by Megyn Ward
Jane’s gone.
Eyes still closed, I listen intently and smile a bit when I hear sounds coming from the kitchen. The soft close of one of the cabinets. The muted rattle of a drawer. I don’t know what she’s doing but she can’t be snooping—there’s nothing left to snoop.
Laughing at the thought, I sit up and scrub a hand over my face before squinting at the bedside clock.
5 AM.
What the hell is she doing in the kitchen at 5 AM?
Levering myself off the bed, I swipe my glasses off the nightstand and push them onto my face before shuffling down the hall toward the kitchen. The light is on and the closer I get, I catch the sweet scent of something sugary, mingled with the butter. Confused, I stop short of the entryway, just inside the hall. Leaning against the wall, I poke my head around the corner so I can sneak a look into the kitchen.
There’s Jane—long, light brown hair thrown up into a sloppy bun on top her head, wearing nothing but one of my dumb cat T-shirts and a pair of oven mitts. The kitchen is a mess. Flour and sugar all over the place. What looks like every available dish in the place, stacked in the sink. I watch as she bends over, flashing me her bare ass while she opens the oven to pull something out of its belly.
A pie.
Jane is baking pies.
“Jane.”
When I say her name, she gives me a startled yelp and nearly dumps the pie plate in her hands onto the floor. Recovering, she manages to slide it onto the counter before she turns toward me and huffs the hair out of her eyes. “Why are you awake?” she asks me, while she pulls off her mitts. “You were up and at your computer all night. You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
She’s right, I was. I have a new client—a single mother looking for her daughter who ran away three years ago and never came home. I was determined to find her before the holiday’s set in and I did. I found the daughter living in California and sent her an email, letting her know her mother is looking for her. I’m not sure how it’s going to pan out but I’ve learned to be optimistic. That things have a way of working out. That it’s okay to hope.
Jane taught me that.
“Well, I was sleeping,” I inform her on my way into the kitchen. “But then I woke up you were gone.” Standing in front of her, I feel a scowl settle onto my face as I slide my hands across the swell of her hips. “I didn’t like it.”
“I’m here,” she says, breath catching in her throat when my hands coast over the curve of her ass. “I’m still here…”
It’s been five months and even though she still keeps her apartment, she hasn’t spent a single night in it since we said I love you. The majority of her stuff made the migration to my place months ago and I couldn’t be happier. Because Jane belongs here and I’ll do whatever it takes—give her whatever she needs—to keep her with me. Thinking like that used to scare me.
Not anymore.
“What are all the pies for?” Hands anchored under her ass, I lift and a low, satisfied growl ripples through my chest when she opens her legs and wraps them around my hips.
“It’s Thanksgiving, remember?” Turning to look over her shoulder while she throws her arms around my neck, Jane grins. “We’re supposed to be at Silver and Tob’s at noon and then we have to be on the road by three so we can make it to your grandfather’s by—”
“About that…” I say as I reach up to pull my glasses off and toss them on the counter. “We’re gonna be late.”
“Late?” Her breath catches again and her gray green gaze drops to my mouth when I start walking us out of the kitchen and back down the hall. “We’re going to be late?”
Unable to wait, I stop halfway to the bedroom. Turning, I push her against the wall of the dark hallway. “Mmm hmm…” Burying my face in her neck, I scrape my teeth along the long line of it on my way to her ear, loving the way she shudders and tightens her legs around me in response. “Matter of fact we might just stay home and eat all of those pies by ourselves.”
“Why?” She moans it, her hands slipping into my hair, gripping tight when I flex my hips, pinning her to the wall with the hard press of my cock against the juncture of her thighs.
“Because, Jane…” I whisper, nipping her lobe while my fingertips coast up the insides of her thighs to tease her mercilessly between them. “I have a terrible idea…”
The End
Did you love LOGAN? Check out it’s binge-worthy sister series, THE GILROY CLAN, available in KINDLE UNLIMITED.
