“No,” she said. “We’re going to be doing a pretty basic blacksmithing demonstration, and that will just be after the parade. So, I won’t be busy the whole time.”
“I was wondering if you wanted to go with me.”
The air pressed itself out of her lungs. She didn’t even know what to say to that. Her mind was like a shiny blank slate, and she had no idea how to respond.
“To go with you,” she repeated.
She could feel Logan respond to that. She didn’t even have to look at him to know that he had tensed up. It was the way that he was. The way that he radiated that sort of thing. She did look over then, and saw that he was doing exactly what she had thought he might be.
Did other people know when he reacted to things like that? Or was it only her?
It couldn’t be.
It had to be something anyone could see. It didn’t make any sense otherwise.
She blinked, totally derailed.
“Yes. As my date.”
Her stomach sank, and suddenly she didn’t want to eat. She didn’t want stew or anything else. This was the first time she’d ever been asked on a date in her life. Coming from a man she’d been pushing toward her sister, a man she’d made her sister...like and be excited about. While she was being stared at by the man who’d told her so. The man who had taken her expectations of the world and herself and everything and turned them upside down.
It was horrible. Utterly, uniquely, horrible.
“Your date. I... Elliott, I thought you liked Iris?”
“What? Iris?” He sounded so incredulous. So incredulous that it made her want to eat the stew so she could throw it up.
“Yes, Iris. I introduced you to her. I thought that you would like her.”
“You introduced me to your friend Logan too, but I didn’t think you wanted me to go on a date with him.”
“I...” She had. She had absolutely introduced him to Logan. But she had thought that it was obvious. And she had been so sure that he was interested in Iris. “You texted her to get her sourdough recipe,” she said, as if that invalidated everything else he had said.
“Because you thought that I should have it. It was because of you.”
“I... I am so sorry if I did anything to make you think that I was interested in you like that. I’m just not.”
The silence coming from across the kitchen was as deafening as if Logan had dropped and shattered a bowl.
“You asked me to meet you at the bar,” he said. “I thought you were asking me out.”
She wanted to stamp and protest and say that it wasn’t a very fair assumption since it was Iris he had been in contact with ever since.
“You called Iris,” she said, and it sounded so very lame.
“To talk about you.”
But there was no use arguing. He was saying that he liked her. And what was she supposed to do with that? How was she supposed to argue?
She wanted to argue, she just didn’t know if there was any way to... Any way to do it. Because it wasn’t like she could tell him that he was wrong about how he was feeling. She wanted to, but even she had to acknowledge that was a little bit ridiculous.
“I wasn’t,” she said. “I only ever wanted to... I just thought you would be good with my sister. That’s all.”
“I see,” he said. “Well, I would be lying if I said that wasn’t disappointing. Now that you know, though...”
“No,” she said, horror twisting her stomach.
What was she going to tell Iris? All right, she had never got the feeling that Iris was head over heels for him, but this was... It was horrible. She’d been trying to do a nice thing, and she had failed so profoundly she couldn’t even...
“No,” she said again. “I... This isn’t going to work. It can’t.”
“All right,” he said, painfully decent until the end. “If that’s how you feel.”
“It is.”
She hung up then, and she didn’t want to look at Logan. She did not want to. Because this was more than just losing a bet. More than being upset because she had been wrong about something. She had very possibly caused harm to the one person she wanted to do something nice for. To say nothing of the fact that she had caused Elliott discomfort.
That paled in comparison to the potential hurt she might have caused Iris, though. She was trying to make herself care about Elliott because it seemed like the right thing to do. But mostly, completely, her worry was for Iris. And then, if she were honest, secondarily for herself because Logan was standing right there and he had borne witness to this whole thing. And he had told her.
He had told her a lot of things lately. And every single one of them burned.
“I take it that didn’t go how you wanted.”
“Please don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.”
Something in the air changed between them, and she looked up at him. It was just like last night, except there was no anger. But that same electrical current was there. That same shift in her soul.
She didn’t know what the hell he was doing to her. And she was still too afraid to ask. Then, he took a step closer to her, and very suddenly she felt certain she knew what was going to happen next.
Like a key had slid into a locked door and turned it easily, opening it.
“You lost the bet.”
She understood.
She understood, and she didn’t move away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THERE HAD BEEN a moment where he could’ve still turned back. But with one step toward her instead of away, he passed that moment by.
If he were honest with himself, he had passed that moment by back in the barn when he had backed her against the wall.
Maybe he had passed that moment by in the Gold Valley Saloon when they had gone up to the bar together to get
