by Miranda King
So why Grandfather suddenly wants him home makes no sense. Unless…
“Are you sick?” He asks his grandfather.
“It’s just time to get my affairs in order.” Grandfather does not give a straight answer. “I’m sorry for our past, and I’m signing Thorton Hall over to you.”
So Grandfather is asking Logan’s forgiveness for neglecting him all these years by giving him Thorton Hall? Eden once told him to think about his grandfather’s point of view and the unbearable pain he experienced losing his son. That his grandfather didn’t deal with it well, yet never meant to hurt Logan. She asked him to consider forgiving his grandfather.
Forgiveness. That word is so easy to say, but what does it actually do? Forgiveness can’t erase the past. Forgiveness can’t undo the damage already done. Forgiveness can’t even be bought.
“I don’t want it.” His voice is as sharp as a blood diamond.
“It’s not just Thorton Hall,” Grandfather persists. “I’m creating a new position for you. To supervise the High Command. I think you’re the right one for the job.”
“No, you didn’t think that.” The conversation borders on argumentative. “You didn’t know for sure about me, so you asked for the General’s advice. You didn’t know for sure about me because you’ve never bothered to know.”
Grandfather says, “Well, it’s your fault—”
“—Please, please don’t argue,” Poppy pleads with an ache in her voice that no one her age should have.
Both men say nothing.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen.” Poppy charges into the conversation with the courage of a warrior. “Grandfather, you’re gonna work on not blaming Logan for the accident. And Logan, you’re gonna work on forgiving yourself for what happened to Dad.” She takes a deep breath. “Maybe after that, both of you can forgive each other.”
Both men still say nothing.
“Logan, you need to recognize that Grandfather took a big step today by offering you not just Thorton Hall, but this position. He needs you, whether or not he’ll admit it. The least you can do is say you’ll consider it. Can you do that?”
Poppy’s cleverly backed him into a corner with the skill of a military general three times her age.
“Okay.” Logan offers only the one word. It’s all he can give at the moment.
“And here’s what I’m gonna do.” Poppy’s voice returns to the scheming shenanigans of a normal sixteen-year-old. “I’m going to decorate your new house for you. I’m gonna transform Thorton Hall from a cold, lonely, dusty place into a real home.”
Translation: More pink flowers, foo-foo potpourri, and fluffy pillows than a man like him could handle.
“Sure,” Logan tells Poppy. She could decorate the house with every shade of pink on the planet. Logan has no intention of accepting that house. She can have it.
“And Eden’s gonna see your new home, and she’s never gonna wanna leave us.” Poppy says all this in nearly one breath.
“Poppy, I won’t be asking Eden to marry me. I know I said I was, but it’s not going to work out now.”
“It has to,” Poppy says. “She’s your Thorton Thunderbolt. You’re destined to be together.”
“No offense, Grandfather, but I don’t think what you taught us about the Thorton Thunderbolt applies to someone like me.”
“You’re a Thorton. No Thorton is exempt from the Thunderbolt.” Grandfather’s voice, for this brief moment, transfixes Logan, back to a magical time when his grandfather used to spoil him and tell him bedtime stories about the Thorton Thunderbolt. “Remember, if you feel like you’ve been struck by lightning when you see this woman, then she’s the one you’re meant to marry.”
Here is yet another thing for Logan to disagree on with Grandfather: Meant to marry and being able to marry are two different things. The Thorton Thunderbolt isn’t stronger than his promise to Dante.
“Oh, Logan was struck by the Thunderbolt with Eden. He was!” Poppy exclaims. “He admitted it to me. Didn’t you Logan?”
Yes, the Thunderbolt. That hot flash of need that sizzles in his veins whenever Eden is near him.
“I don’t remember.” Not exactly a lie. He doesn’t have to remember.
His veins are on fire right now.
His back is to the door, and he instinctively turns around. And in the doorway is…
“Eden?”
“Is Eden Knight Dating Prince Logan?”
– headline from The Summerland Tattler
“When you come to the base in a few weeks, plan on an extended,
private one-on-one tour with me.”
– Prince Logan’s email to Pop Star Eden Knight
“Love insists the loved loves back.”
– Dante Alighieri, Medieval Poet
“I’m here for that tour you promised, Logan.” Eden Knight leans her body against the doorframe. His back is to her, and she takes in the man she’s traveled over a thousand miles just to be near.
Pure rugged male. An aura of protective strength. Muscles bulge under his uniform because they can’t be contained. His broad-shoulders could carry the weight of the world, and then some. His proud posture possesses a lethal grace. Those thick, unruly dark locks practically beg for her touch, but she wouldn’t stop with his hair. Her fingers twitch to trace every hard contour of his body.
He looks over his shoulder and sees her. Electricity surges through her body, and every cell remembers their time together last weekend. But almost a week later, he hasn’t called or emailed or texted… or anything.
Get it together. Be cool. Act like nothing’s wrong just because he hasn’t called you since you’ve slept together.
She steadies her body, setting a hand on her hip. Why do men have this stupid three-day rule about waiting to call women? And if it’s longer than three days, does that mean a man isn’t interested anymore if he hasn’t called?
