by LENA DIAZ,
He was immaculately dressed, as usual, in perfectly pleated navy blue pants, shiny black shoes, a light blue dress-shirt tucked into his waistband and the ever present gun holstered beneath his left arm.
But he’d rolled up his sleeves and instead of the suit jacket he normally wore he had a white towel hanging from his waist from hip to hip, apparently his homemade version of an apron to keep the grease from splattering his clothes.
Returning her smile, he used a pair of tongs to lift out several slices of burned bacon and laid them on a plate. Not a napkin or paper towel in sight to absorb all that grease. Honestly, she didn’t know how men survived their own cooking.
“I hope you like bacon and eggs,” he said as he turned off the stove and set the pan on a cool area of the glass top stove. “I have biscuits, too.”
“Sounds wonderful,” she lied, as she suppressed a shudder at the thought of all that fat. A bagel was her usual fare, but he looked so awkward she’d bet he almost never cooked. He certainly hadn’t cooked since she’d started living here, but she’d assumed that was because he usually got home so late. The fact that he’d cooked for her this morning made her determined to eat whatever he’d made and to pretend she loved it, regardless of how fatty or burned it was.
“Breakfast is the only meal I know how to cook,” he continued, confirming her earlier thought. “Well, besides cook-out.”
“Cook-out?” She smiled.
“Hamburgers, steak, ribs.”
“Ah. Man-food.”
He gave her a grin and placed a platter of eggs, bacon, and biscuits on the table. “I have coffee, but you prefer soda, right?”
Since he was already grabbing a soda from the refrigerator, she didn’t bother to answer. She nodded her thanks when he set it and his cup of coffee on the table.
“So, why aren’t you in the office?” she asked, hoping he hadn’t heard the nervous catch in her voice.
He stepped behind her, startling her until she realized he’d pulled out her chair so she could sit. His mama had taught him well. This wasn’t the first time she was the recipient of his ingrained southern manners.
Nodding her thanks, she sat and scooped some scrambled eggs onto her plate. Apparently Logan only knew how to cook breakfast one way, well done. The eggs were as dry as they could be without being brown.
Rather than sit in the chair across from her, he chose the one next to her. “I asked Karen to come over a couple of hours late today. I’ll go into work after she gets here.”
He hadn’t really answered her about why he wasn’t in the office, but she decided not to push him. She probably didn’t want to know his real reason for being home. She didn’t want to rehash last night’s events, and she fervently hoped he hadn’t stayed home to grill her with a few more questions about her abduction.
They sat and ate in companionable silence. Neither of them seemed anxious to fill the void with conversation, which was fine with her.
After forcing down the minimum amount of food she thought was necessary to make him feel like she appreciated his efforts, she set her fork on her plate and took a sip of her soda.
Logan put his fork down right after she did, as if he’d been waiting for her to finish. She glanced at his plate and only then realized he hadn’t eaten much more than her. Apparently he didn’t have an appetite this morning either.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay before I left for work,” he said. “I know last night was . . . difficult.”
Why couldn’t he let it drop? She took another sip of her drink.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Sighing, she set the can down. “I don’t know how I feel. You’ve kind of knocked me off balance.”
“What do you mean?”
She waved a hand at the food on the table. “Breakfast. You, here, being nice to me.”
He sat back with a lopsided smile. “I’m not supposed to be nice to you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I think I do.” His face lost all signs of amusement. “You think because you survived some lunatic’s twisted sadistic game and your friend didn’t, that you’re somehow to blame. That’s bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
He pitched his napkin on the table and stood. “Let’s go for a walk. There’s something I want to show you.”
He stepped behind her chair to pull it out, not giving her a chance to argue.
They went out through the French doors, across the back deck, and stepped into another world. The grass was spongy and soft beneath Amanda’s sandals. The air as they neared the edge of the lawn was surprisingly comfortable in the shade of the towering pines and moss covered live oaks.
“It’s the creek,” Logan said, noticing her surprise. “It runs along the back of the property, cools the air. Beyond that is deep-water access to the Gulf, which sends even more breezes this way.” He reached out his hand. “Come on.”
She placed her hand in his and was rewarded with an affectionate squeeze of his fingers.
He pulled her behind him down a twisting path through the pines, a path she hadn’t noticed from the house.
“Are you sure you have time for this?” she asked, wondering how far they were going.
“I’m the boss. I’ll write myself a note,” he teased. “We’re almost there.”
The path ended abruptly at the edge of the creek Logan had mentioned. Amanda was walking so fast to try to keep up with his long strides that she couldn’t stop. She would have fallen into the creek if he hadn’t grabbed her.
Once he’d steadied her, instead of letting her go, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest.
She stiffened at first, then she relaxed against him, and his arms tightened around her. Delicious heat spiked through her as she breathed in his familiar scent, the same scent that clung to the comforter on her bed. It felt so right standing there with his arms around her.
“This is my private sanctuary,” he said, his voice pitched low as if they were in church. “It’s where I go when I need to think, or get away.”
