The Summer Cottage
Page 5
That adorable crinkle appeared between Jessica’s auburn brows. “What could happen? Logan?”
He realized she must be able to feel the way his heart suddenly kicked in his chest, and the way his body stiffened until it probably felt as if she were lying on a wooden plank. Making a conscious effort to relax, Logan twitched his shoulders against the sofa cushions and forced an analytical tone.
“There’s no big mystery about it. Sleep has been difficult for me since my parents died—I’m sure you figured out the connection there. But what you probably don’t know is that their accident…”
He paused, horrified at the break in his voice and the burning sting behind his eyes.
“Oh, Logan,” Jessica said, as if the weight of unspoken memory was crushing her, too, and to get both of them out from under it, he made himself keep going.
“They were on their way home from a charity benefit. It was late. Statistically, there shouldn’t have been anyone else on the road, they should have been fine—but the one other driver they encountered happened to be drunk. He ran a red light and plowed his SUV into their car. The drunk driver walked away without a scratch. My parents didn’t.”
In spite of the lingering rigidity of his limbs, Jessica melted around him. She tucked her face into the side of his neck. The smell of her hair was indescribably comforting.
“So one night, you went to sleep,” Jessica murmured, “and when you woke up, your whole world had changed.”
A faint smile tugged at Logan’s mouth. “Not exactly a mystery where my insomnia comes from, is it? Unfortunately, knowing the rational cause of the problem has not helped me to solve it. Until…”
Jessica raised her head, meeting his gaze. “Until?”
“Until you.” Logan struggled with the words for a moment, fighting the sensation of stripping himself bare. “The evidence doesn’t lie. I sleep better when you’re around. You make me feel like it’s safe to close my eyes. Because I know you’ll be there when I wake up.”
With a shuddery breath, Jessica surged up to press her mouth to his. Logan locked his arms around her shoulders and rolled her beneath him, needy hunger rising like fire in his blood.
Logan squeezed his eyes shut and lost himself in the warmth and closeness of her body’s soft, supple welcome—and tried to forget that Jessica had made no promises to stay with him forever.
Chapter 7
Over the next week, Jessica only caught Logan trying to hack into her phone to check his e-mail once, and it seemed like more of a reflex than anything else. To her surprise, he mostly entered into the spirit of the island and did his best to relax. The frequent, athletic lovemaking probably helped with that.
Also, Logan asked Jessica a new question every day. From her first time—high school boyfriend after prom, sweet and fun, if not earth-shattering—to her dreams for the future. Apparently, he’d never quite understood what someone as smart, dedicated and ambitious as Jessica Bell was doing working as a personal assistant.
She was glad to be able to tell him his instincts weren’t wrong. When Miles hired her, he’d basically promised that if she put in her time learning the R&D division’s workings from the unique vantage point of Logan’s lab, she’d be on track to run the entire division one day.
“Not that I’m in a rush,” she’d told Logan on day five, breathless and still glowing from the aftereffects of yet another of his devastating assaults on her senses. “Working with you has been surprisingly rewarding.”
Looking smug, Logan stretched luxuriously until his vertebrae popped. “Of course it has. I told you we’d be explosive together.”
Jessica only smiled at him with what she knew was a ridiculous amount of fondness. She was tempted to take him down a peg about his sexual prowess, even if she’d be lying. But she didn’t want to risk putting any distance between them, even with playful teasing. She sensed that Logan was connecting with her more deeply than he had with anyone in a long time.
He’d learned early on to turn inward, to retreat from the world and the expectations of the people around him, into his own head. He’d even retreated from his family. And now here she was spending every waking moment growing closer to him.
Since that first day on the island, they’d barely left the cottage. Jessica felt guilty about it—she ought to be encouraging Logan into the fresh air, playing on his love of swimming to get him down to the beach for some exercise. But every morning she woke to find Logan propped up on one arm, watching and waiting impatiently for the moment he could drag her out of the bed—at least she’d managed to stick to that rule—and pounce.
So it’s not like we aren’t getting any exercise at all, Jessica consoled herself as she seeded bell peppers and chopped cucumbers for a salad on the evening of their seventh day on the island.
The rules she’d implemented to combat Logan’s insomnia actually seemed to be working. He slept less than she did, but he reported an unprecedented string of nights filled with uninterrupted sleep. She was cautiously optimistic about that, and every time she remembered Logan’s confession of how much better he slept when she was around, a warm glow filled her chest.
All in all, apart from the surprise addition of their shockingly good sexual relationship, this trip to Sanctuary was going exactly according to her original plan.
Except for one thing.
Perking up when she heard Logan pad barefoot into the kitchen behind her, Jessica kept her gaze on the steady motion of her knife over the cutting board. “Dylan came down to the cottage while you were in the shower.”
“Hmm,” Logan said, sliding his arms around her waist and hooking his chin over her left shoulder to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to her jaw.
Jessica shuddered, her unruly body immediately pushing back into the circle of his embrace, desperate for more of what it had gotten so alarmingly accustomed to in only a few short days. Struggling to maintain her focus on both her objective and the sharp knife in her hand, Jessica stiffened her spine. “Yes. He invited us up to the big house for dessert.”
