“It was a long time ago. More than ten years. It’s not a fresh wound. Or at least, it hasn’t felt that way in a very long time. What I realized was that it hasn’t felt that way because I’ve been damn good at not thinking about anything that could make me remember.”
“You said the cottage . . . the tower . . .” Her eyes widened. “You didn’t—she didn’t—”
“No, no.” He cupped her shoulders with his hands, real concern etched all over his face. “I’m sorry, no. I didn’t mean for you to make that connection. They were very special to her, to us, but more to her. In a sentimental way, which I wasn’t. Not then, anyway. But they weren’t the reason she died.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter, not really. I mean . . . any circumstance when you lose someone you love, no matter the cause . . . they’re all equally terrible. You don’t have to explain.”
She felt his hands tighten slightly on her shoulders, only she wasn’t sure whom he was bolstering just then, her or himself. She thought maybe they both could use it, so it didn’t really matter.
“I want to. Or maybe I need to. So you understand what I know about where you are. She didn’t fall. She drowned. We were on her father’s fishing trawler. It was summer, and we were both home from college, working for her dad. We got caught up in a summer squall. She was trying to help save the catch we’d just pulled in and got caught in the nets. The storm was fierce, the waves were cresting over the boat. She was dragged over before we could do anything about it. We tried to pull the nets in to get to her, but it was too late.”
“Oh, Logan, that’s awful! I—” She reached up to cup his cheek with her palm, instinctively needing to soothe the very real pain she saw in his eyes. She didn’t even realize she’d done it until he moved his head and she felt the bristle of his morning beard brush against the tender skin of her hand. She pulled it away. “I’m so sorry,” she said, not bothering to clarify exactly what for. She was just . . . sorry.
“As I said, it was a long time ago. And yet, to be honest, I haven’t been up in the tower since. Or in the cottage. We spent a lot of time together in both. It was a place we could go and be alone. It was never a draw for me like it was for her, and it’s been falling apart for so long, no one really went up there anyway, even back then. I told myself it was just not something I’d have done anyway. But . . .”
“It’s all part of it. I know about how twisted up it can be, and not entirely rational.”
“More to the point, it was two years before I could go out on a boat again. Any kind of boat. So, in that way . . .”
“You know about me,” she finished. “What that tower represents. The horse I have to climb back up on.”
He simply held her gaze and she saw the truth in his eyes. “I guess I really didn’t want to know what you were dealing with, because it meant I had to deal with what I knew, and why it made me feel the way it did, and all the other tangled parts of my own loss.”
Before she could say anything, he lifted his hands from her shoulders, and she felt suddenly bereft.
“But that’s on me. In all the more obvious ways, I have moved on. It happened a lifetime ago and almost feels like it happened to someone else, in some other life.”
Alex sighed. “I’m still sorry I stirred it all up again. I don’t know what I’ll feel like in two years, much less ten, but I imagine being reminded of how I feel right now isn’t something I’m ever going to welcome.”
“Still, it’s not an excuse. At the very least, I should have been sympathetic, empathetic, and instead I’ve been . . . resentful.” He paused, then shook his head. “It was selfish. And now I feel foolish.”
“Don’t ever apologize for feeling. Good or bad, it’s what makes us human.”
“Famous quote?”
“One of my dad’s.” She smiled. “He was a big one for never holding anything in. He could read me like a book, and he made it his business to drag out any problem I might have, big or small.”
“He sounds like a good man.”
Her eyes sheened a little, but she was still smiling. “The very, very best. Of course, I’m a little biased.”
“You should be. Sounds like he earned it.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to say more. She’d cried enough in front of this man. Still, it struck her that it was the first time she’d spoken out loud about her father in a fond, reminiscent way. It was a little sad, because it felt so . . . past tense. But it also made her feel, well, not good, but . . . better, healthier, for being able to speak the words and honor him fondly, proudly.
She blew out a breath and smiled through the ache inside her chest. “He’d have been so angry with me . . . for keeping it all in like I have and for making myself sick with it. I guess I just . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head.
