Chapter 14

My mind is still gooey with pleasure, and I can barely process what’s happening as Logan pulls out, and ushers me behind the bar, him with me. We’re both crouched down, naked, covered in sex, and I’m coming down from the biggest orgasm I’ve had in my life. Then I hear the door creak open, letting in a burst of cold.

“Brittany?” Cole calls out, his voice worried.

Oh, shit. He must have driven fifteen miles over the speed limit to get here this quickly.

Then I think of what he must be seeing—our clothes scattered everywhere, Midge’s whiskey open on the bar, the whole place smelling of sex, and start laughing hysterically. Logan, who had an oh shit look on his face a second ago, squeezes me to him and smiles. It’s only there for an instant though—fading from his face like a whisper fades from hearing. He’s worried what Cole will think. He’d always been worried about that, I realize.

“What the fuck is going on?” Cole says, and I can hear his footsteps start to come closer.

“Don’t come around this bar, Cole, I swear to God,” Logan says, his voice a low grumble.

“Logan?” Cole asks in disbelief. “Are these…are you back there with a woman? What the fuck? Where the hell’s Brittany?”

I could wait for him to put the puzzle pieces together, which he’ll get around to eventually since he’s not a stupid man, but I figure I might as well put him out of his misery. This is obviously not the best way for him to find out that we’re together, but the best way has gone out of the window, and no amount of wishing and praying will lure it back. We’ve got to make do with what we have.

“I’m back here with him,” I say, making Logan’s eyes round. “Why don’t you come back in five minutes once we’ve had the chance to make ourselves decent?”

Cole swears, not bothering to do it under his breath, and I can tell he’s weighing what to do or say next, but then he repeats, “Five minutes,” and pounds out of the bar, slamming the door behind him.

Logan looks worried now, so I kiss his brow. “You didn’t want your brother seeing you naked?” I ask with a smile, trying to lighten his mood.

He snorts. “I didn’t want him seeing you.”

I kiss his cheek and his mouth. “He’ll be okay. Go clean up.” He’s still wearing the Smurf condom, and there’s something achingly vulnerable about him like this—his chest bare and sculpted, his cock out and still half-hard.

It’s difficult for me to believe that Logan wants me, that he finds me beautiful. No one’s spoken to me like him, touched me like him—like I’m someone worth treasuring. And for it to be a man that I also treasure…

It’s more than I ever thought I would get.

“I didn’t want him to find out like this,” he says soberly. “I don’t want him to get the wrong impression.”

I pull him in for a kiss, needing to reassure him and myself. “First impressions don’t matter. What matters is what sticks.”

He smiles at me. “Then we’ll be just fine because I’m sticking with you. You won’t be able to shake me.”

“I hope that’s a promise.”

“Oh, it’s a promise.” He kisses me again. Then, as if he can hear the minutes counting down, he gathers his clothes and goes to the bathroom. I pull mine on quickly, but I can’t find my hair tie, so I settle for running my fingers through it. I glance in the small mirror behind the bar, and I”m taken aback.

I don’t look like myself. I don’t look anything like the Brittany I saw in that mirror last month, the night Logan gave me the necklace. My hair is loose around my face, my cheeks and lips are pink, and I look…happy.

I look like a woman who’s just been satisfied, twice, in her place of employment. Although maybe it won’t be my place of employment much longer, depending on how much offense Cole takes to me fucking his brother in the brewery.

But I don’t care.

I’m not afraid, and even though I probably should be ashamed, I’m not. If anything, I feel more powerful than I have in years.

A minute later, Logan emerges, looking mussed, and he comes over and puts an arm around me, pulling me to his chest, unselfconscious. “I don’t regret anything,” he tells me. “No matter what he says.”

He couldn’t have said anything more certain to set my mind at ease. “Me neither,” I say, pulling his hand up for a kiss.

A few minutes later, there’s a knock on the door, and I’m still riding the high of Logan because I almost laugh again. Not only did Cole give us more than five minutes, but he’s knocking at the door of his own brewery. We obviously gave him a fright.

“Come in,” I say.

When Cole enters through the door, he looks pissed as a wet hornet. I can tell his rage isn’t directed at me, though, but at Logan, whose arm is still around me.

“Can I have a minute to talk to my brother, Brittany?” he bites out as he stalks toward the bar.

“Sure,” I say. “But whatever you have to say can be said around me. Especially if it’s about me.”

“Brittany,” Cole says, his voice pleading. He looks a little unsure of himself, and I notice the way his gaze lingers on the bruise on my forehead. “Fuck. That looks bad.”

Logan pulls me in closer. “I’m going to stay with her all night and make sure she doesn’t have a concussion.” News to me. I glance at him, and he nods. “I”m going to. Unless you’re willing to go to the hospital after all.”

I shake my head because I”m fine, not even a headache really—just a dull ache that I’ve barely noticed over the past hour since my head’s been so full of him.

