Logan's Way

by Lisa Ann Verge

  Yeah, that didn’t help. It didn’t help that he had the sight of her fixed in his head, those full breasts, those puckered pink nipples, the smooth curve to her belly and the pleasures that could be had—

  No, that didn’t help. It had been too long since he’d had a woman, but it was more than that. She was a cool customer, this one, but he sensed a volcanic intensity within her. The cooler she acted toward him, the more he wanted to prod her, the more he wanted to see the flush of anger on her face, or lust, or any passion, any passion at all, as long as it was directed toward him.

  “Listen.” He shoved the faucet off and wished he could turn off his libido as easily. “I’m trying to save you some time. I’ll lead you to the damn plants today. Do you want me to help you or not?”

  He turned to face her. She had that stunned-doe look on her face again, as if he were some new species of flora she couldn’t classify. Couldn’t much blame her. For even now, he couldn’t stop himself from engulfing her with his eyes, from the tips of her bare toes to the rumple of her rosy-red hair, pausing with intensity on every place in between. He looked at her the way he’d like to kiss and suckle her, if he could ever convince her to stretch out naked before an open fire and spread those legs for him.

  He didn’t let his gaze falter. Why the hell should he? He knew what he wanted, even though there’d be no sex between them. He had nothing to offer a woman but heat and a lot of enthusiasm. And Dr. Eugenia Van Saun was obviously not the type to indulge in something as intimate and carnal as a quick roll in the hay.

  “All right,” she said in a quiet voice.

  He glanced at her again, his loins hardening at her unwitting response to his thoughts.

  “It will save me time,” she continued, “if you really can guide me to those samples.”

  Ah, yes. Time. Dr. Van Saun had an obsession with time. Getting as much work as possible done within the shortest amount of it. He watched the film of cool professionalism drop over her face like a patina of stiff, glossy paint.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, prodding his own thoughts back to reality. “I can show you.” He tossed the sponge to the back of the sink. “Just be ready to leave within the hour.”

  FOR A GUY WHO HAD OFFERED to help, Macallister sure did seem in a hurry. Eugenia adjusted the weight of her backpack and tried to concentrate on the path through the misty woods, not the sight of Logan marching in front of her. More than once, she’d stumbled against the gnarled roots and jutting rocks cushioned beneath the layer of pine needles on the ground. She vowed not to stumble again. She felt unbalanced enough around this cowboy. The last thing she needed was to go sprawling face first across the ground.

  She should have declined Logan’s offer. She didn’t need him. The park ranger they’d met at the entrance had seemed willing and eager to help. Had she come alone, she suspected the ranger would have directed her according to Dr. Springfield’s instructions. A ranger would certainly have a better grasp of the lay of the land than Macallister, who, by his own admission, had only wandered these paths a handful of times.

  Nevertheless, Logan was here, bulldozing his way through the red cedar and Sitka spruce, bulldozing her, just as he had yesterday when he’d maneuvered her into agreeing to share the cabin. And here she was, trudging after him, her thoughts a mangled mess. She should be scouting the terrain, noting the relative percentages of Douglas fir and hemlock, the smattering of alder, birch and maple, and thinking about the testing and samples to come, not watching the flex of his thighs and wondering if he still wore blue silk boxers under his khaki shorts.

  “The stream is just ahead,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Good,” she said. Finally. “Then we’re close.”

  “Almost there. Need to walk upstream a ways.” He eyed her with those piercing greens without breaking his stride. “We’ve already done two, three miles. You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She tried to keep the edge out of her voice. It was a simple question. But she couldn’t tell if he was just being considerate or doubting her ability, and she’d be the first to admit she was hypersensitive about such issues. Still, one look at her battered hiking boots and worn leather backpack should have clued him to the fact that she’d done plenty of fieldwork.

  Then, to her dismay, he dropped back to walk beside her. With a slight break in his rhythm, he matched her gait. They strode for a while through the piney woods in silence. The rhythm of their synchronized movements unnerved her. It reminded her, inanely, of when she used to ride show horses as a teenager. There’d been a connection between her and her horses, a mental link, an ability to read each other’s body language with the slightest tightening of a muscle.

  Now she could feel Logan’s unease the way she could feel the restless wind darting amid the boughs. Rushing, slowing, spiraling, turning in on itself. The feeling invaded her, twisting the tightness in her belly a notch. The sensation unnerved her; her awareness of him made her dizzy, unbalanced. She couldn’t control Logan the way she could control a well-trained show horse.

  Desperate for something to break the connection, she gestured to the binoculars and the long-lensed camera dangling from his neck. “Planning to shoot some pictures today?”

  He absently caressed the lens, then shrugged. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “If I get lucky.”

  She glanced at him sharply, for the words were rich with innuendo. For a flash of a moment she wondered exactly what kind of photographer he was and, as his gaze settled on her with that shadow-eyed intensity, what kind of pictures he had in mind.

  “Sometimes my subjects,” he said, without cracking a smile, “are less than cooperative.”

  “Oh?”

  “They need a little convincing to show themselves.”

  She thought she saw a glimmer of humor on his face. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He gestured to the trees around them. “This time of year they hide out, depending on when their eggs hatched.”

