Meeting His Match

by Tia Souders

  His eyes locked on hers, and she knew what he was really asking for—not just an extension, but a real shot at this, them.

  “I don’t know,” she answered because it was so much easier to play dumb than to choose from the side of her brain that screamed at her, none of this is real, while the other half rejoiced.

  Slowly, he threaded his fingers through hers and shifted their joined hands to rest on his stomach. The back of her hand burned the cotton of his shirt. “Are you glad I came?”

  “I was going crazy with boredom, and I missed you,” Marti said, mustering her courage. “Purely from a professional standpoint, of course,” she added because, baby steps.

  “Of course.” He grinned and his eyes crinkled.

  She shifted closer, closing the gap between them, practically sitting on his lap until she could smell the musky scent of his cologne combined with the laundry detergent he used.

  She reached out with her free hand and ran a finger over the scruff of his jaw. “Do you ever shave completely?”

  “Rarely. My five o’clock shadow is pretty heavy, so it just seems easier to keep it.”

  She murmured her approval, taking in the exact shade of green of his eyes, and she realized she had been wrong. They weren’t green like emeralds because they faded to blue—a brilliant shade of turquoise—right in the middle. She wondered how she’d never noticed before.

  “So did you have any more run-ins with Allison?” she asked, grimacing as she did. Apparently, jealousy wasn’t beneath her.

  “No.” His thumb stroked lazy circles over the back of her hand. “What about you? Any guys try to pick you up while I was away?”

  “Fat chance of that.” She laughed and thought of what Blue said, about not screwing things up.

  “There’s this new restaurant opening up tomorrow night. The one on 51st? They’re placing some major ads with the digital site, and my boss wants me to check it out so I can name drop in my column. You game?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She repressed her smile, staring down at their clasped hands.

  “What made you get into writing?” he asked, surprising her with the shift in conversation.

  Her eyes locked with his, and she straightened. Weirdly enough, no one had ever asked her that question. It seemed like something a lot of people would want to know about her. The fact he cared, made her want to tell him.

  “After my dad left, I started writing. In my journal mostly.” She turned her eyes to the throw blanket on the couch and slid it over her legs, needing something to do with her hands. “Then my senior year, I entered a couple of my poems in this competition, and I won first place. It was, I don’t know . . .” She searched for the words. “Kind of this proud moment for me. Like maybe I was better at something than most, which sounds terrible when I say it out loud.”

  He squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t sound terrible.”

  “And then I went on to college and joined the student paper. We kind of became this nerdy little team. But I loved it. That feeling you get when people read your words and listen to what you have to say, it’s addicting. I majored in journalism and creative writing and never looked back.”

  “And you still love it?”

  She nodded, picking at a piece of lint, wondering why talking about herself made her feel all squirmy inside. “Yeah, I do. Do you still love being a doctor?”

  “After what happened with Allison, I almost quit.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “My sister.” Logan smiled. “She reminded me of our mom and why I started in the first place. She reminded me that even if I could save one life that might not otherwise have been saved, then it was all worth it.

  “She loves you, by the way,” he added.

  “Clearly she has excellent taste.” Marti pulled her hand from his, then grabbed her cup of hot chocolate. Deciding she didn’t want it, she set it back down again and picked up the remote.

  “Why are you fidgeting?”

  “I am not.”

  “You are. You haven’t stopped since we sat down.”

  She grunted and crossed her arms over her chest, then realized she just did it again. Couldn’t she just be still?

  Logan laughed. “Am I making you nervous, McBride?”

  “Hardly.” She scoffed.

  “Hmmm,” he murmured, studying her, then without warning, he leaned in and brushed a kiss over her jaw. “Let’s see . . .” he said, leaning back, examining her. “Dilated pupils.”

  He pressed the tiniest of kisses below her mouth. “Shallow breathing.”

  What was he doing?

  Trailing his finger over the smooth skin of her neck, he expertly placed it over the tender spot below her jaw and held it there, glancing for several seconds with a look of total concentration that had Marti biting her lip. At this rate, her heart would fly from her chest. “Rapid pulse.”

  He met her eye as he slid his fingers from her neck, down to her shoulder. His other hand joined in, smoothly moving to the coiled knot at the top of her back. “Tense.”

  “What’s the diagnosis?”

  “Definitely nerves.” He spoke so close to her mouth, she could taste the chocolate on his breath.

  “Is it fatal?” It felt fatal. Any second her heart would burst from her chest.

  One corner of his mouth quirked. “I think you’ll live.”

  “Any particular remedies?”

  “Just one,” he whispered, and then he pressed his mouth to hers.

  EVERYTHING FADED AWAY. The air around them turned to dust. Her limbs were no longer hers. Her breath no longer her own.

  Logan parted her lips with his, kissing her gently until she surrendered. Fisting his shirt in her hand, she pulled him closer.

  He tasted of cocoa and mint—a peppermint patty—and the combination was as lethal as it was intoxicating.

