The Summer Cottage (7 page)

Sucking in a breath, Jessica straightened. “My parents did not reject me. We may not
be as close as we once were, but that doesn’t mean—”

“You said you asked them for help,” Logan went on, relentless as the tide. “You asked
to go home. They refused to take you in.”

“They did help me.” Jessica swallowed, hating how thin and plaintive she sounded.
In her heart, she knew Logan was right. Her parents’ reaction to her mistakes had
been a kick to the ribs when she was already down. It had opened up a dark chasm between
Jessica and her family that no amount of polite chitchat on Thanksgiving and Christmas
could bridge. But that didn’t answer her original question.

“We’re not talking about my relationship with my parents,” she said, proud of the
steadiness of her tone. “We’re talking about you and your brothers. What happened,
Logan? What makes you think Dylan hates you?”

The emotion in his eyes was so raw, so visceral, Jessica almost took a step back.
But she forced herself to hold her ground as Logan ground out, “Because Dylan was
eight when our parents died. Miles was already gone, in college. Our grandparents,
the ones who owned the vacation house here on the island, offered to take Dylan in.
He begged me to come with him, but instead…”

Logan broke off, his hoarse voice grinding to a halt as he turned his back and braced
his hands on the kitchen table. Jessica had to curl her fingers under the edge of
the counter to stop herself from going to him.

She wanted nothing more in the world than to wrap Logan up in her arms and shield
him from this pain—but the pain was inside him already, and he had to get it out.
Terrified that if she moved, she’d shatter this rare confessional moment, Jessica
held her breath.

“Instead,” Logan said, low and hoarse, “I tested out of my senior year of high school
and escaped to college a year early. I abandoned my grief-stricken eight-year-old
brother to life in a new city with grandparents he hardly knew, buried myself in school
and work and research, and I never looked back. Of course Dylan hates me.”

Jessica’s throat ached with tears she wouldn’t shed. Logan hated tears, mostly because
he was bewildered by them and didn’t know how to react, she’d learned. So she wouldn’t
cry for this proud, lonely, regret-ridden man, no matter how badly she wanted to.

Instead, she finally pushed away from the counter and took the few steps that would
allow her to slide her arms around his lean waist and press her hot face to his back.
Logan’s muscles were granite under her touch, but she didn’t let go.

“It sounds to me,” she murmured urgently, “like Dylan isn’t the one who hates you
for leaving him. It sounds like you hate yourself. But Logan—your parents had just
died, tragically and suddenly, and your world was spinning off its axis. You handled
it the only way you knew how. Please, please don’t hate yourself for that.”

“Dylan was only a kid. He needed me, and I could’ve stayed. I chose to leave, I chose
college over taking care of my baby brother.”

“You were a kid, too.” Jessica snugged up as close to Logan as she could, until she
couldn’t tell her own heartbeat from his. “So young. What were you, sixteen?”

Logan cleared his throat. “Fourteen. I’d already skipped a couple grades.”

Squeezing her eyes shut against the burn of tears, Jessica mouthed a quick, fervent
kiss against the body-warm cotton of his T-shirt. “Only a baby yourself. Logan—”

“I should have stayed. But what could I have done? I don’t know the first thing about
comforting someone else, or making them feel better. All I knew was that I was in
raw, screaming pain, and I had to escape it any way I could—which was by throwing
myself completely into my work.”

“That’s not true.” She tightened her arms around him. “That you’re bad at comforting
people. No matter what we talk about, or how emotional I get, you always make me feel
like it’s okay. You listen. That’s all anyone can do.”

He slumped another inch over the table, hanging his shaggy head between his stiff
arms. “So I should have stayed and listened to Dylan have nightmares and cry for Mom
and Dad.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. You did what you needed to at the time, to cope with
your own grief.” Although she was starting to suspect that he hadn’t coped with that
grief at all; instead, he’d grabbed onto the challenges of college at fourteen years
old to avoid facing it. How had he put it? That he escaped completely into his work.

But no one could outrun a loss like that forever. Jessica was very much afraid that
Logan could never truly be healthy and well-adjusted until he dealt with the pain
of the past.

