Playing Love's Odds (A Classic Sexy Romantic Suspense)

by Alison Kent

  As always the water summoned, calling to him with a promise of peace. For Logan, peace was a fallacy and would be as long as the demon lived. Until then, until he faced the monster in his mind, he'd settle for a level of fatigue that would allow him to sleep. And he needed to face it soon. That was obvious. It was beginning to interfere in his work.

  How else could he explain his carelessness? How else could he have followed Hannah for a month and never realized someone else was doing the same? How could he forgive himself for another failure? How could he explain the truth to Hannah? Or to himself?

  And how could he be so stupid as to bring her into his home?

  He bounded down the stairs, jogged across the sand and into the tepid salt water. He needed a swim. The steady rhythm taxed his muscles; the repetitive strokes tired his mind. Maybe he'd swim south to Cozumel. Or maybe head east to Florida. Maybe he'd go down and see what Davey Jones kept hidden in his locker.

  Logan laughed to himself and slid through the water, his arms slicing through the wall of salt and foam to drag his body along. His hair slapped side to side and, with each breath his despair subsided, replaced with the exhilaration of being alive. He'd never take the coward's way out. He loved being alive.

  He loved the muscle rubbing across his ribcage with each reaching stroke. He loved the burning in his calves, thighs, and buttocks each time he kicked. He loved the water sluicing over his naked skin, the way he overpowered nature with his human strength, fighting the tug of the waves and the siren call of the open sea.

  Someday he'd turn that strength on himself and battle the inward man. Someday soon. But for now, he only wanted to sleep.

  Dripping and sated, he trudged up the beach he knew well enough to cross blind. The moon lit the night sky, shining down on sand the color of bleached bone. He stared at the reflected light sparkling in ripples across the black of the sea. Waves pulsed, following one another to shore, every seventh one washing over his feet.

  At last his heartbeat slowed. His blood no longer pounded in exertion. Or in terror. He turned to plod back up the beach.

  Hannah stood in the corner of the deck, the pale light giving the brunette of her hair a burnished sheen. His steps faltered. He stopped, concealing himself in the shadows below and, like a dog shedding his bath, shook his head, drops of water showering down on his feet.

  "Did I wake you?" he asked, his voice quiet, respecting the still of the night.

  "I thought I heard a door slam."

  "Must've been the refrigerator."

  "Oh," she replied, as if he'd answered some earth-shattering question. He covertly watched her slide to sit on the deck, pulling her nightshirt over her knees. Just as he had with that slinky jacket, he found himself wondering what she had on beneath.

  "Couldn't you sleep?" she asked, breaking the thick silence.

  Logan kicked at the sand. It filtered between his toes and the exotic feel of Hannah's skin through the sheer weave of her hose returned to haunt him. "I don't sleep much."

  "Insomnia?"

  He shook his head though he knew she couldn't see, wondering if he could trust her with his secret, or if it would be best to keep his mouth shut. "Nightmares," he finally answered and held his breath.

  She scooted to the edge of the deck, dangled her legs over the side and peered down. "Bad ones?" she asked, and he resisted the urge to reach up and touch her.

  Her question echoed with such concern he felt compelled to take a small step on the long road to trust. Hoping the darkness hid the affect she had on his naked body, he answered, "Bad enough."

  "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "What's to say? I wake up, head pounding, drenched in sweat and come down here to swim it off." Don't ask any more, he silently begged, honestly afraid of the truth. And of himself.

  "Did it help? The swim, I mean."

  "I think I'm tired enough to sleep." But not tired enough to get you out of my mind. He glanced up and Hannah's legs vanished over the edge. Her bare feet trod across the planks.

  "Not tired enough to forget?" she asked from the far side of the deck.

  "I never forget." He paced a trench in the sand, scooping the granules to the side with his toes. Back and forth he walked, wanting to talk, forming the words, afraid to speak but more afraid not to. "The dreams. They're so real. Every color and smell exact. The reality was bad enough. The dreams ..." he let the thought go unfinished, unable to voice the horror.

