“What are you parked all the way out here for?” Samuel asked.
I bit my lip, embarrassed as I looked from Samuel to his passenger and back. Those eyes! I felt the heat rise in my cheeks.
“Battery died on me,” I replied, trying my best not to focus on the man still staring at me.
“Did you try calling Pete’s?” Samuel asked.
“Phone died, too,” I admitted, albeit a little more quietly.
“Hold up,” Samuel said, stepping out of the truck with a groan. “Let me see what we can do about that.”
I watched him walk around the front of the truck, then looked back at the man in the passenger seat. He gave me a small smile and a nod, and I quickly returned both before following Samuel to my car. I unlocked the hood, and he pushed it up, locking it in place.
“So, what happened?” Samuel asked.
“Just stopped in the middle of the road,” I replied, briefly looking over my shoulder as the other man stepped out of the truck.
“And it won’t start?”
“Nope.”
“Problem with the alternator,” the other man said, walking past me and reaching into the hood of the car. I saw him fiddle with the spark plugs before clicking his tongue. “At least that’s what it sounds like.”
“Jenni, you know my son, Alex,” Samuel said.
No fucking way!
My eyes shot wide as Alex Logan smiled and reached out a hand. I took it, shaking it loosely and just stared at him. Like an idiot, I might add.
“I think he babysat you a couple of time,” Samuel chuckled. “This is Hank’s little girl, Alex.”
Alex nodded in recognition, his eyes never leaving mine, and I felt like I was beginning to drown in them. There was something more than just masculine about him. His entire demeanor reflected control and confidence, and for a second there I actually believed he could start my car with just the snap of his fingers.
“Jenni Wright,” he said, smiling again. “I remember.”
I remembered Alex from my old days, when he was a senior in high school and on his way to college. He had babysat me a few times, especially when my dad had to pull double shifts when we were short on staff, and I remembered him telling me that I could do whatever I wanted as long as I made sure to keep it down. He had even let me stay up late. I also remembered the childish little crush I had on him.
“Surprised you’re still in Kent,” Alex was saying.
“I’m managing the diner with my dad,” I replied. “And doing a little writing.”
“And robs me of my money every morning,” Samuel cut in, chuckling. I shot him one of my ‘don’t play that card’ looks I usually reserved for my dad’s friends, and that only made him laugh harder. Alex seemed quite amused at the whole ordeal.
“Well, there’s nothing I can do for you here, Jenni,” Samuel said, “but we can tie your car up to the truck and I can tow you to Pete’s.”
“Anything is better than sitting out here,” I said. “I was thinking of just walking home and leaving it here until the morning.”
“And have your father give you hell over this tomorrow?” Samuel asked, shaking his head. “Nah, we want him thinking you’re the strong, independent woman you claim to be.”
“I would call that comment sexist if I didn’t need the help,” I smiled.
Samuel laughed and slapped Alex on the arm. “Help me with the chains.”
I stood to a side as I watched them work. Samuel maneuvered the truck until its rear end was a few feet away from my fender, and Alex quickly worked the chains in between them, giving them a quick tug just to make sure they wouldn’t break loose. There was definitely control in those hands, and for a split-second I wondered what it would feel like to have them working me.
What the hell’s the matter with you?
I shook my head quickly and ran a hand through my hair. What was I thinking? I was acting like a teenager with no control over her hormones. It was completely unlike me, and I mentally chastised myself for it. I couldn’t understand what had gotten into me, and although I was known to be attracted to the strong ones, current relationship included, I felt like this was pushing it a little too far. I blamed it on the erotica-ghostwriting state of mind I was currently in, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
Stop it! You keep acting like this, and he’ll get the wrong idea.
Still, I couldn’t help thinking there was something about him. Sure, he was hot, and his physique left little doubt as to what was under the shirt he was wearing. But I was definitely not the kind of girl who just threw herself at every man she thought was attractive. Besides, the girl in the truck could only be his daughter, which probably meant that there was a Mrs. Logan in the picture.
