Free Montana Creeds: Logan by Linda Lael Miller Page B

cut-off jeans and a white tank top. She slipped her feet into sandals, pinned up her hair, applied a spritz of the drugstore perfume the boys had given her for Christmas and examined her reflection in the blurry mirror above the bureau.
    She definitely needed mascara and lip gloss, she decided.
    The savory scent of the casserole filled the kitchen when she made her entrance. She drew up, a little thrown, when she saw Logan sitting at the kitchen table, with Josh seated at his right side and Alec at his left.
    “I’m early,” he said, looking apologetic as he rose from his chair. He’d brought wildflowers in a canningjar and a bottle of light wine, both of which were sitting on the table.
    She gave him credit for good manners. But he looked too fine in his new jeans and pressed white shirt, open at the throat. His dark hair was still damp from a shower, and there were little ridges where he’d run a comb through it.
    The back door was open, and through the screen, Briana saw Sidekick sleeping contentedly on the porch. She’d had to look away from Logan for a moment, in order to steady her nerves, but now she made herself look back.
    “That’s okay,” she said, too brightly and a beat too late. “Supper’s ready.”
    “Smells good,” Logan said. He sounded shy.
    She knew he wasn’t.
    Was he putting on an act?
    “It’s Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza,” Alec announced proudly, evidently over his earlier fixation about serving steak.
    Logan, sitting down again at a nod from Briana, raised an eyebrow, and a slight grin quirked one corner of his mouth. “Who’s Wild Man?” he asked.
    “Our Grampa,” Josh answered. “He was a famous rodeo clown.”
    “Oh,” Logan said, his eyes never leaving Briana’s face.
“That
Wild Man.”
    “You
knew
him?” Alec asked, hyperintrigued. This, his expression seemed to say, was even better than “winning” a free trip to Lake Tahoe. Even his freckles were jazzed.
    “I saw him perform a few times, when I was aboutyour age,” Logan answered, shifting his gaze to Alec, somehow managing to pull Josh into his orbit, too. “I wanted to be Wild Man McIntyre when I grew up. Turned out to be myself instead.”
    Briana busied herself setting the table. Logan had probably eaten off the same dishes they’d be using that night, she thought fitfully, back when he and Dylan were like regular brothers. If indeed they’d ever
been
regular brothers.
    “We’ve got a whole album
full
of pictures of him!” Alec said.
    “After supper,” Briana interjected, her smile a little tight-lipped.
    The boys missed it.
    Logan didn’t. His eyes lingered on her face, making every single cell in her body throb before going back to Alec. “I’d like that fine,” he said. “When the time is right.”
    Briana gave herself strict orders to calm down, stop being such a ninny, but herself didn’t listen. This was just supper with a neighbor, that was all, but it felt like more.
    It felt like some kind of beginning.
    Briana didn’t like beginnings, because they inevitably turned into endings. Given her druthers, she’d have spent the rest of her life somewhere in the middle, between major events. The present, for all its problems, was a terrain she knew.
    She had her boys, and a place to live, and a job that paid the bills.
    And that was enough—wasn’t it?
    The casserole went over big. Logan had two helpings,though he didn’t touch the wine. Since he’d opened the bottle at some point, Briana accepted a glass, took a couple of jittery sips and decided she’d be better off without a buzz. Even a very mild one.
    The truth was she had enough of a buzz going in her nerve endings already, without adding alcohol to the mix. Maybe Vance had been right, when he’d accused her of being sex-starved.
    She went weeks without thinking about sex.
    Now, with Logan Creed sitting at her table, looking ruggedly handsome in his cowboy dress-up clothes, something primitive was streaking through certain