“Forget I said anything,” Derek groaned. “You don’t like to take it easy on a man, do you?”
Claire gave him an arch smile. “I know how to deal with arrogant men. I’ve been putting up with Logan for years.” She turned and began to leave, but paused, looking over her shoulder. “Oh, and don’t forget to remind him I’ll pick him up tomorrow morning. Seven. I’ll wait exactly two minutes.”
It was almost midnight before Logan’s migraine finally dissipated. Ordinarily, they didn’t lay him low for quite so long. He’d take his pills, close his eyes and re-emerge two hours later. But tonight’s had been bad, quite possibly the worst he’d ever suffered.
Raking a hand through his already bedraggled hair, he made his way down to the kitchen. Derek, ever the night owl, looked up at him from one of the barstools at the kitchen island. In his hands was a tattered copy of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost. The irony was not wasted on Logan. A bottle of water sat on the island before Derek. He sent Logan a semi-grin.
“He lives.”
Logan scowled at his friend. “What the hell are you doing, sitting in my kitchen, reading an ancient play at this time of night?”
Derek shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. What the hell are you doing in your kitchen?”
Logan pulled open the fridge and peered inside, evaluating its meager contents. “I’m hungry. Is there anything in here not sprouting mold?”
“If there was, I ate it,” Derek told him with relish.
Logan grunted and retrieved a carton of orange juice that had expired four days ago. He sniffed it, deemed it safe, and went for a glass. As he poured, he looked over his shoulder at Derek. “What did you think of her?”
Derek feigned ignorance, the jackass. “Who?”
“Claire, damn it.” The sound of liquid swishing onto the countertop had Logan turning belatedly back to his orange juice. It was everywhere.
A snicker reached his ears.
“Looks like you spilled, Loge.”
Issuing a growl of annoyance, Logan fumbled for some paper towels and began sopping up the mess. A silence descended, interrupted only by intermittent, squishy plops of juice-laden paper towels.
“Well?” he finally demanded, looking back at Derek. “You never answered me.”
Derek offered another shrug. “She’s gorgeous.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. “And mine.” The proprietary words surprised him. Of course, they weren’t technically true, but she was going to have his baby. That had to count for something. So Derek and his golden boy, Hollywood looks could just forget about it.
“Settle down, Monroe,” Derek halted his admittedly jealous thought process. “I have eyes, that’s all I’m saying. But I’m not interested in her, you dipshit. Besides, anyone can see she’s got it bad for you.”
Really? The thought perked Logan up as he threw his soggy paper towels into the trash. Then again, he’d already known she was attracted to him. But she thought little enough of him otherwise to want to keep him out of their child’s life. That said a hell of a lot.
“She said she’d pick you up for work tomorrow at seven,” Derek continued. “You’ve got a two-minute window before she leaves without your ass.”
Logan walked back to the counter, picked up his full-to-the-brim glass of orange juice, and settled on the stool next to his friend. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with her,” he confessed, taking a hearty gulp of his drink. “She’s all wrong for me.”
“Or maybe all right for you,” Derek pointed out.
Secretly, Logan was beginning to think so too, which was all part of the problem. It had ceased to be about mere lust a long time ago. Maybe it had never been about lust and lust alone. He found himself wanting more and more to talk with her just to hear her voice, to see her, to be in her presence. He wanted to ask her advice, to have the freedom to kiss her gorgeous mouth whenever he damn well pleased. To wake up with her, go to sleep with her, rub her belly and feel their baby moving inside her. He wanted what couples had, that sort of warm intimacy that he’d never experienced in his life.
The list never ended.
“I don’t know,” he said at last, staring morosely at his half-empty glass. “She’s a business associate, and she’s at the tail end of a divorce, and she doesn’t seem to think highly of me at the moment.”
“She was worried about you tonight.” Derek laid his book down on the island, spine up to keep his page, and considered Logan gravely. “I was too. Migraines, Loge?”
