Hard Choices. Allison Leigh
her arms and stuck out her chin.
Annie started to push back her hair, realized she was still holding the dust cloth, and dropped it on the counter next to the cash register. “Logan—” even saying his name aloud felt odd “—this is m-my niece, Riley.”
“Will’s daughter?” Logan looked at the teen again. Assessing. “No kidding. Is he on the island, too?”
Riley rolled her eyes.
“No.” Annie quickly stepped closer to her niece. She didn’t entirely trust that Riley wouldn’t bolt. And though Annie knew the girl couldn’t get to the mainland from the island as easily as a person could hop a bus out of an ordinary town, she didn’t want to take any chances. She wanted Riley to go home, not run away again somewhere she couldn’t be found at all. “He and Noelle still live in Washington state,” she told him.
Then she looked at Riley, speaking quickly before whatever was forming on her niece’s lips could emerge. “This is Logan Drake. He might be an old friend of your dad’s, but he’s also Sara’s brother. I…I’m sure he’s here to see her and Dr. Hugo. He’s from Turnabout. Isn’t that right, Logan?”
His half smile didn’t waver. “I grew up here,” he confirmed.
“Bet you couldn’t wait to leave it. There’s hardly anything to do here, you know, even if it is part of California. There’s, like, only five cars on the entire island. It’s boring as hell.”
“Riley!” She sent Logan an awkward smile. It was true that Turnabout was not a large island. Situated well off the coast of California, it was barely eleven miles long and less than half that wide, with a single road almost exactly bisecting the island down the length. Annie didn’t own a car. Most people on the island didn’t and instead walked, rode bicycles, or occasionally zipped around in golf carts.
“Sara’s in San Diego for the week, I’m afraid,” Annie finally said. “She, uh, she didn’t say she was expecting you home.” Truth be told, Sara rarely talked about Logan anymore, and when she did it was to speculate over the source of the money he seemed to have—evidenced by the generous checks he’d occasionally send Sara’s way—or, more commonly, to bemoan his long absence.
That half smile of his, little more than a quirk at the corner of his lips really, hadn’t moved. For some reason, it made her uncommonly nervous.
“She didn’t know I was coming to visit,” he said.
She understood his clarification. He wasn’t home. He had no intention of staying. Though why he felt the need to clarify himself escaped her. It wasn’t as if he was there to see her. She knew good and well what his opinion had been of her. There were some things that were not in her memory banks from sixteen years ago, but his opinion of her wasn’t one of them.
Before she could stop the nervous gesture, she’d run her fingers through her hair. “Well, like I said, Sara is away. Riley and I were just heading over to Maisy’s Place for lunch. You’re welcome to join us.”
He looked at her thoughtfully and she swallowed. What was she doing? She didn’t ask men out to lunch, or to anything else, for that matter. Not anymore. Not even one on whom she’d once had an unrequited crush the size of the Cascade Mountains. Not even one who was the brother of her best friend.
“Oh.” Her brain belatedly kicked into gear with an explanation for that look of his. “Of course you’ll be wanting to see your dad, probably. I saw Dr. Hugo this morning when we came in to the shop. His office—well, of course you’d know where his office is.” She was babbling and felt like an idiot.
“Actually, lunch sounds good.”
For a moment, her heart seemed to stop beating. It had always been like that when Logan was around. Even back when she was only seventeen years old to his twenty-three. “Okay,” she said faintly.
Riley huffed, a sound halfway between a snort and a groan. Annie ignored it. She was only Riley’s aunt; pretending that she had a right to correct the girl’s atrocious manners was—
She broke off the thought, recognizing the words that had been silently streaking through her mind. Words that Lucia had used, too often, to describe Annie’s behavior, Annie’s attitude, Annie’s habits.
Nothing Riley did was atrocious, she reminded herself. The girl was a teenager, troubled enough to seek out an aunt she barely knew. The only thing Annie could do for her was to convince her voluntarily to go back home to her parents. As quickly as possible. Considering Riley’s statement just now that the island was boring, perhaps she should focus on that angle with the girl—
She realized both Riley and Logan were staring at her. Obviously waiting. Probably wondering what was wrong with her. She smiled weakly. “Right. Lunch.” She hurried into the back to get her wallet and grabbed the shop door keys as she came back out.
Logan and Riley were watching each other. It was a toss-up who looked more wary of the other. And now, because of her big mouth, they’d get to sit at a lunch table together. Joy, oh joy. She reached for the door only to find Logan’s hand beating her to it. She jumped a little and felt her face flush at the nervous reaction.
Riley glared at her.
Logan looked satanically amused.
She hurriedly locked the door and set off across the bumpy road. What she wouldn’t give for some of the mindless bravado she’d once had. She would have had a response for Riley’s smart-aleck attitude, and she’d have looked Logan right back in those ungodly blue eyes of his without having some desire to collapse in a puddle.
She sneaked a look over her shoulder at him.
He looked right at her. Her heart squeezed and she hurriedly looked forward again. Who was she kidding? Even at seventeen, particularly at seventeen, she’d been a puddle where he was concerned.
Riley was already nearly Annie’s own height. She easily caught up with her. “I don’t care whose brother he is,” she whispered, not altogether quietly. “I’ll bet you a million bucks that my dad sent him to drag me home.” A low roll of thunder underscored her words.
Annie looked up at the sky, half expecting lightning to strike right down from the roiling black clouds to the earth at her feet. Such an event would have been about as ordinary as having Riley and then Logan show up on Turnabout. She was acutely aware of the occasional scrape of his boot on the road as he walked right behind them.
She shivered. “You don’t have a million dollars.”
Riley made that impatient sound again.
“Well, maybe he is here because of your dad,” she acknowledged softly. Coincidences did happen in life, but for him to show up now? It was stretching it.
“I won’t go,” Riley said flatly.
Yes, you will, Annie answered silently. Thunder rolled again. The air seemed far too still and full of energy, lying in wait for some perfect moment to flash.
“Storm coming,” Logan said behind them.
Annie quickened her step, heading down the road to Maisy Fielding’s inn. As far as she was concerned, the storm had already arrived.
Chapter Two
“As I live and breathe. Is that my very own nephew, Logan Drake?” Maisy Fielding, all five-feet-nothing of her, stood in the middle of the entry to Maisy’s Place, her hands on her hips.
Despite himself, Logan felt amusement tug at his lips. Maisy Fielding was an aunt of sorts—her deceased husband having been his mom’s cousin—and she looked the same as she had the last time he’d seen her. The same corkscrew red curls, the same migraine-inspiring colorful clothes, the same hefty attitude screaming from the pores of her diminutive person. “That’s what my driver’s license says.”
She laughed heartily, then tugged his shoulders until he had to bend over her. She