Logan's Way

by Lisa Ann Verge

  She deserved better. His lips went thin, his jaw tightened. She deserved a hell of a lot better than Logan Macallister, failed M.D., unemployed drifter crashing at a friend’s house and temperamentally unable to put together a résumé. She deserved better than to have a guy like him eyeing her at every turn, pawing her the moment the opportunity arose, making her afraid to leave the basement.

  But he wasn’t going to give her an apology. Oh, no. Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed her out there in the woods, but there was no way she could deny she enjoyed it. He’d felt her response. Hell, he could still feel her response every time he closed his eyes. He could still feel it now, rumbling in his blood. That was raw, unadulterated animal passion between them. If she were the kind of woman to indulge in that kind of relationship, he would be happy to oblige, but if there was one thing he’d learned about Ginny Van Saun, it was that her head ruled her heart. At least, it tried to—until a jerk like him used primal lust to shake her up.

  No, he had no intention of apologizing. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to make amends. At the rate she was working, she’d be done with her research by the end of the week, and then he wouldn’t have the opportunity.

  So he stood outside the shed and glared at that grimy basement window as he had at least a dozen times already that day, running the arguments through his head again. Wondering how he could make amends for something for which he was completely unapologetic. Wondering how he could make amends at all, when at the first sight of her he was sure he’d turn into that mindless, lusty jerk again.

  This time, he didn’t turn back to the shed. He crossed the yard, swung open the door, pounded across the kitchen floor and confronted the basement door. Before he had second thoughts, he swung it open and descended the stairs.

  She stood in a glaring-white lab coat, peering at a long loop of paper spooling out of a machine that hummed on the workbench. In the hood, something burbled in a round-bottomed glass set just above a gas burner. The whole room smelled of honeysuckle. Bits of leaves and stern lay discarded on the table; a green mass congealed in a ceramic bowl.

  She raised her head and stared at him steadily through a pair of scratched safety glasses. He had the feeling she’d been expecting him.

  “So this is the hideout,” he said, gazing around the room. “Impressive.”

  One sleek brow rose above the edge of the glasses. “It’s not a hideout. It’s a lab.”

  “It’s serving double duty.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Dr. Macallister. I’m not hiding from you. I’m not hiding from anybody. I’m working.”

  “You work too much.”

  “I enjoy my work. I always work this hard. I’m good at it. And I’d like to get back to it.”

  “And rid of me.”

  “Yes.”

  He cocked his head at her. She’d given up on the meanest of social graces. He had a feeling Dr. Eugenia Van Saun rarely reached this point in a relationship. Whatever point this was.

  “I’ve thought of a solution to our problem, Red.”

  “We don’t have a problem,” she retorted. “I’m working here just fine, and you’re staying out of my way. No problem.”

  “Prickly today, aren’t we?”

  “Busy.”

  “Hmm.” He sank down on the third step and hung his hands between his knees. “Keeping busy works for me, too.” He jerked a thumb toward the basement window. “I’ve done more work in the past two days than I’ve done in the past two months.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “But it hasn’t done the trick,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm in her voice. “I still can’t get my mind off you.”

  He heard the sudden catch of her breath as she turned her face away. “I suggest,” she said, “that you try harder.”

  “I’ve got a better solution.”

  “Oh?” She tucked a tress back into her chignon and then adjusted a knob on the humming machine. “Are you leaving, then?”

  “No.”

  “Pity. I could use the peace and quiet.”

  “I’m asking you on a date instead.”

  She froze in place. Her fingers whitened on the paper.

  “Pizza and a movie,” he continued. “Nothing fancy. There’s nothing much fancy around these parts, anyway.”

  Ginny swept the glasses off her face, dislodging the stray curl from the tightness of the chignon again. She clanked the glasses on the table and leaned her hip into its edge. She took a breath that made her breasts strain against the buttons of the lab coat.

  He remembered what those breasts looked like, glazed with steam, in the light of the master bedroom.

  “Logan, listen to me,” she said, her voice pitched as if she were speaking to a child—or a very stupid graduate student. “I’m sure, in most circumstances, you’re a really nice guy. You must be, because your conscience keeps sending you back to me to make amends.”

  “I’m not making amends. And I’m not apologizing.”

  She arched a brow. “Oh?”

  “Yes. ‘Oh.”’

  “That just proves my point,” she continued. “You keep coming back to do…something. And all you end up doing, in the end, is making the situation worse.”

  He resisted the urge to wince. He supposed he deserved that. He supposed he’d have to swallow it. But he didn’t have to like it.

  “See? You’re not denying it.”

  “That I can be a jerk? No, I’m not denying it.”

  She exhaled and it was as if some of the tension left her body.

  “Hey, you could disagree with me, you know. Tell me I’m really a charming guy.”

  She rubbed her forehead with two fingers, glancing at him once from under her hand. “The bottom line is this, Logan—we don’t have to be best of friends. We don’t even have to like each other. But if we’re going to live together for the next week or so, there has to be an element of respect, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I mean, I admit I’m not very good at this. I’m used to living on my own. I haven’t had a roommate since boarding school.”

