Maybe the shrink had been right. Maybe he was a single trigger away from a nervous breakdown. Maybe he was even more fucked up than he’d thought.
“She’s a big deal,” Lucky said as if it were common knowledge.
“She is?” Logan hadn’t meant to sound surprised, but he hadn’t really kept up with her career. Mainly because, every time he thought about her, he thought about that night in the kitchen and he would immediately try to push her out of his thoughts.
“Yeah. What rock have you been living under? I mean, I know you were pretty deep undercover, but it’s not like they had you out in Bum Fuck, Nowhere. You weren’t part of Undercover Amish. You still lived in the real world and—”
If he let him, Lucky could travel down this road for quite a while and entertain himself by coming up with new and “clever” ways to mock the fact that he didn’t have a clue about Emma’s career. His brother was talented like that.
“Enough.” Logan only said one word, but thankfully, it worked.
Lucky chuckled, but then he backed off. “Look, I only know what’s up because every single hookup I’ve had for the last few years has had two books on their nightstand. Fifty Shades and When It’s Real. I didn’t even know that Emma was Chelsea Paige until I picked it up one night from sheer boredom while waiting for some chick to get ready and I saw her picture on the back.”
“You read her book?”
“Books. Plural. Hell yeah, I have.”
Damn. He never had before, but now… Now, Logan felt like an ass because he’d never read any of her books.
His brother continued. “And they are muy caliente. Like Mrs. Lynch’s chili hot.”
Mrs. Lynch, their neighbor when they’d been growing up, used to make the boys chili whenever she babysat. Logan had no idea what the hell kind of peppers that woman had used, but it had been so freakin’ hot that their mouths would burn for a week after just one bite.
“Seriously. I can’t believe that you’ve never read them. I just figured, since you and Andrew were so close and you’re Drew’s godfather and all that, you would’ve.”
“I’ve been busy,” Logan replied. But he left out that he’d been busy trying not to think about Emma.
“Well, it’s probably a good idea that you haven’t. I know you think of Emma as some kind of saint—as evidenced by you almost biting my head off at just the mention of her name—and she is a saint. Losing Andrew like that, raising Drew. It’s just, if you read her books, they would inspire you to do all kinds of sinning with that particular angel.”
That ship has sailed. Inspiration has already struck. “All right, well, thanks for the book report, Lucky. It’s getting late.”
“Late? The night’s just getting started. Stamina, remember?”
“Goodnight, Lucky.”
“Night, bro. Tell Em and Drew I said hey. Oh, and tell her I’m a big fan.”
Not a chance.
Logan disconnected the call and sat in his dark kitchen. So many thoughts were filling his mind that they were fighting each other for who would get top billing, but they all centered around one common theme: Emma Locke.
This woman struck more than one chord in Logan. Obviously, she was a strong woman. She’d been a teenage mom. Then she’d been widowed and left with a child at the same time most girls her age were partying it up in college. Instead of crumbling, she’d managed to become a best-selling author and raise an incredible kid.
Still, all Logan wanted to do was protect her. When he’d picked her up and pulled her into his arms, she’d felt so small, so vulnerable. Every protective instinct he had—and some he hadn’t even known he possessed—had risen to the surface of the choppy waters of his consciousness. Then, hearing Drew thank him for taking care of his mom had annihilated Logan. Broken his heart, which he’d thought was so hard that it couldn’t have shattered. But it had.
Before he’d even had an opportunity to process either of those things, his damn brother had called. And now, all of those emotions, feelings, whatever the hell they were, were nothing compared to the curiosity Lucky had piqued to the point that it overrode every other thought battling it out in his brain.
What the hell did she write in those books? And why the hell did he want to put his fist through the wall because his brother had read them?
Chapter 8
‡
Mmm, bacon.
And coffee.
In Emma’s fuzzy-brained state, the first thought she had was that she must still be dreaming. That or she was dead and this was Heaven. Never before had she woken to the smells of breakfast wafting through the air. Either way, she hoped that this fantasy-like state lasted long enough to include her getting to indulge in the deliciousness she smelled.
