Kathleen O'Brien - Texas Trouble

TexasTroubleHe watched her approach
Nora was too far away for Logan to see details, but his mind could conjure every
inch. The silly auburn curls that frothed around her shoulders. The round eyes,
too big for her face, forest-colored, mostly brown with shards of green and
bronze. Little-girl pink cheeks, freckles and an upturned, cheerleader’s nose.
But a dangerous woman’s mouth, wide and soft and tempting.
Today, her head was bowed as she moved toward them, her pale face somber. She
might have the coloring of a roseate spoonbill, but she had the soft melancholy
of the mourning dove. The widow Archer. He squeezed the handle of the hammer he
was holding. She was as beautiful—and as off-limits—as ever.



Dear Reader,
Many years ago, on a wintery Florida afternoon, my mother, my little girl and I
spent a couple of hours at the nearby Audubon Center for Birds of Prey. It was
an idle choice, mostly an excuse to get outdoors.
But as we walked under the spreading oaks, we were caught by the magic of the
place. The long-taloned, steady-eyed raptors. The impossibly tiny owls, who
peeked out of their houses, mere cottonballs with button eyes. The dignified
barn owl turning his head solemnly from side to side while we watched. We
laughed at his hauteur, but we were secretly honored that he had deigned to
notice us.
My mother has been gone a long time now, and my “little girl” is a beautiful,
independent woman. But that day lives on. That afternoon when we shared a
mystical bond with nature, feeling completely at peace, one with the birds…and
each other.
When I came to write Nora Archer’s story, I knew she needed a special kind of
healing. Nora and her fatherless sons have been through so much. She needed a
man, and a place, that could bring her that kind of peace. And so…I remembered
the birds.
I hope you enjoy Nora and Logan’s story. If you have a wildlife sanctuary near
you, please visit and support them. Then drop by www.KOBrienOnline.com and tell
me all about it!
Warmly,
Kathleen O’Brien
Texas Trouble
Kathleen O’Brien

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathleen O’Brien was a feature writer and TV critic before marrying a fellow
journalist. Motherhood, which followed soon after, was so marvelous she turned
to writing novels, which could be done at home. She works hard to pack her
backyard with birds, butterflies and squirrels. Indoors, her two cockatiels,
Honey and Lizzie, announce repeatedly, if not humbly, that they are “pretty
birds.” Her colorful Gouldian finch, who lives in her office, fills every day
with music.
Books by Kathleen O’Brien
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1015—WINTER BABY*
1047—BABES IN ARMS*
1086—THE REDEMPTION OF MATTHEW QUINN*
1146—THE ONE SAFE PLACE*
1176—THE HOMECOMING BABY
1231—THE SAINT†
1249—THE SINNER†
1266—THE STRANGER†
1382—CHRISTMAS IN HAWTHORN BAY
1411—EVERYTHING BUT THE BABY
1441—TEXAS BABY
1572—TEXAS WEDDING
1590—FOR THE LOVE OF FAMILY
HARLEQUIN SINGLE TITLE
MYSTERIES OF LOST ANGEL INN
“The Edge of Memory”
To my much-loved mother and daughter, who shared that extraordinary day with me.
I wish we could do it again.
And to the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, for working magic year after year.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
A DRAGONFLY HOVERED INCHES from Nora Archer’s shoulder, its wings hypnotically
beating the warm air of the hacienda courtyard. She ought to get up, get going,
get Sean ready for Little League, but peaceful moments were too rare these days.
She used to love sitting out here in the late afternoon, when the Bull’s Eye
Ranch was quiet, the shadows stretched across the bricks, and the breeze was
full of honeysuckle and wind chimes.
Milly, the housekeeper, was vacuuming on the second floor, a way of keeping an
eye on Sean without making him feel like a prisoner. So, temporarily off duty,
Nora lay on the lounger, prepared to steal a few more minutes.
A battle was coming with Sean, and she wasn’t eager to engage. They’d quarreled
as soon as he got home from school, about whether his homework could wait until
after the game. She hadn’t budged, though as always she’d needed to steel
herself against the pain behind his angry hazel eyes. He was only nine… He’d
been through so much….
But dealing with Sean called for discipline and routine, not sloppy emotion and
inconsistency. So she’d held firm. As usual, he’d stomped upstairs in a fury and
slammed his door.
Most days, after a scene like that, she would send Harry up to remind Sean it
was time to shower and put on his uniform. No matter how prickly Sean was with
his mother, no matter how sour he’d grown about his former love, baseball, he
never took it out on Harry.
The hero-worship of a little brother had once been the bane of Sean’s existence,
but not anymore. These days, Harry was the only one Sean seemed to trust.
Unfortunately, Harry was playing at a friend’s house.
So for just a few minutes more, she wanted to watch the dragonfly, bask in the
spring sunshine, and pretend everything was normal. She wanted to pretend that
her boys had a father, who at any moment might come whistling around the corner,
shouldering a trio of fishing poles. She wanted to pretend that Sean hadn’t
grown surly and difficult, that he hadn’t begun to hate everything he used to
love, and that his nights were peaceful under acres of starry Archer sky, not
haunted by nightmares of madmen, guns and fear.
A lovely fantasy, but it couldn’t last. Too soon the quiet hour was gone. She
opened her eyes and saw that the sunlight had abandoned the last inch of
courtyard, the shadow of the tiled roofline on the west touching the shadow of
the tupelo on the east.
She sat up. Had she just heard a sound…maybe a car coming through the iron gates
at the front of the hacienda?
Evelyn, already? Could it really be almost five?
Nora’s sister-in-law had agreed to picked up Harry and meet them here so that
they could ride to the game together. Darn. Nora had hoped to get the war with
Sean over and won before Evelyn showed up to witness it.
Evelyn always meant well, but the older woman always preferred sandpaper to
honey, so she and Nora rarely agreed about how to handle even the smallest
parenting issues.
Nora was tugging on her sneakers when, suddenly, the air seemed to burst into
chaotic sound.
First, the shrill ringing of the telephone. She felt around under the lounger
for the cordless handset. Just as her fingers closed around it, a whoosh of air
swept through the courtyard, followed by the bang of the massive wood-and-iron
front door.
Then voices. Her sister-in-law’s agitated alto. “Sean Archer! I told you I want
an answer! What have you been doing?”
“Sean!” The short, high-pitched squeal of the housekeeper, Milly. “How did you
get out? What happened to you?”
And, finally, the tearful defiance of her older son. “I didn’t do it. I don’t
care what they say. I didn’t do it.”
Nora flew into the great room, the telephone still ringing in her hand. She
determined first that Sean was all in one piece—and so was Harry, who stood
holding Evelyn’s hand, eyes wide. Clearly upset, all of them, but no one
seriously hurt.
Then she noticed that Sean was covered in dirt, and his left cheek was bleeding.
“I found him trying to sneak in through the side loggia. Look at him! God only
knows what he’s been up to.” Evelyn tried to grab Sean’s shirt, but he ducked
away. “Explain yourself, Sean!”
Nora winced at the tone, which was guaranteed to make Sean—or anyone—mulish.
“Honey,” she said more gently. “What happened?”
He took one step toward his mother, as though his instinct was to run to her
arms. But then he checked himself. His eyebrows drew together, and his jaw
jutted out. “I didn’t do it. That guy is a liar.”
Harry had no scruples about racing over and burrowing his face into his mother’s
stomach. “Sean’s bleeding, Mom. His face is bleeding.”
“I see that. But it doesn’t look too bad, really.” Nora kept her hand on Harry’s
carroty curls, but she focused her gaze on her older son. She fought to keep her
voice calm. “What guy, Sean?”
“Over at Two Wings. That son of a—”
Evelyn, whose weather-beaten face was every bit as grim as her nephew’s, raised
her palm. “Sean Archer. We don’t use words like that.”
Nora felt a twinge of frustration. Bad language obviously wasn’t the real
problem here. Two Wings, a newly constructed private bird sanctuary, was the
property next door to Bull’s Eye Ranch. But in Texas terms, next door meant
maybe a mile away. Could Sean possibly have been at Two Wings while she thought
he was safely pouting in his room?
Without meeting Evelyn’s reproachful eyes, she bent down and spoke steadily to
her son. “What guy at Two Wings? Do you mean Mr. Cathcart?”
“No.” He wiped at his cheek, his fist coming away streaked with dark red mud.
Nora saw gratefully that the skin beneath was no longer bleeding—a fairly
superficial scrape. “I mean Mr. Cathcart’s manager. He’s probably the one who
was calling just now.”
Nora glanced down at the phone in her hand. It had given up its demands and gone
silent, cycling over to voice mail.
Sean sniffed. “He thinks I killed a bird. But I didn’t.”
“Killed?” Evelyn’s voice roared. “For God’s sake, Sean, what did you—”
“I told you I didn’t,” Sean began hotly.
“Evelyn, please—”
“Mom,” Harry broke in, his voice rising as he absorbed the agitation around him.
“Mom, is Sean okay? Does he have to go to the hospital?” The little boy’s voice
trembled, and his arms tightened around her waist. “We don’t like the hospital.”
Her heart squeezed hard at the childish understatement, and all the pain that
lay behind it. Little boys shouldn’t have the kinds of memories her sons had.
They should barely know what hospitals were for.
“Of course not,” she said with authority. “It’s just a tiny scrape.”
Harry lifted his face, brightening, but Sean’s expression grew darker. His hazel
eyes flashed, and his red eyebrows dug down toward the bridge of his nose. “I
still want to go to the game.”
“You must be joking,” Evelyn snapped. “Do you think this kind of behavior will
be rewarded by—”
“It’s not a reward!” Sean interrupted his aunt without thinking, but Nora
cringed inside, well aware that the older woman had already been offended, and
would now be doubly so. Every social faux pas the boys committed was proof, in
Evelyn’s eyes, that Nora hadn’t taught them manners…or respect for their aunt.
“I hate baseball.” Sean turned to Nora. “But you said it was a commitment,
remember? You said when people made commitments they had to follow through,
and—”
“This is different.”
Nora knew what she’d said, but she also knew the rules about being consistent
with your parenting message. Whoever invented those rules must never have been a
parent.
“We need to get that cheek looked at. And then you’ve got a lot of explaining to
do. Most importantly, if you’ve been in some kind of trouble over at Two Wings,
we need to talk to Mr. Cathcart.”
“We certainly do,” Evelyn agreed.
“No!” Sean wheeled on her, his hands fisted. “Not you! Why would you go?”
Oh, God, could this get any worse? Nora tossed her sister-in-law a smile, asking
her to understand that Sean was afraid, and undoubtedly ashamed. He loved his
aunt. He probably just didn’t want any extra witnesses to his disgrace.
But Evelyn didn’t understand. Nora could see by the narrowing of her eyes. She
looked as if she’d been struck. Evelyn Archer Gellner was a tough Texas widow,
pure steel from the inside out. But the boys, her only blood relations left in
this world, were her Achilles’ heel. They could break her heart by simply
twitching away from her kiss.
If only she could lose some of that barking bossiness, perhaps they could enjoy
her more. But right now Evelyn’s wounded pride was not the focus.
“I want you to go upstairs with Milly,” Nora said quietly. “I want you to wash
up and change into clean clothes. I’m going to call Mr. Cathcart.”
“He’s going to be mad. Because his manager is a liar, and—”
“Sean. Enough.”
Sean recognized his mother’s tone, and he took in a huge breath, preparing to
throw a fit. But Milly, who had worked at the ranch since Nora’s late husband
had been a little boy—and, thus, for the duration of their marriage—recognized
the tone, too. This discussion was over. She swooped in and took Sean by the arm
before he could get out the first furious syllable.
“Come on,” Milly said. Sean balked, digging in his heels, but Milly, who could
see three hundred from her spot on the scales, just grinned. “You don’t want me
to have to sling you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, now, do you? With
your little brother looking on?”
At that threat, Harry mustered the courage to leave his spot in Nora’s embrace.
He walked over to his big brother and took his hand.
“I know you didn’t kill anything, Sean,” he said. “Really. And Mom knows, too.”
Born to be a peacemaker, Nora thought with a rush of tenderness. And thank God
they had one in the family these days. Evelyn looked like a thundercloud, and
Sean’s scowl was almost as fierce.
But then Sean glanced toward Nora, and for a minute she thought she saw
something else hiding behind the hostility. Something like…hope.
Hope that she believed in him.
In spite of the other sins, the tempers, the sneaking out, the running away and
whatever had caused all that mud and blood, he wanted her to trust that he
hadn’t done anything as terrible as destroy a living creature.
“Harry’s right,” she said, praying it was true. “I know you didn’t kill
anything.” She ignored the intake of breath from Evelyn, who clearly thought she
was, once again, being too soft.
Refusing to meet her sister-in-law’s outraged gaze, Nora watched as Milly and
the boys climbed the winding staircase, Sean dragging his dirty hand along the
iron railing. When they rounded the first curve, she called up the voice mail.
“Nora,” an elegant baritone said smoothly, “this is Logan Cathcart. My manager
just said your son was at the sanctuary. He was— He’d been—” A short silence.
“It’s nothing serious, but…I think we should talk.”
She shook her head, frustrated, and clicked the button. “He didn’t leave any
details,” she said, for Evelyn’s benefit.
She began scrolling through the handset’s electronic address book. “I’d better
call him and see what really happened. His message said it wasn’t serious, but
of course he might be trying not to upset me. He’s a very nice man, actually.”
She had just found the Two Wings’s main number when she sensed Evelyn’s gaze
boring into the top of her head. She glanced up. Her sister-in-law’s expression
was even more unpleasant than Nora had imagined. It tried unsuccessfully to
disguise her real anger as amusement.
“I know you want to come with us, Evvie,” Nora said, trying to smile. “But I
honestly think we’d do better alone. Sean’s pride is one of his problems, and if
you see him—”
“Oh, I know you would rather go alone. That doesn’t surprise me. I was just
surprised that… You have his number on speed dial?”
“What?” Nora looked at the handset, confused. “Whose?”
“His.” Evelyn jerked her head toward the phone, as if there were someone in it.
“Logan Cathcart’s.”
Nora’s hands stilled on the keypad. She was so shocked, she couldn’t think of a
single response. Evelyn’s face…her tone…
What could she possibly be hinting at?
But then Nora realized her silence sounded guilty. It even felt guilty, which
was ridiculous. She had nothing to be guilty about. She hadn’t spoken to Logan
Cathcart, except to say hello if they passed in town, since Harrison’s funeral
six months ago.
She’d hardly exchanged ten words with him even then. Or for several months
before Harrison’s death, for that matter. Occasionally, in the middle of the
night, Nora might wrestle with a guilty conscience about the handsome New
Englander who had shocked Texas society by turning good cattle acres into a bird
sanctuary, but Evelyn couldn’t possibly know that.
Could she?
“Of course I have the Two Wings’s number programmed. Why wouldn’t I? They’re our
closest neighbors.”
Evelyn’s smile was cold. “And he is, as you say, such a very nice man. The kind
of man you’d like to see…alone.”
Nora set down the phone carefully on the end table beside Harrison’s favorite
leather couch. She faced Evelyn squarely, and waited for her to explain.
Clearly in no hurry to do so, Evelyn stared back, folding her arms neatly in
front of her chest. Though she was almost sixty now, her skin leathered by years
of too much sun, she was still a handsome woman. She wore her salt-and-pepper
hair cut short and straight around her ears, accenting her black, bright eyes.
Her body had been kept young by constant motion.
If she’d ever given a human being the same warmth she bestowed on her Jack
Russell terriers, she might have been quite beautiful. In the ten years Nora had
known her, though, she hadn’t seen that happen.
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply, Evelyn.”
“Of course you are.”
Nora hesitated, feeling as if she’d been caught on a dangerous square of an
invisible chessboard. She knew that Evelyn didn’t like her. For so many
reasons—many of them completely justified.
From the outset, Evelyn had been suspicious of a young nobody’s motives in
marrying a very rich man twice her age. When it was clear she couldn’t prevent
the marriage, Evelyn had tried to train Nora to deserve the name Archer, but in
spite of her best efforts Nora’s social skills were slack, her ranching
inferior.
