“Logan, I needed to get the heck out of that house for a while. Coming to see you and Dr. Van Saun seemed the best excuse I could think of at the time.”
“It’s a three hour drive.”
“Exactly.”
Logan glared at him, hard, until John looked away. For a moment, John looked almost sheepish.
“Give me a break, Logan. Three hours is nothing. It’s three hours when I don’t have to look at my lovely wife suckling our newborn child, knowing I’ve got to wait six whole weeks before—” John stopped short. His ruddy face intensified in color. He eyed Logan with pure envy. “Before I can send her underwear spinning on the ceiling fan.”
Logan dipped the measuring cup into the fragrant grounds and heaped measure upon measure into the filter. Logan understood too well. He didn’t think he could wait six more minutes before dragging Ginny back to the bedroom. But Ginny wasn’t his wife. Hell, she wasn’t even his girlfriend. And if it weren’t for John taking up space in this kitchen, Logan would march back to the bedroom, confront Ginny and figure out exactly what they were.
Blindly, Logan slammed the filter of the coffeepot closed and yanked open the faucet to fill the pot. What an ungrateful jackass I am. John had saved his hide when Logan had left Mexico; John had given him a place to live and all the time in the world to pull his life back together. And now Logan stood here, wishing John would just disappear, when it was obvious that his friend needed a friend.
“So,” John said, watching him intently, “I guess you and the professor worked things out.”
“Yeah, we did.” Logan clicked the coffeemaker on and leaned a hip against the counter, giving John the eye. “We worked things out very, very recently.”
“Ah.”
“It hasn’t been easy.”
“Oh.”
“In fact, it has been damn hard.”
“I bet.”
Logan glared at John as his friend’s lips quirked. John struggled to control his humor and finally just cleared his throat. “So things are still unsettled in this house.”
“Very.”
“And here I am, Mr. Sunshine.”
“Precisely.”
“And right about now, you want me to march out that door and head back to my wife and child and my own private tor—”
“That won’t be necessary, Professor Springfield.”
Both men glanced up in surprise. Ginny stood in the doorway. She’d tossed on a bathrobe of some heavy, cream-colored silk that covered her from head to toe and brought out the sheen in her unbound strawberryblond hair. A glow lit her cheeks—a silent flush of embarrassment—but she held her chin level.
She checked the knot on her robe, then stepped into the kitchen and thrust out her hand. “It’s good to see you again, Professor.”
“Best call me John,” he drawled as he lumbered to his feet and took her hand. “Under the circumstances, that is.”
“Yes…the circumstances.” She managed a tight little smile, then stepped back into the doorway. Logan realized he’d pushed himself away from the counter and was now standing, fists at the ready, as if prepared to battle his friend John if he made the slightest move toward her.
And all the while his gaze drifted over her, seeing in his mind’s eye what the satin covered. She stood erect, her face controlled and cool, her chin just a notch below defiant, and he wondered how he could have ever thought her frosty and distant. It was all just a shield, and a brittle one at that, holding back the rumbling molten passion inside her.
“Please stay, John,” she said, toying with the sash of her nightgown—the only evidence of her nervousness. “This is your cabin, after all.”
“Yeah, but I turned up without warning.” John’s blue eyes twinkled with humor. “And I think you two could use a little privacy—”
“Nonsense.”
She spoke swiftly and firmly. Both men looked at her in silence. Logan watched the rising flush stain her neck. She couldn’t seem to meet his eye.
“You drove three hours to get here,” she added. “There’s no use driving away just because my lingerie is decorating Logan’s bedroom furniture.”
John choked.
“Besides,” she continued, as John fumbled for a napkin to cover his coughing, “I think Logan and I can keep our hands to ourselves for a few hours. Don’t you think so, Logan?”