  “Eggs.”

  “You know, birds’ eggs? I shoot birds. Sparrows, wrens, jays. Hawks or eagles if I can find a pair.” He paused for a heartbeat and gestured toward the netting of branches above them. “Hear that?”

  “What?”

  “You missed it. The common North American house wren. There, that’s its mate, calling back.”

  She heard it then. A throaty warbling, high in the trees. When she glanced at him again, he had a grimly amused look on his face.

  “I’ll bet you a beer you didn’t think I was a birdwatcher.”

  She knew her eyes betrayed her. Birdwatching wasn’t on top of the list of things she’d expect him to have for a hobby. Football watching, maybe. Rugby playing. Pool. Anything that involved a six-pack of beer and a pair of jeans. And a blond bombshell of a woman curled under his arm.

  “The first time I saw you,” she admitted, “I thought you were a cowboy.”

  “I am from Montana.”

  “So I wasn’t so far off the mark.”

  “No.” He angled her a hot glance. “The first time I saw you,” he said, “I thought you were a centerfold.”

  She stiffened. The tingling starter again. “Macallister, you promised—”

  “I know, I know. Never to mention it again. It’s not easy, Red.” He shifted his shoulders, rolled his neck. “Forgetting, that is.”

  “Try harder.” She struggled a few steps ahead of him, to break the synchronicity of their pace. “How far is it now?”

  “Follow your nose. It’s up ahead. You know, I’m a pretty nice guy once you get to know me.”

  “You keep telling me that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “every time I act like a surly roommate.”

  “Which has been just about every minute of the last twenty-four hours.”

  my hey—”

  “Denying it, Logan?”

  “Damned right I am. Who packed you a lunch today?”

  “You packed m
e lunch?”

  “Turkey and Swiss on a roll.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t know what to say, so she resorted to Miss Marples’s etiquette. “That was kind of you. Thank you.”

  “You didn’t eat breakfast.”

  “Sure I did.”

  “I don’t count a glass of orange juice as breakfast.” He clambered around a rock rising from the rusty carpet of the ground. “Do you often miss meals?”

  “No. Well…” She shrugged. “Yes. I guess I do.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I get involved with things,” she explained, trying not to become defensive. “I eat when I’m hungry. It all works out in the end.”

  “You get involved with work, you mean.”

  “Of course.”

  The words came out of her mouth impatient, vaguely surprised. What else was there to be involved with? Certainly nothing else in her life. Not now, anyway. Not ever, really. Michael had seemed to understand that when they were living together. At least, she’d thought he had.

  She paused and lifted her face to the breeze. Amid the tartness of rising sap, she smelled something else…a distinctive heavy-sweet honeysuckle scent. “I think I can smell it.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured, glancing around. “This looks about where John and I were last time.”

  “There. There it is.” She shifted the pack on her back and made a beeline toward a tree entwined with vines. She feathered the leaves with her fingers and eyed the blossoms higher up on the trunk. “This is it. I’m sure of it.”

  “I remember the smell.”

  His voice sounded strangely gruff. She’d dropped down on one knee to muscle her backpack off, but at the sound of his voice she glanced up at him. He was looking around the site, his jaw tight, his face hard with an expression she could not read. And all of a sudden, it was as if the sky had gone dark with clouds, the wind grown cold with oncoming rain. She’d wondered what had happened to cause the shift in the emotional weather, and why she’d noticed it at all when she was usually oblivious to such things.

  He said gruffly, “You need me?”

  “No…. No.” She shrugged. “I’ve got some samples to collect, some testing to do. It might take a while.”

  “I’m going hunting, then.”

  She watched his back as he strode away. She knew, in some unscientific way, that something was bothering him. She wondered what she’d done, or if his shift in mood had anything to do with her at all. It seemed to be the place that unsettled him. She glanced around the verdant woods. Bees hummed in the honeysuckle above. The cool, clear water gurgled over stones. A lush carpet of grass grew luxuriant in a patch of sunlight just at the river’s edge. It was a lovely spot. She wondered with a disconcerting pang if he’d once come here with a woman.

  She shook off the perplexity. I must concentrate. I have to think of the work. She had observations to make about the surrounding flora, she had to check pH and water hardness levels in the stream nearby. She had to test the soil for alkalinity and then collect the samples themselves. She yanked open her pack and started pulling out plastic bags and test tubes, resolutely turning her back on that patch of soft grass.

  Later, she was jolted out of her concentration by the click of a camera. She glanced up from the edge of the stream and found a lens aimed directly at her. Above it appeared a pair of intense green eyes, shaded by black hair turned silver by the sunlight.

  Her breath caught. She felt the fresh air on the rise of her breast and remembered she’d unbuttoned an extra button on her blouse because of the heat. She should have worn longer shorts, or bicycle shorts, something that wouldn’t gape to reveal more flesh than she wanted to reveal—as her linen shorts did. But it was too late. He’d already snapped the picture and immortalized her on film. Capping the test tube in her hand, she dropped it in the holder with the others, stood up and smoothed her shorts over her thighs with as much grace as possible.

