Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2017 Books 5 - 8 - Jane Porter, Andie Brock - Страница 15
ОглавлениеTHEY’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.
High risk, high stakes all the way.
“You are so focused on the end goal—getting Jax, being with Jax—that you don’t realize you’re crushing me!”
“I’m not crushing you. I’m doing my best to protect you. But you have to trust me—”
“I don’t.” Her voice sounded strangled. “At all.”
“Then maybe that’s what you need to work on.”
“Me?”
He shrugged, as if compromising. “Okay, we. We need to work on it. Better?”
* * *
Back in her suite of rooms, Logan paced back and forth, unable to sit still. It was late, and Jax was asleep in the modified bed that had been assembled earlier against one wall of the huge walk-in closet, which had been turned into a bedroom for the toddler with the addition of a small painted chest, large enough to hold toddler-sized clothes, and provided a place for a lamp. It was a small, brass lamp topped with a dark pink shade that cast a rosy glow on the cream ceiling chasing away shadows and gloom. A framed picture of woodland fairies hung on the wall over the chest, giving Jax something to look at while in her snug bed. Rowan had even made sure Jax would be safe from falling out by adding a padded railing that ran the length of the bed.
But with Jax in bed for the night, Logan had far too much time to think and worry.
And she was worried.
She was also scared.
She was caught up in a sea of change and she couldn’t get her bearings. She’d lost control and felt caught, trapped, pushed, dragged about as if she were nothing more than a rag doll.
But she wasn’t a doll and she needed control. And if she had to share power, she’d share with someone she liked and admired and, yes, trusted.
Someone with values she respected.
Someone with integrity.
Rowan had no integrity. Rowan was little more than a soldier. A warrior. Great for battle but not at all her idea of a life partner...
Logan swallowed hard, trying to imagine herself wedded to Rowan. Trying to imagine dinners and breakfasts and holidays, never mind attending future school functions with him...
She couldn’t see it.
Couldn’t imagine him driving Jax to school or returning to pick her up or sitting in the little chairs for parent-teacher conferences. She couldn’t see him being that father who was there. Present.
And then a lump filled her throat because maybe, just maybe, she didn’t trust Rowan to love Jax because her father hadn’t loved her. Maybe this wasn’t about Jax at all—history was full of men who were good parents.
Logan had grown up surrounded by men who knew how to put their families first. Men who were committed and involved. She’d envied her classmates for having devoted fathers...fathers who routinely made it to their daughters’ soccer games and dance recitals. Men who zipped up puffy jackets before they took their little girls outside into the cold. Men who’d put out an arm protectively when crossing a busy street. Men who didn’t just show up in body but were there emotionally. Men who taught their daughters to ride bikes and drive cars and navigate life.
Logan’s eyes stung. She held her breath, holding the pain in.
She’d wanted one of those fathers. She’d wanted someone to teach her about life and love and boys and men.
She’d wanted someone to tell her she was important and valuable. She’d wanted someone to say she deserved to be treated like a princess...like a queen...
Logan blinked, clearing her eyes.
But just because she didn’t have a loving, attentive father, it didn’t mean that Jax couldn’t. Maybe Rowan could be a proper father. Maybe Rowan could teach Jax about life and love and boys...
And men.
Exhaling slowly, Logan glanced from the door of the closet—open several inches so she could keep an ear open in case Jax needed her—to the bedroom door that opened onto the castle hall.
She needed to speak to Rowan.
She didn’t know what she’d say, only that she needed to speak to him about the whole marriage thing and family thing and understand what it meant to him. Was he going to be a father in name only or did he really intend to be part of Jax’s life?
Because being a father had to be more than carrying on one’s family name. Being a father meant being there. Being present. Being interested. Being patient. Being loving.
Logan peeked in on Jax and in the rosy pink glow she could see her daughter was fast asleep, her small plump hand relaxed, curving close to her cheek.
Jax’s steady breathing reassured her. She was sleeping deeply. She shouldn’t wake for hours—not that Logan would be gone hours. Logan planned to find Rowan and speak to him and then return.
