So that was that.
It hadn't even occurred to him to wonder whether she might be married, fool that he was. But she was entirely lovely, and of course some man had recognized it and won her long ago.
A knot of regret squeezed his heart like a fist, and he sighed deeply and turned to the twins. "You guys ready to leave now?" he inquired listlessly.
What was the point of fantasizing over a married woman, regardless of how attractive?
But they stubbornly shook their heads and settled down to watch the next heat, and Logan frowned irritably and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees despondently.
That sun wasn't delightfully warm anymore. It was downright hot. And was that a headache building behind his eyes?
"This is the tiebreaker, ladies and gentlemen. One, two, three, go!"
The action was fast and furious. Despite himself, Logan was drawn again by the flying feet and precarious balance of the women on the log, and he let out a roar of approval when Sara finally wavered and slipped into the water. Karena had won.
The young voice making Logan's eardrums ring was jubilant.
"Way to go, Mom, I knew you'd do it. I knew it, I told you so," he was bellowing, and Alexander twisted around to get a look at him. Lizzie turned as well.
"Is that lady really your mother?" Alex inquired curiously.
Logan heard Lizzie give a groan at what she considered a stupid question, but the raucous voice directly behind Logan said proudly, "Yep, that's my mom, and I bet she's gonna win the grand championship tomorrow, too. She's the best."
Liz waved at the arena where preparations were in full swing to begin the men's team competitions.
"Which one's your dad?" she inquired logically, and Logan found himself waiting tensely for the answer. He wasn't sure he wanted to even see the guy. Paul Bunyan himself wasn't good enough for Karena, that was certain.
There was a tiny pause in the conversation and then the boy's voice announced, elaborately casual, "Oh, my dad died when I was a little baby. There's just Mom and me, and I've got a friend called Gabe. And then there's Grampa." Logan suddenly became intensely interested in this conversation. He twisted around to take a good look at this nice kid who called Karena mom.
Alexander asked, "How old are you?"
"Twelve next Thursday, July ninth. If Mom wins, she's gonna buy me the whole set of World of Nature wildlife encyclopedias. How old are you?"
He was white blond just like his mother, a thin boy with long limbs, ungainly and awkward, his features already too large for his face in the way nature had of marking boys who would grow into huge, handsome men. His expression was animated and friendly, his nose was peeling and he needed a haircut. He met Logan's glance with clear deep-blue eyes and not a trace of shyness.
"We're both eleven," Alexander supplied. "She's Lizzie, and I'm Alex, and we're twins, but she was born first. This here's our Uncle Logan. What's your name?"
"Daniel Eric Carlson," the boy answered, "but everybody just calls me Danny. Unless they're mad at me," he added matter-of-factly, making Logan wonder if it happened often.
Liz pronounced, "How do you do, pleased to meet you," and then the conversation lapsed for several minutes as the children watched the frantic pace of the men's event, which involved much cutting, climbing, running and carrying of blocks of wood.
Logan was oblivious to any of it. He sat perfectly still and methodically considered and rejected ways and means of meeting Karena.
As soon as possible, he put his best scheme into effect and mentally crossed his fingers. Surely it would work. "Anybody want a hamburger?" he asked innocently.
Of course, Liz and Alex did. Logan casually turned to Danny. ''How about you, Danny? Would you like a hamburger with us?"
"Wow, super. But I have to ask my mom first," the boy said, just exactly as Logan had expected.
"We'd better come along and meet her, just so she knows who you're going with," Logan announced, adding innocently, "maybe she'd like to come along, too. Why not invite her?" and Danny enthusiastically led the way over the fence and toward the tent, with Logan and the twins close behind.
What was the penalty for using kids as cupids?
He strode along in the wake of the three chattering youngsters and his heart beat a little faster than usual.
"Mom?" Danny bellowed, sticking his head into the hot tent.
Karena was pulling on fresh pink cotton shorts and a dry bra and T-shirt in the tiny curtained-off area that was the women's dressing room. She ran a wide-toothed comb through her unruly curls. Those few past moments with Sara had been totally draining, calling on her to use every ounce of guile and technique she possessed. But she'd won, and there was satisfaction in that.
"Just a minute, Danny."
"Mom, these people asked us to go for a hamburger with them. Boy, you really did great in the last couple heats. Can we go, please? You know we didn't eat yet, Mom, and I'm starving, so can we go?"
Karena ducked out from behind the curtain and bent to follow Danny out of the tent.
"Danny, slow down, okay?" Nearly every conversation she had with him started with that plea. "I really think—" she stopped abruptly, conscious of a tall, broad-shouldered man in a blue checked shirt, his hands resting gently on the shoulders of a small dark-haired boy with freckles and eager eyes and a prim little girl with long red braids.
All three were staring at her intently, and Karena felt shy yet somehow compelled to glance into the man
'
s face, despite the wave of nervousness that brought heightened color into her cheeks.
Chapter Two
"How do you do?" he said formally, and then his firm mouth tilted into a crooked, one-sided smile and one dark eyebrow rose inquiringly above his horn-rimmed glasses, as if he were as surprised to be there as she was to encounter him.
His eyes looked soft and dark behind the lenses and his hair was sooty, wavy and disarranged, falling over his forehead.
"I'm Logan Baxter, and this is my niece, Liz Gardom, and my nephew, Alex. We'd like to take you and Danny for a hamburger to celebrate your win at logrolling."
His voice was pleasing, deep and gentle and a shade hesitant. He was extremely attractive, somehow sophisticated despite his casual garb, and Karena hesitated the slightest bit before refusing.
"Thanks, but I don't think—"
Immediately, three young voices interceded.