“It’s nothing.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I get them mostly when things are hectic at work. They go away and I’m fine.”
Derek studied him for a moment, so closely Logan barely suppressed the urge to squirm. “I think you need to get away from your damn company. Go on an extended vacation. Take Claire with you. It’d be good for the both of you.”
Logan considered it. He had to admit, Derek’s suggestion sounded tempting. Very tempting. But he had duties and responsibilities, not to mention a shitload of work to do.
He shook his head. “I can’t. We’re in the middle of a huge ad campaign for Pierpont Hotels, we’re down to the wire on the sugar substitute ads, Scrubby Soap has us reworking our pitch, HRC Insurance just took us on board.”
“So delegate. Give everyone specific jobs, leave the next in line in charge, and go for a week. Just a week. You can swing that, Loge.”
He had Logan there, and the grin on Derek’s face said he knew it and enjoyed it thoroughly. Maybe the idea wasn’t so bad, supposing he could actually convince Claire to accompany him anywhere. The idea of having Claire alone and all to himself for a week sent a thrill coursing through his veins.
Still, he hesitated. Walking out for a week, leaving matters in the hands of his staff, would be a risky venture. He always scheduled his vacations around lulls in campaigns.
“I don’t know. Who will take care of Caesar?” Logan was stalling and he knew it.
As if on cue, Caesar strutted into the kitchen with a loud meow. He made a beeline for Derek, purring loudly along the way.
Derek chuckled and leaned down to scratch the cat’s head affectionately. “I will. He likes me better than you anyway. Can’t say I blame him.” He looked up at Logan. “Just stop being yourself for a change and do it. Christ, you don’t know how lucky you are to be in your position. You’re going to be a father, Loge. That has to come first. Even I know that, worthless fuck-up that I am.”
Logan drained his glass. “You’re right. Not the part about being a worthless fuck-up, but the rest of it.”
Derek looked startled at Logan’s capitulation. He’d obviously expected more rigorous objections before a concession. But Logan was beginning to realize success in business didn’t fill in the hollow void he’d felt all his life and continued to seek so desperately to fill. And neither did money, a mansion, or expensive cars, regardless of how fast they were or how badass they looked parked in his garage. Maybe it was time to reconsider his life.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Logan said suddenly, an idea striking him with full force. “I’ll go on a vacation for a week, try to slow things down a bit, if you promise to stay here for a month.”
Derek made a face at that. It had become the proverbial vicious cycle with him to fly in for rehab, stay with Logan for a week or two, and fly back out to LA and all his addictions. Logan had always been loath to interfere in his friend’s life, but Derek was more depressed now than he’d ever seen him. It scared the hell out of Logan to think his friend couldn’t continue to live like this without killing himself.
“No offense, Loge, but I wanted to get back before the end of the month for a part in a movie.”
“I think you need to stay the hell out of Dodge for a while.”
Derek turned that over in his mind before nodding. “All right. It’s a deal. You go on vacation with Claire for a week. I stay here for another month. But you’ll be tired of me, I’m warning you.”
“Won’t
happen,” Logan assured him.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Logan decided to wait until Claire stopped inside the parking garage before springing the question on her. She had unhooked her seatbelt and was reaching for the door when he caught her hand in his.
She looked over at him, clearly startled by his gesture. Rattled, he thought. He’d rattled her calm façade with just one touch. Her lips, a glossy pink this morning, parted, her eyes vivid blue. And just like that, Logan’s carefully practiced speech went straight to hell.
He leaned over and kissed her, as deeply and as hotly as he’d been wanting to ever since he’d gotten in her car that morning. He cupped her cheeks, caressing her delicately smooth skin. Her mouth opened to allow his tongue and he tasted the sweet vanilla flavor of her lip gloss. It was heady stuff. The feel of her, the taste of her, the scent of her, the tiny, breathy noise she made when he kissed her, all combined to make his senses reel. He was rock hard from one kiss, already envisioning taking her right here on level three of the parking garage where anyone could see.
