Break (Lakefield Book 3)

by Jennifer Vester

  My mood was a little annoyed. I had gotten rest but dealing with the Logan earlier in the day had been taxing. I was used to doing things on my own without the interference of bossy daddies that thought I was going to perish if I ate something wrong. If I frequently went out and started doing wild things, like Julia had once done, that would be one thing. But I was a cautious and stable woman that had taken care of myself for a very long time.

  I was also nervous about his declaration of love. Did he love me because he saw the babies or was it something more? The more I thought about it, he’d had plenty of opportunities to tell me prior to that moment and it was only after he saw the twins that he said it.

  This was the type of thing I had been dreading in telling him in the first place. He was a nice man that I knew would do the noble thing even at the cost of doing the right thing. Case in point, his offer to let me stay with him in the first place back in October. Noble, but it probably wasn’t the right thing at the time.

  It was so confusing. I sighed.

  I sat down at the table and watched him for a minute before he looked up at me and smiled.

  “Feel rested?” he asked.

  I nodded and took a bite of my food.

  He grimaced. “Whole grain bread is better for you.”

  “Do you want to have more children or are you looking forward to the sledgehammer?”

  He growled. “We need to go back to Texas for a while.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  He stopped typing and sat back. “Cade is coming up to help with some moving details. He’ll help us pack up some things and get it to the airfield. We’ll be staying there for a few weeks.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  He looked around for a minute and I could tell he was thinking about his answer.

  “Sweetheart, that weirdo is up here in the area and his victims thus far have been pregnant women of about your age and build. We’re not staying.”

  “That’s ridiculous Logan. I know you helped Mick today but the chances that he’s targeting anyone in Hope are slim.”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t see the analysis. Brock even agrees that we need to go back to Texas for a while.”

  “I’m not leaving my home, Logan! This place is where I live and work. I love it here.”

  He put a hand on my knee and started rubbing it. “I understand that, but I’m not taking any chances for the time being. Frankly, I assumed that no matter where we were, as long as we were together, it was our home. Not yours and mine.”

  “Well, this is mine. I own it and it’s not like we’re married. I want you here but this is the first thing that I’ve owned and I can call mine in a very long time. I’ve done so much work to it and I feel close to my family here. I know they aren’t here but it’s like living with them in a way.”

  He sighed and a look of irritation went across his face. “We’re going to be getting married Kaitlyn.”

  “Who says? You can’t just assume that sort of thing. You told me you love me today but that doesn’t mean you’ll stay. What if the twins drive you nuts one day. What if I get terribly fat and look like a beached whale while carrying them and you don’t find me sexy anymore?”

  “Why would you say that?” he asked, confusion written on his face.

  I bit my lip. “Because I’m not like the people you dated in the past. That are pretty and flawless. They probably didn’t argue with you about anything. I’m used to doing things on my own. Little things make me happy in my little world.”

  “Kaitlyn, you make me happy.”

  I gave him a look. “You’re just saying that because of the babies.”

  He grimaced. “What are you talking about?”

  “If we hadn’t seen them today, I think you would have left eventually. And you wouldn’t have said that you loved me.”

  Logan stood up and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure you’re understanding all of this. I also think you’re either hungry or sleepy because that was a fucked-up thing to say. You’re mine. Regardless, of whether you’re pregnant or fat, as you put it, I’m never leaving Kaitlyn. I said I loved you because I do, not out of obligation.”

  “Everyone leaves Logan.”

  “Well I don’t! I take care of what’s mine. You and those babies are the most important thing on my mind right now. You and I are leaving for Texas in the morning. We’re going to work on selling my house while we’re there and we’re getting married!”

  He stormed off to the bedroom.

  He didn’t have to be so loud about it.

  I wandered to the kitchen and grabbed my matches and lit two candles. Maybe I had been a little harsh. I normally wasn’t so grumpy.

  Bells was peering at me from the back of the couch. She kept following my movements then finally stuck her nose up in the air and went after Logan.

  Traitor.

  I looked out the window and saw a plow at the end of the driveway. Sam’s smaller one was still sitting to the side. He hadn’t been back over yet to fix it. James crawled out of the cab and started walking to the cabin.

  I put on my coat and boots to meet him. When I walked down the stairs he waved.

  “Hey Kate.” He greeted me.

  I hugged the coat to me. The flurries had eased but the wind had picked up a little and was making things chillier.

  “Hey James, are you here to do the driveway? How did your shift go?”

  He gave me a tight smile that pinched the scar on his mouth.

  “It went okay, thanks for asking. I was on my way back and noticed that your drive still wasn’t done. I need to eat first though. Do you want to come with me? I think Becca and her friends are usually down there. Hey, what’s up with all the cops around here? I meant to ask her the other day but I forgot.”

  I smiled. Since he was new, he probably wasn’t on the gossip list yet and probably hadn’t heard. “There was a body that was found on the highway near here. Some crazy stuff. I’m surprised Becca didn’t tell you.”

  He grimaced. “Not my type. I have particular tastes and “slut” isn’t it. So, food?”

