Tess merely smiled and took another bite. “I can’t believe I ran into him here of all places . . .” She shrugged again. “Whatever. Hopefully, I’ll never see him again.”
“Did you see that friggin’ Barbie doll he married?” Logan said with a disapproving scowl. “Ugh. She was a serious bitch, and so fake.”
Tess giggled. “You mean you don’t like overly prominent plastic curves?”
“I like curves fine, when they’re real. None of hers were.”
“You could tell, huh?”
“Couldn’t you?”
Tess shrugged, her brows lifting as she said, “Well, he always liked busty women. God knows that’s not me. I remember wondering why he liked me so much when all his exes were these hourglass-shaped women . . . I hadn’t realized at that point he was into me for my money, not for me.” She dabbed at the side of her mouth with her napkin. “The thing is, it used to make me feel so insecure when I was younger. Being a beanpole. I hadn’t embraced my body yet.”
“And now?” Logan asked quietly, eyes locked on her.
“Now, I totally, gladly accept myself for who I am. But it was so hard as a teen, and even in my early twenties,” she admitted. “It was really hard, actually.”
He was fascinated. “What do you mean? Why?”
“I was too tall, too skinny, and flat chested,” she said plainly. “My mother was . . . I don’t want to say a movie star, because that gives her more credit than she’s due. But she was a B-level actress, she was in a handful of movies back in the seventies. We all look just like her, my brothers and I—it’s practically the same face. But she was a real bombshell, sex goddess type. Hourglass curves, and only five-foot-five. Whereas I, however, inherited the Harrison DNA: tall and lean. Apparently, my father’s grandmother was six feet tall.” She fidgeted with the napkin, folding it in her lap. “My father offered to get me a boob job for my sixteenth birthday.”
“Are you serious?” Logan sputtered. “Please be kidding. Jesus.”
“Dead serious. I was mortified. Ah, the teen years . . .” Tess shot him a wry smirk. “My mother had abandoned us, my father was . . . my father. My brothers were great when they were around, but I just wanted to either go out with my friends, or hide in my art studio and paint. To be normal. But I wasn’t. I was a flat-chested giant.” She grinned ruefully, her tone weary as she said, “Do you have any idea how hard it can be for a very tall girl? I hit five-ten by the time I was fifteen. I was taller than my own brothers for a few years, much less some of my teachers. And forget about the boys.”
“Well, I was five-ten at thirteen,” Logan said. “You wouldn’t have scared me.”
“Where were you when I needed you?” she joked, throwing her hands in the air in mock frustration.
“Well, I’m here now! Better late than never.”
They laughed together.
“It wasn’t until my early twenties that I started to love being tall. ’Til I started getting off on towering over people, embracing the power of it.” She eyed him and added, “Come on. You’re huge. You know that being tall can grant some unspoken power. That people treat you a bit differently.”
“I never really thought about it,” he said earnestly. “But I’m a guy. I didn’t have to. I mean . . . yeah, I knew deep down people would think twice before messing with me just because I’m big. So . . . I guess I just proved your point after all.”
Her voice lowered as she leaned across the table and murmured conspiratorially, “Now, I love wearing high heels. At the Holiday Ball, in my stilettos? I was six-foot-two.” Her smile was radiant. “Even my two older brothers were an inch or two shorter than me. Pierce is six-two; he looked me in the eye. Heh.”
“I bet you stood there like a goddamn Amazon warrior princess,” Logan said reverently. “I bet you do every time.”
“Goddamn right.” Her smile brightened before she took another sip of water.
He could only stare at her. Respect, appreciation, lust, bemusement, and genuine like all flowed through him at the same time. She was something special. Other women, given what she’d had since birth, could very easily coast through life. But Tess was as down-to-earth as they came, with a good and still-open heart, despite her past heartaches. Tess Harrison was a rare woman. He could almost feel his crush on her deepen, which was both a rush and a curse.
“Your entrées are ready!” the waitress said with a smile as she brought a tray to their table. She cleared their appetizer plates, set down their steaks, and refilled their water glasses before leaving them again.