She didn’t keep the correct distance with the servants, she couldn’t manage the
appropriate intimacy with the horses and she never made friends easily with
Harrison’s business pals.
And, of course, there was the matter of Bull’s Eye, the ten-thousand-acre horse
and cattle ranch that had been the Archer home for generations.
Harrison had left Bull’s Eye to Nora, who didn’t appreciate it, involve herself
in it or deserve it. Evelyn had been seething about it ever since the will was
read.
Over the six months since Harrison’s death, the relationship had gone from
marginal to messy. Somehow, they’d found a sliver of common ground in their
mutual love for Sean and Harry, and Nora had tried to build on that.
Obviously it wasn’t working today.
“Isn’t that right, Nora?” Evelyn’s piercing gaze hadn’t flickered once. “You’re
secretly glad to have an excuse to call Mr. Cathcart, aren’t you?”
Nora took a breath and squared her shoulders. “Evelyn, please. I don’t need
anything else to worry about right now. If you have something to say, say it.”
“I did. I said that you have an interest in Logan Cathcart. And I’ll say more.
I’ll say that you’ve been interested in him since long before your husband
died.”
“That’s ridiculous. Where on earth did you get such an absurd idea?”
“From my brother.”
Nora felt her head recoil slightly, as if she’d been slapped. “That can’t be
true,” she said. “Harrison would never have said…”
But she couldn’t finish the sentence. Harrison could have said exactly that. He
had said it once, to Nora.
Evelyn saw Nora’s dismay, and she blinked slowly, a movement that was pained and
triumphant at the same time.
“Yes, that’s right. He told me. He was my brother, and he confided in me. Did
you think he wouldn’t? Did you think he’d suffer in silence?”
Nora shook her head. “It’s just that…I hoped he would have realized how wrong he
was.”
“Wrong?”
“Yes. Not that I owe this explanation to you, Evvie, but he was wrong.” Nora’s
throat felt dry. She was telling the truth, but she knew it sounded like a lie.
That made her angry, almost as angry as Evelyn’s constant criticism and her
heavy-handed interference in the boys’ lives did.
“Harrison did once suspect that I might be attracted to Logan. But I assured him
it wasn’t true, and he believed me. There has never been anything between Logan
Cathcart and me.”
She clicked Talk, and the dial tone hummed. She had a choice between two
pre-programmed buttons, the Two Wings manager’s office, and Logan Cathcart’s
home number. As her finger punched the home number defiantly, she looked up at
her sister-in-law.
“And that’s the last time I’ll ever discuss this with you, Evelyn, because
frankly it’s none of your business.”
The phone began to ring. She looked toward the fireplace, signaling the end of
the argument.
But she should have known she wouldn’t get the last word.
“My brother has always been my business,” Evelyn said quietly, her voice a
deadly monotone. “And so are my brother’s sons.”
Nora’s shoulder blades tingled, but she didn’t turn around. The phone kept
ringing hollowly, and she imagined it echoing through Logan Cathcart’s small
log-and-stone ranch house, which he’d inherited from his great-aunt.
She knew, somehow, that he was no longer there.
Illogically, the unanswered rings made her feel even more alone.
Alone with a troubled son, a haunted heart and a woman who hated her.
“I am always watching, Nora,” Evelyn’s voice came at her in low, hard waves. “I
would never have let you hurt Harrison, and the same goes for Sean and Harry.
There’s nothing I won’t do to protect my own flesh and blood. So be forewarned.”
CHAPTER TWO
EVEN BEFORE SEAN ARCHER’S unexpected visit, and the mess that followed, Logan
Cathcart had been up to his eyeballs in alligators. Two candidates had shown up
for the clinic tech job, but neither had any experience, so he was still
administering antibiotics and changing bandages himself.
Three injured baby owls had been left in a shoebox on his doorstep overnight,
and two of them didn’t have a chance in hell.
Finally, the county had sent over a ream of red tape so convoluted it made his
law school years look easy. He wanted to shred it up for nesting material, but
since the Two Wings tax break depended on it he had to resist.
So, frankly, he hadn’t been in the mood to hear that a troubled kid from the
ranch next door had appeared with a dead bird in his backpack and for no
apparent reason started tearing up the enclosures they’d just built yesterday.
He knew the kid’s dad had died, and the family was going through a bad patch. He
even felt sorry for him. His manager didn’t believe the kid’s story—that he’d
been bringing the bird here for tending, but it died along the way—but Logan
did. Somehow he just didn’t think Sean Archer was that kind of crazy.
Still. A nine-year-old kid reacts to a bird’s death by ripping apart everything
he can reach? That didn’t smell like fresh-baked mental health to Logan.
So now not only was he having to repair the damage himself, but also he was
going to have to talk to Sean’s mother, and that was something he’d vowed to do
as little of as possible. He’d decided to steer clear of Nora Archer about two
days after moving to Texas, about two minutes after meeting her.
He tossed his hammer onto the pile of wood chips and pulled the measuring tape
out. He might have to order new wood. The kid must know karate—he’d really
smashed things up.
“Boss?”
Logan raised his gaze, sorry to see his manager, Vic Downing, standing at the
edge of the hawk enclosure. He dropped the tape measure. “What are you still
doing here? You should be at home. Tell Vic to go home, Max.”
Max, a red-shouldered hawk who was never going to live in the wild again, moved
nervously from one foot to the other, head lowered on his flexible neck, fixing
Vic with a beady-eyed stare. As if obeying Logan’s command, Max let out an
ominous screech, the perfect sound track for a horror movie.
Vic just rolled his eyes. “Shut up, pudgy,” he said affectionately. It was all
an act, of course. Max was gentle-natured, one-winged and a pushover for a
fistful of treats. “Look, Logan. I can stay a little while. Let me give you a
hand with that.”
“You’ve already worked fifty hours this week. Didn’t Gretchen say she’d shoot
you if you missed dinner again?”
Vic stuck a piece of Juicy Fruit in his mouth. “Yeah, but that was just the
hormones talking.” He sighed. “You wouldn’t believe how insane pregnant women
can be.”
Oh, yes, he would. But Logan didn’t say that, of course. He also didn’t say that
Gretchen would undoubtedly get worse in the next few weeks. She had about a
month to go, and if Logan remembered correctly from those last months with
Rebecca…
But remembering was one thing he didn’t waste time doing.
He retrieved his hammer and a broken plank and started working out the nail that
was stuck in one end.
“Anyhow,” Vic went on, “where I put the bullets, she’ll never find them.”
Logan looked up. “Where did you hide them?”
“Behind the Windex. Woman hasn’t done a lick of housework in months. Says it
makes her cranky.” Vic tossed down the plank. “But what doesn’t?”
As they exchanged a sympathetic chuckle, Logan glimpsed the slow fluttering of
something pale and pink at the edge of Vic’s silhouette. For a fanciful split
second he thought it might be a roseate spoonbill, although he didn’t have any
at the sanctuary, and undoubtedly never would. The delicate beauties didn’t show
up this far inland.
He blinked, and the fluttering became the edges of a loose pink skirt. He
blinked again, and saw the woman wearing it.
It was Nora Archer, probably the only woman on the planet who could wear that
color with that red hair and pull it off.
She was too far away for Logan to see details, but his mind could conjure up
every inch. The silly auburn curls that frothed around her shoulders. The round
eyes, too big for her face, forest-colored, mostly brown with shards of green
and bronze. Little girl pink cheeks, freckles and an upturned cheerleader’s
nose. But a dangerous woman’s mouth, wide and soft and tempting.
Today, her head was bowed as she moved toward them, her pale face somber. She
might have the coloring of a roseate spoonbill, but she had the soft melancholy
of the mourning dove.
The widow Archer. He squeezed the handle of the hammer. As beautiful, and as
off-limits, as ever.
Vic had noticed her now, too, and both men watched without speaking until she
finally reached them. Max stared as well, cocking his head and rotating it
slowly to follow her all the way. Logan smiled inwardly. It must be a male
thing.
When she got close enough, he stood. While she was shaking hands with Vic, Logan
dropped the hammer again, and brushed his hands against his jeans, sorry that
they were gritty with sawdust and dirt.
But that was dumb. His hands were always dirty. The days when he spent all his
money on designer suits and weekly manicures were long gone and unlamented.
“Hi, Nora,” he said. “I was going to call you again later.”
“Logan.”
She held out her hand, and he took it. It had been six months, and yet he knew
to brace himself for the little electric jolt. She felt it, too, he could tell,
though she had always been polished at covering it.
“I came to talk about Sean. To apologize, first of all. He told me what happened
this afternoon. He said he did a lot of damage.”
“Not so much. He busted up a couple of enclosures. Nothing we can’t fix.”
Logan was amused to see Vic nodding vigorously, although an hour ago the manager
had been ready to wring Sean Archer’s neck with his bare hands. That was the
effect Nora Archer had on people. Male or female, young or old, one look into
those wistful hazel eyes, and they wanted to don armor and jump on a white
horse.
She let go of his hand quickly, then gazed around, her lower lip caught between
her teeth. “Did he—were there birds in any of the enclosures?”
“The screening wasn’t finished yet. It was just bare boards, really. Don’t
worry, Nora. He hurt stuff, nothing living.”
She smiled, still sad but clearly grateful, then turned to Vic. “He tells me you
were disturbed about the bird he brought with him. He thinks you believe he
killed it.”
“Well, I—” Vic looked uncomfortable. “I couldn’t be sure. It was dead by the
time I got here, and he was kind of going nuts, breaking boards and—”
“I can see why you were worried,” she said. “I was worried, too. But I’ve talked
to Sean about it, and he told me everything. I’m convinced he’s telling the
truth about that part. He simply doesn’t have that kind of brutality in him.”
Vic didn’t look quite as sure, but when he opened his mouth to respond, Johnny
Cash’s voice suddenly growled out of his back pocket, promising in his rumbling
baritone that he found it very, very easy to be true.
Max squawked, disliking the sound instinctively, and Nora’s eyes widened.
As the manager dug hurriedly in his back pocket, Logan chuckled. “Vic’s cell
phone,” he explained. “That must be the new ringtone Gretchen put on it. That’s
not the one that means the baby’s coming, is it?”
Vic shook his head. “No. That one’s ‘Stop, In the Name of Love.’ Johnny Cash is
the get-your-ass-home-for-dinner ringtone.” He clicked the answer button.
“Sorry, honey. I know what I said. I’m leaving right now. Yes, right now. No,
not five minutes from now. Right now.”
Logan pointed at the clinic parking lot, urging the other man to get going. With
an apologetic smile and a wave to Nora, Vic loped off toward his truck, keeping
his wife updated on every step he took. “I’m ten feet from the truck, honey…”
The few seconds after Vic’s departure were subtly awkward. Nora stood in a ray
of sunshine that poured in dappled blobs of honey through the oak branches.
Logan stood stiffly by the broken wood, in the shadow of the hawk enclosure,
surrounded by busted planks and tools.
Well, of course it was awkward. It was the first time he had been alone with her
in about nine months. It was, in fact, only the second time he’d ever been alone
with her in his life.
The first time had been at Trent and Susannah’s peach party, last summer. They’d
had…what…five minutes alone together in the pole shed? Other than that, their
encounters had all been casual, public, superficial. The same politely chatting
circle at a cocktail party. Nearby tables at a busy café. Two customers apart in
the checkout line at the grocery store. Four rows down at the city council
meeting.
Funny how you could fool yourself, he thought, watching her scratch an imaginary
itch at her throat, then fidget with the neckline of her creamy blouse. The
truth was, he hardly knew her. And yet…
“I know you’re busy,” she said. “I won’t take up too much of your time. But I
wanted to talk about Sean. I’d like to know what he can do to make this up to
you.”
“Nothing.” He shook his head firmly. “That’s not necessary. Let’s forget it,
okay? I know he’s had a hard time this past year.”
“Yes. That’s true.” She swallowed. “I’m sure you’ve heard all about it. I guess
everyone has.”
He couldn’t deny it. Eastcreek was a typical small Texas town. People talked.
And when they had something juicy to talk about, like the fact that one of its
social pillars, Harrison Archer, had gone stark raving mad and tried to kill two
people, they buzzed like hornets.
Logan wasn’t a fan of gossip. He and Rebecca and Ben had been the subject of
enough of it for him to know how little it captured of the real truth. But he
couldn’t help himself. He had wanted to know. He’d wanted to understand more
about that wildly mismatched Archer marriage, so he’d listened.
“I heard. I discounted about half of it, though.” He smiled. “I’ve been here
long enough to know that Texans are just as good at embellishing as they are
back in Maine.”
“In this case, half is bad enough.” She moved a little closer to Max’s cage, as
if she didn’t want to meet Logan’s eyes while she talked. The hawk, who had been
preening his wing, paused briefly, then apparently decided she wasn’t a threat
and went back to work.
“The basic facts are true. Harrison did threaten to kill Trent and Susannah. He
lured Trent out to Green Fern Pond, so that he could shoot him, and when
Susannah found them, Harrison held them both at gunpoint. But I don’t think he
would have done it, even if Sean…even if Sean hadn’t stopped him. I really
don’t.”
She looked back at Logan, her fingertips hooked into the wire screening. “Of
course, I don’t know for sure. He was very sick, and he was in a lot of pain. He
had been for a long time.”
He knew she didn’t mean physical pain, although that had probably played its
part. Pancreatic cancer wasn’t a merciful disease. But the pain that had truly
destroyed Harrison Archer wasn’t the physical kind. It was emotional, and it had
apparently eaten away his soul, his conscience and his common sense.
Logan knew he ought to stop her from going on. He didn’t have any comfort to
offer in return for her confessional. And she didn’t need to lay out the details
of her private tragedy, like an offering on the altar, buying his forgiveness
for Sean.
He’d already forgiven the poor, unlucky kid, for what that was worth.
“You probably know that Harrison blamed Trent for his first son’s death.” She
turned her head back toward the enclosure. Her auburn curls slid across her
breastbone, the tips catching the sunlight. “He never got over Paul’s death. Not
even… Not even after Sean and Harry.”
Though many people found that part of the story perplexing, Logan had always
sort of understood. The first-born, the miracle, the child of your dreams. You
might love again—in fact, humans were probably hardwired to love something,
anything, just to survive—but you’d never love like that a second time. Never
with your heart wide open, just asking to be smashed to bits.
“Poor Trent.” Nora took a deep breath. “He blames himself, too, you know. He
shouldn’t. Paul died a few years before I came to Eastwood, but from what I hear
the fire was just one of those impossibly tragic accidents.”
Logan shrugged. “That doesn’t make it easier. But you don’t have to tell me
this, Nora. I think I get it.”
“I’d like to explain, if you don’t mind listening. I think it might help you to
understand Sean a little better.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.” She gave him a grateful smile. “Anyhow, Harrison had just found out he
was dying, and he wanted to avenge Paul’s death while he still could. So he…he
took Trent out to the pond. It was the last place he’d ever been with Paul.
Peggy, Harrison’s first wife, called us, and we came as fast as we could. We had
no idea what we would find. And Sean…he ran ahead…”
She’d been telling the story with impressive composure so far. But finally, when
she spoke about Sean, her voice trembled. Her eyes were shining, anguished, the
muscles around them pulled so tight it hurt to see.
He picked up the hammer again and inspected the handle, which had felt a little
loose when he was working earlier. He needed to resist this irrational urge to
move toward her.
What was he going to do? Take her in his arms?
Oh, man. This was why he’d decided it was better to steer clear of her. There
was something about her that wormed straight into the weakest chink inside him.
What exactly was her magic? She was small, only about five-four, he’d guess
barely a hundred pounds. Nice figure, but she’d never stop traffic. She wore
almost no jewelry or makeup, didn’t bother with ornamentation. She was
soft-spoken and introspective.
She should have been easy to ignore.
And yet, ever since he’d moved to Texas eighteen months ago, he hadn’t been able
to get her out of his mind. Not then, when she’d been a meekly married woman,
clearly in the no-touch zone. And not now, when she was the epitome of Mrs.
Wrong: a single mother with troubled sons. Vulnerable, grief-stricken and needy.
Oddly innocent, incapable of the kind of no-strings fling he specialized in.
