A Knights Bridge Christmas (7 page)

“Yes, she is. It can be tricky to balance her desire for independence with her legitimate geriatric needs. That’s one reason this place will be so good for her. That might not be the case for every senior, but it is for her—by her own account. And I believe her.”

Clare shivered, her jacket open against the cold air. “It’s my fault she got upset. I should never have asked her about the candle. I get curious and then I start asking questions that I have no business asking.”

“That’s part of what makes you a good librarian. If you hadn’t mentioned the candle, I would have. It was an innocent mistake, if it even was a mistake. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“If she’d had a heart attack—”

“She didn’t,” Logan said, trying to break through Clare’s self-recriminations. “And if she had, it still wouldn’t be your fault.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. “Sorry.” She breathed deeply, then exhaled slowly, obviously a practiced move. She opened her eyes again and smiled at him. “I’m not as accustomed to medical emergencies as you are.”

He decided not to tell her that his grandmother hadn’t experienced a medical emergency. It obviously had looked worse to Clare. He touched her shoulder. “Okay now?”

She nodded. “Nobody likes to scare the hell out of an old lady.”

He laughed at her unexpected irreverent humor. “Gran would agree. She feels terrible she upset you.”

“It’s not her fault!”

“See how that works?”

“Point taken,” Clare said, calmer. “I should see about Owen.”

“They won’t let him run off, but Randy Frost might hunt you down.”

“I noticed he looked daggers at you. Do you two have a history?”

Logan pulled open the door, letting Clare walk in ahead of him. “Not one that I know of. He’s protective of you, isn’t he?”

“He looks out for Owen and me. I don’t know if I’d call it protective. But what’s that got to do with the look he gave you?”

“Mmm. What, indeed?”

Her cheeks flushed red, and Logan grinned, realizing she had just figured out
what, indeed?
Had she been oblivious to his attraction to her until now? She shot ahead of him back inside, but she hesitated when she reached his grandmother’s apartment.

He eased past her and went in first. His grandmother was dozing in her chair. “I’ll let her sleep,” he said. “I can come back later.”

Clare stood next to him. “My grandmothers are both in their eighties. They’re such a presence in my life. You want to think they’re going to be there forever...” She trailed off. “We’re lucky to have them with us.”

He leaned in close to her. “Now I really do want to kiss you,” he said in a low voice.

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Imagine the ruckus if I kiss you and Gran wakes up or Randy Frost walks in here. Not to mention Grace Webster. She’s been retired for thirty years, but I bet she can still rap knuckles with her ruler.”

“Do you think she ever rapped knuckles?”

Logan grinned. “No doubt in my mind.”

He kissed Clare lightly on the top of her head—sort of like a friend, except not really. He could smell her hair, feel its softness. She entwined her fingers with his, just for a second, long enough to tell him that she didn’t object.

“We should go before we start a scandal,” she whispered.

Would that be such a bad thing?
Logan thought, amused. He walked over to his grandmother and kissed her on the forehead. “See you soon.”

“Good,” she said without opening her eyes.

“Didn’t realize you were awake.”

“And you a doctor.”

But she was barely awake—just awake enough to let him know she was aware of the exchange between him and Clare. He might have been embarrassed if he thought his grandmother realized what he’d been thinking. Then again, she hadn’t lived eighty-plus years alone on Mars. She knew the score.

Clare went out ahead of him. When he met her in the hall, she let out a breath and raked a hand through her pale hair. “You keep it up, Logan, and I’m not going to be able to live in this town. There will be rumors about us all over this place by nightfall. They won’t stay within these walls, either.”

“Rumors? I did just kiss you, and you did just willingly grab my hand.”

“I didn’t
grab
your hand. I...” She fumbled for the right word. “I got caught up in the moment.”

“My point.”

She sighed, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “I’m going to be smart this time and not respond.”

When they reached the sunroom, Owen was outside at the bird feeders with Randy Frost. Grace Webster was reading, and Audrey Frost was crocheting. “I can only look at birds and snow for so long without doing something,” she said.

Randy popped his head in the door. “Why don’t I take Owen back to the mill with me? He wants to ride in my truck. Let you two finish decorating.”

“Your truck?” Clare grimaced. “Is it safe for a six-year-old?”

“I was a volunteer firefighter for thirty years. We’ll be okay.”

She smiled. “Of course you will. Thank you.”

Owen waved to her at the window. Randy chuckled. “He’s been pressing up against the glass and making faces at my mother. We’ll know what fingerprints are his. He’s the only kid here.” Randy seemed to enjoy having Owen to entertain. He turned back to Clare. “We’ll plan on giving him dinner at the house if you run late.”

Logan didn’t detect any animosity in Randy’s tone, just a knowing look as Logan left with Clare. He had no inclination to disabuse Randy of his suspicions. He wouldn’t be surprised if most of them were true, anyway.