"Aw, Mom, c'mon," from Danny.
"Please do come with us," from Liz.
But it was Alex who tipped the scales. He disengaged Logan's hand and walked over to stand directly in front of her, his triangular freckled face tilted earnestly upward.
"Did it take long to learn how to walk on logs that way? Could anybody learn how?" he asked worshipfully, and Karena glanced down at him, at the innocence and enthusiasm he radiated.
She gave the little boy a smile so potent that Logan was immediately envious.
"I guess I started learning when I was a bit younger than you, and I still have to practice a lot," Karena explained, and Alex took a step closer still, eager to have the rest of his questions answered before his sister Liz could take the conversation over as she always did. He peered up into Karena's face blinking against the sun.
"Did you fall in the water lots before you learned? D'you wear special shoes?"
"The shoes have cleats in the bottom, which helps some, and yes, I was just like a drowned rat for the first year or so. Danny knows, he's been at it since he was five or six, didn't he tell you?"
Both twins turned their admiring gaze on Danny and continued to bombard the boy and his mother with questions.
Under cover of their chattering, Logan cleverly began steering the group out of the area of the timber show and toward the concession stands.
Karena, still explaining details to Alex, was hardly aware that they were moving along together until they reached the benches ringing the stand that advertised Bunyan Burgers.
"Sit here, where there's some shade," Logan suggested, pointing at a bench placed under a tree. A peculiar sense of elation consumed him when Karena hesitated and then sat down.
"Danny and I will take your food orders and then bring them over," Logan announced.
Danny beamed proudly, moving to stand near Logan, and Alex took the opportunity to slip into the seat next to Karena. She smiled fondly down at the boy.
Logan patiently listened to the twins' complex and detailed instructions for what they wanted, and Karena watched him covertly as he furrowed his brow and pretended to jumble the orders, making the twins giggle at his nonsense, and when he turned his attention to her, the crooked half smile flashed and he winked conspiratorially at her.
What a nice man he was, she thought wistfully.
"Will madam have the pheasant under glass or the trout?" he purred then, gazing seriously down into her eyes.
Karena was suddenly uncomfortable, not used to such teasing.
"That's fine, Danny will get ours," she stammered, fumbling in her wallet for money. A large, warm hand closed over both of hers, a hand with just a sprinkling of dark hairs on the back, and a sensation of tingling pleasure wound slowly up her arms.
Logan shook his head, frowning.
"Please," he said quietly, holding her gaze against her will and not moving his hand from where it restrained her own. "You don't want to spoil my whole day, do you? I invited you and Danny to lunch, so I'm buying. How often do I get a chance to take a champion to lunch?"
"Before you even know how much we can eat? Wow." The awe in Danny's tone made both Logan and Karena laugh, breaking the tension that had sprung up between them for an instant.
It seemed silly to protest any more, so Karena waited with the twins, and a short time later, Logan and Danny unloaded cardboard trays stacked with burgers, fries, milk shakes, sodas and coffee.
Logan slid into a space directly across the table from Karena, and she helped him distribute the food. By the time everyone had what they'd ordered, an easy camaraderie had been established between the adults, and Karena unwrapped her burger and bit hungrily into it, forgetting to be self-conscious.
She was still acutely aware of the man across the table, but it was hard even for her to be nervous in the presence of a man with sauce dribbling down the beguiling cleft in his strong chin.
"Uncle Logan," Liz remonstrated severely, "use your napkin, you got stuff all over your face."
Logan saluted his dictatorial niece and nonchalantly wiped his chin, winking at Karena again.
Liz turned to Karena, as one female to another, to confide, "We have a new baby named Nicole, six weeks old, and you should see the mess she makes when Mommy feeds her pablum. Yuck."
Danny swallowed half his burger in one gigantic bite and announced patronizingly, "That's nothin', Mom and I have a baby moose at home named Mort, he's about six weeks old, too, and you oughta see the mess when he eats. Once he swallowed the nipple right off the bottle we were feeding him from, and he steals whole loaves of bread off the table, and he chewed Mom's underwear—"
"Danny." Karena's scandalized voice made him pause, but he went on momentarily.
"Well, you know he did, Ma. Three pairs, remember, that day it was cold and he was in the house?"
The twins, and Logan as well, were now paying fascinated attention to mother and son.
"You actually have a baby moose?" Logan asked a discomfited Karena in a bemused voice, and she reluctantly nodded, wishing Danny hadn't blurted that information quite this soon.
The twins were already deluging Danny with questions, and under the cover of their voices, Logan said softly, "Well, Karena Carlson from Minnesota, I knew you were a fascinating woman the moment I saw you on that log. Care to tell me how you came to be foster mother to a baby moose who devours underwear? Or better yet, go back a few years and tell me why you started dancing on logs at an early age."
Karena looked across at him, pondering what she should say. To answer his questions honestly would be to reveal a great deal about herself, about her way of life, a way of life she felt no need to defend.
And yet, would there be any need for defense with Logan?
She studied him. She wasn't used to talking much about herself, certainly not with strangers, and this quiet man with his glasses, his crooked smile, his beguiling manner, was very much a stranger.
Wasn't he?
There was that curious sense of familiarity between the two of them that caused her defenses to slip more than they usually did with people she'd just met.
Her glance slid from the strong, square lines of his face to his shoulders, wide, but not overly muscular, down his long arms to his strong hands, folded around a Styrofoam coffee cup, and she shivered in the heat.
What was wrong with her today? She worked with numbers of brawny men every day of her life, and certainly none of them made her shiver, even though she'd read that women's sexual desire increased as they got older. She'd be thirty next year.