Dangerous Conditions. Jenna Kernan
Sleeping Beauty, she thought and smiled. Logan was still beautiful. The scar didn’t change that. His dark, fathomless eyes and crisp, thick hair still tempted. Even that stupid cowboy hat made him look as handsome as any Western hero of movie or television.
She paused to face him. He pushed back the brim of his hat. She used her teeth to tug off one glove and then used her index finger to trace the hard line of his jaw. His coarse whiskers gently scraped her finger pad. She gave him her best seductive smile.
And for an instant, he was back. His eyes went wide with speculation and then came that easy, slow smile.
A familiar garish, orange Audi SUV raced by them and made an illegal U-turn right on Main. Connor Lynch pulled to a halt at the curb, and the passenger window whisked down. Logan’s brother leaned across the seat to peer at them.
As if caught doing something illegal, Paige jumped back from Logan and now glowered at Connor. He used to make a habit of interrupting them whenever he thought they might be…occupied. Some things never changed.
“Paige, you need a lift home?”
She stiffened and narrowed her eyes at Connor. This was yet another attempt to keep her away from his little brother. He’d made his feelings crystal clear after Logan finally came home. Logan was not capable of that sort of relationship, Connor had told her in no uncertain terms. And she should not burden him with trying to have one. Connor had been adamant, she’d ignored him and Lori had suffered as a result.
She’d backed off, but stayed close, watching his gradual improvement. He might not remember her, but his accident had not reduced his intelligence. Even his doctors said so. The slow speech and hearing trouble were results of brain injury. The part of his brain that handled cognitive function had been unharmed. Most people around here forgot that. Spoke to him more slowly than necessary and as if they were dealing with a child or a pet monkey. It infuriated her.
But was that indignation on his behalf or fury over what she had lost? She didn’t know, and sometimes her disappointment over Logan reenlisting blended into a general anger at the universe for stealing something precious from them both.
“I can walk her home,” said Logan to his big brother, his speech slow by comparison.
“Aren’t you supposed to be directing traffic at five?” he asked his kid brother.
“Yes. But I have time to walk her home and get back.”
“Today we need you in your office to cover phones. We had a traffic fatality. You still have a job, bud. Don’t blow it on me.”
“I can walk her and then come back. I didn’t take a lunch today.”
Connor ignored him. “Paige. Get in the car.”
Her home was half a mile east on Route 10, but she wasn’t sure she could make it, even leaning on Logan. She was equally sure that she didn’t want to ride with Connor. Ever since his little brother came back from Iraq, Connor had been trying to move in on her. Not that his little brother noticed because he’d forgotten her with the rest. Logan might not remember what they were together, but she did. And Connor was not Logan’s replacement. She’d told him so, more than once. All the cars and boats and fancy houses in the world wouldn’t change that.
Logan drew back as if anxious to put her aside again.
“It’s getting cold. Windy,” he said and glanced toward his brother’s car. Logan could drive, but his truck was parked back beside the office.
She stared up at him, willing him to recall something, anything, as she had so many times before. The betrayal of his forgetting them as a couple, as an engaged couple, of him forgetting he told her that he loved her forever and would make this all right, hurt in her bones. That betrayal had mellowed into a pervasive longing and soul-deep aching sadness. It hurt to look at him sometimes, especially when she was remembering, and he was just giving her that congenial smile.
Still, she had to wonder, who did she seek out when she was in trouble? Not Connor, the village councilman with a successful business in real estate and a large empty house of his own.
She’d come to Logan.
“Paige, I have to talk to you,” said Connor.
Her radar engaged. What did a village councilman have to talk to her about? She decided right then that she was not speaking to him or anyone else about what she had found until after she had reread the document from Dr. Ed’s folder.
Logan opened the passenger-side door, and Paige reluctantly slipped inside. She gave his free hand a squeeze, but he didn’t return it as he once would have.
Connor took his foot off the brake, and she waved to Logan, whose brow knit as he lifted a hand in farewell.
And then she was being whisked down Main Street, toward her mother’s home, her home again, too.
She still couldn’t believe she was back here in Hornbeck. That had never been her intention. Neither had getting pregnant her senior year of college. Her mother disapproved of Paige’s decision to keep the baby and stay close to help with Logan’s recovery. But Lori’s accident forced Paige to face facts. What choice did she have? She’d needed to earn a living and care for her daughter, so she’d accepted the fellowship at Cornell and earned her master’s degree in only one year. Next came an opportunity in Arlington, Virginia. But when her mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer, Paige had come home to find Logan much improved, a fact that no one in his family or her mother had shared with her. The job at Rathburn-Bramley allowed her to stay. That had been four years ago. They had even paid for her doctorate. And here she was, still, close to Logan and waiting for him to come back to her.
“What are you doing, Paige?” Connor asked.
She gave him a blank stare.
“You tried this. We all were against it, but you told Logan everything and he forgot it as soon as you told him. How many times?”
“Six,” she lied.
“More like ten.”
“He’s doing better,” she insisted. “No lapses in short-term memory.”
“Great. So what if your daughter calls for help and Logan thinks it’s the television again?”
The memory made her stomach clench. Shortly after he returned to his father’s home, Paige had been visiting with Lori, then ten months old. Paige had stepped out to retrieve a package from the mailbox, leaving Lori happily perched on Logan’s lap. When she returned, she heard her daughter wailing from outside and ran into the house to find Lori on the floor, a gash on her chin. Logan stood before the lounge chair pointing the remote at the television as he vainly tried to turn off the volume. He thought their baby’s howls of pain were on the television.
“It was too soon,” she said.
“It always will be,” Connor replied. “You should listen to us this time.”
Before they reached the old white farmhouse, they passed the funeral home where Dr. Sullivan’s body likely now lay in the basement on an aluminum table. He should be finishing up at the lab and heading home for supper. She shook her head in despair. The authorities would have to do an autopsy. That thought gave her the shivers. She checked the connection on her safety belt again.
“What did you tell Logan about today?”
“Tell him? Nothing.”
“That’s good. Just upset him.”
While she appreciated his concern for his little brother, Connor was the one who seemed upset. His face was red and he kept dragging his fingers through the hair on the top of his head. Connor looked much like Logan with just a little thickening at his waist and hair that was lighter and noticeably thinner. His skin was ruddy, and tiny burst blood vessels in his cheeks pointed to a drinking problem. Too many meals alone at the pub and too many evenings alone in his big, empty house, he had once told her. If that was supposed