Page 17 of The Pumpkin Spice Cafe
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.
