Blame It on the Cowboy

by Delores Fossen

  Reese pushed aside the twinge she felt in her stomach and went to the back door of the McCord building. Unlike her other visit, this time it was unlocked, and Greg was still working at his desk.

  “Logan’s expecting you,” Greg greeted. He stood, went closer to her and leaned in as if to tell her a secret. “Explain to Logan that the brown sofa doesn’t work. It’s the only one the store had in stock, but it’s butt ugly.”

  Reese doubted she’d be staying long enough for a conversation about sofas, butt ugly ones or otherwise, but she assured Greg she would do just that if it came up. She made her way up the stairs, and like during her other visit, his loft doors were wide open. Unlike her other visit, though, she smelled chicken, onion and rosemary.

  The first thing she saw was the sofa. Yes, it was ugly. The sort of piece that would probably be okay in a family room but not on gleaming hardwood floors against the backdrop of all those windows. It looked out of place.

  As did Logan.

  He was in the kitchen area of the loft, amid all those high-end appliances, and he was dishing up something from a skillet.

  “Della fixed it,” he said. “It’ll actually be edible.”

  That’s when Reese saw that he had two plates sitting on the new table. She watched, uncertain of what she should do, but then he motioned for her to sit. Apparently, he was sharing his dinner with her. And his wine. Logan opened a bottle that he took from the counter and poured two glasses.

  She’d been right about those smells. It was chicken with rosemary and onions, and Della had done a baby potato dish and some steamed veggies.

  “The place looks better,” she said, and because Reese thought they could use some levity, she added, “I do miss the broken porcelain boob, though. It was a great conversation piece.”

  “I can have the work crew fish it out of the Dumpster for you.”

  Good, he was going for levity, too. She hoped. She really didn’t want that boob.

  “I’m supposed to talk you out of keeping the sofa,” Reese said, still aiming for light.

  “Greg.” He looked over at the sofa. “It’s simple, and simple works for me right now.”

  Reese wasn’t sure if they were talking about furniture or life. Or even her. Yes, his life would be simpler when she was gone. Hers, too, she supposed. But she wanted the watch first.

  He sat across from her at the bistro-sized table, eating and drinking as if this were a dinner date or something. Reese was instantly suspicious. But she was also hungry. So, she ate. It wasn’t just edible, it was delicious.

  “Tell me about Spenser O’Malley,” Logan said.

  Just like that, the food wasn’t so delicious anymore. Her stomach tightened into a cold, hard knot.

  “Who told you?” But she immediately waved off her question. “Chucky did.” Ironic, though, since the man knew almost nothing about it.

  Logan didn’t press her for anything more, and Reese considered just clamming up, but he’d probably already gotten every last detail from another background check.

  “What do you want to know about him?” she asked.

  “What do you want to tell me?” he countered.

  This was easy. “Nothing. I don’t want to talk about him at all, but it’s my guess that Chucky told you I was violent and then he dropped Spenser’s name.”

  “Pretty much,” Logan admitted. “All the details, though, are sealed in your juvie record.”

  And apparently Logan’s dirt-diggers hadn’t been able to get into the sealed record. Which meant she could tell Logan anything. It surprised her that she wanted him to know the truth. Well, what part of the truth she could say aloud, anyway.

  “I was sixteen when I met Spenser. He was nineteen. Things were fine between us in the beginning, and then they weren’t.”

  “He was from a good family,” Logan tossed out there. He didn’t add “like mine” but Reese heard the unspoken words loud and clear.

  “He was, but Spenser had anger-management issues. And clout. A bad combination.”

  A muscle flickered in Logan’s jaw. “He hit you?”

  Again, there were things unspoken here. Logan had noticed how shaken up she’d been when Chucky had pushed her so maybe he’d put two and two together.

  In this case, though, it didn’t exactly equal four.

  “He did,” she admitted. “And that’s all I want to say about him.”

  Reese expected Logan to press for more. He didn’t. Maybe because it didn’t matter. After all, she would soon be out of his life.

  She made the mistake of looking at him, and Reese saw something she didn’t want to see.

  Sympathy.

  Crud on a cracker. Not this. Not from Logan. She needed to get this conversation far away from Spenser, Chucky or anything else in her past.

  “Before I forget,” she said, and she took out the piece of paper from her jeans pocket. “That’s the recipe for the lemon thingies.” Reese slid it across the table just as he reached for it, and his fingers brushed across hers.

  Good. This was a distraction she actually welcomed.

  It felt intimate. Strange. Because this was a man she’d had sex with so a simple touch should have been just that: a simple touch. Of course, maybe nothing was simple when it came to Logan.

  “I talked to Della about getting someone else to do Mia’s party,” Reese explained. Best to keep the conversation moving. “She was a little disappointed but said it wasn’t a problem.”

  Reese hadn’t wanted to tell Della that she’d been disappointed, too. She wasn’t a kids’ party expert, but she had been looking forward to doing the cake and food for the little girl.

  “Did you really bring Chucky to your office?” she came out and asked.