“I’ll have to call you back.” He drops the phone from his ear, ending the call abruptly with whoever was on the other line, and tosses the phone on a coffee table. He turns around, giving her his full attention.
Yet he stands there. Not moving. Not saying anything.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were on the phone.” Eden doesn’t step beyond the doorway. She mentally shakes herself. This is such a mistake. She should’ve waited for him to come find her at the concert if he wanted to see her, and now she probably came off as a stalker, asking his fellow officers were he might be and tracking him down here.
But hadn’t he sent her an email a few weeks ago about wanting to give her a “private one-on-one tour” of the base? Yet that is well before they actually slept together last weekend. Since then their relationship has unfurled like a puff pastry missing the cream filling. Too hollow for her taste.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she berates herself out loud. “I shouldn’t be here, should I?”
He slowly shakes his head. “It’s not good for us to be here together like this.” His voice is raw. “But don’t go. At least”—he draws in a deep breath—“not yet.”
He steps forward and extends his arms out for her. The look in his eyes is a please-come-to-me invitation. She can’t resist and slips straight into his secure arms. He strokes his hands up and down her back. He caresses his face against her hair.
Ahh, this is heaven. Pure heaven. She closes her eyes. Her muscles melt against him like frosting spread over warm cake. He revs up her body faster than a sugar high.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” His breathing is labored, and he pulls away from her.
Eden opens her eyes and looks over her shoulder to see the door ajar. “Oh, yes, you’re right.”
Their bodies no longer touch, and the room chills her. She tugs at the hem of her skin-tight minidress, but it still doesn’t reach mid-thigh.
Logan sweeps his eyes over her, and shivers shoot up and down the length of her body.
Is he remembering last weekend and the way my body clung to h
is?
He mutters something low, perhaps a curse, before he speaks. “I can’t let you stand here like that in front of me without doing something to warm you up.” His voice is dark and rich like molasses pouring over her.
He unbuttons his military uniform shirt with the same urgency he undressed himself last weekend in her hotel room. Each loosened button ratchets her body temperature up a degree. He wants to seduce her right here, right now? And here she is worried that he hasn’t called because he isn’t interested anymore in her.
He yanks off the military shirt, stripping down to only his T-shirt sculpted against the muscled arcs of his chest. She reaches out for him, and he swiftly swings his military shirt around her shoulders.
“There.” He pats her arms the way one would do for a child. “It’s cold in here.”
“Uhh, thank you….” This is not exactly how she wants him to warm her up.
But his shirt still carries the heat of his body and his familiar masculine musk. She breathes his scent and wraps his shirt closer around her body.
He watches her with hooded eyes and shoves his hands in his pockets. “You changed your outfit.”
“You noticed.” And the places inside her that were hollow fill with hope.
“Hard not to miss. It’s… shiny.”
She glances down at her bright pink costume, a shorter-than short dress and thigh-high, Editorial Edge Lilith inspired boots with open toes show to off her shiny pink nail polish. “The dress might be made of vinyl. Don’t know. The boots kill my feet, but the whole outfit shows up well on stage.”
“That’s what you’re wearing up on stage for everyone to see? That dress is tinier than something on one of my sister’s dolls.” He scrunches his eyes the way a disapproving father might, but his tone is light. “And what happened to the sides of that dress? Did they run out of material?”
She laughs. “No, these are cutouts.” She opens the shirt so he can see them. “It gets hot dancing, and clever Emma put these in to help cool me on stage.” She points to each side of her stomach exposed by the gaping slits. “Emma adapted the dress from the Integrity designers’ Diva Dasha outfit from the Supermodel Convention. Don’t you just love it?”
He cocks his head to the side. “Well… looks like someone got a little scissor happy. Or is this the latest trend for spring?” He smiles at her. “Should I get some scissors and make some cutouts in my T-shirt?”
“In your case, I say just take off the whole thing.” She giggles and lowers her lashes to check out how his T-shirt stretches over his ripped abs.
“Oh, now I get it.” He grins. “All this time you’ve been trying to recruit me as one of your male backup dancers.”
“Well, I can verify you’re amazingly flexible.” She shimmies a little closer to him.
He coughs. “So… this Emma you mentioned, is the same one my brother was dating a while back?”
“Emma? Yes, she’s a sweetheart. The real deal. Your brother was stupid for letting her go.”
“Sometimes we can’t have everything we want.” His voice seems to speak from experience.
She tiptoes right up to him. “I would think that you could have anything you want.” She traces her finger back and forth over the curves of his chest. “Especially what’s right in front of you.”
The dark depths of his eyes smolder, and he grasps her hand so possessively that the fire flaming inside her flares out of control.
“You would think.” His voice is low and husky. He caresses her hand, up and down, up and down, and then he abruptly pulls back as if she scalds him. “But some things just aren’t meant to be.”
His words burn like dry ice on bare skin.
She blinks up at him. “But we are meant to be, aren’t we? Don’t we have something really special together, especially after last weekend?”
“Yes, we had fun.” He steps back. “But that’s all. I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but surely you’ve had enough experience to know how these things go.” He looks away from her.