The creek was no more than twenty feet wide but it had a strong current as evidenced by the little eddies and swiftly moving pine needles that blanketed its surface. It was dark, with the towering pines and oaks sheltering the glade, but that’s why it felt so cool and comfortable even in the midst of the hot Florida summer. Jasmine scented the air and a cooling breeze blew across the water.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, her voice as low and respectful as his was.
He took her hand and pulled her to the quaint wooden bench that sat in the middle of the clearing with a perfect view of the creek. He sat down and patted the bench beside him.
“Sit,” he ordered. When she hesitated, he added, “Please?” and gave her hand a gentle tug.
Shaking her head at his irresistible charm, she sat, her thigh pressed tightly against his in the narrow space. “How many women have you taken here to your cozy little retreat?”
“Just one. You.” He turned his intense gaze upon her.
Her breath caught at his whispered words. Unable to bear his scrutiny, she looked at the water, concentrating on the beauty of its motion as it rushed over the little rocks and branches that drooped down.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked, barely able to get the words out past the tight constriction in her throat.
He sighed, the sound loud in the silence of the forest. “I should never have asked you to tell me about your abduction. I put you through torture. Gave you nightmares.”
“Nightmares?”
He glanced at her as if searching for something in her expression. “I heard you cry out.”
“Oh. Well, I do that sometimes, have nightmares. It drove my sister crazy.” After several minutes of silence, she said, “I’m not upset at you for last night. If you brought me here to apologize—”
“That’s not why I brought you here.”
“Then why did you?�
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He raked his hand through his hair. “You bared your secrets to me last night, secrets that were difficult for you to talk about. I don’t take that lightly and I want to return the favor.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask me anything you want, anything at all. I’ll answer as honestly as I can.”
She stared at him, surprised again at his generosity, how he put her needs above his at every turn. At first she thought she’d turn down his offer, let him off the hook, but there was one thing she wanted to know more about.
“What was the rookie mistake you said you made, the one that made you leave Shadow Falls and go to New York?”
His glance shot to hers. “Ouch. How did you know where to strike?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just that you told me at my house, about making mistakes, and regrets . . . so I was curious. Forget it, I shouldn’t have—”
“Hey.” He gently lifted her chin to look up at him. “A deal’s a deal.” He dropped his hand and sighed, looking out over the creek. He told her about a murder, a traffic stop, a split-second decision gone wrong.
“I screwed up,” he continued. “I made a bad decision that has haunted me ever since. And I knew the only way for me to move past it was to get better training, better experience than I was getting here. So I moved to New York City, took a job in the most violent precinct, traded my vacations for FBI courses at Quantico, did everything I could to make myself a better cop.”
“That sounds admirable.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s what I had to do. It was the least I could do. My mistake, no matter how small it might sound, had tragic consequences. A killer went free.” He clenched his fists against his thighs. “It’s something I have to live with, knowing if I’d taken two more minutes, followed my instincts, followed standard procedure, I could have stopped him. Who knows if he’s killed again, or hurt anyone else?”
“Thank you for telling me.” Amanda reached out her hand to hold his.
He looked at their entwined fingers resting on his thigh before turning the full wattage of his gaze on her. The pain was there, etched in lines around his mouth, but there was also a raw hunger in him that made her gasp in recognition as the same hunger burned through her. She looked at his mouth, leaned slightly forward.
His body tensed and he reached for her, but in spite of the heat in his eyes and the tension in his body, he was ever so gentle as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him. He lowered his lips toward hers, slowly, as if to give her time to change her mind. She waited for the panic to come, but all she felt was the same raw hunger, the same answering need. She reached her arms up and wrapped them around his neck, pulling his lips down to hers.
He groaned deep in his throat. When she moaned beneath the gentle pressure of his lips and parted hers in invitation, his restraint vanished and he swept his tongue inside to mate with hers.
Without breaking their kiss, he twisted, pulling her onto his lap. She straddled him between her thighs, her stomach clenching as she felt the hardness of his erection beneath her. She couldn’t stop herself from arching against him.
He jerked beneath her and thrust his hips in response. His hand slid along her thigh, up beneath the edge of her khaki shorts, squeezing her bottom. His other hand snaked up between them, beneath the hem of her tank top to the lacy edge of her bra. He cupped the fullness of her breast and she cried out when his thumb brushed across her.
His mouth broke free from hers and he slid his lips along the bottom of her jaw, tracing a heated path down the side of her neck. When he reached the upper curves of her breasts where they swelled above her top, he kissed his way to the valley between them and delved his tongue inside.
Amanda shivered beneath his fiery caresses and ground her hips against him. She ran her fingers across the planes of his chest, unable to get enough of him, desperate to feel his skin against hers. Frantically working the buttons of his shirt, she gasped when his hot mouth closed around her, not realizing until then that he’d worked her top and bra down, completely exposing both of her breasts.
“You’re exquisite,” he breathed against her.