“Then I’m staying with her,” Logan repeats with a glance at his brother. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Cole looks conflicted, his gaze pinging between me and Logan until he finally says, “I meant what I said last month, Brittany’s not the kind of woman you can mess around with. She’s family to me and Jane. You should have honored that, man.”

Last month?

Shock pings through me. I hadn’t realized Cole had noticed anything had changed between us—or that they’d had a talk.

Logan doesn”t flinch. He doesn”t move his arm. “I do honor that. I’m in love with her. I should have told you how I felt before now, but I was too much of a fucking coward. But I’m done being a coward. I’m lucky enough that Brittany wants to try to be with me, and I’m not going to mess that up. Not for anything.”

Cole still looks pissed, a vein beating in his forehead—and I can tell he’s been in a keyed-up state ever since he first heard there was trouble at the brewery. He’s angry, and there’s been nowhere for it to go. Now, he wants to arrow that anger at Logan. The two of them are too alike for their own good, and that’s why they’ve gotten into plenty of arguments in the past. They’re too close in age, Millie used to say to me with a small smile. Because they were like this even when Millie was still alive. That’s why they’re always getting into scraps.

But it also means they love each other an uncommon amount. I’m not going to get into the way of that. Never.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “We got carried away. It was a stressful night. If you think it’s a conflict of interest—” I need to stop speaking and swallow air, because the next words hurt. “—if you think it’s a conflict of interest for me to keep working here, I can find—”

“No,” Logan says, turning to me and taking my hand. “No. You love your job. What are those old folks going to do if they don’t have you to draw them together? This place will stop being what it is. It’ll stop meaning anything to this town.”

I hear Cole snort, but I can see him softening from this evidence of Logan’s devotion. Still, it can be nothing to what I feel like inside. I’m a dish of melting butter. I’m candy, left out in the sun. In this moment, I’m not too tough—like a passed over piece of meat—I’m Badass Brittany, soft and gooey inside, but fuck with me and find out.

“I could find another—”

“You’d better not,” Cole says. “He’s right. We need you around here.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, eyeing us. “I don’t know how I feel about this.”

The door cracks open, and his girlfriend Holly comes through with another burst of cold. Her cheeks are pink from it, her eyes merry. “Do I have to pretend I wasn’t standing outside of the door listening to everything?” she asks. “Because it’s cold as fuck outside, and I want to be where the gossip is.”

“Where’s Jane?” I ask, jogged out of my thoughts. Cole and Logan’s parents are gone, and Millie’s parents are out of the picture, so more often than not, the brewery has been a second parent for Jane.

“She’s with my sister,” Holly says, wrapping her arm around Cole, who lowers his head to nestle her closer. “Now, I think we were about to leave you two alone to get back to all the fun you were having before grumpy bear stormed in here and ruined everything.”

“I didn’t ruin anything,” Cole objects. “I just…have reasonable concerns.” His gaze finds Logan again, and even though I know Logan cares about his brother’s opinion more than he does any other living person’s, he doesn’t quail or shrink under it.

“And do you think people didn’t have concerns when we started dating?” Holly says with a snort. “You weren’t any less of a player than your brother.”

“But…” Cole cuts himself off, looking at Logan, and I see the understanding dawning in his eyes. He’s seeing something different in his brother. In my man. My heart soars, because I can see it too. I can feel it.

“Well, all right, then,” Cole says gruffly. “We’ll be going.” He glances around. “Just make sure…”

“Don’t worry, boss,” I say with a smile. “We’ll be giving the place a thorough cleaning.”

“But I think you should keep it closed tomorrow,” Logan says. He throws me a worried glance. “Brittany needs to rest.”

Cole snorts. “Doesn’t seem to me she’s been—”

“Oh, hush,” Holly says, pulling him toward the door. “Goodnight you two!” she calls, and as suddenly as they arrived, they step out into the night, shutting the door behind them.

I turn to look at Logan, who’s still watching the door, an almost puzzled look on his face. He glances at me, and for a second, he looks like a lost little boy. “He believes in me,” he says, almost in disbelief. “He’s going to trust me.”

“Well, of course he does,” I say, feeling my heart crack open. “And so do I.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to deserve it,” he insists, his gorgeous eyes so open and earnest.

“You can start by helping me clean up.”

And he does, with efficiency and without complaint, and then he takes me back to his house and insists on keeping watch over me all night, as if my bruise might take a turn for the worse sometime in the night.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel a twinge of anxiety. I know I don’t look my best in the morning, my hair mussed and my face plain and undone. My bruise is probably even uglier in the glow of the sun. But I breathe my way through it. And the second Logan wakes up, he looks at me with open joy and appreciation.

“I’ve never seen you in the morning before,” he says. “So this must be the best day of my life.”

And I can feel the rest of my old hurts being plastered over.

“Me too. Let’s make some breakfast.”