Wedding Cake Wishes (7 page)

Lizzie was the first to unravel from the knot of people. “Look. Uncle Logan's here.” She ran over, and in a practiced move, propelled herself into his arms. He shifted her to his hip.

“What's up, kiddo?”

“Did you hear about the wedding?” Her eyes were as big as quarters as she spoke.

“I did just now. That's great.”

She straightened in his arms. “I get to be a flower girl again. Two times.”

“Hey, that's a big deal.”

Lizzie bubbled with excitement. “None of my friends have been a flower girl two times.”

The child prattled on about a new dress and new shoes and whatever else little girls get all hyped up about in weddings, but Logan barely heard any of it. He was too busy trying to shake away the image of his niece in a third flower girl dress, with a surprising pair as the bride and groom.

Where had that thought come from, and what could
he do to make it stop? He wasn't the marrying kind. He'd always known that. He didn't even date anyone long-term. He would not be like his father, not if he could help it. So what was he going to do about Caroline Scott and the way she made him want to forget who he was?

This wasn't good. Not good at all.

“Aren't you going to congratulate me, brother?”

Logan started, surprised to see that Dylan had made it all the way over to him before he'd noticed. Great. Now he was becoming a virtual Walter Mitty, daydreaming about weddings and the most unlikely bride he could ever imagine.

“Sure I am.” Lowering Lizzie to the ground, he grasped his brother in a bear hug. “But did you really set a date, or are you just playing a cruel joke on poor Mrs. Scott?”

“I'd never do a thing like that to my future mother-in-law, but we did scare her by telling her we were just going to have a civil ceremony on Wednesday.”

“Now that
was
cruel.”

“I thought she was going to blow a gasket before we told her we were only kidding.”

Logan spotted Trina across the lawn, laughing as she rubbed her hand over Haley's rounded belly, so he guessed she'd survived the joke. “So when's the real date?”

“July twelfth.” Dylan beamed. “We just confirmed it with Reverend Boggs.”

“That's just over a month. Are you going to be able to pull it off?”

“It was the only date open at our church until the end of August.”

Logan lifted a brow. “After stalling all this time, you're in a hurry now?”

“You kidding? I'd marry her tomorrow if she'd let me. I've been waiting my whole life to be Jenna's husband.” Dylan patted his younger brother on the shoulder. “I hope someday you find someone you can care about as much as I love her.”

“I'm happy for you.” Logan patted Dylan's arm, refusing to let his thoughts travel to dangerous places again. No more Walter Mitty adventures for him today. “Wait. When did Haley say she was due?”

“August first.”

“You guys are cutting it close.”

Approaching them, Jenna took Dylan's arm. “We are, but Matthew and Haley agree with Mom that we should go ahead with the wedding. It will give your mother something else to look forward to. When we told her, she said that it was, and I quote, ‘good.'”

“Of course she would say that,” Logan told them. “She wants to make sure her matchmaking targets get hitched. And mark my words, the ink will still be drying on your marriage license before she'll be bugging you about adding to her brood of grandchildren.”

“Whoa. Don't even go there yet.” Dylan wrapped his arm around his fiancée's shoulder and turned to kiss her cheek. “But someday Jenna and I will have some beautiful babies.”

“You kidding?” Logan said with a grin. “You'll have enough of them to field your own baseball team before your tenth anniversary.”

“Or at least a beach volleyball team,” Matthew chimed as he joined them.

Laughter filled the backyard as Haley and Trina
stepped over to complete the group. Logan joined in, but he couldn't resist looking past the others, still searching for the missing Scott sister. “Has Caroline heard the news?”

“No, we just told the others—” Jenna stopped and gave him a sharp look. “You're not worried she'll be upset, are you? She's always seemed to be happy for us before. You don't think…?”

Logan was shaking his head before she could finish. “No. She'll be thrilled for you guys though she'll be bummed she missed your announcement…wherever she is.”

He tried to sound nonchalant as he added that last part, inserting a mini fishing expedition while hoping not to get caught himself. The last thing he wanted was to make anyone suspect that he was overly interested in the whereabouts of one Caroline Scott. Or that he had any interest in her at all besides as coworker and friend. He didn't. That was his story, and he was sticking to it.

Jenna looked relieved. “That's good because I can't wait to ask her—”

“Look at you guys,” Caroline called out as she crossed the yard, carrying two plastic shopping bags. “I was gone only five minutes. I even leave the party to go buy the buns
somebody else
forgot, and I come back to find you all talking about me.”

“We weren't— I was just—” Logan stopped and gestured for Jenna to take over for him.

Jenna gave him a funny look before turning back to her sister. “Logan was just wondering why you weren't here for our big announcement.”

