Boise was not, and had never been, Logan’s hometown, but he’d lived most of his life within about a hundred miles or so of its limits, and it was, by far, the closest city—or even real town—to Jasper Ridge. It was the closest place for most kinds of modern life, business and leisure both. So he knew his way around the place.
Even so, he was surprised to see Honor’s building. The address was familiar enough that he’d found it quickly, but it was fairly new, and, by Boise standards, a high-rise. As he pulled past, looking for a parking spot on the street that would accommodate his extended-cab GMC, he saw two Boise Police Department cruisers—blacked-out Dodge Chargers with massive grille guards—pulled up in the emergency zone directly in front of the entrance. Their lights weren’t flashing.
Two cruisers. They’d needed backup? Shit, was it worse than she’d said? No ambulance, though—or worse. She wasn’t hurt. Logan rubbed at his chest as his heart settled out of panic and back into worry.
He parked about halfway down the block and got out. As he approached the building, two uniformed BPD officers came out, with a handcuffed man—young, long blond hair and some hipster scruff for a beard—between them. The perp’s shoulders were slumped, his head down, his hair swinging over his face, but Logan had seen blood on his cheek.
He stopped and watched as they loaded Honor’s stalker into the front cruiser, guarding his head as they pushed him into the back seat. One cop went around to the driver’s side. The other slammed the back door shut and turned to the passenger door. As he opened it, he looked over at Logan. His eye was swelling. The guy had tried to fight off cops.
When he made eye contact, the cop gave him a one-eyed squint. Then, probably taking in Logan’s tuxedo and deciding he belonged here, the cop nodded briskly and slid into the cruiser.
Logan went into the building without waiting for them to pull away.
It was a nice building. One of those that tried to straddle an imaginary line between ultra-modern and old-style loft but really had both feet planted on the modern side. No doorman—he wasn’t sure there were apartments in Boise with doormen—but a nice lobby area, with huge pots of real plants, and sleek mailboxes tucked off to the side. He stepped into a waiting elevator and pressed the button marked ‘15.’ On a small screen above the buttons, a message appeared: You’ve indicated a private floor. Please insert your keycard or press the blue button below to call the resident. Thank you.
Huh. He’d never seen that before. He pressed the blue button, and the message changed: Thank you. Please wait while the resident is contacted.
After a few seconds, long enough that Logan began to feel a bit claustrophobic—how long did an elevator wait? Or would he be stuck here until somebody called it from elsewhere in the building?—a green dot of light appeared just above the screen, and then Honor’s face was there. Her hair was still up in the sleek coil she’d worn to the banquet, but her dark eye makeup was smeared beneath her eyes. But no bruising or other signs that the hipster asshole downstairs had gotten to her.
“Hi, Logan. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—you don’t … you can go. I’m okay.”
Logan smiled, because it was his nature to smile in most situations, but a little bump of irritation had hit the back of his head. “Darlin’, I rode all the way over here on my big white horse because you wanted me here. Before you send me back to the stable, at least let me put my eyes right on you to see you’re really okay.”
If he’d hoped to get a smile in return, he’d have been disappointed. But he knew her well enough to know she wasn’t so easy a target. She sighed. “Okay. Come on up.”
Her face went away as the screen went to sleep, and the car moved upward.
When the doors opened on a small, elegant entry, there was a cop standing right there. She held out one hand to stop him from leaving the elevator. The other rested on her service pistol.
“Hold right there, please.” She turned her head to the side. “Ms. Babinot?”
Logan couldn’t see much, but then Honor was there—still in that black silk caress of a dress, but now barefoot—and he finally got a smile. A real one. Her eyes sparkled wetly. Shit, she was going to cry again.
“Yes, that’s Logan. My friend.” She put her hand to her throat and fiddled with her pearl necklace. Always those pearls.
The cop relaxed and moved out of the way. “Thank you, sir. Sorry ‘bout that.”
