Snowbound Summer (The Logan Series Book 3) by Sally Clements Page B

a
couple of hours ago. She’d been quiet since the lights went out. Unusually
quiet. Probably regretting the foolish impulse that had made her kiss him. He
should have just let it be, but impulse control where Summer was concerned was
a problem. He remembered the look in her eyes, the dawning awareness. When he’d
kissed her, for a moment she hadn’t responded.
    But then she’d kissed him back
with such passion all his misgivings had disappeared in an instant.
    He was no monk. There were some
fine looking women in Brookbridge—many of whom he’d dated at some time or
another. But he’d never been aroused as quickly as he had with Summer. Maybe it
was because he’d spent so many years craving her.
    He’d crawled onto the sofa fully
dressed under Declan’s duvet, and had spent the last while trying to get
comfortable. The damn thing was too short—his feet hung over the ends. And a
spring or two had broken in the middle, making it damn uncomfortable.
    If he had to stay here for
another night it would be in Declan’s bed.
    Fella would have to deal with
being alone. There was nothing wrong with being alone—Nick preferred his
solitude, didn’t really like sharing space with anyone. But the thought of
sharing a bed tonight with the woman upstairs was appealing.
    If she wasn’t drunk.
    Stop thinking about her. He closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.
    A couple of hours later he shot
up in bed—heart pounding.
    A long, mournful howl.
    Fella. Nick clambered off
the sofa and re-lit the candle. “It’s okay, Fella.”
    The dog looked back at him,
tilted his head to the side, then pointed his nose at the ceiling and howled
again.
    What the hell? There was
no aggression in the dog’s body language, he sat in the basket rather than
standing, and his hackles weren’t rising. “Shush.” A sound came from upstairs,
a high-pitched, discordant sound.
    He picked up the candle and
walked to the bottom of the stairs. The sound was louder—more distinct. Was
she… Was she singing?
    An answering howl came from the
kitchen.
    Nick pushed up his sleeve and
checked his watch. Four-twenty. It was four-twenty in the goddamn morning and Summer
and the dog were having a karaoke session. Jesus. He tramped up the
stairs and pushed open the bedroom door.
    She lay in bed with eyes closed.
Earbuds hung from her ears and she was singing at the top of her voice. He
couldn’t fault her music choice—heck, everyone loves the Foo Fighters—but she
was murdering The Best Of You.
    She was wearing fleecy pajamas
and a wooly hat, and had a blanket around her shoulders and the covers pulled
up as high as possible around her chest. Her head tilted side to side, keeping
pace with the music. Her hands rose from the coverlet, and her wrists rotated
as she mimed the drum solo.
    “Summer.”
    She kept singing, and the tinny
sound of music bled from the earbuds. There was no way she could hear him over
that.
    He knew the song well—she was
only halfway through. He could walk over and tap her on the arm, which might
cause a heart attack, or worse still, a scream…or he could wait until she
finished and then speak in the silence at the song’s end.
    He propped a shoulder on the doorjamb
and waited.
    *****
    She never should have gone to sleep that afternoon. In the
months after the double disasters of losing first the restaurant and then Michael,
she’d been plagued with insomnia, and resorted to sleeping pills.
    It had taken the help of a doctor
to break the habit—she couldn’t add the shame of having become addicted to
sleeping pills to her trophy cabinet of failures. She’d built up a careful
routine—hot bath, warm cocoa, never napping in the day—to get her over it.
    And then she’d blown it by
sleeping in the day, and not having any of her usual tricks to fall back on. So
she’d read for a while on her backlit Kindle, tried lying there, mentally
counting sheep, and given up when the vision of sheep had been replaced by
visions of