“Look, it’s really okay,” he said gruffly, trying to ignore the tenderness that
was threatening to create itself inside him. Her problems were her problems. He
couldn’t solve them. Hell, he couldn’t even solve his own. “I’m not mad at Sean,
and the damage is easily enough repaired.”
“That’s very generous.” She finally turned completely around. Max grumbled,
sorry to lose the attention, and the hope of a treat. “But, for Sean’s sake, I
have to do more. I can’t let him get away with this. He needs to pay for what
he’s done.”
Logan felt his chest tighten. He didn’t like where this was going.
“I’ll send you a bill. You can make him work it off. You know. Chores around the
house. Teach him his lesson.”
She moved a step toward him. “That seems so remote from the crime, though, don’t
you think? Is there any work he could do at the sanctuary? It would teach him so
much more. He’d learn what you do here, for one thing. Surely, if he understood
that what you do is so valuable, so unlike what his fa—”
She broke off awkwardly. But he knew what she meant.
Harrison Archer, whose family tree had put its roots down in Texas before it was
even called Texas, had never thought much of Easterners, and he damn sure didn’t
think much of wasting a hundred acres of prime horse and cattle country to nurse
a bunch of half-dead hawks and barn owls back to health.
He’d undoubtedly passed that disdain on to his son, the heir-in-training to all
the Archer arrogance. Logan hadn’t connected the father’s attitude to Sean’s
outburst, but perhaps Nora was right. If Sean hadn’t heard so much at home about
how worthless Two Wings was, the urge to do it violence might not have been so
close to the surface.
“You’ve got a point,” Logan said, trying to sound reasonable. “It would be nice
to have next-door neighbors who don’t think Two Wings is a waste of space. But
I’m afraid Sean’s re-education will have to be done at home. We have only about
six weeks before we open Two Wings to the public, and I’m just too busy to play
guidance counselor, or parole officer, or whatever you’re thinking.”
“No, I didn’t mean you. Of course you don’t have time.”
Her eyes had clouded again, and he realized his rejection had been more forceful
than he’d intended. Damn it. Why couldn’t he reach equilibrium with this woman?
Why couldn’t she just be another pretty neighbor? Why did the idea of having
her, and her little boy, at Two Wings every day make him so uncomfortable?
“I meant your manager. Do you think Vic might have time? I promise you, Sean can
be a hard worker. He’s smart and he’s strong.”
Logan had started shaking his head when she began to talk, and he didn’t stop.
She frowned, clearly wondering why his resistance was so absolute.
“And of course I’d be happy,” she said cautiously, “to make a donation to Two
Wings, to offset whatever inconvenience or expense Sean’s presence might
create.”
“I don’t want your money.”
Crap. That had come out too harshly, too, especially given the obvious
differences in their financial states. Smooth, Cathcart. Whip out the whole bag
of insecurities, why don’t you? Want to tell her about the puppy that died when
you were two?
She studied him for a minute, her wide forehead knitting between the brows.
“What’s really the matter, Logan? Do you think Sean killed that bird? Is that
why you don’t want him here? You’re afraid he’s crazy?”
“No. Of course not. No.”
For a minute he considered telling the truth. She knew he was attracted to her,
and vice versa. It had never been put into words, but it was as obvious as a
neon sign. Would it be so bad to just talk about it?
But what exactly would he say? I’m not interested in a long-term relationship
with a woman like you, but as you know I’m wildly turned on by you anyhow. I’m
afraid that if we spend too much time together, I might seduce you, and I might
end up breaking your heart….
Yeah, right.
Not in this lifetime.
Besides, the attraction was only part of the problem.
The rest of it was that he just didn’t want to get involved in the Archer family
tragedy. Call him a selfish bastard, but he didn’t want to feel their pain. He
didn’t want to dig around in the muck of their grief and see if he could help
them drain the swamp. He didn’t want to lend his ear, offer his shoulder or hold
the Kleenex while they cried.
He couldn’t help them anyhow. Bereavement wasn’t like some club you joined.
There wasn’t a secret handshake he could show them, no guided tour he could lead
to help them feel at home.
It was a private hell, and everyone was locked up in their own solitary fire.
“I’m sorry, Nora,” he said. He picked up the tool box to show that he was out of
time. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”
CHAPTER THREE
“JEEPERS, NORA. I ASKED you to come because I wanted to talk about Sean. But now
I think we’d better talk about you, instead.” Jolie Harper, the music teacher at
Eastcreek Elementary School, leaned forward, elbows on her desk. “You look
awful. Aren’t you sleeping?”
“Not much.” Nora plopped into the visitor’s seat, relieved to be able to drop
the brave face for once. She had volunteered in Jolie’s classroom several times
a week for the past three years, and had come to trust her completely.
“I try to sleep, but my mind won’t shut off. I keep second-guessing every
decision I make. I’ve told Sean he’ll have to work off the damage to the
Cathcart place. But am I being too hard on him? Too soft? Does he need more
freedom? Less? Evelyn thinks—”
“Ugh. Spare me what Evelyn thinks.”
Jolie stood and went to the window. Using her thumb and forefinger, she wedged a
crack in the blinds so that she could peek into the rehearsal room, where her
assistant was helping Sean and three other students learn “The Star Spangled
Banner” on the guitar, flute, clarinet and bells.
She grimaced. “They sound terrible. Any chance they’d let us have our spring
show in August this year?”
Nora smiled, although the joke, obviously meant to lighten the tension,
paradoxically set off a new pang of guilt. The guitar was another former love
that Sean no longer enjoyed. Getting him to practice was like pulling teeth, and
half the time Nora just didn’t think it was worth the struggle.
They couldn’t fight all day, every day, could they? What kind of life would that
be for a nine-year-old boy?
Or was she taking the easy way out, craving peace, even at her son’s expense?
She reached up and rubbed her aching forehead. This was the kind of emotional
tail-chasing that kept her up all night. For Evelyn, life was so
straightforward. In her opinion, Nora was a naive woman who had no idea how to
steer her sons through this dangerous storm and should rely on Evelyn for
guidance. End of debate.
In those sleepless hours before dawn, Nora sometimes wondered if she might be
right.
“So why did you ask me to come in, Jolie?” She braced herself. She might as well
know the worst. “Has something else happened?”
Jolie cast one more glance into the rehearsal room. Apparently satisfied that
Sean was safely occupied, she leaned against the edge of her desk, close enough
to speak softly and still be heard.
“Not really. Nothing dramatic. It’s just that…he seems very remote. He doesn’t
volunteer for anything extra, doesn’t go for the chair challenges. He doesn’t
hang out with his friends much, either. He sits by himself whenever he has a
choice. He doesn’t cause trouble. He just doesn’t…” She sighed. “Doesn’t
engage.”
Nora laced her fingers in her lap and squeezed tightly. Out of nowhere, she felt
the urge to talk to Harrison. She would like his advice, of course, but she’d
also like to be able to tell him that she understood so much better what he’d
been through with Paul.
Intellectually, any human being could grasp that it was terrible to watch your
son suffer and die. Anyone with a heart could sympathize with a tragedy like
that.
But when you actually went through it, when the fear that your child might be
hurting, might be in danger, ran through your veins like a fiery poison,
threatening to blow your heart up right in your chest…that was a whole new level
of understanding.
“I see that apathy at home, too,” she said. “At first I thought it might be an
improvement, a sign that he was calming down. But it’s not natural. It’s too
bottled up.”
“Right.” Jolie’s shiny blond ponytail bounced jauntily as she nodded, but her
face was very serious. “Like a fire behind a tightly closed door.” She glanced
toward the window again. “Is he still seeing the counselor?”
“Yes, but he’s down to once a week. It was the psychiatrist’s suggestion. He
said it was time to move toward normalcy. I thought it might be too soon, but he
said we should try.”
Evelyn had pooh-poohed Nora’s doubts, eager to accept the psychiatrist’s
recommendation. The older woman didn’t set much store by talk therapy, which she
believed encouraged brooding on your troubles, instead of moving past them. She
called it “wallowing.”
“I’ll phone him tomorrow.” Just making the decision loosened the knot in Nora’s
chest slightly. She leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. The varied
scents of the classroom were soothing to her. The sharp, alcohol sting of
whiteboard markers, the crisp sweetness of new textbooks, the warm musk of
children.
And best of all, the muted laughter of students in the next room struggling to
make music.
She’d always planned to be a music teacher, like Jolie. She loved working with
kids, watching them light up as their clumsy efforts suddenly bloomed into
beautiful sounds.
When she first went to visit Harrison at the Bull’s Eye Ranch that summer ten
years ago, she’d been only twenty-one, just out of college, still interviewing
for teaching positions in South Carolina. By the time she landed a job, she knew
she might be pregnant. And by the time classes started in South Carolina that
September, she was living in Texas, married to a very rich man twice her age.
Harrison quickly quieted her talk of teaching. Motherhood, he insisted, was a
full-time job.
Understanding why he was a bit overprotective, she’d indulged him. He’d bought
her a beautiful piano, so that she could keep up with her own music, and she’d
appreciated the gesture.
Someday, she’d always promised herself, she’d start over. When the boys were
older. When Harrison felt more secure—about her, and about them. She’d earn her
Texas certification, and she’d finally stand in her very own classroom.
Guess someday was on permanent hold now.
And she didn’t mind. There was only one goal that mattered anymore. Shepherding
what was left of her family through this crisis.
But she didn’t want her worries to monopolize this whole visit. Jolie had
problems, too.
“So did the PTA finally agree that you need new sheet music?” Nora knew that the
recent budget cutbacks had slashed the school arts programs. Jolie would have
had to cancel the Independence Day concert if Nora hadn’t written a personal
check for new instruments. She’d write another, if the PTA didn’t come through
with funds. She might write one, anyhow. One of the nicer aspects of having
money was being able to give it away.
“It’s still under advisement.” Jolie rolled her eyes. “Which means they’re
waiting to see what the Phys Ed teacher needs. If it’s a choice between music
and sports, we all know who—”
Suddenly, midsentence, she lurched forward, though she must have been reacting
to some sixth sense. Nora hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
“Oh, dear Lord,” Jolie murmured under her breath. She flung open the door to the
rehearsal room. “Madeline, grab Sean.”
Nora was only a foot behind her, so she had just entered the room when Sean’s
guitar hit the floor. Obviously the instrument had been flung with force.
Contact with the linoleum made a hideous sound, part splintering wood, part
ghastly harmonies from reverberating strings.
“Oh, Sean, no,” she said softly.
Her son didn’t hear her. He stood on the other side of the room, rigid as a
pole, his eyes sparking with fury. His face shone palely, which made his
freckles stand out like copper pennies on his cheeks. His hair was mussed, his
collar lifted where Madeline, the assistant music instructor, held it in her
fist.
Jolie had one hand lightly but authoritatively placed on the shoulder of a
second boy. Nora knew him—Tad Rutherford. He and Sean had played together since
the kiddie band in nursery school. Tad was Sean’s age, but twice his size, and
something of a bully. Right now, his broad face burned red, his breath coming
hard and noisy.
Nora’s heart beat high in her chest. But Jolie, as always, looked completely
calm, in spite of the chaos, the wild-eyed boys and the smashed guitar, which
was now two splintered halves held together only by the strings.
She owned the situation. She had frozen the potential for trouble right in its
tracks with just the force of her silent authority. That was her gift. It made
her a wonderful teacher.
She glanced at Sean, then at Tad. “What happened here?”
“I was just kidding,” Tad said, his chest still heaving. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Didn’t mean what?”
Flushing brightly, Tad ducked his head and stared at his shoes. Whatever he’d
said, he didn’t seem to have the courage to repeat it in front of the adults.
Jolie looked across the room. “Sean?”
Sean didn’t flinch away from her gaze. He met it, his jaw squared so tightly he
might have been carved from marble—if it hadn’t been for his eyes, which were
alive with emotion.
Jolie’s gaze shifted. “Madeline?”
The assistant shook her head. “They were playing. I didn’t hear it.”
Jolie didn’t waste time with the third degree. She obviously knew what had to be
done. She walked over to Nora. Her eyes were sympathetic, but her voice was
matter-of-fact.
“I’ll have to call the principal,” she said quietly, touching the phone that
hung from her belt. “The rules are very clear.”
Nora understood. “Of course.”
Nodding to her assistant, a message that seemed to speak volumes, Jolie slipped
back into her office to make the call. Nora moved slowly to her son’s side,
sidestepping the wreckage of the guitar.
“Sean.” She knelt in front of him and took his cold, limp hand. “Honey, can you
tell me? Can you tell me what happened?”
For a moment he stared at her. And then, slowly, as if his neck were a rusted
joint, he shook his head.
Such an absolute silence. She looked into his eyes, where sparks of fury still
flashed and simmered.
And she thought of Jolie’s comment.
Like fire, she thought with a sinking heart. Like fire behind a tightly closed
door.

LOGAN’S NIGHT HAD BEEN an unexpected success. Dinner and drinks with Annie…Aden?
Arden? Something like that. The office manager for one of the vets he used at
Two Wings.
He’d asked her out purely because she was smoking hot, and he was bored with the
book he’d been reading. But he got the bonus prize, too. She’d turned out to be
witty and sensible, and extremely easy to please. She liked her steak, she liked
her wine. She liked his jokes, his car, his jacket and his smile.
It was also pretty clear she liked the idea of coming home with him. It should
have been a slam dunk—sex with a woman who was easy to please. And did he
mention smoking hot?
But for some reason he would never understand, he ignored all the signals,
kissed her politely at her door and drove back to Two Wings alone.
He didn’t try to figure himself out. He’d never been into navel-gazing
self-analysis. He was tired. Her perfume turned him off. He hadn’t been in the
mood for a blonde. Whatever.
What difference did it make? There was always another night. There was always
another Annie.
He poured himself a glass of water and picked up the sports section, which he
hadn’t had time to read that morning. He kicked off his shoes and, with a
satisfied yawn, settled onto the tweedy sofa that faced the picture window. It
was only eleven, but he’d been up since five, and he’d be up again at five
tomorrow. He was dog tired, and he had a right to be.
When the doorbell rang two minutes later, he cursed under his breath. But he
swung his legs off the sofa and tossed the newspaper onto the floor. It might be
someone dropping off a bird.
When he opened the door, at first he didn’t see anyone at all. Then his gaze
fell about two feet, and he discovered a kid standing there, the pale oval of
his face peering out from a black hooded sweatshirt.
He wore black jeans, too, and black sneakers. He looked like a miniature cat
burglar.
“Hi, Sean,” Logan said wryly. “Did we have something else you wanted to bust
up?”
The boy flushed, but he covered it well with a deep scowl. “My mom says she’s
going to pay you for it. She’s making me work it off. I’m going to have to pull
weeds about ten hours a day for a month.”
“Good.” Logan kept his hand on the doorknob, but he scanned the driveway for a
car. “Is your mom with you now?”
“No. I came alone. On my bike.”
Oh, great. The moron had ridden a mile and a half in the pitch dark. All in
black. Probably didn’t even have a light on his bike.
He needed a good shaking. Didn’t he have the slightest idea what it would do to
his mother if anything bad happened to him?
“Does she know you’re here?”
“No. She’s out with my Aunt Evelyn. I didn’t climb out my window this time. I
went straight out the front door. Milly’s supposed to be looking after me, but
she always falls asleep. She’s got blood sugar.”
“Really.” Logan fought the urge to smile. “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to
take you back, then. If Milly wakes up and finds you gone, she’ll have a heart
attack to go with her blood sugar.”
“No. It’s okay. She never wakes up. I’m not going back yet.”
Logan looked at the boy, who clearly had amazing persistence and dogged
determination in that stubborn jaw.
He did some quick thinking. He didn’t want to spook the kid. If Sean decided to
dart off into the night, in that outfit, Logan would have hell’s own time trying
to catch him. He was tired, and barefoot, and about twenty years older than
Sean. He didn’t like his chances.
“Okay.” He held open the door. “Want to come in, then?”
Sean hesitated, still frowning. He glanced into the lighted great room, as if he
were checking for trap doors and cages.
