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“Not yet. I’d like to see if we can work this out ourselves.”
Jordan picked up the headphones Logan had knocked to the ground and placed them around his neck, keeping his gaze firmly away from Logan.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Logan said finally.
Jordan’s head shot up and his eyes blazed. “Olivia is the one who should be sorry. My dad says that if she’d been more of a woman, her husband wouldn’t have needed to go after Mom.”
“Have you heard from her since she left?”
“She’s called a couple of times.” Jordan’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “She’s in Arizona. Told me she loves me and that I can visit her over the summer. My dad yells, then begs her to come back. I don’t care if she ever comes back, and I’m not going to see her.”
“I don’t blame you,” Logan said quietly. “But it’s not fair to blame Olivia. She didn’t force your mother to leave.”
“But my dad—”
“I understand what your dad is saying. He’s angry. This must be really hard on him.”
“He sits on the couch in the dark every night. I can’t even get him interested in any hockey games, and he loves hockey.”
“He loves your mom, and he’s hurting. I imagine you are, too.”
“I don’t care about her,” Jordan said, his voice an angry hiss. “It wasn’t like she was a good cook or anything. I can heat up frozen dinners myself.”
Logan felt a mix of sympathy and admiration for the kid. He remembered what it was like to put on a tough attitude to mask the real pain and how much trouble that could lead to. He pointed to the letters on the wall. “You’re going to have to clean that up.”
“I’ll be late for school.”
“Enough time this morning to write out one word but not much else?”
Jordan glared at him.
“Come back after school. Wear old clothes because you’ll be repainting that wall.”
“What if I don’t show?”
“Crimson is a small town, buddy. It won’t be hard to track you down.” Logan picked up the can of spray paint and the flashlight. The room was beginning to brighten as morning dawned more fully. “I’m going to be working on renovations for this building, and I’ll come looking for you if there’s any vandalism while I’m here. But I’m going to need an extra hand for the small stuff. You interested in making some money?”
The kid’s eyes widened. “You’re going to give me a job after I did this?”
“Give me your dad’s number and I’ll run it by him. I’ll have an answer by the afternoon. We all make mistakes.” Logan smiled as he repeated Olivia’s words from yesterday. “You get this chance on one condition. You need to leave Olivia alone. Your mom leaving wasn’t her fault.”
“Some people are saying—”
Logan cut off Jordan’s words with a wave of his hand. “Some people are idiots. Don’t be one.”
“Fine,” the kid said on a huff of breath.
Logan held out his hand. “Give me your headphones.”
Jordan shook his head. “No way. These are Beats. Do you know how much they cost?”
“I do.” Logan took a step forward. “You can have them back once the wall is clean.”
Jordan muttered a few choice curse words under his breath but handed over the headphones. He picked up his backpack from the floor. “School lets out at three. I’ll be here after that.”
“See you then.” Logan took a deep breath as he watched the kid disappear through the doorway. He’d come back to Crimson for his brother’s wedding and now he had a job in town and a potential delinquent on his hands.
For someone who prided himself on keeping his personal connections to a minimum, today was a big departure. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to offer Jordan work, other than recognizing a boy who was carrying a lot of emotional baggage on his shoulders and who might need an outlet for some of that pent-up anger and frustration. Maybe if someone had given Logan a little help years ago, his life wouldn’t have gone off track.
He certainly felt out of his comfort zone right now.
He took some measurements and made notes about the state of the progress before heading to the address Olivia had given him. He walked the few blocks to her house near the center of town, hoping the morning cold would clear his muddled head.
The house was situated on a block of renovated Victorian two-stories. It had a large front porch. The exterior had been painted a sage green with white trim and shutters framing each of the windows. As a kid, he’d walked these streets with his twin sister, imagining which of the homes they’d want to move to. Anything would have been an improvement over the dilapidated farmhouse outside of town they’d grown up in. His oldest brother, Jake, still owned the land, but the house had burned down in a fire a few years after their mother’s death.
As he stepped onto the porch, the front door opened. Olivia smiled nervously and gestured him inside. “I saw you coming up the sidewalk,” she explained quickly. “Not that I was watching or waiting. I happened to be near the window...watering a plant...and you were...well, come on in.”
