The Summer Cottage (10 page)

So why did the sight of Logan, still on the island and walking toward her with a determined
edge to his jaw, make her heart race?

Probably adrenaline, she told herself as her attention finally shifted to the man
who paid her salary, Miles Harrington. From what hints Penny had dropped, with many
a concerned glance at her fiancé, Miles had been coldly furious to hear about Penny
and Dylan’s whirlwind romance.

His presence at the engagement breakfast might signal a change of heart—or it could
mean he was here to lay down the law and forbid the marriage, like some soap opera
patriarch come to life.

Checking behind her, Jessica saw Dylan taking advantage of a brief moment of quiet
before the party really started to draw his bride-to-be around a corner and steal
a kiss. Happiness shot through with shards of loss tightened Jessica’s throat.

By God, someone in this whole drama deserved a happy ending.

Pushing away from the booth, she jerked her head in the direction of the oblivious
couple. “Keep the lovebirds occupied in here,” she told Greta. “I’ll take care of
those guys.”

Greta arched a dark blond brow and flicked her long braid over her flannel-shirted
shoulder. “If you need help, you know where to find me.”

Smiling, Jessica thanked her. But as she moved swiftly to the door to head off the
invasion of the Harrington brothers, she thought bleakly that she was probably the
only person on Sanctuary Island who stood a chance of making Miles Harrington listen
to reason.

And even then, it wasn’t a very good chance. Miles was famous for making up his mind
and sticking to his guns.

Jessica had braced herself for the emotional charge of coming face-to-face with Logan
after their recent fight, but nothing could have prepared her for the reality of staring
up into his stern, hard-planed face and seeing his ice-blue eyes fire with open, obvious
desire.

Faltering, heart stuttering, Jessica darted a nervous glance at her boss. She’d already
lost Logan—she couldn’t lose her job, too.

Miles’s gaze narrowed on her face, his expression as cold and implacable as granite.
She felt the piercing force of his stare as if he could peer into her mind and see
that she’d made the colossal, ridiculous mistake of falling for one of the Harrington
brothers.

Jessica dug deep and unearthed a reserve of strength she hadn’t known she possessed.
It was enough to straighten her shoulders and pull her spine taut. Enough to enable
her to face her boss as calmly as if she were wearing her favorite red wool suit and
heels, rather than a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were dusty from climbing
a ladder to hang streamers.

“Mr. Harrington,” she said coolly, extending a hand before belatedly realizing it
was smeared with a bit of buttercream frosting from the cake she’d helped set up on
the café counter. Withdrawing it, she wiped it smoothly on her pants. “What a surprise.
We weren’t expecting you.”

Her gaze slid sideways to Logan before she could stop it. “Either of you,” she finished,
as impassively as she could manage.

The light in Logan’s eyes dimmed as if she’d snuffed it out like a candle. His abrupt
shift to slide his hands in his pockets made her wonder if he’d been about to reach
out to her.

Jessica flinched away from the urge to hope like a person with vertigo on the edge
of a cliff. Logan wasn’t ready to change who he was, wasn’t ready for a real emotional
commitment. He might never be. And in the meantime, she couldn’t wait around, wishing
and hoping for more.

It would hurt too much.

Forcing herself to look away from Logan, Jessica faced her boss. A muscle ticked in
Miles’s stony jaw. “Ms. Bell. Here you are.”

“Here I am.” She projected a light professionalism she didn’t really feel. “I promised
Dylan and Penny I’d help set up for the party.”

Miles frowned. “Yes, so Logan mentioned. Not exactly in your job description, Ms.
Bell. Unlike accompanying Logan when he travels. That
is
part of your job, as I remember explaining it.”

Jessica suppressed a wince. Miles could smell fear, like blood in the water. But before
she could make the excuse that she’d told Logan not to travel anywhere—and Miles would
see it as an excuse, he didn’t accept any rationalization of failure—Logan said, “It’s
fine. I told her to stay here, and that I’d see her back in New York on Monday.”