“Hey, suit yourself,” Logan said, chuckling. Kids were so dumb. Sean had snuck
out in the middle of the night, wandered the darkness alone, knocked on a
stranger’s door, then suddenly started remembering what Mom said about safety
first.
He shrugged. “I have all the snotty kid prisoners I need at the moment, anyhow.”
Sean laughed. It was an awkward, sputtering noise, as if he hadn’t expected to,
and hadn’t wanted to. He caught himself and cut it off, but it had undoubtedly
been a laugh.
Encouraged, Logan opened the door wider, and ambled casually toward the kitchen.
“Want some water? Must have been a dusty ride. Did you come the back way, by the
creek?”
Behind him, he heard the door shut softly. Then he heard it open again, and once
more click shut. Too funny…the kid must have been testing to make sure it didn’t
auto-lock.
The soft slap of sneakers followed him to the kitchen. Then Sean spoke, with the
belligerence dialed back a notch. “Water would be very nice. Yeah, I came by the
creek. It’s nice in the moonlight.”
Logan slid a filled glass across the countertop. “But it’s a long way. And I’m
guessing that if you get caught you’re in a boatload of trouble. What do you
want so bad you’re willing to come all this way to get it?”
Sean picked up the water and swallowed about half of it before he answered. “I
want the bird,” he said. “I was going to go to the center and poke around till I
found it, but that seemed babyish.”
He lifted his small, pale chin. The hood dropped off when he did so, exposing
his curly red hair, still sweaty from the ride over. “And I’m not a baby. So I
decided I’d come ask you for it. You can’t want it. It’s not worth anything.”
In spite of the absurdity of the situation, Logan felt a stirring of respect.
The boy’s behavior didn’t make any sense, and he could definitely use an
attitude adjustment.
But that didn’t make it any less brave.
“I’m not sure I understand. What bird?”
“The one I brought over here yesterday.”
“The dead one?”
The scowl appeared again. “It wasn’t dead when I left my house. It flew right
into my window, and then it couldn’t fly anymore. I thought maybe you could fix
it. But I guess I took too long. When I got here, it was already dead.” His
fingertips were white where they gripped the glass. “I…I couldn’t believe it. It
just wasn’t breathing.”
Logan watched the boy carefully, recognizing that helpless anger, that
bewildered impotence in the face of the implacability of mortality. If he’d had
any doubts before about Sean’s culpability in the death of the bird, they
vanished now.
“I guess that was a pretty bad moment. When you saw that it was too late.”
“Yeah.” Sean had to take a deep breath to stop his voice from quavering. “Yeah,
it was. I wanted to save it. Maybe it was even my fault. Maybe if I’d asked my
mom to drive me over—”
“No.” Logan couldn’t allow that thought to exist for a single second. “No. If it
flew into your window, it probably broke its neck. No matter how fast you got it
here, I couldn’t have saved it, either.”
“Okay.” Sean nodded, staring down at his water. “But your manager took it away
from me. I don’t want him just thrown in the trash, you know? I want to bury
him. But I don’t want to steal him. I shouldn’t have to. He’s mine.”
He lifted his head and stood ramrod straight. All the regal Archer entitlement
was in that bearing, but so was the little boy’s fear and confusion. Those angry
eyes were shining with unshed tears. The effect was incongruous, and oddly
touching.
“So I thought I’d come over here and ask you straight. Will you let me have his
body?”
Goddamn it. For a minute Logan felt his own eyes stinging. Damn it. He was not
going to actually go soft over this kid and one silly bird. Birds died on him
all the time in the sanctuary. No one wept over it, not even the most naive
teenage volunteers.
“I can’t,” he said firmly. Facts were facts. “I’m sorry, but at least I can
promise you it wasn’t thrown in the trash. We’ve already incinerated the body.
We have to do that to all the birds we lose here at Two Wings. It’s the law.”
“Oh.” Sean bit his lips together, dealing with the disappointment. His throat
worked a few seconds as he fought for control. “Why?”
He really seemed to want to know. Logan debated with himself for a second—would
it be better to gloss over it, or offer up details as a distraction?
He decided on distraction. He simplified, but he laid out the basic setup, the
federal laws that governed rehabbers and sanctuaries like Two Wings. Encouraged
by Sean’s absorbed attention, he even included some interesting trivia about how
hunters used to kill birds by the thousands because women wanted to wear their
elegant nesting plumage in their ridiculous hats.
“There was a period, maybe a hundred years ago, when an ounce of ostrich
feathers was worth more than an ounce of gold,” he finished up. “So the
government passed laws to protect the birds. We aren’t allowed to keep so much
as a single feather.”
The stories, and the time it took to tell them, did the trick. By the time Logan
was finished, Sean’s eyes were brighter. The lightening of his fog of
unhappiness was palpable. He probably didn’t fully understand most of it, but he
was clearly fascinated by the brief glimpse of the rich history of bird lore.
Logan looked him over, above the rim of his own water glass. When Sean stopped
all that glowering, he was a fairly nice-looking kid.
“Anyhow, I really should get you home now,” Logan said casually, hoping he
wouldn’t rekindle the fire. “Think we can get your bike in the back of my
truck?”
Sean nodded reluctantly. Whatever adrenaline had pushed him here was fading now
that his anger and tension were gone. He was starting to look like a normal,
sleepy little boy.
“Thanks,” Sean said. “Thanks for being so nice to me.”
And then, to Logan’s surprise, Sean suddenly thrust out his hand. Logan took it,
feeling the fragile bones in the skinny fingers, and the calluses on his
fingertips. The hand felt ridiculously small to be offering such a man’s
gesture.
“You’re welcome,” Logan said, but he had to clear his throat to get the words
out.
“I won’t bother you any more, Mr. Cathcart.” The boy looked him straight in the
eye. “I’m sorry I lost my temper yesterday and messed up your cages. I wish I
could do something to take it back.”
Logan felt himself being drawn into those hazel eyes, so round and so much like
his mother’s. He was no psychiatrist, but his instincts told him this kid wasn’t
crazy, or mean, or bad. He was just hurting like hell.
Oh, man. Logan felt himself about to say something he’d probably regret. Pull
back, Cathcart. Think it through.
Remember the attitude. The flash of temper. The tragedy, hanging like a black
wing over everything the boy did. Remember that half his DNA was from his dad,
who had always been a jerk, and had ended up a head case.
Everything he’d told himself yesterday was still true. He still had too much to
do. He still knew Nora’s sex appeal would be a distraction, an itch he could
never scratch.
And he damn sure still didn’t want to jump on the Archer family trouble train.
Besides, would working at the sanctuary really be helpful for Sean? True, Logan
honored hard, outdoor, sweaty work, and he believed in the therapeutic value of
getting in touch with, and resigning yourself to, the rhythms of nature.
But this was a kid with death issues. A kid who would try to save his dad all
over again every time he tried to save a bird. And lose his dad all over again
every time he failed.
Logan wasn’t up to dealing with that. Just because, for a minute here, Sean
reminded him of Nora, of the forest-colored sadness in her eyes…
That was no reason to—
He tried to apply the brakes, but nothing seemed to have the power to stop the
skid.
“That’s the rotten thing about mistakes,” he said, testing to see whether Sean’s
belligerence had really subsided. “Once you make ’em, you own ’em. You can’t
take them back, no matter how much you want to.”
Sean nodded grimly, but no resentment sparked. “Yeah.” He sighed. “It sucks.”
Logan paused one more time, giving himself another second to come to his senses.
But it didn’t happen.
“I tell you what,” he heard himself saying. “Maybe there is something you could
do. Why don’t we see if your mom will let you work off your punishment here with
me?”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SKY WAS ALREADY A HOT neon blue by eight o’clock when Sean reported for his
first shift at the sanctuary on Saturday. More like summer than spring, really,
Nora thought as she parked the car by the double row of hackberry trees, where
the dappled trees would keep it cool.
She didn’t know how long she’d be staying. She’d expected to drop Sean off and
return for him later, but as they neared the small wooden cabin that housed the
sanctuary’s reception area, Sean’s shoulders grew rigid and his lower jaw thrust
out.
Nora knew those signs. He was scared, but tightening every muscle to avoid
showing it.
“You’re coming in, too, right, Mom?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” His shoulders loosened, and he gave her a shrug that said the whole
thing bored him. “Mr. Cathcart’s probably forgotten I’m coming, anyhow.”
Nora bit back a frustrated response. She wished she knew how to prevent Sean
from masking his fear with belligerence, but Harrison had worked hard to be sure
his son and heir knew better than to show weakness. Probably the lesson of his
own father, Harrison believed that anger was the manly man’s only respectable
emotion.
It would take more than a few months with a child psychiatrist to make Sean
disloyal to his father’s teachings now.
But the night Logan had brought Sean home, his bike in the flatbed of a Two
Wings truck, had given her a glimmer of hope.
They’d rung the bell politely, and then Logan had stood with his hand on the
boy’s shoulder, as if to lend moral support, while Sean had explained about
sneaking out to retrieve the body of the bird.
Nora had hardly recognized her son that night. No stubborn silence, no slippery
fibs, no tantrums. Just the truth, offered somberly, even apologetically, with a
glimpse of the grown man he would someday be.
She’d kept her own tone equally forthright, though she couldn’t pretend she
wasn’t upset, or that there wouldn’t be a punishment.
Then, together, the three of them had come up with this plan.
It called for Sean to work at Two Wings three hours every Saturday morning, and
two hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until the damage was paid off.
His salary would be five dollars an hour. Logan had estimated the damage at five
hundred dollars, though Nora suspected him of minimizing the mess. Still, Sean
would clearly be working into the summer. That night, he’d seemed reconciled to
the plan.
But as the first day grew closer, his anxiety had increased, and out came the
attitude. By this morning, he’d been sullen, difficult to rouse. He “lost” the
green Two Wings T-shirt Logan had provided, groused about the jeans and sneakers
his volunteer training sheet called for, and presented himself at the breakfast
table with a scowl and no appetite.
She had a feeling Logan was going to regret his decision to bring Sean on board.
“See?” Sean shoved his car door shut, then looked around the empty parking lot.
“Told you he forgot. There’s no one here.”
“Maybe we’re early.”
But she saw his point. Two Wings seemed deserted. The only sounds were the
sawing of unseen crickets, the croaking of invisible frogs and the occasional
melodic whistle of birds that flitted between the trees.
The ticket window, still unmarked awaiting the formal opening of the sanctuary
to the public, was firmly shut, reflecting back only the blue sky and the
ancient trees.
“He’s probably in the clinic,” she said, trying to remember how to get to the
main part of the sanctuary. In the eighteen months since Logan Cathcart had
moved in, she’d only been here once, the day she came to apologize for Sean’s
vandalism.
She knew the general layout of the land, because she used to visit often when it
was owned by Logan’s great-aunt, Doreen Cathcart. Doreen had been eccentric, but
a kind woman. She’d never liked Harrison, who thought her land was wasted and
wanted to buy it. But she’d always welcomed Nora and the boys.
The house was over on the western edge of the property. On the other side,
Doreen had built an odd little amphitheater. She’d hoped to turn the whole
estate into a performance arts center, but the dream died with the amphitheater
when the money ran out.
“He might be back where those big enclosures are,” she said, trying to orient
herself now. “I went down that little boardwalk, off to the left.”
He seemed unsure whether he should admit that he knew where that was.
She waited.
“Okay, fine. It’s back here.” Sean moved to the left, where the wooden boardwalk
snaked through the trees.
He obviously knew his way well, and she wondered how often he might have been
here. He’d been caught twice now, but was that all?
A chill crept through her as she watched him walk confidently through the
heavily wooded maze, never hesitating when the boardwalk forked off in different
directions.
How many lies had he been telling her? Would she have to take all freedom away
from him? Was there to be no more fun, no more riding his bike with his friend
Paddy James, or helping the ranch hands with the horses? Would she have to peek
into his room every few minutes when he played video games, or did his homework,
or even while he slept?
Would she ever be able to trust him again?
As they walked, birdcalls grew louder, and after a couple of hundred yards, the
trees thinned and the path ended in a large open area filled with huge,
screened-in wood pens.
And Nora saw that Two Wings was far from empty.
It bustled with life.
The enclosures were filled with hawks and eagles and owls and vultures. That
didn’t surprise her. She’d seen them last week.
But, unlike last week, the place was teeming with human life, too.
At least half a dozen people moved purposefully about, ignoring the concrete
paths and taking shortcuts across the sand and grass. They lugged hoses and bags
of feed, rakes and brooms and boards. One man carried a large hawklike bird on
his gloved hand.
“Sean. Good. You made it.”
Logan’s voice brought Nora out of her dazed surprise. She’d completely
misunderstood the scale of the place. Harrison had always been so dismissive
that she’d assumed Two Wings must be some kind of dilettante’s hobby.
But this was no hobby. This was a mission.
Logan nodded at Nora. “Thanks for bringing him. See you at eleven?”
She felt Sean tense up beside her. She smiled at Logan, hoping he’d understand.
“I’m sorry to be the hovering mother, but could you show me a little of what
Sean will be doing while he’s here?”
Logan didn’t exactly look delighted, though he was too nice a man to refuse, no
matter how busy he was.
“No problem,” he said. “But remember it’s not glamorous.” He held out his hands,
which were stained and gritty. “We’ve been spreading mulch. To tell you the
truth, I’m going to be darn glad to let Sean take over.”
“Mulch?” Sean scowled. “I thought I’d be working with the birds.”
“Sean,” Nora admonished. “You’ll do whatever Mr. Cathcart—”
“No,” Logan said bluntly. “You won’t be working with the birds yet. You won’t be
doing anything alone. We don’t take regular volunteers under the age of
eighteen, so you’re kind of a special case. Todd or Matt will work with you.
They’re good. You’ll learn a lot from them.”
“I think I can clean out a bunch of cages.” Sean frowned. “I’m not an idiot.”
“No, but you’re a beginner. Beginners make mistakes, and either they get hurt,
or the birds do.”
Sean’s mouth was still set hard, but after a couple of seconds of trying to
stare Logan down, he blinked first. He lowered his gaze, toeing the sand with
his sneaker.
“Yeah,” he said under his breath. “Fine.”
Nora’s cheeks burned, but Logan didn’t seem overly concerned about his new
volunteer’s attitude. Maybe he’d expected nothing better. That was probably why
he’d been so reluctant to let Sean participate. He undoubtedly knew he’d have to
assign someone to follow the boy around like a nanny, to be sure he didn’t do
something dumb.
Or just plain run away.
Logan might have said he didn’t want a donation from her, but she suddenly saw
that it would take a mighty big check to compensate for the hassle Sean was
likely going to be.
Scattered among the large bird enclosures were several small, neat, officelike
buildings. Logan began leading them toward the one marked Clinic. Off to the
side of that building, a couple of teenagers were scattering handfuls of dark
chips that smelled like pine-bark mulch.
“Hey, Mark. Todd.” Logan waved toward the teens. “Come meet Sean—”
But at that moment a young girl’s head poked out of the clinic door. “Logan, the
vet’s on the phone. He’s in a hurry, but he says Fritz is ready, and he needs to
talk to you about Punk.”
Logan nodded. “Thanks, Dolly. I’ll take it.” He looked at Nora. She thought it
might be time to depart. She was about to open her mouth and say so when he
suddenly cocked his head. “Want to see one of our permanent residents?”
She looked at Sean, but he deliberately turned his head, just to show how
unimpressed he was.
She smiled at Logan apologetically. “If it’s not too much trouble, that would be
very cool.”
The clinic was small, more like a condo kitchenette than a vet’s office. When
all four of them bundled inside, and Logan made quick introductions, there
wasn’t much room to spare.
She usually avoided being this close, physically, to Logan. She never sat next
to him at meetings, or gave him the same casual hug she might have given any
other acquaintance she met on the street.
It was partly because of Harrison’s suspicions. But it was also a
self-protective choice. As absurd as it sounded for a thirty-two-year-old
housewife, Logan Cathcart gave her butterflies.
She wasn’t really sure why. Though he was amazing to look at, with his dark
hair, his intense blue eyes and his six feet of lean muscle, she was completely
immune to a hundred men equally well-endowed.
