No, it definitely was not.

He had been floored that she thought he wanted her to come with him. Uncomfortable.

“You asked me to be your first, Sophie. Not your last.”

She shuddered, shaking off the ice water of that memory as she knocked on the door of the Fraser house.

She cracked the door seconds later, calling out, “Emma? You here? It’s me.”

“I’m downstairs,” Emma called.

The split level made the most of its position overlooking the cove and marina. It had plenty of windows and jutting decks, but stairs. Man, did it have stairs.

Sophie left her dirty boots on the stoop and slipped from the foyer through the living room to the kitchen, then down the stairs to the basement where Emma was folding laundry that she piled onto a bench press with a barbell across it.

“Who let you off your overtime chain?” Emma teased.

“I know. Logan’s covering the office, the store, and all the callouts today. Good luck with that,” she said with an eye-roll. “I live in terror that Randy will fail his exam and have to stay for another rewrite. Or won’t come back at all. That would actually kill me.”

“You really think he wouldn’t come back?”

“Forty-sixty?” She wavered her hand to indicate she didn’t like the odds. “He would have to pay the company for his tuition and everything, since we sponsored him, but he has a girlfriend in Nanaimo. And he has a wedding to go to. This is probably my only day off until he gets back in July.”

“And you used it to come see me?” Emma clutched a sleeper to her chest. “I’m touched.”

“Logan told me Storm’s aunt might make a play for custody? What’s going on with that?” Sophie shifted a box of framed photos off a paint-spattered kitchen chair and sat on it.

“I’m trying not to think about it.” Emma grimaced and shook out a receiving blanket covered in yellow ducks, halved it, then halved it again, before she ironed it down her front. She rolled it to the size of a burrito, then added it to the ones already in the basket. “I thought you and Logan only talk about work?”

“That’s the deal, but he told me they’re all staying longer. Gramps told Logan he can stay in our house,” she added with outrage.

“Because my family’s coming?” Guilt flashed across Emma’s oval face. “I’m sorry, mate. Does Art not realize you two lock horns?”

“Gramps has a soft spot for him.” For all the Fraser boys, really, but especially Logan. Logan had been more than a willing pupil. He’d extracted every scrap of knowledge he could from Gramps, but she suspected he’d confided in him, too. “Gramps probably feels he owes something to Wilf. They were friends all those years. And Glenda, for that matter. She used to come up to cook for Gramps when Mom was sick.”

Glenda had been a godsend throughout Sophie’s life, but especially while Janine had been in treatment. Sophie had been stretched thin between her new baby and her terminal mother, unable to travel up here to look after Gramps as well.

Neighbors help neighbors, was Gramps’s view. Especially in a small community like this one. If Logan needed a bed, then Gramps would give him one.

Sophie was less inclined to be neighborly, especially to him.

“Maybe we can figure out something else,” Emma murmured, moving along to the rumpus room that Logan had been sharing with Trystan until Emma had married Reid and moved out of the room she’d been using upstairs.

The basement had yet to benefit from the updates upstairs. Everything was tidy, but dated. In here, there was a distressed dresser, a television with slots for VHS and DVDs, and a sofa that turned into a bed. If Logan’s muttered remarks were anything to go on, that sofabed was a medieval torture device.

“Logan was going to set up his desk in here but hasn’t found the time or the right place. This room is too small for his desk once the bed is pulled out. I was planning for the kids to stay in here. Trystan stays in my old room on his nights with Storm, which is actually the room he used to share with Logan,” Emma said with a chuckle. “He’s mostly on the Storm Ridge now, but I’ll need it for Mom. I guess Logan will be on the bed in Storm’s room when he’s on shift.”

“They arrive this weekend, don’t they? Have you decided whether you’re going to Vancouver to meet them?”

“I am.” Conflict had her squinching up her nose. “I hate to leave Storm, but I’m excited to see the kids. I’ve missed them so much.”

Emma didn’t say she missed much from her life in New Zealand, but her niece and nephew were the top of the list when she did.

She frowned with concern. “I also have to ease Mom into the idea of all this without, you know, putting Storm in her arms from the jump. That dinosaur exhibit you suggested hasn’t started yet, by the way. We’ll try to catch it on the way back, but we’re going to the suspension bridge and the aquarium. Then we’ll fly here, mess around for a few days, go on the boat tour with Trystan, another few days here, then back to Vancouver before they fly home. It will go fast.”

“Maybe from your perspective. Logan’s going to be at my house most of that time.” Sophie quickly waved off her acrimony. “I’m just having a whinge.” Having Logan under her roof would stir up old feelings, ones she didn’t want to allow.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Emma searched her expression.

“No. It makes me feel too stupid.”

“Been there,” Emma said with a faint smile of empathy. She planted her hands on her hips and looked to the stairs. “We thought about making our walk-in closet into a temporary nursery, but that’s a lot of work and once Storm is in there, she might not want to go back to her old room.”

“Honestly, Em, it’s fine.” Sophie gave in to the inevitable. She hadn’t come here to plead her case anyway. She was far more concerned about what would happen to Storm and thus Emma.

Before she could pry any further on how Emma was coping, Emma asked, “Did you ask Biyen if he’d like to play with Immy and Coop while they’re here?” Imogen was Biyen’s age and Cooper had just turned five.

“He does, but he’s supposed to go camping with Nolan as soon as school finishes.”

“Oh? I thought…”

“I know. They usually go later in the summer, after Biyen’s birthday, but Nolan and Karma aren’t getting along.”

“Metaphysically?” Emma lifted intrigued brows.

“Yes?” Sophie brought her shoulders up to her ears. “Karma is his girlfriend.”

“Oh right.”

“But Nolan has never bought into the idea of cause and effect. Most people understand that if you move in with your girlfriend, but never pay rent, eventually she’ll kick you out. That blindsides him every time.”

“How does she pay rent? I thought she sold oils and crystals and such.”

“She does. She also works for BC Ferries. She wants to quit and open a store. I’m getting all this through Biyen, reading between the lines. She thinks Nolan should get on with the ferries and support her while she opens her own business, rather than, you know, him doing odd jobs for beer money and smoking weed all day.”

“Maybe she should have consulted her runes before she let him move in.”

“She should have consulted me,” Sophie said out of the side of her mouth, but they were both chuckling. God, she loved Emma for those deadpan dunks of hers.

“Does Nolan smoke pot around Biyen?” Emma tucked her chin with concern.

“No,” Sophie said firmly. “That’s a red line and he knows it. But it’s legal now and he used to bring it to Mom when she was in treatment so I can’t be too judgmental about him using it on his own time. Biyen knows what it is. I’ve talked to him about it and why I don’t want him to try it.”

Infuriatingly, Nolan was not a bad father. He might be lousy at paying taxes or even buying a cup of coffee if he could bum one, but he showed up regularly to take Biyen fishing or hiking or kite-flying. It might only be an afternoon, but his time with Biyen was almost always one-on-one, nurturing Biyen’s love of nature and sense of self-worth.

“Tell you what,” Emma said brightly. “After Mom and the kids leave, you and Biyen can move in here. Logan can stay with Art. Would that work?”

“I don’t hate that idea, but you might want to ask your husband first.”