His voice was quiet, a little tired around the edges, but the fact that he was trying
to cover for her made emotion rise up to clog Jessica’s throat.

She couldn’t stop herself from meeting his gaze, and the weary defeat in his blue
eyes nearly exploded the ball of emotion into a storm of tears. But Logan smiled at
her, a small, private smile that looked as if it intended to be reassuring. “Bright
and early, Monday morning, back to the real world. Everything just as it was before
we left.”

The world screeched to a halt around Jessica’s ears at the subtle message Logan was
sending, like a whisper only she could hear. Back to normal, exactly as they’d agreed.

He was telling her she could have what she’d negotiated for up front—a week of bliss,
of fun and discovery in his arms, and on Monday, they’d pick up where they left off,
as colleagues. It was everything she’d thought she wanted, especially since it was
all she believed she could have after he stormed out of the summer cottage.

As Logan handed her what she’d asked for, free and easy as a gift, Jessica realized
the truth. She wanted more.

She wanted it all. And for the first time in years, Jessica seriously wondered if
it might be possible.

*   *   *

Jessica didn’t even appear to register the way Miles was complaining that everything
better not be back to the way it was, because he couldn’t have Logan dropping dead
of a heart attack before the age of forty due to stress and exhaustion.

That was fine. Logan was ignoring him, too. But then, he usually ignored Miles, while
Jessica usually hung on the man’s every word. Miles was her boss, after all, and her
job was the most important thing to her—which she’d proved by acting like there was
nothing between her and Logan, the minute Miles showed up.

But now she was staring at Logan in a daze, as if he’d somehow shocked the sense out
of her by trying to finally give her what she’d asked for.

Which didn’t make Logan feel too good, especially when combined with the fact that
he was here now, with Miles, to try to start standing together as a family. Tuning
the big man out probably wasn’t the best way to go about it.

Logan tuned back in with a vengeance when the front door of the café pushed open,
and Dylan stomped down the steps to confront them. He went right up to Miles, toe
to toe with their older brother, and it gave Logan a jolt to notice as if for the
first time how alike they looked. Not merely their blue eyes, light-brown hair, and
tall, athletic frames, but in their identical stubborn expressions.

Maybe he should read up on genetics—clearly a fascinating field of scientific study.

A tall woman Logan didn’t know hovered in the restaurant doorway behind Dylan, watching
with definite interest.

“Great job keeping him distracted,” Jessica muttered, and the woman grimaced.

“Sorry, he’s a force of nature when he’s going after something.”

“Family trait,” Jessica replied tersely, causing the young woman to grin and flick
a sideways glance at Miles.

Ignoring all the byplay, Dylan divided his glower equally between both of his older
brothers as if unsure whose ass should be at the top of his to-be-kicked list. “If
you’re here to try and stop me from marrying Penny, you may as well head back to the
city.”

Miles stepped up, as usual, raising his smoothly shaved chin to stare down his long,
straight nose. “Don’t cast me as the villain in this drama. I’m only here to make
sure no one is taking advantage of you.”

Dylan snorted as if he didn’t buy it for a second, but Logan saw the way the lines
at the corners of Miles’s eyes deepened and his frozen mask chilled down another few
degrees.

This was the kind of fraught, intensely emotional confrontation Logan hated. Everyone
here believed he was right, utterly and completely, and no one was ever going to back
down. Usually he stayed out of it, knowing the chaos would eventually resolve itself.

“And I suppose the fact that I love Penny and she loves me,” Dylan argued, “that means
nothing to you.”

It was Miles’s turn to register complete disbelief, although he was too controlled
to snort. “Dylan. You’ve known each other for less than a month.”

“So? Grandma told me once that Dad asked Mom to marry him on their third date.”

The mention of their parents shut Miles up as nothing else could. Turning his hard-jawed
face away to stare out at the ocean vista that provided a backdrop to the Firefly
Café, he muttered to Logan, “Reason with him. I can’t deal with him when he’s like
this.”

A tiny intake of breath to his right had Logan looking back in time to see Jessica
subtly stepping closer to Dylan, aligning herself with him. She stared at Logan, her
whole heart in her eyes, and he read the plea there as clearly as if she’d written
it on the air between them.