But Logan’s masculinity obviously transmitted on her frequency, and she wasn’t
sure she ever completely concealed the jitters. The best bet had seemed to be
maintaining a cordial distance.
Today, though, in such cramped quarters, she didn’t have much choice. And, with
her emotions so caught up in Sean’s problems, anything as frivolous as
butterflies seemed unlikely. She just tried to stay out of anyone’s way.
“Kind of messy, isn’t it?” Sean let his scornful gaze drift over the cupboards
and bookshelves that lined the walls, overflowing with medical tomes and binders
from various federal and state agencies.
“Sean,” she said, her voice stiff with warning.
Logan chuckled as he took the phone from Dolly. “Yeah, it’s a mess, all right.
Maybe that would be a good job for you tomorrow.”
In the corner, hand puppets that looked like birds had been tossed into a
basket. Sean went over to inspect them, but tossed each one back indifferently,
as if they didn’t pass the test. Dolly ignored him, fiddling with instruments
that looked like tiny forceps.
Logan’s phone call was brief, a few monosyllabic words that seemed to indicate
satisfaction. Apparently the vet’s news was good, though Nora wondered how often
that was the case. Surely not all the birds brought here found happy endings.
She looked at Sean, his tense, bony shoulders and his unruly red hair that stood
up in a tuft at the part. For a minute she saw him as another of Logan’s wounded
birds, and wondered whether he would be one of the lucky ones.
“Sorry about that.” Logan joined them at the counter. “The vets we use are all
volunteers, so I had to catch him while he was free. Dolly, I’ll weigh Gulliver
today. If you could make sure the status sheets in the pens are ready, that
would be great.”
The young woman, whose hair was brown with purple tips, and whose nose was
decorated with a serious piece of hardware, smiled amiably.
“Sure thing, boss,” she said, waving at Nora and Sean before skipping out the
door and down the path toward the larger enclosures.
Logan moved to the farthest countertop, where cages stood in rows next to large
scales and microscopes and first aid supplies.
“Gulliver is one of the birds we’re going to use for education,” Logan said as
he opened a large gray cage and peeked in. “Hey, buddy,” he said to whatever
occupant waited inside. “Time to see how fat you’re getting, living the life of
leisure.”
He put his hand in slowly, and when he pulled it out, he held the most adorable
piece of brown-and-white fluff Nora had ever seen. She smiled instinctively, and
when she glanced at Sean, she saw that his scowl had deepened, which she knew
meant he was working hard to suppress his curiosity.
“Oh, how darling,” she said. “Sean, look! It’s a baby owl!”
Sean moved dramatically away, sighing to communicate his boredom. But he
remained angled, so that he could still glimpse the little bird out of the
corners of his eyes.
Of course he was fascinated. How could he not be?
The owl was so cute Nora had to laugh. About six inches long, it fit neatly in
the palm of Logan’s large hand.
And then the hand itself was almost too much of a distraction. It was definitely
not a rancher’s hand, with its graceful, long lines. She was surprised to see
the elegant fingers tipped in calluses.
Sean made an impatient sound as he toyed with the instruments on the counter.
“I thought,” he said, “that you weren’t supposed to let them see people much, so
that they don’t imprint on humans.”
Nora gave her son a hard look, and she was glad to see that he flushed,
obviously aware that his tone had been out of bounds. What made him think he
could teach Logan his own business?
“Been reading up?” Logan nodded, as if he approved. “You’re right. For a baby,
we’d have to wear the puppet, or even the whole outfit. But Gulliver here isn’t
a baby. He’s a fully grown Eastern screech owl, and unfortunately somebody
already let him imprint on humans before he got to us.”
“But he’s so small,” Nora said. “He’s fully grown?”
“I know.” Logan scratched the side of the bird’s head. The owl seemed quite
content to lounge in his hand, blinking its large, shiny eyes at him sleepily.
“They don’t get much bigger than this. And they don’t screech, either. Weird,
huh?”
Sean was no longer pretending not to watch. His hands were fisted at chest
level, as if he had to force himself not to reach out and touch the intricately
patterned feathers.
Nora met Logan’s gaze over her son’s head. She wondered if he knew how
embarrassed she was by Sean’s behavior.
Or how worried.
But she couldn’t read anything in Logan’s blue eyes except a polite patience.
“I should probably get going,” she said.
She should. She had a million things to do, and she was postponing the moment
when Sean would have to adjust. Maybe, when the safety net that Mommy provided
was gone, he’d settle down and behave.
If he didn’t, she knew it wouldn’t be long before Logan kicked his surly
attitude out of here. Two Wings wasn’t occupational therapy for bratty boys.
This was, as she’d observed earlier, a mission.
Logan Cathcart cared about this place and these birds. He wouldn’t waste much
time on a nasty kid who didn’t understand that.
So she needed to let them get to work.
She moved toward the door.
“I’ll be back at eleven, Sean, all right?” She put her hand on the knob.
“I guess.” Sean stood stiffly.
She opened the door, looking over her shoulder. To her surprise, Logan was
watching her, his hand gently holding the ball of fluff in place on the scale.
When she hesitated, his eyes softened, and he nodded briefly. The gesture was
oddly comforting.
It’ll be okay, that nod seemed to say. I’ll take care of him.
She might be imagining it. God knew she’d imagined a lot of things about Logan
Cathcart over the past eighteen months. Things that weren’t real, and never
would be.
But, as she let the door shut behind her and made her way back to the parking
lot, she realized she felt a whole lot better anyhow.

SEAN’S FIRST WEEK was a disaster.
It was a battle to get him to Two Wings every time. He complained bitterly,
inventing a hundred obstacles. A test he absolutely had to study for. A
blistered finger. An extra Little League practice.
Somehow, Nora held her ground, though when she presented him to Vic Downing, who
seemed to have taken over nanny duty, she felt as if she were handing off a
piece of dynamite, set to blow at any minute.
She never saw Logan, though she would have liked to thank him, and get his read
on Sean’s chances of settling in.
Logan’s absence had to be deliberate. She assumed he didn’t want to have to say
things that would hurt her. And he didn’t want to have to lie.
Every day when she picked Sean up, then drove him home in sour silence, she
expected a call from Logan before the night was over.
He might try to gloss it over, if he felt kind. He might create some excuse that
didn’t sound as if he were rejecting her son.
Or maybe he’d just tell it straight. They couldn’t handle Sean’s tempers or his
arrogance.
Either way, she couldn’t blame him. Sean’s behavior had never been worse. He
obviously hated the menial tasks Logan assigned him, and he resented being
bossed around by the senior volunteers.
But, amazingly, the call never came.
The following Monday, when the boys were at school, she headed into town to
proof the programs she’d designed for Jolie’s spring concert.
Because Harrison had insisted she stay at home with the boys instead of working,
Nora had always been vigorously involved with the PTA. Over the years, she’d
become fairly decent at designing flyers, newsletters, brochures and concert
programs. The other parents considered her the go-to person for such things, and
she welcomed the creative outlet.
Jasper’s was the only printer in Eastcreek proper, so she knew she might have to
wait in line.
But she hadn’t expected to see Logan Cathcart standing at the counter.
She spotted him through the window as she fed the parking meter. In the past,
she probably would have walked on by, and come back for the programs another
time. Avoid those butterflies, whenever possible.
But she’d waited too long to find him, to thank him for giving Sean a chance.
She pushed open the door. The tinkling sound of the bell caused both Logan and
Jasper, who were studying something on the counter, to look up.
“Hi, Jasper,” she said. And then there were the butterflies, right on cue. She
took a breath and smiled. “Hi, Logan.”
Though Logan smiled back, he looked oddly tense. She advanced toward the
counter, telling herself not to take it personally. She didn’t know what had put
that stiffness in his posture. It might have nothing to do with either her or
Sean. Maybe something had gone wrong with his print order.
“You here to proof the programs, Nora?” Jasper, ordinarily the most laid-back of
men, looked a bit distracted, too.
“That’s okay,” she said. “No rush. I can wait until you and Logan are finished.”
Jasper shrugged. “We pretty much are finished, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Logan. I
should have called you when Nell’s file didn’t show up.”
The printer looked back at Nora. “Is Nell Bollinger okay, do you know? She was
supposed to send over a flyer for Logan’s open house, but it never came. I’ve
been trying to call her, but I just get voice mail.”
“I haven’t talked to Nell in a while,” she said. She wasn’t surprised, though,
that Nell was volunteering for Two Wings. Nell had spent her life working for
worthy causes, and even at eighty she wasn’t slowing down. “I’ll try to find
out, if that’ll help.”
Logan shook his head. “It’s no big deal. I’m sure I can patch something
together.” He patted the countertop. “I’ll e-mail you later in the week, Jasper.
Good to see you, Nora.”
And just like that, he was headed for the door.
She didn’t have time to think it through or worry whether she looked a fool. If
she was going to talk to him, she was going to have to chase him out onto the
sidewalk. And so she did.
He turned when he heard her footsteps behind him. His face was, as always,
polite but remote.
“Logan,” she said. “I’m sorry to hold you up.”
“No problem.” He didn’t wear a cowboy hat, as so many of Eastcreek’s men did. He
faced the sun, which turned his eyes the incandescent blue of a butterfly wing.
And speaking of butterflies…
She was suddenly trying to swallow past a swarm of them. How did he do that to
her? He wasn’t flirting, and neither was she. And yet suddenly the air hummed
with awareness.
“I wondered if you could tell me how Sean is doing,” she said. “I’m trying to
let him handle his responsibility to you on his own, but naturally I’m
concerned.”
He hesitated only a second or so. And then he shrugged. “He works hard. I can’t
say he seems thrilled about it, but he does it.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “I wondered, because, at home, at least, he’s
still a little…lukewarm about it.”
He chuckled. “He’d have to go a way to reach lukewarm.”
“I know.” She sighed. “But that first night, when you brought him home, he
seemed almost enthusiastic. I was disappointed that his attitude changed so
much.”
“Me, too.” He had his keys in his pocket, and he shifted them, making a jingling
sound that hinted he had somewhere to be. “Look, I wouldn’t worry too much about
it, Nora. He’s insecure. I guess that’s to be expected.”
“But why should he be insecure about working at Two Wings? I saw how you
welcomed him. I’d say all of you have been extremely generous and patient,
considering the damage he did.”
He frowned. He messed with his keys a little more, as if he’d decided to speak
his mind.
“Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’d say Sean’s having some serious identity
problems.”
She tilted her head, confused. “What does that mean?”
“I guess it was pretty heady, being Harrison Archer’s son. Big man in town. Heir
to all he surveyed. But now…now he doesn’t really know whether being Harrison
Archer’s son was a good thing or not. I’d be willing to bet the other kids have
said some things.”
She thought of Tad Rutherford’s shame-faced silence, the day Sean broke the
guitar in the music room. Oh, yes, the other kids had undoubtedly been cruel.
“But surely no one there—”
“Of course not. Nobody at Two Wings gives a damn who Sean’s father was, or what
he did. All we care about is how hard you work, and how much you know about the
birds. But Sean’s a newbie, and that’s how we treat him.”
“I see,” she said, hearing the ring of truth in his words, and hating it. She
wished Logan had known Sean before Harrison’s death. Her son hadn’t always been
like this. Nora had come from a very modest background, and had always worked
hard to make sure her boys weren’t snobs.
On the surface, anyhow, Logan’s assessment was dead-on. Lately Sean had
developed an unbecoming hauteur, and it didn’t help that it was clearly feigned.
His pride was easily pricked, as if it were no thicker than a soap bubble. He
bragged to his friends about how much the new front door cost, the new flowers,
the repairs to the fountain, though, ironically, the other children couldn’t
have been less interested.
He spoke of being an Archer in the same tone Evelyn used—a tone that had always
made Nora’s flesh creep—as if the name itself wore a purple robe and a golden
crown.
It wasn’t Sean. It wasn’t a healthy or helpful reaction to the fear and
heartbreak and confusion of this past year.
And it had to stop. Whatever they’d been through, she couldn’t coddle him any
longer, not to the point that she let this arrogance seep in. Left unchecked, it
could permanently stain the fibers of his personality.
She was intensely glad, suddenly, that Sean had been forced into an environment
where he was a nobody. Logan Cathcart was an eminently sensible man, with no
airs or affectations. A plain nicer man, really, than Harrison, for all his good
qualities, had ever been.
If Logan would allow Sean to watch him in action, to make him a role model, it
would do her son a world of good.
“Thank you, Logan,” she said. She held out her hand.
He hesitated. But then, because it would obviously have been very strange to
leave her standing there, on a public sidewalk, with an empty hand outstretched,
he took it.
“You’re welcome.” His hand was warm, his grip firm but neutral. “What for?”
“For everything.” She heard the thickness of emotion in her voice. “For not
giving up on Sean. For not hating him, even when he’s being hateful.”
He extricated his hand gracefully, somehow managing not to make it feel like a
rejection.
“Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, Nora.” His gaze was cool, his smile wry. “I
don’t want to be a buzz kill, but it’s only been a week.”
CHAPTER FIVE
TWO DAYS LATER, LOGAN sat in his office, staring at an open e-mail on his
computer screen.
It was from Nora. After checking with Nell Bollinger who, it turned out, was
quite sick and wouldn’t be able to keep her promise to design the open house
brochure, Nora had sent over some mock-ups. She’d like to help, she said. He was
spending so much time with Sean, the e-mail read. She’d like to even the balance
a little bit by helping with the open house. She’d spent years in the PTA doing
this kind of thing.
She wasn’t bragging. Her sample brochure was good. Clearly she’d already put in
a lot of hours. The graphics were interesting, the layout appealing, the text
sharp.
Then she’d added a paragraph at the end of the e-mail, casually asking whether
he could use any help with the education arm of the sanctuary. She’d always
planned to be a teacher, she explained, and she had some ideas that might work.
She listed a couple, as examples. Very intriguing.
Too bad he was going to have to say no thanks. He’d vowed not to let this Sean
thing invite all kinds of intimacies that could only lead to trouble. No
blurring of the property lines between Bull’s Eye and Two Wings, either
literally or figuratively.
He hit Reply and then stared at the blinking cursor.
But, vow or no vow, his fingers couldn’t find the right words. When you ran a
rescue mission like this one, saying no to any help felt insane.
And besides, she was right. He had lost valuable hours because of Sean. Not his
own hours, of course. He’d kept a safe distance. He wasn’t interested in being a
surrogate father, and he didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.
But Matt and Todd, the volunteers he’d assigned to keep an eye on the boy,
reported that the kid was a real handful. A constant pain in the butt who
thought he was too good for grunt work.
Major flaw. Around Two Wings, ninety percent of everything was grunt-and-sweat
work. And with the open house only about four weeks away, Logan needed every
available volunteer sweating with enthusiasm. Taking on a brat who needed
babysitting had been a really dumb move.
He looked at the attachment again. The brochure she’d designed was perfect. It
would save him a fortune in something—either time spent designing one himself,
or cash spent at the printer’s, having them create something half as nice.
But, open that door a chink…
Crap. He couldn’t sit here all day, dithering like a barnyard chicken. He closed
the e-mail and decided to decide later.
Right now, his conscience was nagging at him. Maybe his distance from Sean was a
bit much. Time to track the kid down and see how he was settling in.
Vic should know. Logan found his manager in the clinic, going through records.
“Let’s see… His Highness is supposed to be emptying the trash bins,” Vic said
with a sardonic air that didn’t bode well.
“Supposed to be?” Logan groaned. “Isn’t he supposed to be pretty much handcuffed
to Todd?”
“Well,” his manager said defensively, flipping the binder shut with a bang,
“Todd’s out sick, and we don’t have anyone else available for hand-holding.
We’re running about a week behind schedule as it is.”
Logan cursed under his breath. “Damn it, Vic. The kid’s a flight risk, remember?
There’s not enough insurance in the world to cover our asses if he wanders off.”
Vic frowned. “So send him home. I mean it, boss. Get rid of him. We’re keeping
him away from the birds, but still. He’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Can’t,” Logan said, hoping he sounded more matter-of-fact than he felt. “But he
goes home in half an hour, right? I’ll keep an eye on him till five, then I’ll
send him in to wait for his mom. You’ll be here, right?”