Logan finally got out of the elevator. “No problem. I understand.”
“Oh, fuck!” Honor cried just then, and Logan and the cop swung their heads to her. She was staring at his throat—his bow tie. “I didn’t think about where you were! Had you made your announcement already?”
“Don’t worry about it. I asked the mayor’s rep to do it.”
“Emily is going to kill me.” When the cop reacted to her choice of words, Honor waved her off. “Sorry—figure of speech. Are we about done?”
“A couple Is to cross and Ts to dot,” the cop said, smiling at her lame joke, “and then we can get out of your hair tonight. You’ll need to make a fuller statement at the station in the morning, but we have enough to proceed for now.”
At Honor’s nod, the cop moved toward her open apartment door. Honor gifted Logan with another watery but true smile, and he followed her into the apartment.
It was very much as he expected it to be—airy and open, with a wall of windows showing a far-reaching view of Boise after dark. Her furnishings were modern and evidently comfortable. Not a lot of clutter. On the wood floor—the grain had an exotic striping effect—before the low, sleek sofa was a thick white sheepskin rug. He’d fucked a few times on a rug like that, and his roughneck mind conjured the image now of Honor lying there, naked and soft beneath him, all that blonde hair spread out around her head, blending in with the long wool.
He gave his head a hard shake before that image got loose in his body.
Another female cop stood at the kitchen island, filling out paperwork. While Honor spoke with the cops and signed their papers, Logan wandered over to the windows and looked out over the twinkling city. His Sawtooth Mountains bit at the sky along the horizon. He preferred the natural views of his part of the world, where that range of spiky peaks rose magnificently, right up close, but he could see the appeal, too, in this cityscape. As a change of pace, not as a way of life.
The sounds of conversation behind him had changed, and he watched the reflections in the glass as Honor saw the officers to the door. She closed it and turned three locks, then pushed some keys on a pad, and a long chime sounded. She’d set an alarm. Then she dropped her forehead to the wall beside that keypad and didn’t move.
Logan went to her and set his hands on her bare shoulders. “Hey. C’mere.” He pulled gently, and she turned, allowing him to wrap his arms around her and settle her head on his chest. She fit exactly as she should, tucked in his arms, her head resting on the thick muscle just below his shoulder. Her slim arms snaked around his waist, inside his jacket.
Oh shit, this was such a spectacularly dangerous place to be.
“I don’t know why I called you,” she mumbled against the coat of his tux, just as he was about to bend his head and kiss her crown, and breathe in the sweet scent of her.
He didn’t like the painful little zing that went through him as those words landed, so he ignored it. “But you did.”
“I’m sorry I dragged you away from the dinner.”
‘Don’t worry about it. I hate those things, anyway.” Something she’d said earlier strummed a string of memory. “You know Emily Gomez?”
“She’s a good friend. I was there tonight to support her—and to do some networking.”
That strummed another string—something she’d said at the courthouse. It had caught him oddly at the time, but he’d been too floored to be face to face again with Honor Babinot to ask about it then. “Did something happen with your job? You said this afternoon that you don’t have people to stand in line for you anymore.”
She pushed out
of his arms at once and turned to the kitchen. “Can I get you a drink? I don’t have bourbon, but there’s vodka. Or wine. Or, I think there’s spiced rum.”
He followed her. “You don’t have to play hostess, Honor. I’m not here to be entertained.”
Turning to lean lightly on the stainless-steel countertop of her kitchen island, she crossed her arms. “Why are you here?”
She’d turned her lawyer on. Honor loved to turn everything into an argument. She’d dispute that, too, and insist that she wasn’t arguing, that she was simply curious and wanted answers, but she wanted those answers whether you wanted to give them or not.
“You called me. You didn’t want to be alone.”
“Yes. But why did you come?”
He didn’t want to be lawyered; he didn’t even know his own answer to that question, much less one he’d want to say out loud. “Honor, what do you want me to say?”