“That was a hell of a story,” he said once they were alone again. “Thanks for sharing all that with me.”
“Thanks for having my back in the lobby,” she said. “You jumped right in! You were great.”
“My pleasure.” He readjusted his napkin over his lap, his mind buzzing with thoughts that all of a sudden came pouring out of his mouth. “I just have to say . . . you’re a stunningly beautiful woman, from head to toe, inside and out. Jesus, Tess, your legs alone . . .” Heat rose in his face as he realized she was gazing intently, hanging on his words. The words he probably shouldn’t have said out loud. He cleared his suddenly dry throat and tried to switch gears a bit.
“And, being a tall man myself? I like when I don’t get a crick in my neck from talking to a woman and having to look doooown. So I love that you’re tall.” Noting her smile at that, he cut into his Black Angus. “I had no idea you’d ever been insecure, because you’re one of the most grounded, self-assured women I’ve known in a long time. You carry yourself like a queen, and you should. You’re insanely beautiful.” Jesus, he was rambling now. He shoved another bite of steak into his mouth to have a reason to stop talking.
“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured. Her eyes were bright. “Those are some high-level compliments. I’m incredibly flattered. Thank you.”
He only murmured back, “I meant every word.”
“But for the record, I’m no queen. I’m just a lady from Long Island.” Obviously touched, she smiled warmly. He basked in the pleased look on her face as she lifted her utensils to slice into her filet mignon. They ate quietly for a few minutes, letting the music and chatter around them fill the silence comfortably.
He was surprised at how at ease he was with her. How they didn’t have awkward silences, spurred by the need to fill the gaps. Maybe it was because they were both pretty self-confident people, but maybe it was because they were really in sync. And when they did talk, he was finding it easier and easier. For a worldly, incredibly wealthy woman from a different world, Tess was approachable and open. He liked her more every time they spent time together.
“So, mister, I spilled my guts,” she said when half their meals were gone. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity and a hint of mischief. “Your turn. Tell me some more about you.”
He sighed inwardly. Had to know that would come, didn’t he. “Really?”
“Really. Come onnnnnn, Carter.” Her tone was light and playful. “Tell me something. I’d like to think you know you can, and that you know it’ll stay with me.”
“I do know that,” he said quietly, only admitting that to himself as he said the words aloud. He took a gulp of water before saying, “Okay, yeah, reciprocation is fair play. I’ll tell you some of mine too. But . . . Tess, some of it is ugly. That’s just the truth.”
“Logan . . .” Her voice sobered. “We’ve all had ugly. And no matter what happened before, now you’re a strong, good man.”
“Well . . . yeah, now I’d like to think I am, and I was when I was younger. But in between . . .” He winced. “There’s a block of time there I’m not proud of. I fucked up big-time. Took me years to forgive myself. Some days, I still wrestle with the things I did. Or things that happened . . .”
Tess reached across the table and took his hand. Her skin felt warm and unbelievably soft. “Hey. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. Ever.”
“I know that.” He
squeezed her hand and gazed at her. Then he took one more bite of his steak, savoring the taste before he said, “Well, how about to start with, I know a little something about betrayal too. I was married. To my college sweetheart. We were together for six years, married for the last three of them. I loved her more than anything in the world. And when I needed her the most, when I hit the lowest point of my entire life, she left me.”
Chapter Ten
“I’m listening,” Tess said gently as she laid down her utensils. “Go on, please.”
“Okay.” He set down his fork and knife too. “Warning you again though . . . some of it’s ugly.”
“I can handle ugly, Logan. You don’t scare me.”
“I bet very little scares you, actually.”
“You’d be dead wrong. But go ahead.”
He nodded, trying to figure out where to start. He took a long sip of water, feeling the cool relief of it slide down his suddenly tight throat. Then he said, “Rachel and I met in our junior year at Tulane, in a psych class. Love at first sight, immediate connection, the whole nine. Within two weeks, we were inseparable. I proposed the week after we graduated, and we got married the next spring.”