“I’ll be here till doomsday.” Vic pulled another heavy binder from the shelf.
“Send him in, and I’ll put him to work shredding old files. He’ll love that.”
Logan shut the clinic door quickly, to keep the air-conditioning in. Wouldn’t
you know this would be the hottest March in twenty years, when they all had to
work like dogs?
Over by the eagle enclosure, he saw three of his volunteers sprawled out in the
shade of a hickory tree, shirts off, cheeks pink, water bottles strewn on the
grass. Though there were a hundred chores screaming to be handled, he didn’t
have the heart to complain.
Besides, he needed to find Sean. He wondered how long the kid had been without
supervision.
He walked the paths quickly, swinging the lids of the bins as he passed, noting
with relief that they all seemed to have fresh, empty bags. Sean must have taken
his assignment fairly seriously, and he should be easy to spot, since he’d be
dragging around a huge black sack of trash.
Sure enough, Logan found him at the owl enclosure.
The largest of their cages, it was also the most interesting. Shaped like a
giant doughnut, with an ancient live oak growing up right through the hole in
the middle, the enclosure was shady, mysterious and complicated. Rafters and
branches, perches and wooden houses and nesting boxes crisscrossed the area, and
the owls themselves were simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Their strange,
noble silence made them initially hard to spot until your eyes learned what to
look for.
As predicted, the gigantic, unpleasantly aromatic garbage sack was right behind
Sean, deposited on the sidewalk while he pressed himself against the screening,
staring into the enclosure.
Logan was pretty sure the boy hadn’t heard his approach. Sean’s posture, the
tension in the fingers pressed against the screening, emanated an intense
curiosity that Logan could feel from ten feet away.
“Hey, Sean,” Logan said casually. The same tone he might take with an edgy hawk.
Sean twisted his head, and the guilt that moved across his features didn’t last
long. It was replaced by that characteristic lift of the chin and the steady,
impassive gaze that looked remarkably like his father’s.
“Did Mr. Downing send you to check up on me? I’ve been doing the trash. I
haven’t been goofing off. I just have one bin left.”
“Good.” Logan didn’t follow up on that. Instead he moved inside the rails that
had been set to keep the public at a safe distance and joined Sean at the
screening. “How’s everybody doing in there today?”
“Fine.” Sean shrugged. “I guess.”
The enclosure was full of owls—a couple of Eastern screech, a pair of barns and
at least six barred. “Hard to tell with these guys, isn’t it?” Even Logan needed
a minute to locate the eerily silent birds, which were lined up, two by two, on
the upper rafters. “They’re pretty cryptic.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Sean frowned. “Does it mean, like, secretive?”
“Yeah. That’s a good word for it. They keep their feelings to themselves. I
guess that’s why they’re so soothing to be around.”
Sean nodded absently, as if he had to think about it. “That’s true,” he agreed,
finally. “They’re so calm. They let you forget about everything and be calm,
too. That’s why I like to look at them.”
Poor kid. Logan, who sometimes came out here for the very same reason, felt
something soften inside him. Behind that steely, arrogant attitude lurked a
bewildered kid who was carrying around memories that would keep most grown-ups
awake at night.
But he knew if he made even the slightest sound that hinted at pity, Sean would
retreat into his favorite fortress—arrogance. So he just kept watching the owls,
who blinked back as if they understood.
After a couple of minutes, Sean turned to look at Logan.
“Mr. Cathcart?”
Logan smiled. “Why don’t you call me Logan? Everyone else does.”
Sean nodded. “Okay.” But he didn’t do it. “Mr. Cathcart, I think one of them is
sick.”
“Sick?”
“Yeah.” Sean glanced back into the enclosure. “Maybe.”
“Which one?”
“That one on the right, on the first rail up there. He always sits next to the
little one.”
Logan peered into the shadows. “That’s Hamlet. He’s an Eastern screech. Why do
you think he’s sick?”
“I don’t know. I watch them every day. He’s my favorite. He used to move more.
And he isn’t very steady, not like the other one. Sometimes I’m afraid he might
fall off the rail.”
Logan watched the owl carefully. He didn’t see anything odd, but he didn’t
dismiss Sean’s gut instinct. He’d seen many trained volunteers spot a tiny
alteration in a bird’s manner, or eating habits, or mood, and end up saving its
life. If Hamlet did have something…maybe trichomonas…catching it early would
really help.
He made a quick decision. “He might have a parasite. It could give him sores on
the roof of his mouth, and he might not be eating enough. Why don’t we go get
Vic, and see if we can take a look?”
Sean’s fingers tightened on the screening. He didn’t even turn his head, as if
he didn’t dare look at Logan and somehow make him change his mind.
“Me?” His voice was small. “You want me to help with the owl?”
“Yeah,” Logan said. “If there’s something wrong, you’re the one who found it.
That means you have good instincts.” He picked up the garbage sack and slung it
over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get this done before your mom shows up and
you have to go home.”
But they didn’t make it to the clinic. Halfway down the winding path, they met
Vic, red-faced and out of breath.
“There’s a fire,” he said without preamble, his voice tight. “Lightning struck a
tree over in the woods near Little Creek Estates. Dodie called to warn us. She
says we should get ready.”
Logan cursed softly. Dodie, the dispatcher for Eastcreek’s fire and police,
volunteered at Two Wings every weekend, so she knew what this meant for the
sanctuary. Those woods were full of owls, hawks and kestrels. They’d all been
run out of their original habitats back in January, when the Little Creek
builders had mowed down fifty acres of majestic trees for a tacky new
subdivision.
Now fire. Trees downed, nests destroyed. Smoke inhalation, burned wings,
orphaned babies. Depending on how fast it spread, the devastation could be
terrible.
How many, he wondered, would they be able to save?
Sean touched his arm. “I can stay late, if you want. I can help.”
Vic made a noise.
Sean glared at him, then turned back to Logan. “I’ll do anything,” he said. His
eyes were intense, the green flecks burning.
“Okay.” Logan put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “But you know what Vic is
thinking, right? He’s thinking you’ll be in the way. We haven’t got time to mess
with attitude today. If you stay, you have to man up. You get that?”
Sean nodded. “I get it.”
“Okay, then, go use the clinic phone to call your mom. Make sure it’s okay with
her.”
Sean was still nodding. He started to run.
“Wait—” Logan made a last-minute decision. He was going to need help worse than
ever now. As they said, beggars couldn’t be choosers. In his case, beggars
couldn’t be cowards. “And tell your mom something for me, okay? Tell her I
appreciate her offer to help, and the answer is yes.”

WHEN NORA ENTERED Jolie’s music room, holding Harry by the hand and the spring
concert programs under her arm, the place was a mess.
Oblivious to the chaos, Harry ran instantly to the computer, on which Jolie had
follow-along music software he loved. He couldn’t wait until he was in first
grade and had enrichment classes like music regularly on his schedule.
Nora was more in tune with the nuances of the room, and she noticed that Jolie
was flushed, uncharacteristically disheveled. She seemed to be emptying her desk
drawers into half a dozen cardboard boxes.
“What’s going on?” Nora moved one of the boxes an inch to the left, so that she
could drop the programs on the desk. She smiled. “If you’re quitting because you
can’t listen to any more of Sean’s awful guitar, don’t worry. I’m letting him
use my old one, and he’s promised to practice every day. He should learn that
piece any minute.”
To her surprise, Jolie didn’t laugh. Her face was grim, and she continued to
stack sheet music into one of the boxes.
“Not quitting. Never quitting. Can’t quit. Some people need their paychecks,
remember?” She slammed a book of piano music on top of the stack. “Some people
can’t afford to swan around donating their time to their favorite charities.
Some of us are the charities.”
Nora felt herself flush as the barb hit home, but mostly she was worried. It
wasn’t like Jolie to be so spiky. Besides, Jolie knew that Nora would dearly
love to be working for a paycheck instead of “swanning” around, trying to find
something meaningful to do.
She put out a hand to stop Jolie’s fevered stacking. “What’s happened?”
The other woman blew strands of damp blond hair out of her face and then
squeezed her eyes shut, clearly searching for calm.
“Darn it, Nora, I’m sorry.” She dragged the blue band out of her ponytail,
scraped the hair into a neat bunch, then wound the band back around it. “It’s
been a bad day. No. Make that a bad week.”
Nora pulled out one of the student chairs and sat down. She didn’t have long,
because she had to pick Sean up at Two Wings in half an hour. But she’d never
seen Jolie look this…disturbed. Not even the day Allison Eckles found a scorpion
in her French horn.
She checked to be sure Harry was still tapping the keyboard intently. Then she
patted the chair next to her. “Tell me. Maybe I can help.”
Jolie laughed without any real mirth, but she took the chair and looked better
for it.
“I don’t think you can help this time,” she said. “This time you’re actually the
problem.”
Nora’s eyes widened.
“Well, not you, technically,” Jolie amended. “Your sister-in-law.”
“Evelyn?”
Jolie lowered her voice, glancing at Harry, though he was obviously in his own
world.
“Yeah. Evelyn. She came in last Friday. She wanted to talk to me about Sean. She
said she’d heard there’d been an incident with another student in my class, and
his guitar ended up broken.”
Nora’s cheeks felt cold. “How could she possibly know about that? I didn’t tell
her, and I know you wouldn’t. Surely that’s not the kind of thing that is
discussed outside…”
But then she realized how naive that was.
How had Sean’s aunt heard about it? Ha. Evelyn Archer Gellner was connected to
everyone in Eastcreek. She was a fifth-generation Texan who had married a
tenth-generation Texan, and if she wanted to know something, she could always
find someone to tell her.
Jeanne Foster, the principal of Eastcreek Elementary, played bridge with Evelyn
every Saturday night. Why look any further than that?
“Yeah,” Jolie said, folding her arms across her chest. “It sucks, doesn’t it?
Can’t tell you how many privacy laws that violates, but who could prove it?”
“But what did she want from you?”
“She wanted details. She wanted my assessment of Sean’s behavior, and his
emotional health.”
“My God.” Nora’s hands fisted.
“Right.” If possible, Jolie looked even angrier than Nora was beginning to feel.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her that I was terrifically sorry, but that simply wouldn’t be possible,
since she wasn’t Sean’s custodial guardian. I said that I couldn’t, in fact,
even confirm that I knew anyone named Sean, and if she needed details perhaps
she’d better return to the rumormonger who had told her about it in the first
place and request the rest of the dirt.”
In spite of herself, Nora laughed out loud. “Oh, good for you, Jolie. I wish I
could have seen her face.”
“No. Not good for me.” Jolie gazed at the chaos around her. “Bad for me. It was
gratifying, temporarily. But there’s always a price. Ms. Foster informed me
yesterday that my music classes will be moved out to the new portable. You know
the portable, right? The one with the unit air conditioner that roars but never
cools, the floor that creaks and the acoustics from hell?”
“Oh, Jolie.” Nora’s heart sank. No one could appreciate music in
that…dilapidated trailer. She didn’t even know what to say. “You think Evelyn…”
Jolie raised her eyebrows. “No one is connecting the dots, you understand, but
I’m not a big believer in coincidence.”
She stood, picking up another box. “So, if you really want to help, grab the
reeds and mouthpieces out of that cabinet, would you? I’ve got a lot of packing
to do.”
CHAPTER SIX
NORA WAS HORRIFIED to hear about the fire. She prayed it would be quickly
extinguished, with minimal damage all around. Selfishly, though, she was glad
Sean would be staying late at Two Wings today. She didn’t want him to get caught
in the storm she knew was brewing.
Evelyn was on her way.
Harry was no problem. He was thrilled to hear that he could watch an unexpected
hour of cartoons before dinner, and he didn’t question his good fortune. An
imaginative child, he was already so lost in the giant talking pelican’s
adventures that he wouldn’t notice if Nora and Evelyn started tearing down the
rafters.
Nora hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but she was certainly mad enough to do some
damage.
And Evelyn, who wasn’t accustomed to being summoned to Bull’s Eye, clearly
wasn’t exactly feeling sunny, either.
Evelyn had entered moments ago, coming in through the side loggia. She never
knocked. It was one of her little gestures that said the house should have been
hers, not Nora’s. And Nora never asked her to. It was her own gesture, one that
said she understood.
Milly ruled the kitchen at this hour, and Harry claimed the family room, so Nora
led the way out to the courtyard, where they might get half a chance at privacy.
Evelyn didn’t sit, though Nora invited her to.
“What is it?” The older woman stood ramrod straight. “You know Ginger is going
to drop her litter any day now. I should be there.”
“I won’t keep you long,” Nora said. It showed how upset she was that she had
actually forgotten that Evelyn’s terrier was about to have puppies. It was the
event around which Evelyn’s entire life pivoted. “I just thought we should have
this conversation face-to-face.”
“Is it Sean?” Evelyn tsked, as if she’d expected this. “What has he done now?”
“Sean’s fine. It’s not about him. It’s about Jolie Harper.”
The older woman tilted her head. “Who?”
“Jolie Harper.” The innocent act didn’t fool Nora. “Sean’s music teacher.”
“Ah.” Setting her purse on the bricks, Evelyn arranged herself comfortably on
one of the wicker chairs, as if she could relax now that she knew it wasn’t
anything truly important. “Yes. Miss Harper. Poor woman. She’s in a little over
her head with that job, isn’t she?”
Nora stood behind the lounger, so that she could grip the back. It made a nice
shield. “No, as a matter of fact, Jolie isn’t over her head. She’s one of the
most capable, talented teachers I’ve ever met.”
Evelyn lifted one shoulder. “Well, she is a friend of yours, so I suppose you
would be defensive of her.”
God, Evelyn was an expert at trivializing Nora’s opinions. She’d been a little
more subtle while Harrison was alive, but since his death she’d pulled out all
the stops.
Nora understood that Evelyn’s attitude was partly a result of her pain over
Harrison’s death, which made her more poisonous. Nora could empathize with that.
But she also suspected that Evelyn felt free to show her true feelings because
Nora was boxed in.
Both women knew that the boys needed security. No drama. No big changes. They
needed to rebuild their confidence after the horror of this past year.
Evelyn knew that, no matter how unpleasant she was to Nora, shutting her out of
the boys’ lives was unthinkable. Nora would never make them endure another loss.
“This isn’t about friendship, Evelyn. It’s about what’s fair. And it’s not fair
for Jolie Harper to be punished just because she wouldn’t break the rules to
please you.”
Evelyn smiled, as if Nora had said something ridiculous. “Punished? That sounds
a bit dramatic. If something has happened to Miss Harper, I don’t see how that
can conceivably be laid at my door.”
God, Nora was sick of that supercilious tone.
All of a sudden, she realized that she was very, very tired of being rational.
For so long now, she’d tried to be the calm one, the practical one, the one who
held everything together after Harrison fell apart.
She had thought she’d done well, but it must have taken a subterranean toll,
because suddenly she just wanted to scream.
In the family room, the talking pelican was dancing to “I Believe I Can Fly,”
the signal that the program was almost over. Somehow, the thought of Harry,
cuddled on the sofa with his cartoon-patterned pillow and his muscle-bound
action figure, managed to stop her from losing it.
She shut her eyes hard, clamped her teeth together.
“I do lay it at your door, Evelyn. I think you pulled strings to get Jolie
banished to a portable classroom, where she will have to work twice as hard to
get half the results.”
Evelyn laughed. “Good heavens, Nora. I think you overestimate my power. As well
as my interest in Miss Harper.”
“Maybe.” Nora paused. “But perhaps you underestimate mine.”
Evelyn smiled again. “Fair enough. Still, I’m not sure what was so important
that I had to leave Ginger and rush over here. I’d think a simple telephone call
would have been adequate if you merely wanted to accuse me of meddling.”
This was getting them nowhere. It wouldn’t help the boys, and it wouldn’t even
help Jolie.
“Evelyn, look.” In an effort to get past the sniping, Nora kept her voice
measured and low. “If you and I are having problems, shouldn’t we try to work
them out ourselves? If you want to know something about Sean, don’t you think
you should ask me?”
Evelyn stood with a snap. Her ramrod posture warned Nora that they’d reached the
line in the sand.
“I shouldn’t have to ask you,” Evelyn said, her eyes narrow and her words sharp.
