Slow Hands

by Faye Avalon

April wasn’t sure what to believe right then. Logan had tried to protect her? Had warned Veronica not to mention the name of April’s business? But why? Wouldn’t he relish the publicity for his new client?

  ‘Isn’t Logan representing you?’

  ‘Huh. As if. He’s still trying to fob me off by dangling that carrot.’

  April shook her head and then, since her head was swimming anyway, swigged down some wine. ‘What carrot?’

  ‘He said he’d ask some New York TV mogul whose divorce case he’s handling to give me a screen test for his latest blockbuster series. All I had to do was drop my case against you. Since he couldn’t guarantee I’d get the part, I told him to stick it.’

  Logan had offered to get Veronica a screen test? ‘He didn’t offer you money?’

  ‘You’re bloody joking. The man wouldn’t budge an inch. Kept insisting you were in no way at fault. That there was no case to answer. That he wasn’t going to let you accept liability when you’d done absolutely nothing wrong.’

  April’s heart thumped hard in her chest. He’d been protecting her, and all she’d done was lambast him with accusations.

  ‘He’s demanded the paper print a retraction about his representing me. I never actually said that, but I didn’t correct them when they assumed he was.’ She slugged more wine. ‘Shit—what a bloody mess.’

  Even as her heart was doing a happy dance, April actually felt sorry for Veronica. Okay, her methods were dubious, but since April had now sensed a crack in her armour, maybe they could make progress. Veronica was desperate for the limelight, and had demonstrated that she’d do anything to help her career. And, from the sad look in her eyes when she’d mentioned Haydon, it seemed the woman had a solid dose of heartache to go along with everything else.

  April knew the feeling.

  She shrugged off thoughts of Logan for now, and concentrated on her pitch.

  ‘Why don’t I get us another bottle?’ April said, reaching for her purse. ‘There’s something I’d like to run by you. Maybe we can both end up winners in all this.’

  * * *

  ‘Well, it’s better than nothing, I suppose.’

  Logan looked across the veranda as his brother commented on the retraction the paper had made about his representing Veronica, saying how they were sincerely sorry for any inconvenience caused.

  ‘Did you speak with Haydon?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Logan admitted, nursing a beer. ‘I think he misses her more than he’s letting on.’

  Logan knew the feeling only too well. He missed April so much that some days he found it hard to concentrate. It was an alien concept to him. Usually his focus was impeccable. Especially where work was concerned. But lately...

  ‘If you ask me, he had a lucky escape,’ Connor said stretching his legs out along the deck, his gaze slanted sideways at his brother. ‘Nobody needs a woman who gives them nothing but grief.’

  Tipping down his sunglasses, Logan eyed his brother. He caught the implication and decided to ignore it.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Connor said grinning. ‘Any more news on the sex toy lady?’

  The punch of Connor’s words hit Logan hard in his solar plexus, and he battled both irritation at his brother’s flippant reference and something else he couldn’t quite define.

  To cover his discomfort he pushed the sunglasses back to the bridge of his nose and took a swig from his beer. ‘Not since her email confirming she didn’t want me to act for her any more and demanding I return the documents that belong to her.’

  Logan had lost count of the calls he’d made to her. He’d gone to her apartment several times, only to be told by her friend Lizzie that she was staying with a friend in North London. Yeah... Most likely to avoid him.

  He ached to see her. He needed her to understand his motives, why he’d acted the way he had. Somehow he had to make her realise that he’d done everything with her interests at the centre of it all. He wasn’t ready to let her go. He wasn’t entirely sure he ever would be.

  ‘So why are you sitting on her documents, bro?’

  Although they were shadowed by his sunglasses, Logan narrowed his eyes at his brother’s knowing grin. ‘You keep pushing it and I’ll shove said documents straight up your ass, bro.’

  Connor laughed and reached for his beer. ‘And yet you didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Because I’m still her best bet to deal with any fallout from this. She didn’t give me a chance to explain anything. Just kept accusing me of doing my own thing, of not keeping her informed, of going behind her back.’

  Connor touched the lip of the beer bottle to his mouth. ‘You did go behind her back,’ he pointed out helpfully. ‘Your problem is that you want to fix things for her the same way you want to fix things for the rest of us. One day you’ll have to realise that sometimes we all need to fix things for ourselves.’

  ‘I’m her lawyer,’ Logan said defensively. ‘It’s my job to fix things.’

  Despite his protestations, Logan knew his brother had a point. Maybe he had pushed things too hard in his dealings with April. She’d said he hadn’t listened when she’d voiced her need to understand what he was doing on her behalf. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d kept her in the dark when he should have been more upfront.

  The reasons hovered beneath the surface of his thoughts. It was because he wanted to be her white frigging knight. Wanted to look into those dazzling eyes of hers and know that he’d made everything all right for her. That he was the one responsible for creating her happiness. Shit. He wanted to be the one making her life run smooth and easy.

  Deep in thought, Logan sipped his beer. Was his brother right? Was he too much of a fixer?