She’d be gone fifteen minutes, if that. It’d be a short, calm conversation, and she’d try to see if they couldn’t both discuss their vision for this proposed...marriage...and find some common ground, create some rules, so that when she returned to the bedroom she’d feel settled, and perhaps even optimistic, about the future.
At the foot of the staircase Logan encountered an unsmiling man in a dark suit, wearing a white shirt and dark tie.
“May I help you?” he asked crisply, revealing an accent she couldn’t quite place.
“I was just going to see Rowan,” she answered faintly, brow knitting, surprised to see someone so formally dressed at the foot of the stairs, and then understanding seconds later that he wasn’t just anyone in a suit and tie, but a bodyguard...probably one of Rowan’s own men. Which also meant he was probably armed and dangerous. Not that he’d pose a threat to her.
“Is he in his study?” she asked, nodding toward the corridor on the opposite side of the stairwell.
“He’s retired for the night.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that, unable to imagine Rowan retiring from anything.
“His room is upstairs, just down from yours,” the man added.
She knew where Rowan’s room was. It was just on the other side of Jax’s closet. The suite of rooms all had interior connecting doors, with the closet being shared by both bedrooms, but the door to Rowan’s room had been locked and the chest of drawers had been placed in front of it, making the closet more secure.
It had been Rowan’s suggestion.
He’d thought Logan would sleep better if she knew that no one could enter the room without her permission.
He was right. She did feel better knowing that the only way in and out of her suite was through the door to the hall, a door she could lock, a door she could control.
She’d been grateful for Rowan’s understanding.
“Did he turn in a long time ago?” she asked.
“Quarter past the hour maybe. I can ring him for you, if you’d like.”
“Not necessary,” she answered lightly. “I can just stop in on my way back to my room.”
She hesitated, glancing to the heavy front door across the entry hall.
She wondered just how far she’d get, if she ran for the door. Would she be allowed out? Somehow she suspected not. She sensed that this bodyguard wasn’t just there to keep the bad guys out of Castle Ros, but to keep her and Jax in.
Rowan wasn’t taking any chances.
And just like that she thought of Joe, and how Joe once upon a time must have been a bodyguard very much like this, a tall, silent man in a dark suit. That is, back before Rowan sent Joe to her, and Joe dropped the suit and intense demeanor to become her Joe, the recent college grad grateful to have a job...
Even though he was already employed, and apparently drawing two salaries. Her mouth quirked. She ought to speak to Joe about that.
“I’ll head back upstairs,” she said. “Good night.”
His head inclined. “Good night.”
And then she retraced her steps, footsteps muffled on the thick carpeting on the stone steps. The same carpet ran the length of the second-floor gallery with the corridor stretching east and west, marking the two wings of the castle.
Rowan opened his bedroom door just moments after she knocked, dressed in gray joggers and a white T-shirt that stretched tight across his chest and then hung loose over his flat, toned torso.
She couldn’t help wondering if he’d been expecting her.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
He nodded and opened the door wider, inviting her in.
As she crossed the threshold, she flushed hot and then cold, her skin prickling with unease. She wasn’t sure this was a good decision. She wasn’t sure how she’d remain cool and calm if their conversation took place here.
As he closed the door, her eyes went to his oversize four-poster bed and then to the heavy velvet curtains drawn against the night. The room was close to the same size as hers and had the same high ceiling, but it felt far more intimate. Maybe it was the big antique bed. Or maybe it was the thick drapes blocking the moon. Or maybe it was the man standing just behind her, sucking all of the oxygen out of the room, making her head dizzy and her body too warm.
She drew an unsteady breath and turned to face him, thinking she’d made a mistake. She shouldn’t have ever come here, to him.
A tactical error, she thought. And worse, she’d voluntarily entered dangerous territory.
Swallowing her nervousness, she glanced to the chairs flanking the impressive stone hearth. “Can we sit?”
“Of course.”
“It’s not too late?”
“Not at all. I was just reading. I don’t usually sleep for another hour or two.”
Her gaze slid over the bed with its luxurious coverlet folded back, revealing white sheets.
