Ms. Starr’s Most Inconvenient Change of Heart (A Raven's Run Romantic Mystery Book 1)

by Dorothy St. James

  He’d thought she’d died.

  Let her cower over by the door until the storm passed. It wasn’t as if she’d spared him any compassion fifteen years ago.

  “I-I-my—” she started to answer.

  Thunder shook the walls just as a burst of lightning brightened the room. The stricken look on Sam’s face made him feel like an ass.

  “Get over here,” he growled.

  “Are you sure?” She didn’t budge.

  “No.”

  Hell no. He didn’t want her anywhere near him.

  Who was he kidding? He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold onto her forever. But he didn’t have forever to give. And neither did she.

  And hell, he was half-naked under the sheets.

  After digging out the tracker and destroying it, he’d fallen into bed without bothering to pull on his jeans. All he had on under the covers were his boxer shorts. The stupid silky ones covered with bright red lips Rafe had given him as a joke. He’d put them on the other day because they’d been the only clean underwear left in his drawer.

  Sam had seen those boxers, and she hadn’t commented on them. But she had to have thought something. Probably that he was the kind of guy who bought flashy underwear. No wonder she’d looked as if she hadn’t believed him when he’d said he didn’t have a woman in his life.

  Lady killer.

  Gad.

  She should have laughed in his face and told him that his choice of clothing was the reason he couldn’t keep a girlfriend.

  She had.

  Ri-ight.

  He was going to have to beg his brother to pick him up some new, boring underwear in the morning. That’d be something he’d never live down. He should have grabbed a pack of underwear and a change of clothes when they were at the store earlier that day, but he’d been having too much fun helping Sam buy new clothes that he’d forgotten to get anything for himself.

  Maybe if there was a storm tomorrow and he was dressed in a freaking suit of armor under these covers, he might be able to invite her over knowing she’d be safe with him. And maybe not.

  Let her suffer a little.

  He sure had suffered when he’d found her empty hospital bed. She could have written a short note telling him that she hadn’t died. She could have told him that she still cared...even a little. Had that been too much to ask?

  Another batch of lightning troubled the sky. A millisecond later thunder shook the rafters. This time Sam didn’t jump. Or yelp. But the way she was clutching her hands in front of her told him how hard she was working to hold her fear in check.

  The hell with what she might think. Or how hard it was going to be to keep his hands to himself. Sam needed him. And he’d always been her hero.

  “Come on, Sammy Jammy. Get over here.” He held up the sheet in invitation.

  Chapter 23

  My hands trembled, no longer from the storm, but in anticipation of what could happen tonight. With Logan. I ran my fingers over his bare chest as I crawled under the covers with him. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t wear much to bed. A man possessing such raw sensuality as Logan would want to feel the air against his skin as often as he could.

  The thunder kept getting louder, sounding as if the storm’s energy might tear open the sky. Logan wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight against his chest.

  “Storms in these parts are wild and fast. They rarely last much longer than an hour,” he whispered against my hair.

  I nodded.

  “Uh-Logan, there’s something I should to tell you.” I needed to tell him that I’d called off the wedding.

  The fact that George never answered when I called told me all I needed to know. I’d served as a pretty convenience to him. Just a darn convenience, which hadn’t mattered up until now. He’d served as a convenient fiancé to me too. But when things had started to fall apart, like the trouble happening now, I needed a partner I could depend on. I needed someone who could hold me fast against his chest whenever I felt afraid of the storms.

  Logan started rubbing me, his hands moving over my back in broad circles. “Whatever you need to tell me, it can wait until morning. Just take some deep breaths.”

  He pushed up my sweatshirt and began blazing a sensual path up my spine, massaging my tense muscles and reigniting the passion I’d felt for him only a few hours earlier.

  “What are you—?” I started to ask. I really should tell him about the wedding. But gracious, that felt good. His questing fingers kneaded my muscles. He concentrated on my shoulders and the tension bundled up there. Slowly, with his help all my tension began to melt completely away. It didn’t happen all at once. I still felt twinges of guilt for crawling into Logan’s bed like this. And wanting more, much more, than a simple massage.

  I wasn’t engaged to be married. Not anymore. Other than our clothes, there were no barriers to keep us apart.

  Sure, I knew Logan couldn’t offer me much more than one night. But that wasn’t going to scare me off. Spending the night with Logan, here, in his bed was an opportunity, if missed, I knew I’d regret for the rest of my days.

  I snuggled closer, pressing the full length of my body to his. Thunder rumbled softer this time. The worst of the storm had passed. Even so, I used the sound as an excuse to wrap my legs around his.

  “Sam,” he said, trying to put some space between us while I held onto him as if my life depended upon it. “We shouldn’t.”

  “I used your secure phone just now. I called off the wedding.” I pressed my lips to his. A bold move, but one I couldn’t deny myself a moment longer.

  He stiffened. “Because of me?”

  “Partly,” I admitted.

  “Sam, you shouldn’t have done that. I was an idiot for trying to talk you out of getting married. I can’t offer you—”

  “I know.” I set my finger to his lips to stop him from talking himself out of what we could be for each other tonight. “I know what you can and cannot offer me. And I’m okay with that. I’m not asking for a lifetime. Only a night. Tonight.”

