The Summer Cottage by Lily Everett

their blue eyes, light-brown hair, and
     tall, athletic frames, but in their identical stubborn expressions.
    Maybe he should read up on genetics—clearly a fascinating field of scientific study.
    A tall woman Logan didn’t know hovered in the restaurant doorway behind Dylan, watching
     with definite interest.
    “Great job keeping him distracted,” Jessica muttered, and the woman grimaced.
    “Sorry, he’s a force of nature when he’s going after something.”
    “Family trait,” Jessica replied tersely, causing the young woman to grin and flick
     a sideways glance at Miles.
    Ignoring all the byplay, Dylan divided his glower equally between both of his older
     brothers as if unsure whose ass should be at the top of his to-be-kicked list. “If
     you’re here to try and stop me from marrying Penny, you may as well head back to the
     city.”
    Miles stepped up, as usual, raising his smoothly shaved chin to stare down his long,
     straight nose. “Don’t cast me as the villain in this drama. I’m only here to make
     sure no one is taking advantage of you.”
    Dylan snorted as if he didn’t buy it for a second, but Logan saw the way the lines
     at the corners of Miles’s eyes deepened and his frozen mask chilled down another few
     degrees.
    This was the kind of fraught, intensely emotional confrontation Logan hated. Everyone
     here believed he was right, utterly and completely, and no one was ever going to back
     down. Usually he stayed out of it, knowing the chaos would eventually resolve itself.
    “And I suppose the fact that I love Penny and she loves me,” Dylan argued, “that means
     nothing to you.”
    It was Miles’s turn to register complete disbelief, although he was too controlled
     to snort. “Dylan. You’ve known each other for less than a month.”
    “So? Grandma told me once that Dad asked Mom to marry him on their third date.”
    The mention of their parents shut Miles up as nothing else could. Turning his hard-jawed
     face away to stare out at the ocean vista that provided a backdrop to the Firefly
     Café, he muttered to Logan, “Reason with him. I can’t deal with him when he’s like
     this.”
    A tiny intake of breath to his right had Logan looking back in time to see Jessica
     subtly stepping closer to Dylan, aligning herself with him. She stared at Logan, her
     whole heart in her eyes, and he read the plea there as clearly as if she’d written
     it on the air between them.
    She didn’t want him to systematically take the whole concept of love apart, to reduce
     it to pieces and parts, components scattered across a lab table for dissection. That’s
     all Jessica thought he’d know to do with love.
    Maybe that was true, before Sanctuary Island. But now … Logan took a deep breath and
     faced his younger brother—although his words were meant for the older brother.
    Once again, Logan was in the middle, tugged in opposite directions. But this time,
     he was sure enough of his own footing to keep from budging. Jessica had given him
     that. So he paid her back the only way he knew how.
    “Miles wants me to tell you that love is nothing more than chemicals in the brain,
     a means to promote the propagation of the species. Maybe he thinks the fact that there’s
     a biological basis for the experience of loving another human being means it’s not
     real. But I’m a scientist, and a man, and I know that love is real … that it’s something
     more than an evolutionary imperative.”
    Miles swung around, hell in his eyes, but before he could blast Logan, Jessica said,
     “You wanted him to talk. So let him talk.”
    A little thrown by the novel experience of Jessica defending him against Miles—usually,
     the two of them ganged up on Logan to bug him into working less and eating more—Logan
     had to refocus on Dylan’s set, uncertain face to keep going.
    “Love is not an equation,” Logan told him. He told Miles, and Jessica, and himself,
     the truth revealing itself to him as he