Like Never Before (9 page)

And Mae wasn't helping.

“This is exactly why you should be talking with my niece, Amelia. I can guarantee you
USA Today
doesn't have her fixing jammed machines.”

It was at least the fiftieth time Mae had brought up her niece—a “real journalist.” Apparently, she worked at
USA Today's
Chicago outlet. “You really want to get rid of me that badly, Mae?”

“I'm just saying, if you love the newspaper business so much, then why would you not take advantage of a connection at a major paper? Plus, Belle's part of this young startup thing on the side, which you, of all people, would love, and she's in town this weekend—”

Amelia huffed a strand of hair from her face. “Thank you, Mae, but I'm staying.” If she wasn't willing to move an hour away to work for the
Communicator
, she certainly had no desire to traipse off to Chicago.

“Sorry about this,” Ledge rasped behind her as the door signaled Mae's sulky retreat. Amelia had only recently learned the reason for the press operator's soft, throaty voice—the result of damage to his vocal chords in a house fire when he was a kid. It didn't match his frame—bulky enough for a spot on a football team's defensive line.

“Not your fault this equipment is older than dirt.” Freddie had wanted to replace the pressroom's machines last year after the flood, but a flimsy insurance policy had left him cash-poor and forced into making lousy repairs instead. There, her fingers latched on to the source of the jam, and she yanked.

“Try it now, Ledge.”

“Get your hand out of there first.”

She hopped off the stepstool and backed away. Ledge hit the button to start up the machine.

It gurgled to life, rumbling enough to rattle the window in between the pressroom and newsroom. But a couple chugs later, the clunking started again, and then the flashing light alerted them to another jam.

As if the mangled paper shooting from its mouth wasn't sign enough.

Ledge released a sigh and switched off the press. “I don't know, Amelia. We might have to buckle down and call a repairman this time.”

“Oh no. I have fixed this baby so many times. No way are we paying someone else to come in and do what I'm perfectly capable of myself.” Never mind that she'd probably ruin her shirt in the process. She'd already accidentally smeared ink down her arm.

She climbed onto the stool again, buried her hand inside the machine again, and felt around for more bits of paper and the rod that always insisted on coming loose. The pressroom door whomped behind her. Owen, probably, coming to check on their progress. With production day tomorrow and the paper due to hit doorsteps on Wednesday, Monday afternoons were always busy.

But it wasn't Owen's voice that caused her to jerk, bumping her shoulder against the top of the machine. “Having trouble?”

She yanked her arm free and turned. Logan? He held a stack of folders under one arm, wore a gray, unbuttoned plaid flannel coat—looked like something he'd borrowed from his dad—over an untucked Oxford and tie, along with a pinched smile that told her he was trying to hold his amusement in check. Even from the stepstool, she had barely an inch on him. “Just . . . ah . . . a paper jam.”

“You know, I fixed that thing about a thousand times back when I worked here. If you need help . . .”

She swiped the back of her hand over her forehead. “That's okay. I've got it.” She turned back to the machine, trying to pretend the heat in her cheeks was from the effort of fighting the press and not the man standing behind her.

Please, it was thirty-five degrees outside, and this building was as drafty as an old garage.

She'd had the exact same reaction to Logan at the bridge on Saturday, when he'd held his daughter with the pride of an Olympic athlete's parent. And then Sunday when she'd spotted him in church with his family, way up front in the Walker pew. Had almost considered sticking around after church just to say hi. Almost. Would've been the first time in two years she didn't slip out during the last song.

She wasn't even sure why she still attended, really. Maybe just a stubborn hope that one of these days she'd be able to scrounge up some trust in the God who'd let her down.

Or who she'd let down. Could never quite decide which.

Aha. Her fingers brushed over a crinkled paper. She gave a hard pull, then felt around to make sure there weren't any more scraps jamming the inside. She slipped her arm free, bringing the paper with it. “Victory.”

Logan had rounded to Ledge's side of the machine, and she could feel his eyes on her as she jumped down from the stepstool. “Try it again, Ledge.”

This time when he turned on the machine, it chortled into a steady rhythm right away. “Yeah, baby.”

She balled up the ruined paper and chucked it at the garbage can. Rim shot.

“Proud of yourself, are you?”

She turned back to Logan. “Well, we'll get the
Shopper
printed on time.” The tab-sized advertiser they printed every
Monday afternoon was their one actual moneymaker. “So yeah, fairly proud.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“That you're impressed with my mechanical skills?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled with his smile. “That there's a panel on the side of the press. You have to use a screwdriver to open it, but if you do, you can actually see what you're doing rather than feeling around blindly.”

What she wouldn't give for the kind of poker face that would make him think she already knew this. Just happened to like squeezing her arm down the tight opening to feel for the jam.

“If not for the fact that Ledge didn't know it either, I'd feel totally idiotic right about now.” Except, why was Ledge looking at her like that—all contrite? “You knew?”

He rubbed one hand over his bald head. “You're just so proud every time you fix it. You always hear it jam from the newsroom, come running back like it's on fire and you've got the only bucket of water.” He shrugged.

And Logan just stood there, not even trying to hide his amusement anymore.

“Well, I still fixed it.”

“That you did.” His overly consoling tone might've been irritating if not for what might actually be a hint of impressed sincerity joining the humor in his expression.

And if not for the nerves that refused to settle.
Pull it together. You're thirty, not thirteen.