Forcing her heavy eyelids open, she inhaled deeply. Were those blueberry muffins she detected? If they were, then there was no question about it. She was definitely in Heaven.
As she looked around, she didn’t immediately recognize her surroundings. Heaven looked a lot like a room in a cabin.
A cabin.
Right. It all came back to her. She was in California. In Hope Falls. At Logan Dorsey’s home.
She was also in bed. A bed she didn’t remember going to. The last thing she remembered was seeing Shia LaBeouf on the big screen. Then…nothing.
Shoot. She must’ve fallen asleep during the movie. But then how did she end up in this bed?
Sitting up, she tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry that it made the task difficult.
The need to go check on Drew was top priority. The only thing that trumped it was her need to pee and brush her teeth.
As she slipped out of bed, she headed to the bathroom off her room. One look in the oval mirror on the wall above the sink had her shrieking silently in horror. Her hair looked like birds had nested on top of her head, two large creases ran down her right cheek, and two matching puffy pillows beneath her eyes were highlighted by the dark circles covering them.
She looked awful.
Emma made the executive decision that Drew could wait ten minutes, then she jumped in the shower and tried to make herself as presentable as possible. She washed, shaved, and shampooed in record time, all the while attempting to convince herself that her need to shower and look human was only because she was a houseguest and had absolutely nothing to do with the man whose house she was a guest in.
“Ouch,” she hissed as the blade she was running up her leg slipped, causing her to nick herself on her calf just above her anklebone.
Note to self: rushing and shaving are not activities that should be combined.
After a quick rinse off, Emma tried to prepare herself for seeing Logan today as she stepped out of the shower and dried herself off. Yesterday, she’d thought she’d been prepared, but Whoa Nelly, had she been wrong. It wasn’t just that Logan Dorsey was gorgeous and had a body that would make any woman’s knees weak, a voice that could melt panties right off, and a killer smile that was as potent as it was rare. His sex appeal also came in the form of broodiness. He could brood with the best of them. But not just brood—he effortlessly exuded this silent strength.
Just being in the same room as Logan gave her this ridiculous sense that everything was going to be okay. That nothing bad could happen, and even if it did, he would take care of it.
Projecting much? her inner voice, which usually leaned to the side of sarcasm, piped up.
With a sigh, she had to admit that that might’ve been the case. She’d been writing heroes for so long that she might’ve been placing all of her favorite qualities onto Logan. It was actually kind of pathetic.
He’d opened his home to her and Drew, and she was repaying him by making him into one of the guys she would pen in her books.
Not cool, Emma.
This was life. Not a romance novel.
In an attempt to reconnect with reality, she decided to forgo the blow dryer, put her damp hair into two braids, and not put on a drop of makeup. She stuck with her nor
mal beauty routine of moisturizer with SPF 30 and ChapStick. After she’d snatched a pair of jean shorts and a T-shirt and threw them on, she was feeling much more grounded to reality than she had felt over the last few days, which had been a whirlwind of meetings, flights, and sleepless nights.
Smiling to herself at her unintentional rhyme, she checked the room Drew was staying in and saw that it was empty. The bed was made though—and with what looked like military-style precision.
Her gut twisted at the sight. She hoped that her son had been the one who’d made it and not their host. At home, it was a constant battle to get Drew to make his bed, but she crossed her fingers that he’d been on his best behavior in Logan’s house.
As she walked to the kitchen, her stomach growled loudly at the scent of fresh-out-of-the-oven blueberry muffins, which were basically her favorite thing in the entire world. She’d heard people wax poetic over their love of pizza, chocolate, ice cream, and candy, but she’d never understood why more people weren’t riding the blueberry muffin train. In her humble—read: right!—opinion, Kentucky Fried Chicken had nothing on fluffy blueberry-infused cupcakes, which were the epitome of finger-lickin’ good.
