Logan's Way

by Lisa Ann Verge

  She frowned. He must have been expecting thick goggles and bad teeth. “I’m a scientist. A botanist, to be specific. But I’m not mad.”

  “Oh, yes you are. You cover it up well, but you’re as mad at this whole situation as I am.”

  She raised a brow at his honesty. She was angry, in her way. She was annoyed that the situation hadn’t gone as planned. She had always had very little tolerance for mistakes like this, even understandable ones. “Anger will not solve the problem,” she said. “And we will solve this problem.”

  “You won’t be happy until I agree to clear the hell out.”

  Yes. Yes. That was precisely what she wanted. She worked best in solitude, like at three in the morning when all the graduate students had finally abandoned the lab, leaving her alone with her beakers and her thoughts. Even here—especially here, in a strange place—she needed time to work, she needed a place to work, and she didn’t need some oversexed cowboy hovering around, disrupting her concentration.

  Still, the summer school in etiquette she’d been sent to as a teenager had pounded its lessons into her hard, and she felt a blush of shame at his bluntness. “Mr. Macallister, I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to say it, lady. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “Nah, I’m a pretty good judge of character. I wouldn’t blame you for wanting me to disappear. I wasn’t exactly the welcoming committee back there in that bedroom—”

  “Let’s just take things from here and now.”

  Eugenia cleared her throat, tugged on the hem of her linen blouse. He would bring up that little bedroom scene, wouldn’t he? He did it on purpose, to unnerve her. Well, all her professional life she’d been known for her coolness under pressure. All her professional life she’d been known for her capacity to think complex situations through. Granted, those complex situations were usually of the scientific, botanical sort—not of the human sort. Still, she’d be damned if it would take the memory of a moment of nudity under the eye of an unpredictable cowboy to interfere with her powers of clear thinking.

  “We’re both adults,” she said evenly. “Surely we can work something out.”

  “I thought my idea was just fine. The house has two bedrooms. Enough space for two people to share for a couple of weeks without stepping all over each other.”

  He sauntered closer to her. He really was tall. She was used to being eye level with most men, or slightly taller. It helped, in her testosterone-driven business, to be born a tall, long-legged woman. But with this guy, she had to arch her neck to stare into his eyes. Eyes that were really a pale green, not blue. And full of strange, shifting shadows.

  There was no rational reason for the sudden jumping of her heart, the clamminess of the palms of her hands. She flattened them against her thighs and wondered what that kid in the coffee shop had slipped into her brew this morning.

  “I’m not going to lie to you,” he continued. “This ain’t going to be easy, Red.” He’d lowered his voice to a sexy rough rumble. An intimate husky sound, as if he were whispering to a wild young horse. “I’ve gotten used to my own company. Don’t have much patience for visitors.”

  “Now, there’s a revelation.”

  His lips quirked—a strange little move, charming, but with only the barest trace of humor. “Stay out of my way,” he said softly, dangerously. “I’ll stay out of yours. That’ll be our deal.”

  She didn’t answer right away. She took a deep breath and stepped back, out of the sphere of physical influence this man radiated. He was a big man, in more dimensions than the physical. That freethinking new graduate student of hers—Maritza something or other—would say that he had an angry red aura around him. A sort of intense circle of sensation that grew stronger the closer he came.

  He was a safe distance away now. But still she felt that magnetic pull. It would not be easy to avoid this one. The cabin was simply not that large. Then again, she reasoned, she’d be spending most of her time in the laboratory in the basement. He’d have no reason to intrude upon her there.

  Of course, she hadn’t a clue what he’d be doing with his time. Drinking beer? Watching sports events? Puttering aimlessly around the house? She knew nothing about free time. She hadn’t taken a vacation from work in more than three years. She’d never been unemployed except when she’d been in school, and then she’d spent every waking hour with her nose in a book.

  She tried to shake off the speculation. What Logan Macallister did with his spare time wasn’t her concern. The fact remained that she had work to do—lots of work. If she didn’t start unloading the equipment soon, she’d be setting it up until midnight.

