Читать книгу Montana Creeds: Logan - Linda Miller Lael - Страница 10

THERE WERE TWO CARS parked in front of Cassie’s ramshackle place at the edge of town, and she’d scrawled With a client on the whiteboard nailed up beside the front door. Logan took the marker, dangling from a piece of tattered baling twine, and added I was here. Logan.

That done, he turned and swung his gaze across the property.

Sidekick was sniffing around the edge of the teepee, the closest thing to a tourist attraction that Stillwater Springs, Montana, had to offer. It was authentic, built in the old way, by Cassie’s father, of tree branches and buckskin, and she charged fifty cents per visit.

Logan approached, dropped two quarters into the rusty coffee can that served as a till—Cassie believed in the honor system and so did he—and ducked into the cool, semidarkness where he and Dylan and Tyler had played as boys.

Except for the long-cold fire circle in the center, rimmed by sooty stones, the teepee was empty. Gone were the ratty blankets he remembered, the gourd ladle and wooden bucket, the clay cooking pots. No sign of the mangy bearskins, either.

He sat down, cross-legged, facing the fire pit, and imagined the flames leaping before him. Sidekick took an uncertain seat beside him, leaned into his shoulder a little.

Maybe the animal knew that in the old times, he might have been on the supper menu.

Logan wrapped an arm around the dog, gave him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay, boy,” he said. “Nobody’s going to boil you up with beans.”

Sidekick stuck close, just the same.

As Logan sat, he drifted into a sort of meditation, recalling other visits, sometimes alone, sometimes with his brothers. They’d always built a fire, filling the place with hide-scented smoke, and taken off their shirts. Sometimes, they’d even painted their chests and faces with cosmetics left behind by one or the other of their mothers.

Jake never threw anything away.

Except, of course, for three wives and three sons.

Something tightened inside Logan, and Sidekick seemed to feel it, as though the two of them were tethered together by some intangible cord. The dog gave a low, throaty whine.

The warp and woof of time itself seemed to shift as Logan sat there, waiting. It stretched and then contracted, until, finally, he could no longer measure the passing of seconds or minutes or even hours.

Outside, car doors slammed.

Engines started.

Sidekick eased away from his side, restless, and headed for the opening to look out.

And still Logan didn’t move.

He knew the bulky shadow at the entrance was Cassie, but he didn’t look up or speak.

“You’ll have to make peace with him, you know,” she said quietly.

Logan didn’t respond, even to nod, nor did he meet her eyes. He knew she was referring to Jake, the man he both loved and hated, with such intensity that most times, he couldn’t separate one emotion from the other.

“He won’t rest until you do,” Cassie went on. She stepped into the teepee then, sat down on the ground across from him, graceful despite her size.

Logan blinked, came out of the meditation, or whatever it was. He smiled. “Still telling fortunes, I see,” he said, referring to the client she’d been with when he arrived.

“It’s a living,” she said, with a little shrug and a partly sheepish smile.

“You don’t need to read cards to make a buck, Cassie,” he pointed out, as he had at least a hundred times before. “You get a regular check from the tribal council.”

“Maybe it isn’t about the money,” Cassie suggested mildly, laughing a little when Sidekick gave her a nuzzle with his nose and tried to sit in her ample lap.

“What do you tell them?” Logan asked. “Your clients, I mean?”

“Depends,” Cassie answered, “on what I think they need to hear.” She regarded him with a focus so sharp that it was unsettling. “Did you call Dylan and Tyler?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Dylan basically blew me off. I left a message for Ty, but he hasn’t called back.” He grinned. “Off the hook,” he finished.

“In your dreams,” Cassie said.

“Is this the part where you tell me what you think I need to hear?”

“Yes,” she replied succinctly.

He huffed out a sigh.

Sidekick arranged himself on Cassie’s broad thighs, and she didn’t push him away. Instead, she stroked his back idly, though her attention was still on Logan, one hundred percent. It felt a little like a ray of sunlight coming through the lens of a magnifying glass, searing its way through the brittle inner shell meant to hide his secrets.

“Jake won’t rest until you’ve come to terms with being his son,” Cassie said.

Logan bristled. “What do you mean, he won’t rest? He’s dead, gone, crossed over, whatever. Maybe they let him into heaven, but I’m betting he gets his mail in hell.”

