Читать книгу Beneath The Surface - Linda Turner, Linda Turner, Marilyn Pappano - Страница 10

“Hi, Logan. This is Abby Saunders…”

Grabbing a cold soda from his refrigerator as his answering machine rattled off his messages, Logan found himself smiling as Abby’s voice, wry with amusement, filled his kitchen. So she’d called some of the other men on her list of possible dates, had she? he thought with a grin. Considering her shyness, he was surprised she’d worked up the nerve. From the sound of it, her calls hadn’t gone any better than his.

At least she could laugh about it, he thought, as he listened to the rest of her message. He wondered if she realized how special that made her. Probably not. From what he’d been able to tell, she didn’t appear to think that she was the least bit remarkable, which was a crying shame. She was upbeat and positive…and flat-out nice! The only negative thing he’d heard her say had been about herself. She didn’t seem to have a clue how rare that was. Why was she so insecure? Who had made her doubt herself? Her parents? Her first boyfriend? Whoever it was, Logan hoped he got the chance to one day tell them off. It was no less than they deserved.

Her message ended and the next one started. Not even listening to the reminder that he a dental checkup scheduled for the following day, he quickly looked through some papers on the kitchen table and found Abby’s phone number. It wasn’t until he’d placed the call that he realized that it was nearly ten o’clock at night. She was probably getting ready for bed—

“Hello?”

He recognized the lilting softness of her voice immediately and felt something shift inside him that he couldn’t put a name to. Frowning, he didn’t give himself time to analyze it. Instead, he told himself it was just his imagination, then proceeded to ignore it. “Hi, Abby. I hope I’m not calling too late.”

“Logan! Oh, no, not at all,” she said in a pleased tone. “I was just—Buster, no!”

When she gasped, then giggled, Logan grinned. “Why do I have a feeling I caught you in the middle of something? Buster’s not one of the men on your date list, is he?”

She chuckled. “Not hardly. He’s my dog. I’m giving him a bath and he decided this was a good time to shake.”

Even though he didn’t have a clue what she looked like, Logan could picture her on her knees next to the bathtub as a big shaggy dog shook water all over her and her bathroom. Most of the women he knew wouldn’t dream of bathing their dogs themselves, and they certainly wouldn’t laugh when they got soaked, but Abby couldn’t stop giggling even as she warned Buster to behave.

“It sounds like you’ve got your hands full. I can call back later, if you prefer.”

“Oh, no!” she protested quickly. “Now that this mangy mutt of mine has soaked me and the bathroom, he’s curled up on the bath mat, cleaning his paws. Let me throw a towel over him and we can talk.”

A few seconds later, she sighed in relief. “There! What a workout! I hadn’t planned to bathe him tonight, but he loves water, and I forgot to shut the door when I was filling the tub for a bath.”

Moving into the living room, Logan sank down into his favorite chair, a recliner Faith had bought for him on his thirtieth birthday, and popped his feet up in one smooth motion. “When I was a kid, we had a German shepherd that used to do that. He drove my mother nuts. So what kind of dog is Buster?”