Two Times as Hot (14 page)

Logan pulled back. He knew very well her father was waiting for her so they could
leave for the airport. With one last look at the face he was sure would haunt his
dreams, he said, “You’d better go.”

“Yeah.” Emma nodded and took a step toward the door. “I’ll be seeing you sometime.”
She turned and left Logan alone in the coatroom.

He certainly hoped that sometime would be sooner rather than later. While wiping a
hand across his mouth to remove any lipstick, he realized he missed her kisses already.

Logan couldn’t handle more of being social right now. The brunch was breaking up anyway.
No one would miss him. He strode directly for the exit and caught sight of Emma as
she got into the backseat of the car and slammed the door.

After that one final glimpse of her, Logan turned toward his truck. Inside, he couldn’t
help but look at his empty passenger seat and remember how nice it had been having
Emma in it, if only for a little while. He drove toward home feeling less jovial,
knowing that with Emma on her way to the airport, that seat would likely remain empty
for a long while—a very real reminder of the companionship lacking in his life.

Talk about symbolic.

Shaking off the depressing thoughts, Logan twisted the knob on the radio, turning
up the volume to let Jason Aldean sing him out of this bad mood.

The restaurant, like everything else in this town, was only about a five-minute drive
from home. Logan pulled in front of his parents’ house and stopped. What he saw there
had his heart stopping.

An ambulance idled in the driveway, lights blinking, and the back open.

A member of the emergency crew backed out of the front door, supporting one end of
a stretcher held between him and another paramedic. Logan threw the truck into park
and flung open the driver’s side door. Eyes wide, he watched his mother follow the
stretcher out of the house and realized that the prone figure on the stretcher was
his father.

T
hree weeks. It had been three weeks since Becca’s wedding and three weeks during which
Emma hadn’t had even one damn phone call from her sister.

After having talked on the phone every day—sometimes multiple times a day—since Becca’s
move to Oklahoma a year ago, the drought in communications was enough to drive Emma
nuts. Sure, she hadn’t expected a lot of contact—after all, Becca was on her honeymoon.
But still, was one phone call too much to ask?

It had also been three weeks since she’d said good-bye to Logan, stealing a much too
brief good-bye kiss in the coatroom before she left for the airport with her parents.
Three weeks with no call from him, either.

For the entire week after the wedding, Emma had jumped every time the phone rang,
hoping if it wasn’t Becca, maybe it might be Logan. She’d been disappointed every
single time.

She let out a huff and looked at the display on her cell phone one more time. She
confirmed it was charged and had signal, and that she hadn’t missed any calls or texts.

What the hell was wrong with her? She flung the phone at the throw pillow on the other
end of the sofa. If Logan hadn’t called yet, he wasn’t going to. Proving beyond a
shadow of a doubt that Emma’s taste in men stank.

In spite of the fact they’d both gone in to that night together knowing it was just
sex, she’d honestly thought he would call when he discovered she’d slipped her business
card into the pocket of his tuxedo.

They’d connected on a level much deeper than sex. And Logan wasn’t Jace, who had a
history of ditching her. Of promising to call and then not following through.

This was Logan, the man who’d looked at her and made her feel as if she were the only
woman in the world. He’d told her she was beautiful, both dripping wet from the shower,
as well as when she was wearing her fancy dress at the wedding. They’d almost been
late for the brunch because they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. He didn’t
need to say all those sweet things to her, but he did. She hated to believe she was
such a horrible judge of character, yet the proof was there in the phone that had
never been more silent.

Logan was the man who’d never been married and hadn’t had a serious girlfriend that
Becca knew of. Emma needed to remember that. He obviously wasn’t the kind of guy who
wanted to settle down, not even for a casual, long-distance relationship.

Maybe he was incapable of giving more. A man didn’t reach his age without ever having
been married unless he had commitment issues. He’d blamed it on the army, but Tuck
was a soldier, too, and he was married. Twice now.

As much as Emma had pretended to herself and to Logan that she only wanted a night
of mindless sex, she wanted more. She’d hoped he had, too. Apparently, he didn’t.

The fact that Becca was away and incommunicado wasn’t helping Emma’s sanity. The funny
thing was, Emma hadn’t even planned to tell Becca about the one wild night with Logan.
Silly woman that she was, Emma had thought she would preserve that magic feeling of
a new relationship and keep it to herself for a little while, before telling her sister.
That was back when she still had hope he’d call, which he hadn’t. Or that Becca would
call, which she hadn’t.