  Keep this all business. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said, tilting her head toward the vine-laden tree. “Looks like I need your help. Those blossoms are too high for me to reach, and I need to bring some home to the lab.”

  “So,” he said as he lowered the camera. “You do need me.”

  She let the comment pass as she seized a sample bag from her pack and led him toward the tree. They stood, heads tilted back, watching a bee meander from one blossom to another. Logan raised an arm and stretched up, but the blossoms hung just above his reach.

  “You’ll have to climb on my shoulders,” he said, discarding the camera atop the day pack at his feet. Then he dropped to his knees, with his back to her.

  She blinked at the top of his bowed head. He obviously expected her to just climb right on.

  “Uh, Logan,” she said, crushing an empty plastic bag in her hand. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “What, afraid of heights?”

  “No.” She didn’t feel like spreading her thighs and sinking her bottom behind his head. “I’ll be too heavy for you.”

  “What d‘you weigh, one-fifteen?” He twisted and measured her with a lazy, roaming eye. “I can handle you, Red. C’mon.”

  He bowed his head again. She took a deep breath. If she was ever going to get those flowers, she supposed she didn’t have much of a choice. Short of heading back home and hiking back out here with a step stool or a ladder. That would kill half a day, at least. And make her look very, very foolish.

  She swung one leg over his shoulder. He slapped his gritty hand around her calf. She braced her fingers on his shoulder between his neck and her thigh, then swung her other leg over. Her shorts slid up; his hair tickled the inside of her thighs.

  Then he tightened his grip on her leg and made a lumbering lurch up. Her feet left the ground. He leaned forward. She slid until her crotch bumped against the back of his head. Then he rose, high, hiking her up with him, hiking her up into the boughs of the tree and their twines of fragrant blossoms.

  For a moment she just braced herself in the shadow of the tree branches, drunk with the scent of the honeysuckle, dizzy with the height and the feel of his rough hands on the bare skin of her legs, dizzy with the crush of his head against her abdomen and the heat of his breath along the inside of her thigh, shaking with the sensation of being off balance, out of control of her own body in this high, fragrant place.

  His voice sounded strained. “Can you reach now?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said. Back to business, Eugenia. She lifted one hand off his head and uncrumpled the bag. Peeling her other hand off his head, she tightened her thighs and started picking. “Stay still for a few minutes,” she said hoarsely, “and I’ll be done here as soon as I can.”

  “Relax, Red.” He stroked her legs, massaged her tight thighs. “You’re choking me.”

  “Sorry.”

  She tried to loosen up. But her skin still tingled where his hands had touched her. And if she eased the tension in her thighs too much, her buttocks sank down deep into his shoulders. She felt, too keenly, the shape of his head between her legs, the surprising softness of his hair.

  “So,” he said, flexing his grip, “how did you get into this field, anyway? You don’t strike me as a country girL”

  “I’m not.” She yanked the nearest blossoms off and stuffed them in the bag. “I grew up in New York City.”

  “New York City?”

  “Move up a little,” she said. “There are more closer to the trunk.”

  “Concrete madness,” he said as he lumbered forward. “No wonder you went into botany.”

  “I like the city.” She stuffed more blossoms into the bag, ducking her head to dodge an angry bee. “I’m done,” she announced, sealing the bag with a quick swipe of her fingers. She glanced through the plastic at the stuffed bruised blossoms and frowned. It would have to do. It would be a rough-and-ready analysis, nothing more. She could bring a ladder or a step stool next time. But she had to get off this man’s shoulders, now. “You can let me down.” />
  “That was quick.”

  “I don’t need much.” She sank along with him, watching the ground as it rose to meet her, felt it hard and stable beneath her hiking boots. She braced her feet on the solid ground. He unlocked his head from the V of her thighs, lowered his chin and swept his head out behind her, rasping the tender skin of her inner thighs, scraping the full sweep of her crotch. As she stumbled at the loss of his steadying influence, he rose up behind her and grasped her arms.

  “Steady, Red.”

  He yanked her back against his chest. Forcing her spine straight, forcing her head into the nook between his shoulder and his jaw. She breathed heavily, felt her chest cave with each exhale, felt the heaviness of her breasts in the silk cups of her bra. Her button-down shirt gaped; she sensed his gaze sweeping downward, burning a trail through the thin fiber to the pucker of her nipple.

  “So, city girl,” he said against her hair, “if you liked that concrete madhouse so much, what are you doing here in the woods of Washington?”

  “What’s with all the questions, Macallister?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  Guilt and frustration rushed through her, adding to the mélange of tangled emotions. She was doing it again—being prickly and cold to someone who’d taken the time to help her out, who was trying to make up for past mistakes. She had to get a handle on this, to get a handle on him. She shook herself free, turned and faced him—and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was hard enough to concentrate without all six feet or so of him so close to her, a big, lumbering hunk of breathing, sweating man in the warmth of a June morning.

  He deserved an answer, he was waiting for one, and standing here, she couldn’t think of a legitimate reason not to tell him the truth.

  “I suppose,” she began somewhat reluctantly, “that it started, really, with my grandmother.”