by Susan Haught
Ryleigh followed her nose and Logan to the kitchen. “Shrimp Scampi?”
“Yes,” he said, and glanced at her. “And you know this, because?”
“I know my way around a kitchen.”
“Good to know,” he said, and poured two glasses of the wine.
“Why?”
“Might come in handy when the power comes on.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Clear as day. I’ll be helping Max to earn my keep.”
An artful expression of amusement slowly spread across Logan’s face and met the corners of watchful eyes, the brown as deep as molten chocolate, yet as soft as the down on a doe’s nose.
“Interesting thought,” he said and touched the rim of his glass to hers.
Chapter Thirty
THE EARTH HELD its breath. And so did she. Ryleigh rubbed her arms, the frozen landscape beyond the glass door a vivid reminder of the manner in which the mindless acts of fools mimicked the unpredictability of nature, and how—for the most part—neither could be controlled.
Save for the occasional hiss of pitch from the fire, the room remained quiet. No one to remind her how silly she’d been. No one to emphasize her uncanny ability to create fiction from nothing more than an indiscriminate kiss and an overactive imagination, a talent that should have remained an imaginary scene on a disconnected flash drive.
The wilderness lay in full dark, the membrane of the night a cloak to all but a freckle of stars, and here and there a slice of moonlight cut through the pines. Ryleigh drew the collar of the chambray shirt into her fists, pulled her elbows to her sides, and prayed the power would return to shed light on a distorted sense of reality.
She sensed his approach before his shadow flickered in the glow of firelight, his presence as visceral as the man who stood beside her.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
She shook her head.
He handed her a glass. “Neither could I,” he said, his voice rich with sleep. “A glass of wine might help.”
“I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I couldn’t concentrate on writing. What’s your excuse?”
Logan drained the wine, set the glass aside and stepped toward the door. He dragged a hand slowly through his hair and placed both hands on his hips. “You.”
She took his arm and turned him toward her. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I do either.” The smile hidden in the corner of his mouth defied the salient uneasiness in his voice.
“I thought,” she said, biting her lip, “never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.” Logan reached a hand to her face and stroked her cheek. “You matter.”
She shoved his hand away. “Don’t touch me,” she said, and took a step back. “I don’t make a habit of humiliating myself more than once a day.”
Logan turned away and scrubbed a hand over his face, the day’s growth a harsh rasp in contrast to the ambiance of the room. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain?”
“No,” she snapped. “I learn quickly from my mistakes and don’t particularly care to repeat them.”
He frowned, the lines cutting deeply into his brow. “I was…mistaken?” He dragged a hand through disheveled curls. “Or have I done something I shouldn’t have?”
“No. Of course not.” The tension bled from her shoulders. “You’ve been nothing but a perfect gentleman.”
“And, is that a problem?”
“Today,” she said, facing him directly, “in the shower.”
“Ah.” He cleared his throat.
“An explanation would be helpful,” she said, crossing her arms against the air of embarrassment surrounding them, “so I don’t make the same mistake the next time I throw myself at a man.”
“I see.”
“I’m glad somebody does.”
He released a long, slow breath. “I couldn’t allow myself to take advantage of the situation. Of you.”
The rush of intimacy the first time his lips had brushed hers lingered as unquestionably lucid now as it had been then. Hadn’t he taken full advantage then? She pulled her lips in on themselves and bit down hard to counter the effect. She raised a hand and rubbed her neck. “Seems it didn’t stop you before.”
“Under the circumstances—”
“What circumstances?”
“Nearly drowning. You couldn’t control your actions any more than you could control how badly you were shaking.”
“You thought I was delirious?”
“It’s common in times of severe trauma.”
“I knew exactly what I was doing.” Her spine stiffened. “I practically raped you of my own free will and for your information, Logan Cavanaugh, the only thing that has permanently traumatized me is you.”