  “Sam?” he whispered. “Are you—?”

  “Yes, I’ve never felt more certain of anything in my life.”

  Making a commitment to anyone, especially to Logan, involved too much risk. A risk I wasn’t willing to take.

  “My father,” I whispered in the darkness. “He’s the reason why I disappeared from the hospital fifteen years ago. He left my mom. And me. He left me. Said he couldn’t handle watching me die. So, he left. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Oh, Sam, I’m—” I slapped my hand over his delicious mouth before Logan could start to heap his pity on me. But I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me. I only wanted him to understand.

  “My mom told me what had happened and checked me out of the hospital that morning. She drove north until we reached New York where my grandmother lived. And then she checked me into a hospital that was close to Nana’s house.

  “I wanted to call you, to write to you, but the trip had sapped what little energy I had. And then a heart came available. Things moved pretty quickly after that. I had the surgery to get my new heart.” I tapped my chest. “And then a long recovery. As soon as I was feeling up to contacting you, I...” I shrugged. “I couldn’t. I was afraid my letter would be returned because you had...”

  “Oh Sam,” Logan mumbled, because I still had my hand over his mouth.

  Since that was all I’d wanted to tell him I let that fingers slip away from their lovely perch.

  “I don’t know what to say. Your father—”

  “Is a jerk. Yeah, I know.” But he’d taught me an invaluable lesson. That love was dangerous. Too dangerous.

  “You were right, Logan,” I said, tears filling my eyes. Tears Logan couldn’t see thanks to the darkness. “I’m not ready to marry...anyone.”

  I will never marry.

  That had been all the urging he needed. With a satisfied grunt, he pulled my sweatshirt off over my head. He
then turned me so I was lying on my back on the bed with him on his side stretched out next to me.

  “Oh Sammy Jammy, my Sammy Jammy,” he groaned between kisses. “You are so damned beautiful.”

  “Yeah, easy for you to say,” I said, laughing through my welling tears. “It’s pitch black in here.”

  “It’s not that dark,” he whispered. “I can see well enough.”

  Perhaps he did have cat-vision and could see me through the dark shadows blanketing the room.

  “And let me tell you, I like what I see. You grew into a stunningly beautiful woman.” He unerringly found the thin scar that ran down my chest from the heart transplant and started to lightly trace it with the tip of his finger.

  Instinctively, I jerked away from him. While I didn’t mind others seeing the scar, it was as much a part of me as my legs or my hair, I’d never felt comfortable letting a man touch it, not during an intimate moment such as this one.

  Past experiences had taught the hard lesson that bringing the scar and the surgery that had caused it into the bedroom would wreck the mood. The scar served as a reminder of how vulnerable life could be. My life, his life, anyone’s life. If not for the organs in our body operating as they should, we could die at any moment.

  Talk about a mood killer.

  No one liked to think about their own death, and certainly not during sex.

  Since this night was my one shot at experiencing what it’d feel like to sleep with the only man I’d ever dared love, I wasn’t about to risk losing this chance. So when he touched my scar again, I grabbed his hand and placed it on my breast instead.

  “No, please,” he said, his voice gruff. “I want to touch you everywhere. I want to learn the feel of you...all of you. I’ll be careful not to hurt you.”

  “That’s the problem,” I said with a sigh. He was already reining in his passion, letting the fear of our mortality take over. “The scar makes you think I’m fragile when I’m not. I assure you my heart is healthy enough to survive you.”

  A lie. Yes, I abhorred lies and liars. And still I’d lied to Logan.

  Sure, my heart was as healthy as could be expected. But I doubted it could survive one night and only one night with Logan without coming away with some kind of damage.

  He looked at me, his blue eyes as dark as the midnight sky. “You’ve got it backwards, Sam. This scar”—he placed his palm over my heart—”doesn’t make me think you’re weak or less than a woman. It’s the opposite. Your scar reminds me how strong you are.”

  “Then what was all that nonsense about promising to be careful, promising not to hurt me?”

  “I’m a big guy.” His white teeth gleamed in the darkness as he flashed his roguish smile. “Most women are intimidated by my size.”

  “Most women? You really want to bring your past conquests into this bed tonight?”

  “Er...no. Forget I said that.”

  I chuckled.

  His hand was still on my breast. He gave it a little squeeze. “Let’s start over, shall we?”

  Passion zinged through my body and landed at the apex of my legs. I sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh-oh, o-okay.” My voice trembled.

  Although I’d been with other men, not many—I could count on one hand the number and still have a few fingers left over—I’d never felt this comfortable or this free to just enjoy the moment...with him.

  “Please,” I groaned, “don’t stop.”

  “Never.” His hot breath whispered against my skin.

  My head fell back against the pillow and I roamed his chest with my hands, retracing the path they’d taken when we were searching for the tracker. This time I didn’t fight the urge to enjoy the taut texture of his skin or revel in the firmness of his muscles below.

