Chapter 8

ChapterEight

It was well past midnight when they rolled out the sleeping bags.

‘Thanks for bringing these. I’m not much of a camper. You probably could have guessed that. Just imagine how I’d be in a tent with no lock and all manner of creepy noises outside.’

Jeanie smiled as she held onto the edge of the bag and shook it out. Logan was relieved to see only a few pine needles fall out. It had been a long time since he’d used these. He was glad she didn’t shake out a family of mice.

‘Although, I did camp with the girl scouts as a kid. But I was mostly in it for the s’mores. Once I learned you could make those in the microwave, that was the end of my camping days.’

Logan nodded. He’d already learned that most of Jeanie’s stories didn’t require a response, and since she’d eaten half her weight in candy and washed it down with enough cups of coffee that he’d lost count, her stories had increased in quantity and speed. No time for a response, anyway.

‘I could see you camping,’ she went on, settling onto her sleeping bag. ‘You’re that type of guy.’

He sat across from her on his own sleeping bag. ‘What type is that?’ he asked, too curious about what kind of guy Jeanie thought he was to stop himself.

She tipped her head, studying him. Her thick black hair swung over her shoulder. ‘You know...’

He shook his head. He absolutely did not know, but was now embarrassingly desperate to find out.

Jeanie blew out a sigh like he was being difficult. ‘The rugged type, outdoorsy, flannel-y.’

‘Flannel-y?’

‘Yeah.’ She gestured to the general area of his flannel-clad torso. ‘You’ve got a very strong beardy, flannel-y vibe going on.’

Logan frowned. Was beardy bad? He ran a hand down his face self-consciously. Did Jeanie not like flannel? It was just so warm and cozy.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said, leaning closer. ‘It’s totally working for you.’

Oh. Oh ... it was working for him.

Her cheeks flushed pink in the warm light of the café. She blew out another breath and pushed her hair behind her ear. ‘I just mean that flannel is very practical for your line of work, and the beard suits you. And I’m sure you’re very good at camping.’

Practical. Right. That was him. Sturdy. Like a reliable piece of farming equipment.

You’re a really good guy, Logan.The memory of Lucy’s goodbye rang through him. You’ve built yourself a nice, comfortable life here, but I just can’t do it. I can’t stay in this little town forever. I need more than this.

He let his beard grow in after she left. Lucy hated a beard.

‘I’ll go grab us some pillows.’ Jeanie jumped up and clambered up the backstairs to her apartment.

Damn it. He was probably scowling at her, all his Lucy-induced anger misdirected toward Jeanie. He glanced at his watch. 1.07am and still no weird sounds, no ghostly chill in the room, nothing out of the ordinary at all. This was absurd.

He toed off his boots and stretched out on the sleeping bag, his hands behind his head. He was positive at this point that these noises were nothing more than Jeanie’s nerves about being in a new place. Which was totally understandable, but at some point she was going to have to get over it.

It might have been Nana’s voice in his head, telling him he absolutely should not tell Jeanie to get over it. But even he wasn’t that dumb. He would just hang out with her until she was feeling better. And he would not be a jerk. Even when her innocuous comments dredged up old insecurities.

The stairs creaked on Jeanie’s way down, and she was standing over him with an armload of pillows before he could get up to help her.

‘Here you go,’ she said and dropped a pillow on his face.

He took it and stuffed it behind his head. ‘Gee, thanks.’

Jeanie giggled and dropped the remaining pillows on her sleeping bag. Logan stared at the ceiling while Jeanie got herself settled, suddenly aware of the intimacy of lying next to someone in the middle of the night. Even if that was all it was.

They’d turned off the main lights in the café, leaving them in the soft glow of the night lights behind the counter. Moonlight streamed in through the big front window and the trees outside cast shadows on the ceiling. The room smelled like coffee and pastries.

‘Now, we can’t get too comfy,’ she said. ‘Or we might fall asleep and miss it.’

‘Well, we wouldn’t want that,’ Logan murmured even as he let himself relax into his pillow. It smelled like Jeanie, like her shampoo, and he resisted the urge to roll over and breathe in.

Jeanie’s sleeping bag rustled as she rolled over to face him. He stayed on his back, feeling safer staring at the ceiling instead of looking into her dark brown eyes.

‘I know you think I’m crazy.’

‘I don’t.’

Jeanie let out a little disbelieving ‘harumph’, her breath skating across the side of his face. Logan closed his eyes at the sensation, so soft, so warm.

‘I’m fully aware of how crazy all this is. I just wanted everything to be ... perfect here, for this new ... endeavor. And I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Like something is trying to get rid of me.’

Logan rolled toward her, and she was so close, he could hear the hitch in her breath. His need to make her happy here rose to the surface before he could stop it, that same damn instinct that hurt him every time.

‘You’re doing great.’

Her eyes widened like she wasn’t expecting that, and that hurt him too. Was she not used to hearing that she was doing a good job?

‘I just had this vision of how it would be to live here and run my aunt’s café.’

‘And?’

She wriggled deeper into her pile of pillows, her eyes big and dark. ‘And it’s been different than I thought.’

And there it was. The reason he needed to stay away from this woman. She expected Dream Harbor to be something it wasn’t, and she would expect the same from him.

‘You need to settle in. It’ll be fine.’ His voice was gruffer than he intended, but her words reminded him of why he shouldn’t be with her in this darkened café, smelling her pillow, wishing she was lying closer to him. It was like that first weekend with Lucy all over again, when he thought he could sell her Dream Harbor. And himself.