And there’s a Garth Liston in yours.
Fuck.
“I think we’re good here,” Alex said, shooting me a quick glance before checking the chains a second time. He got up, stretched, and I noticed how one hand was massaging his right thigh. Samuel gave us a thumbs-up, and Alex gestured to the truck. “Get in,” he said.
“That’s okay, I can ride in the car,” I said quickly.
“Why?” he asked. “There’s enough space in the truck. And besides, Sam will probably send me home walking if I didn’t insist.”
I looked at the car, then at Samuel as he waved me over, then shrugged. Alex led me to the back of the truck, opened the door and helped me up. I felt a slight burst of electricity race up my arm at his touch, and again found myself thanking the darkness for hiding whatever my face would have given away.
Alex climbed into the front just as I settled myself in my seat. The girl had forgotten about her phone and was now watching me closely.
“Hi,” I smiled.
The girl only looked at me and didn’t reply.
“Be nice, Kelly,” Alex said as he put his seatbelt on and Samuel slowly pulled away from the curb.
“I didn’t say anything,” Kelly complained.
“Exactly.”
Kelly looked at me, and I rolled my eyes, quickly trying to take her side on this. Kelly smiled, rolled her eyes as well and shrugged.
“She seems nice,” she said.
“She’s sitting right there,” Alex replied while Samuel chuckled.
“I know,” Kelly retorted, looking at me over her shoulder. “That’s why I said it.”
Chapter 7: Alex
Jenni Wright. Wow, had she grown up to be a looker and a half.
It was all I could to not turn around and look at her.
For years since Janice died, there were only two things that had occupied my head. The first was Kelly, the little girl that had to do with only her father when what she really needed was a mother. And the second was the job.
I never really had any time for relationships. I had never even toyed with the idea of maybe bringing someone into my life. For years, my whole world had revolved around Janice. We had met during a particularly dark period of my life, when nothing was going to way I had planned and I was ready to just throw it all away and head back to Kent with my tail between my legs.
We met at the carnival, a run-down assortment of crap rides at a pier where the only good thing that could possibly come out of it was a good fix. And that was exactly why I had been there. I had started working at the DEA a year before, and one of the first assignments was cracking down on a distribution channel coming out of the carnival.
The job had been easy enough, the dealers too comfortable in their turf, and the carnival attracting nothing more than the low-life of the city. It was one of the reasons why I had been a little surprised that Janice was there to start with.
She had been taking her nephew out, showing him around the city, and had found herself caught in the middle of an arrest when we cracked down on a couple of dealers by the Ferris wheel. She had been shell-shocked, and I had felt the need to make sure she was okay. Had even driven her and her nephew home.
And from then on, well, the rest is jus
t history. Several dates led to her moving in with me, and eventually I was on one knee by the same pier where we had first met, asking her to be my wife.
I had flown my father in for the wedding, and it was the only time I had actually seen him cry. I couldn’t even remember him shedding a tear at my mother’s funeral. And if he had, then he’d done a pretty good job at hiding it from me. He didn’t do that on my wedding day, though. The man was practically bawling his eyes out, and it had scared me just a little.
Kelly came a couple of years later, and for me, it had been the happiest day of my life. I had looked into my daughter’s eyes, and knew that I would do anything I could to keep her safe. The two of them were my world, and everything revolved around them.
The cancer came quick, and Janice was gone before I even had the chance to register what was going on. Kelly was three when it happened, and Samuel had flown down again just to make sure I didn’t drive the both of us off the pier and into the ocean. A thought that I hate to admit, came often.
“That girl needs you,” Samuel had told me, but I wasn’t listening. At that point, you could have me that the world was on fire, and I wouldn’t have flinched. I tried to be a father, and a cop, and had been failing miserably at both for quite a while until I learned to pull myself together. Hours of therapy and tough love helped, but throwing myself into the job with all the fury of a hurricane did even more.