  Boarding school? Logan kept his mouth shut and filed that little insight away.

  “And certainly not a male roommate,” she continued. “Not since—well, not for a while.”

  “For a while?” He realized, with a sudden shock, that she had once had a male roommate. She’d once had a lover. “Since when?”

  “Since so long ago that it doesn’t matter,” she said, waving the air as if to wave the words away. “And this… this attraction between us. Just think about it for a minute.”

  “Only a minute?”

  “It’s biology, that’s all,” she continued. “We can’t even be in the same room without arguing. To indulge in anything more…intimate…would be, well, pretty stupid and shortsighted.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Agreed?”

  “Yeah.” He straightened and rolled his shoulders. “That’s exactly why I’m asking you on a date.”

  She shook her head as if shaking off a fog. “I don’t get it.”

  “So we can get to know each other better. Instead of seeing me as a brawny, beer-chugging woodsman, you’ll get to know the real me, uncluttered by wit and charm. Cut the shine off the diamond.”

  She blinked at him. And then her lips—those soft, irresistible lips—twitched into an unwilling smile. “Wit and charm?”

  “I know, it’s blinding.”

  “So blinding that I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Well, you will if you come on this date. And it’ll dim after a few hours across a dinner table, for sure.”

  “Then,” she said as his meaning slowly dawned, “you think that we’ll realize how ill-suited we are.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And how ridiculous this whole situation is.”

  “Yup.”

  She crossed her arms and leaned more deeply into the table, frowning as if trying to work out a chemical equation. “
You know…that’s almost twisted enough to work.”

  “If it doesn’t work, you’ll have at least gotten a pizza and a movie out of it.”

  “Mmm.”

  A silence fell between them, pierced only by the hum of the machine and the burble of liquid in the round-bottomed flask in the hood.

  “So,” he said finally, wondering why his chest felt so tight, anticipating her answer. “Are you going to go on a date with me, Ginny? Or do I have to march over there and kiss you senseless first?”

  5

  IT’S JUST PIZZA AND A MOVIE.

  At least, that’s what Eugenia had been telling herself for the past half hour as she scoured her meager wardrobe. The bulk of it carpeted her unmade bed. She clasped a hanger against her shoulders and stared down at the skirt splayed against her outstretched leg, wondering if a dress was too formal. Perhaps she should take the jeans-and-T-shirt route. As if she didn’t care what she looked like. As if she dated sexy, aggressive, contradictory, impossible-to-figure-out men like Logan every day.

  Yes, that’s what she should do, she thought as she tossed the dress back on the bed. She reached for the jeans, then caught sight of a sheer floral skirt underneath. Hmm, this was lovely. Really feminine, really cool. Topped with that lightweight, cream-colored, sleeveless knit sweater, it might be just right—

  She jumped at the sharp rap on the door.

  “Ready when you are, Ginny.”

  She seized the floral skirt and pressed it against her body, as if he’d burst in to see her standing in nothing but matching satin bra and panties. She glanced at the clothes strewn everywhere, the shoes toppled out of the closet, the clutter of jewelry on the countertop. “I’ll be right there.” Her hair dripped against her bare back. “Just one more minute.”

  Dear Lord, what am I doing? She was making much too much of this, that’s what she was doing. Look at this place. If he could see it, he’d think she was dressing for him. What had gotten into her? She wasn’t nervous. She wasn’t! She couldn’t be. If she was nervous, then that meant she gave a fig, and she didn’t.

  She just wasn’t prepared, she told herself. It had been so long since she’d been on a date, even a weird date like this, and she hadn’t brought much to wear. When she’d packed for the two weeks she had expected to be in the lab or hiking in the forest or, at best, doing a quick country-store shop for her father’s August birthday. Certainly not going on a date with anyone. Especially not on a date with a man who almost managed to kiss her socks off—and every other unit of her apparel, as well.

  She curled her fists into the skirt. She wouldn’t think about that, no, she couldn’t think about that, but her body was already remembering, and reacting, with all the fierceness of that bright hot day in the woods.

  I kissed him back. I kissed him back not because he expected it, not because it was expected of me, but because I wanted to kiss him back, because I couldn’t help myself.

  And that, Ginny concluded, was such a totally shocking, unexpected, mind-bending experience that she’d spent every moment since wondering why, after having experienced no more than awkward, uneasy and only vaguely satisfying sex, she found herself electrified by one man’s singularly world-rocking kiss.

  She’d concluded that it was a fluke. A moment out of time. An alignment of the planets, a phase of the moon, an excess of estrogen in her bloodstream, a total eclipse of the sun. Or maybe a combination of all the above. Too rare and strange ever to happen again. She had no doubt that Ginny the ice queen would freeze again the next time Logan lunged.

  She shook herself. She couldn’t stand here thinking about that, because if she lingered too long in this bedroom he’d start wondering what was taking her so long. He’d start wondering if she was dressing for him, carefully choosing her clothing right down to the laceedged bra and panties. She didn’t want him to think that, she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. After all, this was a date where they were supposed to end up not liking each other, right?

