Читать книгу One Night With Her Ex - Kate Hardy - Страница 11

LOGAN remembered to breathe again once Angie had gone and the door snicked shut behind her. He shouldn’t have told her. It wasn’t something he talked about. Not with his mother, not with the psychologists his mother had taken him to once she’d had him back in her care.

It was okay to be angry, several of them had told him gently. Maybe he could examine his anger; start with the little things, they’d coaxed, while his ten-year-old self had sat there and studied his ragged, chewed-off fingernails and told them he wasn’t angry, not him. Not with his father for topping himself, not with his mother for leaving them. She’d come back, hadn’t she? Once the old man was gone? She’d come back for her son who was volatile, and controlling and needy, just like his father, and she’d never once called him those things, just started praising all the other traits he possessed and sent him to shrinks to keep the crazy in check.

Why had he told Angie that? Why couldn’t he have left it at his father was dead?

She’d run now, if she had any sense. Away from this family. Away from him.

Evangeline Jones didn’t understand the stakes in this game, but Logan did. He knew how it went; the breaking of a woman’s will. Drip by tiny drip until it was all gone and she jumped at the sound of a footfall and flinched whenever someone moved too fast. He knew those games, knew every move.

Second hand.

Time to take himself in hand, thought Logan grimly as he sat up and ran his palms over his face. Do something about the want first. Take the edge off; the needy, greedy edge. Stay focused on the end game, which was staying strong and staying sane.

Hurting no one.

Hurting everyone.

Evie made it back to her room without encountering anyone. She made it to the en suite and stood there staring at the carnage Logan had wrought. Lips swollen from kisses that had gone too deep, complexion still rosy from the afterglow of good sex and her eyes dark with a mixture of shock and desire.

If a man tries to warn you over and over again that he’s damaged goods he probably is.

If he tells you that he has his reasons for not wanting too hard then he probably does.

If he tells you outright that he doesn’t want to hurt you, it’s because he knows that some day he will. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but he will, and he’s given you fair warning.

Evie turned her back on the face in the mirror and closed her eyes and tried not to remember the crazy things Logan made her feel. Time to forget the feelings and listen to what the man had to say and get out of his life as best she could. Tell Max she’d see him at work on Monday, make her apologies to Caroline Carmichael and leave.

She stripped off her dress and her underwear and tossed them over the edge of the bath. She headed for the shower and turned it on hot and hard and stood and let the water wash away the stench of cowardice that clung to her skin.

‘Walk away, Evie,’ she whispered, and set her palms to the wall in front of her and her face to the spray to wash away the sting of tears. ‘Run.’

And then the shower door behind her opened and Logan stepped in, fully dressed, and reached for her and she went to him without hesitation, wanting to comfort and be comforted, wanting his touch more than she wanted anything in this world. Riding that slippery slope of obsession and longing as the water poured down on them both and he pressed a condom packet into her hands and pushed her back against the wall and started kissing her.

Rough was the wrong word for what he wanted. Intense was a better word. All-consuming, as she helped him shed his clothes and laid hands to him, learning him all over again. Condom on and then Evie on as she put shoulders to the tiles and locked her legs around Logan’s waist and he was slow and forceful as he entered her, and the skin on his jaw tasted salty and a little bit rough, but his movements weren’t rough, not rough at all. His movements spoke of worship and wonder and a slamming, heartbreaking need as he claimed her body and offered up his own for her pleasure.

His touch was deft and agonisingly sensual as he cupped her and tilted her just so against him. Such tenuous control once passion came to play, and Evie was no help whatsoever, because wherever Logan led she went willingly.

He wanted her mindless to everything but his touch; and he succeeded.

He wanted her convulsing against him, with her mouth on his shoulder her only tether to this earth; and he succeeded.

She wanted him with her and this time he came when she did, eyes blazing, and his body straining, matching her gasp for gasp, with his mouth on hers, but only just, and his hand on the back of her neck as if he would never let her go.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered when his breath had slowed enough for speech. ‘Angie, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘For the mess I made of my time with you. For the mess I’m still making.’

‘Don’t be.’

She unlocked her legs from around him and set toes to the floor and he held the condom on and slipped out of her and turned away. No words of affection for her, no smile of reassurance, just a need he couldn’t voice and old fears made new again.