He smiled as color crept into her cheeks and felt the anxiety his memories produced slip away. She wore a cream-colored turtleneck sweater and slim pants that made her legs look a mile long. Her hair was pulled back again, and he realized he wanted to see it down around her shoulders. To know whether it was straight or held a bit of curl, if it all would feel as soft in his hands as the bit he’d fingered during their dance.
“Good morning,” he said as she scooted aside to let him in. He took a strange satisfaction in the fact that she seemed as affected by him as he was by her. It wasn’t the six-year age difference that made his awareness of Olivia so foreign. She was in a totally different league than him. Normally he’d respect that invisible barrier. But something about this woman made him want to forget all of the very rational reasons she was not for him. Because as much as his brain understood that, his body wasn’t cooperating.
“Do you want coffee?” she asked as she led him through a formal living room filled with antique furniture and real art—the kind that looked like it cost a lot of money. A few spaces on the wall were noticeably blank, but he didn’t comment as he followed her into the kitchen.
“I’d love a cup,” he answered, taking in the modern appliances and warm butcher-block counters. “Nice space,” he told her.
Her hand faltered as she reached up to take a mug from the cabinet. “Thank you. The kitchen is my favorite room in the house. It’s the only place that doesn’t feel stuffy to me.” She flashed a tentative smile. “The garage apartment is nice, too. It was going to be my studio, but...”
“You’re an artist?” He pulled out one of the stools and sat at the island’s counter.
“A painter. Sort of. Not really.” She shrugged. “I like to paint and studied art in college, but I haven’t had much time for it lately.”
“I took a ceramics class in high school. Before I got suspended for the second time.”
The mug she held clattered to the floor but didn’t break. He watched as she scooped it up, set it in the sink and took out another one. He shouldn’t have brought up his misspent youth, but he’d needed to remind them both how different their lives were.
“Were you any good?”
“I didn’t have a chance to find out,” he told her. “They put a lot of the troubled kids with one of the art teachers. Kept us busy and out of the way of the students who gave a damn.”
She turned, her gaze curious. “Why didn’t you care?”
“I was angry, stupid and young. A bad combination. I managed to graduate, mainly because the school wanted to be rid of me.”
She set the cup of coffee in front of him. “Milk or sugar?”
He shook his head.
“But things got better after you left Crimson?”
“After a while,” he answered as he took a drink. “I grew up. Realized I didn’t have to turn out the way most people expected me to. I had a choice not to fail, to prove them wrong. I made that choice.”
She took the seat across the counter from him. “Maybe the problems you had when you were younger shaped you into a person determined to be better.”
He actually laughed out loud. “I’ve never heard anyone suggest that.”
“I have a lot of experience putting a good spin on bad situations,” she answered with a small grin.
How was it that talk about his wild past seemed to melt away her nerves? He’d brought it up to keep her at arms’ length, not as an ice breaker.
Her smile slowly faded. “I wasn’t sure you’d come today. I figured maybe once you’d left town you wouldn’t be back.”
The thought had crossed his mind more than once in the past few days. He’d even interrupted Josh on his honeymoon to run Olivia’s plan by Sara. He’d figured his new sister-in-law would have something to say about Logan returning to town and working so closely with her friend.
To his surprise Sara had loved the idea. She’d told Logan that Olivia needed someone on her side, and he’d be the perfect person to take over the renovations. Even Josh had seemed happy that Logan would be spending the next month and a half in Crimson.
Logan wasn’t used to people being happy to have him around. He’d felt as though he had an itch he couldn’t quite reach ever since he’d agreed to this plan. He didn’t know how to make it go away, so he was doing his best to ignore it.
“I gave you my word,” he answered.
She nodded as if that made perfect sense. He wanted to reach across the table and shake her. Didn’t she see that he was not worth the trouble he was bound to cause? Maybe that was what he found so irresistible about Olivia Wilder. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had believed the best about him, whether or not he deserved it.
“I have the plans and the proposed budget.” She pushed a stack of papers toward him. “Not that I want to cut corners, but if there’s any way to reduce expenses, that would be a big help.”
“You know I’m cheap labor.” He was only teasing but loved the blush that colored her cheeks once again.
“That’s not what I meant. I’m going to put some of my own money into the project. At least until I can line up more outside funding. The new mayor has the best of intentions, but his plate is overly full at the moment. There’s a chance the community center could get waylaid if there’s something more critical that needs money from the town. I don’t want the work delayed any more than it has been.”