“What big announcement?” Caroline looked back
and forth between her sister and Dylan and then grinned as she held up her cell phone. “I heard. You think I could have one of these, and Mom wouldn't be able to reach me within seconds when she had good news?”

“Thanks, Mom.” Jenna rolled her eyes.

Trina was unapologetic. “You made me wait months for this, so I plan to enjoy every minute of it.”

“Anyway,” Jenna tried again, turning to Caroline, “since you already know about the date, I wanted to ask you to be my maid of honor.”

Instead of answering, Caroline shot a glance at Haley.

“Me?” Haley said. “There's no way I'm going to try to squeeze all of this into a bridesmaid's dress less than three weeks before my due date.” She indicated her expanding belly.

Jenna looked from one sister to the other. “You see, I didn't even have to choose between you two.”

“Then I'd love to do it,” Caroline said with a smile.

“And I don't have to choose, either, because Matthew volunteered to plan the wedding music instead,” Dylan said. “So I guess that leaves you, buddy. Are you in?”

“You know how much I
love
weddings.” But after getting the laugh, Logan nodded. “But sure. I'll do it.”

“Sure you don't have a date that day?” Matthew wanted to know.

“If I do, I can reschedule.” Logan frowned at his oldest brother, but when he glanced sidelong at Caroline, he caught her watching him. Was it wrong of him to wish that she would be a little jealous of his nonexistent dates? Wrong and dangerous, he decided. Dangerous to him.

“I just know Amy will be well enough to attend,
and it's going to be perfect.” Trina folded her arms, the satisfied grin of a successful matchmaker on her lips.

“It will as long as you ask Mr. Kellam to be your escort,” Haley chimed.

“Don't you start.” Trina probably would have continued her lecture, but something caught her attention, making her turn toward the grill. “Well, there go the brats.”

Matthew and Dylan rushed over to the smoking grill, but it was too late to save the charred meat, so another trip to the store for replacements would be required.

Why did Logan have the feeling that the cookout that had just gone up in flames might be a better reflection of what the wedding might be like than the perfection Mrs. Scott had predicted? At least for him.

He wanted to say he could do this. He had survived being in Matthew and Haley's wedding last summer, but this time was different. This time he would be escorting Caroline. Wasn't it hard enough working every day with her and pretending not to notice how beautiful, how clever and how compassionate she was?

How could he escort her down that aisle and stand near her, just a breath away from the altar, and not get some crazy ideas in his head about a more unlikely bride and groom?

C
aroline expected only the dull glow of a single safety light when she unlocked the bakery's back door, so the brightness coming from inside startled her. She was already making a mental note to remind staff about turning off lights when a sound came from the office, signaling that she wasn't alone.

Remembering that first day when Logan had mistakenly thought the front door had been left unlocked, she stiffened. Had someone really forgotten today? Her pulse quickened, and her senses clicked into high alert. This part of Markston might have been a low-crime area, but Caroline reasoned that every neighborhood had that same spotless record until the break-ins, carjackings and murders began.

Scanning the hall for a weapon she could use, if necessary, she caught sight of Logan's riding boots beneath the coat rack. His leather jacket hung from a hook just above them. Her breath caught. She should be relieved that Logan was in that office instead of some prowler intent on raiding the safe, but her pulse didn't
slow in the comfort of that knowledge. If anything, it beat even faster.

Just in case she was wrong about the visitor's identity, Caroline grabbed a wooden hanger and crept down the hall toward the lighted room. Feeling ridiculous, she tiptoed to the half-open door and peeked inside.

Logan sat at the desk, surrounded by a pile of open books. His shoulders were bent, and his head was bowed. Was he praying? She'd pictured Logan Warren a few different ways these last few weeks—chopping wood with his arm muscles flexing, riding his motorcycle with his leather jacket whipping in the wind, even on dinner dates with every single woman in town besides her. But praying? She hadn't expected that.

Instead of looking away and giving him privacy, Caroline couldn't help continuing to watch him. She supposed it shouldn't surprise her to learn that Logan was a praying man. She'd learned in the past few weeks that the boy she'd thought she knew didn't resemble the man she was coming to know at all. Instead of being surprised to find Logan praying, she should be wondering why she'd spent so little time in prayer lately.

Caroline had just decided to slip out unnoticed when Logan lifted his head. His shoulders stiffened as if he could sense someone else's presence, and he turned his head to look at the doorway.

“What—” He jumped up from his seat and then turned back to shuffle the materials on the desk.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.” She moved just inside the door, setting the hanger on top of the bookshelf.

“Uh, you didn't,” he said, though she obviously had.