She stepped on his clothes on her way out of the shower. Looked at them and looked back at him. ‘Impulsive,’ she said with the tiniest of smiles.

‘Always.’ As he cut the water and she handed him a towel. ‘Around you.’

‘I try to control it,’ he said gruffly, a moment later. ‘I need to control it.’

‘Yes, I guess you do.’ An indirect reference to his past. The history that had shaped him. This had been controlled for Logan. He could get way more lost in desire than that. ‘Lots of baggage, Logan.’

‘More than you can handle?’

‘Are you asking me to have a relationship with you?’ Evie wiped her face down with the towel and started in on her dripping hair.

Logan said nothing, just slung the towel around his hips and stepped from the shower, avoiding the question, avoiding her eyes so Evie figured that for a no, and wasn’t surprised. He’d retreat now, he always did, and she should have felt used and confused, but she didn’t. Instead she felt sad as she let her gaze wash over his naked form. Sad for him. Sad for herself. But not abused.

She didn’t even know how he came to have a body like that. What sports he played, what he did to blow off steam. The list of things she didn’t know about this man seemed endless. And the list of things she did know about him was short and anything but sweet.

‘Do you play sports?’ she asked, and when he lifted his eyebrow at the inanity of the question she shrugged and tried not to be too distracted by the thin line of hair that ran south from his belly-button and disappeared beneath that low-slung towel.

‘I climb,’ he said. ‘Snow and water ski whenever I get the chance. Sail catamarans competitively.’

That’d do it.

‘Does this have anything to do with the amount of baggage I can carry round?’ he asked with the ghost of a smile.

‘No,’ she replied with a rueful smile. ‘I just wanted to know a little more about you, that’s all. Something little. Something …’

‘Normal?’ he offered.

It was as good a word as any. ‘I don’t know what to do. From the moment I first saw you again, I haven’t known what to do.’ Truth, and if it signified weakness on her part then so be it.

‘You need to call off this wedding, Evangeline.’

‘I know that, Logan.’ Evie glanced towards the shower. ‘Is that what the sex was all about? A demonstration of my weakness when it comes to your touch? Because if it was, it wasn’t necessary. I already knew.’

‘It wasn’t that.’ Logan turned away to pick up his soggy clothes and wrung them out. ‘It was need.’

And there was the appeal of this man and the danger in him. That stinging, searing, all-consuming need—and his fear of it.

‘What if we start again?’ she offered quietly. ‘I call off this wedding, MEP finds some other way to finance the civic centre bid and you and I, we start again. Clean slate. You might, for example, come to Sydney one weekend and ask me out on a date. We might see a movie or go for coffee in the park. You could bring me a bunch of black-eyed daisies or a paper parasol. I might feed you chocolate-cherry mud-cake with my fingers by way of thank you.’

Logan’s eyes had darkened again.

‘Easy as,’ she said lightly. ‘And your call.’ She wasn’t the one carrying a dead father and a battered mother around. ‘What kind of cocktail party does your mother throw? Fairly formal?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you planning to attend?’ she asked next.

‘Are you?’

Evie nodded. ‘Got to try and explain my engagement to Max away somehow.’

‘Just tell them my mother made a mistake. Tell them you’re celebrating a business milestone rather than a personal one.’

‘Yes. Something like that.’ She eyed him steadily. ‘We could use your help to sell it. You could aim for civilised.’

‘Yes,’ he said with a smile she didn’t trust at all. ‘I could.’ And handed her back the towel and stalked from the bathroom and then from her room without another word.

‘So what happened between you and Logan?’ asked Max for the umpteenth time as Evie plucked a midnight-blue gown from a clothing rack and flattened it against her body.

‘We talked,’ she said calmly. ‘Too formal?’

‘No,’ said Max. ‘Does he still want you to go live in Antarctica?’

‘Probably,’ said Evie, and withdrew a sleek little black dress from the rack. ‘But he knows he can’t make me, so he’s just going to have to learn to live with disappointment. Too severe?’

‘Yes.’

Evie draped it across her arm of potential dresses anyway. Little black dresses could be deceptive. A deceptively demure black-and-caramel-coloured dress caught her eye next. Demure could be deceptive too. ‘What about this one?’

‘Evie, just pick one,’ said Max.

‘Or I could take an early flight home and forget about your mother’s cocktail party altogether,’ said Evie. ‘As long as we’re talking contingency plans, I’m liking that one a lot.’