“I should have listened to him,” Logan repeated, like a looped recording, and Jessica
let out a shaky breath.

“It’s too late to help your eight-year-old brother,” she said, as firmly and gently
as she could. “You can’t go back in time. You have to let it go … and realize that
you’ve been blessed with a second chance.”

“What do you mean?” His wrecked voice came from deep inside his chest.

“You can listen to Dylan now.” She kissed him once between his shoulder blades, then
again because she couldn’t help herself, before glancing at the digital clock on the
stove. “Come on. Let’s go wild and skip dinner, head straight for dessert. Last one
up the garden path to the big house has to wash the dishes.”

Logan straightened slowly, as if his bones ached, but when she finally got a look
at his face, there was a small smile curving his mouth. “Dessert for dinner? Doesn’t
sound very healthy to me.”

“It’s okay to let yourself enjoy life sometimes,” Jessica said, brushing a tentative
hand over his jaw.

He turned his head to plant a kiss that left her palm tingling. Meeting her gaze directly,
he admitted, “That’s not the easiest thing for me. But I’ll try. I want to do better.”

Joy lifted Jessica’s heart into her throat. She’d never felt closer to anyone than
she did to Logan in that moment. “That’s good. Because you’re a Harrington—and what
you boys want, you usually get.”

But as they left the summer cottage and walked up the winding path through the twilight
garden, Jessica’s happiness was tempered by the fact that if Logan was truly improving
so quickly, then their time on Sanctuary Island was drawing to a close.

And once they left this magical little hideaway and returned to the real world … she
and Logan would never be this close again.

Chapter 8

Logan sort of wanted to hold hands with Jessica on the way to the house—it was a garden,
there were flowers all around and the setting sun was flaming the sky with pinks and
purples overhead. A textbook definition of a romantic setting probably called for
something sappy like hand-holding.

To his surprise, he found he didn’t mind the idea all that much, although it was something
he usually avoided like malware and spam. Everything was different with Jessica. Take
cuddling in bed, for example. He hated cuddling—the clinginess of a woman he barely
knew expecting him to keep in contact long after the sex was over? Made no sense,
was sweaty and awkward, and he just … didn’t enjoy it. So he didn’t do it.

But with Jessica and her crazy rules about not having sex in bed, there was nothing
to do except lie close together, their heads on one pillow, and breathe each other’s
breath. Sometimes they talked, sometimes he watched her sleep until the steady rhythm
of her soft breathing closed his lids and pulled him under.

He didn’t mind it. Same with the hand-holding, as long as it was with Jessica—except
at the moment, his palms were too clammy and itchy with nerves to inflict on anyone
else.

Don’t be stupid,
he told himself.
This isn’t going to be some huge emotional revelation. You’ve already met your quota
for those today.

Dylan just wanted his brother to meet the woman he was seeing for more than a thirty-second
introduction in which Logan had inadvertently outed Dylan as a member of the Harrington
family. Which Penny hadn’t been aware of previously.

Jessica led them confidently up the back steps and rapped smartly on the window-paned
door, giving Logan flashbacks of arriving at the house a week ago.

Only then, they’d waited on the front porch, and he’d felt like a reanimated corpse
after weeks of nonstop work. Now that his brain no longer resembled a cracked-out
hamster trapped in an exercise ball, Logan could appreciate the storybook feel of
his family’s old vacation home.

Most of the Victorian gingerbreading was festooned over the façade in front, but even
from the back, the house was appealing. Three stories, gables, wooden shutters, the
whole nine yards. There was even a bay window overlooking the garden; probably a nice
spot to settle in and read a book.

Still, as footsteps sounded from inside and Logan braced himself for whatever was
about to happen, he acknowledged silently that he was glad Jessica had maneuvered
them out of the main house and down to stay in the cozy summer cottage across the
garden.

In the cottage, they had privacy and peace, and no … teenagers.

A lanky kid opened the back door and grinned at them from under a shock of dirty-blond
hair.

“Ha! Dylan, you owe me five bucks,” he shouted over his shoulder before pushing the
door wide and ushering them in. The kid studied them with open curiosity, his wide
hazel eyes lingering on Jessica in a way that made Logan suddenly, intensely aware
of how extraordinarily beautiful she looked. Dressed more casually than he was used
to in a linen button-down shirt over a pair of jeans, Jessica took his breath away.

