Page 18 of The Cowboy's Second Chance
Nine
Logan
This wedding just flat out sucked.
Not that he wasn’t happy for Malcolm and Kyle. He was. His own feelings for Kyle had gone by the wayside ages ago, and honestly, he had never had all that much hope that he would actually start anything with the gorgeous lawyer.
After dancing with Derrick, feeling his beautiful body against his once more, he knew one thing for sure. If he had gotten Kyle to go out with him, he would have regretted it. It would have been an unfair thing to do, not only to Kyle but to himself. Because he was never, ever, going to be able to be with anyone until he had gotten over Derrick.
He was starting to think that was something that just wasn’t going to happen.
Kyle and Malcolm might be adorable, and it might be a perfect, warm, early-fall evening, with the stars starting to twinkle merrily overhead and the moon, which was just rising, casting a silvery glow over everything. It might be utterly stunning, this wedding, a perfect fairy tale, but as far as Logan was concerned, it was terrible.
If only he hadn’t asked to dance with Derrick. He had, after all, promised to keep his hands to himself. It had been nothing but an impulse, and the mischief of the DJ who had decided to do the same-sex dance in the first place. He was going to be kicking himself for a long time.
He had just been starting to show signs of getting over Derrick, and during the course of a three-minute dance, he had thrown all of that progress out the window. He was right back to square one, and he had worked so very hard for so many months even to get as far as he had.
It was pretty funny to think about, in a sad sort of way. He was suddenly finding himself in the position of wishing that Derrick would just go back to school. He had spent so long pissed off at the younger man for doing just that, but there was no doubt that he had been doing better before Derrick had come back to live at the ranch full time.
Maybe it was true, what they said. The grass reallywasgreener on the other side. Being around Derrick, and not being able to have him, that was torture, though. Even more so than it had been not to have him at all.
After the dance, Logan stayed away. He was still at the wedding, technically. He could see Malcolm and Kyle together, dancing, laughing softly to each other, often lost completely in their own romantic world, and he figured that as long as he could see them, he was okay. He wanted to be there to support his friend, but to say that he wasn’t feeling social right now was a serious understatement.
It didn’t help his mood when he caught sight of the very man who was driving Logan so insane. And he was speaking to Wyatt. After what Wyatt had done, why in the ever-loving hell would anyone even do more than just be polite enough not to potentially cause a conflict at the wedding?
They spoke briefly, and Logan tried to pretend that he wasn’t watching. They were too far away for him to hear, especially over the cheerfully loud music, and he didn’t know how to read lips, but the conversation seemed to get intense pretty quickly.
It didn’t take too long for Derrick to get a repulsed look on his face and then turn and walk away. Logan smirked a little bit. Wyatt did tend to have that effect on people. How the slimy, oily man had managed to succeed so spectacularly, he had no idea. The man pretty much oozed insincerity and had all the charm of a rabid weasel.
Well, good for Derrick. Logan had only the vaguest of ideas what Wyatt had been speaking about so intently with Derrick, but it seemed that Derrick was too smart to fall for it. Chances were, it was something to do with selling the ranch because Wyatt was as stubborn as any of the Hart boys were. He might not look like any of the rest of them, and he might have nothing else in common with them, but the Hart stubborn streak, he had in spades.
As Derrick walked away, Wyatt turned and walked off in the opposite direction, which just so happened to be toward Logan. He shouldn’t have said it. He knew it the moment that the words left his mouth. But Wyatt had always been the one and only member of the Hart family that he just plain couldn’t stand.
“Sucks to be you, man,” he called, and for a moment, he wasn’t even sure that Wyatt would hear him over the sound of the music. But then the other man raised his head and his dark eyes focused on Logan, the beginnings of a smirk starting on his lips.
“Oh, hey, it’s the brainless wonder,” Wyatt shot back, and Logan rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, right. That hurts. Get me some ice for that burn,” he said sarcastically. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that a lot of people thought he was nothing but a muscular idiot. He didn’t tend to care much, and when it came to Wyatt’s opinion of him, that got downgraded completely to not caring at all.
“Oh, shut up,” Wyatt said crossly, and Logan smirked a bit. Wyatt had stopped getting under his skin a long time ago, and it was nice to be able to bug Wyatt instead.
But just when Logan thought that Wyatt would simply get frustrated and walk away, a little bit of a frown spread over the other man’s round face, and his gaze turned appraising as he looked Logan over from head to toe. Suddenly, Logan felt a lot like a horse that the other man was considering buying, and it wasn’t a feeling that he liked much.
“Didn’t your parents ever tell you that it’s rude to stare?” he demanded, but Wyatt had that determined look on his face, the one that Logan had seen before on the faces of all of the Hart boys, at various times.
“You’re Malcolm’s best friend,” Wyatt commented, and his casual tone didn’t hide the interest in his eyes.
“Yeah. I see why you make the big bucks, with deduction skills like that,” Logan replied, a little uneasy with the attention that Wyatt was paying him.
“So you probably have a lot of influence on him,” Wyatt said, and that was when the lightbulb went on over Logan’s head. He should have figured it out sooner. He really should have.
“Not interested,” Logan told him promptly. “Not gonna happen. Give it up. I hate you and everything you stand for. Get the picture?”
“You’re not being reasonable—” Wyatt started to speak, but Logan cut him off immediately.
“Just stop. It’s never going to happen,” he declared.
“I don’t know. Derrick seemed to think that it might,” Wyatt said, tilting his head slightly to the side as he looked up at Logan. “He’s a smart guy. He’ll come around.”