After a moment, Logan said, “Just what?”
“I just didn’t have anyone to tell. Or at least, no one I trusted to hear me. No one I needed to tell. It sounds pathetic, and I don’t mean it that way. It’s just the truth.”
“I know. It’s your new reality,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.” That he got it—got her—intimately was clear. Disconcertingly so. It forced her to reassess entirely what she thought of him, who he was, and what he was made of. “It’s an adjustment. A transition I obviously haven’t handled well.”
“You’re doing what you can, the best way you know how. It’s a lot and it’s all on you. You two weren’t just father and daughter—you had a family business together. When Jessica died, I had a family—hell, a whole town—behind me, and I floundered pretty badly. I didn’t do well at all when I went back to school. Stopped playing sports, everything. Cost me a full semester and would have cost me my degree if I hadn’t finally pulled myself together. My family didn’t hold it against me. Nor did hers. Their love and solid support was a big part of why I was able to finally move forward.” He held her gaze, searching her eyes. “I didn’t know the man, but if he was half of what you say, and I’m guessing he was all that and more, then your father doesn’t hold it against you, either.”
She felt tears prickle again and moved to brush them away, but he beat her to it. Using the side of his thumb, he caught them before they fell. His skin was warm, a little roughened.
“Sorry,” she said, the word throaty with emotion.
“Don’t ever apologize for feeling,” he said, and there was kindness in his tone as he echoed her father’s words. “Something I picked up from someone smarter than me.”
She sniffled a little inelegantly. “Thank you,” she said, then added a watery, wry laugh. “God, I’m so tired of crying. I never used to cry.”
“That changes. In its own time.” He ran the side of his thumb down her cheek and along her jaw. “After my parents died—I was seven—my grandfather told me each tear shed is a tribute two times over. Once to the ones you lost, and a second time as tribute to how deeply you loved and were loved in return. And what a blessing that is. It took me a while longer to truly appreciate that, but he was right.”
“Sounds like we both knew some pretty smart people. I’m sorry. About your parents. That’s . . . a lot.”
“It was like losing my whole world. But my grandfather was a larger-than-life kind of man, and he made it his business to become our whole world, while making sure we still honored our parents. My sisters were younger, and they don’t remember them. They just remember all the stories. But I do. He made it . . . well . . . not okay, but he helped it to make sense. He was there when Jessica died, and Fergus was there by then, too. I knew I could trust them because we’d been through hard things together before. And that helped. A lot. Did you—do you—have . . . anybody?”
She shook her head. “My mom died when I was little. Pneumonia. I was only four, so my memories . . . it’s probably like your sisters. I’m not sure what might be a direct memory or I remember because their stories—my dad, my grandfather, my great uncle—were so vivid.”
“Cousins, distant or close?”
She shook her head again. “My dad raised me, along with his dad and his uncle. I was—” She broke off, surprised by the smile and the ease with which it came. “I might have been a handful.”
“No,” he deadpanned, but there was the most delightful gleam in those eyes. It was downright dazzling.
“I might have also been spoiled.” She put her fingers close together. “Wee bit. But I started working with them as soon as I could swing a hammer. They might have kept me somewhat in a protective bubble, but on the other hand, I was a pretty worldly kid. I traveled all over and met kids from everywhere, but most of my time was spent with adults. We took jobs here, Canada, overseas. It was . . . well . . . it was pretty much awesome. I loved it.”
“It’s an education I imagine only a few ever get, but, yeah, it sounds pretty incredible.”
“I never went the traditional college route. Heck, I never really went to school. I mean, I did spend time in this one or that depending on where we had our jobs. In the end, I just studied and got my GED at sixteen, mostly because it was important to my dad, then called that a day. I knew my life’s path and I loved it. Everything about it called to me.”
“I can see that.” With his thumb propping up her chin, her gaze drifted from his eyes to his mouth. She felt the oddest flutter in her stomach as an echo of a memory floated through her mind. About not just wanting to bite that bottom lip of his, but of actually doing it. Then doing a lot more. That had been a dream, right? One of her Sex-god Voice dreams. Hadn’t it?
