“Think it’s safe to rev ’er up now?”
She nodded. “Just don’t give it too much gas, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When his car started right up, she fist-pumped the air the way she did every time Drew reached a goal...and Logan’s jacket slipped from her shoulders and onto the dirty parking lot.
Retrieving it, she dusted it off. “See? I had a feeling something like that would happen.”
Out of the car now, he took it from her and gave it a once-over. “Clean as a whistle.”
But she could see the grit and grime that had stained the front pocket. Bianca felt duty-bound to do something about it.
“Just so happens there’s a stack of dry cleaning on my closet floor,” she said, reaching for it. “I’ll drop it off with the rest of my—”
He held tight. “I told you that it’s fine. But even if it wasn’t, I have an account with the best dry cleaner in town.” He shrugged. “Besides, you already have enough on your shoulders.”
Before she could ask what he meant, Logan said, “Can I get you to do me another favor?”
She caught herself staring. “A favor?”
“I don’t trust this old beast to fire up again when I need it to, so I was wondering if maybe you’ll let me buy you that cup of coffee now to thank you for the jump-start. And to keep you around awhile. For backup. In case this old clunker decides to play dead again when I get ready to hit the road.”
The mention of his dead battery reminded her that she hadn’t detached the cables. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she muttered. Silently, she ran down the step-by-step process: remove black clamp from his engine bolt, then black clamp from my battery. Now red clamp from my car and red clamp from his.
Once finished, she said, “It’s been so long since I did this that I wasn’t sure I’d remember the right order to do things.”
“Now she tells me,” he said to the cloudy sky.
In her rush to put everything back where it belonged in the Jeep, Bianca nearly dropped the cables.
Logan caught them. Caught her hands, too.
“You’re freezing,” he said. “Now you have to let me buy you a nice hot cup of coffee. The least I can do is warm you up after making you stand out here in the cold wind all this time. If you have time, that is, before picking Drew up at school.”
Bianca checked her watch. By her calculations she had hours and hours!
Logan’s lips slanted in a charming, boyish grin. “So you have time, then?”
She was freezing. It would feel good to discuss Drew’s condition with someone who really understood it. And she was curious to hear more about this school he wanted to build, for no other reason than to get him on the show to tell the viewers all about it.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Try not to overexcite yourself,” he teased, tossing the jacket onto the passenger seat, then climbing into his car. While parallel parking across from the café, Bianca remembered the last time she’d jumped a car battery; it had been three and a half years ago, driving home from Jason’s funeral. Drew had gone completely ballistic, drawing the attention of every driver who had passed them on Frederick Road. And the last man she’d shared coffee with? The funeral director, who’d served it in a tiny disposable cup.
Memory of his solemn, monotonous voice prompted a grin because something told her this impromptu coffee date with Logan would be anything but boring.
CHAPTER FOUR
“SO LET me get this straight,” Griff said, “you spent an hour—”
“Hour and twenty minutes.”
“Pardon me. I stand corrected.” Griff leaned back in his oversized desk chair and propped both pointy-toed cowboy boots on the glass and stainless-steel desk. “You spent slightly less than an hour and a half with this gal, and already you’re feeling...protective.”
“She reminds me of Sandra.” He shrugged. “So sue me.”
Not surprisingly, Griff didn’t violate the attorney–client rule, divulging details of his sister’s case, even though he and Logan had been as tight as brothers since high school. Logan had seen Griff through a brutal divorce, and Griff had helped Logan survive the first grueling year after the team dropped him.
“But she’s a widow?”
“Yeah....”
“Then I don’t get it. Your sister divorced her thug of a husband. Do you suspect this Bianca woman was abused, too?”
“No.” She hadn’t said or done anything to leave that impression. “I can’t explain it,” Logan admitted. “It’s just...” He didn’t dare say It’s just something I feel. Because of the autism connection, and because he was in no mood to fend off his friend’s razzing.
Griff put his feet on the floor and leaned both forearms on his desk. “Can I tell you how I feel?”
He sat up straighter. “Suppose I say no.”
Griff shrugged. “Then I ignore you, as usual.” He aimed a crooked forefinger—the one he’d broken twenty years earlier while playing HORSE in Logan’s driveway—and said, “Read my lips: Mind. Your. Own. Business.”
Logan winced at the stinging truth of it because he wanted her to be his business.
“Chances are, the only thing she has in common with Sandra is an autistic kid. But if there are more parallels?” Griff shook his head. “Then you need to back off. Right now. Or you’ll open yourself for a world of hurt. Again.”
The not-so-subtle reference to Logan’s last disastrous relationship didn’t go unnoticed. Everyone had told him to steer clear of Willow. His parents’ main objection had been the eight-year age gap. She’s a lifetime ahead of you! they’d said. But Griff had been present to witness a few of her outbursts. Despite his friend’s objections—and because he’d been young, stubborn and determined to become her protector—Logan had convinced himself that once they got to know her, they’d love her, too. Griff, included.
“Took you a year to recover from what that batty broad did to you.”
“You’d think a guy with a hundred degrees on his wall would know broad isn’t PC.”
“And you’d think a guy with a hundred Tinseltown starlets listed in his little black book would know better than to get tangled up with another emotional basket case. Besides, the only way Wacky Willow deserves PC is if it stands for Permanent Confinement in the nearest loony bin.”