She looked at him. A surge of electricity passed between them, intense enough to make lightbulbs explode into a thousand shattering pieces. He wanted her. He wanted to tear that satin bathrobe off her as he’d torn her skirt off her last night; he wanted to feel the silky sheath of her along his shaft; he wanted to fill his mouth with the taste of her.
Then he realized that she was expecting him to say something, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember what he was supposed to stay.
“Ah…” John said, clearing his throat. “Maybe it’s best if I—”
“Stay for the afternoon, at least,” she said firmly, looking away from Logan. “I insist, John. We’ve got ground beef in the fridge. Logan can use that grill outside to make us some burgers.”
“Well…” John glanced at Logan, looking for guidance.
“Besides,” she continued, drawing his attention back to her, “while you’re here, I’d like to show you some of the results from the tests I’ve been running on those plant species.”
He lifted his brows. “Oh?”
“Yes,” she said. “Some potentially good results. You’re welcome to peruse my notebook downstairs. I’ve got to…” She pointed vaguely back to the bathroom, and the brittle shield of control quivered a little before she forced it still. “We can talk about the results when I’m more…presentable.”
“Okay…fine.”
Her gaze flickered to Logan. A hesitant, careful little look that set his blood on fire. She nodded to the coffeepot. “I hope there’s enough there for me?”
“Plenty.”
“Good. I’ll be back in twenty minutes or so.”
Then she was gone, leaving behind her a lingering trace of some very expensive perfume.
John let out a slow, long whistle the moment he heard the bedroom door close. “Well, well, well, will the surprises ever end? Here I thought you were doing the wild thing with Dr. Eugenia Van Saun, tenured professor, working wonder, and lo and behold, I find not the good professor in her designer suits and tight hair, but a gorgeous Amazon love goddess who smells good enough to eat.”
“Shut up, John.”
“You are one lucky son of a gun.”
“You still take your coffee with milk and sugar?”
“I mean, when I got off the phone with you a week ago,” he continued, nodding absently at Logan’s question, “I thought that this was heading for disaster. You’ve been such a bear since you got back from Mexico, and Dr. Gene can be one cold… Well,” he said, biting down on his words, “obviously I don’t know the lady well enough—”
“So, John,” Logan said in a voice that was not in the least bit casual, “how is Judy?”
“—until now. Boy, oh, boy, you could set the house on fire with just the looks passing between you two.”
“Tell me about this baby nurse.”
“Obviously,” John continued, ignoring the questions, “Dr. Gene hasn’t turned you into any less of a bear. But I had no idea you two would hit it off so quickly.”
“But you hoped we would.”
“Yeah, of course. I wouldn’t have set you up otherwise.”
Logan glared at his friend as John’s grin split as wide as Texas. Logan had suspected he’d been set up. Now he was sure.
“You son of a b—”
“Hey, after what I witnessed this morning, you should be thanking me.”
“You’re worse than my mother.”
“Thank you. I like your mom.”
“Go home, John,” Logan said. “Go home to Judy. Postpartum depression will be setting in soon. And I warned you about a certain surgical procedure I’d
try on you if I found out you set me up.”
“You don’t have the stomach for it, Logan. And Judy has enough company, believe me. Neither wild horses nor the threat of your rusty scalpel will tear me away from this house. Not yet,” he warned. “I’ve got an invitation, remember? From the lovely Miss Van Saun herself. It would be plain inhospitable of me to go driving away now. So you’d better fess up, Logan, ’cause I’m not leaving until I hear the whole story about you and the lovely lady.”
Logan thrust the steaming cup of coffee toward John and met his eyes levelly and hard. “That will take all of five minutes.”
“So you say.” John took a sip of the coffee. “I’ve got all afternoon to see for myself if that’s true.”
It looked, Logan thought, as if John had sent roots into the linoleum. Logan sighed and resigned himself to the inevitable. He and John had known each other since they were children, attended the same schools for fifteen years, played on the same football team, struggled in the same calculus classes. In just a way as this, John had dragged out of Logan the whole sordid tale of what had happened in Mexico—a story Logan had told to no one else.