And every time I was late picking her up, or missed a recital, or didn’t show up for a PTA meeting, I said to myself that I was doing it for her. I was working the night oil for my daughter, to give her the life she deserved.
Until I got shot, of course, and realized I was probably not doing it for Kelly after all. A part of me still missed Janice, and that same part seemed to have an inexplicable death wish.
Sometimes I look back at all that, and wonder what the hell went wrong. When did I forget to take care of myself for her sake? When did I think it would be okay for her to grow up without both parents?
Maybe those hours of therapy didn’t help after all, buddy.
Maybe. And maybe I had been pushing people away for the exact same reason. Why build long-lasting relationships I didn’t expect to keep, right? It was why I had never been on a date, why I had never let any woman into my life, and definitely why I couldn’t even fathom the idea of sharing a bed with someone Kelly might one day call ‘mom’.
Which made my attraction to Jenni Wright even more confusing!
She was definitely my type. Brunette, check. Slim, check. Smile that could melt steel, double-fucking-check. But there was something else there, something more than just the way she looked. It was in her eyes, a hint of mischief, a touch of a desire to live on the wild side. Reading her was definitely not easy, but that had been clear enough. And maybe that was exactly why I was feeling the way I was. Janice had that same spark, the willingness to jump headfirst into the unknown.
Dammit, she had even made jokes about the cancer when the pain had been bearable enough for that.
Jenni Wright…
The truck hit a small speed bump, and I was abruptly brought back to where my mind had wandered off to. Samuel was pulling into the driveway of a small workshop, Pete’s Garage in large painted uppercase letters on the front. I remembered the shop from my childhood, a lot of long afternoons spent with my father and Pete as we fixed up whatever the Ford had been complaining about then. It felt a little nostalgic.
“Okay, you kids stay here while I go talk to Pete,” Samuel said, jumping out of the truck.
“Take me with you,” Kelly said, following suit.
I watched from my seat as the two of them disappeared into the shop, then turned to look at Jenni. She was huddled up near the door of the backseat, biting her lip as she gazed out the window. She smiled at me when she saw me looking, and I felt parts of me melt immediately.
“So, what brings you back to Kent?” she asked.
“Decided to spend the summer with the old man, show my daughter where her father grew up,” I replied.
“That’s nice,” Jenni smiled. “Is it her first time here?”
I nodded. “Ever since her mother died, and we’ve kind of been avoiding free time.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jenni said, her eyes suddenly wide in shock. “I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It happened almost ten years ago.”
“That’s a long time to be avoiding ‘free time’.”
I shrugged. “We’re not very good at mourning.”
“And Kelly?”
“She has to deal with me, which I think is probably the hardest part of it all,” I said.
“I know where she’s coming from,” Jenni said, looking out the window again, her eyes glazing over.
“Mother, too?”
Jenni nodded. “But she walked out on us,” she said. “I’m sure it’s not the same, but the end result pretty much is.”
I laughed. “Hank isn’t exactly the lenient type.”
“Tell me about it,” she smiled. “But he’s a great dad, all things considered.”
“Is that why you stayed back in Kent?”
Jenni hesitated, then shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said, frowning. “Partly, yeah, but I don’t hate it here, either. It used to be a great place to live for a while.”
“Used to be?”
“The college campus brought a lot with it,” she replied. “Good business, but also late-night parties, drunk drivers and of course, our all-time favorite, drugs.”
The DEA agent inside me suddenly woke up. “Drugs?” I asked.
Jenni looked at me, and for a second I had a feeling that she was about to tell me something she wasn’t supposed to. It looked like she was conflicted over what to say and what not to.
“The usual,” she shrugged. “Weed, a couple of synthetic garbage, you know?”