“So bitter,” Cassie said, in a tsk-tsk tone. “No one is all bad, Logan. Including Jake Creed.”

“He was a son of a bitch.”

Cassie frowned. “Wrong. Your grandmother was a fine woman.”

Logan said nothing. He’d never known his grandmother, or his grandfather, either. They’d both died long before he was born, and Jake neither told stories about them nor kept their pictures around.

“People come into this life with agendas to fulfill, Logan,” Cassie told him quietly. “Sometimes they’re simple. Sometimes they’re complicated. Jake did what he was supposed to do.”

“What? Raise hell?”

“He made you strong.You and Dylan and Tyler.You’re as tough as the walls of this teepee, all three of you.”

“It would have been easier,” Logan said, “if he’d just named me Sue.”

Cassie laughed. “Easier isn’t necessarily better,” she pointed out.

Logan wanted to refute that statement, but even with all his legal training, he couldn’t come up with a solid argument. “I called my brothers,” he said. “The ball is in their court. What else is there to do?”

“You haven’t been to Jake’s grave, have you?”

Logan stiffened, shook his head. Cassie, it seemed, had eyes everywhere, in the bushes, in the trees, in the walls. She’d always known, somehow, what he’d done and what he hadn’t done. Worse, she believed she had the right to comment.

“His things are still packed away, too. That’s convenient, isn’t it? Because then you don’t have to remember quite so readily.”

“I came back here, didn’t I?”

Again, Cassie executed a half shrug. “You won’t stay if you don’t settle things with Jake,” she said. “I know what your dream is—to make the name Creed mean something good—and I can tell you that it’s more than just a dream. It’s a quest—the most important thing you’ll ever do.” At this, she paused and looked up and around at the interior of that teepee, as though her ancestors were hovering in the air or something. When her brown gaze collided with Logan’s, he felt like a butterfly with its wings pinned to a mat. “You’ll fail if you don’t own who you are—all of it. Not just the law degree, and the fancy silver belt buckles you won at the rodeo, and all that money you’re pretending you don’t have. You’ve got to accept that you’re flesh of Jake Creed’s flesh, bone of his bone, blood of his blood, and nothing is going to change that.”

Logan shifted, got to his feet. “He was a bastard,” he said. “If I could be anybody else’s son—anybody’s—I would.”

“Well,” Cassie said implacably, moving Sidekick gently off her lap and then accepting Logan’s hesitantly offered hand so she could stand, “you’re not. That’s one thing I know for sure.”

“Maybe you should have told him,” Logan said, seething. “He used to say otherwise. He said Teresa was a whore—did you know that? Practically every time he got drunk, which was often, he told me she’d been catting around, and I probably wasn’t his.” He leaned in a little, despite the flinch he saw in Cassie’s broad, kindly face. “And you know what? I wished to God it was true back then, and I wish it now!”

Cassie stood her ground, like she always had. It was a trait he blessed her for, even when he hated what she said. “How’s that working out for you, Logan?” she asked quietly. “All that wishing?”

He glared at her.

She waited.

“You’re so sure he wasn’t telling the truth, for once in his miserable, worthless life?”

“Teresa was faithful to her husband. She loved him. She loved you.” Cassie drew in a long, somewhat quivery breath. “Besides, you have Jake’s bone structure. His temper, too, and that mile-wide stubborn streak that ought to be in every dictionary under ‘Creed.’”

“Great,” Logan said, sagging a little on the inside, now that he’d let off steam. “And what am I supposed to do with all this information, oh, great medicine woman?”

“Break the curse,” Cassie answered. “Make different choices than Jake did. Find a woman, love her with your whole heart and mind and body and spirit. Make babies with her. Stick with her—and the children—for the duration.” She paused, regarded him with a kind of warm sorrow that got under his skin in a way her challenges hadn’t. “You’ve been running ever since the day they put Jake in the ground,” she went on, touching his arm. “Coming back here was a big thing. I know that. But until you can forgive Jake—really forgive him—you’ll be stuck, no matter where you go or what you do.”

Logan thrust a hand through his hair. “I can’t,” he said.

“Then you and your dog might as well get back in that old truck and move on, because you’re wasting your time here.” Tears glittered in Cassie’s wise brown eyes. “In all the ways that really count, Teresa was my daughter. I know what Jake put her through—Maggie and poor Angela, too. I had to let it all go, Logan—the hatred, the need for revenge—because it was devouring me from the inside.