“I’ve got all the dessert I need right here.” With unerring accuracy, Logan nipped the soft, sensitive spot beneath her ear to make her jump, then soothed the sweet sting with his tongue. Jessica bit back a moan and laid the knife down before she cut off one of her fingers.
“I told him we’d be there,” she said, and immediately felt the way Logan tensed before dropping his arms. He moved casually to grab a glass from the cabinet beside the sink, and Jessica watched him go to the fridge and fill it from the jar of green, vegetable-laden protein smoothie he’d become hilariously addicted to.
“And if I don’t feel like socializing?” Logan finally faced her, kicking the refrigerator door shut behind him.
Logan never felt like socializing. At least, not with his brother or the nice new family Dylan appeared to have stumbled into.
“Dylan said he had something important to tell us,” Jessica pressed, determined not to let it go, or to let Logan sidetrack her, this time. “It’s only dessert. When was the last time you sat down with your brother—either of them—for long enough to catch up?”
“Catch up?” Logan sneered and sipped at his drink. “Are we in a race now?”
“Catch up on what’s happening in each other’s lives!” Jessica pressed her lips together, trying not to let her frustration show through in her tone. “We’re here. Dylan’s here, along with a woman and teenaged boy who have become very important to him. I don’t understand why you don’t want to spend time with Dylan. You seemed to get along fine the day we arrived, when you were giving him advice about how to go after the woman he loves.”
“It’s not that Dylan and I don’t get along…” Logan put his glass down without finishing it and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I prefer not to get in too deep with personal relationships. I’m better with theory, abstract problems and mechanical puzzles. You know that.”
Jessica kept her tone even with an effort. “So when you go t
o bars and pick up your one-night stands, that’s okay.”
Logan shrugged, a cynical twist to his mouth. “Sure. Nothing about that is especially deep. Or personal.”
“But it takes people skills. You can’t simply grunt while pointing at your groin, and expect women to follow you to your car.”
With a sardonic twist to his mouth, Logan drawled, “Not exactly, but if I grunt and point at the car, and the car is a chauffeured Bentley…”
“That is pathetic,” Jessica told him bluntly. “I’m embarrassed and ashamed for you, and for every empty-headed, shallow woman who slept with you for a ride in a limo.”
“A Bentley is not a limo. It’s a work of art, a precision piece of automotive engineering—”
“I don’t care about your car!” Jessica realized her voice had risen an octave, but she couldn’t seem to bring it back down into normal range. “Why are we fighting about this?”
“We’re clearing up confusion,” Logan told her. “You seem to think I’m incapable of social interaction, as if I suffer from Asperger’s syndrome or crippling shyness. That’s not the case at all. I’m perfectly capable of interpersonal relationships. I simply choose not to indulge.”
Ignoring the dart of pain his calm, cool statement sent through her chest, Jessica pulled back her shoulders and stared him down. “Understood. But it changes nothing. Your brother has something important to tell you. We’re going. Or I revoke your question for the day.”
“That violates our agreement.” His face darkened. “You want to get me out into the world—to be healthier and more well-adjusted, yet you want me to start with a man who has every cause to hate and resent me.”
Shocked at the depth of angry despair in his voice, Jessica choked out, “What? Why would Dylan hate you? You’re family.”
“Exactly. Whose cuts slice deeper than your family’s? When your parents rejected you after they found out about your affair, did it hurt more or less than the rejection you faced at work?”
Sucking in a breath, Jessica straightened. “My parents did not reject me. We may not be as close as we once were, but that doesn’t mean—”
“You said you asked them for help,” Logan went on, relentless as the tide. “You asked to go home. They refused to take you in.”
“They did help me.” Jessica swallowed, hating how thin and plaintive she sounded. In her heart, she knew Logan was right. Her parents’ reaction to her mistakes had been a kick to the ribs when she was already down. It had opened up a dark chasm between Jessica and her family that no amount of polite chitchat on Thanksgiving and Christmas could bridge. But that didn’t answer her original question.
“We’re not talking about my relationship with my parents,” she said, proud of the steadiness of her tone. “We’re talking about you and your brothers. What happened, Logan? What makes you think Dylan hates you?”
The emotion in his eyes was so raw, so visceral, Jessica almost took a step back. But she forced herself to hold her ground as Logan ground out, “Because Dylan was eight when our parents died. Miles was already gone, in college. Our grandparents, the ones who owned the vacation house here on the island, offered to take Dylan in. He begged me to come with him, but instead…”
Logan broke off, his hoarse voice grinding to a halt as he turned his back and braced his hands on the kitchen table. Jessica had to curl her fingers under the edge of the counter to stop herself from going to him.
She wanted nothing more in the world than to wrap Logan up in her arms and shield him from this pain—but the pain was inside him already, and he had to get it out. Terrified that if she moved, she’d shatter this rare confessional moment, Jessica held her breath.
“Instead,” Logan said, low and hoarse, “I tested out of my senior year of high school and escaped to college a year early. I abandoned my grief-stricken eight-year-old brother to life in a new city with grandparents he hardly knew, buried myself in school and work and research, and I never looked back. Of course Dylan hates me.”
