with them. Here I am.”
“Wow. I’d never have guessed that. What were you going to do?”
“No idea. Not really.” He pushed the food around his plate for a moment. “My parents are older. They had me later in life. They’re both semi-retired now and moved back to the reservation where they were born. We’ve got some extended family there. They aren’t as...taken care of as I would like them to be. There’s some bad blood between them and some others about how they left. I just want to make sure they’re taken care of, you know?”
“No. Not really, I mean. My parents are dead and I don’t have any other family to speak of.”
Logan paused. Had he known that?
“You don’t, like, talk about it, but it seems like you’re really grounded in your family and your culture. I wish I had that.” Kelsey slid her fork into her mouth and began to chew.
“I didn’t know your parents were gone. I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Wow, this is good.” She gestured at the plate. “It’s okay. They divorced when I was like, fifteen. They were both remarried within a year. Mom died when I was eighteen. Dad had more kids, so things were always weird there. He died when I was nineteen, almost twenty. I never got very close to my step-parents or my half-sisters. I don’t know I just never felt connected.”
“I...have no idea what that’s like.”
“Probably a good thing.” She chuckled.
He swallowed his bite and stabbed at another. “I don’t have my shit together as well as you think I do.”
Kelsey gestured with her fork. “So you want to retire from Aegis Group to go be with your parents who haven’t asked you to take care of them. Do I have this right?”
Logan winced. “When you put it that way, I have to wonder what I’m thinking.”
“Nah, I think that’s just you. You want to take care of people and look after them. It’s what makes you a really great leader. But, you have to know where the line is, and that’s where we get crossways.”
“You’re right.” Her words smarted, but he could see the truth in them. “I guess that goes to further prove my point. I don’t have my shit together.”
Kelsey chewed another bite while watching him, so he did the same.
She’d taken time to mostly dry her dark hair. She hadn’t put make-up back on and she was once more in casual clothes.
This was how he liked her most.
“So, I’ve told you why I don’t think we’d work. Why do you think we would?” she asked.
Logan chewed his food slowly. This was something he’d thought about and had an answer for, but he wanted to say it the right way.
“We’re similar. Cut from the same cloth,” he began. “We both have a deep drive to do the right thing. We’re both dedicated to what we believe in. But we’re also different. I know I’m too serious. I get stuck in a rut, or blind to what’s not in front of me. You have a better sense of balance. You always seem to step back and see a situation differently.”
“It sounds like you’re describing a working relationship.”
He shook his head. “Those same qualities work in a relationship.”
“Then why do we clash so much? Really?” She turned to face him fully.
Logan braced a foot on her stool.
She waved a hand as she spoke. “Let’s say that a quarter of our arguments were rooted in sexual frustration. What about the other seventy-five percent of the time?”
That answer was easy. “Poor communication.”
“What?” Her nose wrinkled.
“Poor communication.” He nodded. “I thought a lot about this the last two days. Since you kissed me.”
Kelsey glanced away and shifted in her seat. But only for a moment.
Logan leaned toward her. Really thinking about this had opened his eyes to his own short-comings, and he wanted to do better. “I don’t want to tell you that you can’t do your job or how to do your job. Most of the time we clash because I want to look out for you as part of the team. But you view yourself as separate from the team always.”
She stabbed the air between them with her fork. “Because I’m not part of your team.”
“You’re part of this Task Force, which means we’re all on a team together. This dividing line between branches and departments fractures us. I know you take issue with how I do things sometimes, but there’s usually a reason. And I