She wanted to leave. She wanted to return to her room. It was all too quiet in here, too private. “Maybe it’s better if we talk tomorrow. I’m sure you’re as tired as I am—”
“Not tired yet. But I will be, later.”
“I’m tired, though. Probably too tired to do this tonight. I just thought since Jax was asleep it might be convenient, but I’m worried now she’ll wake and be scared...” Her voice drifted off and she swallowed, her mouth too dry.
He said nothing.
Her heart hammered harder. She felt increasingly anxious. He was so intense, so overwhelming. Everything about him made her nervous, but she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t let him know how powerless she felt when with him, and how that was bad, really bad, because she needed control. She needed to be able to protect herself. And Jax.
Logan grasped at Jax now, using her as an excuse to leave Rowan’s room. “Let’s schedule a chat for the morning. It would be best then. I wasn’t thinking when I came here. I really don’t want Jax to wake up and be frightened.”
“I have security cameras. We’ll know if she stirs. You’ll be able to be at her side before she even wakes up.”
Logan straightened, shocked. He had cameras? Where? “You’re watching our rooms?”
“I monitor the entire castle. There are cameras everywhere.”
“You’ve been spying on us in our room?”
He sighed and crossed to a wall with dark wood paneling. Shifting a small oil landscape, he pushed a button, and suddenly the wall split, opening, revealing a massive bank of stacked TV screens. There had to be five screens across, and five down, and some of the screens were blanks, while others showed interior castle rooms and corridors, and others revealed exterior shots: entrances, garden paths and distant iron gates.
She walked to the wall of monitors and searched for her room with the pretty canopied bed, but the only thing she could see was the closet door, slightly ajar, just as she’d left it. And then she found another monitor showing the hall outside her room.
No bed shots.
Nothing that indicated he was watching her. At least, not until she’d exited her room and approached his.
So he could have known she was coming to see him. He could have watched her leave her room and walk toward his.
She turned to face him. “You knew I was looking for you. You saw me downstairs talking to the bodyguard.”
“I knew you’d left your room. But I don’t have the sound on. I never do. It’d be too distracting.”
“So you didn’t know I was asking for you?”
“I thought maybe you wanted a snack.”
She just stared at him, trying to decide if she believed him or not. She wanted to believe him, but there was no trust, and that was a huge problem. “So you closed the door on the cameras when I knocked on your door?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t want me to see them.”
“I don’t want anyone to see them. Security is my business.”
“But you showed me.”
“I thought you should know they are there. I thought you’d be reassured that Jax isn’t alone or in danger.”
“But if the door is closed on the screens, how do you monitor movement in the castle?”
“The cameras also alert me to movement, and I get those alerts on my computer, my phone and my watch.”
“Can you turn those off?”
“I can disable them or mute them. Usually I just glance at the screen, note the alert and then ignore. I never disable them. It defeats the purpose of being secure.”
She turned to pace before the fire.
Rowan said nothing for several minutes, content to just watch her. Finally he broke the silence. “What’s on your mind, Logan?”
He didn’t sound impatient. There was nothing hard in his tone and yet she felt as if she was going to jump out of her skin any moment now. “I thought maybe we could discuss your proposal,” she said, unable to stop moving. Walking didn’t just distract her, it helped her process, and it minimized her fear and tension. She didn’t want to be afraid. She didn’t want to make decisions because she was panicked. Those were never good decisions. “I thought we could see if we couldn’t come to some agreement on the terms.” She paused by the hearth, glanced at him. “Clarity would be helpful.”
“The terms?” he repeated mildly. “It’s not a business contract. It’s a marriage.”
She stiffened at the word marriage. She couldn’t help it. It was one thing to imagine Rowan as a father to Jax, but another to consider him as her husband. “Relationships have rules,” she said cautiously.
“Rules?”
She ignored his ironic tone and the lifting of his brow. The fact that he sounded so relaxed put her on edge. “Most relationships evolve over time, and those roles, and rules, develop naturally, gradually. But apparently we don’t have time to do that, and so I think we should discuss expectations, so we can both be clear on how things would...work.”