Flip the page for a sneak peek at MR. WRONG, book 1 in my latest series, The Clan McLeod.
Ellenore
As far as break-ups go, it was pretty anti-climactic.
No screaming.
No crying.
No throwing personal belongings out the window.
No shocking confessions.
Well—maybe one, but to tell the truth, it wasn’t all that shocking.
Look, Elle—I’m sorry, but I’m going to New York alone.
I wish I could say I was surprised. That I’d been blindsided. That I never saw it coming but the
truth is, it’d been brewing for a while, for both of us.
What surprised the hell out of me was the text I got late last night while I was camped out on Dani’s couch and mentally going over my to-do list for the next day.
Derek: I miss you.
Derek: I mean it, Elle
I really miss you.
Derek: Please say
something.
I can’t decide if I’m feeling pissed about the fact that Derek yanked the rug out from under me nearly three months ago and still feels like it’s perfectly acceptable to hit me with a 2AM I miss you text or smug over the fact that he sent it in the first place.
In the end, I ignored it because I didn’t know how I felt about it. I didn’t even tell Dani.
“Are you going to cry?”
I look up from my drink and give my bestie a glare. “What?” I shake my head at her, half amused, half annoyed. “What’s to cry about?”
“I dunno…” Dani swirls the cherry in her glass through a deep puddle of booze before pulling it
out and popping it in her mouth. “Maybe the fact that your boyfriend of five years dumped you and is currently living your New York dream life and probably boning a super model.”
“It was mutual.” God knows, I love her, but annoyance is winning out over amusement. “It was a mutual dumping—and he isn’t boning anyone.” Derek never boned.
At least he never boned me.
“Uh huh.” She rolls the fruit from one cheek to the other, biting into it mid-roll. “A couple months ago, you said he was the perfect guy. Mr. Right.”
She’s right. I did say that and it’s true.
Derek is Mr. Right.
Tall and good-looking.
College educated and intelligent.
Gainfully employed and emotionally stable.
My parents adored him.
My cat tolerated him.
What more could I possibly be looking for?
“He is Mr. Right,” I give my own drink a stir to wake up some of the whiskey resting on the bottom of my glass. “He’s just not Mr. Right for me.” Lifting my glass, I drain it while telling
myself that I mean it. “I don’t want to talk about Derek anymore.” I lean out of the booth to signal our waitress. “How’s work?”
“I’m a secondary character on a cheesy soap.” She shrugs. Six months ago, the part was her big break. Demi Moore started out on a soap, you know? Now, the part of a lifetime barely warrants more than a shrug. “I’d rather talk about your big break.”
“It’s just a tutoring job,” I remind her. Catching the waitress’s eye, I lift my glass and smile. She pretends she doesn’t see me. Probably because my jeans didn’t cost as much as a used car and my sweater is from Target. “And I haven’t even started yet.” Last week, I was a newly minted college graduate with a plan:
Graduate college a semester early.
Move with Derek to New York.
Get teaching job at uppity private school.
Patiently wait for Derek to ask me to marry him.
When he said, “Elle, we need to talk,” I was sure the proposal was coming ahead of schedule. Seventy-two hours later I was crying in my parents’ basement and wondering what I did. Where I made the wrong turn that brought me to
Loserville. Why I got left behind while Derek made the move to New York to start his new job at a management firm without me.
“No.” She sets her glass down and shakes her head at me like I just said the dumbest thing she’s ever heard. “You’re a private tutor for Landon Trask’s daughter.” She leans forward, her perfect dark brows lowering over brilliant blue eyes. “Landon. Trask.” Her voice is raised enough so that more than a few people at nearby tables glance in our direction.
“Can you keep your voice down?” I scowl at her. I had to sign a confidentiality agreement. I could get sued for just telling her I work for him.