“Look at your life. Your brothers are strangers to you. Twice, you married the wrong woman. The ranch—your legacy—is practically in ruins. You can’t just ignore all of that. You have to make it right.”

“How?” Logan demanded, furious because it was all true. Both his wives, Susan and Laurie, had been good women. He’d never raised a hand to either one of them, barely raised his voice, in fact. But in his own way, he’d been no more available to them than Jake was to Teresa or Maggie or Angela. “Short of committing bigamy—”

Cassie smiled. “Those marriages are behind you,” she said. “Did you part friends?”

Friends? Logan ached. He’d loved Susan, or thought he did. And when they weren’t having monkey sex, they’d been giving each other the cold shoulder. Now, she was happily married to a balding dentist with a slight paunch, and expecting her second child. He’d given her a settlement when his company took off, several years after their divorce, and she’d put it in trust for her children. Still, the last time he’d seen Susan, he’d known by the look in her eyes that she could barely restrain herself from spitting in his face.

“Not so much,” he admitted. He still talked to Laurie sometimes—usually when she needed something. She’d used her divorce settlement to open a hair salon in Santa Monica, and the last time they’d spoken, she’d told him all about her recent wedding ceremony on a beach at sunset.

She’d married herself. White dress, veil, cake and all.

Still, it had to be an improvement over being married to him, Logan reflected ruefully. Except, if he did say so himself, for the sex.

That had been beyond good, with both Susan and Laurie.

It was also pretty much all he missed about being married.

“Are they happy?” Cassie asked, ostensibly asking about his exes.

He nodded. “Nothing like divorcing one of the Creed men to improve a woman’s outlook on life,” he said.

Cassie laughed. Dusty light poured into the teepee as she pulled the flap aside to step out. Sidekick preceded her—Logan followed.

The sun dazzled him, made him fumble for his sunglasses, which he’d left on the dashboard of the Dodge.

Another car pulled into the driveway, parked beside his truck.

“That’s Elsie Blake,” Cassie said, with a philosophical sigh. “She’s going to ask if I see a man in her future, the way she does every time she comes for a reading. I ought to tell her she’d be better off marrying herself, like Laurie did.”

Logan blinked. “You knew about that?”

“Of course I did,” Cassie answered brightly, and the dismissal was as clear as if she’d flat-out told him to get his butt into his truck and go home already. “She mailed out announcements, with a picture of herself on the front, wearing a white dress. I sent her a toaster.”

Logan was rolling his eyes as Cassie walked away.

RUSHING INTO the kitchen with a grocery bag in each arm, Briana surveyed her surroundings. The counters were clear, except for the vestiges of lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches, she guessed, by the burned crusts of bread—sneakers were neatly lined up just inside the back door and both boys looked angelic enough to light candles for a Vatican Mass. Only Wanda was her regular self.

“Okay,” Briana said suspiciously, juggling the bags and heading for the table to set them down. “What have you guys been up to?”

“I’ve been doing my history homework on the computer,” Josh said loftily, and whatever Web page he’d been looking at faded into cyber-oblivion at the click of the mouse.

“And I swept the floor,” Alec volunteered. “After I did my homework, of course. Not that stink-face would let me use the computer.”

“What did I say about name-calling?”

The boys exchanged poisonous glares.

“Don’t do it,” they chorused dolefully.

Briana had been concerned that Alec and Josh might head for the orchard—it was infested with bears, to hear Logan tell it—or dash off to Cimarron’s pasture to play matador the moment she’d driven out of sight that morning. Instead, they’d probably watched something they weren’t supposed to on TV, or gotten into her secret stash of snack-size candy bars.

Or both.

“What are we having for supper?” Alec asked, as Briana began taking things out of the bags—milk, oversize cans of soup, packages of hamburger and chicken breasts, bread and fresh fruit, frozen potatoes compressed into little cylinders.

“A casserole,” she said.

Alec frowned in obvious disapproval while Wanda scratched hopefully at the back door, asking to be let out. “You do remember that we’re having company tonight?”

Briana smiled hurriedly, went to open the door for Wanda, and then put away everything except the soup, two pounds of lean hamburger and the potato chunks. “Yes, Alec,” she said. “I remember.”

“I think cowboys eat steaks,” Josh observed, drawing nearer. This particular casserole was Briana’s specialty—her dad had taught her how to make it—and both boys loved it. usually.