  I laughed then looked back at the cabin for a minute. “That was terrible, James. She’s not that bad. No, I’ve got some plans. Apparently, I’m going to be moving to Texas tomorrow morning. For a while anyway. Have you ever been?”

  He shuffled for a minute and stuck his hands in his pockets. “No. Not there yet. Michigan, Colorado, Ohio, and a few weeks in Montana.”

  “Were you doing other work?”

  “Of a sort. I work construction, do odd jobs. I go where the money is.”

  I heard the familiar sound of my cabin door closing behind me and footsteps in the snow that were approaching.

  James looked past me and frowned slightly. It was a small movement that I wouldn’t have caught but his scar pinched in a funny way right before he started smiling.

  “Hey,” I heard Logan say before his arm snaked around my waist. He pulled me back into his chest in a clear sign of possession.

  A man marking their territory no doubt.

  James kept smiling. “Hey man, just came by to tell Kate that I would be doing the driveway when I got back from lunch.”

  I noticed he left out the part where he had invited me.

  “Sounds good. I’m Logan by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you. I thought for some reason Kate was fending for herself with the broken plow out here. If it’s working then I can just go over and ask Sam and Peg if they need theirs done.”

  Logan grumbled. “No, not fending for herself. It’s still not working and I’m sure Sam would appreciate the help until he gets it fixed.”

  James nodded. “Gotcha, well I’ll be back later. Do you need anything from the diner Logan?”

  “No, I’m good. I was about to step out for a little while and go pick up a friend. Getting to the driveway today would make things easier to get another vehicle in here.”

  “No problem, i
t’ll be all over by the time you get back.”

  Logan squeezed me. “Great, well we’ll see you soon. What did you say your name was?”

  “James. James Coffey. See ya around. I’ll be back Kate.”

  “Thanks,” I said, as he turned and climbed back in his plow.

  We stood for a minute and watched him leave. Logan didn’t let go until he was out of sight around the corner.

  “So, is he better looking when you’re mad at me?”

  I groaned. “No, you idiot. Let me go.”

  “No. You’re coming back in the house.”

  I squirmed as he steered me toward the cabin.

  “I’m perfectly okay to walk by myself Logan.”

  “I know, but I like having my hands on you so get used to it.”

  I sighed. Another round of fighting was about to happen.

  My cheeks were cold when we got in the house. The smell of clove and lavender drifted through the room from the candles I had lit. I took off my boots and coat and left them by the door. With every intention to go to the bathroom and take a long bath, I started moving in that direction.

  Logan caught me around the waist again though and prevented my progress.

  “Hey, come here for a minute.”

  I rolled my eyes and let him steer me to the table. Bells was playing the candles again and I shooed her off the table. She was seriously going to get hurt eventually.

  Logan sat me down in one of the chairs.

  “Wait here,” he said and pointed down at me.

  “Bossy.”

  “Always sweetheart. Get used to that too.”

  I heard him messing around in the kitchen for a minute. Looking out the front window I watched as a huge clump of snow slid off a tree in front of the cabin and landed on the ground.

  Logan cleared his throat beside me and I looked up at him.

  He was holding a plate with a huge cupcake on it that was decorated with bright pink icing. There was a lit candle in the middle.

  “What’s that?”

  He sat on the other chair and set the cupcake in between us. “Make a wish.”

  I arched my eyebrow at him. “Why?”

  “It’s for your birthday. I kind of missed it. So, it’s wish time.”

  “You didn’t miss it, we saw each other.”

  Logan grabbed my leg and winked at me. “I missed it. Make a wish.”

  I did what he asked, wondering what this was about. I was about to ask, when he stood up and went back to the kitchen.

  He brought out a big plate with four more cupcakes that all had lit candles on them as well.

  Setting them down in front of me, he said. “Wish?”

  I laughed. “What are you doing?”

  He pointed at the cupcakes. “All the holidays I missed with you. Halloween, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day is the blue one, and Thanksgiving is the chocolate one.”

  I blew out the candles one by one and narrowed my eyes at him. “When did you get these?”

  He shrugged and grabbed the Halloween cupcake. “At the grocery store when you went to the bathroom. I was planning ahead for an icing and sex night but things changed so we’re having our icing now.”

  I picked up the pink one and bit into it. I moaned when I tasted buttercream and strawberries. “I’m surprised this much sugar is on the “allowable foods according to Dr. Matthews” list.”

  He winked. “I just want you to be healthy. And to be quite honest, I was thinking of that pink icing on one of your tits and it sort of overrode the “healthy” part of my brain.”

  I giggled. “Oh, well, I’ll remember to bribe you with sex the next time I want chocolate.”

  He set his cupcake down. “Won’t be that hard. All you’ll have to do is give me those eyes and that smile. Speaking of hard.”

  I laughed when he dropped to the floor, wondering what he was going to do. Sex with him was always interesting to say the least.

  He dug around in his pocket for a minute and came out with a jewelry box.

  I stopped chewing and my eyes met his blue ones.

