There was a time when she hoped her kids might know the man standing in front of her. She thought they might call him Mr. Logan, or even Uncle Logan, but that opportunity had come and gone. Logan West wasn’t a close family friend who got an honorary title like that.
“Why are you here, Logan?” she asked, crossing her arms across her chest. She already knew the answer—hated the answer—but the injustice of life took away all logical thought.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Aunt Betty asked me to come help sell the house. I thought you knew.”
Erin let out a humorless laugh. “She was doing fine without you.”
And so was I.
Logan’s mouth opened and closed again. He refused to meet her gaze.
Erin wasn’t sure why she was even bothering to have a conversation with him. One act of kindness toward her children wouldn’t erase the last ten years.
Tears formed in her eyes from a mixture of sadness and frustration. She shook her head. “I need to go check on my children.”
Not everyone had the luxury of running away at the drop of a hat. Some people had responsibilities no matter how hard things got. Not that Erin would ever want to run away from her children. She loved them and would never leave them.
She just couldn’t understand why it was so easy for everyone to leave her.
Logan’s guttwisted as he watched Erin walk away and disappear inside Aunt Betty’s house. He was an idiot, and not just because he didn’t know how to talk to children.
He’d never been good with children—had no reason to be. He’d barely been an adult himself when he moved to Chicago, and starting a family was the lastthing on his mind at the time. Fresh out of college, with a newly broken heart, Logan had put everything into advancing his career and never had the opportunity to develop the paternal side of him.
No, the reason Logan felt like the dumbest guy on the planet was the fact that he thought he could be this close to Erin and not feel like that love-sick young man again.
He’d hoped enough time and enough distance would be enough for him to get over losing her, but he’d never been able to get past his first love. Any time he’d tried moving on and started dating, he’d realized he was still hung up on the pretty girl with golden curls and a pure heart. It wasn’t fair for those women, and so he’d ended things quickly every time. No one had been able to compete with Erin, and Logan was afraid he’d compare every woman to her for the rest of his life.
The surprise of seeing her after so long had him twisted up in the worst ways. The few interactions they’d had were disastrous. He was always saying or doing the wrong thing. She never looked happy to see him and was always in a hurry to get away.
Even if he didn’t see her, didn’t talk to her, her presence filled every space of Aunt Betty’s house. Her car was parked in the driveway, baking pans were in every kitchen cabinet, the smell of baked goods came from the house almost every day, and kids’ toys were all over the place. Logan had found Lego creations inside therefrigerator, had almost tripped on a doll coming down the stairs, and in his most recent run-in, taken a water balloon to the face.
He bent down and picked up the broken piece of latex at his feet and soon found himself picking them up from the entire yard. The task was soothing in a strange way.
Logan didn’t usually like the silence that came with mundane tasks, instead favoring jobs that required him to use all of his brain power, which was why he’d been able to advance as quickly as he had through the company he worked for back in Chicago. He’d poured every spare minute into his work, and when he wasn’t working, he was keeping busy in other ways. He spent his spare time exercising at the gym or volunteering at the local soup kitchen.
Being back here made him restless. There was too much stillness in this quiet town. Not enough to do. Logan stood and stretched his arms over his head when he finished cleaning the yard, stretching his back. He tossed the broken balloons in the trash can outside Aunt Betty’s house before returning to the guesthouse.
Before Parker had hit him, Logan was busy trying to evaluate Aunt Betty’s property and make a list of the most pressing things to repair before it was ready to put on the market. While he’d mostly worked on commercial properties in Chicago, Logan wasn’t completely in the dark about residential sales.
The first thing he needed to do was get the old Victorian up to code. The wiring and plumbing were the most pressing. Curb appeal would have to take a backseat, though Logan had noticed Erin doing projects around the house. He wasn’t sure what series of events landed Erin and her children here, and he was afraid to think too hard about what would happen to them after the house sold. Aunt Betty was the most generous person he knew. She wouldn’t kick a family out of the street.
Of course, as far as Logan knew, Erin had a place of her own. The house she lived in with Jake. Logan had never been there, but he’d looked up the address once or twice while living in Chicago. The house she and Jake moved into after they married. It was here in Frostford, not too far from Aunt Betty’s.
Was it possible she was staying with Aunt Betty while she grieved the loss of her late husband and would return at some point? If so, that would make it easier to sell Aunt Betty’s home. He needed to know for sure and added it to the list of things to accomplish while here. Figure out Erin’s housing situation, sell Aunt Betty’s house, find a place to live in Florida, and get on-boarded for his new job. All in a few short weeks.
No big deal.
He plopped down on the small twin mattress in the guesthouse and opened his laptop. After answering a couple of emails to his new employer, he looked over hismost recent search for comparable properties for Aunt Betty’s house. If his calculations were correct, and they usually were, the house could sell for more than enough for Aunt Betty to live out her golden years in style visiting the white-sand beaches that were close to his new office.
He’s just begun looking up what the local laws were for pulling a permit for these repairs when there was a knock on his door. He shut his computer and answered it.
Aunt Betty stood on the other side of the door, wearing one of her infamous floral dresses, her lips turned down in a frown. He wondered if she’d somehow found out about what had happened with Erin and was here to scold him.
“Is everything okay?” Logan asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.
“I could ask the same of you.” She pushed her way inside the guesthouse. She turned and raised her brows at him. “Do you remember when you lived out here in your junior year of high school?”
He nodded. “I’d just gotten a job down at the feed store. I thought I was so grown up.” He chuckled at the memory of how he thought he was making so much money with his part-time, minimum-wage job.