  He nodded. “I don’t think he’ll be bothering you again, but I could be wrong. You should be careful just in case.”

  “Uh, what did you say to him?”

  “We just talked.” He topped off their wine, and when he set down the bottle, he took out the watch from his pocket. As she’d done with the recipe, he slid it toward her.

  No finger graze this time, but the emotions hit her pretty hard when she closed her fingers around it. For such a small piece of gold, it always packed an emotional wallop.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say, though now there was a lump in her throat.

  “The watch is important to you.” Not a question, but it was still an understatement.

  “Very. It doesn’t work. Hasn’t since, well, in a long time. But it’s still the only thing I actually treasure.”

  She’d always said she would get it fixed but had never gotten around to it. It didn’t have to tell time for her to feel the connection to the man who’d given it to her.

  “You loved your grandfather?” he asked.

  It took her a moment to trust her voice. More wine helped. “Yes. He was the only sane thing in my life when I was growing up. He died when I was twelve. After that, no more sanity until I was able to escape at sixteen.”

  “You ran away from home?”

  She hoped this didn’t take them back to the subject of Spenser. “More like my parents ran away from me. I called the cops on them when they took some things from one of our elderly neighbors. They were arrested, and when they made bail, they didn’t come back to the apartment. I figured if I stayed, I’d end up in foster care so I took off.”

  This probably sounded like a nightmare to someone who’d been raised on that massive McCord Ranch. Then again, Logan had had his own version of a nightmare. “You were…what…nineteen when your parents died?” she said. “So, you weren’t much older than I was when you were on your own.”

  Reese instantly regretted bringing that up. Logan dodged her gaze, and he took a moment before he shook his head. “I wasn’t on m
y own. I had Della and Stella. My brothers and sister. The whole town rallied around us. Plus, I had finished high school and was in my first year of college.”

  Still, a town, housekeepers and siblings couldn’t replace loving parents, and from everything she’d heard, his parents had been exactly that—loving. However, there seemed to be something missing, something he wasn’t saying that made her believe their deaths were still a wound that hadn’t fully healed.

  They finished their meal and gathered up the dishes to take to the sink. “Did my friend Jason say anything to you today?” he asked.

  The question was so out of the blue that it threw her for a moment. Good grief. Who had tattled? “He came into the café at the end of the lunch shift and asked me out. I didn’t think anyone heard him.”

  “Word gets around.”

  That was it. No opinion on how he felt about that. Which meant Logan probably didn’t have an opinion. Still, this whole eating-chicken deal seemed as if he did indeed have something to say to her. If he’d just wanted her out of his life, he could have had Greg bring over the watch, and it would have saved him from washing an extra plate and wineglass.

  “In case you’re wondering, I told Jason no, that I was leaving town,” Reese explained.

  “And if you weren’t leaving?”

  Logan didn’t seem like the type to pose what-if questions. “What’s this all about?” she came out and asked.

  He took his time. “Jason doesn’t know what happened between us.”

  Oh, she got it then. “You’re worried I’ll say something to him. I won’t. What happens in San Antonio…” Reese stopped. “Or maybe you’re just concerned that I’m not the right kind of woman for him.”

  “You’re not.”

  Reese pulled back her shoulders, was ready to say a quick goodbye, but then Logan added, “Jason moves pretty fast from one woman to another without thinking things through. He tends to hurt women without even realizing it.”

  She pulled back her shoulders even more but this time for a different reason. “Are you actually looking out for me?”

  He stared at her and leaned against the sink. “I can’t get involved with you.”

  A burst of air left her mouth. It sounded like a laugh, but it definitely wasn’t humor driven. “Believe me, I understand.”

  “No, you don’t. You think it’s because of what people will say. And that was part of it in the beginning. It’s because I’m not ready to get involved with anyone.”

  “Believe me, I understand,” she repeated, this time without the humorless burst of air. “It’s only been a couple of months, and you were with Helene for a long time. Plus, there’s the whole thing about us not being compatible.”

  The moment the last word left her mouth, she got a flash of them in bed together. Naked. With Logan’s toned and perfect body stretched out over hers. The brief image was more than enough for her to remember everything. To feel everything. And the heat slid through her, settling in her female nether regions.

  “Opposites,” she amended. Because they had been compatible in bed.

  He nodded. Gave her a long, lingering look that singed her toenail polish along with frying some brain cells. The man should come with a warning label attached to his zipper.

  She headed to the door, and Logan followed her. Reese turned back around to tell him good, but Logan spoke before she could say anything.

  “I want you to stay,” he said.

  Because she was still dealing with the singeing and frying, it took her a moment to hear him.

  “In town?” she clarified. Because her mind was already starting to weave a nice little fantasy where they got naked and landed in bed.

  “In town,” he verified. Though she thought he might be dealing with his own singeing feelings. Feelings he definitely didn’t want to have even though it was just old-fashioned lust.

  “You’re okay with that?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  Boy, talk about a conflict in body language so she repeated it. “You’re okay with that?”

