Leaning forward, as if she had a particularly juicy secret to impart, Mrs. Hutchinson took her time drawing out the suspense. “I might not have even noticed her, except for the fact that she’d lost her son. Lost her son, can you believe it? On her first day back in town.”
He felt a premonition that he wasn’t going to like whatever came out of her mouth next. “Did they find the boy?” he demanded. “The sheriff’s department hasn’t been notified—”
“Oh, yes, they found him after only a couple of minutes, hiding in the back with the comic books. But not before she made a total spectacle of herself running around screaming for him.” She sniffed. “He didn’t answer. Not that I blame him, I guess. If I had her for a mother, I’d probably be hiding, too. It probably looked like a good place to stay lost, as not many people make it back there.”
Patience wearing thin after her salacious account—it wasn’t like Mrs. Hutchinson to be so malicious and it made him uncomfortable to be a part of it, even if in a peripheral way—Logan asked, “So who is it? Who’s back in town?”
She grinned. “Paige Matthews. And from the amount of food she picked up at the grocery store, she’s planning on staying a while.”
Her words sent him reeling, the way she’d intended them to. She kept talking, telling him more—he was sure—about Paige’s ill-fated trip to the market, but he didn’t hear her. Couldn’t hear her over the buzzing in his ears and the shock that was ricocheting through him.
Paige Matthews was back in town.
Paige was back.
In town.
Paige Matthews was back in town.
The words looped in his mind as he tried to figure out what they meant when strung together in that order.
Trying to get them to make sense.
And more than anything, trying to decide how he felt about them.
Fumbling an excuse he knew didn’t make much sense, he headed up the street in a kind of daze. He knew Mrs. Hutchinson—and plenty of other people—were watching him, but in those first few moments, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Couldn’t bring himself to fake his way through this bombshell.
It had been so long since he’d heard anything about Paige, so long since he’d even allowed himself to think her name.
He didn’t get far before someone else stopped him to report the same news. Again and again, people stepped forward to tell him about Paige, each one adding a new little detail about her—and her son—until he felt as though he’d run the gauntlet.
Had he seen what kind of car she was driving? one person asked.
A ninety-thousand-dollar BMW, someone else imparted. Of course, she’d gotten it illegally. Hadn’t they always known she was going to turn out to be a drug dealer’s girlfriend? He’d tried to put that rumor to rest by mentioning the latest movie she’d been involved with, but he’d known his protests had fallen on deaf ears when the same person asked if he thought Paige was on the run from her drug-dealing boyfriend.
Did he know why she was back?
Logan’s simple morning walk through town had turned into a nightmare. And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he cared.
Yes, he and Paige had been an item a million years ago. And, yeah, she’d screwed him over totally and completely. But that didn’t mean he wished her ill, didn’t mean he wanted any of the things the towns-people were speculating about to be true. Any more than it meant he wanted to see her.
Sure, he might be curious about what she’d been up to. And why she had chosen now—when he’d been in Prospect a little over eighteen months and was finally getting comfortable with his new life—to come back to town. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he would be asking her any of those questions any time soon.
If they met up, when they met up—this was Prospect after all, and there were only so many places to frequent—he would be polite, courteous. Treat her the way he did any of the other people under his protection. Because that’s what she was to him—all she would ever be to him. Maybe she’d meant something to him in the past, but that was a long time ago. The present and future were a whole different story.
He was the first to admit he’d made a lot of mistakes in his life. But from the time he was a kid, he’d made a point of not making the same mistake twice.
And Paige had been more than a youthful mistake. She’d been a goddamned natural disaster that had ripped apart the very fabric of his life. And it had taken him too long to get over her to ever let her back in again.
Pasting a wide—and hopefully not glazed—smile on his lips, Logan continued toward the diner in as straight a line as he could manage. He didn’t know much about Paige anymore, but he knew he was going to lose it if he had to hear one more ridiculous rumor about her. Or her son.
Then Ruth Oberly stepped into his path and asked if he’d had a chance to see Paige Matthews’s son yet. When he’d told her he hadn’t, she’d looked at him blandly and said that she thought the boy looked just like his father.
Logan’s back went ramrod straight at this new piece of information, and he had to force himself to relax. Normally, he didn’t mind the gossip that was part and parcel of living in a small town—it was relatively harmless, after all—but Paige’s child was still a raw spot for him.
The knowledge came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one. In fact, he was so busy trying to wrap his mind around the implication that one look at the kid had given Ruth a good idea of who his father was, that he nearly missed the diner. Logan had spent a lot of hours trying to convince Paige to tell him the truth about which of his high-school classmates had gotten her pregnant and the thought that he might finally be able to find out, after all these years, had him reeling.
Which was perfectly normal, he assured himself. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have history together. After Paige had left Prospect, he’d spent weeks—months—lying awake wondering about her. Wondering if she was okay. Wondering if the father of her kid was helping her out. Every time one of the guys from Paige’s side of the river had left town, Logan had wondered if he was the one. If he was sneaking off to be with Paige, wherever she was.
Eventually he’d left himself, gone to college, and memories of her had faded to bittersweet regret. Sure, she’d creep up on him sometimes, but he figured that was normal, when all was said and done.
First love was a bitch, after all. Sure, he’d gotten over her, moved on with his life, even gotten married to a woman he’d loved. But that didn’t mean memories of Paige—memories of them—didn’t catch him off guard every once in a while. They’d sneak in when he least expected it—a glimpse of the swings at the park, the teasing scent of lilac in the woods, a stray word about her sister and the crazy house Penny had bought with the hope of turning it into a bed and breakfast—and suddenly he’d be right back there, crazy in love with a girl his parents wouldn’t let in the front door.
But that’s all they were, he assured himself. Just memories. And if hearing about her son was a kick in the ass, the sting would quickly fade. After all, her betrayal had happened a long time and a lot of women ago. He had more important things to worry about these days than ancient history.
And yet, he found himself thinking about her. The idea that Paige was here now, that the answers to all those old questions were suddenly within his reach, had him thinking about things that were better laid to rest.
Frustrated, out-of-sorts, his earlier enjoyment of the day completely gone, Logan pushed open the door to the diner. And got a hell of a start when nearly every face turned toward him, the low buzz of conversation coming to an abrupt halt.
Okay. Never comfortable being the obvious topic of conversation he reminded himself of all the positive reasons to living in a town where