“That's good.” With her gaze, she followed his jerky movements as he tried to hide whatever he'd been reading. That he didn't want her to see it only made her more curious. “I didn't see your bike when I pulled in.”

“Parked it on the street. I, uh, didn't expect to see you here tonight. Why
are
you here?”

“You know me, the workaholic.” Caroline shifted. She didn't want to admit she didn't have anything better to do on a Saturday night. “The only way you can keep me out of the workplace is to bar the windows and doors.” She cleared her throat. “Or downsize my job.”

“Tried to do that here. It didn't work out so well.”

He kept messing with what appeared to be a stack of magazines until he had them in a pile at the edge of the desk, but when he turned to face her, the copies on top of the stack slid to the floor.

Caroline took a few steps forward and bent to stare down at the magazine covers. Where she might have expected
National Geographic
or
The Outdoorsman,
she was surprised to see
American Cake Decorating
and
Indiana Bride
.

With a frustrated breath, Logan bent to grab the magazines, stacking them back on the desk with a whole collection of similar titles.

“Reading up for your stint as the best man?”

Logan turned back to her, crossing his arms over his chest. “That's the best you've got?”

“Well, I was going to ask you about your take on the cathedral-length-train-versus-chapel-length controversy. Or maybe get your opinion on Miss Manners's reception seating chart for step-siblings.”

Logan shot his hands into the air as if she held him at gunpoint. “Stop. Stop. I can't take it anymore.”

“Come on,” Caroline said, chuckling. “I haven't even gotten to the nosegays or boutonnieres yet.”

“Nose whats?”

She waved away his question. “Never mind. Okay, I'll bite. What are you doing in your mother's office on a Saturday night, surrounded by bridal and cake magazines? Giving up being Ranger Logan in favor of a new career as Logan the wedding planner?”

“I'll pass.” He glanced at the desk and shrugged. “Since I'm working here, I figured I should learn something about the wedding business.”

“I think that's a great idea.”

He tilted his head, his gaze narrowing.

“I'm serious,” she told him. “Your mom will be proud, too, when she finds out all you've done for her business.”

Now didn't seem like time to tell him she suspected that Mrs. Warren would never return to the shop. Somehow she doubted the time would ever be right.

“Thanks,” he said finally.

She noticed that he shifted more uncomfortably because of her praise than he ever had from one of her wisecracks.

“I probably would have known a lot more about the wedding business before if I'd been paying attention.” He brushed his hand over the slick cover of one of the magazines. “Mom made the cakes, and Matthew planned all the wedding music at our church. I could have gleaned a few things from them.”

“So, you're like everyone else. You learn on a need-to-know basis.”

“I guess. Well, do you want to look at these with me?” As he waited for her answer, he gathered the magazines
and motioned with a turn of his head for her to come with him.

“Why are we going out here?” she asked as she followed him through the kitchen and out into the dining area.

“A couple of reasons. First, don't you agree the light is better out here?”

Caroline lifted her head to stare at the series of hanging lamps that offered little more than ambience. A lot of light wasn't necessary, though, because daylight usually poured in from the windows, and even now glare from the streetlamps filled the room.

“I also get claustrophobic in that office,” he said. “It's too cramped in there.”

“Yeah, it is.”
You have no idea.
But then every room seemed uncomfortably close when she and Logan were in it together. She decided not to share that bit of information.

He used his thumb to indicate the front of the shop. “But mostly, I came out here because I ordered a pizza, and the guy prefers to deliver to the front door after dark.”

“You often order here in the evenings?” It was a sneaky way of asking how often he'd been working there at night, but she couldn't help being curious. Not about his overtime work, either. If he was at the bakery, he couldn't have been on all those dates she'd imagined.

“Sometimes.” He was watching the street, waiting for the driver, but he glanced back. “The people at The Pie know my phone voice now, so they ask if I want my regular.”

“What's your regular?”

“Not deluxe the way you and Matthew like to order it. Just pepperoni and black olives.”

Caroline covered her eyes with her hand. “Oh, I'll never forget that night when our moms tried to push Matthew and me together at The Pie. It was so embarrassing. Mom had this crazy idea Matthew and I were perfect for each other just because we liked the same stuff on our pizza.”

“Well, you
did
have an awful lot in common.” The side of his mouth lifted. “Same goals. Same books. Same—”

“But could you ever picture Matthew with anyone but Haley? Me especially. That would have been like marrying myself.”

“No, I couldn't.”

She had been chuckling as she stared out the window, but Logan's words and his reflection in the glass quieted her. When she would have expected him to be smiling, his jaw was flexed instead. By the time that she could turn to take a better look at him, the expression was gone. Still, she was sure she hadn't mistaken it. He might not have been able to imagine her with his oldest brother, but something else was bothering him.