So Logan leaned against the counter, gripping his coffee cup and trying to form his thoughts into words. He could hear the vague sound of the water running in the master bathroom. It hurt to think. What he wanted to do was toss the coffee into the sink, tear down the hallway, and join Ginny in that small shower. Run his hands over her wet flesh. Suck the nub of her nipple into his mouth. Make love to her against the tiles….
But there sat John, grinning, his feet planted firmly on the kitchen floor, taking his time with his cup of milky coffee.
Logan realized he didn’t have words for what he was feeling. They didn’t exist, not in any language he knew. His feelings for Ginny were deep and muddled and visceral. He wanted. It was as basic as that. He wanted more than her body, but he wasn’t ready to go down that path. He wasn’t even ready to think about it. Everything was too raw, too fresh and too tender to expose to the bright open air.
“By God,” John murmured as he watched Logan struggle. “I never thought it would happen.”
“What?”
“You, falling like a load of bricks.”
Logan’s first instinct was to deny it. To shake his head or laugh it off, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t, because he knew John might just be right. “It isn’t the right time, John.”
“What?”
“The timing,” Logan said, waving his coffee cup in vague circles. “It’s not right. I’m not ready for this. And neither is she.”
“Cupid doesn’t give a damn about timing.”
Logan nearly spit a mouthful of his coffee across the kitchen floor. “Cupid?”
“Don’t laugh.” John got up from the chair and tossed the dregs of his coffee in the sink. “I remember the first time I saw Judy. Got shot clean through the heart. Felt it, too.” He yanked open the refrigerator door and sidled a glance at Logan. “I felt exactly how you now look. Like the arrow was made of lead shot and weighed about fifty pounds.”
Again, Logan couldn’t muster a denial. Neither could he say the L word. But he was honest enough with himself to realize that something had seized him. Something fierce and needy and uninvited.
“The good professor was right, you do have burgers in here.” John took the meat out and started to unwrap it. “Got propane for that grill? I’m starved.”
Logan glanced at the clock over the sink. “John, it’s eleven-thirty in the morning.”
“Hey, you single studs might be able to sleep until noon,” John said, “but I was up feeding Lily at fivethirty this morning. It’s way past lunchtime for me. You and your ladylove will just have to have burgers for breakfast. Besides,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, “what a man needs after a night like yours is some red meat.”
“Point made,” Logan said, clanking his cup in the sink. “But I’m the one who’s making the burgers.”
“You burn them. No way to treat fine ground beef.”
“Shut up and get the Worcestershire sauce.”
8
GINNY SAT IN THE LAB, on the stool that had seen better days, twisting this way and that, the open pages of her notebook spread out under her elbows. Through the grime on the basement window she could see Dr. Springfield’s long knobby legs stretched out from a lawn chair. The muddled sound of his and Logan’s voices could be heard now and again, punctuated by a sharp bark of laughter. Whatever discomfort Logan had felt when John interrupted them this morning had obviously passed, for the two men had spent the last hour in easy conversation in the afternoon sun.
She frowned and glanced down at the page. She wanted to get this notebook in shape to show to John, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate. The numbers blurred into one another. The murmur of the men’s voices outside her window was mesmerizing, strangely drawing. Her attention kept drifting back to that window, and the occasional glimpse of Logan through it.
Logan.
She felt as if someone had poured warm honey over her heart. All soft and dreamy and languid. She shifted on her chair, exquisitely aware of the soreness between her thighs. If she allowed herself to think about it for more than a minute, she swore she could still feel the roughness of his tongue on her—
She straightened on the stool and inadvertently tore a page in the notebook. She wasn’t going to think about that, she told herself. Not now, anyway. She had to get a grip on herself. She had been working in this basement for a good hour. She did have to work, she told herself. She glanced around the lab at the unfinished experiments, the pile of test results yet to be interpreted. She could reasonably stay here for the whole afternoon and have a good excuse for it.