“I shouldn’t have to request information from total strangers about the health
of my own nephews. Am I not a part of this family? Am I not their blood? The
only Archer blood they have left?”
“Evvie, of course you’re a part—”
“If Harrison were alive, he wouldn’t allow you to exclude me like this. Of
course, if Harrison were alive, I wouldn’t be so concerned. He knew how to raise
an Archer.”
Nora lifted her chin. “And I don’t?”
“You?” The older woman snorted elegantly. “You haven’t got a clue.”
After waiting a moment for a response that didn’t come, Evelyn picked up her
purse and slung it over her shoulder. She headed toward the arched doorway that
led to the front yard.
At the last minute, she turned slowly around.
“Let me be very clear,” she said. “I don’t give a badger’s backside where Jolie
Harper teaches her students to plunk the piano. What I do care about is having
full access to my nephews. I’d suggest that you inform the school that they’re
free to talk to me about the boys at any time.”
“That sounds like a threat, Evelyn. And if I don’t?”
“Miss Harper said she couldn’t talk to me because I didn’t have any legal
rights.” Evelyn shook her head slowly. “Isn’t that typical? No mention of blood
rights, or family rights. Nothing about moral rights. Legal rights, that’s all
they care about. So I was thinking. It might be time for me to look into getting
some.”

THE OWLET WAS GOING to die.
The vet, Denver Lynch, couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong. Well, hell, Logan
thought as he washed dirt and soot off his face at the clinic’s small sink. What
wasn’t wrong? The fire had left the little guy homeless, orphaned, scorched,
bruised and generally traumatized in just about every way a bird could be.
On the other hand, the tiny, maybe three-week-old barred owl had a brother, also
found on the ground by the firefighters, who was probably going to make it.
That was how random life and death were. A split second, a square inch. A
literal bolt from the blue.
Mostly, you didn’t have any choices, or any real control. You just had to do
your best, and if you failed, try to accept it and move on.
Sean Archer, who had been hovering around the clinic for the past half hour as
darkness fell, had been asking everyone who emerged how the owl was doing.
Clearly he hadn’t got the acceptance part figured out yet.
It was probably time to send him home. He hadn’t been much use since the owlets
were delivered.
Unfortunately, while everyone else was busy with a couple of kestrels who had
been brought in first, Sean had been the one to accept the basket from the
firefighters, and carry it to the clinic door. In that few minutes he’d fallen
in love with the downy, helpless creatures with the large, bewildered eyes.
Sean had gone unnoticed for a while in the chaos, staying to watch over the baby
birds. When Logan finally noticed him and banished him from the clinic, the boy
had been choked with frustration and disappointment. He’d been peeking through
the window ever since. Clearly he was deeply invested in the outcome.
“Damn it,” Denver said, the sound sudden and heart-felt. “Damn it.”
Logan glanced over. The look on Denver’s face said it all. The little bird’s
struggle for survival was over.
He ignored the pinch in his chest. You never got over hoping for a miracle, but
you knew the odds. “What about the other one?”
Lynch glanced into the cage. “Weak, too, but more of a fighter. We’re sure the
mother’s dead?”
Logan nodded—the firefighters had confirmed it. And their nest, in a hollow of a
live oak, had been destroyed completely by the fire. If the owlet lived, they’d
have to hope one of the other resident adult owls would “adopt” him.
But that was a big if.
Lynch wiped his face with the back of his hand, then headed over to the sink to
clean up. “You going to tell the kid?”
Logan looked out the small window. Sean sat on the steps, chewing on his
thumbnail and staring at nothing. He was going to take it hard, and for a minute
Logan considered sending someone else to do the dirty work.
But it was just a fleeting cowardice.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll tell him. Want me to send Matt or Todd in to help feed
the survivor?”
“No, he doesn’t seem to be hungry. I think I’d wait a couple of hours. For now,
just watch.”
“Okay.” Logan opened the door. “Thanks, Denver,” he said.
The words were inadequate, since the vet never took a cent for his work, but
Lynch knew they were sincere. “We got lucky tonight, but you know the worst is
probably yet to come.”
They both knew that most mature, healthy birds were able to fly away from the
danger a fire presented. The real crisis hit in the aftermath, when the
competition for diminished resources began. Wildlife of all kinds would be
wandering the area, hunting for food and shelter. Without their normal habitat,
they’d get hit by cars and picked off by predators. They’d need more food to
gain sufficient body fat to stay warm, and there would be less to go around.
Two Wings would be inundated. Logan was damn glad he’d sent word to Nora,
accepting her help on the brochures. Now if he could just get Sean to calm down
and go home, maybe Logan himself could grab a few hours’ sleep.
He’d be up all night, watching and feeding the wounded.
The boy whipped his head around as soon as he heard Logan open the door. He was
a smart cuss, and he obviously knew how to read faces. He saw the truth on
Logan’s in the blink of an eye.
“Joe’s dead, isn’t he?”
Logan nodded. He didn’t know the kid had been foolish enough to name them.
“One of them is. The other one is hanging in, so far, at least.”
“It’s Hank who lived. Even I could tell he was stronger.”
“Maybe. But he may not be strong enough. Denver says it’s touch and go.”
Sean looked furious, and it took Logan a minute to realize he wasn’t furious at
him, or even at the vet. He was furious at himself for being so weak.
His mouth pressed in on his teeth so tightly it seemed to disappear. His
eyebrows dug trenches in his forehead, and his eyes narrowed to hard, glinting
slits.
If he could help it, no wussy tear was making it past that blockade.
Logan wasn’t a fan of wallowing in emotion, either, but for God’s sake, the kid
was going to give himself a stroke, holding it in like that. Logan wondered what
Sean’s dad had said to him about crying. From what Logan had seen of Harrison
Archer, he’d guess the man probably mocked emotion as girly and weak.
Or tried to beat it out of the boys, so that they would learn how to be “men.”
“I’ve got to check on the others one more time before we close up,” he said.
“Want to help?”
Sean didn’t respond in words, but he stood, so Logan took that for a yes. He set
off down the winding path, stopping at each enclosure and pretending to check on
each bird. Max, in particular, was delighted to receive an extra dose of TLC,
and hopped over so that he’d be close enough to snag any treats Logan might be
bringing.
None of this was strictly necessary, but Logan figured it wouldn’t hurt to
remind Sean that they logged a lot of successes here, too.
“By the way, Lynch had the chance to check Hamlet out, too. It is trichomonas.
Good catch. You may have saved his life.”
Sean followed listlessly, obviously not convinced that victory offset the other
defeat. When they neared the owl enclosure, he stiffened. He finally met Logan’s
gaze, for the first time since reading the death on his face.
“What kind of owl was he? He had that funny baby coat, so I couldn’t tell.”
“A barred owl,” Logan said matter-of-factly. He stepped up to the enclosure and
peered in. It was almost dark, but just enough light remained to make out the
different birds. “There. See the two over on the left? They have big, dark eyes,
and a kind of striping, or barring, on their chests.”
Sean approached slowly, but then pressed in close and looked in silence for
quite a while.
“They’re fairly friendly, nonaggressive owls,” Logan said. “But they can make
quite a racket. When you hear them out in the woods, their hooting can sound
downright eerie. They’ve probably been the inspiration for many a ghost story.”
The effort to distract with trivia didn’t work this time. Sean didn’t even
appear to hear him. He seemed intently focused on picking at the wooden brace
nearest him.
“How old was he?” Sean didn’t look up when he asked. “The baby owl, I mean.”
“Between one and two weeks, probably. At two weeks, they lose that pure white
downy coat.”
Sean’s scowl was back, and he dug at the wood with his finger until Logan
worried he might get splinters under his nail.
“Two weeks? That’s just a baby,” the boy said angrily. “That’s so unfair.”
Yeah, well, nobody said life was fair, kid. That was Logan’s next line in the
script, obviously.
But he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Sean had already met the injustice of
life up close and personal. What he was really asking was why? Why wasn’t life
fair? Why did the good suffer? Why did innocence die?
“I don’t know why things like this happen,” Logan said. “I don’t understand
death, and I don’t like it. But I’m learning to accept that I can’t always stop
it.”
At that, Sean lifted his head, and the depth of passion Logan saw on those
chiseled little features shocked him. The boy was so pale his freckles looked
like bruises on a dead man’s cheek.
“Accept it?” Sean’s voice was reedy, as if his throat were too tight to let
normal sound escape. “That’s what everybody says. Just accept it, Sean. Get over
it. But you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know one darn thing about it.”
They weren’t talking about the bird anymore, obviously. Sean glared at Logan as
if they were suddenly enemies. His breath wheezed hard and fast, as if he were
gearing up for a fight.
Did he want the fight—and the release of tension it might bring?
Or did he want comfort? A gentle word. A hug…
Out of nowhere, like a blow to the rib cage, a memory assaulted Logan. He saw
Rebecca bending toward him, her arms outstretched.
And he saw himself, a grown man, just as furious and bewildered as this little
boy. Glaring at the one person in the world who actually knew what he was
feeling as if she were his enemy. Panting, like a cornered beast.
Turning away from his wife’s embrace and any comfort it might bring, fearing he
didn’t deserve it, knowing it couldn’t save him, in the end.
“I do know,” he said, though he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t talk about this.
Ever. “I lost someone I love, too. I know exactly how hard it can be.”
Sean looked suspicious, unimpressed. “It’s not the same. If you lost your dad, I
bet he was super old, and my dad wasn’t.”
Logan almost laughed at the myopic self-absorption of the young. Sean assumed no
one on this earth had ever hurt the way he was hurting.
But Logan hadn’t lost his father. He’d lost his son. His laughing, bright-eyed,
four-year-old little boy, who should have outlived him by decades, who should
have gone to college, played football, had children of his own.
He’d watched his son die, that miraculous being that every instinct in Logan’s
body had been programmed to protect. When Danny took his last breath, the
natural cycle of life had split open, and all sense, all meaning, had oozed out.
But Sean didn’t know. No one in Eastcreek knew, because Logan had left all that
behind in Maine.
And he wasn’t going to start jabbering about it now.
It wouldn’t help Sean, anyhow. No one ever felt better just because they heard
that someone else felt worse.
Grief was an individual sport, and you played only against yourself.
Sean’s hands fisted at his sides, needing some recognition that his grief was
different. “And I bet your dad didn’t go crazy first, so that everyone hated
him, and no one will even say his name anymore. It’s like he never existed.”
Logan’s heart squeezed. Like he never existed…
“Tragedy makes people uncomfortable,” he said. “They’re not sure what to say.
They’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they don’t say anything at all.”
“That’s dumb,” Sean murmured.
But he didn’t sound quite as angry, and Logan wondered whether he’d stumbled on
the right tone somehow.
Sean cleared his throat roughly. “My dad was a really good dad.”
“I bet he was.” Logan could imagine that Harrison Archer could hope for no
better epitaph, and he almost said so. He had a feeling the boy wanted to keep
talking, and that it might do him good to get some of it off his chest.
But someone else would have to help him with that. Logan had the uncomfortable
feeling that he might already have gone too far.
In the enclosure beside them, the barred owl hooted. The melancholy sound echoed
into the gloaming around them, and Logan was reminded how late it was.
“I should probably get you home,” he said.
“Okay.” Sean nodded, and, sure enough, he sounded disappointed.
But he obediently made his way across the mulch, over the barricade and back
onto the path. Logan followed. When they reached the bricks, they walked in
silence a few minutes, their strides comfortably matched.
“Logan?”
The word caught him by surprise. It was the first time Sean had used it.
“Yeah?”
“I was just wondering. I’m doing this concert thing at school a week from
Friday. We’re supposed to be selling tickets, to raise money for the band. I’ll
be playing the guitar. I’m not very good, but—”
He put his hands in his pockets, to show how much he didn’t care. “I was
wondering if you’d like to buy one.”
It took Logan a minute to realize what Sean was asking.
He could have kicked himself into next week. Why hadn’t he sent Vic to break the
news about the owl? Didn’t he know how dangerous it could be, indulging in a
heart-to-heart talk about death with a boy as needy as this?
He’d meant to handle it with kindness, but at a professional’s distance. He’d
meant to treat Sean the same way he treated all his new volunteers, offering his
bracing, sensible philosophy—nothing personal, nothing deep.
But he knew it had gone beyond that. He’d let it get personal.
And now the kid…
Expected something.
Expected Logan to care. Expected him to get involved. To come to his school
concert and watch a bunch of kids torture musical instruments for two hours.
Logan’s heart rate sped up.
Sean clearly hoped that Logan would want to…to do what Harrison would have done
if he were still alive.
To fill the empty seat. And the empty heart, too, perhaps?
But no.
Hell no.
Sean might be looking for a father, but Logan was not looking for a son.
“I don’t know,” he said, buying time to think of a way out of this. “How much
are the tickets?”
“Five dollars,” Sean said, still trying to sound completely nonchalant, as if he
couldn’t care less whether Logan accepted or not. He put a little slouch in his
walk, to increase his cool factor, and made a snicking noise with his teeth.
“That seems reasonable.” Logan dug in his pocket and pulled out a five. “I can’t
come to the concert, of course, because you know how busy we’re going to be here
over the next few days. But I’ll be glad to contribute to the cause.”
He held out the crisp bill. The silence was so damned awkward Logan felt like
smacking something. The kid just stared at him.
It was so uncomfortable he felt the words, “Okay, whatever, I’ll come,” about to
form on his lips.
Then, like salvation, Vic Downing walked by.
“Vic.” Logan reached out and grabbed his manager with thinly disguised
desperation. “Vic.”
The other man stopped, obviously confused.
“What?”
“Can you run Sean home, please? He’s got school tomorrow, and his mom will be
wondering where he is.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN NORA HEARD THAT Logan had accepted her help with the brochures, she was a
little surprised. She’d half expected a polite refusal. He’d already saddled
himself with one Archer. She wasn’t sure he’d be interested in taking on two.
But she followed up immediately, arriving at Two Wings with a portfolio of ideas
before he could change his mind. He thanked her warmly, then assigned his
manager, Vic, to oversee her work.
She went over to the sanctuary every day while Sean and Harry were at school. By
the end of the week, she was enjoying herself thoroughly, and learning a lot,
but she’d seen very little of Logan. She got the distinct impression he was
avoiding her.
She had to laugh, wondering if she was, in the end, as big a nuisance as Sean.
But on the rare times Logan came in and listened to her discussions with Vic
about new brochures, or scripts for the school education programs, he always
seemed impressed at how quickly she was picking things up.
She basked in his approval. And when he told Vic to ask her if she’d like to
handle some of the school programs herself, she accepted without hesitation. It
was like having one little corner of her dream come true.
She couldn’t take on a full-time classroom, not until the boys were older, and
the tragedy a more distant memory. But she could still do some good. She could
spread the word about the generous work done by everyone at Two Wings.
Somehow, teaching a reverence for life seemed like the best possible antidote
for the year she’d just been through.
Late Friday afternoon at the end of her first week, she lingered at her computer
in the administration offices. Vic had spent much of the afternoon introducing
her to the education birds, ones that were so damaged they’d never be able to
live in the wild.
Two Wings had received permits to keep them, as long as they were used regularly
to instruct the public about wildlife conservation.
She had fallen absolutely in love with Cadbury, the Harris hawk, a beautiful
bird with chocolate brown, black, rust and white coloring. Cadbury had only one
wing and a prosthetic beak. His own had been shot off. But he carried himself
with the hauteur of a king, and Nora just had to laugh at his wonderful native
arrogance.
She had taken a few photos that she hoped she could use in a brochure, and she
wanted to play around with them on the computer, seeing how she might design a
flyer to hand out at the schools.
She was so absorbed she almost didn’t hear the front door open. Since the grand
opening was still three weeks away, the ticket office remained locked. But the
entrance signage had arrived a couple of days ago, and it occasionally drew in a
curious tourist who apparently didn’t understand what “Closed” meant.
She glanced up with a smile, reaching for one of the brochures to give as a
consolation prize.
But it wasn’t a visitor. It was Logan, looking fantastic in jeans and a blue
T-shirt the color of his eyes.
