“Oh, man,” Faith said.
“What’s going on?” Logan asked.
“I’m sooo sorry,” Faith said. “I saw your brother…kissing Annie and…and I thought it was you.”
“You told Tess.” It wasn’t a question. Of course she would tell her best friend.
The guilt on Faith’s face was his answer. “He looks exactly like you, and I’d already suspected a secret family.”
“Huh? Why would you think that?”
“No reason.”
“What’d Tess say? Crap. I’m already in the doghouse for the whole Outpost thing. Now this?” He needed to talk to Tess. Right away. If there was any chance of fixing this, he had to find her and explain. “Where is she?”
“Um.” Faith wrung her hands. “She left town.”
Logan tamped down the panic that came crawling up his throat. He couldn’t let Tess stew on this false information. Not on top of the true information she was already stewing on.
“Okay, well, I’ll go to her,” Logan said. “Where’d she go?”
“More bad news,” Faith said. “She knows I’m weak when it comes to keeping secrets, so she wouldn’t tell me. I have no idea where she is.”
“She must have told someone,” Logan said. “Will you ask around and find out?”
“Yes. I can do that. Right away.” Faith pulled out her phone and typed for a minute before hitting send on a text. Just then, Alex and Brody entered the restaurant. Alex was reading something on her phone.
“Wow,” she said, glancing between Logan and his brother. “You two really do look alike.”
“Alex, do you know where Tess went?” Logan asked.
She shook her head. “Honestly, this may explain the secret family, but you still didn’t tell her about buying The Outpost. I’m not sure finding her is going to help anything.”
“What’s with this secret family obsession?” he asked, confused. “Is that a thing in small towns?”
Alex bit her lip like she was holding in a laugh. “Faith?”
“Shut up,” Faith hissed.
“All right, well, moving on,” Logan said. “Here’s the truth. I did come here just to do due diligence on The Outpost. I didn’t say anything on the campout because, I mean, I didn’t know Tess from Adam, and it didn’t really matter to me then. After we became friends, I planned to tell her, but then the seller wanted to take it out of the deal, and I thought the point might become moot, so I put it off. By the time we started dating, it was likeI’d waited too long. Whenever I finally came clean, it was gonna seem like I’d hidden it the whole time.”
“Which you had,” Alex blurted.
“I know.” He sighed. “I wish she’d said something. I didn’t find out she wanted the business until yesterday. If I’d known that, I would have written it off straightaway.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.
“I’m serious,” Logan said. “Instead, I’ve made an utter mess of things.”
“A problem you could’ve solved by being honest from the start.” Alex sure had an uncomfortable way of cutting to the chase.
“Yes,” Logan admitted. “That is true. I accept full responsibility, but I also want to fix it. Bare minimum, I need to apologize. But I have to find her first.”
The thought of Tess, off somewhere fuming about what a lying, cheating jerk he was, had him in a panic.
By now, they’d drawn quite a bit of attention to themselves. A waitress approached.
“You want me to move some tables so y’all can sit together?” She glanced around, hinting that they were in the way.
