Marrying the Northbridge Nanny (10 page)

As if Logan sensed the sudden rise of her inhibitions he began to draw their kiss to a close. His tongue did a final pirouette with hers and bid it adieu. After a moment, he returned for another lingering but more chaste kiss. And then he raised his head and merely peered down at her.

“I don’t suppose we want old man Pritick coming out here and catching us like this,” he said.

“I don’t suppose we do,” Meg agreed, sounding reluctantly resigned.

Logan sat up and took her with him. Then he stood and with a hold of both of her hands, he brought her to her bare feet, too.

“It was a good footbath, though,” Meg said.
And an amazing kiss…

“I’m glad,” Logan answered with a lopsided smile.

Back in her car, Logan drove again, Meg slipped her shoes on, and neither of them had much to say in the aftermath of that kiss.

It wasn’t until Logan had walked her to the bottom of the steps to her apartment that he said, “Hadley bought two tickets to the party for the preopening of the bridge tomorrow night.”

The bridge he was referring to was what the town was named after. It was an old covered bridge that had been completely refurbished, and the area around it had been turned into a park. The grand opening picnic was scheduled for Sunday, but there was a private dinner-dance being held there Saturday night.

“Hadley told me tonight that she doesn’t feel well enough to go and said maybe you and I could use the tickets,” Logan added. “What do you say? Can you take another night in heels?”

Now that
would
be a date…

So don’t do it,
Meg told herself.

But that kiss had weakened her will and her resolves.

“I think I can stand heels again by then,” she heard herself say.

His smile this time was pleased. “Great.”

He kissed her once more—a simple good-night kiss with intimacy on its fringes. Then he looked into her
eyes for another moment and she could tell he was tempted not to go.

But he finally sighed, whispered good-night, and left anyway.

And tonight while Meg watched him head for the main house she thought that if the crush his sister had had on his friend was anything like what she was in the grip of when it came to Logan, he might be right to wonder how things would play out when Hadley was in close proximity to his partner.

Because whatever it was that Meg was feeling in response to Logan seemed to have a will of its own. And nothing she did could even slow it down, let alone extinguish it. It was just bigger than all of her efforts.

Big enough to send her up the stairs to her apartment thinking more about what she was going to wear the next night than about the fact that she shouldn’t be going at all.

Especially not after that kiss that still had her imagining plunging naked into a lake with him…

S
tone piers anchored the old north bridge on either side of the river that ran below it. The lower half of the bridge’s sides were solid, the upper half had cross-hatch beams. Both upper and lower had been restored to their original rustic-red color, and they were topped off by a steeply pointed black-shingled roof.

The higher plateau of the river banks had been turned into a park with a manicured lawn dotted with benches and picnic tables. Cobbled stairs allowed easy access to the banks of the river itself where walkways had been added and more benches looked out over the lazy, rambling waterway.

Altogether the old bridge was judged a successful refurbishment and the park a welcome addition to the outskirts of Northbridge. Certainly Meg was impressed
by what had previously been a run-down, dilapidated, rickety old bridge surrounded by an overgrowth of weeds. For the occasion of the prelaunch dinner-dance the entire bridge and everything around it was lit with tiny white lights. Plus, for the party, there were linen-covered, candle-lit dining tables set up from one end of what had formerly been the roadway—and was now another walkway—across the bridge to the other side. There were bistro chairs around the tables, tuxedoed waiters attending to each table, and a dance platform set up on part of the grassy knoll where a string quartet played music.

The kind of music Meg had wished for the night before—slow and lilting.

The kind of music that now had her dancing in Logan’s arms after dinner.

“So you
own
a tuxedo,” Meg said as they swayed under the stars along with a large portion of Northbridge’s natives and newcomers.

The event was formal and luckily Meg had brought something with her that worked for that level of dress-up. In order to be prepared for anything—because she was unsure what kind of celebrations might be held for her sister’s wedding—she’d bought a pair of black silk slacks and a loose-fitting sleeveless black sequined top that had a flowing cowl neckline in front and a much deeper cowl dip in back that left her bare almost to the waist. She’d also brought another pair of high heels—these not quite three inches and much more comfortable than the bridesmaid’s shoes of the previous evening. Plus she’d done her hair in a loose
knot that left a lot of come-hither wisps around her face to make sure she looked fancy enough for a semiformal affair.

But she hadn’t expected to find Logan in a very sophisticated and perfectly tailored tuxedo when he’d come to pick her up. A tuxedo that he’d said was his when she’d marveled at the quality and fit of what she assumed was a rental.

They’d been sidetracked then, though, and this was the first chance Meg had had to ask how it was that he possessed such a formal set of clothes.

“I mean, of course you need a few good suits for the business end of your work—I figured that’s what last night’s suit was,” she continued. “But your own tuxedo?”

