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I pulled back. “I didn’t.”
“You did.” Logan responded with a smile. “I was waiting for you to come outside when I heard you talking to her. Or, should I say talking at her? No one’s ever done that.”
“Yelled at your mom?”
“Protected me.”
I was silent as I stared up at him. He looked nervous and vulnerable at his admission. I thought of Logan as a teenager, joking around and trying to make everyone happy but still feeling like the black sheep of the family. Unprotected from his mother’s wrath and his father’s disappointing stare.
“I’ll always protect you,” I said suddenly and looped my arms around his waist, leaning up to press my lips against his. “Just like you protect me.”
Chapter 17
“T he south shore is sure to be hit hard by this.”
“The biggest nor’easter New England has seen in years.”
“Hope everyone grabbed their bread and milk.”
“What is with the whole ‘gotta get the bread and milk’ shit? Those are going to be the first things that spoil if we lose power,” Violet said from the doorway of my office.
I begrudgingly turned down the radio, still wanting to listen to the weather forecast for the next few days. We were about to get annihilated by what was sure to be a blizzard for the books and everyone was acting like it was the apocalypse. I’d gone food shopping this morning and it was a complete zoo. One woman rammed her grocery cart into mine and another one ripped the last pack of cookies out of my hands like she was some savage. It was a mess.
All I wanted to do was get through the day and get home before it began to snow. It was no secret that work had been tense ever since my spat with the Arden sisters and I definitely didn’t want to argue now when I had a million and one things to do. I still needed double and triple check to make sure the generator was all set, make sure I moved every toy and water bowl inside and make sure each dog had some time outside because they’d be cooped up for a few days. I didn’t even look at the stack of adoption papers sitting on my desk.
“You’re going to take off before it starts snowing?” she asked, still standing in the doorway.
“That’s the plan.”
“Can I come in?
I looked up from my laptop. “Sure. Everything okay?”
“What?” she asked as she closed the door. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I just wanted to, um, talk to you. About things.”
My spine straightened. I definitely couldn’t deal with another lecture about the things I was doing wrong with my life. “About Logan.”
Violet shook her head, her sleek bob looking shiny. “No, this isn’t about Logan. This is about us.”
I closed my laptop and then sat back, my hands tucked between my knees. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry,” she blurted out as she tugged her gloves off, revealing neat, manicured fingernails with blood red polish. How she kept her hands that clean while working on a farm, I had no clue. “We’re sorry. About everything we said. Rose and I would never want you to feel like a pariah, Juliette. We love having you here with us every day. You work hard, do your job the right way and you treat all of the animals as if they were your own. We’d would never, ever want you to feel like you don’t belong here. We love you.”
I don’t know what was up with my emotions, but I couldn’t seem to hold back tears to save my damn life. I’d bawled my eyes out on top of Logan in his car and then cried again the next day when he surprised me with flowers, possibly the sweetest gesture I would ever see from a hard ass like him. He’d been mortified as he gave me the beautiful bouquet, his cheeks red in a way that was so adorable I couldn’t help but smile at the memory.
Violet’s words really hit me. They loved me. They thought I belonged at the farm and for so long I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I wiped my shirtsleeve against my watering eyes and then shook my head. “I shouldn’t have walked away from you guys that day. I should have stayed so we could hash it out.”
“We completely understand why you left. After everything was said and done, we realized that we could have approached you in a much better way. We just wanted you to know that we were concerned. You’re so sweet, Juliette, and we were worried that he was going to take advantage of that. Take advantage of you.”
I nodded. I could understand where they were coming from and probably should have looked at it through their eyes. All they saw was me falling head over heels for a strange man with a bad rep. If it had been me in their shoe,s I would have been just as concerned and probably meaner about it.
“I get it,” I responded and leaned my elbows on my desk. “I really do. If the tables were turned and it was one of you, I would have thought the same thing. But he’s not taking advantage of me, I promise. We all know I’m too smart for that.”
Violet laughed and then leaned forward, grasping one of my hands between both of hers. “I mean it, Juliette. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that our first instinct wasn’t to be happy that you’d found someone you care about. It should have been, I have no excuse for that. Only an apology. Rose feels the same way.”
“No, I don’t.” came an all too familiar voice. I heard squeaky, wet boots on the floor outside of my office and then Rose appeared in the doorway with a scowl on her face.
I raised my eyebrows. “No? What do you feel, Rose?”