With a hesitant smile that held as much pain as it did joy, Logan reached for her hand. This time she allowed him to take it, or maybe it was the intensity with which he held her gaze that rendered every muscle in her body useless. He gently cradled her hand to his chest, and as he tightened his grip and pulled her close she felt the movement—not of her body instinctively drawn to him—but the inescapable tug of her heart.
The lines on Logan’s brow deepened. “I can’t deny the wanting, the need,” he said, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “It’s like standing at the threshold of a hurricane.”
She reclaimed her hands. “I’m not very good at this.” Uninvited emotion clogged her throat. “Fiction,” she said with a disconcerted shrug, “is easy. Comes with a delete key. But you aren’t a character in a novel.”
“No. This isn’t fiction.” He turned to face the window. “You’re as real to me in my sleep as you are standing here. I feel you with me everywhere. And I shouldn’t.”
She followed his eyes as he steadied his gaze on the landscape outside. The moon shone brightly, a luminescent brooch pinned to a pearl-black dress, casting a blue wake over the gentle slopes of the meadow. The snow glistened like thousands of tiny diamonds scattered with a breath of wind.
“Then what is it?” Though the room was warm, the hairs rose on her skin, a silent warning of the distance growing between them. Her knees trembled. “You’re scaring me, Logan.”
“Don’t be frightened, Cabin Number Three.” A hushed lapse hung between them. “You’ve faced enough fear and pain to last a lifetime.”
“I’m not afraid. Not of you, or of taking a chance even if it cracks and sucks me under. You’ve shown me how to trust again—to step beyond the boundaries I built around myself.”
He released a long breath but remained silent.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t afraid when I fell through the ice because I knew you’d be there. The way I knew you’d come for me when the power failed.” She lowered her head. “And that scares the hell out of me.”
“Please,” Logan said and took her face in his hands, “trust me one more time, Ryleigh Collins. I won’t let you fall.”
The sound of her name resonated through her, the syllables flowing together in a fluid dance as though he’d spoken it in a foreign language. Though his brief touch fell eager and warm against her cheeks, his words held nothing but the voice of reason.
He lowered his hands. “I’m the one who’s afraid,” he said, studying each finger. “And that’s not exactly true.” He turned to her. “I’m terrified.”
Ryleigh swallowed to force the bile rising in her throat. “I’ve kept no secrets from you.” She placed her hand on his arm, a reminder there was no room for doubt. “What happened three years ago, Logan?”
He pulled her against him and held her securely in his embrace. “You’re trembling.”
“Don’t let go,” she whispered, afraid he would. Knowing he should. Either would collapse what little resolve she clung to.
Logan held her against him, the air around them as raw and tender as their emotions. He lifted the hair from her neck, his breath a whisper
as he spoke her name. Yet hesitation rippled across her skin. “I would hold you like this forever if I could.”
She closed her eyes to the simple phrase burdened with implication.
Sliding a hand along her arm, he took her hand and led her to the sofa. They sat facing the fire, his eyes hooded in thought. He leaned forward, draped his arms over his knees and drew restless hands together kneading his palms in a slow, methodical rhythm. The dim glow of the flames played across his face. But her eyes settled on his hands. Compassionate and tender, yet the veins pulsed with authority and competence, the marked aggregate of his strength and the poise of vulnerability.
He stared into the fire. “Three years ago as my youngest daughter was choosing a college,” he said, pausing to swallow and then drawing a long breath, “God took my wife.”
The loss in his voice was staggering and as deafening as the silence before a clap of thunder. She placed her hand on his arm, a hallmark of her trust. His muscles tensed beneath her touch.
“Pancreatic cancer.” He cleared his throat. “The devil’s plague.”
“Oh, God—”
“I begged the Lord to spare her.” The quiet plea strangled his voice, yet remained so sonorous she couldn’t breathe. “Nothing the doctors did—nothing I did—could free her from a living hell.”
“Logan—”
“The illness ate at her body until she no longer resembled the woman I knew.” His jaw clenched and unclenched. “I watched her draw closer to death every day, every minute. Every breath I feared would be her last.”