It was all those articles and speeches of his she'd read. She'd let his words build him up too much in her mind. Couldn't separate the real deal from the writer up on a pedestal in her mind.

Didn't help that he somehow managed to look both rugged and polished at the same time. The shadow on his cheeks, the tie, that funny plaid coat.

The press machine's chugging snapped her to attention.

She was staring at him, wasn't she? “Uh, well, so . . . you're here.”

“I'm here. Maybe we could talk in the newsroom?”

“Right. The newsroom. Of course. The press, it's loud.” The words, they jammed. Worse than the decrepit machinery.

The newsroom was empty. Owen must've gone off to cover something or another. Maybe for the best. Things had been strained all morning. She'd apologized so many times for Friday night, but it didn't erase the awkwardness.

They were barely through the doorway when Logan stopped. “I'm not going to sell the paper.”

She tripped over Owen's chair, caught herself on the counter. “What?”

“I mean, I probably
am
going to sell.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

She sent Owen's chair rolling back to his desk with her foot and leaned against the counter. “You're confusing me, Logan Walker. You're not going to sell but you are.”

“Just not right away. And there's more.”

“There's more.”

He stood next to her now, looking down, like he still wasn't sure about what he was going to say. He licked his lips, fingered the folder still tucked under his arm, flicking its corner up and down. “I think I might stick around for a while.”

“You're going to stick around?”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

“Only when I'm not entirely clear what you're saying.”

He took a breath, stopped fiddling with the folder, and leaned his hip against the counter to face her straight on. “If you don't mind, if it's not intruding, I'm going to . . . help out, I guess. I still plan to sell . . . I need to sell. But I think I could do some good around here. Get a website going, help you with
that centennial issue. It's partially selfish—the better shape the paper's in, the better price I'll get. But . . . well . . .”

She tried to ignore that last part. Latched on instead to the first part. He was staying. He was going to help.

“How long?”

“At least a month. Although after the way my partner reamed me out when I called him this morning, I'm tempted to stretch it into two. Besides, there's this speech therapist I really want Charlie to see, and the soonest I can get her in is three weeks from now. So I've got even more reason to stick around.”

Two whole months? If he wasn't her new boss, she just might kiss him.

And oh, if that thought didn't make her stomach somersault. Then, in a move that surprised her and sent all her nerves fluttering to attention, he reached one hand out to brush his thumb over her cheek. “You've got ink . . .”

From her fight with the press, of course.

His thumb came away smudged. “So I was thinking as my first official act as publisher, I'd buy everyone coffee.”

She had to blink and step back in order to actually hear him. “Brown-nosing?”

He glanced at her. “Or I'm just not ready yet to see Freddie's empty office.”

His honesty shook her even more than his touch. “I'll come with. I know everybody's drink of choice.”

They were outside and halfway to Coffee Coffee, quiet accompanied by the wind flapping through the awning over the flower shop, when Logan suddenly stopped. Sunlight tumbled like ribbons through cottony clouds. “I almost forgot.” He held out the folder he'd been carrying. “This is for you.”

A breeze rustled through the papers as she opened the folder, and she clamped them down with her palm. Handwriting—
Logan's, she assumed—filled the margins of Xeroxed articles and newspaper clippings, covered pages of lined notebook paper. “Notes about Kendall Wilkins?”

“You're not the only one who thinks he's interesting. Way back, I wanted to do an article on him, but he refused to be interviewed, so it never went anywhere. But Dad still has all my old boxes in his attic, and I found my notes.”

She flipped through page after page.

Logan laughed, and she cocked an eyebrow. “What?”

“You gonna read it all right here in the middle of the sidewalk?”

“Maybe. This is a gold mine, Logan.”

“Yeah, but it's cold.” Circles of red covered his cheeks, and specks of amber flickered in his dark eyes. He'd gone looking through his dad's attic just for these old notes? For her?

“He's the reason I live here, you know. I came to town a few years ago during a hard season in my life. Felt like so many people had given up on me. So on a whim, I decided to come and thank the one man who'd somehow strangely believed in me.”

“But he'd already passed away by then?”

She nodded. “And yet, I ended up staying. I met Freddie that very first day and found out there was an opening at the paper. I ran across Sunny and Lenny Klassen's advertisement for the barn-turned-house on their property. There was some fair going on in the town square.” She gazed over the street to where the river burrowed its course, sparkling blue under a matching sky. “I just stayed.”

She looked up, suddenly surprised at where she'd let her words wander, the snippets of her past she'd let him see. He simply waited. Maybe she should tell him how lost she'd been in those months leading up to her arrival in Maple Valley. How a failed adoption and a broken marriage had shattered her.

Things she'd never even spilled to Raegan.

But no, it was too much. Too soon. Maybe it'd always be
too soon
.

So she shook her head and lightened her tone. “Tell me the truth—it's those emails I sent you weeks ago that really convinced you to come back to Maple Valley and stay, isn't it?”

He grinned. “Of course. You were just so persuasive. Not at all blunt or out of the blue or . . .” His words trailed as his focus flitted from her face. He looked over her shoulder, his expression shifting into concern. “I don't think she's okay.”

“Who . . . ?” Amelia turned, seeing what he saw through Coffee Coffee's lanky windows. Megan, alone in the shop, gripped the edge of a table with one hand, holding her protruding stomach with the other, a broken coffee cup at her feet.

Logan was already moving toward the door.