Was that what she was doing? Maybe a little.

“If a guy comes along who is worth wrecking my life over—and wrecking my son’s life—I might consider it. I haven’t met anyone worth the risk, though.”

“That’s how it seems to you? That sex would wreck your life?”

“It did before. Are you paying me to talk or work?”

His brows went up at her snark, but he picked up the saw with a pensive expression and got back to work.

Chapter Twelve

They worked well together, not that it surprised Logan. They had both trained under Art so they had common principles and knew how to stay out of each other’s way. Before quitting for the night, they got the wall removed and the area cleaned up.

He went home physically tired, but didn’t sleep well, thinking too much about Sophie.

Was this part of his father’s legacy, too? Wilf had come from an abusive, neglectful home. Logan didn’t know a lot about it, but his mother had told him that much in the past. Wilf had never been overtly cruel to Glenda or anyone else, but he’d been deliberately obtuse to how much he was hurting others. That’s why he had led with monetary generosity. He had wanted to be loved, but he didn’t know how to earn it or reciprocate it.

He hadn’t loved himself.

Neither did Logan. It went deeper than his self-contempt for treating Sophie so callously. He had told her he hadn’t believed she could love him and that was true. Who would? His mother had, but she had loved a man like Wilf so that only told Logan how low her standards were.

Logan had done his best to play the field once he left for university, feeling empty doing it. He’d met smart, pretty, funny girls who should have held more attraction for him, but he hadn’t understood them, and they hadn’t understood him. He kept waiting for something to feel right and nothing ever had.

Then, when his mother had had enough of his father’s infidelity, he came back here to help her leave him. He had wanted to hurt his father by helping, not that there’d been much evidence he’d succeeded.

Logan had been hurting, though. He’d still been resentful of his upbringing and there had been Sophie, soothing the beast inside him. She did understand him and made him laugh at himself as much as every other aspect of this miserable journey called life. She’d been thoughtful and ambitious in her modest way, and he had felt connected to her in a way that was different from anyone else.

That connection had scared the hell out of him. That was the truth. He could look back and admit that it wasn’t just that he hadn’t wanted to bring traces of his childhood into the life he was building away from it. It was the heavier sense that she could pull him back into something he was determined to leave, something that would anchor him to this place forever.

So he had cut things short with her and left, treating her heartlessly in some bizarre effort to prove what an unlovable shit he was.

Just like his father.

He had never felt good about it. Never looked at another woman without comparing something about her to Sophie. He had never let himself get truly close to anyone since. His few long-term partners had always pointed that out when they ended things. He was inaccessible and incapable of real commitment.

He was. He had kept his focus on work, thinking it would bring him the fulfillment that otherwise evaded him, but even that success had failed to bring him any real satisfaction or any sense of true pride in himself.

Outside, the dawn light was increasing. Ravens started making their racket, coaxing their fledglings to fly. He gave up on sleep and rose to see one young raven on the lawn, letting out helpless, prehistoric screeches that roughly translated to I’m lost. Where do I go?

“I hear ya, bird.”

He walked up to a silent kitchen. Usually Storm was in her chair, babbling and blowing raspberries. Someone would be making coffee. They’d all talk about what they were doing that day.

Sophie’s house was equally busy with Art putting on the news and Biyen spilling his cereal and Sophie bossing everyone while taking care of them at the same time.

He used to think he was lucky that he lived alone with no one to answer to. Today, he couldn’t stand his own company. He walked down to the pub where he found Cameron and joined him for breakfast before heading into the office.

Sophie was already there in her coveralls, sitting on the stool, logging hours.

“Callout?”

“Mmm. Gillnetter needed a fuel line and was trying to get on his way so I came in early.” She yawned.

“I brought you a coffee from the pub.”

“I went through to the break room.” She picked up the mug beside her, meeting his gaze over the rim. Hers seemed wary.

“I forgot we can do that now.” He kept a level tone, wondering when he was going to quit spilling cold water on whatever warmth he managed to kindle between them. Her sex life was none of his business.

Not everything is about you, Logan.

“I woke up to a long string of texts from Emma,” Sophie said with amusement, tone brightening. “I guess all the travel was too much for Storm. She hated the playpen. Thought she’d been sentenced to baby jail and was not having it.”

“She sleeps in one in Reid’s office all the time. Are they all sharing a suite or…?”

“Adjoining rooms. And the funny thing is—Well, it’s not funny unless it’s happening to someone else, but I can picture it so clearly. When babies learn to pull themselves up to stand, they just keep doing it. They don’t know how to get back down unless they fall down and that scares them so they turn into this wrecking ball of self-torture. You try to lay them down and they’re standing up and screaming before you get to the door.”

“I’m trying not to enjoy this, because Storm will do it to me soon enough, but this is what I’m saying about Reid. Remember how he was yesterday? ‘I’m not scared,’” he mocked.

“Emma said he had to walk her all over the hotel until she fell asleep. They finally got everyone down, then it was musical beds because Cooper wet the sheets. They switched up to a girls’ room and a boys’ room, which got them through to five this morning when Biyen woke Reid, asking if he could call me. That’s another reason I was in so early.”

“Does he want to come home?” he asked with concern. “Do you need to go?”

“No,” she scoffed. “As soon as he saw me on the screen, he started talking about everything they were going to do today. He just needed to know I was still here, same as always.” She shook her head and chuckled, turning back to the computer to finish tapping.

“Yeah.” What was wrong with him that he suffered a little fomo that he had missed all of that chaos. He didn’t want any part of it. Who would?

“I have to work on the propeller for that cabin cruiser today, but I’ll mud the holes from the shelves first,” she said absently.

Back to work. Personal time over, he noted with a raw sensation in his throat.

“Sounds good,” he said. “Thanks.”

*

By the time Sophie was finished with her marina duties, Logan had framed in the new wall, door, and the space for the window. He’d moved the electrical outlet and, as soon as she appeared, asked her to help him set the window in place.

She did, then went down to the locker room to remove her coveralls and put on the cutoff bib overalls she liked to wear for working at home when it was hot. They were loose and had lots of pockets.

“This is going to feel a lot more functional,” she said, when she came back into the office. “I thought it would feel claustrophobic, but I’ll actually have more space once the filing cabinet is out from behind my chair and in your office. Plus, I might actually see sunlight.” She pointed through the window to his door into the accounting hallway. The breakroom had a window that faced the cove. Sunlight shone through that window onto the floor there through the middle of the day. “It’s as if you went to school to learn how to do stuff like this.”

“They said going all the way to Italy for a master’s degree in yacht design wouldn’t pay off, but they’re eating their words now, aren’t they?”

“You’re finally realizing your potential, is what I’m hearing. What was that like, anyway?” She had always been curious about his time there. It was such a worldly accomplishment, not something her very ordinary ambitions had ever conceived of. “Did you learn Italian?”

“Sì. Then I moved to Florida and mixed it up with all the Spanish I heard there. I’m kind of lousy at both, to be honest. It was a good experience, though. It made me realize what a young country Canada is. The colonial Canada, obviously. We have trees that are five hundred years old. They have buildings that old. Can you—?”

She went around the window to shim from the other side.