In the deepest recesses of her mind, Ryleigh begged for him to stop—and pleaded for him to continue despite the shattering of her heart.
“I watched her wither to nothing before my eyes. The cancer consumed her and destroyed me,” he said, bitterness overpowering the grief. “Six months after the diagnosis, her body failed. God knows the number of your days, but I was selfish and I begged for a miracle. I would have given my life for hers. To take her pain.” The lines in his face softened, but his eyes remained distant, as if frozen in the memory. “Day and night I prayed. And waited for a miracle that never came.”
A deep, unforgiving ache penetrated her gut and she took it along with his. One secret had been explained, yet the mystery of him deepened. She tightened her grip. He covered her hand and squeezed, his grasp the tether that bound their grief, and she answered, leaning into him, her assurance she would safeguard his words—his pain—as her own.
“I knew her time was near, and that morning as the sun rose, I promised to meet her in heaven with a warm wet kiss. It’s a line from a Keith Urban song. She would cry every time she heard it,” he said with a wistful smile that faded as quickly as it had appeared. “And she opened her eyes and smiled at me, like she used to. And I knew.” Tears welled in his eyes. “So I held her and rocked her, and it was then she took her last breath and crossed the threshold. And I closed her eyes to this world.” He turned away. “God claimed her pain. And her. And I felt nothing—as if I had died with her and I cursed myself for closing her eyes.” He shook his head. “I tried, but I couldn’t remember.” Logan dragged his hand across a deeply furrowed brow as if to remove the pain of the memory. “I can’t remember her eyes. I can’t remember what color they were.”
Logan rose and stood by the fire, the distance an open, raw wound. Broad shoulders rose and then fell, grabbing at whatever loose thread he could to climb from his mental grave as she watched from hers. “I could ease anyone through the devastation of losing someone. But no one could help me through Laurie’s death.” He took a deep breath, swiped an arm across his face and continued to stare into the fire. “The nights were unbearable. I eventually found the numbing eraser I needed. But I found I was no better off drunk than sober, so I prayed I would fall asleep and never wake.”
Logan turned to face her. In the pale light, she witnessed the return of the solemn loneliness that overshadowed the strong lines of his features. It couldn’t be denied, nor could it be disguised, and it somehow matched hers. She rose and taking his hand, allowed him to assuage his grief as he pulled her close, their bodies molding into one.
“Everything in me belonged to God,” he said, the words drawn harshly through his teeth, “but it wasn’t enough. He took my girl too. And part of me died with her.”
Uncertainty played across his face in a road map plagued with grief, jaw muscles pulsing between memories too painful to reveal. “I dream of her…like she was before the illness, and it wakes me.” His voice echoed the acuity of his pain and he drew his eyes to hers, his expression one of exposed secrets—a naked profession of truth that touched raw nerves. She knew it well, that feeling, for she too sometimes woke from dreams of ghosts who walked the halls of her past. And of Chandler.
Sorrow and pain lay cached behind a smokescreen, but the distance in his eyes spoke of truths that had been denied to her, but mostly to himself. His soul was no longer hidden, exposed through one who has experienced indescribable grief, a grief that paled in comparison to hers. The resurgence of a nightmare rose its ugly tentacles, one she thought had been put to rest, and her own scars stung with the pain of a freshly opened wound. Her heart ached on the inside for him, and tears fell on the outside for her.
“After her death, I became an expert at fooling everyone—including myself—and I was nothing but an incomplete version of the man I used to be. I became intimately acquainted with a bottle.” He plowed both hands through his hair several times as if he could grab the memories and drive them away. “Alcohol is the devil’s prescription for pain. My father forced me to look at myself, dragged me from the bottom of the bottle and into the family business, and when I sobered up and took the reins of Wentworth-Cavanaugh, the business flourished.”
“When God closes one door, He opens another,” she whispered, and for the first time since her mother had recited the words to her, she understood.
“Laurie was all I ever needed. Or wanted. I believe once married, you’re married forever. In life and in death.” As he stepped back, the distance between them grew to a deafening measure.
