This Heart for Hire

by Marie Ferrarella

  With a jerk, Jessica freed herself of her coat and turned to face him. “Yes, but someone added bougainvillea stems.”

  Confusion melted into anger as he reached for her hand again. “Who the hell—?”

  Jessica stepped back, pulling her hand back to her side. “My guess is, the same person who’s been sending you your little missives.”

  Her call to the florist had yielded nothing, just as she’d thought. According to the clerk, the flowers had been purchased by an “average-looking man” who wasn’t too tall, wasn’t too short and had paid cash, hence destroying any hope for a paper trail.

  Jessica looked around, trying not to be obvious. Where was Dane? “Obviously they don’t want anyone poking around, trying to uncover their identity.”

  With a decisive movement, Logan hung her coat on the ornamental coatrack his father had brought back from Japan the year before Logan was born. “You’re off the case, Jessica.”

  Her chin went up. There was a tune she would have hung on every one of his words, listening without question. But she wasn’t in a love-induced coma anymore. That woman no longer existed.

  “You have no right to tell me what to do,” she reminded him coolly.

  He’d always admired her determination, but it had never been turned against him before. Anger flared, swiping the tip of its red-hot flames over him.

  “You want to play games? Okay, we’ll play games. I’m your client—”

  She raised herself up on the balls of her feet, a fighter ready to go all the rounds necessary to win the championship match.

  The word rankled her, rubbing her raw. “No, I do not want to play games. Logan. You might, but I don’t. I never had time for games. And even if I did you wouldn’t be the one I’d play with. You can’t get the rules straight.”

  “What are you talking about?” he shouted back. Conscience pricked at him. Logan knew she wasn’t talking about the case. She was talking about them. He didn’t want to go there.

  “Your brother is my client.” She pointed the fact out tersely. “You’re Just the object of his concern.”

  Looking around again, Jessica caught her reflection in the hall mirror. She didn’t look like a woman on pins and needles. But she was. Jessica silently congratulated herself on being able to keep her feelings from registering in her eyes.

  “Speaking of Dane, where is he?” she wanted to know. He was supposed to be here. She never would have agreed to come otherwise.

  “He’s not here.” Getting his temper under control, Logan indicated the way to the dining room. As if she hadn’t gone there at least several dozen times before. “That emergency call that dragged him away from you earlier today—”

  “Yes?” Jessica had a stnking feeling she knew what was coming.

  “It turned out to be a more complicated situation than he initially thought.”

  She turned to look at Logan. The smile on his face answered her before she even asked the question. “Then it’s just you and me for dinner?”

  “Apparently.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  Chapter 4

  The line about discretion being the better part of valor played in her mind.

  It might be good advice, at that, Jessica decided. She glanced over her shoulder toward the door. Outside, thunder was rumbling, but nothing was happening yet.

  The same couldn’t be said for inside. The foyer, spacious and grand, seemed to be shrinking around her, and the light that cascaded from the chandelier appeared to be growing dimmer.

  It wasn’t panic she felt, it was her sense of self-preservation warning her that remaining here with Logan might be far from the best move on her part.

  As a matter of fact, it might just be the worst.

  She wondered how she could leave without making it seem like an out-and-out retreat.

  “Maybe I’d better come back another time, when Dane’s here.”

  There was a time when Logan could read everything she was thinking in her eyes. Now that way was closed off to him. He took a chance, remembering that she always rose to a challenge.

  “Afraid?”

  Jessica’s eyebrow arched as her eyes narrowed. “Of what?”

  “Of the ghosts between us.” Because he felt them. Shimmering there beside them. The ghosts of what they’d once meant to each other were as real to him as if they had breadth and substance.

  Was he actually mocking her? After all this time? She couldn’t tell, but she felt her temper rising, anyway. Jessica clung to it as if it were a magic carpet that would fly her out of this dangerous place she found herself emotionally inhabiting.

  “There aren’t any ghosts, Logan. For there to have been ghosts means that something had to have been alive and thriving and then died. There was nothing alive between us.” She’d believed that there had been, but he’d shown her she was wrong. Her eyes pinned him as she added, “It was all a misunderstanding.”

  The words hurt, though he told himself they didn’t. She’d developed spunk, Logan thought. He liked it even if it was at his expense.

  He half laughed to himself. “Well, I guess that’s putting me in my place.”

  “I doubt if anyone could do that.” He was in her way. When she took a step, he matched it, blocking her way with his body. Jessica frowned. “Now, if you let me pass, I’ll just get my coat and—”

  But he wasn’t about to let her leave so easily. He wanted her to stay. More than he’d believed possible. The same nerves that had danced their way into existence when he’d been waiting for her now reappeared for another performance.

  Maybe it was borrowing trouble, but he found himself a petitioner.

  Resting his hand lightly on her shoulder, he restrained her efforts. “Just because Dane isn’t here doesn’t mean that the death threats aren’t.”

  So now he was playing the other side of the street? “I thought you didn’t believe in the threats.”

  He shrugged. Ever so subtly, exerting a little pressure with his hand on her shoulder, he changed her direction. “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.”