  “Della said I was being an ass,” he explained. “She guessed the reason you were leaving had something to do with me. I don’t know how. I swear the woman has ESP. So, I told her that I would let you know it was okay for you to stay.”

  Reese gave that some thought. “If I stay, we’ll end up in bed again.”

  “Yes.” No hesitation. Not a drop. And neither was the kiss he gave her.

  He didn’t linger with the kiss as he had done the look. Just a quick brush on her mouth to let her know that if she stayed, she could have a whole lot more of Logan.

  But not without risks.

  She figured those risks were too big to take. Not just for Logan but for herself.

  “Goodbye,” she told him.

  Reese walked away and didn’t look back. The best thing she could do for Logan and for herself was be on that 6:00 a.m. bus out of town.

  CHAPTER NINE

  EVEN THOUGH LOGAN knew it was a dream, he couldn’t force himself to wake up. Images of the accident that felt so real he could practically feel the cold rain on his skin, could smell the stench of the gasoline spewing from the cars.

  Logan didn’t remember getting out of his truck. Not then, not now in the dream. He was just there, his feet on the asphalt, running in the rain to get to them in time.

  The steam from the radiator had fogged up the windshield and windows, but even through the cloudy glass, he saw Claire. His folks had given her a ride home from a ball game, and she was in the backseat. She appeared to be dazed. Even though she’d been seventeen at the time, she looked much younger in her band uniform.

  And helpless.

  It seemed to take an eternity to get to the car, and Logan threw open Claire’s door first. She tumbled out into his arms, no longer conscious. That’s when Logan looked in the front seat.

  That’s when he knew he’d fucked up.

  He hadn’t called for help yet. And that skid had cost him seconds. Seconds he didn’t have.

  His parents weren’t moving, though his mother was making some kind of gurgling sound in her throat. And the blood. God, there was so much blood.

  Logan took out his phone. His hands were shaking—costing him even more seconds. And in each of those seconds, his mother was still making those sounds.

  No sounds from his father, though.

  Logan pressed in 911, and like that night he didn’t know who answered or what he said. The only thing he remembered was the emergency operator told him that help was on the way.

  Claire moaned, a reminder that she was still alive, and for her to stay that way he needed to get her off the road. Away from that spewing engine, too. There was enough spilled gasoline to start a fire.

  “What happened?” Claire mumbled.

  He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Logan just put her on the gravel shoulder and threw open the front passenger door. His mother’s eyes fluttered, threatening to close, but she managed to turn her head and look at him.

  Had she said something?

  She didn’t in the dream. Perhaps she didn’t that night, either, but there were times when Logan let himself believe that she had spoken. That she had said the words that he wished she’d said.

  It’s all right. I forgive you for not saving us.

  * * *

  THERE WERE PLENTY of days that Logan loved his job. This wasn’t one of them. He always felt a little like a circus monkey whenever he had to pose for a photo shoot for a magazine. No way could he do this for a living, but a magazine article was always good promo for the business. Considering the crap rumors that were still floating around about Helene and him, Logan figured the family and business could use all the good publicity they could get.

  Plus, as bad as
this was, it was also a distraction. Something he’d found himself wanting today. And no, it didn’t have anything to do with Reese. Or that shit-brown sofa in his loft. Or the paperwork that’d been screwed up on a recent sale. Or the nightmare still rifling through his head.

  Okay, maybe it did have a little to do with Reese.

  But that was just the tip of this iceberg of a bad mood.

  Perhaps Lucky was right. He did need to start dating again, especially since even a seventy-hour workweek wasn’t enough to keep his mind off things it shouldn’t be on.

  Like Spenser O’Malley.

  Even though Logan wanted to know what had gone on between Reese and the man, he hadn’t asked the private investigator to dig any deeper. Heck, Logan hadn’t even done an internet check on the guy’s name. It hadn’t been easy to hold himself back. Logan preferred to know anything and everything about people who came into his life, but it’d been obvious that the topic was off-limits for Reese.

  And for once, he had respected that.

  Still, that didn’t mean he could stop himself from speculating. The guy had obviously hit her, maybe even done something worse to her. But then Reese must have done something to him, too, to get that juvie record. It was probably a good thing she wasn’t around to tell him because Logan wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about it.

  “Uh, you probably need to soften your expression a little,” the photographer told him. “We’ve already got enough resting-bitch-face shots.”

  Logan didn’t ease up on his scowl. In fact, he made it even worse so he could let the photographer know he wasn’t pleased with that remark. Men didn’t have bitch faces. Asshole faces, maybe.

  “Why don’t you just get your brother to do these photo shoots?” the photographer asked, clicking off some more pictures. “I photographed him at a rodeo last week, and he seemed to like it.”

  It wasn’t the photo session but rather the bull riding that had probably made it enjoyable for Lucky. But the guy had a point. There were some benefits to having an identical twin, and this could be one of them. But he was still walking a fine line when it came to his brothers finally working in the family business. Logan had run the company for a long time, and it was hard for him to give up control. Hard, too, for his brothers to accept him as their boss.