  “All right,” she said, nodding once. “We’ll see how this works out.”

  “Good.” His nostrils flared. “You’d better take the master bedroom. I’ll move my stuff out.”

  Miss Marples’s Etiquette floated through her mind. “No, I won’t dislodge you from your room—”

  He cut her off with a swift pass of his hand. “It’s for my own good. I won’t lie on that bed again, Ginny, without seeing a certain redheaded, wet-skinned vi sion floating out of the bathroom.”

  With that, he turned on one heel and disappeared down the hallway, leaving her with that image in her mind. The image of her standing naked, dripping wet and completely vulnerable, while Logan Macallister lay flat on his back in his bed in his unbuttoned Wranglers… watching.

  Just watching.

  A HALF HOUR LATER, Eugenia shouldered open the kitchen door, bracing the first box in her arms. At the other end of the kitchen, an open door revealed a set of stairs leading into the basement. She heard Logan rustling around long before she reached the bottom step.

  He didn’t spare her a glance as he collected some items off the counter of the long center island. “I’ll be out of your way in a minute.”

  She scraped the box onto a sturdy wooden table and eyed the lab. A clutter of trays lay near a sink. Brown bottles of developing chemicals stood high on a shelf against the wall. Three ropes hung from one end of the ceiling to another. A few photographic prints still swung, drying, from the rafters.

  She tried to keep the note of incredulity out of her voice as the significance of the clutter registered. “You’re a photographer, Mr. Macallister?”

  He snatched a print down before her eyes then shouldered by her. “It’s just a hobby.”

  He clutched a pile of prints against his chest as he shoved the trays under his arm. There was a strange, tight look on his face. She felt a spurt of guilt that she might be usurping more of his space than she had realized.

  “Listen, we can share this lab,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the small basement area. “I’m going to be out in the field for a couple of days and there’s no reason you can’t use—”

  “If I need a darkroom, I’ll rig up the second bathroom.” His eyes looked bright in the light of the bare bulb of the basement. “You just get your work done.”

  And move on.

  The words were unspoken, but as clear as a bell. Logan pounded up the stairs, leaving Eugenia alone in the musty basement, her ears still ringing.

  She sank down on a bar stool whose padding had seen better days and blew a strand of hair off her brow. Well, Eugenia, you bumbled it again. In her lifetime she’d managed to earn a Ph.D., publish a dozen papers in scientific journals and achieve a full professorship at a large state university. But, in the immortal words of her sixth-grade teacher, she still hadn’t figured out how to play well with others.

  She hiked an elbow on the center island and sank her head into her hand, rubbing her forehead as if she could rub away her own mixed feelings of guilt and confusion. She’d come here, in part, to escape people. These days, her idea of a vacation was to be in the Washington woods with her work and her own private laboratory. She spent the whole year trying to navigate the rocks and shoals of murky academic politics, and the last thing she wanted to do on he
r “vacation” was negotiate living space with some stubborn, mercurial, unpredictable, sexy—

  Sexy.

  Totally against her will, totally against all expectation, a tingly heat stole over her body. She sank her teeth into her lower lip as the heavy wave of sensation languorously crested, filled her body, made her breasts heavy, pressed up on her throat…then, just as slowly, ebbed away.

  Moments later Eugenia found herself sitting bolt upright on the stool, contemplating the strange, empty ache left throbbing throughout her body and the rush of sensation that had preceded it, all with a growing sense of panic.

  She’d been working too hard, she told herself. Yes, that was it. Correcting too many papers, administering too many finals, shepherding too many students through the last of their laboratory projects. She was tired. Disoriented from the long ride. Unsettled by the fact that some tall, broad-shouldered, wild-eyed stranger had scoured her naked body with his hungry eyes.

  He’d gotten under her clothes…and her skin. She’d never let anyone have that kind of power over her—not even Michael. Michael, whom she’d lived with for far longer than two weeks.