The gaping hole—make that holes—in Emma’s life had never been more apparent. She had
no life. She had a job that she used to love ten years ago when it was new and exciting
but bored her to tears now. Work associates, but no close friends except for her sister.
No boyfriend, and obviously no hope for one if recent experience with Jace and Logan
was any indication.

Emma drew in a deep breath. She’d feel more settled once Becca was back in Oklahoma
and calling her five times a day. Then, things would feel normal again.

She hoisted herself off the cushion. All this overthinking was exhausting. She’d slept
okay last night, but still felt as if she couldn’t move her limbs now. She went to
the fridge and looked inside, but that’s all she allowed herself. The numbers on her
digital scale this morning had been a very rude awakening.

One more reason to avoid men. They broke your heart, forced you to turn to food for
comfort, and then you got fat. Now, Emma’s favorite jeans were so tight she could
barely zip them. At this point, she was ready to throw them away and live in sweatpants
for the next—oh—ten years or so. Maybe then, she wouldn’t care about men or Logan
or her jeans not fitting her anymore.

Wandering back to the living room, Emma flopped onto the sofa again and grabbed the
television remote. She flipped through the channels and found only crap. What else
was new? It was fitting since her life was in the crapper, too.

“Sundays suck.” She spoke aloud to no one at all. Maybe she should get a cat. At least
then when she talked to herself, it wouldn’t seem quite as crazy.

Monday through Friday, Emma kept busy at work. Usually at least one of her coworkers
would be looking for something to do after work, and Emma would sometimes go along.
Dinner. Drinks. Shopping. Whatever. She’d do anything to keep from having to go home
alone. But weekends were the worst since Becca had moved from New York to Oklahoma.
That’s when Emma missed her sister’s company the most.

The four walls seemed too close. Antsy, Emma flicked the TV off and stood. She needed
to get out of here. She found her cell among the couch cushions and dialed as she
headed for where she’d dumped her purse by the front door.

“Mom? Hi. Are you and Dad busy? I was thinking of driving over for a visit . . . Great.
I’ll see you in a bit.”

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Even her parents’ company would be
preferable to the silence in her apartment. Then tonight when she got home, she’d
take a look at the calendar and confirm what time Becca’s flight was supposed to land
tomorrow.

Finally, this eternally long honeymoon, and the hiatus in their communication, was
about to come to an end. Becca might be Tucker’s wife now, but Emma needed her bitching
partner back. He had better understand that. Besides, it was Tucker’s stupid boss
Logan who hadn’t called Emma despite the amazing sex they’d shared. Tuck should have
to assume some of the responsibility for that. He could damn well share Becca to make
up for it.

Emma locked her front door and got into her car. She’d just turned the key in the
ignition when she realized she probably should have grabbed a bottle of wine from
the rack to bring with her. Her mother could cook, but she had the worst taste in
wine ever. If Emma didn’t want to drink crappy wine, she had to bring her own.

Although, Emma’s stomach hadn’t been feeling quite right lately. It was probably her
Logan-induced stress manifesting itself as an ulcer. She’d definitely lay off the
wine tonight and see if that helped.

Emma hoped that when Becca was back in Oklahoma and in steady contact again, normalcy
would return and she would forget all about Logan. Then maybe the issues with her
belly would disappear.

With that plan in place, Emma steered the car to the entrance of the highway that
led to her parents’ house, but as she drove, she realized Logan was going to be hard
to forget.

 

Logan glanced at the work still left to be done. Beside him, his brother Layne opened
the flaps of a box and peered inside.

Blowing out a breath, Logan went back to his own box, glancing at his brother. “Thanks
for coming home. I know I told you not to, but I’m glad you did.”

“You gotta stop trying to be a martyr, Logan. I know you’re the older brother, but
you can’t handle everything yourself.”

Logan let out a snort. “I think I could have cleaned the garage by myself. It’s not
hard.”

Not hard. Just dirty and boring as shit. Logan was about to lose his mind. Then again,
at least while he was working out here in the garage, he wasn’t at the rehabilitation
facility. He’d spent one too many days there already watching his mother feed soup
to his formerly vibrant father. Cheering him on for some small victory such as saying
her name, or something the speech therapist thought sounded close enough to her name.

“You know damn well I’m not talking about us cleaning the garage.” Layne stopped his
work to shoot Logan a glare. “I mean dealing with everything with Dad.”

“It’s not like there’s a damn thing either one of us can do to help him get better.”
Logan shrugged. “It’s up to Dad, the doctors, and God.”