“Where did you get the money?”
“What?” She looked at him as though she didn’t understand the question.
He studied her. “You said at the wedding that Craig had drained your bank account. I know the community center is important, but you need to take care of yourself first. You don’t need to do anything foolish just to get money. Things will work themselves out, Olivia.”
She busied herself with emptying her mug into the sink. “Easy for you to say. And it’s none of your business where I got the money.”
“That’s true,” he answered softly. “But remember I’m on your side in all this.”
“I sold my wedding ring to a jeweler in Aspen.” She whirled around to face him. “We’ll be divorced within the month. I don’t have any use for it.”
He held up his hands, palms facing her. “I’m not judging you.”
“Besides which,” she continued, absently rubbing two fingers across the empty space on her left hand, “it was my grandmother’s diamond. My parents gave it to Craig before he proposed. He didn’t even have to spend his own money on a ring. That’s how ready they were to pawn me off on him.” She stared at him, eyes blazing, her chest heaving. “I practically had a dowry attached to me, as if I was some Regency spinster. I was twenty-eight at our wedding, not exactly an old maid.”
“I hope you got a lot for it.”
Her mouth twisted. “Enough to make sure the renovations will continue.”
“If you’re sure that’s how you want to use it. You don’t owe anyone in Crimson because of what your husband did.”
She shook her head. “I owe this town a lot. It’s the first place that’s felt like home to me.”
“How long were you and Craig married?” he asked, coming to stand next to her.
“Five years.” She took the mug from his hands, his skin tingling where she touched him. “I’m thirty-two. Way older than you.”
“Six years,” he clarified. “Not way older.”
She took a step back but he followed. “I could have been your...babysitter.”
He tipped his head back and laughed. “My brothers and I would have had you tied up in minutes.”
“I’m tougher than I look,” she whispered, turning away.
“I bet you are.” He placed a hand on her arm and she looked at him over her shoulder. “You’re not an old maid, Olivia. Not by a long shot.”
Her gray eyes darkened as she looked at him. Hope and doubt crashed behind them and he had to resist the urge to smooth the crease between her brows.
Instead he said, “I went by the site this morning to see where to start.”
“Is it bad? Are we behind? Do you need to hire a crew?”
He glanced up at her. “I have someone working part-time for me, and I’ll bring subcontractors in as needed. A lot of it can be done on my own. I brought my tools up from Telluride.”
“You can keep them in the garage. I had an extra key made although most people in Crimson don’t bother locking their doors at night. I’ll show you the apartment.”
He followed her out the back door and across the driveway. He noticed a small Subaru station wagon parked next to the house. “The SUV, too?”
Her pace didn’t slow. “It was bigger than I needed. I traded it in.”
Olivia Wilder was more resourceful than he’d expected. “You really are committed to this community center,” he murmured more to himself than her.
She turned to face him as she stood on the first step leading up to the garage apartment. “Do you believe we can do this?”
She was above him on the step and he tipped up his face to meet her gaze. Her skin was creamy and smooth in the sunlight. A pale dusting of freckles spilled across her nose. “I believe you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to.”
“We’re a team.” Her eyes searched his as she spoke.
He’d been part of a team once. His twin sister, Beth, had been his best friend, confidant and protector, and he’d been the same for her. Since her death ten years ago, Logan hadn’t allowed himself to get close to anyone. Now this slip of a woman wanted more from him than he was capable of giving.
He couldn’t tell her that. He wanted Olivia to get what she wanted, to regain her self-confidence or maybe discover it for the first time. He’d been too young, selfish and stupid to help his sister when she’d needed it. But he could help Olivia. And perhaps in the process he’d be able to rid himself of a bit of the blackness that had consumed his soul since Beth’s accident.
“We’ll finish the work on your community center,” he told her. “It will be great.”
Her smile was so open and trusting, it made his heart beat faster. Which was strange because before today he hadn’t been sure he still had a heart.
* * *
Later that afternoon, Olivia turned around in one of the side rooms of the community-center building. “This is going to be where we do the kids’ programs because it’s on the first floor and close to the bathrooms. Upstairs we’ll have yoga classes and adult workshops. The big room in the back will be for speakers and community events.”