Come on, Ginny.
She squeezed her eyes shut and groaned. She didn’t like to think of herself as a coward. She knew she had no reason to be ashamed. After all, she and Logan were adults, and what they’d done last night was a reasonable thing for two consenting adults to do, given the circumstances and the red-hot passion between them. She’d destroyed that ice-queen image for sure now; she’d seen the shock on John’s face when she’d met him in the kitchen. Yes, she reminded herself. She’d screwed up her courage to face John then and now, by gum, she was going to screw it to the sticking point and join those two on the lawn. Act like it didn’t matter. Act as if she tumbled into bed with complete strangers on a regular basis.
Act as if last night’s coupling hadn’t changed something in her, something she couldn’t quite describe, something she was still uneasy exploring.
Still, she lingered on the stool, twisting, twisting, smoothing the tear in the page and trying to calculate in her head the approximate chemical composition of the last leaf extract. John would want to know. She’d have to talk to him about something when she went out there. She’d never been good at social occasions where people stood in tight groups trying to make each other laugh, chatting about this one’s baby and that one’s impending marriage and the illicit affair going on between a teacher and a graduate student. With only John and Logan out there, she’d be expected to keep up her end of the conversation. She couldn’t hide behind her glass of wine, checking the clock at intervals to see when she could in good conscience leave. And all three of them would have to ignore the morning’s incident, the six-hundred-pound gorilla sitting right in front of them that everyone pretended not to see.
But she did have to get up there, she told herself when she realized she’d spent the last few minutes doodling on the page. She flipped the pencil over and firmly erased the tiny hearts and stars that marred her serious text. She had to get up there, because if she didn’t, Logan would suspect she was hiding. And why would she hide unless she was embarrassed, or unless last night meant a lot more to her than it should? That is…whatever it meant. To her.
She dropped the pencil into the notebook and put the flats of her hands against her temples. She was going to lose her mind. She was surprised there wasn’t smoke coming o
ut of her ears for thinking in circles so much. She had to stop being a wimp, suck it up, just get out there and get it over with.
The next thing she knew she was standing on the deck, in the shade by the edge of the house, swinging the arm of her sunglasses from her fingers and staring at the men. Staring at Logan, standing over a smoky grill, his black hair thick and glossy, his neck strong and sturdy.
Remembering how she’d drawn his face down in the middle of their lovemaking, so their lips would meet, so she could taste his breath and his lips and his tongue—
Then Logan turned around and fixed her with an unerring gaze, as if she had winged the memory to him on a gilded arrow.
“There you are.” John waved a beer in her direction. “Logan’s just putting on a second batch of burgers. Better tell him if you like them anything but crisp, Gene, ’cause this cowboy has a heavy hand.”
“Rare,” she said, ducking her head to slip her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. “Just short of bleeding and kicking, preferably.”
John let out a laugh that bordered on a whoop. “I like this girl. She knows how to eat a burger.”
Ginny sauntered out into the sunshine, her eyes shaded behind the sunglasses, trying to be cool and casual. Her act was all in vain, for Logan looked fixedly down at the meat sizzling on the grill. “Keep this up,” Logan muttered, “and you are both going to die young.”
“Don’t you listen to him, Gene. He’s been living in too many foreign countries for too many years. It’s got him spooked.”
“Food poisoning,” Logan reiterated. “Number one killer of children under three in certain countries.”
“I’m over three,” he said, handing Ginny an open beer. “And I sure hope Ginny here is of legal age, otherwise you’re in more trouble than I thought, Logan.”
Ginny settled her lips over the cold glass and took a swig, as a hot blush washed over her face. The brew slipped cold and tasteless down her throat.
John continued, “Logan has to remember that we’re living in the U.S. of A. now, where the government has standards for beef—”
“—And suggestions about how it should be cooked,” Logan added.
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