  Well. She leaped off the chair and slapped the dust off her hands. She scanned the basement. No use wasting time thinking about Logan Macallister. There’d be no love lost between them, that was sure, and not just because she’d been her usual frosty self. He’d taken no liking to her, that had been plain enough. Within two weeks, her work would be done and she’d be out of here and that cowboy would be nothing but a memory.

  She took the stairs two at a time, barreled through the kitchen and headed for her car to retrieve another box. Macallister was nowhere in sight, though later she heard the buzz of an electric tool coming from the backyard. A quick glance through the basement window revealed a roomy shed some distance away, by the edge of a grove of trees. The door was open and a splatter of what appeared to be sawdust flew out of it Cutting wood for the winter, no doubt, Eugenia thought More in line with her first impression of him than his dabbling in photography. Then she forcefully pushed all thoughts of Logan Macallister out of her mind, opened the first box and plunged into the task of setting up her temporary lab.

  She had no sooner positioned a digital scale on the table when she noticed tracks it left through the grime on the surface. She wasn’t a cleanliness nut, as long as it didn’t affect her results, but for some reason she just had to scrub the table clean. Right now. Rolling up her sleeves and tugging on a pair of yellow latex gloves, she set upon the lab with a vengeance.

  She was elbow-deep in a sink full of suds when the basement door scraped open, flooding the basement with light

  Macallister pounded down the stairs. “You still down here?” He stopped midflight and flattened his hands on the sloping ceiling. His eyes widened as he scanned the basement. “What’d you do, power-was the place?”

  She swiped her brow with her upper arm and followed Macallister’s gaze around the room. The counters gleamed, the machines sat neatly in a row, and rinsed glassware sparkled on crisp paper towels.

  “I like a clean workplace,” she said, sounding overly defensive, even to herself. “I’m going to be spending a lot of time here.”

  “No kidding. You’ve already spent most of the day here.” He met her gaze. Boldly. Steadily. “You planning to eat?”

  “Eventually. I’ve got a lot of work to do first.” She turned back to her sink full of suds, away from that strange aura of his. “I’ll manage something later.”

  “Something more substantial than M&M’s?”

  She glanced at the bag of candy she’d opened a while ago, to tide her over. “I’ll eat later.”

  “It already is later, Red. Past eight o’clock.”

  Eugenia glanced toward the single basement window. Rays of dusky gray light seeped through the grime. It was nearly sunset. She must have been working here for six hours.

  “Then I’ll order in,” she said. “Know a good pizza place?”

  Logan surprised her with the rumble of a laugh so magnetic that it drew her gaze back to him against her will. She noticed bits of chaff that dung to the thighs of his jeans. Dirt streaked his T-shirt. Through his dark, careless hair she saw the tracks of his fingers. He looked sweaty and rough and well worked.

  “City bred, aren’t you?” He gestured to the woods that could be seen at the edge of the yard through the basement window. “You’re in the wilds now, Eugenia. There isn’t a pizza joint or a Chinese takeout within fifteen miles.”

  “Oh”

  “All the grocery stores are closed, too, though you could probably get some Twinkies from the gas station till about ten.”

  “Is there a point to this conversation, Macallister?”

  “Yeah.” He descended two more stairs, then leaned a shoulder against the wall. “I’m cooking up some beef,” he said. “Should be ready in ten minutes.”

  She noticed, suddenly, the aroma of cooking meat floating down the stairs from the kitchen. A spicy scent, rich and appetizing. She spoke over the growling of her stomach. “Is that an invitation to dinner?”

  “Yeah.”

  That was it. No explanation, no conditions, no pretty talk, no compromise. Still, the offer made her strangely breathless. “I thought we were going to stay out of each other’s way.”

  “It’s dinner across a kitchen table,” he said. “It’s not like I’m asking you on a date.”

  Not even remotely, Eugenia thought, breathing deeply through the tightness in her chest. In fact, he gave every appearance of not wanting her to join him at all. “Not the most charming of invitations.”