She didn’t want him to systematically take the whole concept of love apart, to reduce
it to pieces and parts, components scattered across a lab table for dissection. That’s
all Jessica thought he’d know to do with love.

Maybe that was true, before Sanctuary Island. But now … Logan took a deep breath and
faced his younger brother—although his words were meant for the older brother.

Once again, Logan was in the middle, tugged in opposite directions. But this time,
he was sure enough of his own footing to keep from budging. Jessica had given him
that. So he paid her back the only way he knew how.

“Miles wants me to tell you that love is nothing more than chemicals in the brain,
a means to promote the propagation of the species. Maybe he thinks the fact that there’s
a biological basis for the experience of loving another human being means it’s not
real. But I’m a scientist, and a man, and I know that love is real … that it’s something
more than an evolutionary imperative.”

Miles swung around, hell in his eyes, but before he could blast Logan, Jessica said,
“You wanted him to talk. So let him talk.”

A little thrown by the novel experience of Jessica defending him against Miles—usually,
the two of them ganged up on Logan to bug him into working less and eating more—Logan
had to refocus on Dylan’s set, uncertain face to keep going.

“Love is not an equation,” Logan told him. He told Miles, and Jessica, and himself,
the truth revealing itself to him as he spoke, unfolding from deep inside him. “You
can’t plug in a given set of values and solve for x. Two virtual strangers might look
at each other across a crowded room and know … while for others, it might take years
as coworkers—friends—to understand the truth.”

Keeping his gaze steadily locked on his brother, heart hammering at even the thought
of glancing at Jessica, Logan saw the moment Dylan realized that he had at least one
brother’s support. The gratitude and relief on his face was almost enough to knock
Logan off his feet.

But he managed to keep his balance—until he had an armful of warm, soft, trembling
woman.

Staring down at Jessica in stunned surprise, Logan murmured, “What are you doing?”

“For a genius, sometimes you’re kind of slow on the uptake,” she said, a beaming smile
breaking through the tears rolling down her pink cheeks. “Kiss me, Logan.”

“But what about—mmmf…” Logan broke off his question about Miles with a happy groan,
wrapping his arms around Jessica tightly enough to pull her fully against him.

If she didn’t care that she was kissing Logan directly in front of her boss, Logan
wasn’t going to be the one to remind her. Not when he had the taste of her in his
mouth, the sweet smell of her in his lungs, and the lush curves of her body in his
hands.

And when the kiss finally broke, purely for lack of oxygen, Logan looked up to see
Dylan giving him a wink as he steered their shocked oldest brother down the path to
the deck at the back of the restaurant to finish their conversation there.

“Looks like your impassioned speech about love didn’t manage to completely convince
Miles,” Jessica observed.

Logan adored the breathless tone of her voice, the way she could sound so serene and
amused even as her body tried to mold itself to his.

“As long as it convinced you,” he said roughly.

A note of uncertainty threaded through as she replied, “You convinced me that I was
wrong—you do know what love is. But if you wanted to be completely explicit about
what you think is happening here between you and me, I wouldn’t complain.”

Which was her wordy, professional way of asking what the hell Logan intended. In response,
Logan dropped a kiss on her uptilted nose.

“What I think is happening is that I love you. And you love me. And maybe we’re both
still figuring out what that means for us, and how to make it work—but I know I want
to try. If you’re willing to take a chance on trying to have it all, I want to be
the man who shares it with you.”

Misty moisture clouded her green eyes, and she did that bewildering laughing-while-crying
thing again, but Logan didn’t let it bother him. Because she was also nodding, and
kissing every inch of his face and neck that she could reach, and as the sun of Sanctuary
Island beat down on their bare heads and gulls wheeled overhead and his lab sat empty
hundreds of miles away, Logan had never been happier.

Yep,
he thought smugly as he dipped Jessica to make her laugh and nipped at the tender
side of her neck to make her shiver.
I am definitely a genius.