Maybe he was going a little insane. Maybe it was just the effect Claire had on him. He pulled away, staring down into her sparkling eyes. “I have a vacation scheduled next week,” he told her, the words sounding abrupt even to his own ears.
A frown wrinkled her brow. “What?”
“I wasn’t sure if I could get away, but I think it would be good for me.” He paused, allowing his words to register in her mind. “I want you to come with me.”
Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. She was clearly taken aback. Logan had never seen Claire speechless before. The urge to chuckle rose within him at the charming look on her face. God, she really was adorable.
“What? Where?” She shook her head vigorously, as though trying to break a spell. “What am I saying? Of course I can’t go away with you next week. It’s my last week of working at LM and I have tons of loose ends to tie up before—”
“I was hoping you might want to rethink that,” he broke in. “You know I’d love to keep you on as creative director. Now that I know about the baby, there’s no reason for you to hide from me.”
That got her back up. Her eyes snapped at him and her face flushed. She looked exceptionally gorgeous when she was pissed, he decided, unable to tear his eyes from her.
“I wasn’t hiding.”
Logan wanted to argue with her on that, he really did, but he also recognized that doing so would put the kibosh on any hopes he entertained of convincing her to go on vacation with him. So he did something else, something infinitely better.
He kissed her again.
God, she tasted so good, so sweet, Logan didn’t want it to end. From the way Claire clung to him when he finally came up for air, neither did she. She looked dazed, her lips swollen. All argument between them was forgotten. For the moment, anyway.
“One week. That’s all I’m asking for.” Logan brushed his lips softly, tantalizingly over hers, ignoring the tremor in his voice. Fear of rejection had dogged him all his life, a vicious byproduct of life as an unwanted foster kid. But this terrible, gut-wrenching anxiety he suddenly felt went beyond that. What if she said no, if she still thought he’d prove to be the shittiest father alive? Or if she felt nothing for him beyond lust?
“Logan.” She paused, nibbling at her lower lip and nearly pulling a groan from him. “What about my letter of resignation?”
He felt a triumphant smile curving his lips at her question. “Irreparably mangled,” he told her, exceedingly proud of himself. “By my paper shredder.”
Her mouth dropped open in shock. “You didn’t.”
He grinned even wider. “I did.”
“When?”
“Right after I finished reading it for the third damn time.”
“Hmm. I should have known.”
Logan didn’t quite like the tone she was using. Apparently, Claire wasn’t as impressed by his clever handling of the situation as he was.
“So you see the beauty of it?” he tried.
She frowned at him. “I see you’re very good at getting what you want. But I can’t just run off with you for a week. I don’t even know where you’re going, for starters.”
“Yes or no?” He grew impatient with her delaying tactics.
Maybe he’d been lying to himself all along, thinking Claire would want to have a relationship with him. Hell, the only reason she’d agreed to go to dinner last night was probably to tell him as much. Either that or she was desperate to get him in bed again, which seemed highly unlikely. To Claire, he was just a cold, unfeeling man who didn’t know how to care about anyone or anything but himself.
“Logan.” She reached out and covered his hand with hers. “It has to be no right now.”
“Right.” He withdrew his hand from hers, feeling nauseated, the subtle pounding of a potential migraine taking up residence in his skull. The smile he plastered to his face was so tight he felt like a caricature of his normal self. “What was I thinking? I’m good for a screw but not for much of anything else, isn’t that right, Claire?”
Sadistic of him maybe, but he enjoyed the way she blanched at his words. Good. He wanted to hurt her, to make her feel as small as he did. It had been a good number of years since anyone had made him feel like the unwanted, no-good foster kid he’d once been. Claire managed to bring him to his knees every time.
“Don’t,” she said quietly.