He just looked at her, green gaze glinting, apparently amused by every word that came from her mouth. His inability to take her seriously, or this conversation seriously, did not bode well for the future. “This isn’t a game,” she said irritably, “and I’m trying to have an adult conversation, but if you’d rather make a joke of this—”
“I’m not making a joke of anything. But at the same time, I don’t think we have to be antagonistic the night before our wedding.”
She shot him a fierce look. “We’re not marrying tomorrow. There is absolutely no way that is going to happen tomorrow, and should we one day marry, we will not need a honeymoon. That is the most ludicrous suggestion I’ve heard yet.”
“I thought all brides wanted honeymoons.”
“If they’re in love!” Her arms folded tightly across her chest. “But we’re not in love, and we don’t need alone time together. We need time with Jax. She ought to be our focus.”
“An excellent point. Now please sit. All the marching back and forth reminds me of cadets on parade.”
“I’ll sit, but only if you do,” she said, gaze locking with his. She wasn’t about to let him score any points on her. She hadn’t survived this long to be beaten by him now. Her father’s betrayal and abandonment had been one thing, but to be betrayed and abandoned by her first lover? That had opened her eyes and toughened her up considerably.
“Happy to sit,” he replied. “I imagine we will have many future evenings in here, in our respective chairs, you knitting, me smoking my pipe—”
“You don’t smoke and I don’t knit.”
He shrugged. “Then we’ll find another way to enjoy each other’s company.”
She was fairly certain she knew what he meant by another way to enjoy each other’s company. He’d always been about the sex. Maybe that’s because that was the only way he could relate to women. “You’re being deliberately provocative.”
“I’m trying to get you excited about the future.”
“Mmm.” She arched a brow. “Are you also going to sell me beachfront property in Oklahoma?”
“No. That’s the kind of thing your father did. I’m honest.”
Her jaw tightened, hands balling into fists. “You don’t have to like him, but I ask you to refrain from speaking of him like that in front of Jax. She doesn’t need to be shamed.”
“I’m not shaming her. And I’m not shaming you, either—”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m just not going to be fake. If I’m upset, I’ll tell you. If I’m content, you’ll know. And since we’re going to raise Jax together, it’s better if we’re both forthright so there is no confusion about where things stand.” He gave her a faint, ironic smile. “Or sit, since that was the whole point.”
She shot him a look of loathing before crossing to the hearth and sitting down in one of the large leather chairs, watching as he followed and then took his time sitting down in the chair across from hers.
He smoothed his T-shirt over his lean, flat stomach before extending his legs and crossing them at the ankle, and then he looked up into her eyes and smiled.
“Better?” he asked.
She ground her teeth together. Rowan Argyros was enjoying himself immensely.
“My father was the breadwinner,” she said flatly. “My mother was a homemaker. It meant that when they divorced, she still had to depend on him to provide. I will never do that. If we marry, I’m not giving up my career.”
“When we marry, we won’t end up divorced.”
“I’m not giving up my career.”
“You barely scrape by. I make millions every year—”
“It’s your money. I want my own.”
“I’ll open a personal bank account for you, deposit whatever you want, up front, and it’ll be yours. I won’t be able to touch it.”
“It will still be your money. I don’t want your money. I’m determined to be self-sufficient.”
“Why?”
She gave him a long look. “Surely you don’t really have to ask that.”
“You’re the mother of my child. You’ve struggled these past few years to provide for her. Let me help.”
“You can help with Jax’s expenses. We will split them. Fifty-fifty.”
“What if I provide for Jax and the family, and then you can use your own...money...for your personal expenses?”
She leaned forward. “Why do you say money like that?”
“Because you have virtually nothing in your bank account.” He rolled his eyes, apparently as exasperated with her as she was with him. “I’m not hurting financially. According to the Times, I’m one of the wealthiest men in the UK. I can afford to make sure you’re comfortable.”
“My work gives me an identity. It gives me purpose.”
“Being a mother doesn’t do that?”