“Not tonight, they don’t,” she replied, going to the sink to wash her hands before assembling the meal. She would shower while the dish was in the oven, and put on fresh mascara and lip gloss, too. There was no time for a shampoo, so she’d wind her braid into a chignon at her nape, pin it into place and hope for the best. “Tonight, it’s Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza or nothing.”

Alec made a face. “Josh is right,” he said, in an Ihate-to-admit-it kind of tone. “Cowboys like steak and stuff like that.”

“Sorry,” Briana said, sounding a bit manic. Wanda was scratching at the door again. “No steak. Somebody let the dog in, please.”

Josh did the honors, after a brief stare-down with Alec.

“And then feed her,” Briana added.

“We’ve been cooped up in the house all day,” Josh said, looking like a slave hauling construction materials to a pyramid as he dipped Wanda’s bowl into the kibble bag, brought it out overflowing and set it down on the floor for her. “I was hoping we could have another picnic at the cemetery.”

“I told you what Mr. Cre—Logan said about bears.”

“When was the last time you saw a bear, Mom?” Josh persisted.

Briana sighed. She’d never seen a bear, at least not around Stillwater Springs, which was probably why Dylan hadn’t warned her when she and the boys moved in. He had told her, during one of their rare phone conversations, that the cellar floor was rotting in places and the furnace needed three good kicks to get going when the temperature fell below freezing in the winter and that she should let the neighbor feed Cimarron and keep away from him herself.

If bears were a threat, wouldn’t he have said something?

Wouldn’t Jim Huntinghorse or one of the dozens of other people she knew in town have said something?

Her mood, already slightly frenzied, darkened a little. Logan was either paranoid about bears, or he simply didn’t want her and her sons having the run of the property.

For a moment, she wished she hadn’t invited him over, that or any night. What other ridiculous fears was he going to plant in her head?

“When, Mom?” Josh prodded, because he never let any subject drop before he was satisfied that all the angles had been covered.

“Okay,” she said. “We can still go to the cemetery for picnics—but not tonight. I am not lugging a hot casserole across the creek.”

Josh and Alec gave each other high fives, in an unusual show of accord.

Hastily, she browned the hamburger in a cast-iron skillet, drained it, mixed it in with the cream of mushroom soup and a few dehydrated onions, poured the potato thingies over the top and put the whole concoction into the oven at three-fifty.

The phone rang as she was stepping out of the shower.

Vance, calling to say he’d be arriving early or not coming at all?

Logan, begging off on supper?

The bathroom door creaked open and Alec stuck his head through the crack, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Mom!”

Briana, wrapped in a towel, chuckled at the sight. “What?”

“We won a week’s vacation at Lake Tahoe,” Alec said. “All we have to do is look at a time share and watch a video. They’ll even fly us down there!”

“It’s a sales pitch,” Briana said, reaching for her robe with her free hand. “Hang up.”

“But I told the guy you were in the shower and I’d come and get you. Mom, we won.”

Briana was in her robe by then, belt pulled tight. “You can open your eyes now, Alec,” she said. “I’m decent. Go back, tell ‘the guy’ we’re not interested and hang up.”

Alec dragged off to the kitchen to do as he was told—Briana hoped—and she slipped into her bedroom to put on clean underwear, cut-off jeans and a white tank top. She slipped her feet into sandals, pinned up her hair, applied a spritz of the drugstore perfume the boys had given her for Christmas and examined her reflection in the blurry mirror above the bureau.

She definitely needed mascara and lip gloss, she decided.

The savory scent of the casserole filled the kitchen when she made her entrance. She drew up, a little thrown, when she saw Logan sitting at the kitchen table, with Josh seated at his right side and Alec at his left.

“I’m early,” he said, looking apologetic as he rose from his chair. He’d brought wildflowers in a canning jar and a bottle of light wine, both of which were sitting on the table.

She gave him credit for good manners. But he looked too fine in his new jeans and pressed white shirt, open at the throat. His dark hair was still damp from a shower, and there were little ridges where he’d run a comb through it.

The back door was open, and through the screen, Briana saw Sidekick sleeping contentedly on the porch. She’d had to look away from Logan for a moment, in order to steady her nerves, but now she made herself look back.

“That’s okay,” she said, too brightly and a beat too late. “Supper’s ready.”