“So young,” Tess murmured. “How old were you both, twenty-three?”
“Barely.” He picked up his fork again and started pushing around the brussels sprouts on his plate. “Her degree was in psychology, mine was in social work. We both wanted to help people. It seemed like a perfect match. Maybe at first, before I blew it sky-high, it was.” He shrugged, not lifting his gaze from the plate. “We had an apartment in downtown New Orleans. She got a job in a medical center that catered to higher-end clientele, working there while she started her master’s. Me, I was working down in the poorest areas of the city, also while getting my master’s.” He felt the wry twist of his lips. “But it pumped me up. The work, I mean. I was so idealistic, thought I was making a difference.”
“I’m sure you were,” Tess said. “Sounds like admirable work to me.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I did. I was young and naïve. Rach and I didn’t have any money, but we had each other. She was going to eventually make lots of money, and I was going to change the world. Our future looked bright.” He noticed how still Tess had grown. When she listened, she really listened.
“We both got our master’s degrees, she started working with a private practice, and I was down in the ditches. Soup kitchens, homeless shelters, community centers, all of that. I felt like I had a purpose. I was crazy in love with my gorgeous, brilliant wife. Life was good for a while.” He stopped, drumming his fingers on the table. He hadn’t thought of the good times in a long time, and doing so now didn’t bring any warm fuzzies . . . more like a hollow feeling. Like it’d all happened to someone else.
“So what happened?” Tess’s voice brought him back to the present.
He blinked as new memories crashed into his head. With a tight sigh, he said simply, “Katrina happened.”
“As in . . . Hurricane Katrina?” she asked tentatively.
“Yup.” Again, as it had a thousand times before, the image of little Rodney Parsons’s body floating in the murky, filthy water assaulted him. Logan briefly squeezed his eyes shut, willing it away. “I was right in the thick of it. Where I was working . . . those people had nothing, or close to nothing. So when the storm hit . . . in a nutshell, we had no idea what hit us. And I tried to help people, I was frantic, but I couldn’t do anything for them. Not enough, anyway. And people I knew died.” His eyes met hers. He saw the empathy there, but she sat quietly, listening raptly. “Whatever you saw on TV? It was worse. It was a true circle of hell, what we lived through down there.”
“I can’t imagine,” she murmured. “I won’t insult you with platitudes. It sounds horrific.”
He raked his hands through his hair. His chest tightened and his blood pulsed in his head, the familiar signs of his demons trying to rear their vicious heads. “I’m not going to go into details now, all right?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
“Good. So . . . um . . .” He edited in his head, trying to decide what to share and what he wanted to keep to himself. There was so much . . . and he didn’t want to talk about any of it. But Tess had trusted him with some of her secrets, and he wanted to do the same. He wanted to place some trust in her, and he wasn’t even sure why.
“I can tell you still carry it with you,” she said quietly.
He nodded at that. “Yeah. But not every day. It’s not as bad as it used to be.”
“It sounds traumatic. If you don’t want to tell me any more, that’s fine.”
“It was traumatic. I was devastated, angry, shaking my fist at the universe . . . and I had survivor’s guilt for years. PTSD lingers, crops up once in a while. Something like that is hard to shake.” He reached for his water and took a few gulps, draining the glass. “Back then, the devastation, the deaths of people I’d come to know and care about . . . I took it personally. So many things I believed in, I just . . . I lost faith in the system, because it failed us. And how was I supposed to do social work in a system that was clearly broken? I didn’t want to. I couldn’t cope, and I spiraled.”
He let his eyes drift away, then made himself look at Tess directly. “Within a few weeks, I started drinking to numb the pain. I drank every night . . . then it started during the day too. Then, after a few months, I stopped going to work. Rachel kept trying to help me, but at that point, I couldn’t be helped, because I didn’t care about anything anymore. I trashed my life, basically. Threw it all away.”
“You were drowning in grief and guilt,” Tess said softly. “You needed help.”