I did, and I also had a feeling there was a lot more to it than that. It was in the way she said it, how she looked away while trying to act like there was nothing serious to it. I made a mental note to ask Samuel about that later. The last time I had checked, Kent wasn’t exactly the place most people would associate with drugs.
I was about to ask her more, when a knock on the window startled me. Samuel waved for me to come out and help him with the chains, and as I stepped out of the truck, I glanced back at Jenni. She was looking out the window again.
Pete was standing next to my father, the hood of Jenni’s car up as he hunched forward to check the damage. “Right, it’s the alternator,” Pete said. “Don’t have the parts now, but should get ‘em in a couple of days.”
Pete stood up and stretched, then gave me a wide smile. “Welcome back, Alex.”
I shook his hand. “Thanks, Pete.”
“You tell Jenni she can come pick this up on Monday,” Pete continued. “Till then, she betta find herself another way to go about her day.”
“Thanks, Pete,” Samuel said, clapping the man on the shoulder. “We’ll manage, just do what you can.”
I unhooked the chains, then helped Pete push the car into the garage. “Now don’t you be a stranger, kiddo,” he said. “You gotta pass by here more often.”
I walked out of the garage with the promise that I would. Kelly was standing in the middle of the driveway, waiting for me.
“Grandfather’s invited your new friend to dinner,” she said with a smile.
I gave her a wary look. “Does that bother you?”
Kelly shook her head quickly. “Nope, I like her.”
“You don’t know her.”
Kelly frowned and tapped her index finger on her chin. “Let’s just say I have a feeling about her,” she said. “What’s the world I’m looking for? Intuition? I think that’s what you keep throwing at me, right?”
“One day that lip of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble,” I smiled, resting my arm around her shoulders as we walked back to the truck. Samuel was talking to Jenni, and she looked over at
us as we approached.
“Your father’s trying to charm his way into my heart,” Jenni said.
“Yeah, be careful about that,” I replied. “A real heartbreaker, that one.”
“So, a man can’t ask a beautiful woman to join him and his family for dinner?” Samuel asked, looking at the both of us with an amused smile on his face.
“Well, we could use the company,” I chimed in. “Normally, the three of us can’t really stand each other, so you’d be like a buffer.”
Jenni laughed. “Only if it’s okay with Kelly,” she said.
Nice. She knows how to play this right.
“Are you kidding?” Kelly rolled her eyes. “Please come. Save me from these two geezers.”
Jenni laughed again and nodded. “Fine, dinner it is. Where are we heading?”
“The Red Roof,” Samuel replied, hoisting himself into the driver’s seat as the rest of us got into the truck.
I stood back to let Kelly in and was a little surprised when she opted for the backseat next to Jenni. I gave her a confused look, and she shot me a warning gaze that made me smile.
It looked like I wasn’t the only infatuated with Jenni Wright.
Chapter 8: Jenni
The Red Roof wasn’t the kind of restaurant where you expected to see the rich and the glamorous. But it was one of the best in Kent, and probably the only place you could really take a date to. The owner, a wonderful woman whose mother had opened the restaurant thirty years ago, tried her best to make the atmosphere as cozy and welcoming as possible. Which just added to the appeal. The fact that she had a sort of monopoly on fine dining in Kent didn’t change the fact that she put her heart and soul into the place.
Which was one of the reasons why the place was packed when we walked in. A lot of times, just getting a table at The Red Roof required a reservation, but apparently Samuel Logan was so popular there, they already had a table ready for him. It felt nice to be able to just walk in and eat, and I giggled when Samuel leaned in and told me that he should probably be charged rent for the table he usually occupied.
We were led to a table in the back, close to the window that looked out onto North Main Street, but was far enough to give us more of a woodland view than street. It was a charming little setup, and I slid into my seat comfortably, a little taken back when Alex actually pulled out my chair for me. Whoever had said chivalry was dead, had obviously not gone out with Alex Logan before.
Passion: A Single Dad Small Town Romance Page 5
