With Nora’s and Cary’s eyes on me, I dipped in my seat. “No.” My cheeks flamed. “Nothing I can think of.”
I peeked up at Logan’s face on-screen. His mouth was set in a frustrated line as the moderator asked Governor Mane the next question, but his eyes...once again, they cast out into the audience, as if he couldn’t help searching for someone. What if he was looking for me, driven by the compulsion to make sure I knew the kiss was a mistake?
The guilt sank me lower in my seat.
26
A Real-Life Prince Charming
I looked at the glowing headline on my phone, this one from TheWatcher on the Hill: “Where Did Logan Arthur Go?” Underneath, the subhead read: “Arthur turned in a mystifyingly meek performance against Mane in last night’s debate. Has the famously feisty Democrat finally been neutered?” I sighed and clicked the phone dark.
The news coverage of the debate, while not as colorful as Daniel Watcher’s commentary, had all been in the same vein. Which was yet another reason I was here. Not only did Logan need Lee’s endorsement more than ever, he and I needed space. When security rushed him past me into Nigel’s waiting car after the debate, he hadn’t even glanced my way, but I didn’t blame him. I took a deep breath, straightened my spine, and knocked on the front door of Will Laderman’s townhouse.
After a moment, the door swung open to reveal Will. It had been a while, so seeing him standing there framed in the doorway was a little like seeing him for the first time. You could tell he and Ben were brothers. They were both tall with coal black hair, blue eyes, and the same defined jawlines. But while Lee liked to say Ben looked like Clark Kent, Will was like if Clark Kent had a leaner, longer-haired cousin who worked in IT. Clark Kent meets Timothée Chalamet. He was so handsome my heart gave an unexpected lurch.
Will grinned at me. He wore a navy Oxford with the sleeves rolled up and below his jeans, he was barefoot. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
I was unprepared for the smoky quality of his voice. “Hi, it’s, uh, nice to see you, too.”
“Come in,” Will said, opening the door wider. “I just started cooking. Lee said you were good with chicken cacciatore, so I hope that’s still okay.”
I followed him in, unabashedly scoping as we moved through the living room into the kitchen. This is what I’d expected Logan’s house to look like. Will’s townhouse was new and sleekly modern, but it looked barely lived-in: some perfunctory furniture and a few lamps, but little else. There were even a few posters sitting in shrink-wrap against the living room wall.
He caught me looking and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s a ghost town. I’m barely here because of residency, and when I am, I’m sleeping. Not that I don’t know how to have fun,” he added quickly. “I’m not making myself sound very appealing, am I?”
“You’re very appealing,” I said reassuringly, then blushed and hurried into the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the townhouse, it was lived-in, strewn with pots, pans, and a knife block that looked lovingly cared for. There were leafy vegetables sitting freshly washed in a colander and a bottle of red wine next to two glasses.
“Can I pour you a glass? Your sister said you liked wine. I had the guy at the store help me pick it out.”
Oh, Will wasnervous. I recognized the signs, even if the idea of someone being nervous around me was laughable. I smiled gently, a little high on the power. “A big one, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned and poured. “I’m going to cook, and I thought maybe you could sit at the counter and keep me company? Or you could go to the living room. Or—anywhere you want, honestly.”
“Here’s good.” I settled on one of his barstools and took a big sip of wine, which was excellent. I checked the bottle. Bloody Good Wine, a vineyard out in Fredericksburg. That was Texas wine country, only an hour and a half outside Austin. I’d have to tell Zoey about it. We were going to Fredericksburg next weekend for her and Annie’s joint bachelorette. I was extremely honored to have scored an invite.
“So, is it weird our siblings set us up?” Will diced an onion expertly, in a way I’d never been able to master. Maybe it was his surgeon skills. “I mean, it’s not for me. Ben’s constantly meddling in my life. He appointed himself my stand-in dad after ours left.” When Will glanced up, his eyes were misty.
“Oh, Will.” I reached over the counter and put my hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.” He froze, looking down at my hand and then meeting my eyes.“Ohhh,”I said. “The tears are from the onion, aren’t they?”
He laughed, a warm sound that curled pleasantly inside me. “They are, but thank you. I’ve actually never been particularly torn up by my dad leaving. I was young, so I never got to know him. It hit Ben way harder. Sometimes I think he worked so hard to be a father to me as a way of coping with his own grief. But I do appreciate the gesture.”
I retreated back to my barstool, taking a large gulp of wine.Good job, Alexis. Treat a grown man like you would your first grade students. “For what it’s worth, I’m used to Lee meddling, too. She did the opposite of Ben when our family broke up—she kind of retreated. For a long time I was the one trying to insert myself into her life. But the last couple of years we’ve grown closer, and she’s jumped headfirst into that annoying older sibling thing of thinking they know what’s best for you.”
Will walked to his cast iron pan and slid the chopped onions off the cutting board into the pan. They sizzled, filling the air with a delicious grilled aroma. “It has to get exhausting for them, don’t you think? All that plotting on our behalf, on top of managing their own lives.” He turned to me and grinned. “Think Lee and Ben stay up at night, scheming about us?”
I pictured Lee in her Belle costume and Ben in his blue Captain Planet wig and blanched. “I’m going to suggest we don’t talk about what Lee and Ben get up to at night.” Despite the joke, my mind wandered to more serious territory. Will and I had a lot in common. Unlike me and Logan, who couldn’t be more opposite. As soon as I thought it, I reprimanded myself:No Logan thoughts.
Will snorted. “Fair.” He picked up his knife, then set it back down, seeming to come to a decision. He brushed a dark curl behind his ear and looked at me. When I met his eyes, all the hairs on my arms rose. His eyes were distractingly blue, so vivid they kept taking me by surprise. They were the opposite of Logan’s warm brown eyes, with their thousand shades of amber.Stop, you addict.
“In the interest of transparency,” Will said haltingly. “I think Ben and Lee set us up because they knew I’ve liked you since the first time we met. Way back when they dated the first time, and you were just a freshman at UT, I came to visit Ben and met you and...well, I never stopped thinking about you.”
My face flamed at his admission. I didn’t know what to do with my eyes or my hands—or, frankly, my mouth. I directed my words to Will’s cutting board. “I feel like I should say thank you for noticing me, but that sounds kind of uncool, so...uh...”
He laughed, sparing me. “No need to say anything. Sorry if that’s too many cards on the table. I just believe in being honest. No games, you know?”
I nodded slowly, willing myself not to compare him to Logan. “That sounds...refreshing.”
Over the next two hours, Will finished cooking and we ate his delicious chicken cacciatore and salad—followed by homemade tiramisu, because when the man did take a break from his surgical residency, apparently he moonlighted as a professional chef. We sat at his homey little dining table and our conversation flowed easily, helped in no small part by the fact that we downed the entire bottle of Bloody Good Wine, causing Will to open a second he’d bought “in case the night went as well as he’d hoped.” The man was charming, funny, and had very little interest in Texas politics, which made the whole night feel like an escape.