  “I’m short on charm these days. Look,” he said, swiftly, as if he’d instantly regretted his words. “We’ve got some things to talk about. House rules and all. How we’re going to stay out of each other’s way. And you’ve got to eat. I’ve made enough dinner for two. Are you coming or not?”

  His arms were crossed, his face stony and unreadable. She considered rejecting the offer out of pique, but she bit her tongue on the reflex. After all, she was hungry. Judging by the aroma now filling the basement, the food was hot and ready upstairs. If she didn’t eat with him now, she’d be starving later and would have to spend precious time searching for something decent to eat in a town she didn’t know. A town that apparently rolled up its sidewalks at sunset.

  Yes, that was it, she told herself. She didn’t want to waste any time. “Yes,” she said, snapping off a glove. “I’ll accept.”

  “Scrub in.” He turned on a heel and headed up the stairs. “It’ll be ready in five minutes.” .

  A few minutes later, she ascended the stairs to the sound of meat sizzling. Steam hissed into the air under the hood of the stove, billowing around Logan, who was planted in front of a wok, wielding a wooden spoon with obvious skill. His gaze skimmed over her then returned to his work. “Sit down. This is ready to go.”

  She’d expected raw, oversize hamburgers or bleeding hunks of steak. She’d expected paper plates, plastic utensils, greasy paper napkins. Not the tender strips of sirloin and crispy vegetables he spooned directly from the wok onto the bed of white rice molded upon the china.

  She searched the kitchen for hidden white paper takeout boxes, but saw only cutting boards, dirty knives, a smattering of vegetable peelings. He’d made the meal himself.

  “Yeah, I did,” he said, scraping a healthy serving out of the wok and onto his own plate. “And I expect you’ll be cleaning it up.”

  She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. She was too drugged by the scent of the spicy sauce, by the sight of the food on her plate. She realized that she hadn’t had anything to eat all day save a cup of coffee and a Danish in the morning, and the M&M’s she’d left downstairs. She speared a piece of the sirloin and let the taste fill her mouth with spices and sauce.

  He swung a leg over the back of a chair and planted himself across from her. He hunkered over his plate and shoveled a forkful of food into his mouth. He lifted those heavy
lids of his and eyed her across the table as he chewed.

  She felt, of a sudden, like a defenseless piece of marinated beef. The table was small, the distance between them made smaller by the way he leaned over his plate. She plastered her spine against the back of the chair.

  Some niggling scientist’s voice in her head questioned her odd behavior. She’d always been awkward with strangers, but this went beyond the usual strain of making small talk. Every time Logan Macallister looked at her, she felt so…vulnerable. He made her shockingly aware of the way she crossed her legs. Or the way she sank her lips over a fork and pulled off the meat.

  Tightening her grip on the fork, she speared a piece of something on her plate and watched it as she lifted it to her mouth, yet for the life of her she didn’t know what she chewed. Even sitting there, as still as stone, tucking into his dinner, he had an aura of restless energy around him. Surging and ebbing, roiling and changing. Sitting this close to him was like standing on a rock by a storm-churned sea, waiting for the next wave to crash.

  She jumped as he clanked his fork against his empty plate.

  “This is the way I see it,” he said, stretching back in his seat “Breakfast, lunch, we’re on our own. On weekdays, we can cook dinner on alternate nights. Forget about the weekends. I might not be around.”

  She heard the splatter of something drop and realized it was a piece of meat falling off her fork onto her plate.

  Forget about the weekends. I might not be around. She hadn’t thought about the possibility of a girlfriend. Truth be told, she’d be surprised to find him single. He was a good-looking guy, if you liked the rough and unshaven look. If you liked the careless way his hair curled over his collar, the deep tan darkening his neck and his shoulders, where the T-shirt dipped to show the start of a strong clavicle, sprinkled with black hairs. If you liked intense, restless green eyes in a face craggy with shadows—

  “It’s the only sensible way,” he continued, when she didn’t answer. “No use having both of us buy separate food, or dividing up the refrigerator.” He eyed her half-empty plate. “You’re no vegetarian.”