The Posse (7 page)

Now it was Jude’s brow that
furrowed. “Matt’s not here yet? Or Sandra? Are you sure? I told
them both five.” She scanned the room.  “It’s twenty
after.”

Logan shrugged. “I heard
there was traffic on the bridge. Maybe that hung up your friend.”
His eyes lingered on Jude’s damp hair, wandered down her neck,
making her acutely aware of the small rise of her breasts visible
at the top of the tank.

She shook her head to clear
it. “Did you get a drink yet? Sam’s supposed to be making one for
me.” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned to head for the
bar.

Samantha and Janet were busy
in the kitchen, pulling condiments from the fridge and setting up
baskets of buns. Emmy was fiddling with the stereo, trying to queue
up some music.

“None of your country twang,
Em!” Jude gave her a friendly nudge. “Play something cool.”

Emmy didn’t look up. “Oh,
you mean like Billy Idol? Adam Ant?”

“They would definitely meet
the cool requirement, but since your taste in music is still,
umm...” She cocked her head, considering.  “...maturing, I’ll
compromise on Pat Benatar.”

“That’s a compromise?” Emmy
sighed. “I have a great mix list. I promise, you’ll be happy with
it. I even have some Blondie.”

“I guess I’ll trust you. Any
love songs on there? We might need them later.” She winked and went
in search of the drink her sister-in-law had promised.

“Captain and coke waiting
for you in the back, Jude!” Sam called.

“You’re my favorite
sister-in-law, you know that?” She found the glass and took a long
swig. Spying her brother flipping burgers, she made her way to his
side.

“Hey, trouble.” He reached
around her shoulders to give her a quick squeeze. “Look at this,
you got me back at my old job.”

Jude grinned. “Yeah, and any
time you get tired of training the young minds of tomorrow, feel
free to come back. We can always use another hand at the grill.”
She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “One of these
days, Sadie really is going to beat Mack. Or maybe pick up a knife
instead of a spoon. Came real close today.”

Mark winced. “I don’t miss
that. I remember when I was a kid thinking they were ancient and
worrying one of them was going to drop dead, yelling at the other.
Dad used to just laugh.”

“Every time I hint at
retirement, Sadie blows a gasket and Mack begs me not to make them
stay home together. And truthfully, I don’t know I could run this
place without them.  The thought of having to train someone to
do what they do gives me hives.” She reached around and pulled a
too-hot fry out of a basket.

“So you doing okay, sis?”
Mark kept his eyes trained on the burger he was getting ready to
flip, but Jude knew he could do it in his sleep. She punched his
shoulder.

“Yes, I’m fine. Logan checks
on me every morning, and Matt took me to dinner Friday night. Sam
and/or Janet call me every day. I’m feeing the love, but please
stop worrying.”

Mark moved the burger onto
the plate next to the grill and smiled. “Whatever you say. Hey, can
you grab me some cheese for this next batch?”

Jude turned toward the
fridge just as the door to the restaurant opened. Sandra came in,
looking more than a little worse for the wear, followed by a little
girl in pigtails who Jude assumed was her daughter Lily. Holding
the door and bringing up the rear was Matt.

“Here, Mark.” She tossed the
block of Swiss in her brother’s direction and went to greet the
newcomers.

“I’m so sorry we’re late!”
Sandra hugged Jude and then held her at arms’ length. “And I’m a
mess! My car broke down on the inter-coastal bridge, and I was
standing out there in the heat...” Her eyes slid sideways. “Until
my hero showed up.”

Sandra’s dimpled smile
turned full force on Matt, who flushed and managed to look both
uncomfortable and pleased at the same time.

“Matt! You rescued Sandra
and Lily?”

He shook his head, grinning
all the while. “I just stopped to help. Anyone would have done the
same.”

“But no one else did except
you.” Sandra laid one hand on his arm and smiled before she turned
back to Jude. “I’d called for the road rescue, but they said they
were going to be over an hour coming. Matt here put flares around
my car, took Lily and me into his air-conditioned Jeep and
convinced the tow truck to come sooner. He was amazing.”

“That’s our Matt,” Jude
murmured, meeting Logan’s eyes across the room. “Always a hero.”
She stifled the urge to do a victory dance.

“Let’s get you all something
to drink and some food. You must be famished.” She smiled at the
little girl. “Lily, the kids are all eating out of the deck, so
they can run back and forth onto the beach. Why don’t you go out
with them?”

Jude maneuvered Matt and
Sandra to a two-person table away from all the noise of the kitchen
and went in search of drinks for them. As she bent to grab a beer
for Matt, she felt a hand at her waist and knew it was Logan.

“You couldn’t have set that
up better if you’d tried,” he murmured into her ear. Jude shivered
and caught her breath. She pulled herself together enough to turn
and smile.

“Funny how things work out
sometimes, isn’t it?”

“If I didn’t know better,
I’d think you messed with her car and made sure Matt was coming
from the same direction.” He narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t,
right?”

Jude rolled her eyes.
“Right. God, Logan, what do you think of me?”

He grinned down at her.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Before she could answer,
Mark slid a basket of onion rings onto the counter in front of
her.

“Can you take these over to
Cooper and Eric? I promised them a hot batch.”

“Sure.” Jude spied the guys
at a table in the corner, tipping back bottles. Sparring Logan one
last glance, she picked up the food.

“Onion rings to the dudes
who clearly aren’t looking to get lucky tonight.” She dropped the
basket between them.

“Hey, don’t make
assumptions. I’m going to take a few of these over to Janet. If she
eats them, too, she won’t be able to tell the difference.” He
winked at Jude and sauntered over to the bar where his wife was
slicing hamburger buns.