  Something in his voice caught her attention. Her annoyance slipped away. Logan wasn’t trying to be cagey. She knew him too well to be fooled. Something had gone down to change his mind.

  “What happened?”

  For a split second he thought of laughing the whole thing off. But that wouldn’t keep her here. And maybe saying it out loud would remove the specter of what was bothering him about the incident.

  “I’m not sure, really, but I think someone tampered with my car.” She looked at him sharply. “The one I race,” he clarified.

  Jessica felt her heart constrict. Damn it, he’d been too cavalier about this. “When?” she demanded.

  He scarcely recognized her. She’d snapped the question out at him. The Jessica he remembered had been quieter.

  “This morning.” He gave a boyish grin, trying to banish the serious topic to a nether region. “I barely avoided becoming intimately acquainted with a tree.”

  He could grin at her all he wanted. Jessica wasn’t about to allow herself to get sidetracked. This was his life they were talking about.

  “After I left?”

  He shook his head. “Before you got here.”

  His answer almost left her speechless. “Then why didn’t you tell me?” And then, when Logan didn’t say anything, she filled in her own answer. “Because you thought you could handle it on your own?”

  It wasn’t really a guess. She knew him well enough to know the way he thought. The man never thought of fatal consequences. He thought himself invincible.

  Logan resented her tone of voice. “I always have.”

  “Why is it that you could never admit that you needed help? That you needed someone?” Without realizing it, she clenched her hands at her sides. She regretted it instantly. Her cut fingers ached.

  This wasn’t the conversation he’d meant to have with her. The steps he wanted to retrace with Jessica i
nvolved candlelight and soft music, not the baring of souls and motives.

  But she was waiting for the truth, and he knew she’d leave if he didn’t give it to her—at least in some measure.

  “Because the minute you need someone, you’re opening yourself up to disappointment. The only person you can always count on is yourself.”

  She hadn’t thought, after all this time, that his words could hurt her. But they did. Damn it, he could have counted on her for anything, if he’d only been receptive enough to realize that.

  Which one of them was the bigger fool, she wondered. Him for not knowing, or her for hanging on?

  But this wasn’t about her, or them, any longer. “Seems to me you can count on Dane.”

  “I can,” Logan agreed. “But I don’t.” And therein lay the difference. They were closer than most brothers in some ways. Logan knew Dane was as loyal as a brother could be. And Dane did worry about him, about his safety, even if they were on opposite sides of the table on this one.

  Jessica shook her head. How lonely and isolated that made him sound. “Were you always this cold and I just didn’t notice?”

  When they’d been together, he remembered, cold was the last word that came to mind.

  “It’s not cold, it’s called a principle of survival.” He paused, then because it was Jessica and he’d been as open with her as he could be with anyone, he allowed himself to say a little more. “My father trusted everyone and wound up getting burned all the time.” He laughed shortly, thinking of the alimony lawyers that came to their door with regular frequency. His father never made a match that could stick. “Not to mention almost going bankrupt before my grandfather stepped in.”

  A gruff tyrant, his grandfather had never let his father forget that he bailed him out of his difficulties. Logan supposed that was one of the reasons his father drank. To blot out a world that hurt, as well as to obliterate the memories of his own shortcomings.

  Jessica was well acquainted with Arthur Buchanan’s history. There’d been as many women in the man’s life as in her father’s. The difference being that her father never released his hold on his heart while Logan’s father gave it away for a song each time.

  Of the two men, Jessica had always liked Logan’s father better than her own. At least Arthur Buchanan was a warm, feeling individual.

  “There’s a difference between putting your trust in someone and trusting everyone who crosses your path,” she said softly.

  Logan’s eyes held hers. She’d become more beautiful in her self-assurance, he realized. A longing twisted within him that he strove to ignore. “Are you telling me to put my trust in you?”

  Once, I would have begged you to do that. “To do my job, yes.”

  That sounded so cold, but Logan couldn’t fault her for it. It was exactly what he deserved. Still, he wanted her to remain. At least for the evening, if not more.

  “Do you have to do your job on an empty stomach?”

  “What?”

  He placed his hands on either side of her shoulders, and she had to struggle not to let the heat of his hands seep into her being. She wished he hadn’t taken her raincoat, although that was only cloth. Armor plating would have worked better.

  “Stay for dinner, Jessi. Maxine worked hard to prepare everything you liked.” When he’d gone to the cook with a list of what he wanted, the woman had taken one look at it before asking him if Jessica was coming. “She was very happy when I told her that you were coming for dinner.”

  A little bit more of the past nudged itself forward. Jessica remembered the woman well. Built like a line backer in drag, the woman had one of the most acidic tongues she’d ever encountered. But for some unknown reason, they had hit it off almost instantly. Supremely gifted in the kitchen, the grandmother of three could make a rock taste like a piece of culinary heaven.

  Somehow Jessica thought that the woman would have moved on. “Maxine’s still here?”

  He laughed. “Where would she go? Who would she ever find to put up with all her eccentricities?”

  He was right. There wasn’t much of a market for a cook who towered over most men, sported several tattoos along the visible length of her body and spoke her mind. Most people went with first impressions. Luckily his father had been convinced to give her a try. Luckily, because Maxine and Julia, their housekeeper, were the only two women who remained constant in Arthur Buchanan’s life, tending to him until his death.

