Sidelines (Wounded Hearts #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

about to ascend, the lights flutter back on and Logan stops mid-step, making me bump right into him. Like my face meets his lower back and when I put my hands up to stop myself from falling backward, I grab hold of the first thing I can to stable myself—his hips.
    Talk about getting up close and personal.
    “Um, sorry.” I immediately let go, only to sway backward and nearly fall off the bottom step. But a warm hand shoots out and grabs hold of mine, sending sparks flying through my veins. Instinctively he pulls me to him, bracing us against the wall.
    “I got ya. Here.” He steps out of the way and helps pull me up onto the same step he’s on. I get my balance back only to realize that there is quite literally next to no space between us. The air gets super thick and a lump gets stuck in my throat.
    I haven’t been this close to anyone in a long time and the fluttering in my stomach is quick to remind me of that. But our conversation from earlier replays in my mind, reminding me of the man behind the disarmingly good looking mask. Clearing the fog gets easier and in no time at all, I’m able to finish my way up the stairs. I don’t turn around to make sure that Logan made it up too, but I hear when his boots hit the wood floors of his family room.
    A quick glance out the window tells me that a tornado didn’t rip through the countryside, so I start to make my way outside. Just as I step back into the stunning kitchen I’ll be daydreaming about for the rest of my life, Logan’s phone starts ringing again.
    “Hey. Have you left shelter yet?…Yep. Just got upstairs. Haven’t seen anything…Okay, I’ll be over in just a bit.” By the time he steps into the kitchen he’s hung the phone up but startled to see me still standing there gawking at his home.
    “Is everything okay?” I ask, clearly seeing the stress furrow his brow
    “Yep.” 
    Crossing my arms, I plant myself to wait for further explanation. A heavy exhale and a hand through his hair later, he finally speaks up. “A tree fell on my parents’ barn. Nobody was hurt, but they need help getting the tree off of it before it falls any further and damages more than just the building.”
    See? Was that really that hard?
    “What can I do to help?”
    He looks at me as if I’ve grown a second set of arms. “What do you mean help? You need to get checked in to your hotel or whatever and come back tomorrow. We can meet after dinner, say around six, six-thirty.”
    Shake my head, I knew he was going to say something like that. “Is there even an inn left? If a tornado came through here—”
    “You’re staying in Walker?” he asks, aghast.
    “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Because we only have the inn. The nearest hotel has to be—”
    “In the city. And I’m not driving over an hour every time I need to see or talk to someone here.”
    Another hand through his hair. That pretty head of his is going to go prematurely bald if he keeps that up. “We don’t know if anything touched down. How about we just drive through town and see what damage has been done.”
    I nod, trying to brace myself for up close images of destroyed homes and businesses. Twenty minutes later it has been determined that a tornado didn’t actually touch down in town, but the wind was so bad that it took out a couple of the store-front windows on several of the downtown shops, blew down all three stoplights on the main strip, and caused several transformers throughout the community—including the one that feeds power to the one line to the inn—to blow up. When we pull up to the inn, a group of weary looking firefighters are exiting the building. This doesn’t look good.
    “Hey, Logan. Your ranch fare okay?” An alert looking police officer wearing a shiny badge on his left shoulder that identified himself as Sheriff Perry reaches a hand out to Logan. He couldn’t be much older than Logan, but the hair around his temples is peppered with bits of gray, a telltale sign that