  We kissed like hungry teens. And then, more deeply and slowly like reunited lovers. Although we didn’t know each other’s bodies, having him touch me and touching him felt familiar.

  Even when he followed the trail of my scar with his mouth and then continuing a path down to the elastic waistband of my sweatpants, I couldn’t get over the rightness of his touch. Our bodies were meant to be together.

  His hand slipped past the elastic then slowly, tantalizingly pushed my sweatpants and panties over my hips and down my legs. The room’s cool air touched where all my heat had gathered. I sucked in a surprised breath that got caught in my throat.

  “Shh...” he whispered, shifting so the bulge in his boxers pressed against my leg. “Don’t be nervous. I’ll take good care of you.”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  “You’re trembling.”

  “In anticipation. You’re killing me.”

  He smiled at that.

  “Payback’s a bitch.” I reached to the waistband of his silly, silky boxers with the intention of getting them off him as fast as possible. Logan stayed my hand.

  “Not yet,” his velvet voice purred. “I want this night to last as long as possible. I want to show you how good it could be with me. If you take off my boxers right now, I’ll probably act more like the teenage boy you used to know and embarrass myself. And that’s the last thing I want.”

  “You could never disappoint me,” I said, but since he’d asked I limited myself to just touching him through his boxers—for now.

  If all I got was one night, I was going to do everything possible to make it last too.

  Besides, my concentration wasn’t what it could have been. Not with Logan touching me so thoroughly. He straddled my hips. And with my pants off, his questing hands quickly found the heat at the center of my legs.

  I opened myself to him, to his attentions.

  I was so close, so close...

  A streak of lightning lit up the room, just for a second. Just long enough to see the soaking wet man standing at the side of the bed. Just long enough to see the gun he gripped tightly in his hand.

  Please, please, please, let this cabin be infested with gun-toting ghosts.

  A few days earlier I would have screamed until my lungs deflated for lack of air at the sight of the man. Spending time with Logan and his dangerous lifestyle must have put some extra steel in my spine.

  Not much, mind you. But enough to help me keep from doing something that might startle the man with the gun, who probably wasn’t a ghost, into shooting either one or both of us.

  Logan, who obviously hadn’t noticed we had company, kept stroking me.

  I froze.

  He must have felt my muscles stiffen. His hands stilled.

  “L-Logan,” I whispered, amazed my voice didn’t tremble—much.

  He groaned softly and rolled partly off me. “I know, Sam. We’re moving too fast. We probably shouldn’t be doing this in the first place.”

  “No, no, that’s not it.”

  “Then what is it? What’s wrong?”

  I lifted my arm and pointed at the man who hadn’t moved. In the darkness he looked more like a shadow on a wall than flesh and blood. A faint drip, drip, drip of rainwater from the intruder’s drenched clothes reminded me that it wasn’t my eyes playing tricks on me and he wasn’t a ghost. There was a man in the room with us. And if I saw what I’d thought I saw when the lightning had lit up the room, the intruder was Jason Billings, the man who wanted us dead.

  “It’s him. That’s what’s wrong.”

  Chapter 24

  “It’s just a shadow,” Logan said before he glanced over his shoulder at what Sam had seen.

  Nope. Not a shadow.

  A man.

  A man with a gun pointed not at Logan, but at Sam.

  Logan silently cursed himself up and down the swear word alphabet for letting his guard down enough that someone could sneak into his own bedroom. In all his years of combat and then operating in the private sector, he’d never been this careless with his safety or those around him.

  We’re dead.

  Muscles tense, he slowly shifted his arm from around Sam to reach under the pillow for his SIG, not that it’d do him muc
h good under the current situation.

  He might be able to get off a shot. He might even be able to kill the assassin. But he’d have to hit the guy in the T-spot, the ridge right between his eyes, to drop him before he could pull the trigger and send a bullet flying—a bullet that would likely hit Sam square in the chest.

  From this angle, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure he could make the shot. And he wasn’t about to gamble with Sam’s life.

  Which meant unless something spectacular happened to save their asses, they were both dead.

  Even so, Logan had no intention of dying without a gun in his hand.

  “Don’t,” the man warned from the shadows, not moving the aim of the gun from Sam’s naked body.

  Logan recognized that voice. But it couldn’t be.

  Jason Billings?

  Why would he come when he had a staff of assassins to do his dirty work for him?

  Was his army just on the other side of that door?

  Probably.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” Jason warned.

  Logan shifted his hand back toward Sam’s body, nudging her slightly away from him. He moved the sheet higher as well, covering her.

  “What are you doing here? What do you want?” Logan knew the answers to those questions. Jason wanted them dead. He’d asked only as a means to stall the inevitable. The longer he could keep Sam and himself alive the greater the chance he’d figure a way out of this corner they found themselves in.

  “You know what I want.” Jason growled.

  “I’d rather not die in the dark,” Logan bit back.

  Sam flinched when Jason obligingly flicked on the overhead lamp and bathed the room in a bright, stark light. Her grip tightened on Logan’s arm, her fingers digging painfully into his biceps. He wanted to tell her to let go, that he needed all the mobility he could muster. But to do so would further jeopardize their lives.