Page 71 of Wilde Secrets

Afternoons were spent the same way as the morning, but the evenings they spent together. They’d cook dinner, moving around the kitchen like they’d been doing it for years, not days. After dinner, they read books, or watched a movie… but they always ended up in bed, the sheets twisted and tangled and both of them replete.

Logan couldn’t remember being so happy.

He’d finished the renovations two days earlier and could have gone back to work. There was a construction project that he could have helped out on, but he found, for once, he’d listened to his assistant manager and actually took the time off.

Logan couldn’t just sit around though, so he’d worked on the boat and even headed out to Mason’s cabin to do some maintenance that his brother hadn’t managed to get to. Mason still wasn’t back in Cape Wilde. Logan didn’t think Harper would want to leave when Mason came back, but he didn’t talk about it with her.

He didn’t want her to leave.

And here she was, standing beside his truck desperately trying to find an excuse to not go and sing karaoke. And he was trying to get her to go?

There was just something about Harper Holden that had Logan wanting to be the best person he could. And that included helping her leave Cape Wilde, if that’s what she truly wanted.

“You don’t have to sing,” he said.

She shot him a scathing look. “I know that, but I also told Cassie that I would.”

Logan smiled. That was one of the things that he liked most about Harper. She said she’d do something and then she stuck to her word. But there was a problem with that as well. When the thing she said she’d do was eating her up inside.

Like this album she was forcing herself to write.

This morning, he’d found her in tears in the living room. He’d been listening to her sing while he’d been taking a break from chopping wood again.

Again, because he knew that Harper couldn’t take her eyes off him when he did it. How was it his fault if it got hot and he had to take his shirt off?

But there she was, in tears, not because she couldn’t write the songs—for a change—but because she could write songs. The wrong type of songs.

He’d gathered her into his arms and rubbed her back as she sobbed her heart out on his shoulder. He finally managed to get it out between sobs.

She was writing songs. But not ones that her sister could sing. They weren’t pop songs, they were folk songs. Designed to be sung with an acoustic guitar, not along to some backup track and played in teenage girls’ bedrooms the nation over.

Admittedly, while Harper had been staying with him, Logan had been listening to Isla sing her songs. He’d listened to the lyrics, hearing years of loneliness pour out through his headphones. It stung his heart that she’d been pleading with the world to listen to her for so long, and nobody had paid any attention.

And now he was here and the only way he could help her was to help her leave.

“She’ll understand if you don’t want to sing.”

Harper sighed and climbed into the truck, Logan following her lead and sliding behind the wheel.

“Yeah, I get that. I just don’t want to disappoint her, you know?”

Logan knew how she felt. Disappointing Cassie was like accidentally kicking a puppy—not that he’d ever done that, of course, but the feeling was the same. You hurt more than she did. Cassie would bounce back almost immediately, but you’d still feel bad.

Maybe that was because she was the baby of the family and had lost so much?

Logan yanked himself back to the present, starting the truck with a roar. He backed out and headed into town.

They chatted about nothing in particular, two people just enjoying time together. The radio was off as Logan had noticed Harper stiffen any time one of Isla’s—one of her—songs came on. Who could blame her?

“So, what are you going to sing tonight?” Harper asked.

Logan laughed. “Oh, I don’t sing.”

Harper turned toward him in her seat with a scowl.

That was a mistake.

“If I’m going to sing, then you’re going to sing.”

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