Jessica’s throat ached with tears she wouldn’t shed. Logan hated tears, mostly because he was bewildered by them and didn’t know how to react, she’d learned. So she wouldn’t cry for this proud, lonely, regret-ridden man, no matter how badly she wanted to.
Instead, she finally pushed away from the counter and took the few steps that would allow her to slide her arms around his lean waist and press her hot face to his back. Logan’s muscles were granite under her touch, but she didn’t let go.
“It sounds to me,” she murmured urgently, “like Dylan isn’t the one who hates you for leaving him. It sounds like you hate yourself. But Logan—your parents had just died, tragically and suddenly, and your world was spinning off its axis. You handled it the only way you knew how. Please, please don’t hate yourself for that.”
“Dylan was only a kid. He needed me, and I could’ve stayed. I chose to leave, I chose college over taking care of my baby brother.”
“You were a kid, too.” Jessica snugged up as close to Logan as she could, until she couldn’t tell her own heartbeat from his. “So young. What were you, sixteen?”
Logan cleared his throat. “Fourteen. I’d already skipped a couple grades.”
Squeezing her eyes shut against the burn of tears, Jessica mouthed a quick, fervent kiss against the body-warm cotton of his T-shirt. “Only a baby yourself. Logan—”
“I should have stayed. But what could I have done? I don’t know the first thing about comforting someone else, or making them feel better. All I knew was that I was in raw, screaming pain, and I had to escape it any way I could—which was by throwing myself completely into my work.”
“That’s not true.” She tightened her arms around him. “That you’re bad at comforting people. No matter what we talk about, or how emotional I get, you always make me feel like it’s okay. You listen. That’s all anyone can do.”
He slumped another inch over the table, hanging his shaggy head between his stiff arms. “So I should have stayed and listened to Dylan have nightmares and cry for Mom and Dad.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. You did what you needed to at the time, to cope with your own grief.” Although she was starting to suspect that he hadn’t coped with that grief at all; instead, he’d grabbed onto the challenges of college at fourteen years old to avoid facing it. How had he put it? That he escaped completely into his work.
But no one could outrun a loss like that forever. Jessica was very much afraid that Logan could never truly be healthy and well-adjusted until he dealt with the pain of the past.
“I should have listened to him,” Logan repeated, like a looped recording, and Jessica let out a shaky breath.
“It’s too late to help your eight-year-old brother,” she said, as firmly and gently as she could. “You can’t go back in time. You have to let it go … and realize that you’ve been blessed with a second chance.”
“What do you mean?” His wrecked voice came from deep inside his chest.
“You can listen to Dylan now.” She kissed him once between his shoulder blades, then again because she couldn’t help herself, before glancing at the digital clock on the stove. “Come on. Let’s go wild and skip dinner, head straight for dessert. Last one up the garden path to the big house has to wash the dishes.”
Logan straightened slowly, as if his bones ached, but when she finally got a look at his face, there was a small smile curving his mouth. “Dessert for dinner? Doesn’t sound very healthy to me.”
“It’s okay to let yourself enjoy life sometimes,” Jessica said, brushing a tentative hand over his jaw.
He turned his head to plant a kiss that left her palm tingling. Meeting her gaze directly, he admitted, “That’s not the easiest thing for me. But I’ll try. I want to do better.”
Joy lifted Jessica’s heart into her throat. She’d never felt closer to anyone than she did to Logan in that moment. “That’s good. Because you’re a Harrington—and what you boys want, you usually get.”
And once they left this magical little hideaway and returned to the real world … she and Logan would never be this close again.
Chapter 8
Logan sort of wanted to hold hands with Jessica on the way to the house—it was a garden, there were flowers all around and the setting sun was flaming the sky with pinks and purples overhead. A textbook definition of a romantic setting probably called for something sappy like hand-holding.
To his surprise, he found he didn’t mind the idea all that much, although it was something he usually avoided like malware and spam. Everything was different with Jessica. Take cuddling in bed, for example. He hated cuddling—the clinginess of a woman he barely knew expecting him to keep in contact long after the sex was over? Made no sense, was sweaty and awkward, and he just … didn’t enjoy it. So he didn’t do it.
But with Jessica and her crazy rules about not having sex in bed, there was nothing to do except lie close together, their heads on one pillow, and breathe each other’s breath. Sometimes they talked, sometimes he watched her sleep until the steady rhythm of her soft breathing closed his lids and pulled him under.
He didn’t mind it. Same with the hand-holding, as long as it was with Jessica—except at the moment, his palms were too clammy and itchy with nerves to inflict on anyone else.
Don’t be stupid, he told himself. This isn’t going to be some huge emotional revelation. You’ve already met your quota for those today.
Dylan just wanted his brother to meet the woman he was seeing for more than a thirty-second introduction in which Logan had inadvertently outed Dylan as a member of the Harrington family. Which Penny hadn’t been aware of previously.
Jessica led them confidently up the back steps and rapped smartly on the window-paned door, giving Logan flashbacks of arriving at the house a week ago.