“Smells good,” Logan said. He sounded shy.

She knew he wasn’t.

Was he putting on an act?

“It’s Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza,” Alec announced proudly, evidently over his earlier fixation about serving steak.

Logan, sitting down again at a nod from Briana, raised an eyebrow, and a slight grin quirked one corner of his mouth. “Who’s Wild Man?” he asked.

“Our Grampa,” Josh answered. “He was a famous rodeo clown.”

“Oh,” Logan said, his eyes never leaving Briana’s face. “That Wild Man.”

“You knew him?” Alec asked, hyperintrigued. This, his expression seemed to say, was even better than “winning” a free trip to Lake Tahoe. Even his freckles were jazzed.

“I saw him perform a few times, when I was about your age,” Logan answered, shifting his gaze to Alec, somehow managing to pull Josh into his orbit, too. “I wanted to be Wild Man McIntyre when I grew up. Turned out to be myself instead.”

Briana busied herself setting the table. Logan had probably eaten off the same dishes they’d be using that night, she thought fitfully, back when he and Dylan were like regular brothers. If indeed they’d ever been regular brothers.

“We’ve got a whole album full of pictures of him!” Alec said.

“After supper,” Briana interjected, her smile a little tight-lipped.

The boys missed it.

Logan didn’t. His eyes lingered on her face, making every single cell in her body throb before going back to Alec. “I’d like that fine,” he said. “When the time is right.”

Briana gave herself strict orders to calm down, stop being such a ninny, but herself didn’t listen. This was just supper with a neighbor, that was all, but it felt like more.

It felt like some kind of beginning.

Briana didn’t like beginnings, because they inevitably turned into endings. Given her druthers, she’d have spent the rest of her life somewhere in the middle, between major events. The present, for all its problems, was a terrain she knew.

She had her boys, and a place to live, and a job that paid the bills.

And that was enough—wasn’t it?

The casserole went over big. Logan had two helpings, though he didn’t touch the wine. Since he’d opened the bottle at some point, Briana accepted a glass, took a couple of jittery sips and decided she’d be better off without a buzz. Even a very mild one.

The truth was she had enough of a buzz going in her nerve endings already, without adding alcohol to the mix. Maybe Vance had been right, when he’d accused her of being sex-starved.

She went weeks without thinking about sex.

Now, with Logan Creed sitting at her table, looking ruggedly handsome in his cowboy dress-up clothes, something primitive was streaking through certain parts of her anatomy.

It simply wouldn’t do.

As soon as everybody was finished eating, Briana jumped up and started bustling around, cleaning up. Usually, she made Alec and Josh do the dishes, but tonight she needed to be busy.

So she bounced around that kitchen like a bumblebee trapped in a sealed jelly jar. Even Wanda regarded her with curiosity.

Logan tried to help with the dishes, but she sort of elbowed him aside. All she needed was that man standing hip-to-hip with her in front of the sink, or anywhere else. The scent of his cologne—if that was what it was—made her feel light-headed. He smelled like sun-dried sheets, fresh-cut grass and summer.

Josh fetched the photo album from its honored place in the living room, and opened it on the freshly cleared table. “This is him,” he told Logan, tapping at a faded black-and-white image with one index finger. “This is my Grampa, Bill ‘Wild Man’ McIntyre.”

Briana had long since come to grips with the fact that her boys would never actually know their grandfather. Just the same, her eyes were suddenly scalding, and her throat was tight.

The angle of Logan’s head, bent over the album, touched something tender inside her. She wished he’d just get up and leave. Wished even more that he would stay.

She was losing her mind.

As if he’d felt her watching him, Logan lifted his eyes.

“Mom says the clowns are the bravest men in rodeo,” Alec said, preening a little.

“She’s right about that,” Logan said, still watching her. “They’ve saved my… life a time or two.”

Briana tried her damnedest to look away, found she couldn’t.

“See?” Josh chirped, delighted to be right. “I told you Logan was a cowboy!”

Briana’s cheeks stung. Look away, she pleaded silently, because I can’t.

As if he’d heard her, Logan averted his eyes. Fixed his attention on Alec and Josh. “I was a cowboy, once upon a time,” he told the boys quietly. “Gave it up to join the service.”

“Were you in the war?” Alec asked, impressed again. Or still.

“Yeah,” Logan said. His voice came out sounding hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “Didn’t care much for that.”