“You’re very lovely tonight,” Logan told her immediately. He should have said it before.
He should be saying it constantly. “Well, objectively, you’re lovely all the time,
but tonight you look especially beautiful.”

The blush that suffused her cheeks in no way detracted from her beauty, he noticed
with interest.

“Thank you. That’s very sweet—and awkward—of you.” Reaching past Logan, she put out
her hand to shake the kid’s. “Hi, I’m Jessica Bell. This is Logan Harrington.”

“Dylan’s brother.” The kid nodded in that know-it-all-way common to teenagers. “I
told him you’d show. I’m Matt Little. Come on in, my mom already sliced the pie but
she said we had to wait for you.”

At the word
pie,
Logan shot Jessica a glance and saw her biting her lip against a smile. They followed
Matt through the open, airy kitchen, past a round table that showed the obvious marks
of frequent use and into a formal dining room.

Dylan sat at the head of a large oval table, his elbows resting comfortably on the
polished mahogany surface, one hand extended across the table to clasp the hand of
a smallish brunette with a beaming smile. Penny Little, Logan remembered through the
haze of exhaustion and confusion that had dimmed his vision when he met her.

The moment before they became aware of the presence of guests, Logan caught a glimpse
of something he dimly recognized, an invisible spark that flew between them and tied
Dylan and Penny together as they smiled into each other’s eyes. Dylan lifted their
entwined fingers to his mouth and kissed Penny’s knuckles so tenderly, Logan felt
his own cheeks heat uncomfortably. Feeling as if he was intruding on an unbearably
intimate moment, he froze in the dining room doorway, unable to make his feet move
forward.

Clearly unburdened by any feelings of being an intruder, Matt breezed past him. “I
told you they’d come,” he said confidently, grabbing a dessert plate and a fork before
retreating in a rush of big feet and lanky limbs. “No one can resist Mom’s famous
buttermilk pie. I’m taking this up to my room so y’all can have boring grown-up time.”

Dylan jerked, clearly startled, and as he started to get up to greet them, Logan’s
gaze caught on something sparkly in his brother’s grasp.

It was a ring. A diamond ring, on Penny Little’s left hand, and its facets winked
in the light when Dylan pulled her to her feet beside him.

“Logan. You’re looking much better than the last time I saw you. I was worried you’d
starved to death down in the cottage.”

“Jessica would never let that happen,” Logan retorted automatically.

“No, sure,” Dylan said, darting a quick glance at Penny. “Of course not.”

Logan swallowed. He’d been right, this was awful. Stilted and weird, too formal and
polite. Nothing like the conversation they’d had a week ago, when Logan had told his
brother to believe in himself, that he was more than the Bad Boy Billionaire the tabloids
made him out to be, that he deserved to find love.

He stared at the ring on Penny Little’s left hand. Looked like Dylan had taken that
advice and run with it.

“So you’re engaged,” Logan said abruptly, aware that his tone was brusque, almost
cold, but not sure how to fix it.

“Logan!” Jessica hissed, poking him in the side, but he twitched away irritably and
kept his gaze on his brother’s face.

Instead of looking sheepish or caught out, the way he had when he was six years old
and dragged every pot and pan out of the lower cabinets and piled them up to try and
climb the counter to get to the cookie jar, Dylan seemed perfectly at ease. When he
smiled and rolled his eyes, contentment radiated from every pore.

“I should have known you’d notice it the minute you walked in.” Lifting Penny’s hand
for another one of those fairy-tale kisses, Dylan said, “I asked Penny to marry me.
And she said yes!”

“Congratulations,” Jessica said into the brief silence that followed Dylan’s jubilant
announcement. “What a wonderful surprise!”

Some of the light in Penny’s pretty face had dimmed, and Logan noted the way her eyes
flicked worriedly from him to her fiancé. But she smiled and held out her hand when
Jessica asked to see the ring.

“My boss and coworkers at the Firefly Café want to throw us an engagement breakfast
at the restaurant tomorrow morning,” Penny said. “I hope you can both be there.”