Twin Blessings and Toward Home: Twin Blessings / Toward Home. Carolyne Aarsen

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      “That’s just excellent.” She beamed at him, and Logan felt a faint stirring of reaction to her infectious enthusiasm.

      He pulled himself up short. This woman was definitely not his type, no matter how attractive she might be. He put his reaction down to a melancholy that had been his companion since he and Karen had broken up.

      A gentle ache turned through him as he thought of Karen. When Logan was awarded sole guardianship of his nieces, Karen had decided that the responsibility was more than she could handle. So she broke up with Logan. At the time he didn’t know if it was his pride or his feelings that hurt more. He still wasn’t sure.

      “So what’s your name?” he asked, relegating that subject to the closed file.

      “Sandra Bachman. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. P.”

      Logan decided to leave it at that. He wasn’t as comfortable handing out his name. Not to a total stranger.

      She smiled at him and looked at the countryside. “Do you come here often?”

      Logan glanced sidelong at her, realizing that she wasn’t going to be quiet. Ignoring her didn’t work, so he really had not choice but to respond to her. “Not as often as I’d like,” he admitted. “I work in Calgary.”

      “As an accountant?”

      “No. Architect.”

      “Ooh. All those nice straight lines.”

      Logan ignored her slightly sarcastic remark. “So what do you do?”

      Sandra lay her head back against the headrest of the car. “Whatever comes to mind. Wherever I happen to be.” She tossed him another mischievous glance. “I’ve been a short-order cook on Vancouver Island, a waitress in California, a receptionist in Minnesota. I’ve worked on a road crew and tried planting trees.” She wrinkled her nose. “Too hard. The only constant in my life has been my stained glass work.”

      “As in church windows?”

      “Sometimes. Though I don’t often see the finished project.”

      “Why not?”

      “Been there, done that and bought the T-shirt. Not my style.”

      Sandra Bachman sounded exactly like his mother—always moving and resistant to organized religion.

      “Do you go to church?” she asked.

      “Yes, I do,” he said hoping that his conviction came through the three words. “I attend regularly.”

      “Out of need or custom?”

      He shook his head as he smiled. “Need is probably uppermost.”

      “A good man.” Again the slightly sarcastic tone. In spite of his faint animosity toward her, he couldn’t help but wonder what caused it.

      “Going to church doesn’t make anyone good anymore than living in a garage makes someone a mechanic,” he retorted.

      She laughed again, a throaty sound full of humor. “Good point, Mr. P.”

      She tilted her head to one side, twisting her hair around her hand. “You have a cabin in Elkwater?”

      Logan nodded, checking his speed. “It’s my grandfather’s.”

      “So you’re on holiday.”

      “Not really.”

      “Okay, you sound defensive.”

      “You sound nosy.”

      Sandra laughed. “You’re not the first one to tell me that.” She gave her hair another twist. “So if you’re not on holiday, why are you going to a holiday place?”

      “I have to meet my mother.” And try and talk some sense into her, Logan thought. If he could convince his mother to stay, he might win a reprieve.

      “So she’s holidaying.”

      Logan glanced at Sandra, slightly annoyed at her steady probing. “My mother has her own strange and irresponsible plans,” he said.

      His passenger angled him a mischievous glance, unfazed by his abrupt comments. “I sense tension between your mother’s choice of lifestyle and yours.”

      “That’s putting it kindly. My mother has a hard time with responsibility.”

      “Surely you’re being a little hard on her? After all, she raised you, didn’t she?”

      Logan held her dancing eyes, momentarily unable to look away, catching a glimmer of her enthusiasm. She tilted her head again, as if studying him, her smile fading.

      Her expression became serious as the contact lengthened.

      She really was quite pretty, Logan thought. Possessed an infectious charm.

      He caught himself and looked at the road, derailing that particular train of thought. This young woman was as far from what he was looking for as his mother was.

      “So why are you so defensive about your mother?”

      “Why do you care? I’ll probably never see you again.”

      She lifted her shoulder in a negligent shrug. “Just making conversation. We don’t need to talk about your mother,” Sandra continued, biting her lip as if considering a safe topic. “We could talk about life, that one great miracle.”

      “Big topic.”

      “Depends on how you break it down.” She twirled a loose strand of hair around her finger. “What do you want from life?”

      Logan wasn’t going to answer, but he hadn’t spent time with an attractive woman since Karen. He found himself saying, “Normal. I yearn for absolutely normal.” He wasn’t usually this loquacious with a complete stranger and wondered what it was about her that had drawn that admission from him.

      “Normal isn’t really normal, you know,” Sandra replied, braiding her hair into a thick, dark braid. Her dark eyes held his a brief moment. “Sometimes normal makes you crazy.”

      Logan gave her a quick look. “Now you sound defensive.”

      “Nope. Just telling the truth.” She dropped the braid, and it lay like a thick rope over her tanned shoulders. “So what’s your plan to get your normal life?”

      “That’s an easy one. I’m picking up my nieces, who are staying with my mother, who wants to scoot off to Alaska for some strange reason. Then I’m taking my nieces back home to Calgary. And that’s as close to normal as I’m going to get.”

      The woman’s smile slipped, and she looked straight ahead. “Nieces?” she asked quietly. “As in two?”

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