Didn’t care much for that.

The very way he’d said the words marked them as the understatement of the ages.

“We usually take Wanda for a walk after supper,” Josh said.

Logan was clearly grateful for the change of subject. He pushed back his chair, smiling. “Sounds like a good idea,” he replied. “Maybe Sidekick and I could tag along?”

“What if we should stumble across a bear?” Briana asked, raising both eyebrows. She’d finished with the washing up by then, draped the dish towel over the plates and glasses and silverware stacked on the drainboard.

Logan chuckled. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t recommend running. A bear can beat a fast horse. Climbing a tree is out, since they’re pretty handy at that, too. Guess I’d just have to grin him down, like ol’ Dan’l Boone.”

“We’re related to Daniel Boone,” Josh said.

“Isn’t everybody?” Logan teased.

Josh laughed.

Logan opened the screen door, and they all went out, Briana bringing up the rear.

She would have sworn Logan was looking at her—well, rear—as she passed.

Sidekick and Wanda trotted ahead, happy at the prospect of a walk, with the boys close behind them.

“They like you,” Briana told Logan.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

She turned her head, looked up at his face. “Depends,” she said. “They miss their dad. It would be easy for them to—”

“To what?” Logan asked quietly.

“To like you too much,” Briana answered, embarrassed.

“I’m harmless,” Logan said.

“I don’t think so,” Briana replied.

And they walked in silence for a while, watching the two boys and the two dogs cavorting up ahead.

Although the sun would be up for at least another hour, the first stars were popping out, and the moon was clearly visible. The country air smelled of hay and grass and fertile earth.

Or was that Logan?

She’d barely touched her wine, but Briana Grant felt moderately drunk. “Why did you tell me to watch out for bears?” she asked. “I was almost afraid to let the boys leave the house.”

He didn’t take her hand, but he moved closer, their knuckles touched and a hard, burning thrill ripped through Briana’s system.

“I wasn’t trying to scare you,” Logan said. “Bears feed at the landfill, mostly, on the other side of town. But once in a while, they pay a visit to the orchard. I’d say it was because of people encroaching on their habitat, but the fact is, they’ve been raiding those pear and apple trees since the first season they bore fruit. And that was back in old Josiah Creed’s time.”

Briana shivered, hugged herself, though the night was warm.

“Bears are like most wild animals,” Logan went on. “They’re only dangerous if they feel threatened, and that happens when you take them by surprise.”

“I guess I could beat a spoon against the bottom of a pan or something,” Briana said seriously. “When we go to the cemetery, I mean. We don’t have much reason to pass through the orchard.”

Logan grinned. “You could do that,” he said.

Was he laughing at her?

Briana got her back up a little. “I don’t want my boys to be afraid,” she said. “Not even of bears.”

“A little fear is a healthy thing sometimes,” Logan retorted. “Especially where bears are concerned. And that old bull of Dylan’s.”

She stole a sidelong glance at Logan, but whatever she’d heard in his voice as he mentioned his brother didn’t show in his face or bearing. “We’ve never had any trouble with Cimarron,” she said.

“God only knows why he keeps that bull anyhow,” Logan mused, with a distracted shake of his head. “He doesn’t run cattle. It would make sense if he had heifers to breed.”

“You don’t like him much, do you?”

“Cimarron?” Logan asked, hedging.

“Dylan,” Briana said.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say, then?”

“That we had a falling-out a long time ago,” Logan told her. His tone was stiff; she’d crossed a line. “It happens with brothers.”

Briana looked up ahead, at her boys, and felt the usual surge of wild, helpless love for them. “Alec and Josh argue all the time,” she confessed. “But if they grew up and hated each other, I don’t think I could stand it.”

Logan didn’t answer for a few moments. “I don’t hate Dylan,” he said.

Briana glanced at him, saw that his jawline had tightened. Since she’d already said too much, she decided to hold her tongue. No sense in digging herself in deeper.

Logan whistled, the sound low and distinctly masculine, and both boys and both dogs turned at the sound, sprinted back toward him.

“Thanks for supper,” Logan said. “Sidekick and I had better be getting back home now. Big day tomorrow.”

Briana merely nodded.

Logan said goodbye to the boys, and then he and Sidekick headed off toward the orchard. If either one of them were worried about encountering a bear, it didn’t show in the easy way they strolled that country road.