Clare was quiet as they left the facility and went back outside and got into his car. “What’s on your mind, Clare Morgan?” Logan asked as he eased behind the wheel.

“Nothing.”

“Usually someone as quiet as you are right now has more than nothing on her mind.”

“Owen...” She glanced back at the building where she’d left her son. “First skating with the Sloans, then lunch with them—then a nap because he was so worn out. Now off with Randy Frost.”

“And?”

“Owen won’t think I’m neglecting him, will he?”

“He’ll think you’ve moved to a great little town.”

“It’s been just the two of us for so long...” She smiled at him as he started the car. “I sometimes come up to the line of being an anxiety-driven and overprotective mother, especially since our move, but I don’t often cross it.”

“Depends where you draw the line. It’s easy to label people.”

“Do people label you?”

“I hope so.”

She laughed. “You’re not serious.”

“What kind of label would I have?”

“Hard-driving, sexy ER doctor?”

“That’s not bad. I could live with that.”

“Hard-driving, sexy ER doctor who leaves a trail of broken hearts behind him?”

He backed out of the parking space, very aware of her next to him. “I guess you could just add narcissistic cad of an ER doctor to the label.”

“Then you’re not denying it,” she said.

“I’m hard-driving, and I’m an emergency physician. I’m not denying that.” He shifted out of reverse into first gear. “It’s for others to decide if I’m sexy or a cad.”

“Or both. A trail of broken hearts, though—that would be factual, wouldn’t it?”

“If it were true, yes.”

“It’s not?”

“There’s no trail,” he said, easing his car onto the road back to town. “These days most of my friends are married or hooked up. But no complaints.” He decided a change in subject was in order. “I didn’t buy food for dinner. I can see what I can find at the country store, but I’m not up for finding my way around Gran’s kitchen. Every spoon and fork is tied to a memory. What if we have dinner at Knights Bridge village’s one restaurant?”

“That sounds great,” Clare said. “So much for my leftover mac and cheese.”

“We can work on blowing up people’s labels about us.”

“By having a turkey club?”

He smiled at her. “And here I was thinking you’d be dancing on the tables.”

“Do you think librarians don’t dance on tables?”

“I’m sure some librarians do, but the label says they don’t.”

“You think I don’t,” she said.

“Do you?”

She laughed, watching out the passenger window as they wound their way into the village. “Not since that one time in college.”

“I will definitely have to hear about that.”

“Have you ever danced on tables—or have you only goaded other people into doing it?”

He gave a mock shudder. “Dancing.”

“You don’t dance?”

“Only if given no other choice.”

“It’s good exercise, isn’t it?”

“Excellent exercise,” he said.

She sank into her seat and yawned. “Dancing could wake me up. I don’t know why I’m so sleepy.”

“Because you’re having a good day,” Logan said.

“Yes, I am.”

When they arrived in the village, the white lights on their evergreen boughs were lit up against the darkening afternoon. “Not bad.” He parked in front of the house. “But I’ve had enough decorating for one day, haven’t you? Time for a walk and dinner.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Six

“Spirit!” he cried... “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse... Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”... The kind hand trembled.

—Charles Dickens,
A Christmas Carol

CLARE’S HEAD WAS
spinning by early evening when she collected Owen at the Frosts’ house, not far from their mill and her apartment. A day of new experiences, to say the least.

Randy pulled her aside as Owen belted himself into the backseat. “My wife suffered from severe anxiety for a while—for too long. It started after our daughters were in a car accident when they were teenagers. They were missing, trapped in the car, for a few hours. We couldn’t find them.” He bit the corner of his lip, clearly remembering. “It was tough. They weren’t physically injured, but the emotional scars—Louise got where she wouldn’t go out of town. She worried about every raindrop causing an accident. It crept up on her but she’s doing great now.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Clare said.

Randy narrowed his gaze on her. He didn’t seem to notice the bite of the night cold. “I understand you lost your husband in a car accident. Black ice.”

Clare nodded. “That’s right.”

“Had to be rough with Owen on the way. You’re raising a happy boy, Clare. If you ever want to talk to Louise, she’s here.”

“Thank you. I’ve let...” She stopped, tried again. “The move affected me more than I realized. I don’t want to live my life in fear, or put that on Owen.”

“Understood.” Randy grinned. “Now I’ll butt out and mind my own business.”

He opened the driver’s door for her but she didn’t get in. “Thanks again for taking care of Owen,” she said, then smiled. “He’s going to start lobbying me for a truck, but he won’t win. I am not buying a truck.”

Randy laughed. “Stick to your guns. Glad you got Daisy’s house decorated.”

“I was happy to help. I was under the impression that people in town didn’t know Daisy’s grandson well.”

“The good Dr. Farrell? We don’t.”