  Her touch on his shoulder sent an erotic burn licking over his skin. The fire seared him, an inferno melting away the hard core of his soul. Clenching his fists, he turned on a wave of nervous unease, drawing a blank mask across his face while wanting more than anything to draw her into his arms.

  "I thought you might be cold," she said, offering him a towel and a candid smile.

  He swiped the towel across his chest and arms then secured it around his naked hips, his eyes never once leaving hers. No censure or ridicule marred her expression. The care and concern etched on her face warmed him deep inside.

  Placing one hand on her shoulder, he cupped her chin, tilted her head to the left, then to the right, and gazed down. "It doesn't work."

  "What?" she asked in a breathless whisper.

  "Your eyes. They change, you know. I wanted to see what color they were now. The moon's not bright enough."

  "It is for some things," she replied.

  "Like what?" he answered in a voice suddenly husky, seeing all too well the outline of rounded breasts and the shadow of pebbled nipples in the soft ethereal light.

  In a moment out of time, she reached up and stroked a thumb across the corner of his eye. "Like seeing that your worry and exhaustion go far beyond what a good night's sleep will cure."

  Logan grasped her hand in his, squeezing his fingers around hers. Turning his face into her palm, he placed a kiss in the center. She caught her lower lip with her teeth and returned his steady gaze. He thought he'd die if he didn't pull her to him. But it was still too soon.

  His hand holding hers, he splayed her fingers against his chest, his pulse thundering into her hand and into his loins. "I doubt if a year's worth of good night sleep would cure me," he said as much to himself as to her, suddenly confused why he'd offered her that glimpse into his soul.

  She pulled at her hand. Before he released her he added a suggestive wink and a not-so-subtle grin, trying to relieve the intensity of the moment. "But a couple of scrambled eggs would be a good place to start."

  "You mean cook?" she asked, aghast.

  "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

  Hannah gave him a lop-sided grin. "Where do you come up with these cornball lines?"

  "I'll tell you about it over breakfast."

  Chapter Four

  Hannah threw off the covers again. That she'd been up once in the middle of the night didn't matter to her subconscious. That she'd barely slept two hours didn't make a difference to her body clock. And Logan sending her back to bed after their pre-dawn breakfast only furthered her inability to sleep.

  With a quick, disgusted glance at the bedside clock, she swung her feet to the floor and lifted one slat of the venetian blinds, then dropped it with a groan. Outside, the early stages of dawn had painted the sky with violet-frosted swirls over a palette of butter yellow. Blue-white gulls dipped through cotton puff clouds and soared over the sparkling water.

  It looked like a cheerful cartoon morning. She wanted to switch channels, burrow under the covers, and curl up for a year or two. Mental weariness sapped her, eating away at her bones.

  Accepting the futility of staying in bed, she made her way down the hall and flipped the bathroom lock, shutting herself inside the tiny room along with the clean, sexy smell of freshly-showered male skin. She piled her hair on her head and climbed under the spray.

  Warm water beat against her back, washing away the lingering remnants of fatigue but not Logan's scent, or the memory of his naked body silvered by moonlight. Her hands s
tilled, rivers of foam slithered down her legs.

  He wasn't tall. In her heels, he barely topped her by an inch. But standing before him on the beach, she'd never felt more feminine, or more capable of filling his masculine need. Because way beyond the tired in his eyes, she'd seen want. And even if the light hadn't been good, he'd no doubt seen the heady response she'd felt in hers.

  His body reflected incredible control, tendons and sinew, corded brawn and sleek symmetry. Touching his shoulder hadn't been enough. She'd wanted to slick her palms across his smooth chest, over his taut buttocks and snap that physical restraint. It made her own muscles ache. Not to mention her heart.

  Cynical and shadowed, radiating pain the way the sun gives off light, he teetered on a razor's edge of nightmares and exhaustion. The anguish in his eyes pulsed with unexplained life, making him seem a stranger in his own body.