  April didn’t want that. Hadn’t she told him that she’d basically lived her whole life having someone else make decisions for her? Her parents had decided what she was and wasn’t capable of. Her mother had driven her into a career that had denied April the chance to do what she wanted.

  He should have taken all that to heart. Should have understood that she needed him to be upfront and totally honest with her. He should have kept her informed about every single step he took, told her his plans for her, talked them out with her to make sure it was what she wanted. What she needed. April had had every right to be part of those decisions.

  ‘Guess you’re missing the sex, too.’ Connor grinned as he brought his beer to his lips. ‘That woman certainly put a smile on your face, or maybe that was more to do with her introducing you to the tools of her trade. Bet she knew her way around them.’

  When Connor gave a low growl, Logan’s chest burned. ‘You need to watch your mouth, brother.’

  ‘No offence.’ Connor held up his hands. ‘Just saying.’

  Any other man and Logan would have shoved him from here to eternity for a remark like that, but Logan knew his brother’s wounds went deep and forced him to make light of his own relationships with women. He had every right to do that after what he’d been through. Taking a fall for a woman who had set him up from the start. A woman who had used him, then run off, leaving him to pick up the pieces.

  Logan often wondered what scars from their past his siblings carried, but they rarely spoke of what had happened to them, each of them getting on with their lives. But Logan knew it wasn’t always that easy.

  Being honest about things that went deep never was.

  When Connor went inside to get two more beers from the refrigerator, Logan reached out to the side table and picked up his phone. It was time to end this stalemate with April. It was time to get this sorted. It was time to tell her everything about the revelations he’d just had.

  And it was about time she answered his fucking calls.

  His temper hiked as it went to voicemail. He tried again. Voicemail. And again.

  This time he sucked in a breath. ‘Answer my calls, April. If you want those
documents back, give me the courtesy of five minutes of your valuable time.’

  He stabbed the ‘end call’ button, his lungs pumping, blood boiling. But beneath his anger lay a bone-deep frustration and a terrifying fear that she might never forgive him. She might never give him the time of day so that he could apologise.

  Where the hell was she? What was she doing? Who was she with?

  It was driving him slowly insane.

  Tomorrow he’d call at her place again. Persuade her friend to give him the address of where she was staying. He’d camp outside the door if he had to, but one way or the other he was going to see her, talk to her.

  Two hours later Logan said goodbye to his brother, stashed the empty beer bottles in the recycling box, and went into his study. He felt fatigue deep in his bones, but he knew he was in for another night of broken sleep. He might as well do something constructive and get some work done.

  The knock at his front door stopped him in his tracks.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LOGAN HADN’T HAD time to prepare for the sight of April standing on the threshold of his home. Of all the scenarios he’d imagined, strangely, that hadn’t been one of them. He’d never expected her to come and see him of her own free will—especially not considering the way he’d been virtually stalking her.

  But, despite she’d damn near stopped his heart, she wasn’t giving any indication that her visit was meant to be particularly amiable.

  ‘Are you alone?’

  Logan raised his eyebrows. What the hell was she insinuating? That he’d jumped into bed with another woman before it was even cold after her presence there?

  He wasn’t going to justify that question with an answer, so he simply stepped aside for her to enter.

  She shoved past him. ‘Good, then we can talk.’

  He followed as she headed straight through to the living room, his gaze eating her up like a man denied sustenance for far too long.

  She turned to face him with a haughty tilt to her chin, her shoulders back and displaying breasts that he knew fitted his palms to perfection. Her expression gave nothing away, and incongruously he imagined she’d make one hell of a poker player. But because he couldn’t get a steer on what she was thinking, or her reasons for being there, it pissed him off.

  ‘So you want to talk now, do you?’ Logan said, barely banking his temper as he made himself stroll into the room.

  All he really wanted was to grab her, kiss that bloody scornful look off her mouth, and make her remember how damn good it was between them.

  ‘Well, that’s rich, considering I’ve been calling you half a dozen times a day since you did your disappearing act.’

  ‘I didn’t disappear,’ April said. ‘I went to stay with a friend. To get my head straight.’

  He crossed to the balcony doors, hoping the view of sparkling lights from the harbour would go some way to easing his temper...along with the idiotic ache dead centre of his chest.

  ‘Considering most of the rubbish that was in your head the last time we met, I guess that explains why it took so long.’

  ‘Considering that what was in my head the last time we met was down to your underhand ways, it really should have taken longer.’

  He kept staring out at the harbour, but since he needed something to do with his hands he shoved them in his pockets.

  ‘You’re making me sound like the spawn of the devil.’

  He waited for her response, tension moving deep between his shoulder blades as he felt her glare straight at him. After long moments, she sighed.

  ‘You don’t make it easy, Logan. You go off doing your own thing, not bothering to tell me you’re even thinking about offering any kind of deal. As far as I knew, Veronica didn’t have much of a leg to stand on—then I overhear you offering her compensation in return for her dropping the case. What was I supposed to do?’

  His answer to that was instant. ‘You should have trusted me. You should have stayed around long enough to let me explain.’