“But you have an opinion about him?”

“He’s a hell of a doctor.”

Randy obviously didn’t intend to go further. Clare slid in behind the wheel, and he shut the door for her, saying good-night to Owen. As predicted, her son regaled her with his reasons for needing a truck as they headed back to their sawmill apartment. She couldn’t help but think of Logan alone at his grandmother’s house. He was so smart, driven and confident that she couldn’t imagine him worrying about ghosts. But Daisy had been born there, his father had grown up there and his grandfather had died there. As well as his grandmother’s move had gone, it was a huge change. Being alone in a house with such memories—such a history—had to affect even a man who saw what Logan saw every day in his work.

Or not, Clare thought, following Owen up the steep stairs to their apartment. She’d left a light on in the living room. He was so tired he made no objection when she mentioned it was bedtime. As he yawned his way into the bathroom to brush his teeth, she pulled the cushions off the couch. She was tired, too—emotionally as well as physically.

Her emotional fatigue took her by surprise but there was no denying it was due to being around Logan. He hadn’t looked particularly worried about ghosts or anything else over their simple dinner at Smith’s, within walking distance of the Farrell house. The restaurant, in a converted house off the town common, was relatively crowded on a Saturday night, all their fellow diners local that Clare could see. She and Logan were both outsiders. At best she was a newcomer, and his deep roots in the area didn’t matter since he’d never lived in town himself. Eric Sloan, Brandon’s older brother, a Knights Bridge police officer, was there with his girlfriend, a paramedic—they’d all exchanged a few pleasantries. Clare was patient. She’d known it would take time to get to know people in her adopted town.

In any case, she’d been focused on Logan Farrell. If they’d signed up for a dating service, she was positive the computer would never have put their names together. Did she want to date a doctor? Absolutely not. Was she drawn to driven, high-achieving types? No. Was she interested in athletic men who couldn’t sit still for five minutes? No. A man who knew he was sexy? No.

What kind of man
did
she want?

She pulled out the sofa bed, still made up from that morning, and got her pillows out of the front closet. She paused, listening, but she could hear water running in the bathroom. She doubted Owen was getting into mischief.

She’d fallen head over heels for Stephen Morgan. Intelligent, ambitious, a lawyer who could handle himself in a courtroom but also knew how to fix things around the house. He’d been so excited about having a child. They’d known before he’d died they’d be having a baby boy.

Her family and friends had given her a year before encouraging her to start dating again. She’d tried an online dating service but had abandoned it after a month.
Get a social life, Clare, have some fun
, her friends would tell her. By
fun
they didn’t necessarily mean sex, but they didn’t necessarily not mean sex, either.

She sat on the thin mattress of her sofa bed. An image of herself in bed with Logan flashed in her mind. She shuddered, feeling a surge of warmth. Where had
that
come from? But she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like with all his energy and drive focused on her, or at least on having sex with her.

She could do worse for a night or two.

But her attempt at humor—at dismissing her unbidden image—didn’t work very well, and she was relieved when Owen came in, his shirt soaked and spattered with toothpaste. He grinned, and she could see the tooth she’d thought earlier in the week looked loose was, indeed, loose. Skating with the Sloan boys and checking out bird feeders with Randy Frost no doubt had helped.

“Come on,” Clare said. “Hop up here. Let’s read a story.”

No more thinking about sex with Logan Farrell, at least not until the lights were out.

* * *

At 82 South Main Street on the Knights Bridge town common, Logan was awakening from the nightmare of his life. He leaped out of bed, heart racing, sweat pouring. His mind was filled with haunting images. He didn’t know what, exactly, they were. Ghosts, maybe.

He swore he smelled smoke. Thick, black, acrid smoke.

He paused, standing on a hand-hooked rug. He didn’t hear smoke alarms.

There’s no damn smoke
.

He breathed deeply, fully awake now. The smoke must have been part of his nightmare.

If he’d had Clare Morgan in bed with him, he wouldn’t have had a nightmare.

He switched on the lamp on his bedside table. He looked around his father’s old room at the matching bed frames, the bookcase, the prints of Boston and Cape Cod. His grandmother hadn’t packed up any of the books. His father’s old yearbooks; biographies of a few of the founding fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams; more biographies of sports figures like Muhammad Ali, Lou Gehrig, a couple of race-car drivers Logan didn’t recognize; and a row of classic novels, from
Sherlock Holmes
to
The Man in the Iron Mask
and
Where the Red Fern Grows
.

Logan hadn’t paid attention to the furnishings or the contents of the room when he’d stayed here as a kid. He’d always been ready to go off with his grandfather to cut wood, plant the garden, sit in the fire trucks and talk to the firefighters. Tom Farrell hadn’t been one to sit still, either.

But this room...