  A shudder crept along her spine, shivered over her skin. The bathroom grew suffocating and too small for one person, especially when memories swirled thick in the humid air. She hurriedly finished her shower, applied her make-up and pulled on her clothes, then went in search of Logan.

  In the light of day she found the beach house stark, neglected. Lonely. A conch shell lamp cast a shadow over the top of a table made of rough beams and driftwood. She fingered the switch and wondered when it had last been turned on.

  A sculpture of brass seagulls, anchored by a heavy rock base, posed suspended in flight. With a puff of breath, she set the birds in motion, stirring up a cloud of dust. Across one wall, starfish, blowfish, anemones, and glass floats dangled at intervals, choked in the webbing of a fisherman's net. The floor was bare, covered with nothing but a smattering of sand.

  A seaside room for rent. It didn't even pretend to be a home. With what he'd told her yesterday, she wasn't a bit surprised. In one breath, he'd denied having family. In the next, he'd contradicted himself. What she'd seen on the beach broadened her insight. He didn't know where to go, or how to get there. His hurt went beyond surface pain and he allowed no one to touch it.

  Oh, how she understood. He handled his problems alone, keeping to the solitary safety of what he knew, the same way she did. They'd both established their boundaries and both knew to maintain their distance in order to survive. So why did she want to intrude on his solitude, to find out why he hurt, when she didn't want him doing the same in return?

  She switched on the forlorn-looking lamp. The bulb flickered, cast a weak circle of light on the floor, then fizzled and popped, like knowing it didn't have the strength to chase away Logan's darkness. Neither did she. Nor would she make the effort to do so—not if she wanted to keep from getting mixed up with his ghosts. And if you tell yourself that a bazillion times you might begin to believe it, Hannah.

  With a defiant click, she flipped off the switch then turned, lured by the sheet of crystal glass boldly spanning the front wall. The panoramic view provided her with a perfect sense of calm. Instinctively she knew this was why Logan loved it here. This soothing perception of all being right when in reality so much was wrong.

  A movement on the deck caught her eye. Logan sat sprawled in a redwood lounger, sun-toasted legs spread wide, sandaled feet negligently dragging the wooden plank floor. Her briefcase sat open between his thighs. Sunglasses shielded his eyes but failed to conceal the worry lines fanning out to his temples. He was going over her notes so she wasn't surprised to see them.

  A tantalizing stripe of hair bisected his flat belly before disappearing under the jagged edge of a T-shirt that boasted 'Surfers Do It To The Motion Of The Ocean'. The breeze rippled the top of his hair and whipped through the length in back.

  Beefcake. Pure beefcake. Hannah swallowed hard and told herself she wasn't hungry. The reminder didn't gel. The tender hollow of feelings buried close to her heart cried out with fierce longing. She chose a deck chair five feet away from his. It still seemed too close. His intense stare penetrated the opaque lenses. She felt it to the pit of her stomach.

  "So what's the deal?" he began, as if they'd been having this conversation all along.

  "What deal?" She tipped her chin back, hoping the heat of the sun would mask the heat of attraction warming her face.

  "Your car. Seems a bit impractical."

  "And yours isn't?"

  "Hey, boys will be boys."

  She cocked her head to one side. "What about girls?"

  "They can be boys, too—" he dropped his glasses down a notch and gave her a rakish once over "— but I like it better when they're women."

  "Oh, please!"

  "Begging already?"

  She rolled her eyes. "You're hopeless, you know."

  "So I've been told. And you're avoiding the subject."

  "C'mon, Logan. It's only a car."

  "No, Hannah. It's a foreign excuse for a tin can."

  "What do you consider your T-bird?"

  "One-hundred percent American." His grin flashed two-hundred watts. "A renegade. One of a kind. Just like me."

  "And you enjoy it."

  "Hell, yeah I enjoy it. What's the use of having a sweet machine like that without milking it for all it's worth?"

  "Then you should understand. I wanted something fun and spirited to take me away. I wanted to blast down the road and forget," she added softly and could have bit her stupid tongue.

  Whisked away by her innocent confession, one that gave Logan an opening she knew he'd take, the teasing mood vanished. He pulled the sunglasses from his face and slowly placed them on the table.