  Logan slid his hand under her thighs, shifting her until she was halfway on his lap before he pressed her back into the soft cushion of the sofa with dizzying momentum.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice screamed this was a mistake, letting him in. Feeling.

  But her body had a mind of its own as his lips melted with hers. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the faint sound of the Rocky theme song Eye of the Tiger, and she thought, odd, but okay. She could roll with that.

  And then Logan sat up, pulling his lips from hers.

  She took in a shuddering breath as she tried to orient herself, to maintain some semblance of control in a situation where she had clearly just lost all of it.

  He pulled out his phone and checked the screen, and she realized in her post-kiss haze it had been the source of the sound.

  “Crap.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I’m on call. A patient’s in labor.”

  He tucked the phone back in his pocket and met her gaze. “You have to go,” she said for him.

  He nodded, if not regretfully, then reached out and helped her to a seated position, much to her mortification.

  He stood and headed for the door as she followed him like a lost puppy.

  “I have a meeting with Baby Co. tomorrow. We’re supposed to sign some paperwork on our deal, but then I’ll call you, set up a time to pick you up.”

  “Right. Sure,” she said. The big endorsement for his foundation. The entire reason he was there in the first place—doing this, dating her.

  She saw him out, closing the door behind him with a hollow thud to match the one in her chest.

  Turning, she put her back to the door, reminding herself where her priorities lay. “This is just a game, McBride.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MARTI

  THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR came before she was ready.

  Crap.

  Marti stared futilely at the makeup she had yet to apply, then down at her bare feet. She wasn’t ready, which was mostly due to spending too much time with the girls in the freebie closet before she left work, languishing over her situation with Loga
n.

  Another knock and she rushed out of her bedroom.

  “Don’t screw this up,” she reminded herself, repeating Blue’s words back to herself. This was professional. She needed to remember that. Their last encounter got out of hand.

  She flung open the door, and without a second glance, turned, waving him inside, rambling about needing to finish getting ready.

  “Marti . . .”

  She did a double take at the sound of his voice. He stood there, in the entryway to her apartment, looking like he stepped off the cover of GQ in a perfectly tailored black suit and a crisp, white dress shirt, sans tie. It was open slightly at the chest, revealing a triangle of tanned skin her eyes were inexplicably drawn to.

  He rubbed the heavy stubble over his jaw as his green eyes glittered, and he held out a bouquet of the most exquisite yellow roses she had ever seen.

  She caught her breath and her gaze snagged on his mouth.

  Don’t think of the kiss.

  Don’t think of the kiss.

  “Red seemed too cliché,” he said by way of explanation.

  Marti’s chest tightened as she stood in place, feet frozen. She swallowed. “Oh,” she said, taken aback. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  He arched a brow and took a step forward. “I wanted to,” he said softly.

  As a rule, she loved flowers. But she didn’t often accept them from men, and accepting them from Logan seemed . . . dangerous. First, they kissed last night, and now this.

  If all of this was for show, then why did he keep doing things that proved otherwise? Like he wasn’t just acting anymore? It was confusing and irritating and . . .

  Marti cleared her throat and reached up, fingering the jewelry around her neck. “Maybe you should save those kinds of gestures for when other people are around.”

  It was a rude thing to say, but Logan just rolled his eyes, taking her in stride like he always did. “Don’t worry, McBride, they’re still intact.”

  She frowned. “What are?”

  “Your walls.” He flashed her a knowing smirk, and her spine stiffened in response.

  She snatched the flowers from his hands, cheeks burning, and stormed into the kitchen where she retrieved a vase from under the sink. Why did it seem like every time things seemed to be going smoothly, something happened to set her off? Then again, things had been going a little too smoothly. She’d looked forward to seeing him a little too much, had thought about it all day, in fact. Even during their staff meeting when Blue snipped at her for daydreaming.

  She filled the vase with water and plunked it down on the counter with sharp, stabby movements. Had Logan hit a little too close to home with the wall comment? Was that why she was so annoyed?

  “Do you always have to be so crass?” she asked, turning to him and spearing him with her gaze.

  “Do you always have to ruin a moment? Read into everything?”

  Marti’s chest heaved, and she braced her back against the counter to steady herself. They hadn’t had a heated exchange like this in a while, and in an odd way, it grounded her, made her feel better because it reminded her of where they started. “Sorry for reading into a gesture that usually indicates a man’s interest in a woman. I guess I’m unclear on the proper etiquette for a man who is pretending to be your boyfriend for his own personal gain. I didn’t realize sweet, private gestures were a part of the package. My mistake,” she said, unable to stop herself from reminding him this was more for his benefit than hers, even if it was a lie.

  “So you’re saying you thought the gesture was sweet?”

  With a growl, she pushed off the counter and brushed past him, hands curled into fists. Good. Anger was good. It was far better than the softening in her chest.

  Her shoulder bumped his arm and he reached out, catching her. A beat of silence stretched between them, so she turned and inclined her head, meeting his gaze as his hand slid down to her wrist. Everywhere he touched sparked to life. If that was his intention, to light her skin of fire, he’d succeeded. Little did he know, it only made her resent him more.

