The children sat as Logan wiped off the frosting that had gotten on his clothes after he’d bumped into the cake. The whole thing still didn’t feel real, and he tried to figure out what he was going to do as he cleaned up. He managed to get most of the frosting off and rinsed his fingers under the hose when he was satisfied that he wasn’t going to make more of a mess.As he shook the water from his hands and walked back up the stairs of the porch, his stomach growled.
After working and playing outside all day, he was hungry. He was sure the kids were too. With the wedding cake in pieces on the floor, there was no way Erin was going to be thinking about dinner—for the children, or herself. He doubted she’d be thinking about anything other than tomorrow’s wedding.
He turned to the kids. “Are you hungry?”
They both looked at him with blank stares.
“I was thinking it might be helpful to your mama if we got something to eat. What kind of pizza do y’all like?”
Parker sat up. “Rock Man and I like pepperoni.”
Logan raised his brows at Samantha. “What about you?”
She shrugged. “Cheese.”
He chuckled. “Okay. What about your mom? Do you know what she likes?”
Please don’t let it be something completely different.Logan couldn’t imagine coming back with a stack of pizza boxes because everyone had different tastes.
“She likes cheese too,” Samantha said.
Logan clapped his hands together. “Great. Why don’t we go down to the pizza place downtown and grab a couple of pizzas for dinner tonight so your mama doesn’t have to worry about it?”
Both of the children nodded as they pushed off the wooden swing.
Then it was settled. There was only one problem. He still didn’t have a car, and he didn’t think it was a good idea to disappear with Erin’s children without letting her know. He’d learned his lesson after teaching Samantha to ride a bike, and Logan imagined it would be even worse if he took the kids after something traumatic like the cake falling.
He pointed at Samantha and Parker. “Stay right here. I’ll be right back.”
The house was still as he entered through the front door. Unsure of what he’d find when he found Erin, Logan carefully made his way back to the kitchen. Erin was sitting on the floor next to the fallen dessert. She wasn’t bothering to clean it up. Instead, she sat cross-legged sobbing uncontrollably. Her entire body rocked with each new wave. It made his chest ache to see her like this.
He cleared his throat, hoping to alert Erin of his presence without startling her.
She hastily wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands before she looked up at him. “I, uh ... hey.”
Logan shuffled on his feet. He felt horrible that he’d been the one to actually knock the cake over, even unintentionally, but he didn’t think “I’m sorry,” was enough to cover what had just happened. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought I would take the kids to go get some dinner ... pizza ... if you don’t mind.”
She stared back at him, her eyes red and puffy.
Logan wanted to crouch down and pull her into hisarms. He wanted to squeeze her tight and tell her everything was going to be okay, but he had no right. She wasn’t his, never had been. She’d always been Jake’s—his best friend’s. Not to mention, things weren’t looking so great for Erin right now. So instead of doing what his gut told him to, he said, “I still don’t have a car.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “The keys are by the front door. You can take mine.”
Logan lingered, waiting to see if Erin would say anything else. When she didn’t, he grabbed the keys on his way back outside and found the kids right where he left them. “Okay, let’s go.”
The children crawled into the back seat of the station wagon. Logan sat in the front and looked at them through the rearview mirror. “Ready?”
Samantha met his eyes. “Parker needs help with his car seat.”
Logan closed his eyes so that she wouldn’t be able to see his embarrassment. Of course, Parker would have a car seat at his age. Logan walked around to the rear passenger seat and looked at the straps of Parker’s seat. His eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out how this contraption worked. Parker tucked his arms through the black straps and looked up at Logan. After fumbling for a few moments, Logan was sure that he had Parker buckled in correctly.
He got back into the driver’s seat and started to pull out of the driveway.
“I wanna listen to music,” Parker said, before they’d even made it onto the road.
Logan looked at the radio. There wasn’t a port for an AUX cord, only an AM/FM dial. This car was a dinosaur. “What do you listen to?”
“We listen to classical music in the car,” Samantha said.
