Page 46 of The Player Next Door
“And what are we bringing him?” she looked around the car but didn’t see any sign of anything that looked like a delivery.
“Stuff from Smorgasbord. He loves their frozen meals, but they don’t have one near him, and he hates driving in the Cities. Once a month or so I stock up for him and bring it down.”
“That’s really sweet of you.”
Logan shrugged awkwardly and signaled, moving toward an off ramp. It was now or never, so Clare screwed up her courage. “Can I ask you something?” she started. He nodded, eyes on the road. “Why did you ask me to come along? I mean, obviously I’m happy to, but—we’re not like, dating or anything, and meeting your dad feels, I dunno, formal? Big? Something like that, you know?”
Logan stayed silent for so long she considered opening the door and rolling out of the car.
“Because I wanted you to see me,” he said finally.
Clare wondered if Logan did this sort of gut-punch-admission thing with anyone else, or if he reserved them for her. “See you?” she echoed.
“Who I am with my dad—only Sam ever comes down, and not often. I just—I wanted you to get to know me, I guess.” He turned up a long gravel driveway and by the time Clare had found her voice they had come to a stop in front of a small yellow farmhouse. “Here we are,” he said with forced brightness.
A man about Logan’s height emerged from behind the house. He had Logan’s frame, tall and lean, but his nose was longer and his smile lacked Logan’s dimples. “About time, lunch is almost ready,” he said genially. “You must be Clare. I’m Burt,” he said, holding up a hand that was nearly black with dirt. “You’ll forgive me for not shaking your hand.” He looked at Logan, who was pulling several tote bags from his trunk. “Did they have the chocolate-covered cranberries this time?”
“They didn’t, but they did have more of that tikka paneer so I got you a bunch,” Logan said.
Clare took a bag from his hand and followed them inside, toeing off her flats and setting the bag down on the floor of the tiny, immaculately clean, if somewhat old-fashioned, kitchen. Burt liked chickens, it would seem. There was a chicken-shaped flour canister on the countertop, and an old-fashioned wallpaper border around the top of the walls had a series of repeating chickens, roosters, and chicks hatching out of eggs. The smell of something savory was wafting out of the oven and her stomach rumbled.
“Hope you like quiche,” Burt said, washing his hands.
“Dad’s a vegetarian,” Logan supplied, stocking the freezer with what appeared to be enough organic frozen dinners for an army.
Clare couldn’t help smiling. “Quiche sounds delicious, thank you.”
“Clare’s a baker,” Logan said, head now in the fridge.
“Not professionally, or anything. Just for fun.”
“Well, it’s a store-bought crust so I hope you won’t judge me for that,” Burt said from the sink.
“No judgment, I swear,” she said. Her smile might be permanently etched into her face at this point.
Burt jerked his chin back toward the front door, wiping his hands with a towel, when Logan emerged from the fridge. “Why don’t you give your friend a tour? I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
Outside the sun dimmed as the clouds reached them and a quiet rumble of thunder rolled through. Clare obediently followed Logan into the living room, nodding absently at his explanation thatthiswas the living room andthat over there with the duck and fish paintingswas the study, and up the stairs, where the walls were lined with school photos of him in ascending order. She stopped to examine each one, biting back a grin at his gap-toothed third-grade photo and the seventh-grade one where he had braces and a haircut that shoutedcool kid.Logan was waiting impatiently at the top of the stairs, but she paused on the last step. The only image of someone other than Logan was a portrait, done with what appeared to be colored pencils. It was a woman, young—very young—with Logan’s dark brown hair and light blue eyes, two dimples framing her smile. She was stunning. “Your mom?” Clare whispered.
“Yeah.”
“You drew this?”
“Senior year project, yeah. Dad was the one who had it framed.”
“She’s beautiful, Logan.” Clare whispered like she was in church. It felt like they were talking about something holy, sacred. Maybe they were.
He gave a small, sad smile. “Dad always says I got my looks from her and my brains from him, but only one of those is a compliment. My bedroom’s over here,” he added, steering her into a small room that overlooked the front yard. Thunder cracked, closer, and Logan startled.
Clare looked at him thoughtfully. “Are you . . . scared of thunderstorms?”
“What? No.”
“I’m not teasing,” she said. “And you just jumped about a mile.”
“Am I that easy to read?”
“Honestly? No, I don’t think so. But you are, aren’t you—scared of thunder?”