“This isn’t about being a mother. It’s about being a woman, and I don’t want to be a woman who depends on a man. My mother spent her life living in my father’s shadow, and as we both know, he cast a pretty big shadow. I don’t want to be defined by a man, and I like being able to contribute to the world.”
He said nothing and she added more quietly, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Work makes me feel valuable. It tells me I matter.” She looked away, throat working, emotion threatening to swamp her. “I need to matter. I must matter.” Her eyes found his again. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“But you do matter. You’re the sun and moon for Jax. You’re her everything.”
“And what if something happens to Jax? What if—God forbid—there was a tragedy, and I lost her? I’d be lost, too. I’d be finished. There would be nothing left of me.” Her voice cracked but she struggled to smile. She failed. “She’s everything.”
“Nothing is going to happen to her,” he said gruffly. “Why would you think that?”
She couldn’t answer. She bit down into her lip, her heart on fire, because bad things did happen. Her parents had divorced when she was young and her father had virtually forgotten her and then later it turned out that he was a criminal...he’d stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from his clients...
“Nothing is going to happen,” Rowan repeated more forcefully.
She nodded, but tears were filling her eyes and she was pretty sure that she hadn’t convinced either of them of anything.
For a long minute it was quiet. Logan knit her fingers together in her lap, knuckles white. Rowan didn’t say anything, deep in thought. She glanced at him several times, thinking he’d lost the glint in his eyes, aware that his hard features had tightened, his mouth now flattened into a grim line.
She couldn’t handle the silence any longer. “Maybe I shouldn’t feel that way. Maybe it seems irrational—”
“It doesn’t.” His voice, pitched deep, cut her short.
She looked at him, surprised.
His broad shoulders shifted. “My little brother’s death destroyed my mother, and it ended my parents marriage.”
“You lost a brother?”
He nodded. “I was seven. Devlin was two, nearly three.”
Jax’s age.
He knew what she was thinking. She could see it in his eyes.
“But that won’t happen to Jax,” he added roughly, his voice as sharp as ground glass. “I will make sure nothing happens to her. And that’s a promise.”
She couldn’t look at him anymore, couldn’t stomach more of the same conversation. Jax was so valuable. Jax was perfect and innocent, not yet hurt by life or other people. She didn’t yet know that people—even those who claimed to care about you—would fail you. Hurt you. Maybe even deliberately hurt you.
Logan hadn’t remained a virgin so long because she didn’t have options. Her virginity wasn’t kept because there weren’t men available but because she wanted to hold part of herself back. She wanted to save herself for the right person. She’d wanted to give that one thing—that bit of innocence—to a man who’d value her.
How she’d gotten that wrong!
Being disappointed was a fact of life. Learning to deal with that disappointment, another critical life lesson. And it was fine to learn about life, and have to accept loss and change, but far better if those lessons came later. If the individual self was shaped and formed. Strong.
“You and I can make sure Jax is safe,” Rowan said quietly, drawing her attention to him. “With vigilance we can give her the life I know you want for her.”
Logan blinked tears away. “What life do I want for her?”
His gaze held hers for an extra long moment. “You don’t want her crushed. You don’t want her broken. You want her to remain a child as long as possible—safe, loved, cherished.” He hesitated, and the silence hung there between them, weighted. “You want to give her the childhood you never had.”
His words cut, pricking her when she didn’t have the proper defenses. Startled, uncomfortable, she left her chair, crossing the floor a ways to stand before the bank of monitors. Jax’s door remained ajar, just as she’d left it. She suddenly wished she could see Jax, though. She wanted to be sure the little girl was still soundly sleeping.
“Do you have sound, if you wanted it?” she asked thickly, keeping her back to him even as the threat of tears deepened her voice.
“Yes.”
“Can you turn it on in her room? Or in my room? So we can check to see if it’s quiet or if she’s crying?”
“I could turn the camera in her room on. If you’d like?”
She glanced at him now. “So there is a camera in the closet?”
“I disabled it earlier, but I can turn it on.”
“I didn’t see one in the closet. Where is it?”
“It’s positioned in the crown molding, hidden in the shadows of the woodwork.”
“It’s very small then?”