  “I bought this when I got out of rehab Kaitlyn. So, you can imagine how utterly pissed and frantic I was when I couldn’t find you. Then when I did and came up here, I wasn’t sure what you would do. I wasn’t just going to apologize and sex you up. Although that’s been a lot of fun too. Then I found out you were pregnant and thought about waiting for a while until you got used to the idea of us being together. I’m not terribly good at this stuff.”

  He opened the box and there in the middle was a solitaire diamond ring with two small diamonds on either side.

  “Oh.” It was all I could manage to say.

  “Will you marry me? I’m occasionally an asshole. I’ll totally admit that I’m deeply in love with your breasts and I’ll still send you dirty pictures from time to time. But, I also love you. Everything about you.”

  My heart clenched then felt very full. I memorized this moment in my mind so I could keep it forever.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, now come here because you have icing on your mouth and I want a taste.”

  I leaned down to him and let him lick the corner of my mouth. Then his lips moved over mine. I opened for him and he swept in, giving me a thorough and heated kiss.

  When he was done I felt dizzy and extremely in need of other things.

  He put the ring on my finger and it fit perfectly.

  He sighed. “As much as I want to stay here and celebrate, I can’t. I have to go pick up Cade from the airfield. I’m sorry about all of this and I promise we’ll come back. I just need to protect you and this is the best way to do it without me buying a bunch of shotguns and turning into Holden’s dad.”

  I touched his smooth face. The beard had been nice on him but I was enjoying the ability to feel his skin on my fingertips more.

  “You’re right. We’ll go for a little while. I just want to make sure we’ll be back to our home.”

  “Of course. I’m not carrying you off in the middle of the night or anything, never to return. I like this place and I like the people. Besides, when Dr. Fuller retires here in a few months, I’m taking over his clinic. We were talking about it. I’m kind of looking forward to dealing with a lot less stress.”

  I blinked at him but didn’t know what to say.

  He grinned. “Told you I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  Chapter Twenty

  After Logan left I had the task of looking around the house for what should and shouldn’t go back to the house in Texas. I hadn’t brought much with me when I had moved here, only what my car could comfortably hold, but since being at the cabin I had accumulated a lot of things.

  The issue was, he said we would go back for a while but didn’t indicate how long that would be. If we were only staying for a couple of months that was one thing, but if it was six months then that would require a lot more packing.

  I had kept the old boxes from the original move up in the loft so I started dragging them down and making a good guess. I didn’t understand why Cade was necessarily needed but perhaps Logan meant what he said about not lifting anything for the duration of the pregnancy. As if he couldn’t handle it. The man was a rippling mass of muscles now.

  I went through my closet first, picking out things that were sensible. Just because Texas was warmer in the winter didn’t mean that they didn’t get their fair share of cold wind and snow. Parts in the north got a lot of snow each year, where the south got cold and occasional dustings.

  I packed a few sweaters, a decent coat and a lot of essentials. The bathroom proved harder to pack than the bedroom. It was amazing how many things a woman would buy for bathroom needs given the short amount of time that was actually spent there.

  When I felt like I had made a dent in the progress I wandered to the kitchen. I had been packing for nearly two hours.

  I opened the fridge and looked at all the food we had bought earlier. It seemed like a waste since no one would be aro
und to eat it.

  I picked up my phone and texted Logan.

  Kate: What do we do with our food?

  Several minutes passed before I heard my phone chime.

  Logan: We’re bringing ice chests. A few. Anything left over can go to Peg and Sam.

  Kate: Guess I’ll call them.

  Logan: Already done.

  I frowned at the phone. Looks like he had taken care of everything.

  Kate: When will you be back?

  Logan: Already miss me?

  Kate: Not at all.

  Logan: Suuure. We have another thirty minutes or so.

  I felt like my timeline had suddenly gotten very short if I was going to try to pack up my dresser.

  On my way back to the bedroom, I glanced through the window and saw James coming down the long drive in his plow. It wasn’t the biggest machine that I had seen but worked tremendously well on narrow county roads and long driveways like mine.

  The blades settled down as he made a pass in front of the house and the snow was lifted up and away to the other side. He had enough room to make a circle and come back around to do it again.

  I watched him for a while, then turned back to the task at hand.

  When I was halfway done with the dresser I heard a knock at the door. James must have finished up and was just coming by to tell me. Logan certainly wouldn’t knock and there were very few other people that I knew well enough to expect a visit from.

  Walking up to the front door I glanced out the window but didn’t see anyone.

  I frowned. Odd.

  When I swung the door open, I still couldn’t see anyone. The plow James had been using stood idling halfway down the drive. The heat from the exhaust was throwing white plumes of air across the road.

  I couldn’t tell if he was in the vehicle or not but it felt extremely weird that he would knock and then get back in his plow.

  Sam had said he was a little strange. Maybe he had picked up on something I hadn’t. I hated to pre-judge someone though based on someone else’s opinion.

  I took a deep breath and looked over at Bells who was in front of the window. She seemed to be looking toward the plow as well.

  Whatever his reasons for doing it, I didn’t like to be teased in such a way. Setting a firm line now would guarantee a boundary. I grabbed my coat off the hook beside the door and buttoned it up. My boots slid on and I grabbed a cap.