by Jane Porter
Rowan lifted his head, his gaze locking with hers. “But you didn’t.”
“It was his choice not to see us. Mother never kept us from him. He didn’t care enough about us to maintain a relationship.”
“But you view him as your father.”
She struggled with the next words. “He paid our bills.”
“So you really couldn’t care less about him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You want to attend his funeral.”
“He was my father.”
“Ah.” Rowan dropped into his chair, and studied her from across the office. “And you don’t think our daughter will care about her father? You assume she doesn’t need one?”
“I never said that.”
“But you’ve blocked me from her life. Kept her from knowing she has a father.”
Logan closed her eyes and drew a slow breath. “There’s a difference between paying for a child’s expenses, and being engaged...and loving.”
“And you assume I can only pay bills?”
Tension knotted her shoulders. Balls of ice filled her stomach. Logan flexed her fingers trying to ease the anxiety ricocheting inside her. After an endless moment she touched her tongue to her upper lip, dampening it. “You have assumed only the worst of me. You have judged me based on my name. You have treated me incredibly harshly, and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to believe that you would want to be a father, much less a loving one.”
“You were introduced to me as Logan Lane.”
“Lane is my mother’s name, and my preferred name. It is my name.”
“Are you telling me you dropped the Copeland from your name?”
“I was in the process of legally changing my name. Yes. Copeland is a distraction.”
He continued to study her, his expression impossible to read. He had such hard, chiseled features and his light eyes were shuttered. And then his mouth eased and his fierce expression softened. “No need to look so stricken. The good news is that we have the chance to fix things. You and I can sort this out without a judge...without the courts. It will be far less messy and painful if we manage our affairs privately. Surely you don’t want your distracting name bandied about in the press? I would imagine that by now you’ve had enough media attention to last a lifetime.”
Her stomach heaved. The very idea of being in the papers made her want to throw up. She couldn’t bear to be chased again. It had been awful when the reporters and photographers shadowed her every move several years ago. She’d felt hunted. Haunted. And that was before Jax. No, Jax’s picture could not be splashed about the tabloids. The reporters and photographers were merciless. They’d harass them, and terrify Jax by shouting at them, by pulling up in their cars, honking horns, creating chaos just to get a photo.
Logan exhaled slowly, clinging to her composure. “I have lived very quietly these past few years to stay out of the media.”
“A custody battle will just put you right back in the headlines.”
She stared at him, furious, frustrated, defiant.
His broad shoulders shifted. His gaze dropped to the papers in his hand. “The funeral has been set for a week from today. It will be held in Greenwich, Connecticut. Your sister Morgan is making the arrangements. Your mother and sisters will be there. It is hoped that you will be there, too.” He looked at her once more. For a long moment he was silent before adding, “I hope we will be, but that is up to you.”
“This is absurd.”
“The grand service for your father...or that we’d attend together?”
“We’re not a couple.”
“Yet. But we will be.”
“Many parents raise children in different homes—”
“Like mine,” he interrupted. “And it was hell. I won’t have my daughter—”
“Your daughter?” she interrupted bitterly.
“My daughter,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “being dragged back and forth. It’s unsettling for a young child. It’s upsetting for an older child. We need to do better than that for her.”
She hated that he was saying the very things that she believed to be true.
She hated that he was being the one who sounded responsible and mature.
Having grown up in a divorced family it wasn’t what she wanted for Jax, but at the same time, she couldn’t imagine a peaceful home, not if she and Rowan were living together in it. “It is better for a child to have two homes than one that is fraught with tension,” she said tightly.
“That’s why we need to put aside our differences and focus on Jax.”
Logan looked away, a lump filling her throat. He made it sound so easy. He made it sound like a trip to an amusement park...but living with Rowan would be anything but fun. He’d hurt her so badly...he’d nearly broken her with his harsh rejection...
“I don’t trust you,” she whispered.
“Then I must win your trust back.”
“That will take forever.”
“We don’t have that much time. The funeral is in a week.”
She shot him a baffled glance. “I’m not sure I follow.”
He dropped the papers and sat down in his chair. “We need to marry before the funeral because, if we’re to go, we go united. You and me. A family.”
“What?”
“We go united,” he repeated firmly.
“There is no way...how could we possibly marry this week?”
“Not just this week, but tomorrow. That way we can slip away for a brief honeymoon before flying to Connecticut with Jax for the service.”
“And if I refuse?”
“We stay here.”
CHAPTER SIX
THEY’D STAY HERE?
Logan’s legs went weak. Boneless, she sank into the chair behind her. Her voice was nearly inaudible. “You’d keep me from his service?”
His gaze was cool, almost mocking. “I could say so many things right now... I could say you never told me you were pregnant. I could say you kept me from my daughter—”
“Yes. This is true. But two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“So, Logan Lane, make this right.”