‘No,’ said Max steadily. ‘We ride this one out together. Kill the speculation stone dead now.’

‘Maybe you can tell them I’m gay,’ murmured Evie.

‘They wouldn’t believe me. Not if Logan’s anywhere in the room.’

‘Okay, then. You can be gay.’ Evie eyed a plum-coloured gown with a plunging neckline and a thigh-high side split speculatively. ‘What about this one?’

‘Evie, just pick one.’ And then Max looked at the dress. ‘But not that one.’

Evie slid it back on the rack. ‘I vote we tell your mother’s friends that we’re celebrating the success of our business partnership and hopefully the beginning of bigger and better things for MEP. We smile and shake our heads and say we’re sorry people got the wrong idea but we’re not engaged and not about to be. We keep it simple. Deny everything.’

‘You really think that’s going to fly?’

‘Put it this way,’ she said. ‘You got a better idea?’

The cocktail party was every bit as awkward as Evie thought it would be. Elegant, wealthy people, all set to welcome Evie into their lives at Caroline’s behest, and politely puzzled when it became clear that they didn’t have to.

Civilised. It was all so very civilised, but no midnight-blue cocktail gown in the world could shield her from Logan’s powerful presence as she stood by Max’s side and talked business goals and achievements with strangers.

Logan didn’t approach her. He stuck to his side of the room and Evie stuck to hers. She didn’t watch him out of the corner of her eye. Instead she stuck to finding him in reflections in mirrors, of which there were plenty. In the shine of tall silver vases. How could one man assault her senses the way he did, just by being in a room? One man, dressed in black tie, just like every other man in the room.

‘Evie, stop fidgeting,’ said Max.

‘I’m not fidgeting.’

She was fidgeting, so with a smothered curse she stopped.

‘And swearing,’ murmured Max, highly amused. ‘You could stop that too.’

‘I’m not—damn!’ Evie swore rather than add chronic lying to her list of sins too. ‘How much longer do we have to stay here?’

‘Until the bitter end,’ said Max cheerfully. ‘I’m guessing around midnight.’

She’d been sticking to mineral water until now. Maybe it was time she swapped over to something with a little more kick. Then again, the argument against alcohol was a strong one. She’d already been quite uninhibited enough today.

‘You could marry someone else,’ she told Max during a moment they had to themselves—just business partners sharing a quiet moment out on the patio, drinks in hand and smiles at the ready. ‘A childhood friend. Someone who knows this life and how to live it. Someone who’d be happy to accommodate you for two years and then move on.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Max with a shudder. ‘I’m over marriage for the time being. I might try being in love with the person next time. Just a thought.’

‘How are we going to get the money for the civic centre bid?’

‘Overdraft for some of it,’ said Max. ‘I’ll put my place on the market.’

‘I’ll put mine on,’ Evie said with a sigh. ‘We’re still going to come up short.’

‘Business loan,’ said Max bleakly. ‘Here, before I forget.’ He fished in his pocket and pulled out something small and round and silver-coloured, those bits of it that weren’t a dazzling, glittering blue. It was a sapphire ring the size of Texas. Evie didn’t understand. ‘My mother wants you to have this as a memento of our engagement. Something about payment for your trouble.’ He held it out towards her.

‘No.’ Evie took a hasty step back. ‘Whatever your mother’s opinions are, just … no. I’m all for forgetting we were ever engaged.’

‘I told her you’d say that.’ Max reached for her right hand and slipped it swiftly on her middle finger. Not her ring finger, not even the proper hand. ‘She seems to think I owe you a ring. That we were engaged, however briefly, and that you deserve some kind of compensation. Wear it. Flog it. I don’t care. Just take it. I’m a man in search of family harmony and my mother wants you to have it.’

‘I don’t want it,’ muttered Evie, tugging the ring off just as swiftly as it had gone on. It was too bulky anyway. Too much the reminder of bad decisions too hastily made. ‘Please, Max. Just give it back to her. Tell her I don’t want it.’

But Max’s attention had drifted to a point just over her shoulder, his eyes narrowing fast, and Evie knew, even before she looked over her shoulder, that Logan was heading their way. ‘Take it,’ she said, trying to push the ring into Max’s hand, only he wasn’t having it, and then Logan was upon them and Max automatically moved to make room for him.