By now she had his shirt unbuttoned and she moaned in delight when she smoothed her hands across the wiry hair of his chest and followed the dark line to where it disappeared beneath his waistband. The muscles of his stomach rippled and jumped as she raked them with her nails.
She was burning up and wanted nothing more than to rip his clothes from his body and drive him as crazy as he was driving her. He jerked beneath her when she ran her hands on the outside of his pants, down the impressive length of him, and then back up, her nails raking against his hard ridge as she struggled to undo his belt.
He reclaimed her mouth and slid his hands around her back, diving them deep into her hair, playing with the silky strands as his tongue tangled with hers.
Suddenly she was in the cabin again, and she heard the humming as the hooded man ran his fingers through her hair.
She whimpered and shoved him but she couldn’t break his hold.
In desperation, she raked her nails across his chest and screamed.
“Amanda!”
Her eyes flew open and she was staring into Logan’s eyes. He held her arms in a vice-like grip, lightly shaking her. “Honey? Are you with me now? Say something.”
“Y . . . yes, I’m here,” she whispered, her throat oddly raw and aching. Her gaze traveled down his chest and she saw the red angry scratches across it, oozing blood.
“Oh, my God, Logan. Did I do that? I think I’m going to be sick.”
Logan turned her to the side as she threw up her breakfast.
“It’s okay, honey. Everything is okay. Do you know where you are?” His voice was low and soothing.
Amanda shuddered and crawled off his lap, pushing away from him so she could stand up. “I know where I am,” she whispered, unable to meet his gaze.
While she straightened her clothing, he stood and repaired his as well. When he reached out to take her hand she shoved it away. Taking a steadying breath, she met his searching gaze. “I did that to you, hurt you.” She pointed to the red dots of blood that were soaking through his shirt.
“I’ve survived far worse. It’s nothing.”
“Stop being so damned understanding. Don’t you see? He screwed up my head. There’s something wrong with me. I’d given up on having a normal relationship again, and then, then I met you, and then . . .”
“Then what?”
“There’s no use, can’t you see? I actually hurt you. And I didn’t know I was doing it.”
“Let me help. I’m a great listener—”
“No,” she sobbed, shaking her head back and forth. She whirled around, her long hair rippling out behind her as she ran into the forest.
Logan jogged behind Amanda. He knew she needed some time alone but he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight until she was safely back in the house and Karen arrived. She wasn’t due to be here for another hour but he’d call and see if she could come over now. No point in waiting.
He couldn’t shake the image of Amanda’s pale face, eyes wild and unfocused as she clawed at him and screamed with such heart-wrenching terror.
When he woke up this morning in bed beside her, he was struck by how right it had felt. Now he wasn’t so certain. Not because his feelings had changed. They hadn’t. But he’d misjudged her, underestimated how scarred she was inside.
He’d brought her to his sanctuary by the creek, determined to share it with her, bring some peace to her after the difficult night she’d had. The kiss had been a terrible mistake. When she’d looked up at him so trustingly, he’d gotten lost in her eyes. Then when she’d looked at his mouth and leaned forward he’d lost all control, and scared her to death.
All along he’d struggled with his attraction to her, worried it would interfere with his job, worried that he might not be any better for Amanda than he had been for
his ex-wife. That worry was justified. He wasn’t any good for Amanda. He needed to back off, keep it all on a professional level.
But now that he’d had a taste of heaven, how was he going to give her up?
Chapter Twelve
Amanda knew she was a coward, running away from Logan like that, but as she stood at the window in his bedroom and watched him drive away, she knew she’d had no other choice.
And running from the woods wasn’t the only running she was going to do.
She was going home.
For a few minutes, anyway, to get some more clothes and her passport. Then she was leaving—not just Shadow Falls. She was leaving the country. There was nothing else for her to add to the investigation, no reason to stay.
The memory of Logan’s sweet, sexy smile shot a stab of pain through her so intense it almost brought her to her knees. How had he wiggled his way into her heart so quickly? She shook the image away and finished stuffing her last few belongings into the suitcase on the bed.
Leaving made perfect sense. It was the right thing to do. She couldn’t bear to face Logan again, knowing she wasn’t coming back.
Getting away from the house would be easy. She’d eavesdropped earlier when Karen arrived and she’d heard Logan tell Karen she was upstairs and wanted to be alone. Karen wouldn’t expect her downstairs anytime soon.
And since Logan had stored her car next to his garage, all she had to do was wait until Karen did one of her patrols around the property and drive away.
With luck, she’d get what she needed from her house and be on her way to the airport before Logan realized she’d left. By the time he figured everything out, she’d be on an airplane and there’d be nothing he could do to stop her.
Would he care? She doubted it, not after the way she’d acted this morning. He’d probably be glad to be rid of her and all her emotional baggage, but he was a man of honor. His misguided sense of duty might force him to try to stop her from leaving, which was why she was going to sneak out now.
After shutting her suitcase, she looked around the room, memorizing it, taking a picture to hold in her heart when she looked back on what might have been.