“It’s my I-was-a-movie-star tux. Chase has one, too. It came with learning how to dance and our sole stint as movie stars,” he said with a grin.

Since most men she knew were anti-dancing—and even the ones who weren’t, weren’t as good at it as Logan was—she’d wondered where he’d learned and had intended to ask that, too. So he’d merely opened a door she was about to knock on anyway. But the movie-star stuff? That had her curious.

“A tux that came with learning how to dance and a stint as a movie star—that’s a story I think I need to hear.”

The widening of his grin said he was happy to tell it.

“It goes without saying that one of the places Chase and I wanted to check out when we left Northbridge was L.A.—sun, sea, surf, beach bunnies…”

“Uh-huh, it does go without saying that two young guys would want to check all of that out,” Meg agreed.

“Well, we lived in a cheap apartment complex where a lot of wannabe actors and actresses also shared places.”

“Did you and Chase want to act?”

That made him grin again. “No, neither of us had any interest in that—”

“Your interest was just in the girls who wanted to be actresses.”

He merely went on grinning to confirm that. “Anyway,” he continued, “one of those actresses—who was also a dancer and singer and was hot for Chase—got a part in a movie that was hiring a huge number of extras. They needed them for background dancing—”

“You were a chorus boy?” Meg teased.

He smiled but wasn’t ruffled. “They needed extras for scenes where there were couples dancing behind the actors at a party, at a country club, that kind of dancing. The money was better than we were making at the car wash where we were working at the time, so we took Chase’s girlfriend up on her offer to teach us to dance. Then she put in a good word for us with casting. We got hired, and the tuxes were for the country-club scene. And since I had started seeing the wardrobe girl by the time we were finished—and since the tuxes had been altered to fit us—she let us get away with not returning them.”

“So you weren’t movie
stars,
you were movie
extras,
” Meg amended.

“But movie stars sounds so much cooler,” he said, grinning again and obviously not taking himself too seriously.

“What was the movie?” Meg asked.

He told her. “But even we can’t find ourselves in the
crowd when we watch it. If we didn’t get away with the tuxes we wouldn’t have anything to show for it. Except the rent that month.”

“And it didn’t give you the acting bug?”

He laughed. “Nope. We had fun doing the one, but the tuxes were the best part of it and that was enough for both of us.”

“Well, the tux seems to have made an impression on Kate’s and my former babysitter Marcy Carson,” Meg said when she caught the other woman openly staring at Logan as she’d done for most of the evening.

Logan didn’t take his eyes off Meg to look in the other woman’s direction. “Yeah, Marcy Carson…” he said with a sigh. “I’ve been wondering all night if she’s gonna throw a plate at me or jump my bones.”

That made Meg laugh. “Really? I know she’s been more interested in you than in anyone else tonight, but I just thought it was—” because he looked so amazing. She didn’t want to say that, though, so she said, “The tux. Throwing a plate at you or jumping your bones—that sounds like there’s more to tell on that score, too.”

“Marcy is a year older than I am but we were off and on through most of high school.”

“She’s an old
girlfriend…
” Meg said. So that explained some of the other woman’s rapt interest.

“I guess. If off and on counts as that.”

“It doesn’t sound as if it does for you.”

He shrugged the broad shoulder she had her hand on and leaned close enough to whisper in her ear, “Marcy could use some therapy.”

“Sorry, I only work with kids,” Meg joked as if he’d
been trying to enlist her.

She had known Marcy Carson as her babysitter and in that role, Marcy hadn’t seemed any different than any babysitter she’d had as a child. Meg hadn’t kept up with her when Marcy’s babysitting services had no longer been required or since leaving Northbridge.

“I don’t know anything about her,” she said softly, in answer to his whispering to make sure no one overheard them. Plus, after the confidence that had brought his mouth to her ear, he’d left the side of his jaw resting against the side of her head and between the effects of that and the effects of having his hand against her bare back, the soft voice was all she could muster.

“I don’t know anything about her now, either,” Logan admitted quietly as they swayed to the music. “But I know that when we were kids, she went back and forth between…uh, hooking up with me, and throwing eggs at my house and vandalizing my locker and slashing the tires on my car and a lot of other pretty nasty things.”

“Let me see if I have this straight—the
on
part of things was the
hooking up
part—”

“Right.”

“Meaning that you slept with her?”

“Meaning that things would start between us because she’d sort of pursue me—we’d be in the same group at the movies and she’d make sure she sat next to me. Or she’d arrange to be my partner on some school project. Or she’d look for an opening when a bunch of us were out at the lake or at a party or wherever to talk to me and flirt with me, and have her hands all over me, and sort of go to work on me. And before I’d know it, we’d
be seeing a lot of each other,” he said diplomatically, leaving Meg to her own conclusion about whether or not he’d slept with her former babysitter.