“Hi,” he said cordially, though he was clearly as surprised to see her as she
was to see him. “What are you doing here so late? I thought you picked Sean up
at three.”
“Not on Fridays,” she explained. “He and Harry spend Friday nights with their
Aunt Evelyn. They’ve done it since they were babies.”
Another of the rituals she wouldn’t dare interrupt, no matter how rocky her
relationship with Evelyn was right now. Sean and Harry would think the world had
tilted on its axis if they didn’t spend Friday nights with Evelyn and her Jack
Russell dogs. This week was even more special, because the puppies were due any
minute, which would be quite a thrill.
“That’s nice.” He pulled a blank ledger out of the supply cabinet. “Good that
they have family nearby.”
She meant to keep her face impassive, but either she wasn’t as good at hiding
her emotions as she thought, or he was better at reading expressions, because he
paused. He watched her a minute, and then he chuckled.
“Not completely good, then? Oh, well. Guess people are the same all over.
Believe me, I know all about complicated family relationships.”
That was the first piece of personal information she’d ever heard Logan divulge.
There’d been plenty of scuttlebutt in town, of course, when he moved in. Maine
seemed almost as far away as Mars to native Texans, and they figured it would
take something spectacular to drag a Northerner way down here.
The tamest suggestion was that he was divorced and fleeing a broken heart.
Others said he was on the lam, one step ahead of the police. One theory was even
that he was dying of some dread disease, and had come here to meet his end among
the animals.
She didn’t believe any of it, and she knew it was unlikely he’d ever volunteer
the truth. He had a major case of that WASPy New England reserve.
She hurried to cover her mistake. “Evelyn is a wonderful aunt. She’s crazy about
the boys, and she’d do anything on earth to help them, if they needed her.”
He nodded. “How about you?”
She paused. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean, would she do anything on earth help you, if you needed her?”
She hesitated a moment too long.
“That’s what I thought. Sorry. It’s just that I know her, slightly. She’s…” He
appeared to be searching for a diplomatic word. “Let’s just say that two more
badly matched people would be hard to imagine. Except—”
Nora felt herself flushing. Except…
She knew what he’d been about to say. Except for Nora and Evelyn’s brother,
Harrison.
“Scratch that,” Logan said suddenly, grabbing his ledger and moving toward the
door. “I should shut up. It’s none of my business.”
He was right. She had no obligation to tell him anything about her personal
life, and he probably didn’t want to hear it, anyhow.
The problem was, she wanted to tell him.
She knew what people had said about her marriage. The whole thing reeked of
exploitation. Harrison had been vulnerable after his son’s death, they thought.
Along came a gold digger who looked a lot like his ex-wife, at least as Peggy
had looked in her youth.
Same curly red hair, hazel eyes, petite body.
A woman young and fertile enough to provide the brokenhearted man with a whole
new stable of red-haired sons.
For a price.
Mostly, Nora didn’t care what anyone thought. She’d done what she believed to be
right, and she had been willing to live with it.
But now, out of nowhere, she wanted Logan Cathcart to understand.
“It’s true,” she said to his back. “Harrison and I didn’t have much in common.
Just one thing. One big thing that was more important than all the rest put
together.”
She took a breath. “I was having his baby.”
If this piece of news shocked Logan, the bit of his profile she could see didn’t
reveal it. He kept his hand on the doorknob, as if he couldn’t make up his mind
whether he was going to turn it and leave, or let go and listen.
She hoped he would stay. And she thought he might. Her attraction to him, which
had been such a shock to her in those early days, hadn’t been one-sided. They’d
both known it existed, just as they’d both known it could never be pursued.
Even if he no longer felt the chemistry, surely he still felt at least a little
curiosity.
“You don’t have to explain this to me,” he said finally, and his voice was
tight. “I don’t judge you. I never have.”
“I know. But I’d like to tell you, if you don’t mind.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. I don’t mind.”
Then he came back into the room, lay the ledger on the table and pulled out a
chair.
When he sat, the area felt suddenly intimate. The office, in the center of an
empty octagonal building with windows all around, was striped with pale shafts
of late-afternoon sun. The trembling shadows of windblown trees moved across the
floor. Outside, birds called, unseen, and the crickets had begun tuning up for
the sunset show.
“I met Harrison when I was still in college,” she said, knowing if she didn’t
get going she might lose her nerve. “He’d come to South Carolina for a
conference, and I was working part-time for the company that catered their
meals. He was nice to me, not in the way creepy businessmen sometimes are nice
to the hired help. But really nice. He talked to me. He listened.”
She waited for a reaction, but apparently Logan was also the type who listened
without comment.
She took a breath and went on. “At the time, my mother was very sick. She’d
recently lost her job, and she didn’t have any health insurance.”
For the first time, a flicker of cynicism moved across his features. She didn’t
blame him. He probably thought she was about to say she’d married the rich older
man to pay for her mother’s medical care. No one still believed that convenient
story.
“Harrison and I got to talking after the dinner. I wondered, at the time, why he
seemed so interested in me. It wasn’t until we were married, and I met Peggy,
that I realized I reminded him of his first wife.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Anyhow, he seemed lonely, and I was in a
pretty bad place, too. I told him about my mother. And he offered to loan me the
money we needed.”
“And you took it.”
She lifted her chin. “I took it. There was no question of my refusing it. My
mother was going through chemotherapy, and while the doctors and hospitals would
do a lot of things as charity, they wouldn’t pay for anything they considered a
frill. Like the medication that would stop her nausea. Or the stronger
painkillers.”
His hand moved. “Good God.”
“Yes. And there were other things, things that would have made it all so much
easier. So when this man offered to help us, with no strings attached, I never
even considered getting on my high horse and saying no.”
“Of course not,” Logan said simply. “I would have done exactly the same.”
“Harrison was a good man. He didn’t ask for anything in return.”
She gave Logan a straight look, to be sure he understood what she meant. “Not
anything at all. He just wanted to help. I didn’t realize then what he’d been
through with Paul, but I think now that it had made him sensitive to suffering.”
“Perhaps.” Logan’s expression remained noncommittal. But then he hadn’t really
known Harrison before the cancer had twisted him. Before his grief and desire
for revenge ate a hole in his heart.
“Anyhow, my mother died a few months later.” She blinked and took a second to
gather strength for this part. “She had a little life insurance. When I got it,
I paid the remaining medical bill, and arranged a very modest funeral. Then I
drove to Eastcreek, and showed up at Harrison’s door, with the money I owed him
in a bag.”
Logan smiled. “I’ll bet he was surprised to see you.”
“He was shocked. But I was shocked, too, because he looked so awful. I told you
he’d never asked for anything, and it’s true. He never even asked for sympathy.
He never told me that his son had recently died in such a terrible way.
Ironically, I arrived to pay the money back as the second anniversary of Paul’s
death was approaching.”
Logan had been toying with the ledger on the table, but at that his fingers
stilled. “Bad timing,” he said neutrally.
“Yes. He was a mess. The house was a mess, too. He’d sent Milly away on an
extended vacation. I think it’s possible he may have been considering…ending his
own life. He didn’t ask me to stay, but I did. I cleaned up some of the mess. I
cooked him some healthy food. I let him talk about Paul.”
“That was very compassionate. Generous, even.”
She smiled. “Not really. I didn’t have anyone else, and I was used to taking
care of my mother. My fiancé—”
Funny that this part should still have any power to hurt. “He had left me while
my mother was sick. And while I was at Harrison’s house, I learned that Doug had
married someone else.”
“I’m sorry,” Logan said, and he sounded as if he meant it. “It’s okay.” She
hadn’t thought about Doug in years, but now she could remember that night so
clearly. She hadn’t wanted her faithless fiancé back, but hearing that he was
married…that the door was forever closed…
After her mother, the sense of loss was dreadful.
Logan shifted in his seat.
She knew he was uncomfortable, because she’d reached the heart of the story.
“I’m sure you can see where this goes. Two lonely, hurting people, in the same
empty house…”
He nodded.
“Right. My last night there, Harrison asked for comfort, and I gave it to him.
He was a kind man, a good man, but so lonely. I knew I could make some of his
pain go away. What would it cost me to give him one night?”
“A lot, apparently,” Logan observed softly. “Ten years of your life.”
“In a way, that’s true. But in another way—” She swallowed hard. “Two months
later, I discovered I was pregnant. I considered having the baby alone. I didn’t
love Harrison Archer, and he didn’t love me. We didn’t have to try to make a
family just because of one mistake. I had plans for my life, and they didn’t
involve moving to Texas and being the wife of a man twice my age. I told myself
he would never know.”
“And yet…” Logan’s eyes were gentle. “Apparently you changed your mind.”
“In the end, I couldn’t be that selfish.”
To her horror, her voice had begun to sound raw, scoured with emotion. It was
painful to think back on that moment. So many people believed she’d come rushing
back, thrilled to stake her claim to the Archer fortune, but it had felt like
reporting for a firing squad.
“I was carrying the child of a man who had already lost one. How, after what
he’d suffered, could I deny him the new hope a new son might bring? So I came
back to Eastcreek, back to Bull’s Eye, and I told him about the baby.”
“But surely…you didn’t have to marry him, just because there was a baby on the
way. People often—”
“Not Harrison. He had very strong ideas about family. About Bull’s Eye, and
Texas and the Archer name. I knew he would want the real thing. And whatever
anyone, including Evelyn, might think, I was a good wife to him. I gave him
sons, and I gave him a happy home.”
She wished she didn’t sound so defensive. She wasn’t talking to Evelyn now. And
Logan had never so much as hinted that he disapproved of her.
Besides, surely Harry was proof that she’d been fair to Harrison. She’d really,
really tried to love him with all her heart. She’d admired him, and she’d pitied
him, and she’d cared deeply for his well-being. That was pretty close to love,
wasn’t it?
Eventually they’d conceived Harry. After that, as if Harrison really had just
wanted an heir and a spare, he rarely came to her room. Their marriage settled
into a loyal, platonic partnership, and she couldn’t deny it was a relief.
But she was still young, and coming into her prime as Harrison was emotionally
and physically withdrawing from her.
Surely that accounted for the rogue sparks when she met Logan. As unfulfilled as
she was, how could she have stopped herself from responding to the virility and
charm of the new young neighbor who was so gentle with the wounded birds who
found themselves in his hands?
She never once sinned with her body, not even by the lightest brush of a finger.
But with her mind…
She tried to smile at him now.
“So. That’s the whole strange story.”
His fingers had returned to toying with the ledger, but he watched her with
shadowed eyes. “Does Evelyn know all this?”
She nodded. “She doesn’t believe it, of course. She always thought I was just
after the money, and when Harrison left Bull’s Eye to me, she was sure of it.”
“But you’re obviously essentially a custodian. You aren’t going to sell it, or
mortgage it for furs and trips to Paris. Any fool can see that you’re holding on
to it for the boys. And Harrison knew he could trust you to do exactly that.”
“Yes. That’s all true. But for Evelyn, the very fact that my name…that I have
control… She doesn’t understand.”
One side of Logan’s mouth went up, but Nora couldn’t quite call it a smile. “It
makes perfect sense to me,” he said, “and I’ll be glad to explain it to Evelyn,
if you’d like.”
She laughed. “Oh, Lord, no. Please don’t tell her I talked to you about this.
She already—”
He lifted one eyebrow and waited.
She faltered. “Well, she already thinks Sean and I spend too much time over
here.”
He stood, as if that was the cue he’d been waiting for. “Then you’d better get
home,” he said. “Because whatever Ms. Evelyn Archer is thinking, I definitely
want to prove her wrong.”

NORA COULDN’T TELL HOW Sean felt about her involvement at the sanctuary. His
attitude toward Two Wings, and toward Logan, in particular, seemed to seesaw
dramatically.
The psychiatrist, with whom Sean’s weekly visits had resumed, assured Nora the
mood swings were normal, but they troubled her anyhow.
Some days, Sean seemed to adore his sanctuary work. One afternoon, when she’d
taken the boys to the library, he’d checked out an armload of books about birds.
That night, she’d heard him reading a description of the American bald eagle to
Harry as a bedtime story.
But other days, he returned home sullen and uncommunicative.
Today, a week after her talk with Logan in the Two Wings office, Sean had come
home in such foul humor that she’d been afraid something had happened to the
owlet they’d rescued from the fire.
Sean had clearly adopted that bird emotionally. His name was Hank, apparently,
and he updated her on Hank’s progress every day. She lived in fear of the bird
succumbing to some delayed reaction to his trauma.
But today, when she asked him if everything was okay at the sanctuary, he had
grumbled, “I just can’t stand Mr. Cathcart. He thinks he knows everything, but
he doesn’t.”
She’d been afraid Sean might go into such a serious sulk that he’d refuse to
perform in tonight’s school concert. He’d been up and down about that all week,
too.
Sometimes he would practice for an hour straight to get one arpeggio right in
his intro to “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Other times, he’d refuse to touch the instrument. The concert, he’d insist, was
“majorly lame.”
But when Jolie arrived to take him over to the auditorium to help her set up, he
was ready to go. He’d even packed his suitcase and left it by the front door.
Since it was Friday, he and Harry would be going home from the concert with
Evelyn.
After Sean left, Nora helped Harry pick out his nice clothes. As she rummaged
through his drawer for matching socks, she asked him whether he thought his
kindergarten class might like to see a Two Wings program about the birds.
Harry scoffed, sounding just like his brother.
“Not if Mr. Cathcart does it,” Harry said, ducking his chin as he shoved his
shirttails into his pants. “He’s a jerk. He probably wouldn’t come anyhow. He’s
not coming to Sean’s concert.”
Nora laughed. “Why would Mr. Cathcart come to Sean’s concert? He’s far too busy
for that.”
“He’s not too busy. He just doesn’t like kids.”
Nora, who had watched Logan with his teenage volunteers, knew that was far from
true. Sean was obviously the source of this pronouncement, and she wondered why
he would tell Harry such a fib.
“Really?” She held out two black socks triumphantly. “What makes you think he
doesn’t like kids?”
“Well, he doesn’t like Sean, anyhow. He said he won’t come tonight, even though
he has a ticket. Sean gave him one.”
Oh… Nora bit her lower lip, suddenly seeing the light.
Sean had asked Logan to attend his concert.
She could hardly imagine her thorny, defensive son taking such a risk. He rarely
admitted to wanting anything these days, for fear he wouldn’t get it. He
couldn’t stand being pitied, or looking weak.
And he absolutely never put himself in the position to chance being rejected.
Yet he’d invited Logan to his concert.
And Logan had turned him down.
No wonder Sean had been so glum as he got ready tonight. Nora had thought his
snarly attitude was a reaction to the extra work of having to set up the
equipment for Jolie. She hadn’t felt much sympathy.
Now she saw something much more poignant. This was the first school function
he’d participated in since Harrison’s death. He would be the only member of the
band without a daddy in the audience.
Oh, if only Sean had mentioned his plan to Nora. She could have warned him that
Logan was not the kind of man who rushed into intimacy. She could have explained
Logan’s obligation to keep a professional distance from his employees, volunteer
or otherwise.
She might even have found some other male friend who might be willing to
represent Sean in the audience. Denver Lynch, the vet, maybe. She’d known Denver
for years, and they were friendly enough that she could have asked a favor.
But Sean hadn’t told her. And she hadn’t guessed.
So all she could do now was put the best possible face on the situation.
“He said he couldn’t come? Well, that’s Mr. Cathcart’s loss, then,” she said
brightly, “because it’s going to be a wonderful concert, isn’t it?”
Harry smiled. He might try to copy his big brother’s cool sneer, but his natural
state would always be sunny.
“Yep,” he agreed as he worked to tie the bows on his dress shoes. “I’m going to
play in concerts when I’m in fourth grade, too.”
She hustled him out the door with an eye on the clock. In spite of a fierce
thunderstorm that slowed traffic, they arrived in plenty of time.
The auditorium was already crowded.
Jolie clearly knew that a big cast of performers was the secret to an impressive
turnout. Every singer had a solo, even if it was only a few words, and every
musician had a moment in the spotlight, too. Sean’s would be the short but fancy
intro to the national anthem.
Evelyn had arrived first, probably trying to beat the rain, and had saved seats
in the front row.