“Yeah,” Iris agreed.
“Do you think...do you think if you hadn’t had to take care of me your life would be different?” Rose asked, the question sticking in her throat.
“Our lives would have been different if that plane hadn’t crashed,” Iris said. “Us being there for each other wasn’t the bad part. I was fourteen, and it felt like everything good in the whole world was gone when we lost Mom and Dad. But there was you, Rose. You were good. Don’t feel bad about me taking care of you. I don’t.”
Rose blinked back tears. She swallowed hard, but her throat felt tight, and she couldn’t maneuver around the lump that had settled there.
“Just trust me,” Rose said. “I’m fine.”
“The problem, Rose,” Iris said, “is that I’m not totally sure you would know if you weren’t.”
That dug underneath Rose’s skin. And she decided to go ahead and be done with the conversation because there was really nowhere else for it to go.
When she tumbled out of the car, Iris started walking toward the house, but Rose didn’t want to. She was too keyed up, and she needed to do something to clear her head.
“I’m going to the barn,” she said.
Maybe she would go for a ride. Or maybe she would...clean a stall. Hope that it was a little bit dirty so that she had something to do.
She was not looking for Logan. She wanted to avoid Logan. He was actively being a jerk to her, and there was no reason for her to talk to him.
What her sister had said about how he was the person she talked to stuck in her craw, especially now.
ROSE GROWLED AROUND the barn for a while, raking dirt that didn’t need to be raked and digging through shavings that were just fine.
She tried not to think of Logan.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, leaning against the shovel she was holding. The way he had looked at her. Those electric blue eyes.
Badly done.
She couldn’t remember ever being scolded like that in her life.
She was twenty-three years old, and he was scolding her like she was a child. It was what he always did. In fact, it was what he had been doing for weeks now. Questioning everything she said, everything she did. Where did he get off?
Where did he get off being right?
The way he’d been lately...he’d been filled with lectures. And he had danced with her.
And he had disapproved of her in such a deep and horrible way tonight. Like he was above reproach. Like he was some beacon of kindness and goodness to the people of the community.
Not that he was a bad guy. He wasn’t. He was nice, and he had always been nice to work with and be around. Until recently. It was hard now, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t know why lately talking to him was like walking through the woods, trying to work her way through a thicket full of thorns.
That brought her right back.
To sitting with him and eating sandwiches. To those eyes clashing with hers as he said it.
You’re talking about someone being inside you, Rose.
Skin to skin.
The memory made her throat dry and her already pounding heart throb and she pushed all that toward anger.
He’d made everything strange and difficult. It was his fault. All of this was.
She prowled to the machine shed, and then started making her way down the line of outbuildings.
It wasn’t that she was looking for him.
She was looking for something to do.
And Iris’s suggestion kept on ringing in her ears.
That Rose talk to Logan. So she should talk to him about this, too.
“I don’t need to. I don’t need to. His opinion has been nothing but annoying. Nothing.”
She saw his eyes again, not as they were when he was her friend, or even that moment when he’d come into the house the other night and everything had felt sideways.
But the way he’d looked at her today.
It had been different and she didn’t know how or why, but it had been.
Some part of her needed to see him again.
To know.
She found herself pushing the door open to one of the barns they didn’t commonly use, the barn that housed the blacksmithing supplies. Somehow, she had a feeling he would be there. Maybe related to the reason they had gone to the meeting in the first place.
It was hot in there, of course it was, because he had the forge fired up. The contrast between the air inside and outside was enough to take her breath away. At least, that’s what she told herself it was.
Because there he was, standing at the anvil, hammering. And he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Of course not. Because it was hot.
It was hot.
That kept playing in her head, over and over again.
So very hot.
He lifted his arm, and every muscle in his torso flexed and stretched before he brought the hammer down on the blazing metal that rested on the anvil. Sparks flew, a few of them hitting him right in his broad chest. But he didn’t flinch.
His jaw was clenched, his expression intense.
He lifted the hammer again, and this time her eye was drawn to his biceps, his powerful shoulders. The way every part of his body seemed to move in service to this powerful explosion of strength.
They couldn’t do a blacksmith demonstration at a Christmas parade. It was a family event. There would be children.
This was not appropriate.
It was...
Logan.
Her chest felt tight, her breath freezing. It hurt. It physically hurt. Her body, her lungs. Something about the way she had solidified there in her place, unable to move. Unable to breathe.
“I have a bone to pick with you,” she said, the words rushing out of numb lips. She had no idea how she managed to say them. Especially because she had no breath.
“I’m sorry, what?” He turned, giving her a full, broad view of his chest. Smudged with soot