She walked to the end of the island, closer to him, but her arms still crossed her chest like a shield over her heart. “I want you to tell me why you came when I called.”
Spectacularly dangerous. When he’d seen her at the dinner, he should have ducked out of the room, not gone right for her and turned on his fucking charm. This woman turned him upside down and shook him hard until everything he thought about who he was and what he wanted spilled out of him and scattered on the ground. For months, he’d sat and watched her save his brother’s life, save his whole family, and do it in high heels and graceful skirts, wearing goddamn pearls around her neck. She’d done it with her brains and her words, with insight and foresight and, shit, for all he knew, with second sight, too.
Self-possessed, self-assured, scary smart, beautiful, capable of changing the world on any given day. He’d never known anyone like her, man or woman. She was fascinating. She fascinated the ever-loving hell out of him.
And then she’d turned those keen blue eyes on him and seen him.
So he’d bailed just as fast as he could.
Why was he here? Why had he come when she’d called?
He couldn’t remember. There’d been a thought process, one that had seemed rational, and right, at the time. She’d been scared. She’d been in some danger, and she’d called him. Only a dick would have refused her.
But he was a dick. He was perfectly comfortable being cruel to end something when it got too thick for his liking. Making a woman hate him was the cleanest, fastest way to get a real ending.
And she hadn’t been in danger, none that he could solve any better than she already had. She’d backed away from wanting him, or needing him, before they’d ended the call.
He was here because he wanted to be. To be here, in the same room with Honor Babinot. To be with her.
He couldn’t, wouldn’t say that. Instead, he asked, “Do you want me to go?”
She stared at him with those beautiful eyes that saw every damn thing. “No. I want you to stay. I don’t want to be alone.”
“And that’s why I’m here.”
She pursed her lips and blew out a tired breath. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Vodka’s fine, thanks. On ice, if that’s okay.”
She turned and took a bottle of Grey Goose from her freezer. With her back to him, she took a glass down from an open cupboard and poured him a drink.
Remembering that he was still dressed like the proverbial penguin, Logan undid his tie and took off his tuxedo jacket, hanging it over the back of one of her sleek Lucite and chrome barstools. He undid a couple of buttons on his pleated shirt and took his first full breath since he’d gotten dressed in his hotel room hours earlier.
Honor turned back to him and offered him a glass. She’d made one for herself, too. As she drank, her eyes fixed at a point below his face. His chest, he thought. Feeling oddly self-conscious—one of the many upside-down things she did to him—he put his hand there and fiddled with his medallion. Maybe she was looking at that? She knew what it was; she’d asked about it once, and he’d told her the story. His mother had given it to him when he was in high school, after his first junior bull-riding win. He’d worn it every day since.
That conversation, which had started out in such tender territory, had eventually devolved, courtesy of Honor’s relentless questioning, into an argument about the evils of rodeo.
Logan understood all the arguments against rodeo. He’d heard them all. Hell, Heath, his own little brother, had shouted the same arguments at him more times than he could count. And yeah, Logan had seen some very nasty shit in the stalls and outside the ring. But he’d always ridden clean; he’d never ridden a bull they’d had to hurt, or drug, to get ready.
To him, rodeo had been a way to show his worth to his old man, and to carve out a thing for himself as well. As the oldest son, he would always walk in his father’s shadow, and he didn’t have the luxury Heath had, to turn his back on the Cahill legacy and make his own way. He had to follow in his father’s deep footsteps. But he’d been better on the bulls than Morgan Cahill. He was a better rider of horses, too. His body instinctively understood the beast beneath it, almost as if he felt what the animal felt, and there was a power in that connection he could never explain to someone who didn’t already know it. He shared a simpatico with animals. They trusted him. Even when they were trying their damnedest to throw him in the dirt.
While his father had been a little jealous of his success, his mother had been openly and enthusiastically proud of him, his biggest booster from the time he was chasing lambs in the kiddie classes.