Jude took his empty chair
and pushed the basket closer to Cooper. “What about you, stud?
Don’t you want to keep your options open for the evening?”

He quirked a grin at her.
“No options tonight. Lex is with me.” He jerked a thumb in the
direction of the deck. “She’s outside riding herd on the rugrats.
Pretending to be annoyed, but she secretly loves it.”

Jude glanced out the doors.
Alexis was leaning against the deck railing, her eyes trained on
the beach below, where Mark’s kids were playing.  Her red hair
was twisted into a braid that trailed down her back.

“How’s she doing? Ready to
start high school?”

Cooper winced. “Don’t remind
me. I tried to talk Jolie into sending to her to an all-girl
Catholic school.”

Jude laughed. Cooper and his
first ex-wife were one of those rare couples whose divorce was far
friendlier than their marriage had ever been.  Alexis was a
happy and well-adjusted girl because her parents worked together to
raise her.

“Good luck with that. You
might as well face it, Coop. You’re going to be beating the boys
off with a stick. I don’t want to scare you, but when Lex was
working for me this summer, there were plenty of them looking at
her. Don’t worry, I kept my eye on her—and them.”

Cooper leaned back in his
chair, closing his eyes. “I’m choosing to live in a blissful state
of denial. She’s still my little girl.”

Jude laid her hand on his
arm. “You keep telling yourself that. Don’t worry. She’s a good
girl. I loved having her around here. Meggie did, too. She says Lex
is the closest thing she has to a little sister.”

“I’m glad. I really did
appreciate you letting her work for you. It was a good way to get
her feet wet, and I knew you were looking out for her.” Cooper
covered Jude’s hand with his free one and held it for just a second
longer than necessary.

Jude smiled to cover her
sudden discomfort and stood up. “If I don’t get back to cooking, my
brother is going to kill me. I think he’s afraid if he gets behind
the bar too long, he’ll end up never leaving. It’s a family
thing.”

“Jude.” She turned back,
unease rising at the intimate tone of his voice. “This was really
nice. Thanks for having all of us. Good to be together again for a
happy reason.”

There was a look in Cooper’s
eyes that Jude hadn’t seen in a long time, and it certainly had
never been directed her way.  Not quite sure what to do, she
nodded and got back to the kitchen as fast as her stumbling feet
could carry her.

Across the room, nursing his
beer, Logan watched her go and frowned.

***

Logan sat at his desk in the room he’d
designed expressly for the purpose of designing from home. He had
an office across the bridge in Elson, where he met clients and from
which the day-to-day running of Holt/Hawthorne was accomplished.
But he preferred to do his creative work here.

The room was almost entirely
windows, placed creatively so that he had the best light at almost
any point in the day. His drafting table faced the beach, because
he had always drawn inspiration from the mercurial surf. He was a
beach kid, after all; he might not have embraced his inner surfer
like Matt had, but it was no less in his blood. He simply preferred
to take the moods of the ocean and translate them into homes that
complemented rather than scarred the landscape.

Home was important to Logan,
had been since his own family had disintegrated when he was just
thirteen years old. He didn’t talk about it, didn’t even think
about it most of the time, but he knew his mother’s departure and
his parents’ messy divorce were what had motivated him to build a
house that was far too large for a man living by himself, as well
as what drove him to design homes for others.

He’d never experienced any
kind of creative block, not really. Daniel used to kid him about
being the temperamental artist half of their duo, while he himself
was the muscle, but they both knew that it was joke. When a plan
had to be drawn up, Logan did it. He didn’t have to wait for a
muse. It was already within him.

But tonight. .  .he
tossed down the pencil and stretched his neck. Thanks to the
regularity of his morning jogging, he wasn’t sore anymore. But the
tension in his shoulders was another story, and he knew the
source.

Jude
. When they’d sat
in here in his bar, over a month ago, and made that deal, he hadn’t
been worried. He knew Jude, knew she wasn’t going to jump at the
first chance for a new relationship. But getting everyone on board
meant that when he was finally ready to make his own move, he’d do
it with the full support of his friends. No one could get mad at
him when he’d already gotten pre-approval from the posse.

Logan rubbed a hand over his
face. That comfortable feeling had lasted just until the day he
spied Matt walking out of the Tide in the middle of the afternoon.
Not that it was unusual; they all worked in such close proximity
that not dropping in on the others would have been odder. But Logan
had a gut-deep feeling that day. He had planned to stick his head
in and say hello to Jude, let her know how the bed and breakfast
was progressing, but it felt too much like one-upmanship after
seeing Matt.

 So instead he followed
up with a phone call to Matt on his way back to the office. He made
small talk and then an off-the-cuff suggestion that they grab a
beer and some steaks at his house that night, like they did on so
many other evenings.

“Uh, actually...” Matt
replied, and Logan had his answer. “I’m taking Jude out to eat. Her
kids went left today, so I thought...”

“You thought you’d make your
move.” Logan had not intended for the words to come out so
harsh.

“It’s not like that.” Logan
could almost picture Matt running his hand over the shaggy blond
hair. “I’m trying to do what we said. Hell, I paced around the shop
today for an hour, trying to make up my mind to go and do it. Ask
her. I mean, it’s Jude. I tried to figure out, do I think about her
that way? Could I be with her? One part of me says no. She’s like
one of my sisters, for God’s sake. But then another part says,
maybe. Maybe we could be comfortable together. You know, grow
old.”

Logan nearly drove off the
road. One word he never associated with Jude was comfortable. And
growing old? Yeah, eventually, but they were a long way from that
yet.

“You gotta be sure, Matt,”
he said aloud. “Think about it.” When his friend didn’t respond,
Logan added, “Have a good time tonight. Catch you later.”