They’d been down this road enough times that Logan knew it was futile to argue the “Willow was certifiable” point. “So maybe Bianca has some issues. Who doesn’t? Doesn’t mean she’s crazy.”
“Or that she was abused.”
Logan waited for Griff to repeat the warning he’d issued during those early months with Willow: Better steer clear of that one....
Thankfully, Griff grabbed Logan’s file. “So when are you planning to see this Bianca person again?”
It had been almost a week since she’d sat across from him, sipping cappuccino and talking about her son, but it might as well have been an hour ago. He remembered thinking how the shaft of early-March sunlight, spilling in from the window behind her, gave a halolike quality to her short blond curls. But then he’d said, “I know a gal who works at Kennedy Krieger, so I know it isn’t easy to get an appointment. If you need help getting in, say the word.” Instead of saying “Drew is fine where he is,” or “We’ll see,” she’d got to her feet, ice-blue eyes scanning his face as she’d thanked him for the coffee and left.
“Yo. Dude.” Griff snapped his fingers. “Earth to Logan, Earth to Logan....”
He met Griff’s concerned stare.
“We have work to do, so how ’bout you nap on your own time.”
“This is my time,” Logan kidded, “bought and paid for to the tune of one seventy-five an hour.”
“Consider yourself lucky. If you weren’t a pal, you’d pay double,” Griff shot back. He tossed a wad of paper into the trash can. “So as I was saying when you veered off into Bianca-land, when will you see her again?”
“Next time I’m on The Morning Show, I guess. Hadn’t really thought about it.”
“If you say so.”
The paperback-sized clock on Griff’s desk chimed eleven times. Using the cap of his ballpoint, he tapped Logan’s file. “Back to business. If you’re serious about this autism project, you’ll need a clear-cut mission statement.” Griff leafed through the will. “What did you do, swallow a leprechaun or something? How does one guy get so lucky in life?”
He’d said pretty much the same thing when Logan had brought him the document naming him sole inheritor of David Richards’s assets. A devout Knights fan, the mega-millionaire had often sought Logan’s help in raising funds for his pet charities, and as had time passed, he’d begun introducing Logan as “the son I never had.” When a team of Hopkins specialists diagnosed Stage 4 esophageal cancer, David—recently divorced from his third wife—sent for Logan. In what turned out to be his last self-deprecating joke, David made Logan promise to distribute his wealth “with my big philanthropic heart in mind.”
And Logan aimed to do just that.
“The mission statement doesn’t have to be fancy,” Griff continued. “Just a few short paragraphs describing the purpose of the charity. Who’ll run it. Who’ll benefit. Once I have it, I can write your Articles of Incorporation, file for your tax ID number—all that legal stuff you pay me the big bucks to do on your behalf.” He scribbled something on the inside front cover of the folder, then met Logan’s eyes. “Have you decided if this is to be a board-only organization?”
“Unless things have changed since our last meeting, that’s the best way to keep greedy stockholders out of the equation.”
Griff made another note in the file. “Given any thought to who’ll help draft the bylaws?”
Logan rested his elbows on the wingback’s arms, then steepled his fingers under his chin. He groaned again, wondering if he’d made a mistake. Funneling the remaining dollars into David’s existing charities would be way easier than building one from the ground up. But his old friend had been very specific, saying, “Your heart has never been in any of these projects of mine. Find one of your own, something that will make you feel like you’re making a difference, the way mine made me feel.” Helping his nephew and kids like him... If Logan could accomplish something like that, maybe he wouldn’t feel as if he was just taking up space and wasting the air he breathed.
Griff was still scribbling when Logan added, “I know a couple people with warehouse space for sale that could work as a school. But I don’t know if that’s the way to go.” He paused as another question popped into his head. “How many board members do you recommend?”
“I think the two of us can handle it.”
“Can’t think of anyone else who’ll keep their eyes on the prize and leave their egos—and self-indulgence—at the door.”
“Yeah. They broke the good-guy mold when they made us, didn’t they?”
The friends shared a quiet laugh as Griff closed the file. “Well, the money is safe in the bank, so you have plenty of time to think about it.”
Logan got to his feet. “Free for lunch?”
“I wish. I’m due in court at one.” He extended his hand, and as Logan grasped it, Griff added, “Be careful, pal.”
“Hey. I’ll sleep easy knowing you’re handling the official stuff.”
“I’m not talking about this school project,” he said, pointing at the file. “I mean this Bianca woman. You barely know her and already you have that gleam in your eye. Last thing you need is to go head over heels for a woman just because she has a kid like Sam.”
Bianca’s son was largely responsible for the hours he’d spent this week boning up on specific disorders within the autism spectrum. When he’d deepened the research by interviewing a few experts, he was surprised to learn that more than half of the markers could just as easily describe him and other athletes who’d suffered head injuries. The similarities between him and Sam made Logan more determined than ever to build a facility that would help normalize their lives. “Just be careful, okay?” Griff said, walking with him to the door. “I don’t have time to put you back together again, Humpty.” Then, “Do me a favor?”
“No, I will not give you J-Lo’s number.”
Griff’s eyebrows rose. “Whoa. You mean to say you actually have Jennifer Lopez’s—”