After his first bull-riding win, when he was sixteen, he’d gone on to take the Idaho Junior Championship the next two years. While he was in college, he couldn’t do enough events to make the splash everyone had expected, and that had chafed him some, but college was an absolute requirement for the Cahill children, and he hadn’t seriously considered rebelling. He’d focused where his parents had wanted him to. After college, his duty done for the moment, he’d had a couple good years on the pro circuit.
Then his dad wanted him to start taking the ranch seriously, and then his mom had gotten sick. He’d tried to keep it up part-time again, but by his mid-twenties his body was starting to struggle against the intermittent abuse.
Riding bulls was hard on the body. By the time he was thirty, when they buried Mama and he finally gave up the bulls completely, he was walking like an old man for the first couple hours of every day. Even all these years later, on the cold, damp mornings of autumn and winter, he had some trouble getting the kinks out.
Shortly after he retired from the circuit, some new kid, Ryder Wells, stormed up the ranks and blew his record out of the water, so nobody even talked about Logan as a bull-rider anymore. Not even his glory days mattered. But he wore the medallion his sainted mother had given him, and he remembered her beaming pride and the way it had washed through him and made him feel worthy.
He hadn’t told Honor all of that when she’d asked about his medallion, but he’d told her enough so she’d understand how that carved pewter disc, and the rodeo itself, was twined up with his memories of his dead mother, and still she’d turned it into a fight about the ethics of rodeo.
Or maybe he’d gotten defensive and turned it into a fight himself. He could never tell, because he was always dancing on hot coals around her, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on in his own head. And hers.
Like now. Why was she staring at him? Why was she staring there?
He had to do something more than stand here and feel like an idiot, so he finished his drink, set the glass on her island, and said, “Tell me what happened tonight.”
She set her drink down and wiped her face wearily, then pulled her hands back and stared at them. “I’ll tell you—but I need to wash my face and get out of these clothes. Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead. “I’ll put us together a couple of refills while you do it.”
“Thank you. If you’re hungry, there’s some cheese in the fridge, and some crackers in the pa
ntry.”
“I was at a banquet, remember?”
She laughed with a glimmer of humor. “Right. Okay, I’ll be right back.”
Logan watched her walk to her bedroom. He saw the corner of her bed, neatly made, before she closed the door.
Then he turned to the other door, the one with the alarm and three locks, and wondered if he should make his escape right now, before it was too late.
Because everything about this night felt like too late loomed right ahead.
Or maybe it had already passed.
Chapter Six
Honor was in her bedroom for quite a while, long enough for Logan to master his cowardly impulse for escape, pour a second round of vodka rocks for them both, find lemons in her fridge and add twists, and make up a plate of cheese and crackers. The kitchen was not where his skills lay, but he could manage to cut up some cheese. As long as he wasn’t being judged on presentation.
He was putting a round of brie away when her door opened.
She’d changed into soft, well-worn jeans and a rumpled white button-up shirt. Her feet were bare, showing that her toenails had the same polish as her fingernails: pale pink. Her hair was down, and a little bit tousled. All her makeup had been washed away. Logan stood in the angle of the open refrigerator and stared. Never before had he seen her like this, in her natural state. He’d seen her dressed casually; before and during the trial, she’d come out to the ranch regularly to discuss the case, because Heath got tense in her office, and when his brother got too tense, he had trouble controlling his temper. That had been especially true back then, when he was still drinking, and while he’d been on trial for murder. So Honor had come to the ranch, and she’d dressed for a ranch. But she’d been made up and stylish even so—she’d been working, and she’d presented herself as a professional, even in jeans.
Now, she was home, after a hard night, and Logan was struck by how vulnerable she seemed. If someone had asked him to describe Honor Babinot, the word ‘vulnerable’ would never have entered his mind. Brilliant, elegant, confident, bossy, determined, beautiful, argumentative, frustrating, fascinating—but not vulnerable. It took his breath to see this new facet of her.
Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2) Page 7