The words stung as if he had poured salt in an open wound. But worse was the emotional withdrawal, and a feral chill burrowed into her heart. Her strength dissolved. She didn’t feel her legs give way, only Logan’s arms around her, his grip steady, his face inches from hers, and she took hold and clung to him like the sole piece of driftwood in a restless sea. The pain buried in his eyes refused to give way. And in hers, he searched for something she didn’t know if she had the strength to let go of.
“I’ve not looked at another woman since the day I met my wife, nor any day after her death. Until you.” His voice was hoarse, but he spoke the words searching her eyes as if branding them on her heart. “I stopped believing in miracles three years ago. But when I saw you on the deck I knew God sent you to me, to witness His majesty again,” he said pensively. “I prayed then. And again today at the falls. It’s been years since I’ve done so, and I begged God not to take you. This time, my prayers were answered.” She wadded his shirt in her fists and held fast. “I’ve seen the hand of God for the first time in more days than I can count. I don’t know what it means, but there’s one thing I’m certain of,” he said with a deliberate pause. “I’m falling for you, Ryleigh Collins, and it scares the hell out of me.”
A bubble of joy rose amid the chaos of emotions. She would have given her soul as comfort for his pain, but what she could give needed no persuasion and called for no words, simply the reassurance of human touch. Ryleigh buried the last whisper of hesitation and twined her fingers through thick curls, allowing a measure of time to sweep the pieces of shattered memories into place and lock them away. Alone, yet together, two lost souls joined in the knowledge of each other, a barrier against the shadows—not of darkness but those of troubled memories.
She rose on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. The brine of poignant tears, empathy’s sweet tang, and the keen ache
of need collided in shifting patterns of sensation as she took his mouth. With a breath of wine still sweet on his tongue, he responded in an urgent, soul-searching kiss, fusing their undeniable connection as if he’d found something lost and wouldn’t let go.
And in a secret place of her heart, she knew it to be so.
Encompassed in his embrace, she closed her eyes and resigned herself to the man who touched a place so deep, who’d carved a piece from her only his lifeblood could fill. Compassion, honesty and trust were but a fragment of what lay beneath the rugged exterior. And he shared it selflessly. He knew no other way. And she allowed herself to be drawn fully into his protective cocoon.
He raised her hand in his and kissed each finger. Her skin shivered, each touch a moist, tender caress that settled on her heart. When each had been served, he pressed her palm to his cheek, the day’s stubble both shadow and comfort, an intimation of the man within.
Tentative hands sought the curves of her waist and hips, the need to feel the whole of her clearly written in eyes gone dark as sable mink. Delicate kisses bathed the hollow of her neck, his touch simmering in places reserved for the most intimate of embraces, and her skin met the kindled burn of his fingers as he worked the buttons of her shirt.
When the last button came free, he slid the cloth over her shoulders and it pooled around her bare feet, her panties a transparent whisper of cloth between them. Dark eyes stroked her from forehead to toe. Her nipples peaked under his scrutiny and waves of desire pooled in her belly.
Ryleigh pulled the T-shirt loose from his sweats and with her unspoken guidance, he raised it over his head and let it drop. His chest lay open before her, a mat of dark curls. She pressed a palm over each nipple, the muscle tensing under her touch and he winced as her fingertips skimmed the smooth indentation of a scar. She raised her eyes to meet his. With a gentle tug, the laces of his sweats loosened. They fell in a puddle around his ankles and her hands took no pause in sliding over the firm muscle of thigh and hip, and then reaching around, exploring in the flesh the profile of muscle that so nicely shaped the backside of his jeans. Gooseflesh rose in the wake of her touch and Logan drew a short breath between his teeth. A smile curled her mouth and she dug her fingers into the firm flesh and drew him against her, wanting—needing—the close intimacy, the bond of skin against skin in the joining of need. Her breath caught and she cooled the urge to lose herself as his arms folded around her.