She blinked, glanced away, and grabbed at the thread of their conversation. It was easier, less confusing than . . . whatever it was she was kind of remembering. Not to mention all of the things he was making her feel.
“After—after the accident, when it was over and it was past that horrible day, I was suddenly dealing with everything that came next. It was all so abrupt and it felt so . . . rude and intrusive. I just wanted to be left alone to make some sense out of it. Only there was no sense to be made. I wanted to curl up and die, or find someplace I could go where I didn’t feel so much pain. I didn’t even know a person could feel so much pain, not like that.
“But I couldn’t leave, and there was nowhere to go, anyway. There were things that had to be done right away and decisions to be made. So I shoved it all inside. After his funeral, from that day on, I didn’t cry.
“I was numb at first, when everything started to unravel about the accident, all the legal stuff. That was almost a relief. I just focused on the decisions and the avalanche of other things that had to be taken care of. The lawyers, the lawsuit . . . God, it was all so awful. But it did one thing. It made me mad. And angry was a far easier thing to be than devastated, so I clung to that. It was an emotion I understood, one I could willingly grab hold of. I couldn’t cry, couldn’t let myself feel anything except anger, because if I let one part of me even start to crack, it would be like a rock striking a windshield, and I’d just shatter completely. If I started crying . . . how would I ever stop? If I let myself go, give in to that crushing vise grip of grief, wouldn’t it just squeeze my heart to a stop? And, even scarier . . . did I want it to? If for no other reason than to end the pain?”
As soon as the words were out, she regretted giving voice to them. There was opening up, and there was being vulnerable, but it was not the time or place for that. She’d been lulled by their shared tragic background, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear—
“Stop it.” He framed her face with his palms, tipped it up to his.
She blinked and looked into his eyes again. Shattered topaz, she recalled thinking, when she’d fainted into his arms. That was the perfect description. “Stop what?”
“Pulling back every time you begin to let go. Never apologize for feeling.”
She wanted to duck her chin, to duck him, but she couldn’t. He wouldn’t let her do either. “You’re a very frustrating man, you know that? Annoying, too.”
“You wouldn’t be the first to say so.” There was a smile in his voice and a curve in those lips.
Lips she found herself staring at again.
And then he was shifting closer still, so that their bodies almost brushed together. The broad palms he’d pressed against her cheeks moved until strong fingers were weaving through her hair, urging her to tilt her face upward even more. “Talk about frustrating,” he murmured, and his gaze dropped to her lips.
It had the positive effect of making her forget everything they’d been talking about . . . but the less positive result of making every nerve ending in every sexual part of her body and even some she’d never thought of as particularly erogenous stand up and cheer. “What is?” she whispered, once again having fleeting thoughts—memories?—of what his mouth tasted like . . . as if she knew. For certain. Not from a dream.
“Wanting you,” he said, his voice so deep he might as well have rubbed those words directly across her bare nipples. “Knowing I shouldn’t.”
Her entire body gulped. “Why shouldn’t?”
“Because it will complicate things.” He let his head drift closer, his lips even closer still. “And I don’t need complicated. I already have complicated. But it’s the kind I can handle. You . . . you’re a whole other kind.”
Her pulse was thrumming so loudly in her ears, she almost couldn’t hear him. She continued to stare at his mouth. “Can I—can I ask you something?”
“I’m pretty sure at this moment you could do almost anything and I wouldn’t say no.”
She would have laughed at that, or at least smiled, but she wasn’t feeling flirty, she was feeling . . . confused. “That night . . . that first night . . . when I fainted. I woke up in your guest bed. You had to have put me there. Right?”
He nodded, his pupils shooting wide as he glanced into her eyes.
She swallowed hard—twice—at what she saw there. Naked desire. Emphasis on the naked part.
“I did,” he said, his voice black velvet on sandpaper.
“Did we—did I—do . . . something? Inappropriate? I’m sorry, I was pretty sure it was a dream, only now I’m . . . not sure.”