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Chapter Nineteen
Jeni didn’t make it inside her house until an hour after Logan dropped her off. As soon as she hit the front porch, she waved him off and sat on her wooden porch swing. Thank God her neighbor was quiet. Jeni didn’t think she could handle that tonight.
For the first time, jealousy surged through her at the memory of Cassidy and Logan’s morning tryst. What would he do if Cassidy called him now? Would he go out with her? Sleep with her? Would Jeni hear the sounds of another woman experiencing the intense, focused attention of Logan Davis?
The thought made her stomach turn.
But so did the words his mother spoke tonight, moments before Logan returned from the bathroom where Jeni had the best kiss of her life.
“It does my heart good to see Logan so happy. I haven’t seen this kind of joy in him in a long time.”
Jeni had sputtered something in response, though she couldn’t remember what. It must have been good enough because Ingrid had gone on.
“My late husband was the best role model Logan could have ever asked for. I have no doubt in my mind Logan’s destined to be a family man, even if his current lifestyle doesn’t attest to it.” She smiled wryly, and Jeni wondered how much Ingrid really knew of her son’s exploits. “He’s just trying to get things figured out. I know he would have stayed in San Francisco for a job at Twitter if it weren’t for me. Social media communication is what he loves, but when I was diagnosed, he turned their offer down and moved back home. He had to take a job he didn’t care for and only recently got an opportunity at the Chiefs. He’s back in a field he’s passionate about but is starting at the bottom because he lost so much time.”
That had surprised Jeni—only because it was new information, not because it didn’t fit the man she was starting to see beneath the ladies’ man exterior.
It was Ingrid’s words about seeing Logan happy and his destiny as a family man—which surely meant married and with children—that knocked the wind out of Jeni and elicited a stab of pain in her chest. She would never be able to make Logan happy in the long run. It would be unfair to let things move forward.
If only Ingrid had said those things before Jeni followed Logan to the bathroom, maybe she could have stopped herself. Talked some reason into her wayward heart.
Maybe she wouldn’t have though. She’d wanted to do that ever since their almost kiss the night of her failed seduction attempt.
Either way, once they were alone in the dark cab of his pickup truck, she had to shut it down. He’d seemed okay with things lately, almost like he enjoyed their weird, non-dating friendship. She’d been hopeful their conversation wouldn’t bother him too much and that they could just go back to the way they were.
But that moment when he looked at her in the truck, his blue eyes almost gray in the darkness, she knew she was mistaken.
The front door swung open.
“Shit!” Jeni’s hand flew to her chest.
Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Relax, it’s only me.” She closed the door behind her and joined Jeni on the swing, glancing at her watch. “This isn’t a respectable hour.”
“I’ve been out here a while,” Jeni said. “We went to his mom’s house for a bit after the game.”
“Really?” Rhonda raised a dark brow. “What’s going on between you two?”
“Nothing.”
“Really?” Rhonda asked again.
Jeni glared at her sister. “I’m not in the mood.”
“You can’t blame me for asking. You two have hung out a lot lately, and I know he’s the one who picked you up for a date”—she used air quotes around the word—“the other night. You haven’t dated anyone since your divorce.”
“Maybe I have and just didn’t tell you.”
“Have you?”
“No.”
Rhonda sighed. “Look, it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it. But he dropped you off an hour and ten minutes ago, and you’ve been moping out here ever since.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know everything. Are you okay? Did he do something to hurt you?”
“No, nothing like that. Logan’s a great guy. One of the best I’ve ever met, actually. On par with Andrew.”