“I didn’t ask for any. Too proud. Too broken at that point. I was lost.” He rubbed the back of his neck. This was his history, the truth. He wasn’t uncomfortable telling the story, but had to admit he didn’t want this beautiful, smart, totally together woman to think less of him. He hoped she wouldn’t, but if she did, there wasn’t much he could do about it. At least he was being honest. “By six months after Katrina, I was unemployed and in an alcoholic stupor. And my wife gave up and left. Rock bottom.”
Tess didn’t say anything. She just willed him to keep talking by the absorbed, intent look on her face, the kindness in her eyes that shone without pity or judgment.
So he did. “I hated her for that. I felt so betrayed. So much for those vows, huh? For better or worse, in sickness and in health . . . For a psychologist who wanted to help people, she felt I was beyond help. But the thing is, she wasn’t totally wrong. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves.”
“But you were her husband,” Tess said. “I . . . I wasn’t there. I don’t know what went on. But she should’ve stayed.”
“Thanks. But. In the short run, she saved herself, and in the long run, she did me a favor.” Logan put down the fork and shoved back a bit from the table. He leaned his forearms on it and looked Tess right in the eye. “Because that’s what it took for me to look around and see how bad things had gotten. That I’d lost everything that mattered to me. My career, my wife . . . myself.” He cleared his throat.
“So. My mother flew down to New Orleans and kicked my ass into gear. Said she refused to stand by anymore and let me kill myself. She’d hoped Rachel would pull me out of it, but she didn’t. So my mom literally threw me into the shower, smacked me sober. And said she’d pay for rehab if I’d go, and really work at it, not half-ass it. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve probably ended up dead, and I knew it. So that’s what I did.”
“How old were you then?”
“Got out of rehab a week before I turned twenty-seven.”
“Thank God,” Tess said on an exhale. “You still had your whole life ahead of you. I’m glad you got the help you needed.”
“Me too.”
“I hate to think of what kind of pain you were in,” she said gently. “That you went down that road, and that far.”
“Thanks. I�
�m okay now. Really.” He sat up straighter in his chair. “So what you said before, about a past life, a past you? Same here. Yes, once in a while something reminds me of it all, and things crop up in my head. But I’ve got a handle on it, it doesn’t handle me. I’m a different person now. With a different life.” He offered a contented grin. “It’s quiet and pretty simple. I do honest work, and no one’s welfare depends on me or my help. No drama. That works for me.”
She cocked her head to the side, apparently considering his words. “Wait a second.” Tess leaned in, her eyes narrowing. “People do depend on you. You still help people, you just—”
“I don’t have their lives in my hands, Tess,” he said firmly. “Yes, I still help people. But it’s nothing like what I was doing before. At the end of the day, I leave my work at work. No one’s hungry, sick, homeless, desperate . . . and I don’t take the work home with me. In here.” He tapped his temple, then scratched at his beard and shifted in his seat.
“What about your ex-wife?” Tess asked.
“What about her?”
“Do you know where she is now?”
“Yeah. She moved to California. Has her own private practice. Remarried a few years after she left me. Has two kids. A good life. She deserves that. Why not.” He fiddled with the fork beside his plate. “About a year after I got out of rehab, I wrote her a long email. Wanted her to know I’d gotten sober, moved back to Colorado, and took my life back. Also, I owed her an apology. I also needed to rail at her a little, but mostly, I needed to own what I’d done. And to get some closure. She answered me . . . we went back and forth for a few weeks. But that was it. That was years ago already.”
“Did you get that closure?” Tess wondered aloud.
“I did. We addressed a lot of things that needed to be addressed. But . . . I’ll never get married again. I don’t, uh . . . I don’t do relationships.” He tried for a wry grin and a lighter tone. “I prefer to be alone now. Surely you, of all people, can understand that.”
She blinked at the parallel he drew. “I do, but . . . wow, it’s different. I want a family so much, but I never found the right person to do that with. You had the person. You were married, you . . . Did you want all that before the bottom fell out? A family, that kind of life?”
Between You and Me Page 12