“Sorry.” Her tone says she’s not really all that sorry. “But seriously—holy shit, Elle. Landon motherfucking Trask,” she says in a stage whisper. “How does this shit happen to you?”
Objectively, I understand why she’s flipping out. Landon Trask is at the top of Hollywood’s A-list. America’s favorite leading man. He’s juggling three major movie franchises and with over six-billion box office dollars under his belt, he’s the highest-grossing actor in Hollywood, moving seamlessly from Rom-com heartthrob to dangerously sexy action-star and back again without a hitch. It’s even rumored that he’s slated to be the next Marvel superhero.
His perfect, boy-next-door good looks and matching Oscars are only rivaled by his very public and very tragic personal life. He fell in love with his wife in high school and when Hollywood came calling, instead of leaving her behind, he took her with him.
Their life was like a fairytale. Insanely in love. Hopelessly devoted. She was eight-months pregnant when she and Landon were in a head-on collision, trying to get away from the paparazzi. Landon survived with barely more than a scratch. She lived just long enough to see their daughter born before dying.
Ever since, Landon’s been obsessed with his daughter’s privacy. Which is why he made me sign a confidentiality agreement the size of a telephone book. If I so much as say her name in public, he can sue me.
And he made it very clear that he will.
I know what you’re thinking, Ms. Pierce. ‘He can try to sue me if he wants but I don’t have anything worth taking, so it doesn’t matter anyway.’ Trust me—you
do. You have something worth taking, and if you so much as even think about bending so much as the paperclip holding this agreement together, I’ll spend every dime I have to find it and rip it away from you.
It was a heart-warming conversation, straight out of one of his rom-coms.
Spotting our waitress again, I try to wave her over, but she turns her head before I can lift my hand. I really, really hate LA. “I went to one of my professors and asked for a letter of recommendation.”
“For your ill-fated, fancy private school job,” Dani reminds me. I’ve told her this story no less than a hundred times in the past forty-eight hours—she probably knows it better than I do by now.
“Yes.” I nod, giving her a quick grin to cover up the fact that losing out on my chance to teach at one of New York’s most exclusive private schools bothers me more than I’d like to admit. “For the fancy private school.” Shrugging, I sit back in my seat. “She went to high school with Mr. Tr—my new boss and kept in touch with him over the years. She knew he was looking for someone to tutor his daughter for the summer and thought
I’d be perfect for the job.” I’d told her thanks but no thanks because New York with Derek was the plan. Suddenly, my plans changed—as in I didn’t have a plan.
For the first time in my life I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I grabbed onto this job for Landon Trask out of sheer desperation, telling myself it would be perfect. Three months in the California sunshine. Dani and the beach on my days off. Room and board. An obscene amount of money. At the end of it all, I could go anywhere and have enough money to keep me comfortable while I figured out my next move.
I could even afford to move to New York on my own if I wanted to.
“I totally hate you,” Dani sighs, leaning her chin on her hand before propping her elbows on the table. “What’s he like?”
“I don’t know. We’ve Skyped three times, Dan.” I don’t want to tell her that he was cold. Intimidating. Nothing like I thought he’d be. The waitress flounces past me on her way to the bar without so much as a be right back. “Where the hell did you bring me?”
“I dunno.” Dani looks around and shrugs. “A bar. Someone on set mentioned it and I thought we should check it out.”
That’s Dani code for I heard famous people hang out here and I wanted to network.
“And don’t change the subject,” she says, narrowing her gaze at me. “Three Skype sessions with Lan—you know who -- is exactly three more than I’ve had, so spill.”
“There’s nothing to spill,” I hiss at her before smiling at the waitress as she flounces by again. She doesn’t even look at me. She’s actively avoiding me. “We talked about—” I catch myself before I say her name out loud. “—his daughter. My qualifications. What he expects of me. Normal job interview stuff.”
“You have to fuck him.” Dani shrugs like it’s the only viable solution for what no one sees as a problem.