‘Change of heart?’ murmured Logan, looking at the ring, and shock flared deep in his eyes; right before those same eyes turned bitter and then carefully blank.

‘This isn’t what it looks like.’ Max’s words came low and fast. ‘It’s not an engagement ring. We’re not engaged. The wedding’s off and it’s staying off. You know that.’

‘Where’d you get the ring?’ asked Logan, and didn’t wait for Max’s answer. ‘She give it to you? Our mother? She tell you to give it to Evangeline?’

‘Yes.’ Max looked uneasy. Evie was uneasy.

‘Take it,’ said Evie urgently. ‘I don’t want it. Would someone please just take it back?’

But Logan wanted no part of it. He knew that stone, the ocean-reef-blue of it. He’d seen it before. He looked towards the small crowd of people in the adjoining room. Those who hadn’t drifted out onto the patio or into the gardens and his mother was one of them. What was she doing? What the hell was she thinking giving Evie this particular ring? She had that look about her; the one that said I’m worried about you and I’m scared of what you’ll do and he wished to hell she’d just stop looking at him like that! Look to her own flaws, for once, and not only to his.

‘Logan?’ said Evie, and put her hand to his forearm to draw his attention, and something twisted deep in his gut. ‘Logan, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Bull,’ she snapped, calling his bluff. ‘You’re hurt.’

‘No. It’s her ring. What do I care what she does with it?’

‘Logan, who gave your mother this ring?’ Evie asked tightly.

But Logan refused to answer her.

‘It’s the one your father gave her, isn’t it?’ said Evie.

‘No,’ said Max.

‘Doesn’t matter.’ He wouldn’t let it matter.

‘Logan, this can’t be that ring,’ continued Max doggedly. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

But she had.

Max wouldn’t recognise it; she’d never worn it in front of him. Different lifetime. Different family. Caroline Carmichael had got it right the second time round. A gentle, supportive husband and a loving, well-balanced child.

Max thought their mother was wonderful.

And then the bitter blackness spewed forth, and, for the second time that day, Logan let it engulf him.

‘She likes to remind me of him whenever she thinks I’ve gone too far.’ He sought Evangeline’s gaze. Evangeline in the midnight-blue gown that accentuated her flawless skin and slender curves. The same skin he’d put mouth to not so long ago. The same curves he wanted to caress again with an intensity that bordered on obsession. ‘Have I gone too far, Evangeline?’

‘No,’ she said slowly as her fist clenched around the ring. ‘It’s not you who’s gone too far.’

And before Logan had any notion of what she was about to do, Evie twirled and flung his mother’s ring into the shadowy garden, into the shrubbery far, far away.

The pregnant silence that followed threatened to engulf them all.

‘Good arm,’ said Max finally.

‘It was given to me,’ she said raggedly. ‘And I’ve done what I wanted with it. No one needs that kind of reminder in their life. No one.’

He couldn’t cope. Logan stared at her, his every defence shattered, and something passed between them, something dark and sticky and breathtakingly savage. He didn’t cope well with emotion; his mother was right. Sometimes his feelings just got too big for him to hold.

‘Excuse me,’ he muttered, before he did something unforgivable like drag her from the room, lock her in his arms and never let her go. ‘Excuse me, I have to go.’

Evie watched him leave, her heart so full of lead she was surprised she was still standing up. ‘I did the wrong thing,’ she whispered to Max. ‘Said the wrong thing.’

‘No,’ said Max and his arms came around her comfortingly, urging her to turn and focus her stricken gaze on something other than the door Logan had just exited through. ‘You did exactly the right thing. He’s feeling too vulnerable, that’s all. He never stays when he gets that way.’

Evie didn’t want to stay either. Not that she wanted to run after Logan, because she didn’t. Assuming she even caught up with him, what would she say? How was she supposed to heal hurts inflicted so long ago? If they hadn’t healed by now, chances were they never would.

‘Max, may we leave early too?’ she asked shakily. ‘I’ve had enough. I really have.’ Of the assault on her senses and on her mind. Of the impossible situations that just kept coming, and of the helplessness she felt in the face of this family’s hidden pain. ‘I want to go upstairs and pack, then call a taxi.’

‘Where do you want to go?’ Max’s usually laughing brown eyes were dark with concern.

‘Back to Sydney,’ she said. ‘Away from here. I want to go home.’