Читать книгу Blame It On The Cowboy - Delores Fossen, Delores Fossen - Страница 11

CHAPTER SIX

LOGAN WASN’T SURPRISED to see Reese. In fact, he’d anticipated it. In hindsight, though, he should have coupled his anticipation with a pair of pants. Greeting a burglar in his boxers just wasn’t very intimidating.

Reese noticed the boxers, all right. Her gaze slid over him, and even though he couldn’t see her eyes that well in the darkness, he thought maybe she was remembering the night in the hotel.

Logan certainly was.

In fact, when he’d dozed off earlier, he’d dreamed about it.

“Should I offer you a drink or call the cops?” he asked. The second one wasn’t really an option, of course. No way did he want to have to explain this to anyone. But Reese didn’t know that.

“You want the cops to find out you slept with me?” Reese tossed right back at him.

So she did know it was a bluff. She probably thought that made this a stalemate. It didn’t. Because Logan had something Reese wanted, and it didn’t have anything to do with the part of his body she was gawking at.

To stop the gawking, Logan took his jeans from the bed and pulled them on. She looked away when he did that. Maybe because she realized she’d been gawking, but her attention landed on the porcelain tit she was holding. She eased it back onto the floor with the rest of the broken clutter.

It wasn’t just any old porcelain tit, though. It’d been a “special” gift from Helene. Molded porcelain bookends of her breasts. An inside joke between the two of them. But one of the bookends had gone missing before she’d been able to give the set to him so Logan had instead used it as a decorative figurine.

Logan also took his dad’s knife from the nightstand and slipped it in his pocket. Not because he thought he might need it to get Reese out of there but because he didn’t want to risk her stealing it.

“By the way,” she said. “There’s a raccoon or weird dog running around downstairs.”

“Cat,” he corrected. “A couple of months ago my brother brought three cats here to stay temporarily. He moved the other two, but no one’s been able to catch that one.”

He could understand, though, how she’d mistaken it for a raccoon because it did look like one. And Reese suddenly looked a little horrified.

“Months?” she questioned. “Please tell me someone’s feeding it.”

He nodded, not that he wanted to have a conversation about the feline he’d dubbed Crazy Cat. “My assistant, Greg, leaves out food and changes the litter box.”

Though Greg had yet to see the cat. In fact, to the best of Logan’s knowledge, only he and now Reese had actually seen it since it had been brought to the building.

And this wasn’t at all what he wanted to discuss or think about.

“Redecorating?” she asked. She didn’t sound concerned that she’d just been caught breaking and entering. But she did look nervous. Reese was rubbing her hands along the sides of her jeans.

“More or less.”

Definitely less. The items were all things Helene had given him, and for some reason it gave him pleasure to smash them to bits. And then look at the bits. Strange because usually he couldn’t stand clutter or anything out of place, but he had no desire whatsoever to clean up this mess. In fact, he was enjoying watching the fine layers of dust build up with each passing week.

Reese stayed quiet a moment while she studied him. “It really was you with me in San Antonio. After I left your house, I considered the possibility that maybe you were trying to cover for your brother, and that perhaps he’d told you what the note I left in the hotel room said. You could have done that so his girlfriend wouldn’t be hurt. But it really was you. I can see it now.”

It did sting a little that she hadn’t been able to see it right off. He might look like Lucky, but they didn’t act anything alike. Of course, he hadn’t been acting like himself at that hotel, either.

“Julia Child,” he said to remind her that she had been the one to set the rules for that night.

Reese nodded, pushed her hair from her face. “Hot no-name cowboy.”

He waited to see if she was going to explain any of what’d happened that night. Apparently not.

“I came for the watch,” she said.

Yes, he’d figured that out. But what he hadn’t figured out was why. “Was it part of some con?”

Now, most people would have looked shocked and asked, What con? Or seemed outraged at such a suggestion. But because he’d run that background check on her and because she’d just broken into his place, Reese probably knew outrage and surprise would seem as genuine as the name she’d given him in that bar.

“I’d like to have that drink now,” she said.