  His voice dropped an intuitive notch. "Are we talking about cars here? Or life?"

  Perceptive didn't begin to describe him. Uncanny, wasting no time with romantic notions or preliminaries, he cut to the heart of the matter. Her heart. He had no right to dissect her like a specimen in a biology class. Or to take her apart bit by bit and put each piece back together like a puzzle. Especially when he was right. So damned right.

  She eased from the chair and made her way across the deck, her measured steps as stiff as her determination not to break. Palms down, she leaned against the railing and watched the gentle waves break over the sand.

  She didn't know herself at all anymore, didn't know if the choices she'd made had been for the best, and didn't like the realization. It unsettled her, made her question the way she'd lived the past fifteen years. Made her wonder if this trouble at ViOPet hadn't occurred, if she would've ever quit playing it safe and taken the type of risks her father had. Or risks of a more personal nature, like the one drawing her closer to Logan.

  She gripped the rail tighter, hearing air whoosh from his seat cushion, the slap of his sandaled steps across the deck.

  "Hannah, I don't mean to pry. I certainly don't want my life opened for inspection."

  So her assessment had been dead on. As she'd known it would be. From the corner of one eye she saw him scrub both hands through his hair in patent frustration.

  "Reading people is a hobby of mine." He shook his head harshly. "No, an obsession. I have to know what makes a client tick."

  Squinting against the morning sun, she studied his face. Interest and curiosity lay firmly etched in the deep slash between his brows, the tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes. "How much do you want to know?"

  "Everything."

  He flashed a blinding grin and she eased her guard. "That could take a while."

  "Fine," he mouthed around a forced yawn. "I'll just lie down and snatch some Z's."

  With a fist jammed on her hip, she gave him a one-eyed glare, doing her best to knock him down a peg. "I'm I boring you?"

  "No. Just trying to get you horizontal."

  "Yeah, in your dreams," she answered, more flustered than she dared admit.

  His face darkened, grew grim, turbulent, a storm cloud brewing over the open sea. "I do have some wild ones."

  "I remember," she answered softly, the memory of the beach and Logan's misery fresh in her mind.

  "Then you know we both have our secrets."
The wall was back up. He returned to his chair, shoved the sunshades in place. "Can I ask one more question?"

  "Why not?"

  "Why yellow?"

  Back to the car, she thought, wishing it was that simple, knowing he was still talking about her life. "Honestly? I needed a touch of sunshine. Yellow seemed to do the trick."

  Several minutes passed in reflective silence. "You haven't been happy for a long time, have you?"

  Time for more honesty. "Not since about fifteen."

  "What happened?"

  "My father got sick during my freshman year in high school and had to be put on permanent disability." Absently, she scraped away a piece of chipped paint on the railing. "He worked at a chemical plant that produced new pesticides."

  She took a deep breath, thinking back to those first hard weeks of denial, the following months of acceptance, and the ensuing months of waiting and watching his health decline. "He wasn't the only one to have the complaints, but was the only one to speak up."

  "Which didn't sit well with the company," Logan said, finishing her thought.

  She responded with an inelegant snort. "They offered all the right words. Claimed to have followed every safety precaution, every federal law. It didn't matter. By the end of that year he required constant care."

  "And your mother insisted on taking care of him herself," Logan added with amazing insight.

  She nodded. "That kind of love is rare. She tended to him. I tended to everything else. Started working during my sophomore year to supplement the insurance. Mother couldn't work because she couldn't spare the time away from him."

  "Couldn't or wouldn't?"

  "Does it really matter?"

  "Only if you resent her for it."

  Her gaze locked with his, then ricocheted away. "I never resented her. Only the situation and the fact that no matter how much I did it didn't change a thing."

  "That's tough on a kid."

  Her lungs burned, smothering her anew with that long-forgotten crushing sensation, that unbearable weight pressing down. She drew in a tight breath, surprised to find she could. "What choice did I have? He was my father. Who was I to complain when he'd given so much to me?"