“Uhhh, no.” I shake my head. “No, I don’t.”
“Why?” Now she’s looking at me like she might need a translator.
Because he’s a scary asshole.
“I don’t know—because he’s my boss.” I sit back in my seat and sigh. I’ve known Dani since we
were roommates our freshman year in college—nearly seven years, so I’m not sure why the things that come out of her mouth still surprise me.
“So?” She gives me a shrug.
“So…” I repeat, grasping for another reason that won’t blow the Landon Trask is a living god illusion that most everyone clings to. “He’s going to be in Europe, shooting on location, almost the entire time I’ll be working for him.”
“Well…” she sighs, her face collapsing into a frown. “You have to fuck someone.”
“Did someone roofie you?” I look at her empty glass, letting out a loud bark of laughter that draws more attention than I’m comfortable with.
“I’m completely serious,” she says with a straight face. “How long has it been since you and Douchewad Derek banged?” She holds up a manicured finger to stop me when I open my mouth to answer her. “I mean really banged,” she qualifies. “Toe-curling, headboard knocking, tectonic plate shifting, oh-my-god-I-think-my-grandma-in-DeMoines-felt-that-orgasm banging.”
“My grandma lives in Decatur.”
“Elle.”
“I don’t know.” I’m suddenly irritable. Derek and I never banged. We had nice, well-mannered intercourse at an appropriate volume. My toes never curled. No headboards were knocked. My grandmother never complained about hot flashes. “Awhile.” It’s been ten months. I chalked it up to last semester stress. We were both busy. Worried about the future. The truth was, we got bored with each other. Easy to do when your sexual partner insists on keeping her shirt on and his idea of setting the mood is muting the television.
God, my life is sad.
“Fine, if not your new boss, then just pick someone.” She waves her hand like we’re standing in the Dick Department in Target.
I bobble my head. “Pick someone?” I look around the bar and instantly feel intimidated. Everyone in this place is gorgeous. Even our bitchy waitress looks like a supermodel. “Oh, okay, I’ll just pick someone.” Dani crosses her arms over her chest and tilts her head at me. Oh, she’s serious. “Do I need to call Poison Control?”
“You’re single.” She holds up a finger like she’s gi
ving closing arguments in a capital murder case. “You’re hot—despite the unfortunate soccer mom get-up.” She holds up another finger and points it at me when I open my mouth to defend my outfit. “You’re twenty-five years old and have an amazing rack that you insist on covering up with a Mr. Rogers sweater. There’s no excuse for that, Elle—no wonder you’ve been in LA for three whole days and have yet to touch a penis.”
“Maybe I don’t want to touch a penis.” Shit, I said that waaay to loud. Now people are definitely looking at me. “You’re completely out of control.” I give up on the waitress and slide out of our booth. “And possibly drugged.”
“Where are you going?” She looks around, probably hoping to see some poor defenseless man to pounce on.
“To the bar.” I say it loud enough that our negligent waitress hears me a few tables over. “To get a drink.”
Lex
It’s been a shitty day.
Super shitty with shit on top.
A complete and utter dumpster fire.
The kind of day that would perfectly justify faking my own death and dropping off the map.
Not that anyone would care if I did—least of all my brother.
The asshole who fired me.
You need a life, Lex.
A real life.
When I told him that Cassie is my life and that taking her away from me was the same as killing me, he gave me the kind of look that made me want to gouge out my fucking eyes. The kind of
look that told me exactly how pathetic and sad he thinks I am.
I know you love her, Lex—but you need a life. A real life. A life of your own.
In other words, not my life.
I left after that. Because I have a life. A real life.
I do.
And fuck him for saying I don’t.
I ended up here because I can drink for free, which is a moot point considering I’ve been nursing the same Beluga Noble for the past hour and a half. I really don’t want it, but I also don’t want to leave. I have a point to make and I’m not going anywhere until it’s sufficiently proven.
