Page 9 of The Library of Second Chances
Logan raised an eyebrow as if trying to guess where she was going with this. Turning to smile at Mildred, he reached out to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Logan’s friendly smile had engaged his lopsided dimple. If Lucy didn’t hate him so much right now, she might find that look even more attractive than the full one-hundred-watt smile he’d weaponized during the meeting to try to win everyone over. This smile was the one he’d given her earlier on the sidewalk. As if she’d just done something irresistibly cute, and he wanted to grab her and kiss her.
Good grief. She had to stop thinking about kissing this man. What was with her? Nothing about Logan Lancaster was cute. Nothing. He was a money-grabbing outsider who’d come to turn their island into some over-commercialized strip mall on the water.
Lucy jumped in before he could try his charm on Mildred. “Mildred, this is the man who’s come to help the town take away your restaurant.”
Pete gasped from his seat at the table, and Mildred’s mouth fell open as she looked from Logan to Lucy and back again, but no words came out.
Logan was unfazed as he turned to Lucy. “Now, I think that’s an over-generalization. Don’t you?”
He was looking at her as if he genuinely didn’t know what she was talking about. What was it about those eyes that made it so hard for her to think straight? She concentrated on imagining all the evil characters in children’s books who had hypnotic eyes. He was a villain, not Prince Charming.
Turning his attention back to the older woman in front of him, Logan spoke in a soothing tone. “Mildred—can I call you Mildred?—it’s true the town brought me in to see if I could help turn around their financial predicament, and a big piece of the puzzle is better management of this amazing waterfront real estate. If I remember correctly from the complaint you all filed against the city, you have had to repair some of the decking structure on your own in the past. Am I right?”
Mildred nodded, still obviously a little shell-shocked from the unexpected encounter. Her eyes flitted from Logan’s to Lucy’s and finally around the table, but they were all as caught off guard as she was.
“Well, I think that’s just nonsense, Mildred. You and your husband shouldn’t be putting out your own money to get this kind of work done. The city owns this property, and they should be doing those things. But they haven’t been—and I’ve already said this to them—because they’re a terrible landlord. They don’t have the first idea how to manage property, maintain it, or maximize its value. That’s what I’m here for. I’m not just going to come up with a plan to address the immediate need for a betterstructure here; I’m also going to help them hire someone to manage the new development so we never run into these issues again in the future.” He gave her another full smile, dimple and all.
Lucy could see Mildred was falling under his spell, nodding as he rattled off his speech. She wanted to break in and tell Mildred that they were all prepared to help her and Marty save the restaurant—and get the city to foot the tab for the repairs—but she actually didn’t know exactly how to do those things.
Logan took the restaurant owner’s hand in his. “Mildred, I promise you that I’ll work to find a compromise you and Marty can be happy with, and you won’t ever have to worry about your safety or pay for your own repairs ever again.”
Mildred nodded, clearly mesmerized by his charm.
Lucy’s plan was backfiring. She’d hoped that by humanizing the restaurant and introducing Logan to sweet Mildred, he’d start to see that this wasn’t just another big-city project where major corporations moved their pieces around on a chess board, each jockeying for their slice of a fancy new development. That these were people’s livelihoods, their life’s work at stake.
“See?” Logan looked first to Lucy and then at the rest of the table, grinning as if he’d just solved world hunger. “For every problem there’s a solution. That is, if we all work together.”
Mildred excused herself quickly as she saw another table headed for the door. Seven days a week, she was always there by the front door acknowledging everyone as they came and went. She knew the locals by name and which tables or servers they preferred. You just didn’t get that kind of customer service from a chain restaurant, which Lucy was sure Logan would love to court as anchors in his new building. Just what they needed, a Joe’s Jumbo Shrimp Shack with its gaudy cartoon jumbo shrimp emblazoned on the side of the building greeting people as theywalked out on the docks or wandered up from the beach that flanked the marina to their left.
“You’ve just got an answer for everything, don’t you?” Lucy mumbled under her breath, crossing her arms.
Logan turned to her, the space between them closing to only a few inches. He was so close she could smell his cologne. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, probably because she’d let him hypnotize her with those darn eyes. He smelled like Christmas, notes of pine and vanilla reminding her of eating cookies by the tree with her dad.
“Well, I certainly hope I do. When I leave here, I want to know both the city and its residents are going to be thriving for years to come. You’ll see, Lucy. I’m not so bad.”
And then he winked at her. The nerve.
She stared at him as he nodded to the others and then walked away. Those green eyes, that lopsided smile with the one dimple, the dizzying cologne she couldn’t seem to breathe in enough of. Logan Lancaster was bad news. For her and for Heron Isle.
Five
Logan
At sunrise, Logan had given up on sleep and gone for a run on the beach. Even at such an early time it was almost too warm to enjoy the run, so he left his T-shirt at home and hit the sand barefoot wearing nothing but his running shorts. He was hoping the sun would tan his arms and chest that were normally hidden underneath button-up shirts.
He’d tried to outrun the look Lucy had given him last night. The one where she seemed disappointed in him. He knew he shouldn’t care. People always viewed him as the villain when he came to town, and it wasn’t as if she really knew him. And yet, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
After returning to his cottage, he grabbed the last book Island Girl had left him off his counter and took it out on the porch with a cold glass of water. In response to the book he’d left on Fitzgerald’s time in Hollywood in the later years of his life, she’d given him a fictional tale about all the American writers and artists in Jazz Age Paris.
He slipped the index card out of the front pages and read it again.
Gatsby’s Ghost,
Since you seem to be interested in the Fitzgeralds, I wonder if you might also be interested in a fictional account of that period. I’ll admit a bit of a fascination with 1920s Paris. Okay, a bit of a fascination with Paris in general, although I’ve never been. It’s on my bucket list!
Enjoy,