Reese sank down onto one of the chairs in the sitting area. The stuffing was coming out of it, and it was covered with feathers from the throw pillows he’d gutted. Since it was copper colored, it looked like a huge molting chicken.

The drink offer hadn’t been genuine, but since Logan needed a refill, he flipped on the lamp and poured them each a glass. He handed it to her and then backed away. Even though he had on jeans now, he was still shirtless, and he was remembering the heated look she’d given him earlier.

A look he’d probably given her, too.

He didn’t understand why his body was attracted to this con woman, and he didn’t care. The attraction wasn’t going to play into this.

“How did you get into the building?” he asked. “Did you pick the lock?”

“Key.” She fished through her jeans pocket, came up with a key and dropped it on the small table next to the chair. “And don’t ask how I got it.”

“How’d you get it?”

She tossed back the shot and made a face just as she’d done after the tequila shots in the bar. “Found it. And no, I didn’t steal it. Nor did I steal anything once I was inside.” Reese paused. “You found out about my parents.”

“Yes,” he settled for saying. Logan didn’t add more. He wanted to see what spin she would put on this.

But there was no spin. She waited him out, and Logan decided he’d already spent too much time on Reese.

“Your parents, Marty and Vickie, are con artists. Your father died in prison a few years ago, but both have multiple arrests for pulling various scams. Scams in some cases where they used you.”

The PI had provided Logan with only one such case, but he figured there were more. In the one the that PI had learned about, Reese had distracted a store owner, claiming she fell and was hurt, while her parents stole items.

“That incident with Mia must have brought back some memories for you,” he snapped. “Of course, the difference is she wasn’t faking. So, what else did you fake? Did you pretend to be attracted to me—”

She came off the chair so fast that Logan didn’t have time to react. Reese took hold of him, jerked him to her and kissed him. It wasn’t the first time he’d been forced-kissed. It had happened one other time when he was a stupid teenager and had pretended to be Lucky so he could break up with a girl who was giving him some trouble.

That kiss was nothing like this one.

For one thing, there was some anger involved here. Not on his part. Logan was still trapped between surprise and “what the hell is she doing?” stage. Reese, though, was obviously trying to make a statement, and that statement was that she could make him feel the kiss in every inch of his body.

Every. Inch.

And she succeeded.

By the time she let go of him, Logan had moved on to the next stage. A hard-on. But since his dick had already caused him to make a bad decision by sleeping with her in the first place, Logan ignored the ache in his groin and stepped back.

“That’s why I slept with you,” she growled. “It didn’t have anything to do with who I am, your bank account, your ranch or your dusty stuff.” Reese flung her hand at the damaged items again.

The kiss obviously hadn’t affected her the same way it had affected him. Or so he thought. But then Logan heard her uneven breathing, saw the flush in her cheeks. Saw her glance at his hard-on. A long glance. That caused her breathing to become even more ragged.

It didn’t mean anything, of course.

So what if they were attracted to each other? It didn’t mean he was going to act on it. However, he was going to act on something else—getting her out of his life and away from his dick.

“For the record, I haven’t seen my mother in over two years,” she finally said, sinking back down onto the chair. “I really am a chef. Went to culinary school. And I wasn’t running a con on you.”

“Really?” He couldn’t have possibly sounded more skeptical.

“Really.” And she couldn’t have possibly sounded more pissed off. “What else did your spies dig up on me?”

Nothing. But clearly they’d missed something. Something that Logan would have them dig even deeper to find.

“Aren’t your con-artist parents enough dirt?” he asked her.

She stayed quiet again for several moments, but Logan thought she might be relieved. Yeah, there was definitely something else to learn about Reese Stephenson.

“I’ve done everything I can to distance myself from my parents and the things they did,” she finally said. “I never stay in one place for too long because I don’t want my mother to find me.”

“Then that should fit right into my plans.” He nearly brought up that he didn’t know what her plan had been, but he decided it wasn’t wise to risk another kiss. There were condoms in the loft, and he didn’t want that hard part of his body suggesting sex.

“What plans?” she asked.

“For you to leave.” He heard the words. The tone. It was probably a tone he used daily to someone involved in his business deals. But it did sound a little Old West, as if he were running her out of town.

Which he sort of was.