Chapter 4

 

- LOGAN -

 

 

I had expected a reply. I hadn’t expected it so quickly.

Within an hour of sending my email, she asked if she could do the house check tomorrow during the day sometime. She was surprisingly polite, and apologetic for not being able to do it after normal work hours, but she works most nights.

So now it’s closing in on 10 a.m. and I’m rushing to finish painting this wall in the townhome that adjoins to mine before she arrives. I hate leaving a wall half-painted. My team is in the third townhome over, knocking down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, just as they had in this one last week. The noise is overwhelming, and I’m really worried she’ll tell me that my house is too chaotic for a dog like Kosmo to recover from surgery. I plan on putting the heavy work on pause during that time anyway, but I just don’t want anything to trigger this woman into going Ice Queen on me again.

The windows are open, and I’m surprised to hear a car pull up in front of my home ten minutes early. Leaning over to peek out the window, my hand slips and I end up with a thick, giant streak of beige paint on my blue shirt.

Dammit. Way to make an impression.

I open the door before she even is able to ring the bell next door. “Hi.”

Glancing at the number on the door, she looks confused. “Oh. I thought you had written that you were in #1.”

“I am.” I step outside and move to my own door, swinging it open. “I’m just working on #2 and 3 now. I bought this row of townhomes and am renovating them.”

“Oh,” she says noncommittally and adds, “Wow,” when she steps into my living room.

I have to admit, my house looks great. I bought most of the furniture and art pieces at Maeve’s direction when I moved to Annapolis for my last tour with the Navy. There’s nothing that looks “bachelor pad” here and that suits me fine.

“This is really beautiful,” she says, her eyes darting around the room.

“Well, don’t be too impressed. My friend Maeve is an interior designer.”

“She’s talented. Does she live in Newton’s Creek?”

I suppress a laugh, trying to imagine Maeve in a small Midwestern town like this one. “No, she’s in Annapolis, Maryland.”

Her hand strokes the supple leather of the couch and I notice she seems to be appreciating the woodwork I installed. There’s dentil molding along the ceiling and built-in bookshelves around the fireplace. I love books and I like to show them off.

She walks toward them. “You must read a lot.”

“I try. I’ve only read half of these though.”

“You could get an e-reader and not have to store all these,” she says, making me grimace. I like e-readers—don’t get me wrong. When I was deployed, it was the only way I could read as much as I liked since I couldn’t fill my rucksack with books. But given the choice, I just prefer the weight of a good, heavy book in my hands.

“I guess,” I reply. “But then what would I put on my bookshelves?”

She nods, her eyes wandering to the huge smear of paint on my chest.

I glance down apologetically. “Sorry. I was painting next door,” I say.

Her eyes are still on my chest, but she seems to be staring at my pecs more than the paint. She bites her bottom lip awkwardly. “So, Kosmo is in the car. Shall I bring him in?” she asks, fluttering her lashes nervously as her eyes meet mine.

“Of course. I was expecting you to.”

“Yeah. I just have learned to always take a quick peek at a house first. Sometimes applicants don’t tell me about other dogs that might not get along with ours. Or once a house I visited had a definite hoarder situation going on. And another time there was a guy who greeted me at the door wearing nothing but a thong. I mean, who wants to expose a nice dog to that?” she finishes, stifling a laugh, and I swear her eyes glance down at my groin momentarily.

This woman completely baffles me. I’m getting the same vibe I did from her that night at dinner, the one that tells me she’s attracted to me. But I’m still waiting for her head to start spinning as she mutates into the woman who stared daggers at me the morning after.

She heads toward the door, but stops abruptly at a framed photograph of my team and me before my final mission with the SEALs. It’s signed by all my SEAL brothers.

“What’s this?” Her voice is faint and I can barely hear it over the circular saw two doors down.

“Just a photo of my team.”

Taking two steps closer to it, she almost looks pale suddenly, and I’m clueless why. I’m a little freaked out by the expression on her face right now. She’s eyeing my picture in a way I can’t even define.

That photo means a lot to me and if she does something weird like sending it crashing to the floor, I’ll be pretty pissed off.

“And that’s you. Second from the right,” she notices.

“Yeah.”

She touches her fingers to her lips. “You were a SEAL.”

My eyebrows arch. I’m positive that I told her that when we had dinner. “Yeah. We talked about that. Remember?”

“But your application said you’re a construction manager.”

“Um, yeah. I separated from the military last year. Got a little too banged up for it.” I’m vague like I always am. If pressed for details, I tell people about my shoulder injury because it usually shuts them up. It’s really no one’s business that I came back from my last couple missions with moderate PTSD, as defined by the docs. I’m doing much better. And somehow talking about having it now just doesn’t seem right to me since most the guys I know who have it are a lot worse off than me.

“Oh, no,” she says quietly, her lower lip inexplicably quivering. “I really owe you an apology.”

“Why?”

“I assumed that you had been lying about being a SEAL just to—um…”

“Get laid,” I finish for her. I toss my head back and laugh. “So is that why you suddenly disappeared that night?”

“No. I didn’t think that till the morning after when I saw your application and some other job listed as your occupation. And then when you said your name wasn’t really Logan…”

“It is,” I interrupt, trying hard to hold back a smile. “I only fill out forms with my legal name though. A habit from ten years in the military.”

“Yeah, I get that now.” She sighs, looking humiliated. “But you did tell me you were from San Diego.”

 “If I recall correctly, you asked me where home was. I only moved back here temporarily for some family reasons. If you had asked me where I lived, I would have said right here.” I shake my head. “Look, I’m sorry if I wasn’t specific enough for you. Maybe I should have made things clearer. But I don’t lie to women.”

That is the God’s truth. Lies are like unexploded ordnance. You don’t know when they’ll blow up in your face, but they will.

“I’m really sorry,” she says.

I touch her shoulder impulsively. I can’t resist because she really looks defeated and I hate it when people look that way. “Not a problem.”

“I’ll get Kosmo.” She walks out my door without even looking me in the eyes.

It’s really not the big deal she thinks it is. It’s not like she poured gasoline on my truck and lit a match. She just acted a little bitchy one morning.

Hell, my last girlfriend treated me like that once a month when she’d get PMS, and I wasn’t mad at her about it.

I step to the open doorway and see Kosmo bound out of the car. He’s big and burly and full of personality, I can tell already. I love how dogs just barrel through life. I’ve seen it before. They don’t let things get to them much.

Got a heart valve problem? Oh well. Where’s my toy?

Missing leg? No prob! Let’s play anyway.

Blind in both eyes? So what. Got a bone for me?

I try to keep that attitude. It was hard when I was told that my time with the SEALs had come to an end. No one wants to hear that. But I just try to barrel through, same as Kosmo.

When they step in the house, I sit on the ground as Alexandra unhooks his leash, and let him sniff and lick me anywhere he wants. He immediately shows interest in the thick streak of wet paint on my shirt. Instinctively, I strip my shirt off quickly. “Hey, no, buddy. I don’t need you licking paint off me the first time we meet.” I ball up my shirt and toss it to the side. His fur is thicker than most Labs and I wonder if there’s some husky or collie in him.

“Want to see your house?” I ask him. I know it’s presumptuous to assume she’ll let me have him. But at this point, I’ll do anything for this mutt.