He’d never wondered about his half brothers before that. At least, he hadn’t much let himself. His mother had wanted to keep the more sordid details of her relationship with Hank, and Hank himself, away from Logan. And he’d respected that.
After her death, he felt honor bound to not go make something that she couldn’t make in life.
No. He had never wanted to go fling himself at Hank Dalton’s mercy. Tell him that his mother was dead and he didn’t have anybody.
He couldn’t think of anything more pathetic.
That was why he had forgotten.
West made it harder to forget.
He was used to ignoring Gabe, Jacob and Caleb Dalton. They’d grown up in the same town, gone to the same schools some years. He’d known. He suspected they didn’t. And if he had sometimes wanted them to know, had sometimes felt the mean and awful urge to tell them so that their happy family could be shattered—especially after his mother’s death—he’d ignored it.
And if he’d felt something like grief when Caleb and Jacob’s best friend had been killed fighting fires alongside his half brothers, he’d pushed it down. If he had felt something like regret when he’d heard through the rumor mill that his half sister had come to town and found a place in the family, he ignored that.
If he felt any kind of mystification over West showing up in Gold Valley and being welcomed by the Daltons in just the way McKenna had been, he just pushed it away.
He’d made his decision years ago.
Fact of the matter was, that bastard children were being accepted into the family left and right... Yeah, it made him question why when his mother had died Hank hadn’t come for him.
He hadn’t appreciated Rose asking that question because it stabbed at a wound he didn’t like to acknowledge existed.
Rose had brought out a whole lot of things he liked to pretend didn’t exist.
And there she was, working and sweating, stripped down to a tank top, even out in the cold because the fire they had going from the forge was blazing hot. And he admired her strength. Her body. Lean muscle that was packed into every part of her frame. She was solid in places, soft in others. The epitome of feminine strength.
And he found her sexy as hell.
He couldn’t deny that. No matter how much he might want to. And he really, really wanted to deny it.
It was impossible.
Even after she had uncovered a secret he pretended he didn’t even have.
Not even Sammy knew.
And she was the one person he had come closest to confiding anything in over the years.
Because she was someone who knew a piece of that pain.
Still, they didn’t speak.
Instead, they pounded iron, huffed around each other, and maneuvered past each other’s bodies like they might get a worse burn by touching each other than they would coming into contact with some of the molten metal they had around the booth.
He had a feeling that was true enough. It was a hell of a thing.
The parade ended, and people began filtering over to the booth. Somehow, he and Rose managed to talk about how a forge works, and a bit about how to fashion horseshoes. They managed to play off each other. Managed to somehow seem like they weren’t in a state of being appalled with one another. Difficult as that was to believe.
It was when West and Pansy came over to the booth that things got hard. Because Rose all but arched her back like a pissed-off cat, and Pansy was still looking at him like he might debauch Rose over an anvil at any moment with the whole town acting as an audience.
He had to admit that was a damn sight more appealing than he wished it were.
But he was a sick bastard. He admitted it. There was nothing to do but admit it.
It was a bit much to deal with his half brother, the sister of the woman he wanted, and the woman he both wanted to kiss and throttle all at once, with an audience present, however.
“How’s it going?” West asked, his arm wrapped tightly around Pansy’s waist.
“Good,” Rose said, not looking at him. Not even a little.
“A little warm back there?” Pansy asked, referencing Rose’s tank top.
It was then Logan realized he was still in a coat. Possibly because he wasn’t in a space where he wanted to strip off any layer of clothing in tight quarters with Rose.
He’d tried. He’d damn well tried.
To keep away from the Daltons. To honor his mother’s memory.
He’d tried to keep away from Rose.
He was failing at both and he didn’t know if he had the strength to keep on with the trying in full view of the fact that there was almost no use.
Maybe Rose was right.
Maybe there was no going back.
Because if there were, then he never would have kissed her in the first place.
Because if he really had the self-control he’d need to never touch her again it would have had to be strong enough to keep him from kissing her at all.
“Just a bit,” Rose said, wiping the back of her hand over her forehead and leaving a trail of soot and ash behind.
He felt the impact of that in his gut. Down lower.
What was it about her? Wearing dirt, wearing ash, wiping her damned nose, that appealed to him? It was a question he hadn’t much asked himself because he’d been so busy trying to pretend that none of it was happening.
That if he ignored it, it might go away.
And all the while, all these last months he’d given Ryder advice on how to deal with Sammy. Had walked around like he had some kind of expertise on the subject of feelings. And how wanting the wrong woman could be just fine.
When he didn’t think that was true for himself, and he didn’t see how he ever could.
“You?” Pansy asked, the question pointed right between his eyes.
“Oh, I’m fine,” he said, gritting his