“Okay. And then I assume you would break up,” she said to encourage him to go on.

“And then we’d break up because even though things would start out okay and I liked her well enough, the longer it went on, the more jealous and possessive she would get, until I’d start to feel as if she wanted us to be joined at the hip.”

“Which would prompt the off part…?”

“When she’d do those other things.”

“Until you went back with her?” Meg asked in disbelief.

“No, that’s when I’d think she was crazy. Then she’d stop the fatal-attraction stuff after a while, I’d just see her around, we’d say hello, she’d be dating somebody else or I would be and that would be it.”

“Until you hooked up with her again?”

He smiled. “Until I’d kind of forgotten the weirdness and she’d start coming around me again and—”

“Then you’d go back to her?”

“Hey, a teenage boy can forget his own name when a willing girl is…well,
willing.
”

“So tonight it’s hard to say if she’s thinking about throwing a plate at you or jumping your bones,” Meg concluded.

“Either way, though, at this point, it’s getting weird to have her keep looking at us like that, don’t you think?”

Meg glanced in the other woman’s direction from the
corner of her eye before looking back up at Logan. “I think I can take her.”

That made him laugh out loud. “As much as I’d like to see that, how about if we take a walk instead and get out of her sight for a while?”

Meg was enjoying dancing with him, being in his arms. So much that she knew she better end it. She was getting tired of being under the scrutiny of her former babysitter, too, so she agreed.

They had to pass by the buffet table as they left the dance floor and without asking if she’d like a second dessert, he snatched another one of the decadent but tiny cupcakes she’d already had and adored.

Then, with a hand at the small of her back where the fabric of her top muted his touch, he guided her away from the bridge, down the steps to the water’s edge and they headed away from the party.

“How about you?” Logan said as they walked, not mentioning the cupcake. “Is there anybody here who you have a history with?”

“I’m the Reverend’s granddaughter, remember? There was no dating, only hanging out in groups. The first—and only—time I was allowed on a genuine date was for the senior prom and even then it had to be with at least two other couples. And my grandfather was a chaperone at the dance. And I had the earliest curfew—with my grandfather following us home and watching from the curb as my date said good-night.”

“You really were kept under lock and key, weren’t you? Who did the Reverend let you go to the prom with?”

“Rob Keniwicky.”

“Rob Keniwicky…” Logan said, clearly trying to recall who that was.

Meg helped him out. “He was my age so you probably weren’t any more aware of him than you were of me. And Rob was anything but flashy—”

“Are we talking quiet loner or all-out nerd?”

Meg nodded in the direction they’d just come from. “Rob is the guy who thought semiformal was the brown sport coat, tweed pants and white socks.”

Logan laughed again. “No?
That’s
who you went to your senior prom with?”

“When your family makes sure you’re untouchable all the way through school, you don’t have a lot of guys beating down your door to take you to the prom at the end. My choices were Rob—who my grandfather advised after bible study to ask me—or a relative.”

She could see Logan grimace as they walked through the moonlight alongside the quietly babbling brook. “Was
that
the guy who gave you your first kiss?” he asked as if that would be a shame.

“With my grandfather watching from the curb? There wasn’t any kissing. Rob didn’t even try. He just shook my hand and left,” Meg said with a laugh.

“You graduated from high school without having been
kissed?
”

His obvious sympathy made her laugh this time. “I wasn’t under lock and key every minute.”

“So you’d been kissed before the prom?” he asked, sounding relieved for her.

“Twice. But the first time was stolen on a dare in the
school yard when I was thirteen and I barely knew what had hit me.”

“And the second time?”

“Also nothing great—it was a game of Seven Minutes In Heaven at a slumber party where boys sneaked in—which was discovered and so that was the last time I was allowed to even go to girls-only parties.”

“You might as well have grown up in a convent,” he said, back to being astounded and sympathetic. “So before you graduated from
high school
the closest you got to actually being kissed was the Seven Minutes In Heaven thing—who was that with?”

“Wes Riley. Who was more shy than I was and had bad aim—he barely kissed the corner of my mouth.”

“This is just sad,” Logan said as they reached a bench so far from the party that they couldn’t see or hear it any longer.

He motioned for her to sit. “I guess this is consolation,” he added, handing her the mini cupcake as he joined her and stretched an arm along the bench back behind her.

The cupcakes were bite-size brownies filled with raspberry and topped with a swirl of white chocolate mousse. Left to her own devices, Meg could have eaten at least six. But she didn’t want to be rude, so after she’d accepted it, she said, “Want half?”

“No, you can have the whole thing—I
was
kissed before my senior prom,” he said.

Meg wasn’t about to argue and only get half of the cupcake. She did eat it in two bites rather than one, however, so she didn’t make a pig of herself.