  The fact that she hadn’t had cut him to shreds. He still felt the raw pain of desertion deep at the core of his being. He hadn’t thought he’d ever hurt that way again, but even his parents’ walking out hadn’t ripped at his heart in the same way April’s walking away from him had.

  Again, there was a thundering silence, during which he willed her to tell him that he was mistaken. That she did trust him. That she had wanted to stay. But her response wasn’t what he’d hoped for.

  ‘You made it hard for me to do that, Logan.’

  Briefly, he closed his eyes. Only when he knew the look in them wouldn’t betray his tumble of feelings did he open them and turn around. Every time he looked at her his heart damn near thumped out of his chest, in acute and imminent danger of landing at her feet.

  ‘At the very least you could have given me the benefit of the doubt. Asked me straight out about the deal you heard me making without flying off the handle and making assumptions.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right. I should have asked you and not jumped to conclusions. But, as we’d already had a conversation about keeping me in the loop, I shouldn’t have had to remind you. I was supposed to be your client. You could have run it by me, got my take on it. But, no, you went off with all guns blazing and took matters into your own hands. Trying to sort everything without letting anyone else get a look-in.’

  Because she had a point, and because he was painfully reminded of the conversation he’d had with his brother, Logan made himself breathe. Not an easy thing to do—especially when he was pitted not only against the tirade of her accusation but also the fact that she was little more than an arm’s length away from him right then, and he could reach out and touch her.

  When had she stepped closer? Had he? He could smell her sweet fragrance, feel her energy wrapping around him, look into those magnificent eyes... She had the power to steal the breath clean out of his lungs.

  ‘That’s the second time today I’ve been accused of trying to sort everyone’s problems. Of going behind people’s backs so I can fix things without even consulting them. The thing is... Shit, I don’t know what the thing is.’

  ‘The thing is,’ April said, with the ghost of a smile, ‘you’ve been doing it for so long, you can’t see how to do it any other way. It’s just the way you are.’

  Her words had a resigned air to them, as if she accepted the situation and knew there was no working through her issue with him.

  He could tell her he’d changed. That he would try and be more upfront with her. That in future he’d run everything past his clients before he acted—that he’d run everything past her.

  Yeah, he could say all that—except he wasn’t sure he believed it himself, so he had little chance of convincing April.

  She saw right through him.

  Which meant he needed to get this over with as fast as he could. He couldn’t bear having her in the same room, within touching distance, and not being able to sweep her into his arms and kiss the living shit out of her. Even more, he couldn’t bear her spelling it out that it was over. That while she acknowledged he was the way he was she could never accept it.

  ‘I’ll get you those documents you asked for.’

  He brushed past her, striding to his study on heavy legs. Once there, he opened a drawer to his desk and pulled out the folder.

  He hadn’t expected her to follow him, so he stayed behind his desk, needing the distance, because he didn’t want to embarrass himself by grabbing her and begging her to give him a freaking chance. She’d made it clear that it was too late. He’d damn well ruined what they’d shared by being an intractable jerk.

  Keeping his expression blank, he offered her the folder containing the business-related papers she’d asked to have returned.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking them after a moment’s hesitation. ‘When I asked for these back, I
wasn’t sure of my next steps.’

  Part of him just wanted her to leave. He didn’t need to hear about her newly appointed legal representatives and how they were a far better fit for her, supporting her, giving her their advice, while checking and double-checking that she was happy with what they planned to do to represent her.

  To hell with that. He was the only one who could represent her. The only one who, despite her accusations to the contrary, had her best interests at heart. And, while he might be dogmatic and controlling, nobody would have her back like he would. Nobody.

  Angry with both himself and April, he sat and reached for the cigar sitting in his ashtray. When it was apparent she wasn’t about to speak again, he stuck the unlit cigar in his mouth and pushed back in his chair.

  ‘Was there something else?’

  Her eyes lit, all that warm brown turning fiery with what looked like annoyance. She pulled over an easy chair, placed it in front of his desk, and sat.

  ‘Tell me something. Why do you keep a bloody cigar on your desk? You’ve got one here, one in your London office, yet I never see you light up. What’s the deal?’

  Knowing she was as riled as he was by their encounter gave him a kind of satisfaction.

  Taking the cigar from his mouth, he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, studying it. ‘I like having it in my mouth. It takes the edge off.’

  Her expression turned circumspect. ‘The edge off what?’

  He shrugged. ‘Whatever’s on my mind at the time. Helps me concentrate.’

  ‘So you buy yourself cigars to help you concentrate?’ she said, as if mesmerised by the movement of his hands. ‘Wouldn’t you be better off with a pencil, or a pen, or something?’

  He was pretty mesmerised himself right then. Mostly by the way she licked her lips, the tip of her tongue just visible, but sending a shock of reaction to his groin.

  ‘They were to celebrate my first big win,’ he said, before he’d even realised he was about to speak. ‘A box of Cuban cigars.’

  Her gaze shot to his. ‘You bought yourself cigars to celebrate winning your first case? Most men would have gone for a luxury car.’