  “Besides—” Logan grinned, lightly placing his hand to the small of her back and guiding Jessica to the dining room “—she knows how I like my eggs.”

  Jessica remembered the large breakfasts Logan was partial to. He’d always woken up ravenous and couldn’t understand how she could just get by on a cup of coffee until she’d been up for several hours. “You never did eat healthy.”

  Logan held out the chair for her. “Haven’t you heard?” As she sat down, he pushed in her chair. “Eggs are no longer banished from our table. They’re back in favor.” He leaned over her chair, his face close to hers. “What are my chances of following in their footsteps?”

  His breath slid along her skin, a whispered reminder of the lover he’d once been. It wasn’t easy sounding unaffected, but somehow she managed.

  “A, eggs have no feet, hence no footsteps. B, you were never banished, you went into exile of your own accord. And C, you were never considered high in cholesterol.” She looked at him pointedly as he took his seat. “Just a high risk all around, and you did turn out to be that.”

  “Ouch.”

  As if her words could have the slightest effect on him. “Don’t pretend, Logan. Nothing I could ever say would leave a single mark on you.”

  His eyes held hers for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was unusually soft. “Don’t be so sure, Jessi.”

  The look went straight to her heart, threatening to melt it.

  Been there, done that, Jessica told herself sternly, shoring up the breach.

  “I’m not here to relive old times, Logan.” Picking up her fork, she jabbed at the salmon almondine in front of her as if it had somehow offended her. “I agreed to come to dinner because Dane said he’d fill me in some more on the situation. Since he’s not here, the ball’s in your court.”

  Logan frowned. “There is no ‘situation,’ Jessica,” he insisted.

  He only called her Jessica when he was annoyed, or being formal. She didn’t care for either. “I saw the letters, Logan.”

  “I’m not talking about the letters. I was referring to your wording.” Logan shrugged carelessly. “Or maybe it’s Dane’s wording.” Until the last year, he’d always left the business end up to Dane, and he knew Dane had grown accustomed to speaking for both of them. Opposing him on the merger had really rattled his brother. Logan sighed. “Dane thinks I should back him in his position, and I think he’s wrong.”

  Jessica picked up her wineglass. The contents gleamed in the candlelight. She watched the light skim off the top. “To think you should back him, or in his stand?”

  “Both.” Lifting his own glass, he silently toasted her before taking a large swallow. On rare occasions, like tonight, he longed for something with a kick to it. But maybe sitting opposite her here like this was kick enough. “Brothers can take opposing views. It doesn’t mean they’re any less of a family.” That was his take on the matter, but Dane didn’t quite see it that way. “He can’t understand why I don’t just throw my lot in with his, make him happy and put a stop the death threats, to boot.” He drained his glass. “Make it simple all around.”

  Jessica had never known him to take up a cause before. It was a side of him she’d never known existed. He’d always been the playboy before, unwilling to be encumbered by mundane details.

  “Why don’t you?”

  Why didn’t he? A year ago he might have asked himself the same question. But that was before his father had died, and he’d seen how empty a life could be and how little significance the passing of that life
could mean. It made him realize that he’d been wasting time. He had to make his life count for something.

  The death threats he’d been receiving just intensified that feeling.

  Logan reached for the bottle and topped off her glass before partially refilling his own. But rather than drink, he toyed with the stem. “Because I don’t think that it’s in everybody’s best interest to let the merger go through.”

  “Dane seems to think it is.”

  His mouth curved. This time he sipped thoughtfully, watching her as he spoke. “Dane is the businessman in the family. He sees everything in terms of the bottom line. And the bottom line is money. For him.”

  “But not for you?” It had been while they were together. He’d never seemed to give a care as to how lavishly he spent it as long as it was there.

  She was probing. Turning questions around on him. He didn’t like being held under a microscope. “Did you get your basic training from a psychiatrist?”

  Oh no, she wasn’t going to have him clam up. He didn’t have that luxury, not if he wanted her to remain. “Don’t shift gears on me now by changing the subject. Why isn’t money the bottom line for you?”

  “Maybe because I don’t need it,” he guessed. If he had to earn it by the sweat of his brow, maybe it would be. Which was why he was taking the position he was. “But other people do. Like the people this merger will be putting out of work.”

  He could tell by the look in her eyes that Dane hadn’t really gone into this at length with her. That was because his brother chose only to see the positive side to any given problem, not the negative.

  “There’s going to be a large redundancy of jobs if Buchanan Tech allows itself to be absorbed by IT. About a thousand people’ll be out of a job so that stock values can rise.” Sarcasm echoed in his voice. “I don’t know, doesn’t seem very fair to me.” He noticed her reaction. “You’re smiling.”

  She hadn’t realized that she was. “That’s not a smile, that’s a stunned expression.” Setting the glass down, she looked back down at her meal. She was beginning to find her appetite. “Since when have you taken to championing the little man?” There was a hint of humor in her eyes when she glanced up at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally had exploratory surgery, and they managed to locate your heart for you.”