She nodded and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind her. She watched as Logan took off his boots and tucked them neatly on an empty shoe rack.
“Hold on a minute,” he said, padding away on socked feet into the house. He grabbed a towel from the cupboard near the downstairs bathroom and headed back to the mudroom.
She’d taken off her sneakers and socks and was standing on the cool tiles in her bare feet. Her toenails were painted a bright red, and he stared for a moment before looking away.
Her smaller sneakers sat next to his much larger boots on the rack. They looked positively child-sized in comparison, and he couldn’t help but smile.
Harper let the blanket slide from her shoulders, pooling in a wet pile on the floor. For the first time, Logan got a proper look at her. Until now, she had either been in the dark or wrapped in the blanket.
She glanced down at herself, crossing and uncrossing her arms over her chest in self-consciousness. Logan couldn’t help but notice the how the once pale pink sweater, now splattered with mud, clung to her generously curved breasts. He quickly shifted his eyes away. But when Harper turned and bent to pick up her handbag, which she must have dropped on the floor, he was presented with another problem.
Her denim-clad backside was now fully visible, and Logan suddenly became acutely aware of how small the mudroom was. She was already obviously uncomfortable about being stuck with a stranger. The least he could do was not leer at her. He cursed himself for being such a bad host. His mother would have his hide if she knew.
He managed to drag his eyes from her ass before she turned and caught him staring, which he congratulated himself for.
“You want a shower first or something to eat?” Logan asked, almost tripping over his feet in his haste to give Harper some space.
“A shower would be amazing,” she said, longing in her voice.
“Come on, I’ll give you the tour and show you where you can clean up.”
As Logan showed Harper his home, he looked at it with new eyes. What would she think of all the wood?
The house had been in a sorry state when he bought it a few years earlier. He had slowly renovated it in the spare time he could find between running Cape Wilde Construction, trading favors with friends in other trades to get things done beyond carpentry. The only downside was that he owed them favors in return, meaning some weekends, when he’d rather be working on his own place, he was stuck returning those favors instead. But that’s what friends were for.
It had been a slow process, and Logan was proud of the work he had done.
The house was two stories, with the mudroom, an office, a laundry, and a small downstairs bathroom on one side of the lower floor. The other half was an open-plan kitchen, dining, and living room. The kitchen was his particular pride and joy, all sleek white cabinets and a marble countertop with stainless steel appliances. He’d only just finished work on it last month.
But the feature he liked the most was the wall of sliding glass doors that opened the living and dining room onto a large porch overlooking the bay.
In summer, you could open the entire living area to the outdoors.
He knew the style wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but he loved it.
Upstairs was where the bedrooms were. The only finished one was the master suite. The other two remained bare and unpainted, still needing work to get them in order. Most importantly, they didn’t have any furniture. Until tonight, Logan had never needed another bed in his home, a fact he now regretted. It looked like he was going to be spending the night on the couch.
He led Harper up the stairs and paused outside his bedroom door.
“Uh, just give me a second?” He asked, rubbing the back of his neck. She nodded and he disappeared into the room.
He stared around his bedroom, quickly stuffing dirty clothes into the hamper and straightening the bedspread. He had only changed the sheets that morning, so they were clean and hadn’t been slept in yet.
The ensuite bathroom was in slightly worse shape. He swiftly wiped away whiskers from the sink, checked to make sure the toilet was clean, and the seat was down. Logan hadn’t grown up sharing a bathroom with his sister and mother for nothing. Satisfied, he nodded to himself and barely remembered to grab his used towels.
He stepped into the hallway. “You can have my room tonight. There’s only one bed in the place,” he said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t really have guests that often. Or at all.”
“Oh, no I can’t take your bed. I can sleep on your couch.”
Logan laughed and shook his head. “No way. My mom would skin me alive.”
Harper gave him a timid smile and nodded.
She looked over his shoulder and took a deep breath. “Logan, there’s something I need to tell you.”
He waited. Bad news never got better for waiting, from his experience. He’d rather hear what she had to say now. “Go on.”
“My friend who knows your brother, Mason?” Her eyes were wide as she spoke. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying at it.