Logan felt his throat tighten with emotion. This was the room young Tom and Daisy Farrell had decorated for their son, now an aging man himself. They hadn’t left the room as a shrine to him. They’d just never bothered changing it. New sheets and a fresh coat of paint every now and then, and it was set for guests—for their grandson. Logan’s sister had stayed in another bedroom.

Everything would go soon, and new owners would do as they saw fit with the place.

His gaze settled on a framed photograph on the top shelf of the bookcase. It was taken at the Farrell farm, his father at around ten with his parents, the three of them standing in front of an apple tree laden with ripe fruit.

Another time, another life.

Logan went into the hall. He could see Clare with her slim hips and fair curls as she’d carried boxes down from the attic. Did she even know how pretty she was?

When was the last time she’d slept with a man?

He pushed
that
thought aside, but at least thinking about her had helped him shake off his nightmare.

Smoke and gunfire—and crying. He knew there’d been crying.

He grimaced and headed downstairs. His grandmother was a teetotaler, but his grandfather had imbibed every now and then. Logan smiled when he found a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the dining room. He was normally a Scotch drinker, but a good sour-mash whiskey would do fine after a nightmare and imagining himself in bed with Clare Morgan.

He splashed some of the whiskey in a glass and took it into the living room. He sat by the unlit fireplace and held up his glass. “Cheers, Grandpa. I miss you.”

An hour later, when a colleague and friend at the ER called, Logan was all too eager to answer his phone. He answered questions about a patient he’d seen during the week and then waited for the expected shoe to drop. “We need you in here in the morning, Logan. Can you do it?”

“What time?”

“Ten. Eleven at the latest.”

He looked at the shadows in the living room. “Yeah,” he said. “I can be there.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m hanging out with the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

His friend made no comment.

After Logan disconnected, he checked his whiskey glass. He’d had something like eight sips. He wasn’t drunk. He wouldn’t be hungover in the morning—which, he decided, couldn’t come soon enough.

He wasn’t going back to his bedroom.

“Hell, no.”

He found an afghan one of Gran’s friends had given her—she wasn’t a knitter—and stretched out on the couch, wishing he’d found a way to have Clare with him. It was selfish and shallow of him, maybe, but he’d have made it worth her while.

Downright arrogant of him, he knew, but there it was.

He was in a kind of survival mode, and a good-hearted, attractive blonde would have kept the nightmares and ghosts at bay, at least for tonight.

* * *

By daylight, Logan had shrugged off his bad night. Since he had to be on his way as soon as possible, he drove rather than walked to Smith’s, open early for breakfast. Yesterday’s relatively balmy temperatures had fallen off the table overnight. According to his phone, it was nine degrees. In his world, that was cold. Among the Sloans, it probably wasn’t bad. Three of them were gathered at a table, coffees already in front of them and their breakfasts ordered.

Christopher Sloan, one of two full-time Knights Bridge firefighters and the youngest of the five brothers, motioned to an empty chair. “Feel free to join us, Dr. Farrell.”

“Logan,” he said, taking a seat, if only because it seemed rude to turn down the invitation and sit alone. “Morning. Cold out there.”

“It’s December,” Justin said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. He was the second eldest, the ostensible heir to running Sloan & Sons, the family’s construction business.

“Either way,” Logan said, “coffee is in order.”

Eric, the eldest Sloan and a police officer, called over the waitress. “Our good doctor needs coffee. Know what you’re having for breakfast, Logan?”

“I thought I’d try the oat waffles—with blackberry preserves on the side, please. No syrup.”

Eric made a face. “Waffles without syrup. Suit yourself.”

Logan put in his order. The waitress, a local woman, delivered his coffee in a heavy diner-style mug. The Sloans asked him about decorating his grandmother’s house and her move into assisted living. He quickly realized they knew far more about what was going on in his life than he did about their lives.

He also realized they didn’t approve of him. It wasn’t anything overt—not as it had been yesterday with Randy Frost. But it was there, the whiff of “we know you’re a heartless bastard.” Logan figured their judgment, fair or unfair, had more to do with their ideas about doctors, city doctors, people who lived in the city—any or all of the above. That didn’t bother him so much, since they didn’t know him well and he was what he was. What got to him—and took him by surprise—was the Sloans’ faint but unmistakable suspicion of his motives for being in their town, helping his grandmother.

“Daisy’s beloved in town,” Christopher said. “Every firefighter who’s served in the town fire department as a professional or a volunteer would do anything for her. A lot of firefighters from neighboring towns would, too.”

“Good to know,” Logan said.

Christopher wasn’t done yet. “Your grandfather’s a legend in the area. I don’t know if he saved as many lives as you have in the ER, but he saved quite a number during his years with the department. He also prevented injuries and deaths with inspections, education, drills. He wasn’t a hot dog who got a rise out of fighting a big fire.”