Rounding the corner, she expected to see Drew standing over a pan of muffiny goodness. “Mmm, something smells amaaaziin…”
Her words trailed off as her eyes landed on the most delectable sight she’d ever seen. Logan was bent over, pulling a silver pan of rounded blueberry treats from the oven. The view his posture afforded her was, well… let’s just say that she might’ve wanted to rethink her stance on what the epitome of finger-lickin’ good was.
“Morning.” Looking over his shoulder, he stood and set the tray on top of the stove. Then his lips turned up into one of those rare smiles that made every part of her body tingle with awareness. “Did you sleep well?”
His question was a perfectly logical one. Still, she couldn’t find the words to answer it. In lieu of speaking like a normal person, she nodded her head up and down like a bobblehead.
“Good.” Logan’s grin grew even wider, and those tingles flared in response.
He was basically lady porn represented with food and a hot male. So she inhaled deeply and tried to pull herself back from the brink of Humiliation Cliff, whose ledge she was tap-dancing on.
“Where’s Drew?” she managed to squeak out. Yes. Squeak. However, the fact that she could speak at all was astonishing, so go, Emma. Go.
“He’s at Mountain Ridge. I dropped him off a few hours ago. They start their days pretty early over there.” Logan pulled two mugs from the cabinet beside him.
“A few hours…?” Emma shook her head slightly. “What time is it?”
She had already been feeling off-balance. So the fact that she hadn’t checked the time the second her eyes had opened, which was her usual MO, made her feel even more like a human teeter totter.
“Ten thirty,” he informed her as he poured piping-hot coffee into the mugs.
Panic with a chaser of disbelief gripped Emma as a tightness swelled in her chest. “Ten thirty!? It can’t be! I never… I mean, I haven’t slept past seven a.m. in…I don’t even know the last time.”
“Then you were overdue.” His tone was so calm that it soothed her rapidly fraying nerves. The fact that it was raspier than any man had a legal right to sound, didn’t hurt either.
“Sit,” he commanded roughly.
Without a second of hesitation, Emma obeyed. Yep, there was just something about a man taking charge. She mentally cataloged her body’s immediate response, filing it under turn-ons.
When he stepped up to the table, it took her a moment to notice what he’d set in front of her. Her eyes had locked on the oh-so-sexy bulge of his bicep beneath his white T-shirt, which was pulled taut. Her mouth began watering and a fluttering sensation grew in her belly at the sight. She not only attempted to memorize her reactions, she also did her absolute best to take a mental picture of his chiseled arm so she could remember it in detail.
For research, of course. Yep. Just one more thing to file under turn-ons.
“Eat.”
His one-word order snapped her out of her lust gaze. The plate in front of her held two blueberry muffins and four strips of bacon. Beside it, a mug was filled with steaming-hot java, and he’d poured her a glass of orange juice. All of her favorites prepared to perfection.
Emma’s mouth was watering for an entirely, much more G-rated reason now.
“You didn’t have to… How did you…?” She more than appreciated that he’d gone to the trouble to prepare this for her, but it occurred to her that he would’ve had no way of knowing what her favorite breakfast was. Drew couldn’t be the one who had told him because, since he didn’t like blueberries, she’d never made them.
Logan’s face tilted to the right, and his mouth transformed into a lopsided grin. “I remember that time in DC that you flew out to see us right before we got deployed and we went to that little diner off base. You asked the waitress for blueberry muffins, bacon, coffee, and OJ.”
“That was, like, eight years ago.” Her chest rose and fell, and the fluttering turned into a full-fledged butterfly disco. “You remembered that?”
She found herself holding her breath, waiting for his response.
*
Logan froze. Was that panic in Emma’s eyes? Was it creepy that he remembered what she’d ordered for breakfast eight years ago?
Yes. Yes, it is. Logan’s inner voice sounded a whole hell of a lot like Lucky.
Shit.