Her eyes stung. She blinked hard and bit hard into her lip to keep from saying something she’d regret.
The only thing that had kept her going these past three years when it had been so hard was the belief that one day her life would be different. That one day she and Jax would have everything they needed, that their future would be filled with hope and love and peace...
But there would be no peace with Rowan.
It wasn’t the future she’d prayed for. It wasn’t the future they wanted or needed.
It wasn’t a future at all.
Rowan leaned forward, picked up a thick stack of glossy colored pages and held them out to her. “Pick one or two that appeal and they will be here later tonight.”
She took the pages before she realized they were all photographs of couture wedding gowns. Fitted white satin gowns that looked like mermaids and slinky white satin gowns with narrow spaghetti straps, and princess ballgowns with full skirts and gorgeous beading of pearls and precious stones...
The virginal wedding gowns were a punch in the gut and she nearly dropped the stack of designs before letting them tumble onto a nearby end table.
“We’ll marry tomorrow night,” he added, not sounding in the least bit perturbed by her reaction. “And steal away for a brief honeymoon, and then join your family in Greenwich.”
“I’m not getting married like this. I’m not being forced into a marriage against my will.”
“I don’t want an unwilling wife, either. I want you to want this, too—”
“That’s not going to happen.”
; “Not even for Jax?”
She took a step toward him and her gaze fell on the stack of bridal designs, the top one so outrageously fancy and fussy that it made her stomach cramp. “You don’t know me. You know nothing about the real me. You and I would not be compatible. We weren’t even compatible for one night—”
“That isn’t true. We had an amazing night.”
“It was sex.”
“Yes, it was. Very, very good sex.”
“But four hours or six hours of good sex isn’t enough to justify a life together.”
“Correct. But Jax is.”
His reasonable tone coupled with his reasonable words put a lump in her throat. He was the bad guy. He was the one who’d broken her heart. How dare he act like the hero now?
She blinked away the tears and shook her head and headed for the door.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he called after her. “If you won’t pick a dress, then I’ll have to select it for you.”
She stood in the doorway, her back to him. “Your desire to protect Jax means crushing me,” she said quietly. “And I know I don’t matter to you, that I mean nothing to you, but you should be aware that I wanted more in life, and once I was a little girl, just like Jax, and on the inside, I am still that little girl, and that little girl within me deserves better.”
Leaving his paneled study, she walked quickly down the long high-ceilinged hall and, spying an open door before her, went through that, stepping outside into the late afternoon light.
It was no longer raining but the sky was still gray, and the overcast sky turned the vast lawn and banked shrubbery into a landscape of shimmering emerald.
Logan descended the stone steps into the garden, feet crunching damp gravel. She began to walk faster down the path before her, and then she went faster, and then she broke into a run, not because she could escape, but because there was nothing else she could do with the terrible, frantic emotions clawing at her.
She dashed toward a stone fountain and then past that, focusing on the tall neatly pruned green hedges beyond. It wasn’t until she was running through the hedges, making turn after turn, confusion mounting, that she realized it was a maze, and then abruptly her confusion gave way to relief.
It felt good to be lost.
There was freedom in being lost...hidden.
She slowed, but still moved, feet virtually soundless on the thick packed soil, so happy to be free of the dark castle with the thick walls and small windows...so happy to be far from Rowan’s intense, penetrating gaze.
He didn’t know her and yet he seemed to know too much about her, including the worst things about her...such as her weakness for him.
It was true that she couldn’t seem to resist his touch, and it shamed her that she’d want someone who despised her. It shamed her that she despised him in return and yet she still somehow craved him.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
The physical attraction...the baffling chemistry...was wrong at so many levels.
She rounded a corner and nearly ran straight into Rowan. Logan scrambled backward. “How—” she started before breaking off, lips pinching closed because of course he knew his way about the maze. It was his maze.
His castle.
His world.
Her eyes burned. Her throat ached. She’d struggled for so many years, struggled to provide and be a strong mother, and now it was all being taken from her. Her independence. Her control. Her future.
She didn’t want to share a future with him.
She didn’t want to share Jax with him.
She didn’t want anything to do with him and yet here he was, blocking her path, filling the space between the hedges, tall and broad, so very strong...
“What are you doing?” he asked, his brow furrowing, his expression bemused. “It’s damp out. You don’t have a coat.”
“You’ve trapped me,” she whispered, eyes bright with tears she wouldn’t let spill because, God help her, she had to have an ounce of pride. “You’ve trapped me and you know it, so don’t taunt me...don’t. It’s not fair.”