  She slipped on the skirt and grabbed the sleeveless top, then frantically ran around the room stuffing the clothes back into the closet in one huge muddled heap. She dragged a comb through her soaking-wet hair as she kicked the shoes atop the pile. She closed the closet door with one swing of her hips, then ran to the bureau to stare at her pale face in the mirror while her mind went through paroxysms of indecision about lipstick and eyeliner and blush and mascara.

  She plunged her hand into her makeup bag. Her fingers fell upon an old square case. She pulled it out and flushed as she realized what it was.

  She hadn’t used what was inside this little pink case since Michael. She snapped the thing open and pressed the flexible rubber ring between her fingers. She wouldn’t need this, of course, she told herself as she lifted the rubber cup to the light and checked for pinholes. She and Logan would hate each other before this night was through.

  A few minutes later she rolled her shoulders, tossed a light sweater over her arm and flung open her bedroom door. Cool. Be cool, she told herself as she sauntered through the hallway and the living room. So you had one really unbelievable kiss. Be satisfied with that, Ginny, because lightning never strikes twice. By the end of the night, he’d know the real her. The frigid icicle that had turned off so many men. That ought to send him running for a hotel room. Alone.

  She found Logan standing outside on the deck, leaning against the railing, staring off into the trees. He’d tucked a simple button-down shirt into a pair of crisp khakis. The stray thought passed through her head: He fills a pair of khakis well. Then he turned around as the screen door wheezed shut behind her.

  She saw the surprise in the depths of his eyes. She saw, too; the widening of his pupils, the way he straightened. Every rising goose bump on her body sensed the way his gaze slipped from the flats on her feet to the drying frizz of her unbound hair. In that moment, she felt indescribably fragile, indescribably delicate, one-hundred-percent vulnerable female.

  “You look great,” he said, then just as quickly frowned. “Am I supposed to say that?”

  She shrugged her shoulder. Felt the scrape of the knit across her breasts. “I’ll let it pass. For now.”

  “I’ll try to be more of a jerk later.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  His grin widened. She felt the twitch of her own lips. Felt a current of humor between them, a quiver of sensation that felt dangerously good. But the date wasn’t supposed to start out like this.

  Logan was the first to turn away. “C’mon.” He fished keys out of his pocket and clambered down the deck stairs. “I’ll do the driving.”

  Ginny was about to offer to do the driving—after all, her shiny new Saab was parked on the gravel, and it sure looked a lot safer than the rusted, beat-up hulk of a pickup truck Logan was heading toward—but she bit her lip on the offer. The whole point of this “date” of theirs was to learn to dislike each other. Better they be battered around in the dirty cab of that dusty old vehicle than purred and lulled to comfort in the airconditioned luxury of a buttery leather interior.

  But if she’d been looking for sensory deprivation, she soon discovered she was seriously misguided. From the moment Logan revved up the engine and turned the Ford onto the road, she found herself overwhelmed by remembrances. Of a summer in her early teens at her grandmother’s house. When Granny had allowed her to go to an afternoon movie with the kind of boy her parents would never have let her date. The kind of boy whose skin had been burnished a deep tan from working on his family farm. The kind of boy whose body rippled with muscles earned through good honest work, the kind of boy who entertained no lofty academic aspirations, the kind of boy who had no qualms about introducing an innocent girl to the delights of necking in his father’s pickup truck.

  A pickup truck just like this one, she thought, bouncing down the country road toward town. The windows were wound down and the balmy evening air tossed her hair over her shoulder. The breeze filtered through the easy knit of her co
tton sweater and rippled the sheer fabric of her skirt over her knees. The cab was set high, so much higher than her Saab, so that despite the jouncing of the car over the road, she felt as if she were floating above it, as lighthearted and powerful as a teenage girl anticipating an evening of hot petting.

  She hazarded a glance toward Logan from the safety of the far end of the cab. Though the breeze had twice hefted her skirt to midthigh, Logan continued to stare at the road with all the intensity of a race car driver The roar of the engine and the squeak and rattle of the vehicle precluded easy conversation. But then again. conversation never seemed to be easy between them Reason one why she and Logan were such an ill-matched pair.

  Fifteen miles and what seemed like fifteen thousand years down the road, he pulled the truck to a stop in front of the only pizza joint in town, a whitewashed building that looked more like a run-down country house than a restaurant. A painted sign swung from a post, the single word Pizza painted on it, in big red letters.

  Ginny swung down from the pickup, put her hands on her lower back and stretched out the kinks. Logan came around the truck and his gaze fell, immediately, to her breasts.

  She slid her hands to her hips and tried to ignore the widening of his pupils. “So, this is the only pizza place in town.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “and it’s the best one, too.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “You’ll love it, city girl. You’ll see.”

  “I’m a pizza expert, Logan. I’ve eaten every brand of pizza available in the American market. I know the best of every kind—thin crust, thick crust, Sicilian, brick-oven…”

  “You haven’t eaten pizza until you’ve eaten Mama’s pizza.”

  “Mama?”

  “The owner of this place. Everyone calls her Mama.”

  “Something tells me,” she muttered, “I’m not in Kansas anymore.”