Read Willow Spring for Free Online Page A

sandy hair still needed a trim and was a little messy, but she suddenly didn’t mind it that way—it gave the impression that he’d just gotten up. From bed. What did Logan look like in bed? What did he wear to bed? She sucked in her breath, wondering, and he said, “Eyes on the road, freckles!”
    “Sorry,” she managed as she focused back out the windshield just in time to make one of the sharper curves on Blue Valley Road. But she still saw his face in her mind. He’d clearly shaved a couple of days ago but not recently, leaving that stubbly look she liked. What was it like to touch that stubble? I should have touched it while I was kissing him, darn it. But who could think clearly while being kissed like that? Will I ever get another chance?
    Just a few hours ago, she’d have said a definitive no to that question. But now, somehow, she was beginning to let herself wonder, speculate, think, just a little . . . that maybe she was wrong. He was clearly noticing her in new ways, after all. And she couldn’t deny feeling especially close to him right now. And as Tessa had repeatedly pointed out, he hadn’t kissed her like a friend.
    So while it still seemed dangerous—to her heart—to even begin thinking such a thing was possible, deep down inside, she was cautiously beginning to wonder . . . if maybe it was. Maybe.
    It was late afternoon when they parked near Under the Covers, and Amy exited the car without any sort of pep talk to Logan. Besides the fact that she thought the time for coddling him was over, she suddenly had other, bigger things on her mind.
    Like the crazy idea that had just entered her head.
    Should she find a way to tell him? How she felt? Or maybe at least hint at it?
    Maybe—given all he’d just been through—the timing was right. Maybe he was noticing her in new ways, thinking of her differently. Maybe having endured a tragedy had changed something inside him, regarding her, regarding relationships in general. Maybe he was ready to settle down. Dare she think with the sweet, small town girl next door?
    But what are you thinking? Telling him would be crazy! A disaster! An utter humiliation of epic proportions!
    So just be cool. Cool but . . . open. To the possibilities. He’d never tell Mike Romo he had nice feet, after all. It had to mean something.
    Maybe it meant . . . a new beginning. A wonderful new beginning she never could have anticipated with the one and only guy in the universe who really was her perfect match.
    So as they settled together on a park bench facing the white, latticed gazebo in the center of the green, shrubbery-laden square, she felt . . . hopeful. And even . . . ready. Like this could really happen. She could have a boyfriend. A lover. And it could be Logan.
    “Can we talk about something?” he surprised her by asking then.
    “Sure,” she said a bit too quickly. Was this it? Was he going to tell her his feelings for her had changed, deepened? Her heartbeat sped up.
    “I don’t think I want to be a firefighter anymore.”
    At this, Amy’s heart sank. And not only because it wasn’t the admission of love she’d been fantasizing about—but because it was just so . . . wrong. “What else would you be?” she asked. Because Logan was the kind of man whose job ran through his blood. He cared about it, he lived and breathed it—heck, it was practically part of his DNA. His father had been a Destiny fireman before him, and his grandfather had started the first Destiny Fire Department as a volunteer organization back in the fifties. “I mean, being a fireman is all you’ve ever wanted from the time we were little.”
    He didn’t meet her eyes as he replied, but he sounded . . . resolute. “Sometimes things change. And things are changing in me right now. I don’t know what I want to do—it might take some time to find a new path—but the more I mull it over, the more I realize that’s one thing that’s been keeping me inside that house. I