At least everyone still had their clothes on this time.

Jeanie’s hair rustled against the pillow as she nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.

‘My boss died on his desk. And I found him,’ she blurted out.

‘What?’ His feelings for her shifted violently again, and the little crease between her brows nearly killed him. ‘Shit, Jeanie. That’s awful.’ No wonder she was so unsettled. Finding her dead boss. She wasn’t just here for a little change of scenery. She was running scared.

‘Yeah.’ Tears pooled in her eyes. ‘It was pretty awful.’ Her voice was so small, so hurt. Damn it, damn it, damn it. He couldn’t handle crying women. Every instinct in his body was clamoring at him to fix it, make it better.

He cleared his throat. ‘What did you do there – at your old job, I mean.’

‘Administrative assistant to the CEO.’

‘Wow. Impressive.’

‘Not really.’ The slight change in subject kept the tears from falling. Thank God. ‘I mostly ran around making sure everything went smoothly. Scheduled meetings, filed paperwork, got coffee. Things like that. But it ended up taking up my whole life. I never meant it to.’

She took a deep breath and rolled onto her back, so Logan did the same. Safe from her intense gaze again.

‘I majored in business as an undergrad, but I never knew what I wanted to do with the degree. It just seemed like a safe bet, like I would figure it out afterward.’

‘Where’d you go to school?’ Logan asked. He’d keep the questions coming if it kept her from crying about her dead boss.

‘B.U.’

‘Go Terriers.’

She huffed a small laugh. ‘The fiercest mascot around.’

‘Hey, those little things can be ferocious when provoked.’

She laughed again and he let the sound roll over him. God, she had a good laugh. The genuine kind that just kind of bursts out in a little spark of joy. He liked it, wanted to bottle it up and bring it home for when he was regretting this whole damn night and whatever came next that left him a broken mess again.

‘Anyway, I took an assistant job and I guess I was good at it because I ended up at the top of the company by the end. But I’d never meant to do it for seven years.’

Their hands lay between them on the sleeping bags and Logan brushed her pinky with his own, encouragement to go on, but that small touch sent shivers through his body. It was late and the town was quiet around them. The only light was the soft yellow glow of the nightlights behind the counter. They were alone in their own little coffee-scented, candy-fueled bubble. And Logan liked it a little bit too much. Moments like this, nights like this didn’t last. Eventually, reality hit and all you had left were two people with incompatible lives.

‘Then one morning, I walked in with Marvin’s usual latte in hand and there he was. It wasn’t unusual for him to stay in the office all night. No one had checked on him. No one was even worried about him. He died completely alone.’

Jeanie sniffled next to him. Logan grabbed her hand and twined his fingers with hers. Warm and soft and small. Perfect.

‘Thanks.’ She sniffed. ‘The thing is, I realized that could be me. I’d let my job become everything. My boss worked all the time, so I did, too. I didn’t have friends anymore. I saw my family a few times a year. I didn’t even visit Dot and she only lived a short drive away!’

‘Everyone gets busy.’

‘I got the flu two years ago.’

Logan was getting whiplash from the turns in this conversation. ‘The flu is very different from a heart attack.’

‘I know, but I had it really bad. Multiple days of a high fever, throwing up, the whole nine yards.’ She started sniffling again, her voice choked with tears and Logan gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. ‘No one checked on me. There was no one to check on me. I threw up on my living room rug and couldn’t clean it up until three days later. I had to throw the whole carpet away!’

She was fully crying now, sad little hiccupping sobs that twisted Logan’s insides up so tight he couldn’t breathe.

‘Hey, hey, don’t cry. Please. It’s going to be alright.’

He unhooked their fingers and wrapped an arm around her instead, pulling her into him. She immediately buried her face in his side, and he could feel the warm, wet tears through his shirt.

‘Shh ... everything’s alright now.’ He rubbed her back in slow circles, every bone in his body wanting to make the crying stop, wanting to make sure she never felt like this again. ‘I promise, the next time you puke you can call me, okay? I’ll clean it up. I deal with all sorts of gross farm emergencies every day. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve had an alpaca spit on you.’

Jeanie’s laugh was muffled in his shirt.

‘This shirt is really nice,’ she said. ‘I told you being flannel-y is a good thing.’

He chuckled, pulling her closer, ignoring every warning bell ringing in alarm at how comfortable this felt. How right. She’d basically just confessed that the only reason she was here was because she was suffering from the shock and trauma of finding her dead boss. Once she was feeling better, what would keep her here then? It was only a matter of time before she realized this small-town life wasn’t for her. Just like Lucy.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said, emerging from his shirt. ‘I think I’m crashing from that sugar high.’

‘Yeah, could be.’

Jeanie’s hair hung into her tear-stained face. Logan tucked it behind her ear, letting his knuckles brush along her cheek. She closed her eyes, her wet lashes sticking together in black spikes. Her nose was pink from crying and her body was so warm next to his; she fit right into his side like a puzzle piece. And despite every reason not to, it seemed natural, obvious even that he would lean forward and kiss her, like they’d done it a million times before.

But before he could cross a line he couldn’t uncross, Jeanie’s eyes flew open.

‘Did you hear that?’ she asked, whispering so she wouldn’t scare the alleged ghost away. Logan tried to hear over the racing beat of his heart, still not recovered from what he almost did, what he still wanted to do.

‘I don’t—’

And then he heard it. A distinct scratching sound. Followed by a shrill cry coming from the back alley.

Maybe they’d found a ghost after all.