He didn’t want to tell her about his photographic or eidetic memory. Maybe it was just a knee jerk reaction because of how badly people had responded to it in his childhood, but the last thing he wanted was for her to know. Still, he needed to pull himself out of the hole he’d just dug, and he needed to do it fast. All he’d wanted to do was make her a nice breakfast, not get into a discussion of why he had some freakish mutation that allowed him to store information like a computer.
Grabbing a large fork full of eggs that he’d made for himself, he nodded. “Yeah. Mainly because of how you lit into that girl I was with.” Then he stuck the food-filled utensil in his mouth, surprised there was room with the foot currently residing in it.
Emma’s brow pulled together just above the bridge of her nose and Logan could see that she was fervently trying to remember what he was talking about. Then she shook her head. “I don’t remember… I don’t think I lit into any…” As she stopped mid word, her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “Oooooh, that’s right. What was that girl’s name? Lisa or Libby…”
“Lia,” Logan interjected. “I remember you giving her one hell of an earful about the nutritional benefits of your breakfast.”
Scrunching her nose in what was quite possibly the cutest expression ever, Emma dropped her eyes to the table as she tilted her head to the side. “I don’t think I was that bad.”
Logan made it a general rule not to waste his time arguing with anyone over anything if he didn’t absolutely have to, but letting this subject drop was just not going to happen. “It was. You told her, loudly, that your well-balanced breakfast had every one of the food groups covered. Milk. Grain. Meat. Fruit. Then you proceeded to go into detail about how exactly they were represented in your meal.”
Even if he hadn’t had a photographic memory, he would’ve remembered that breakfast. Lia, who he’d hooked up with the night before and had invited herself to join him and his friends, had ordered an egg-whites-only omelet and argued with the waitress about how they didn’t have three different types of peppers to put in it. He had cringed at every word the girl had said.
Then, when their food had arrived, she’d made a snide comment about what Emma had ordered. In return, Emma had put her firmly in her place. In Emma’s place-putting speech she’d not only explained why her meal was balanced nutritionally, but she’d also waxed poetic about how every taste complemented the other. The sweet tartness of the muffin was the perfect counterpart fo
r the salty goodness of the bacon. The tart citrus of the orange juice was the yin to the bitter sharpness of the rich java.
It was a beautiful moment he’d always remembered fondly.
This morning, with Drew’s words hanging over his head about no one taking care of her and the long days she’d had, he’d wanted to do something nice for her, so he’d taken a chance that this was still her breakfast of choice. Since he’d never heard someone speak so passionately about any meal before, he’d figured he had a better-than-fifty-fifty chance that it was.
“Oh.” A light shade of pink flushed on her smooth cheeks. “I think I do remember something about that,” she said right before pulling a huge chunk off the top of one muffin and stuffing it in her mouth.
“You do, huh?” he practically growled. He was fighting the strongest urge to wipe off the small piece of crumb that had landed on her chin. Actually, he had the urge to kiss it off. Or lick it off.
Totally oblivious to his inappropriate-urge struggles, Emma tilted her head, her cheeks reminding him of a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. With a twinkle in her eye and a small smile pulling at her lips, she shrugged as she stated defiantly, “She deserved it.”
Her puffed-out cheeks and her borderline cocky attitude made Logan do something he didn’t do often. He laughed.
She chewed her food and then took a long sip of coffee, moaning as she did. When she set the cup down, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and her gaze narrowed ever so slightly.
“Perfect. Two sugars and a splash of cream. Did you remember that too?”
Yes.
Since he had no rational explanation for that one, it was time to change the subject. “Have you given any more thought to whether or not you want to stay? It was all Drew talked about this morning.”
Dropping her head back, Emma sighed. The heavy breath pushed her hint of cleavage up, and Logan fisted his hand as the desire to reach out and touch her there crashed over him.
Since the second she’d walked into the kitchen this morning—hell, who was he kidding? Since the second she’d shown up on his doorstep yesterday, the overwhelming compulsions to touch her, kiss her, and pull her body against his so he could feel her soft curves melt into him, just about consumed him. It was unnerving, to say the least.
Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11) Page 8