That’s what Logan had kept repeating to himself since the day after Tuck’s wedding.
He’d come home from the brunch to find his father being rushed to the hospital with
a massive stroke.

That weekend had gone from the best one of his life to the worst in one fell swoop.
It was almost as if the universe didn’t want him to get too comfortable being happy.
Logan had an amazing night with Emma, then
bam
! His father was a shell of his former self. No warning. Nothing.

“Well, even if that is the case, there was no frigging way I was going to stay in
Japan after you called and told me that Dad had a stroke. Mom needed us here for support,
even if Dad didn’t really know we were there for those first couple of days.”

Logan sighed and sat on the box he’d just filled and taped shut. “Do you think we’re
doing the right thing? Selling the business out from under him while he’s like this?
Unable to fully comprehend it all and give his opinion. I mean, that shop has always
been in his life.” For as long as Logan could remember, his father had been the face
of Hunt’s, and before that, it had been their grandfather.

“Logan, what do you want to do? Retire and sell cowboy boots and saddle blankets?
Because you know Mom can’t handle both the shop and taking care of Dad. The value
is in the building, not in the retail business. We sell the property and Mom and Dad
can live nicely just off the interest from what they’ll make if they invest it well.
Besides, people want to buy online nowadays, where they have more of a selection.
Nobody’s into going to little local stores that have only one brand of everything
on the shelves anymore.”

Logan’s father had finally given in to pressure and had begun to carry other brands
of cowboy hats besides Stetson, but besides that, Layne was right. Small businesses
were falling prey to the big mega stores and online shopping everywhere. It was only
a matter of time. “I know, you’re right. It’s just—”

“It’s the end of an era.” Layne finished the thought. “I know and it sucks. I get
it. I used to work there after school every day and all summer, just like you did.
I shaped my share of cowboy hats, too. But things change, Logan. We chose the military,
otherwise the sign would read Hunt and Sons by now instead of just Hunt’s.”

His little brother was right, and that was almost more than Logan could handle on
top of everything else. “When the hell did you get so damn smart? I’m supposed to
be the older, wiser brother. Remember?”

“Eh, you know.” Layne shrugged. “Unlike the army, the marines make a man out of you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Logan shook his head again and picked the next dusty cardboard box off
the shelf. It looked like a case of fishing line. His father believed in carrying
everything and anything the men and women of rural Oklahoma could possibly want. A
weekend of fishing? He had you covered. Need a pair of horse clippers? Got those,
too. Christmas cards with pictures of horses on them? Got ’em. Unfortunately, a lot
of that stock ended up in the garage for lack of storage space at the shop.

Logan opened the top and looked inside, evaluating whether it should go with the inventory
of the store, or whether he should just keep it for him and Tuck. Though how much
fishing line could a man use in one lifetime? He sighed and shoved it back onto the
shelf. Maybe he was becoming a packrat himself. It must be hereditary. “Let’s just
finish packing this stuff up. No matter what we end up doing—selling the business
and the building together or selling off the stock separately—it doesn’t make sense
to have inventory from the store warehoused here at the house.”

“Agreed.” Layne shook his head and laughed. “Maybe Dad should have done a longer stint
in the military instead of getting out after only a few years.”

Logan shot his brother another sideways glance. “You’re right. There’s no way he’d
be this unorganized if he’d been a career man.”

“He sure is a packrat. Jeez. Look at this. I mean, what the hell is he going to use
this thing for?” Layne held up a single bowling pin and laughed. It was a good sound.
One Logan missed hearing on a daily basis.

“I’m gonna miss you, bro.” In the past few weeks, Logan had gotten used to his brother
being here. Layne had been around for long enough that saying good-bye again would
be hard.

“I’ll miss you, too, goofball, but Okinawa calls.” Layne was scheduled to fly back
to the USMC base in Japan in two days.

The military was generous about giving the troops time for emergency leave, but three
weeks at home was the most anyone could expect to get in this kind of situation.

He’d lucked out with his own current billet at OSU that kept him close to home and
his parents. But that didn’t mean a Permanent Change of Station couldn’t send him
to the other side of the world, just as it had sent Layne to Okinawa.

Dreading his brother’s departure, Logan sighed. “When are you going to PCS back to
this continent, do you think?”

Layne let out a snort. “You know the answer to that well enough. Hopefully next year,
but in reality, when Uncle Sam says so.”

Logan did know. Too well. And for that reason, it wasn’t fair for Logan to pressure
the family to keep the store, because neither of them could guarantee they’d be here
to help out if his mom or dad needed it.