“Remember those pressure ones I used to get when we were kids? Like when a storm is coming or something? They feel like those. As though I’ve still got my helmet on when it’s been off for hours.” Cam took a sip of water. “I’m hoping they prescribe the good painkillers and let me get back at it.”
Logan remembered those headaches. He used to get them, especially in the years after their mom died. They’d gone away as he’d got older, and he hadn’t had any since.
“Well let me know what the doc says.” Logan poured them both a tumbler of juice.
“Sure.” Cam smiled at him. “So, are you all ready for tomorrow?”
“As ready as we can be. The decorator arrives early tomorrow to set everything up, and Ryan is already in the kitchen.” He nodded his head toward the heavy metal door. “You’ll also be pleased to hear the booze is here.”
Cam laughed. “I don’t drink. Not during football season. You know this.”
“Yeah, but we can watch Gray and Tanner get drunk. Almost as much fun.” Logan took a sip of his juice. “Even more fun if Maddie and Van start to nag them.”
“Speaking of other halves, I hear Courtney’s coming, too.”
“Yeah she is. Did Grey tell you?”
Cam nodded. “We spoke last night. I’m glad she’s coming. I like her.”
Logan’s gaze met his brother’s. Cam’s approval was important to him. For most of their life, they were the closest people to each other, after all. Logan had told Cam about his plan to leave Boston and head back to Hartson’s Creek to be with Courtney. His stomach had twisted up with guilt at leaving his brother here. But Cam had encouraged him.
“You’re gonna be a dad. Nothing’s more important than that.”
And he was right. Didn’t mean that Logan wasn’t going to miss being in the same city as his brother though.
“Are you bringing someone tomorrow?” Logan asked.
“Probably not.” Cam grinned at him. “I’m not seeing anybody I want my whole family to meet.”
Until a few months ago, Logan had felt the same way. His family and his romantic life were completely separate. Not that he’d had much of a romantic life until Courtney came around. Even so, it took a special kind of woman to cope with meeting all of the Hartsons at once.
“Have you thought about what you’re gonna do back home?” Cam asked him.
“Not yet. I’ll still have a financial interest in the restaurants, but the day-to-day will be done by Paris and the new partner. So there’ll be some work to do from Virginia, but not tons. And my friends, Dan and Ellie who own a restaurant down there have asked for some help with marketing.” He shrugged. None of it sounded particularly exciting. Not compared to opening a glamorous restaurant in the heart of Boston.
“You’ll find something,” Cam said, his voice reassuring. “Though I can imagine it’ll be hard to leave this all behind. It’s been your life for years.”
It had. The restaurant business was who he was. He ate, lived, and breathed it, twenty hours of every day. It was hard to think how he’d deal with all that spare time on his hands.
“Maybe I’ll take up golf,” he said out loud.
Cam laughed. “Yeah, right. You and Dad at the eighteenth hole, the baby in a carrier strapped to your back. I can see it now.”
“Well what are you gonna do when you retire?” Logan asked his brother, turning the tables. “Maybe you can give me some tips.”
“I’m never gonna retire. You’ll have to pull me off the field in a wheelchair.” Cam winked.
It was funny, but not funny all at the same time. Because both of them were defined by what they did. They always had been.
As kids they were the twins. Defined by a pure quirk of nature.
As teenagers they were the star football players in the school, which brought its own pleasures and pressures.
And now, Cam was riding high with the Bobcats, and Logan was the owner of the most successful restaurants in Boston. It was impossible to imagine anything that wouldn’t be a come down.
Logan wasn’t stupid. He knew there would be a hole in his life. But that hole would be filled. By Courtney and the baby, and the future they had together. That was the certainty that kept pulling him through.
Before he’d met Courtney, he’d laughed at the concept of soul mates. Shaken his head at the way his friends fell one by one for the women who’d changed their lives. He hadn’t had space for a relationship like that, even if he’d wanted one.
Yet she’d broken through that shield he’d put over himself. And now he was changing, too.
“We’ll be okay,” Logan told his brother, as he finished his glass of juice. “We’re adaptable. We always have been.”
Cam lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah. And if worst comes to worst we can open a Sports Bar together. You run the place, I’ll hole up in the corner and tell people about my glory days in exchange for pints of beer.”
Logan lifted his empty glass, grinning as his twin clinked his own against it. “It’s a deal.”
“Okay,” Lainey said the following day at the salon. “I’m thinking an up do. We’ll straighten some of the front, then fix the curls at the nape of your neck. Maybe leave some tumbling down. It’ll look perfect with your dress, I promise.” She lifted Courtney’s hair, her brows locking together as she pulled it this way and that.
Courtney grinned at her friend’s reflection in the mirror. “Go for it. I’m in your hands.”
“You have the prettiest hair,” Maddie said from the salon chair next to Courtney’s. Behind her was Nicole, styling her hair into a high top knot that enhanced her high cheekbones and perfectly bow-shaped lips. “Has it always been that curly?”
“Apparently, I had straight blonde hair when I was a baby,” Courtney told her. “But then