“Don’t tell the truth?” he countered, laughing, the sound bitter and harsh even to his own ears. “Come on. We might as well be honest. We are having a child together, despite your attempt to hide that fact from me. You don’t want to give me a chance because you don’t think I’m worthy of you. If I weren’t a better lay than your husband, you probably never would have left him.”
If possible, Claire’s face paled even more. “I don’t have to listen to this.” She bolted from the car.
Logan followed, slowing his long strides to match her short ones. He wasn’t finished with her yet.
She shot him an icy, sidelong glance. “Stop following me.”
“We have the same destination, in case you’ve forgotten.” His tone was snide. He couldn’t help it.
“So walk behind me,” she shot back at him. “We shouldn’t be seen walking in together.”
Salt in his wounds. He grabbed her arm, stopping her. “I’ll walk with you any time I damn well please. I don’t give a shit about what anyone else says or thinks. That’s my baby you’re carrying. You shouldn’t walk by yourself anyway. From now on, I’ll walk with you to and from work. This is a dangerous city.”
She looked at him as though he’d just lowered himself to a new kind of scum. The scum scraped off scum, maybe. “No.”
Just one word, but it inflamed his temper. “You can’t tell me no. I have every right.”
“No, you don’t.” Her gaze darted off to his left. “Here comes one of the girls from Accounting. We’ll discuss this later.”
Logan was, by this point, one hundred percent, totally pissed off, and at the moment, he didn’t give a shit if all of Accounting was standing behind him, hanging on to every word and taking goddamn notes. “It’s half my baby, and it’s half my choice.”
She pulled free of him and turned, walking again. “You can’t control everything,” she told him over her shoulder.
Logan followed, her words making an idea take sudden root in his mind. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, punching in the familiar number of his lawyer.
“We’ll see about that,” he muttered under his breath.
He was Logan Monroe, damn it, and he always got what he wanted. Always.
By lunchtime, Claire had replayed her conversation with Logan at least thirteen times. It was all she could do to concentrate on work, and there was a seemingly endless supply of that. She’d never be finished by the end of next week, and she shuddered to think of the hapless soul who would have to take on her workload,
mid-projects. Then again, after Logan’s smug revelation that morning, a replacement didn’t seem likely.
Claire blew out a sigh, saving the proposal she’d been editing on her laptop and closing out the program. Logan was right, her decision to leave LM was solely based on her pregnancy, and, if she were to be brutally honest, she’d admit that she had been hiding from him.
But with good reason. The man was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, sensual and soft one moment and hard, angry, crude the next. She never knew what to expect from him, and she hated that. She hated the unpredictable.
But what she hated, absolutely hated most of all, was that she was beginning to care for him far more than she should. No one knew better than Claire just how self-destructive it would be to fall in love with him. Falling in love with a man who couldn’t reciprocate would be incredibly foolish. After the disastrous end to her marriage, she couldn’t willingly jump into another, potentially similar situation once more. Especially with the inclusion of a baby into the equation.
So Claire had checked the impulse to accompany Logan on a week-long getaway and told him exactly what she had to tell him, no. There was really no other option, both for her sake and for the baby’s.
Another sigh left her as she closed down her laptop and stood, stretching. Too much work and not enough time had her practically chained to her desk all morning. She needed to go for a walk, maybe grab a quick bite to eat down at the Blue Room. Claire grabbed her purse from beneath her desk and left her office. Jamie wasn’t at her desk, apparently already having gone for lunch, so Claire headed to the elevator bank at the far end of the floor.
She pushed the down arrow, waiting for the next available elevator to arrive. Suddenly, Amy, the co-partner of Claire’s best Creative Team, hurried to her side, the three-inch heels she wore thumping audibly on the carpeted floor.
“Claire.” Amy was slightly out of breath and she looked altogether rumpled, her brown hair disheveled, the tan pantsuit she wore wrinkled. “I’m so glad I found you.”
Perfect Persuasion (Love's Second Chance Book 2) Page 9