She was trying to come up with some pithy comment to lighten the mood when a car pulled to the curb, a lighted sign for The Pie on its roof.

Logan reached in the back pocket of his well-worn jeans and pulled out his wallet. “I was going to offer to share, but since it's not deluxe, I guess I'll get the whole pizza to myself.”

“I'm not picky,” she was quick to say. “I like all kinds of pizza.”

As soon as he nodded and crossed to open the door
for the delivery guy, who carried both pizza and a two-liter bottle of soda, Caroline's hands started to sweat. It was just pizza, she reminded herself. That and the chance to look at a bunch of bridal magazines. But the reality struck her that it was the closest thing she'd had to a date in years.

 

Logan set the pizza box on the floor beside him and patted his full stomach as Caroline finished her last slice of pizza and wiped her fingertips on a napkin.

“You didn't say you were starved.” He was grinning as he said it. They'd split the pizza right down the middle, and she'd polished off her half almost as quickly as he had. She was such a refreshing change from the women he'd known—women who ate like birds as if that was supposed to impress him or something.

“You didn't ask.”

“Next time I'll ask.” He took a drink from one of the foam coffee cups they'd used for the soda and then reached for the magazines stacked on the floor next to him. “And maybe order two pizzas.”

Next time
. That sounded a little too good to him. Not only was he having more fun on this nondate than he'd had on any date in years, now he also was trying to set up a second nondate. He never had second dates.

Logan was relieved he'd had the good sense to bring her out into the dining area instead of spending more time alone with her in that postage-sized office. In there, he could smell jasmine on her hair every time she moved, and she was close enough to touch no matter where they stood or sat. The dining area offered not only the space for him to keep a safer distance, but it
provided a chaperone of sorts, as they were under the watchful eyes of the streetlamps and passing cars.

“You do that and I'll never fit in my maid-of-honor dress unless Jenna picks a dome tent.”

He wanted to tell her she would still look amazing, even dressed in a tent, but that would have only made the dining area feel as small as the office had. As Caroline grabbed a cake magazine and started flipping through the pages, he couldn't help watching her.

“So how do you feel about the upcoming wedding?”

She shrugged, not looking up from the pages. “It's great, I guess. I hope they're not rushing the wedding just to give your mom something to look forward to.”

“You don't think they're doing that, do you?”

“Not really. But you know how my mother can get what she wants out of my sisters.”

“But not you,” he said with a laugh.

Leaning forward and resting her forearms on the table, she smiled. “No, not me.”

Her smile was so sweet and potent that a weaker guy would have been tempted to be drawn in by it. He had to glance out the window to refocus his thoughts and keep from becoming that guy.

“I wouldn't worry about Jenna getting pushed into anything, either,” he told her. “Look at how long she made Dylan wait for her. Stubbornness is definitely a Scott family trait.”

“You're right about that.”

“At least with them planning the wedding right now, you'll be around to help Jenna with the details instead of just flying in from Chicago at the last minute.”

Logan wondered if it could be any more obvious that
he was fishing for information about her job search. She would surely jump to the conclusion that he was counting down the days until she left. She would be wrong.

“For a while, I guess,” she said vaguely. But then she leaned forward as if to offer some solid information. “Are your bosses nagging you yet about getting back to your Ranger Logan job?”

He frowned, but only partially because she hadn't given him a single clue about her plans. It was time he cleared up her confusion about him.

“You know that's a nickname, don't you?” Her confused expression didn't surprise him. “The Ranger Logan thing. It's just what my brothers call me.”

“I don't understand. You don't work at Boyton County State Park?”

“No, that part's right. It's the title that's wrong. I'm a state park biologist—or wildlife specialist—for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.”

“But I thought—” She stopped herself, clearly at a loss for words.

“Matthew and Dylan just thought Ranger Logan sounded a lot more fun than Park Biologist Logan or Wildlife Specialist Logan. Those names don't have the same ring to them.”

Caroline's hand went to her mouth. “I'm so sorry. I never meant to offend you.”

“Now don't get me wrong.” He shook his head. “I believe that park ranger is an honorable job. It's just not
my
job.”

She must have recovered her embarrassment because she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “So how does one end up working as a park biologist?”

“I started with a forestry degree from Purdue, and a
minor in wildlife sciences.” He couldn't help grinning as he warmed to the subject. “It's great. Instead of sitting behind some desk all day, I get to be outside, overseeing food-plot plantings, conducting wildlife population surveys and managing the walleye stocking program.”