TAKE A CHANCE (Chance Colorado Series) (5 page)

“Twenty is legal enough, mister, and you can just quit trying to distract me. I know you too well for that little trick to have any effect on me. Besides, you’re a fine one to talk. From your expression a minute ago, I’d say that frown thing must run in the family. You okay with all this?” She fluttered a hand behind her toward the crowded lawn.

Even his baby sister could see right through him.

“Hell yeah, I’m okay with it. I’m good. Danny’s memory deserves all this and more.”

Katie arched her eyebrow skeptically and Logan had a pretty good idea of what their grandmother must have looked like fifty-odd years ago.

Katie crossed her arms and tipped her head almost imperceptibly to the left. “Matt’s here. He’s standing with his family over on the other side of all the chairs. Wearing that uniform, he’s looking pretty hot for a guy leaning on a cane.”

“Good. I’m glad he’s here.” Logan filled his lungs with a deep breath as he looked across to the place his sister indicated. If only he could get his roiling stomach on board with his words. “I was hoping to see him here today. Hoping for a chance to talk to him.”

The moment he’d dreaded since first hearing the news of Danny’s death had finally arrived.

He forced his feet to move, one after the other, toward the spot where his friend’s family had gathered. Directly ahead of him, Matt leaned heavily on the cane Katie had mentioned. As Logan drew closer, Matt glanced toward him, his eyes shining with an emotion Logan couldn’t read.

Too late to turn back now.

“Matt,” he greeted, extending his hand, silently praying his old friend wouldn’t reject him for the disloyal coward he was, right here in front of the whole town.

Matt grasped his hand and pulled him forward, clasping him in a tight hug.

“I hoped you’d be here.” Matt spoke in that quiet way he’d always had, as if he spoke only for the benefit of the recipient of his words. “Do you think we might find some time to catch up before I have to go back?”

This was so much more than Logan had expected. More than he’d ever dared to hope for. Could it be possible that Matt didn’t resent him as much as he resented himself?

“Absolutely, we can. You free tonight? We could catch up over burgers and beers at the Main Street.”

“At the café?” A puzzled expression swept over Matt’s face but vanished in the blink of an eye. “Done. My social calendar is pretty empty these days. See you there at six?”

“At six, then,” Logan agreed, turning to nod his farewells to Matt’s mother and grandparents. “Mr. Flynn, ladies.”

Then
she
caught his eye.

“You remember Allie, right?” Matt nodded toward his sister, a smile crinkling his face. “Not that you could very well forget someone as obnoxious as she used to be.”

Logan remembered Allie all right. Just not as she stood before him now. She’d been a pudgy little girl with a head full of curls and thick glasses sliding down her nose, always trying to follow Matt everywhere he went.

Somewhere along the line, she’d ditched the glasses and all that pudge had grown into curves. And those curves had definitely shifted to all the right spots.

“You turned out pretty good,” he heard himself say, as if his inner thoughts had detoured straight out of his mouth without bothering to make the full transit through his brain.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, her gaze flickering up to catch his for a second before darting down toward her feet, even as her cheeks mottled a lovely shade of red.

It had been a while since anyone had blushed for him, though maybe he was misreading her reaction. Still, he found that he liked it.

“Looks like they’re ready to start,” Matt’s grandmother noted, tugging at her husband’s hand. “Sit down with me, Papa.”

“I’d better be getting to my seat, too,” Logan said, backing away, unable to tear his gaze from Allie. “See you tonight, Matt.”

He forced himself, finally, to turn around and walk away, back to the area where members of his family had gathered.

Taking the seat his sister had saved for him, Logan ran a hand over the back of his neck, attempting to unscramble his thoughts.

Today was supposed to be about Danny, and his focus needed to be up front where Danny’s grandmother tapped a fingernail against the microphone in preparation for her speech.

Still, in spite of his best efforts, he found his attention straying across the sea of chairs time and again, back to the petite blonde standing next to Matt.

What the hell was wrong with him? He was a twenty-seven-year-old man, for the love of God, not some fifteen-year-old horndog. And yet, here he was, completely unable to stop himself from staring at her. Maybe his buddy Tanner was right about needing to get back into the dating game in a serious way before he morphed into some kind of weird old man.

After his breakup with Shayla, he’d promised himself that he was never getting involved with another woman. He still felt that way. A casual evening with a female acquaintance when he hit Grand Junction or Denver was fine, but never here in Chance. Dating a woman in his hometown would be too much like getting involved in a relationship, and, as he’d learned the hard way, relationships were for fools.

“Is that Allison Flynn standing over there next to Matt?” Katie leaned around him to get a better look. “I’d heard that she was coming back to Chance to look after her mom, but I didn’t realize she was back yet.”

It would appear that his sister had a much better source of information for what was happening in town than he did.

“I wonder if Ryan knows she’s back,” Katie mused. “They used to date, you know. Most of their senior year in high school, as I remember it.”

Logan hadn’t known. And now that he did, he wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea.

Around him, people applauded politely as Danny’s grandmother began to speak about the wild and witty young man her grandson had been. And though Logan tried to pay attention, his gaze continually wandered back to the spot where Allie stood.

So she’d dated his younger brother. Funny that Ryan had never mentioned her. Or maybe he had and Logan simply hadn’t been listening.

Another glance in her direction and Logan’s decision was made. He needed to make some time to have a chat with Ryan when his brother came home.

CHAPTER FOUR

She was never getting out of this chair again. Never standing on her own two miserable feet again. Not ever.

