“You’re a good girl, Sophie.” He patted her arm. “I like having you and the boy here. How would I know so much about myself, if he wasn’t telling me all those dinosaur facts?”
“Ha!” She sat to eat her last bites, then took her plate to the sink, coming back to top up their coffee.
“I’ll say one more thing about Logan,” Gramps said somberly. “He’s made mistakes and I don’t condone them, but I couldn’t turn my back on him, either. Even though I wanted to kick him in the ass for hurting my girl.”
“I know,” she murmured, sitting and taking up her mug, staring into her coffee. The way Logan had worked under Gramps all those years made him the son Gramps always wished he’d had.
“He was never going to get where he wanted to go by staying here, Soph.”
True. Raven’s Cove was a far cry from Genoa.
“They all have Wilf’s sense of ambition and one-track mind.” He set his hand between his eyes then knifed it forward. “They had to chase whatever it was they were chasing. They would have stagnated if they’d stayed here.”
“I know. But that’s why nothing will happen between me and Logan,” she said with a philosophical shrug. “Eventually, he’ll go off to chase more dreams and I’ll still be here.” Raising her son and looking after her grandfather. “We want different things.”
She wasn’t sure if she was clarifying it for him, or saying it aloud so she would hear it and accept it.
His mouth pursed in something that might have been disappointment, but he only said, “That’s his loss and my gain, then. Isn’t it?”
She doubted Logan would see it that way, but, “Sure is.”
*
Logan was already working when Sophie got there. Aside from a, “Morning,” mumbled around a couple of nails poking out of his mouth, he didn’t say anything about last night or the fact she had disappeared before he saw her this morning.
She got to work, trying to ignore this confused but shimmering awareness between them.
Nothing would make me happier than for you to hate-fuck me. Not because I want sex…
Did he want sex? She did.
Oh God. She did.
Between his kiss after the water rescue and the lessening of her anger and their intimate conversations and his touch on her ass yesterday, she was starting to think—fantasize, really—about sex with Logan. Not sex colored by hate, but with something else. Forgiveness?
She leapt on a callout to the wharf, even though it was so simple she could have sold the part to the skipper and hurried back upstairs. She installed it herself and waved off the labor charge, grateful for the break.
On her way back upstairs, she stopped at the pub and picked up a couple of bowls of mulligatawny, which she and Logan polished in short order, then got back to work.
The rest of the day was quiet enough that they were down to finishing work and a first coat of paint by five.
“I’m going to knock off and make dinner for Gramps,” Sophie said with a stretch.
“Why don’t you invite him to join us at the pub?”
“Honestly? The pub is great but ask me to recite the menu. I can do it, word for word.”
“I hear ya,” he said as he wrapped a paint roller. “I eat there so often I don’t need a menu, either.”
“Come join us,” she offered impulsively. “I’m only making salmon patties with a salad, but Gramps will enjoy your company.”
It turned into a nice evening with a good meal and some big belly laughs.
“What time does the boy get in tomorrow?” Gramps asked at one point.
“Around two.”
“I’ll come to get him and inspect this new office of yours while I’m there,” Gramps told Logan, briefly turning melancholy as he added, “I wish Wilf could see all the work you boys are getting done. It would have made him really happy.”
Sophie caught the flex of anguish on Logan’s face. She felt it.
So did Gramps because he said, “He did the best he could, son. That’s all any of us can do.”
“Yeah,” Logan said under his breath and ran his hands up and down his thighs.
Sophie heard his regret, his inner question as to whether he had done his best.
“He was really proud of you guys, though,” Sophie said. “It’s not as if he thought you should have stayed here, rather than accomplish all the things you’ve done.”
“We could have come back now and again, though,” Logan said with quiet self-contempt. “I could have thanked him, just once, instead of being so angry…” He shook his head at himself, profile carved to a sharp line as he stared at his empty plate. “Such a waste of energy.”
And time. And opportunity. She felt that, too, as she thought about how much she had resented Logan’s presence here all these weeks, only lately coming around to forgiving him.
He swore under his breath, then shook off his mood. “Everyone done? I’ll wash dishes.”
While Logan did the dishes and Sophie started laundry, Gramps moved into his chair. He was snoring by the time she got back to the kitchen.
“It’s really nice out,” Sophie said as she came in and took up the tea towel. “The sky is pink and the tide is low. If Biyen was here, we would go down to the beach and dig for geoducks.”