“No bigger than the head of a writing pen.”
“Are cameras truly manufactured that small?”
“Mine are.”
“You make cameras?”
He shrugged. “One of my companies manufactures cameras and security equipment. These small cameras are now used all over the world, in every big hotel, casino, government building.” He crossed to her side, tapped several buttons on a panel and suddenly one of the dark screens came to life, and then he tapped another key on the panel and she could see Jax in her little bed, still sound asleep, although she now lay on her back, arms up by her head.
Logan shot him a troubled look. “I hate that you can spy on us.”
“I don’t spy on you. I haven’t spied on you ever.”
“Joe...?”
“Protection. And the cameras that remain are for protection.
“I deactivated all of the cameras in the closet, the bathroom, the bedroom, but the one positioned on the closet door. I thought it was important to know if Jax wandered out.”
Logan shot him another assessing look. “Or if someone wandered in.”
“Yes.”
“Does that include me?”
“You’re her mother.”
“Which is why you’re afraid I might try to run away with her.”
He made a soft, tough mocking sound. “It’s crossed my mind,” he agreed. “More than once.”
The smiling curve of his firm mouth just barely reached his eyes. His green gaze wasn’t as warm as it was challenging. She didn’t understand what she saw, didn’t understand the tension or emotion...if it was emotion. But then he was an enigma, and he had been from the start.
That night at the auction he’d given her the same look—long, searching, challenging.
He’d looked at her with such focus that he didn’t seem to be standing across the room, not part of the auction, but all by himself, and it was just the two of them in the room.
Everyone fell away that night in March.
The music, the sound, the master of ceremonies at the microphone.
There was just Rowan standing on the side of the stage looking at her, making her go hot and cold and feel things she didn’t know a stranger could make her feel.
“And why would I run from you?” she asked, her chin lifting, her voice husky. She wasn’t going to be the one to break eye contact. She wasn’t going to back down. Not from him, not from anyone.
“Because you know when I take you to bed, it’ll change everything. Again.”
Her stomach flipped and her head suddenly seemed unbearably light, as if all the blood had drained away. “That’s not happening.” Thank God her voice was relatively firm because her legs were definitely unsteady.
“You sound so sure of yourself.”
“Because I know myself. And I know you now, and I know how devastating it would be to go to bed with you—and not because you’re good in bed, but because you’re cruel out of bed, and I don’t need more cruelty in my life.”
“That was three years ago.”
“Perhaps, but standing here with you, it seems like yesterday.”
He shrugged. “I can’t change the past.”
“No, you certainly cannot.”
And then he was reaching out to lift a heavy wave of hair off her face, his palm brushing her cheek as he pushed the hair back, slipping it behind her ear. “But I can assure you the future will be different.”
His touch sent a shiver coursing through her. “I don’t want—” she started to say before breaking off, because he was still touching her, his fingers sweeping her cheekbones, his fingertip skimming her mouth, making it tingle.
“Mmm?” he murmured, eyebrow lifting. “I’m listening, love.”
She stared up into his eyes, her heart racing even faster, beating in a hard, jagged rhythm that made it difficult to catch her breath, much less speak. But how could she speak when her thoughts were scattered, coherent thought deserting her at the slightest touch?
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, combing her hair back from her face to create a loose ponytail in one hand, “I never asked you about relationships you might have left behind...is there someone significant...?”
He was seducing her with his touch. She couldn’t resist the warmth, couldn’t resist the tenderness in his touch. She hated that she responded to his caress this way, hated that she felt starved for affection. He wasn’t the right man for her. He’d never be the right man. “No.”
“Why not? You’re young and stunning—”
“And a mother with a young child dependent on me.”
“You didn’t want to meet someone...someone who could help you, make things easier for you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Surely it doesn’t surprise you that I don’t have a lot of confidence in men? That the men I’ve known—” she gave him a significant look “—cared only for themselves, too preoccupied by their own needs and their own agendas to take care of anyone else.”
“You’re not describing me.”
“Oh, I most certainly am.”
“Then you don’t know me, and it’s time to change that. Starting now. Tonight.”
