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“Okay. Beat Leo, which is all that I cared about,” Logan said.
She found that hard to believe. There were so many people here that Logan saw as rivals even if she just started with the Williams family. “Really?”
“No, not really, but I’m trying to be gracious. I beat everyone except Nick...we tied,” Logan said.
“The two of you are very similar. Probably comes from all those years of battling each other and watching your fathers battle—”
“Yeah, about that,” Logan said sardonically. “You’re not wrong. Regardless of DNA, Nick is still a Williams through and through, and it’s going to take some time before I can see him differently.”
She had suspected as much. “Does Williams still mean enemy?”
“Yes,” he said then shoved his hand through his hair, ruffling it. He looked almost boyish with the thick blond hair sticking up. “I know it shouldn’t. I mean even before we learned about the half sibling thing, he was marrying my cousin. But at the same time, we’ve been fighting them in the boardroom for as long as I can remember. The first summer Dare and I went to work with Dad, he was setting up a deal that Tad Williams undercut him on and won. It’s hard to change years of thinking overnight.”
“No one’s asking you to,” she said.
“I am. I’m asking myself to change, but it’s hard, Quinn. Also...”
She waited to see if he was going to continue but he stopped as he watched Adler and Nick standing together. Nick had his arm around her.
“I’m an ass,” he said. “I mean, how could I not see how much Adler loves him? I—I have to get out of here. Can you leave?”
She could. But did she want to? Of course, she didn’t want to let him go alone when he’d asked to be with her, but at the same time, if she did go... There was no pretending any more that she wasn’t starting to care about the man Logan was today. Not the vestiges of what he’d been in college but the man before her, who was so much more complicated.
“Quinn?”
“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” she said.
They stepped outside and it was almost as if he took a huge breath. “Sorry about that. I did something before I came here that I regret,” he said as they walked away from the clubhouse.
“What?”
“A business thing,” he said. “It’s complicated and probably boring, but Nick is going to be very unhappy, as will most of my family now that he’s ‘one of us.’”
“What did you do?”
“Just ruined a deal he has spent the last few months putting together,” Logan admitted.
“Why would you do that?” she asked. “He’s marrying your cousin.”
Logan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
But she knew he did. “You hate to lose, right? Doesn’t matter if there is human roadkill on the side of the superhighway that is Logan. You know that Adler is going to be devastated by this. And it’s going to put a strain on things with her and Nick days into their—”
“Do you think I don’t regret it?” he asked. “I do. You’re right. I didn’t think it through, and I thought it was sort of a moral victory because him marrying Adler felt like he got one over on us.”
“Honestly, you make me crazy. Not everything is a competition,” she said. How had she thought that he’d changed?
“Yeah, I know. I realized that when I walked into Gran’s house and saw the devastation that my father had caused by being selfish. I thought it was just a friendly rivalry with Nick, but it wasn’t. I was just trying to make sure I came out on top, just like you said, regardless of who I hurt to do it.”
He turned away, his hands on his hips and his head bowed. “I can’t stop it. What I’ve set in motion can’t be changed. But I wish it could. I think until I saw how Dad’s actions were hurting us all, I never got the effect my actions could have on my family.”
She stood there for a moment, seeing him this way, knowing that he’d shown her this vulnerability because he trusted her. And...well, it drew her to him. She knew Logan wasn’t perfect and, as much as it might make her seem like she wasn’t smart, she always knew that it was his imperfection that got to her. His flaws made him human and real to her, and that was something she couldn’t resist.
She went over to him and hugged him. He hugged her back. They didn’t say anything else and, really, what else was there for either of them to say?
Eight
Logan’s quiet moment with Quinn didn’t last long. His father texted him to discuss the business ramifications of the upcoming announcement dealing with the scandal of Nick’s parentage. He left Quinn to head to his gran’s house and found his father sitting not in the study as he usually was but on the sweeping back porch that overlooked the ocean in the distance.
