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staff who helped out in the kitchen each evening. 'The show's over, folks,'
she told them. 'And we have a restaurant to run,' she added.
But she couldn't exactly say her mind was on what she was doing for the rest
of the evening, conscious of the fact that Logan was waiting to take her
home. Her concentration wasn't helped by the fact that, at eleven o'clock,
Logan, his meal obviously over, came through to the kitchen, making
himself comfortable on a stool at the back of the room.
Everyone else working in the kitchen had already gone home for the
evening by this time, Darcy just dealing with late desserts, doing most of the
clearing away herself too.
Logan didn't say a word, but Darcy was conscious the whole time of his
brooding presence at the back of the room.
'I shouldn't be much longer,' she told him awkwardly,just after midnight, the
last customers gone from the restaurant now, most of the staff too, just the
night's takings to deal with.
'Take your time,' he said. 'I'm not going anywhere.'
Except back to her home with her! To talk, he'd said. But what else did they
have to say to each other? She was coming to accept they weren't exactly on
different sides in this situation—but they certainly weren't on the same side,
either!
Much as she wished she didn't, she still remembered the way he had kissed
her three days ago.
More to the point, she remembered the way she had kissed him, too!
CHAPTER SEVEN
LOGAN remained deliberately silent during the drive to Darcy's home,
appreciating the fact that she was tired from her hectic evening's work. He
also didn't like the fact that she looked so exhausted. In fact, he felt more
than a little angry towards her father for leaving her in the lurch in this way.
It was his restaurant; he had no right just going off like this and leaving
everything to Darcy!
'Cain I get you a coffee?' she offered once they had reached her home,
switching on the lights as she led the way to the kitchen at the back of the
house.
'No, you can't,' Logan answered decisively. 'You can sit there—' he suited
his actions to his words, gently pushing her down into one of the pine
kitchen chairs that stood around the table '—while I make you a cup of
coffee. You've waited on people enough already this evening,' he told her as
he began to search through the cupboards for the makings of the coffee. 'I
had no idea there was so much hard work involved in running a restaurant,'
he admitted, as he put the kettle on to boil.
Darcy gave a strained smile. 'Normally there would be two chefs in the
kitchen each evening, but it was David's—the other chef—night off, and—'
'With your father's disappearing trick, you were left to carry the whole load,'
Logan finished for her.
'Actually, I was going to say—and I didn't feel it was fair to David to ask
him to come in and do an extra evening,' Darcy corrected.
'I don't think it fair of your father to just go away and leave everything to you
like this, either,' Logan told her crossly. 'It's a broken engagement, not the
end of the world!' He placed a steaming coffee in front of Darcy before
sitting down at the table himself to sip at his own cup.
She looked across at him consideringly for several long seconds. 'Have
you ever been in love, Logan?'
He sat back, unable to hide his surprise at the intimacy of her question. No
one had ever asked him a question as personal as this before, not even
Fergus and Brice, and goodness knew, they were as close to him as two
brothers!
'Have you?' he finally came back defensively.
Darcy smiled, a less tired smile this time, the respite from the pressures of
cooking, and the warming coffee, ~ obviously reviving her slightly. 'Once,'
she said. 'But I don't think it counts.'
Logan didn't agree. What sort of man had she once been in love with? Had
he loved her in return? And if so, where was he now?
'I was nine,' Darcy told him with a mischievous smile. 'And he was ten.'
She really was starting to feel better if she could tease him in this way,
Logan accepted wryly.
But he wasn't; why had it bothered him so much when he'd thought Darcy
had been in love with someone else...?
'An .older man,' he returned dryly to cover his own confusion.
'Hmm.' She smiled, sipping her coffee. 'But I don't think it's a legitimate
basis from which to judge how my father must be feeling at the moment,'
she added with a pained grimace.
She might be right; as Logan had never been in love— even at the age of
nine or ten!—he really couldn't say.
Although he was still of the opinion that his mother was no great loss to
Daniel Simon's life!
He had listened to what his mother had had to say two days ago, and perhaps
he even understood her a little better now, but too much had happened, too
