Page 24 of Defensive Desire

The booth attendant, clearly charmed by the whole scene, reaches for a small stuffed penguin and hands it to Ben.

"Close enough," she winks.

Ben clutches the penguin to his chest, beaming from atop Logan's shoulders. "Mom! Mom! Did you see? I almost got it and the nice lady gave me a prize anyway!"

Logan does a weird little shimmy of a dance as he lowers Ben back to the ground and gives him, and the penguin, a high five.

I glance at Melanie, who's watching the scene with raised eyebrows. "So... who's your friend?"

Logan's already busy helping four-year-old Maddie aim her ring with the kind of patience I wouldn't expect from Iron Ridge's most feared enforcer.

"This is Logan," I stumble through the introduction. "He... helps out at the café sometimes. Plays for the Icehawks."

It's not exactly a lie, but it's not the full truth either. How do I explain that Logan has become... what, exactly? A good friend? A business partner? The source of my increasingly inappropriate fantasies about burly hockey players?

"Helps out?" Melanie raises an eyebrow, clearly seeing more than I'm saying.

I'm saved from further explanation when Logan lifts Maddie up so she's level with the bottles. He whispers something in her ear that makes her giggle, the cute noise a sound like tiny bells.

The bored teenager running the game perks up, handing Maddie an extra ring.

"For being cute," she says with a grin.

Maddie winds up with more force than a small child should possess and hurls the ring. It sails past the bottles entirely, landing somewhere in the grass beyond the game.

"I missed," she says, bottom lip starting to quiver.

"Hey," Logan says seriously, setting her down. "Hockey players miss all the time. The guys on my team? They miss shots, passes, opportunities. But you know what they do?"

Maddie shakes her head.

"They keep trying. Because every miss teaches you something about the next shot."

Maddie brightens immediately. "Like practice!"

"Exactly. Like practice."

Melanie watches this exchange with obvious surprise.

"He's good with them," she murmurs to me.

Her phone buzzes, and she glances at it with a sigh. "Mom wants to leave. Something about beating traffic." She startsgathering her kids, but pauses. "It was nice meeting you, Logan. Emma, we should catch up soon."

As they walk away, Ben waving enthusiastically over his shoulder, Logan returns to the game and lines up his final shot.

This time, he doesn't just hit the bottle. He nails it perfectly, the ring settling around the neck with a satisfyingclink.

The teenager hands him his choice of prizes, and without hesitation, Logan picks a scruffy wolf plushie with mismatched button eyes and a slightly lopsided grin.

He turns to me, holding out the wolf. "Here. It's no trophy, but you still like cute shit, right?"

My heart pounds as I take the plushie, our fingers brushing in the exchange. The wolf is soft and ridiculous and perfect, and I'm probably reading way too much into this gesture, but...

"Thank you," I whisper, clutching the toy to my chest.

Logan's eyes darken as he watches me. "Don't thank me yet."

Before I can ask what he means, we're moving toward the parade route where pets and their owners are lining up. The proximity to Logan as we find a spot to watch is making my skin tingle.