Allie stretched out in the recliner, wiggling her poor, tortured toes. If it didn’t hurt so bad to stand, she’d go fill the tub with the hottest water she could bear and soak her feet.

“Pass,” she murmured, closing her eyes and settling deeper into the soft old chair. This felt too good to interrupt for anything else.

Her mother and brother had both gone to their rooms to rest after the exertion of attending the dedication at the community center, so the living room was all hers. With fresh air wafting in through the open windows and only the sound of Grainger’s snoring to punctuate the silence, it was beyond peaceful here. Home was comforting in a way she’d forgotten home could be. Lulled by the rhythmic noises coming from the old dog curled up on the end of the sofa, Allie felt herself drifting into that wonderfully nebulous state between waking and sleep.

It was there, in that not-quite-real world, where her imagination bloomed unchecked, that he always came to her. The only difference today was that the Logan O’Connor who invaded her half-dream was an older, updated version of the teenager she’d fantasized about for so long. Logan 2.0.

In her mind’s eye, he strode toward her, his dark eyes fixed on her as if she were his only reason for being here. A smile slowly lit his face as he approached, and her body reacted to his acknowledgment of her with a shiver of anticipation.

In the space of a heartbeat he stood next to her, his gaze holding hers as his head dipped toward her. She could hear her own heart pounding, echoing in her ears, as loudly as if someone knocked on a nearby door. She closed her eyes and leaned up into him, waiting for that magical instant when his lips would caress hers.

“Allie,” he breathed, in a jarring, feminine voice that sounded nothing like his own.

The perfect moment of fantasy shuddered, shimmered, and slipped away like a wisp of smoke.

“Allie? You in there?” The raised voice was accompanied by more of the knocking she’d heard before.

Well, damn.

Allie scrubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes as she pushed down the recliner’s footrest and stood. Next to her, Grainger lifted his head as if that were the best he could manage.

“Some great guard dog you are,” she muttered, making her way toward the front door. “Chester could do a better job of scaring people off than you do.”

Her cousins, Dulcie and Desi, waited on the front porch.

“There you are!” Dulcie said. “We were beginning to worry when no one answered but we saw your car out front.”

“
We
weren’t worried,” Desi corrected, following her sister into the living room. “Dulcie was. She’s as bad as an old woman. Always has been.”

That much was true. Dulcie had always been the most cautious, the most levelheaded of the three of them.

“Why don’t we head back to the kitchen?” Allie said. “I’ve got some tea in the fridge.”

They could visit out there without any worry about waking up her mother or Matt.

Her guests slid into chairs around the big wooden table in the corner of the kitchen while Allie gathered glasses and the pitcher of iced tea.

“So,” she began, filling each of the glasses before sitting down herself. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

The two women exchanged a look over their teas and then Dulcie leaned forward, arms outstretched on the table, her hands clasped around her glass.

“Mama Odie says you’ve come home to stay. Is that true?”

“I guess it is,” Allie answered, consciously holding back the sigh her answer brought with it.

Though moving back to Chance certainly hadn’t been her original plan, now that she was here, now that she’d seen her mother’s condition for herself, there didn’t seem to be any viable option but to stay. Besides, she had nothing waiting for her anywhere else.

“Have you thought about work yet? About what you might want to do now that you’re back?” Desi asked. “There isn’t much in the way of jobs around here. Unless you’re thinking to try for something up at the resort.”

Allie shared a look with her cousins. Work at the resort? Not likely. The Last Chance Ski Resort was the closest thing to a major employer in the area. Except for the fact that the Reillys, who owned it, seemed determined to hire from outside the valley. Though their two families, along with the O’Connors, had originally founded the valley together, something had happened a few generations back and they’d mostly gone their separate ways. The Reillys especially seemed determined to distance themselves from their roots in Chance. Rumor had it that their money had even played a major role in getting the big highway detoured around Chance, an event that had nearly been the deathblow to the fading little town.

Even if that weren’t the case, the resort was the last place Allie would want to spend her days. It held too many uncomfortable memories.

“I honestly don’t know yet,” Allie answered at last, pulling herself back from her musings. “I haven’t exactly thought that far ahead.”

“Well.” Desi tapped her dark purple nails against the glass she held. “Think about it for a minute. If you could do absolutely anything in the world you wanted, what would you pick?”

Anything she wanted? Unbidden, Logan’s face floated through her thoughts. What was wrong with her? All she had to do was see the guy up close and eight years of convincing herself he didn’t mean anything to her had slipped away, as if they were no more than a matter of days.

Sipping her tea, she stalled for a bit as she forced his image from her mind and tried to think of an answer to her cousin’s question.

“After six years of working in a bookstore, sales is about the only thing I’m qualified to do. But, the way I remember it, most of the shops here in Chance are staffed by the people who own them, so I’m not holding out a lot of hope for a sales job here.”

A queasy heaviness settled over her at the prospect of job hunting. It was why she’d avoided making any plans. She just prayed she could find something to earn a living in Chance. Her savings were minimal and her credit card hovered near its limit, so a regular paycheck was a necessity. But traveling any distance to find that paycheck would defeat the purpose of coming back here to keep an eye on her mother.

Desi stopped her tapping and leaned forward. “I didn’t say anything about what you’re
qualified
to do, now did I? I asked you what you
wanted
to do. Those aren’t at all the same sort of—”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Dulcie interrupted in her always practical way. “A little over a year ago, Desi and I cleaned out Papa Flynn’s old building on Main Street and started our own business, a coffee shop. The Hand of Chance Coffee Emporium.”