  With a little tug, she pulled her arm out of his grip. Tucking her hands behind her back to hide her trembling.

  His eyes softened on her face, despite her glare. “I like you like this,” he whispered and raked a hand through the side of her hair.

  Her breathing hitched as he trailed a thumb down her cheek and over her jaw, up to her lower lip, sending her heart into overdrive. “Like what?” she managed.

  “No makeup. Bare,” he said, as if he could see right through her. “It’s just . . . all you. No masks. No barriers. Just pure Marti.”

  She swallowed, even as her throat tightened. “I need to go finish getting ready.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  LOGAN

  HE WAS AN IDIOT. HE knew that better than anyone. Because what started as a means to an end for him had turned into something much more. While he wanted a relationship, the last thing he wanted was to fall for a woman with a heart of stone. It was like begging someone for a dagger, then drawing them an anatomical map of the exact place to drive it home.

  She was as emotionally unavailable as they came, the opposite of what he wanted. Yet, that didn’t stop his heart from aching at the sight of her. It didn’t stop him from lying in his bed at night, dreaming of her lips, unable to sleep at the thought this might end before he was ready. Somehow, over the last few weeks, he had become determined to make her crack, break her resolve, and smash her walls.

  And if his instincts were right, she felt something for him too. She was just too scared to admit it.

  So, he’d play her game, at least for a little while.

  He sauntered through her living room, toward the open doorway she disappeared into, curious as to what clues he might find in her personal space that could tell him more about the woman who eluded him.

  He paused in the doorway to her bedroom and leaned casually against the frame, like he hadn’t a care in the world. Like she hadn’t just put him in his place and flicked a big fat verbal finger in his face.

  She hurriedly brushed on mascara, then capped it and picked up a tube of lipstick and began to paint her lips. Her eyes flickered up to him as she did, and much to his satisfaction, her hand shook slightly when she noticed his presence outside her bedroom door.

  He watched intently as she finished, then rubbed her lips together, and blotted with a tissue. The action nearly killed him.

  Spinning around, she walked to her closet, where she began to rummage for what he assumed were her shoes.

  Without waiting for permission, he stepped inside her room and reached out to her vanity, touching the tube of lipstick she just applied, only a little jealous it got to touch the softest lips on the planet.

  “Just how many of these do you need?” he asked to cover the direction of his thoughts when she caught him staring.

  “I get a lot from work.”

  He grunted, trying to wipe her ruby-red lips from his head as he moved past her vanity to the picture on her dresser. She stood next to a woman who was obviously her mother—arms wrapped around each other, feet sinking into a sandy beach. Marti could be her twin. Apart from age, they had the same auburn hair and startling blue eyes. It wasn’t hard to see where Marti got her beauty.

  “Nosy much?” she snipped, hunched over on the floor of her large closet.

  “Afraid of what I’ll see, McBride?”

  He noted the flicker in her jaw as she clenched her teeth and chuckled when she hurried back to her search.

  His eyes scanned past the dresser, over the bed covered in a pale cream comforter, to the wall opposite, covered in framed prints of all shapes and sizes, each one containing a quote.

  He began to read them to himself. To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong, Joseph Chilton Pearce. Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself, George Bernard Shaw. Dozens of inspirational sayings leapt out at him from the frames. The fact that
a woman so seemingly emotionless had these plastered on her walls perplexed him. Then again, it was only men she was cold with. It was him she shut out, and that knowledge stung just a little more than it should.

  “You have quotes on your wall?” he asked, needing to know about it.

  Marti turned and her gaze quickly shifted from him to the frames. “They’re just words that speak to me.”

  He nodded, even as his gaze flickered to her bed again. “They’re the last thing you see when you go to bed and the first thing you see when you wake up.”

  She ignored him, but he could tell by the way she avoided his eye, he had hit too close to the mark. Maybe Miss Queen of Single was a romantic after all.

  Logan turned back to the wall, his eyes taking in the words and catching on one quote in particular. He read the anonymous quote out loud, “Understanding is deeper than knowledge. There are many people who know you, but there are very few who understand you.”

  He let the words settle like dust in the silence. Something about them stuck with him—lodged in the space between his ribs and ached with the need to acknowledge it. Maybe because he desperately wanted to understand Marti.

  But as he gazed around her room, seeing a whole new side to her, he wondered if she even understood herself, because it was clear to him she seemed so far removed from her own truth—of why she shut people out—she couldn’t even see through the façade.

  He watched her closely now, the quote lying thickly between them. She swallowed and glanced away from him and said, “I’m ready.”

  Blink and he’d miss the softening in her expression, the catch in her voice. She was so closed off to love and relationships she couldn’t even see it. She wanted someone who understood her but wasn’t willing to put herself out there first. Underneath the tough, cynical façade was a vulnerability that made his chest ache. If she’d only let him in, he’d show her it could be different. He understood her, maybe all too well.