What’s happening here? He doesn’t call, and now he acts like their weekend together was nothing more than a fling.
Beside him on the coffee table, she glimpses the magazine cover with her picture heralded as the Sexiest Woman on Earth, another year as the SWOE.
She struts closer and raises her chin. “Yes, I know how it goes with other men.” She tosses her head to the side and her hair follows. “But I thought you were different.”
She narrows her eyes, and then brushes her body against his shoulder on her way past him, forcing him to turn with her. “And for the record, I don’t make a habit of having flings.” She lifts the magazine with her face on the cover and shakes it at him. “I’m labeled as the SWOE, not a ‘ho.’ Being the SWOE and pictures of me in bikinis doesn’t mean I’m a loose woman.” She slaps the magazine on the table. “I should’ve known you’d be just like all those other men.”
“For future reference, men don’t like hearing about ‘all those other men’ who’ve come before them.” Why did he have to make it sound like there’d been a truckload of men?
Because there hadn’t been that many. And the exact number is none of his damn business. “Oh, you’re no Saint Logan. Like you haven’t had other women?” She crosses her arms. “Come on. I read the headlines.”
“And so do I.” He crosses his arms.
Yes, the tabloids linked her with other men who charmed her and made her feel special, at least for one night. It took a long time to learn that those men only chased her to brag they got the SWOE and pop star celebrity into their beds.
Maybe not after that first night, but eventually, those men would wake up, not to the pop star, but to just Eden—and she wasn’t enough for them to stay.
She made a pact with herself not to sleep with any more men until she was sure the relationship would last. And then Logan pursued her, without a care for her pop star celebrity or SWOE status.
Logan is different. Scratch that. She only thought he was different. Probably because he’d spent the past year wining and dining her not with expensive restaurants and elaborate dates, though he’d done that, but he’d won her heart with his attentiveness. With every email and phone call, he showed her he cared. Really cared about her.
He even hinted about them getting married and asked if she desired a big or a small wedding—small. How many kids she’d love to have—three. If she wouldn’t mind living in Summerland instead of the States—absolutely if it meant being near him. He went so far as to ask her if she could see him as her husband—and then he led her into the bedroom last weekend and showed her everything he had to offer her as one.
And while he didn’t flat out say he wanted to marry her, for the past month or so, it was every day implied. Until after this past week when he dropped off the radar.
Had he suckered her with sweet words for sex? Yet that doesn’t make sense. He said he would wait until she was ready, and for nearly a year, he kept his word. Women threw themselves at him. He didn’t have to be faithful to her for an entire year. But he was—past tense. Now it appears he wants to move on.
“So you were going to break up with me, and that’s why you haven’t returned any of my emails, texts, Skype messages, or phone calls?” Okay, that last part sort of makes her sound like a stalker. “You were just going to break up with me by ignoring me?”
“No, you deserve better. Although I didn’t exactly want to have this discussion right now, there’s no avoiding it.” He shoves a hand through his hair. “What’s done is done.”
“So that’s it?”
He nods.
And poof. That fire flaming in her body for him just charred her insides into ashes.
“You’ll find someone else.” He balls his hands into fists and shoves them in his pockets. “Soon enough, I’m sure.”
But you don’t want me anymore?
How many times has she asked herself that since her parents died? Her brothers had a relatively stable
life in the military academy, but she was placed in the foster care system and passed around from home to home with the frequency of a Netflix DVD.
She tried so hard for her foster parents to love her, or even like her enough to want to keep her. They would scrutinize everything about her, judging if she was worthy enough to stay. But always after they rejected her, she would ask them, what did she do wrong?
She was too tall. Too short. Too thin. Not thin enough. Her hair too red. Her hair not red enough. Answers varied, but they were basically the same. She needed to be better. Although each cycle through the orphanage into yet another foster home reinforced her suspicions there was something wrong with her.
Rejected. Returned. Repeated in an endless loop.
Until that kind lady at the orphanage heard her singing and entered her into a television competition in the States. When she left that orphanage, she never looked back.
Yet that mentality, that feeling in the pit of her stomach there’s something wrong with her, that she isn’t good enough to keep around or want or love. That feeling has never gone away… until Logan.
But the man standing in front of her is not the same man that taught her what it feels like to be worthy of being kept and wanted and loved.
The man in front of her is just like those other men from her past, only it took him a little longer to figure out that the real, insecure Eden isn’t as interesting as Pop Star Eden. And in the end, just like the rest of them, he doesn’t want her.
Her eyes sting. “I thought I knew you. Do you think last weekend was just a fling—that it meant nothing to me? Because I’m beginning to think it meant nothing to you.” She rapidly blinks back the burn in her eyes. “That I mean nothing to you.”
He releases a pent-up breath. “You do mean something to me. A great deal, in fact.” He swallows audibly and looks out the window. “But nothing more than a friend. What we did last weekend was a mistake.” He sighs and faces her again. “Please believe me when I say I don’t want it to ruin the friendship we’ve built this past year.” He reaches his hand out to her, but stops himself.
