“What?” Rose asked, running over Elliott’s water filtration monologue.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding tragic. “I really enjoyed it.”
“Me, too,” Rose said. In her opinion, there was no such thing as a dessert that was too sweet, and everything there had been akin to a sugar bomb. She had loved it. “Of course, Iris made much better baked goods.” She thought it was a great opportunity to introduce the topic of her sister. “You know who Iris is, right?” she asked Elliott.
“Yes,” he responded.
“She makes amazing food.”
“The problem with businesses around here is that they try to open up and they don’t have any consistent hours. Because one person is always running the place,” Pansy said. Changing the subject back to the bakery, which Rose found annoying because she’d just figured out how to get talking about Iris. “I can’t count on a place that is randomly closed on a Monday or Tuesday, and then a Thursday next week.”
“Well, when it comes to business startups, you really need to be committed to losing money for the first five years. But that was one of the bonuses of becoming an independent contractor for Clearwater.”
And Elliott was off again, talking about water. She understood that water was important. Honestly, one of the more important things in life. Certainly more important than cupcakes. But when it came right down to it, she would rather talk about cupcakes. But Iris... Iris would probably appreciate it. Iris was practical. Elliott was practical.
Boring though it was to listen to him talk about water, she felt bolstered by it. And more and more convinced that she was on the right track when it came to him and her sister.
“Well,” Pansy said, “we have to go. You know, Emmett is at home.”
Emmett was West’s younger brother, and Pansy and West were his guardians. Though, the kid was sixteen, not six. Still, she had a feeling that they were making up excuses so they could leave.
“Okay,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” West asked.
“You know, because we are all meeting here tomorrow,” Rose said, suddenly struck with inspiration.
Pansy cast her some side-eye. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning,” she said.
Logan shifted beside her, and she felt that shift in the air.
He was that kind of guy. Big and solid and exactly the kind of partner that you wanted working out on the ranch. Logan could lift his own weight and then some. And at the same time, he never made her feel like she might not be doing her share just because she was a woman, and smaller than him.
Now, he had other ways of making her feel small and silly. And she had a feeling he was gearing up for one.
She looked over at him. His face was set in stone. And he didn’t look like he was planning to say anything at all. That was almost worse somehow.
“We’re meeting tomorrow,” she said, deciding not to give any space to Logan at all. He could keep his disapproving shifts to himself. “The group of us. You should come,” she said to Elliott. “Give me your phone number, that way I can get in touch if anything changes. But we should all be here around eight.”
“Okay,” he said, looking happy about that.
“Yeah. We’ll all be here. Ryder, his wife, Sammy. Our other sister, Iris. Maybe she can bring some of her baked goods.”
“Great,” he said.
She took her phone out, and he gave her his number, which she programmed into it easily. “Excellent. Well, we better get going. You know. Ranch work. Very early rising.”
“Yeah, me, too,” he said. “Water filtration systems won’t install themselves.”
“No,” Rose said, forcing a smile. “I don’t imagine they will. And my cows won’t... Well, they won’t castrate themselves. Bastards. No thumbs.”
Somehow she could feel a groan come from Logan without him actually making any noises. She didn’t know how he managed that. Total silent disapproval that somehow rumbled within her.
Elliott, for his part, laughed. A little bit too hard, Rose thought.
“See you tomorrow,” she said.
She stood and swept out of the saloon, Logan on her heels.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, once they were headed toward the truck.
“A setup,” she said.
“He thinks you like him.”
The idea was so ridiculous Rose dismissed it immediately.
“He doesn’t,” she said. “I’m too young for him.”
Logan stopped walking. She could feel him staring at the side of her face.
“What?”
“How old do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. Thirty-two?”
Logan huffed. “I’m thirty-three.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Anyway. He’s going to meet Iris. He’s going to love Iris.”
“Do you hate Iris?”
“No,” Rose said emphatically. “I love Iris and I want her to be happy. He’s practical. He owns his own business.”
“I think he’s a subcontractor.”
“He’s still a business owner,” she insisted. “And it’s doing something stable and profitable. It’s exactly the kind of stability that Iris would admire.”
“He talked about water filtration for twenty-five minutes.”
“And we could talk about cows for longer than that.”
“Yeah, but cows are interesting.”
“My point,” she said, “is that we all find different things interesting. It isn’t that he’s uninteresting, it’s just that we are uneducated about the topic.”
“I’m educated now,” he said. “About a thousand times more educated than I ever wanted to be. And I think you’re making a mistake.”
“I’m not. We’re going to go out tomorrow night and Iris is going to meet him, and everything is going to be great.”
“Why do you feel like you need to do this?”
“It’s not that I need to. It’s just that... Think about it, Logan. There’s all these things in the world, all these people. And life is fragile. It’s precious. What if people miss out on their chance to make these connections because they’re busy working? Or just because... Someone needed to intervene.”
“And you think that someone has to be you?”
“If Iris ends up alone it might be because of me,” she said, the words bursting from her before she could stop them. Logan’s blue eyes went far too sharp, and she didn’t
