She looked up as Logan and the girls came into the kitchen.
“Why are you still stirring that?” Bethany asked.
“It takes a lot of stirring,” Sandra said quickly to cover up. “I’m hoping to carbonate it.” She grinned, then put out the four cups and motioned for everyone to sit down.
“Can we go back and work on the sun catcher?” Brittany picked up her cup and tugged on her sister’s arm with her free hand.
Sandra glanced at Logan, who was sitting down. His face didn’t change expression.
“I think you girls can stay here with us,” he commented, taking a sip of his lemonade.
“Well, we want to get it done.” Brittany gave Bethany’s arm another tug. Without looking at Logan, they left.
Sandra gave Logan a forced grin. “Well, here we are. Alone again.” Goodness, she thought. If that didn’t sound like a proposition. She felt like smacking herself on the forehead.
“Sorry about that.” Logan scratched his forehead with his index finger as if trying to puzzle out his nieces. “Tact isn’t a word that comes to mind when one thinks of Brittany and Bethany.” He sighed lightly. “I’d like to think that they might be a little less subtle, but I guess I misplaced that part of the training manual.”
Sandra couldn’t help but smile at his deprecating humor. “You’ve done well with them. In spite of missing parts of the course.”
Logan looked at her as if puzzled by her compliment. “Thanks, I think.”
His moment of vulnerability was surprisingly captivating. In spite of her resolve to keep her distance from this man, she found she wanted to reassure him. “Really, Logan. They’re nice girls, and I know they think very highly of you.”
Logan’s deep hazel eyes met and held hers. His face relaxed, a shifting of his features, and Sandra felt herself drawn to him. Unable to look away.
“That’s good to know,” he said, taking a sip of his lemonade and setting the cup down. “There are many times that I feel like all I’m doing is damage control. Just trying to catch up. That’s life, I guess.”
“Life is hard. You get the test first, the lessons later,” Sandra mused, quirking him a grin.
He angled his head, as if to look at her from a different perspective. “You always have a quick comeback, don’t you?”
“Mind like a steel trap,” she quipped, uncomfortable with his scrutiny. “Except it’s rusty and illegal in most parts of the country.”
Logan didn’t respond, merely leaned his elbows on the table as he continued to look at her. “So what makes you tick, Sandra Bachman?” He held up his hand as if to stop her. “Okay, that was giving you a wide-open opportunity. Let me try that again with a more specific question. How did you get here? To Elkwater?”
Sandra wondered at his sudden interest. Wondered what he would say were she to tell him the facts of her life. Facts that would only reinforce his opinion of her.
She looked at her cup, ran her thumbnail along an old scratch in the plastic and decided to be honest. His opinion couldn’t get much lower, she figured. “I came here from Vancouver Island. Actually, Hornby Island. Cora, the woman I rent this house with, and I met up there. We both decided we’d had enough of the life there and wandered around until we stumbled on this place.”
“What did you do on Hornby Island?”
“Stained glass work. Like I’m doing now.”
“Did you make a living at it?”
Sandra pressed her thumbnail a little harder into the scratch, biting her lip. “Sort of.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
Sandra hesitated. She had. At one time. It was something new and interesting. And totally different from what her father would approve of.
The thought plucked at her with nervous fingers. Was that her only reason for doing it? To make her father angry?
She dismissed the questions and their nugget of truth.
“I like it,” she admitted. “Usually.”
“Just like? Is there anything you love doing?”
Sandra frowned at him. “What is this? Part of my ongoing interview?”
“Maybe,” Logan admitted. “But I’m also curious.”
He caught her eye as he leaned forward, as if inviting her confidence.
Sandra felt an ache grow. In spite of their earlier antagonism, she sensed his interest and wondered again about Karen.
“I like doing a lot of things,” Sandra admitted, not moving from her position.
“Why didn’t you ever use your teaching degree?”
Sandra glanced at him. Logan’s mouth curled at one corner in a smile that created a dimple in his cheek.
She tried to find the words to explain the heavy weight of responsibility that dogged her all through school, through college. The feeling that no matter how hard she tried, she never measured up. Would Logan, with his easygoing upbringing, even have the faintest notion of how debilitating the unceasing expectations of her parents could be?
She thought of Florence Napier, remembered comments Logan made about his upbringing and what he wanted for his nieces. She remembered Florence’s laissez-faire attitude.
He wouldn’t understand, she thought.
“Teaching wasn’t what I really wanted to do,” she said, settling on a mundane answer as she leaned back in her chair.
“You’re good at it.”
“Thanks. But two girls as opposed to a whole classroom of kids…” She shrugged. “Not my style, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
Sandra felt herself stiffen at the tone of his question. “Not everyone is cut out for that kind of thing.”
“Meaning?”
“Routine. Schedule. The same thing every day.”
Logan held her gaze, his expression unreadable.
“That’s not your style,” he replied quietly.
“No, it isn’t,” she answered with a little more force than the comment required.
“What would be your ideal job, then?”
Sandra looked away, pulling the corner of her lower lip between her teeth. She wasn’t sure. She had spent so much time figuring out what she didn’t want to do that she hadn’t formulated a clear plan of what she did want. The past few years had been a whirl of trying and discarding.
“I’m sure your girlfriend Karen is the kind of person who has her life all figured out. I’m not like that.”
Logan tipped his eyebrows. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
Why did that simple statement ease a small measure of the loneliness that had gripped her on Sunday?
“I…I’m not sure what my ideal job would be,” Sandra said quickly, looking away. “I haven’t found it yet.”
“That’s too bad, Sandra. I think you have a lot of potential.”
Then, taking a final sip of his lemonade, he got up. He set his cup down, hooked his thumbs in the tops of his pants pockets, one corner of his mouth caught between his teeth. He looked as if he wanted to say something else. “Thanks for the lemonade.” He tilted her a halfhearted grin and went to the back room to get the girls.
Sandra