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Logan unlocked the shop, and a moment later the garage door rolled up. Maddie pulled in and handed over her keys when they got out.
“Dad’ll give you a call tomorrow to let you know his estimate and how long it will take to uh . . . remove that.” Logan had the decency to shelve the smirk, which she hadn’t expected.
“Thanks.”
They all walked back out, and Maddie and Emmett started back toward First Avenue. Emmett walked her all the way to her house, then hesitated for a moment. Maddie understood. It was almost like the end of a date. There should be more, a good-bye kiss or a promise of another outing together. Instead, he gave her a casual wave and started down the stairs and across the street toward the bar.
“Would you like to come in for some coffee or something?” she asked, reaching out to catch his arm before he got too far. She wasn’t ready for him to leave. The vandalism of her car had occupied their minds and put thoughts of last night and what it might mean on the back burner. She wasn’t sure if that was just a middle of the night indulgence for him or if it was the beginning of something real between them. She wanted to know. She couldn’t let her hopes get up for nothing.
“I can’t,” he said. “The bar opens at noon. I’ve gotta try to catch a couple more hours of sleep before work. But,” he added, “I’ll take a rain check. How about dinner tomorrow night?”
“You mean like a date?”
“Yes. You, me, dinner. No paintbrushes or binoculars. Just a date.”
“I’d like that.”
He leaned in and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “I’m glad. I’d like it, too,” he whispered into her ear before pulling away with a wide grin on his face. “I’ll pick you up at six,” he said as he turned and jogged across the narrow road and entered the side door of the bar.
Maddie couldn’t help but match his smile. She hadn’t been asked out on a real date since Paris. There, she’d been free to indulge without her family’s influence getting in the way. Once she returned home, that anonymity was gone. She’d busied herself with opening the bakery, but in the place where her love life should be there was a gaping hole.
But now, for the first time in a long time, she felt almost a little giddy. The thrill of a new romance heated her cheeks and sent her blood pumping warm through her veins. She was surprised, and not many men had the ability to do that to her.
The last one who had, well, he turned out to be a terrible, dangerous mistake. Maddie prayed her instincts weren’t off again this time.
Chapter Ten
Logan was making a quick evening run through the Piggly Wiggly when he noticed his half brother Grant going down an aisle. He tried a few evasive maneuvers, hoping to lose him in the frozen foods, but the next thing he knew, he rounded the endcap display of paper towels and found himself face-to-face with Grant.
“Hey, Logan,” Grant said in surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I didn’t see your car out front.”
“I live right across the street, so I walk. It keeps me from buying more junk food than I can carry.”
Grant chuckled in a disarming way that almost made Logan like him. That went against a lifetime of indoctrination and he hadn’t been able to buck it as easily as Pepper had. He really wasn’t sure how to handle this situation. It was so much easier when the issue was black-and-white: the Chamberlains were all selfish bastards who abused their power and influence, and Logan and Pepper were to stay far, far away from them. The revelations of the spring and Grant’s relationship with his sister had changed all that, shifting a lot of things into a nebulous gray area.
Logan knew his dad had told Grant the truth about Logan’s paternity. It had been necessary in order for Pepper and Grant to salvage their relationship. Thankfully, Grant had kept a lid on the news and hadn’t shared the knowledge with anyone.
Pepper told him that Grant wanted to forge some kind of relationship with him, but Logan had been resistant. He had a hard time trusting Grant or his motives. No matter what, Grant was a Chamberlain and that meant Logan carried a certain amount of skepticism where he was concerned.
Even after months of knowing the truth about his family, Logan had still managed to ignore the fact that he, too, was a Chamberlain. That was an issue that didn’t have to be tackled until after the truth got out and everyone knew. He wasn’t ready for that yet. He was much happier working silently, twisting the screws on Norman’s business and making him suffer.
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask if you’d like to come over to the loft for dinner one night. We thought we might wait until the house was done, but at this rate, it may never happen.”
Dinner with his sister and Grant sounded incredibly awkward and not exactly how he wanted to spend an evening. At least everyone there knew the truth, but he couldn’t fathom what they would have to talk about. He really couldn’t put them off much longer, though. Pepper had been pushing him all summer to get to know Grant—if not for the sake of bonding with his half brother, then for her sake, since Grant would soon be his brother-in-law. What a convoluted mess Norman had made with his wandering eye and wide-open zipper.
“Sounds good,” Logan said. “Just have Pepper text me or something and we can set up a time later this week, maybe.”
“Great.”
Logan was about to veer his cart in another direction when he heard Grant’s voice again.
“Hey, Logan?”
Logan turned back, looking into the Chamberlain blue eyes that he himself had, but never connected to the family the way he should’ve. “Yeah?”
“I was also thinking that maybe you and I could get together one night and get a drink, just the two of us. To talk about . . . stuff.”
Logan suppressed his knee-jerk reaction to say no. Grant had been put in an unenviable position and was trying hard to bridge this chasm between the two families. He didn’t want to, but if he kept rebuffing his half brother, things would become awkward, both with his family and Pepper’s new family. Maybe an honest chat with some beer would be more productive than he expected. “Okay.”