And with a rough oath, he reached for her, pulling her against him, his body impossibly hard and impossibly warm as he shaped her to him. She shivered in protest. Or at least that’s what she told herself when dizzying heat raced through her and the blood hummed in her veins, making her skin prickle and tingle and setting her nerves on fire, every one of them dancing in anticipation.
Her head tipped back and she stared up into his eyes, searching the green-gold for a hint of weakness, a hint of softness. There was none.
“I do not know what fair means,” he said, his voice pitched low as his head dropped and his mouth brushed her temple and then the curve of her ear. “It’s not a word that makes sense to me, but you, mo gra, you make sense to me when you shouldn’t. You make me think that there is something bigger at work here.”
“It’s sex.”
“Good. I like sex.”
“It’s lust.”
“Even better.” His lips brushed her cheek and then kissed the corner of her mouth. “I know what to do with that.”
“But I want love, not lust.” She put her hands on his chest, feeling the hard carved plane of the pectoral muscle and the lean muscular torso below. “I want selfless, not selfish. I want something other than what I’ve known.”
“People are flawed. We are human and mortal and there is no perfection here. Just life.” His mouth was on hers and he kissed her lightly and then again, this time the kiss lingered, growing deeper and fiercer, making her pulse jump and her body melt and her thighs press together because he was turning her on...again.
Again.
Just a touch and she ached. A kiss and she went hot and wet and everything in her shivered for him.
And when he bit at the softness of her lower lip, she knew that he knew. She knew that he understood her hunger and desire, and the worst part of all was that their history, that one torrid night, meant that she knew he could assuage it, too. But it burned within her, this physical weakness. It burned because she despised any weakness that would give Rowan the upper hand.
“I hate you,” she whispered hoarsely.
“You don’t.” His hands twisted in her hair, tilting her head back, exposing her throat. His lips were on her neck and the frantic pulse beating beneath her ear. He kissed that pulse and then down, setting fire to her neck and the tender collarbone. “You don’t hate me. You want me.”
She gasped as his hand slid between them, fingers between her thighs, the heel of his palm against her mound.
And he was right. She did want him. But that only intensified her anger and shame.
She should be better than this. Stronger. Smarter.
Or at the very least, more disciplined.
Instead she let her eyes close and her body hum, blood dancing in her veins, making her skin warm and everything within her heat and soften.
She couldn’t remember now why she’d found making love to him so incredible and so deeply satisfying, but her memory had clung to the pleasure, and his mouth on her skin was lighting fire after fire, making her legs tremble, dispatching what was left of her resistance.
“We can make this work without love,” he said, his hand slowly sliding from her waist up her rib cage to just graze her breast.
She heard his words but they didn’t compute, not when she was arching into his hand, longing to feel more, wanting the pressure of his fingers against her sensitive skin, wanting more friction everywhere to answer the wild heat inside of her.
“We don’t have to be best friends to find pleasure with each other, either,” he added. “We just have to agree that Jax comes first. And I think we can do that.”
Then he kissed her so deeply that her brain shut
up and her heart raced, silencing reason. She shouldn’t want this, but she did. She shouldn’t crave the intensity, and yet it ached and burned, demanding satisfaction. With their history, she should know that nothing good would come of this...sex would just be sex...and afterward she’d feel used and hollow, but that was the future and this was the present.
“So is that a yes?” he murmured against her mouth.
“No,” she whispered, wanting the pleasure but not the pain.
“You want to be mine.”
“No.”
“You’re mine already. You just need to admit it.”
Her lips parted to protest but just then his hand brushed the swell of her breast and the words died unspoken. She shuddered, and the ripple of pleasure made her acutely aware of him. He was tall and muscular and hard. She could feel his erection straining against her. He wanted her. This...chemistry...wasn’t one sided.
He brushed the underside of her breast again and she sighed, even as her nipple tightened, thrusting tautly against the delicate satin of her bra.
“Rowan,” she choked, trying to cling to whatever was left of her sanity, and yet the word came out husky and so filled with yearning that she cringed inwardly.
“Yes, a ghra?”
“This is madness. We can’t do this—”
“But we already have. Now we just have to do right by our daughter.” He released her, and drew back, his hard handsome features inexplicably grim. “So the only real question is, do you intend to select your bridal gown or am I to do it?”
With the distance came a breath of clarity. “I refuse to be rushed into marriage.”
“We’re short on time, Logan.”
“We’re not short on time. We have our entire lives ahead of us. Jax is so young she doesn’t know the difference—”
“But I do. I want her to have what I didn’t have, which is a family.”
“No, you had a family. They were just dysfunctional...as most families are.” Logan’s voice sounded thin and faint to her own ears. She was struggling to stay calm, but deep down had begun to feel as if she was embroiled in a losing battle. Rowan was strong. He thrived on conflict. Just look at his career.
