It made him think of his mom’s cookies. That conversation he’d had with Rose. He pushed it to the side.
He couldn’t tell for sure if this was Iris’s attempt to bury the Elliott hatchet. Which, in Logan’s opinion, wasn’t even worth being a thing. That guy wasn’t anything to get worked up about.
And it turned out that Logan did in fact have a position to criticize him from. He’d been sloppy, and he’d been lazy. He’d settled in the middle, had taken the non-committal route. And then Logan had taken the object of his desire’s virginity. That was what happened when you messed around.
He cleared his throat and moved past both women into the kitchen. He ignored the faint scent of Rose that followed after him. Not the flower. She didn’t smell like a flower. She smelled like woman. Skin. Dust, hay, horse. Ranching was his passion, the land was in his blood. And Rose carried the scent of both on a body that was enough to drive him to sin.
Had, in fact.
Yeah, not responding to that scent, particularly now that he was even more in tune with the bit that was just her, was a damn miracle.
But maybe this was his one Christmas miracle. Maybe God was granting him the strength to get through this dinner without losing vital body parts. Anything could happen, he supposed.
Sammy was already sitting at a set table, the matching plates, which he still wasn’t used to, in place, along with serving bowls filled to the hilt with food.
It was impossible for him to list all the ways this family had taken care of him. But food, home-cooked meals in the midst of tragedy, had been one of them, and it had been vital.
A great time to think about everything they all meant to him. When he was in the middle of a very unrepentant fall from grace. Yeah, there was no part of him that was repentant. Not now. He had half a mind to turn Rose over his knee and spank her for being a little brat and pretending nothing had passed between them, that was for sure.
And that idea sounded a hell of a lot more appealing than he had expected it to. But then, getting his hands on her in any way sounded appealing. One sex session had hardly dealt with five years’ worth of fantasies.
No. Far from it. If anything, it had just whipped up more. A hell of a lot more.
The coward sat at the far end of the table, keeping her distance from him. He hadn’t taken his seat yet, but when Ryder entered the room, he decided not to push it. Not just yet.
Trust Sammy to go ahead and fill any silence, and she did, which Logan appreciated, since he and Rose clearly weren’t in talking moods. And if Sammy took a breath, the rest of them were bound to notice about Rose. Rose was typically pretty chatty. An understatement, really.
Rose was the one who liked to interject a harebrained scheme or an innuendo. The idea of turning the tables on her and throwing an innuendo out there now that she might actually understand what one of them meant, really and truly, amused him. But then, it was Rose. And there was a very real danger she would get frustrated and announce to Ryder that Logan had despoiled her, which might end in his inglorious death by drowning in a bowl of gravy, right next to Iris’s famous mashed potatoes.
He didn’t particularly want that for himself. Mostly because he wanted a chance to get another taste of Rose.
He was less interested in the gravy.
“Did you have a good night last night?” Sammy asked.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he looked at her, realizing she was directing the question to Rose.
Rose fidgeted. “Yeah,” she said.
“I didn’t see you come home.”
“I told you I might crash with Lacey,” Rose said, which he noticed was not an affirmative statement that she had crashed with Lacey.
It was, though, the story that she had said she was going to give, the one she’d said she’d given Sammy on her way out.
He could only give thanks that Pansy and West hadn’t come to dinner tonight. Because Pansy would have smelled the bullshit in this story. Sammy might, but Sammy didn’t know about the kiss. Of course, Sammy knew about his feelings. But Sammy would have confidence in his self-control where Rose was concerned.
Sammy believed in the good in people. Lucky for him.
“The cousins will be here in a couple of days,” Ryder commented. “Colt and Jake are going to sleep in the bunkhouse.”
“Like old times,” Logan said.
“Unless you want to put one of them up in your cabin,” Ryder said.
Logan snorted. Okay, under normal circumstances, he would. Should. But he didn’t particularly want anybody staying in his cabin right now. Because he wanted the luxury of having Rose in his cabin when he felt like it. And having Colt or Jake adjacent was not going to work.
“Yeah, I’ll pass,” Logan said. “Anyway, they’re only going to spend the night here half the time.”
Classic. Turning it around on someone else. A go-to asshole move. Making it about the fact that they probably wanted to go out and get laid, not about the fact that he wanted to stay here and do it.
“True enough,” Ryder said. “And I imagine you don’t want to share your sole bathroom.”
Right. That would have been maybe the better excuse. That the cabin only had one bathroom, and wasn’t really suited to sharing with anyone that you weren’t pretty intimate with.
The thought of intimacy brought him back to Rose, and he looked down at her end of the table.
She was looking at him. But the minute that his eyes connected with hers, she looked away, studying her fried chicken with deep interest. Her cheeks turned pink.
She was
