Fiancé at Her Fingertips (17 page)

“There’s nothing wrong with my dog,” she said. “Suzi should be glad to get him.”

Logan’s eyebrows took a trip north.

“Okay, okay, so he likes to woof and growl at her cat a bit, and carries the cat around in his mouth sometimes. So what? Big deal. He holds her by the scruff of the neck and he never bites down.”

Logan laughed. “I get it,” he said. “His bark is worse than his bite, right?”

Debra giggled. She clasped a hand over her mouth. He’d done it again: distracted her from wussing out. Oh, he was good.

Several hours later she found herself motoring north to spend a romantic weekend with the Illinois State Bar Association Man of the Year, wondering again what she was doing in the midst of this loco, looney-toon love affair. When had her life gotten so out of control? It was as if someone else were piloting, and all she could do was sit back and scream as they did one loop-the-loop after another.

She sighed, trying to put it all into place. It had started the moment less than two months ago when she’d picked Lawyer Logan up off the bargain table, slapped down that bit of plastic, and carried him out of the store tucked under her arm. Not
on
her arm. But, abracadabra! Somehow Logan Alexander had magically materialized smack-dab in the middle of her life, acting as if he had every right to be there.

To be fair, in some ways he did, Debra acknowledged. She’d never met anyone who made her laugh like Lawyer Logan did. Even when her world was a kaleidoscope of confusion, he could still manage to make her laugh. And there was a serious side to Lawyer Logan, too, a sensitive side he didn’t bother to hide, like so many other men. He was so…so…affectionate. He made a point of touching her. And often—an arm around her here, fingers linking there. And those kisses of his? She didn’t dare think about those.

She heaved a long, frustrated sigh. When she wasn’t trying to keep her hands from around his neck, she was trying to keep her hands from around his neck!

She cast a surreptitious glance at him out of the corner of her eye as he drove. The rugged perfection of his profile struck her anew.

She sighed. “Are you real or computer-generated, Lawyer Logan?”

“What was that?” He cocked a hand to his ear. “I can’t hear you; you’re so far away you’re almost in the next county.”

Debra pinched herself. “Never mind,” she said. “I was thinking out loud.”

“About me, I hope.” He grinned. “Or, even better, about us.”

“I suppose you could say I was thinking about us,” she said. “Whatever ‘us’ is.”

Logan patted the Suburban seat beside him. “Slide those long, luscious legs over here and I’ll be happy to define it for you.”

“You’re driving,” she pointed out.

“I can do more than one thing at a time. I’m an attorney, remember? That’s how we rack up all those billable hours.”

“You’re also a man, and men are notorious for being able to do no more than one thing at a time well,” she said. “It’s that right brain/left brain thing, you know.”

He gave her that little crooked smile she hated to love. “That sounds like a challenge,” he said. “One that I cannot, in defense of men everywhere, refuse to take up.”

They drove for a few minutes longer before Logan pulled off the road and into a rest area. He parked the vehicle, and before Debra knew what he was about, he’d hauled her beside him and took her lips in a deep, searching kiss.

Uh-
oh
. There went her hands again, curling around his neck when they should be pushing him away!

“Shut your eyes, sweetheart, and relax.” He pulled his lips from hers to nuzzle at her neck, and his hand slipped inside the white tank top she was wearing. His fingers stroked her budded nipple. She moaned and felt the moistness of her own arousal. She ordered herself to retake her seat before Logan Alexander good and well claimed her.

“Shhh,” he comforted, sensing her inner struggle. “Let me touch you, Debra. That’s all I’m going to do. Just touch you. Feel you. That’s all, sweetheart.”

Debra fell prey to the trust-me tones of a legal eagle who must be, no doubt, well versed in winning over female jurors.
She blocked out her reservations, uncertainties, fears, and foreboding. She ignored the voice of reason, the words of caution, the screams of retreat, and succumbed to his gentle, loving hands.

Honk!

The sudden sound of the Suburban’s horn brought Debra around. She saw that they were in the thick of traffic again.

“How the he—”

“I told you I could do two things at once. And do them well!” Logan kissed the tip of her nose. “As a matter of fact, I did more than two things at the same time. I did four.”

Debra squinted. “What do you mean?”

“Look in your shorts pocket,” he said.

She slipped a hand in her right pocket and came out with nothing.

“The
other
pocket,” he said.

She put a hand in her left pocket and her fingers curled around a hard plastic item. She pulled it out and looked at it. It was the set of apartment keys she’d pilfered from him. The ones she’d left behind on his bed during her botched break-in.

“You left those at my apartment,” he said. “On my bed. An oversight, I’m sure.”

Debra blinked, wondering how on earth he’d managed to get out in traffic and slip the key ring into her pocket, all the while working his magic on her needy little body. How had she not noticed! She put a hand to her lips. Oh yes. Those kisses. Those mind-stealing, heart-pumping, heat-raising kisses. They’d blocked out everything but Lawyer Logan.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about the other thing I managed to do while I was driving, putting the key in your pocket, and making your heart race with my kisses and caresses?”

“No!” Debra said, and slid a discreet and safe distance away. “Hell, no!”

How could he? How could he do this to her? After everything she’d been through, how could he? Debra stared into the hotel room mirror and shook her head.

Where did Lawyer Logan get off being as witty as a late-night-talk-show writer and as attentive as a first-time father (well, a good one) on delivery day? How dare he be as irresistible as a bowl of green grapes on a hot July afternoon and as courteous as a golden-spurred knight of old? How dare he play doctor, making her pulse race and her breathing labored, increasing all her vital signs? How dare he make her feel like the heroine in one of her grandmother’s favorite paperbacks? How
could
he? Debra had come here to write the final chapter to this fiancé fable, so how dare Logan conjure up visions of climaxes and happy endings? Who did he think he was to make her feel things for him she was certain she’d never feel for any other man, and just when she was about to dump him? Who the devil did he think he was?

Debra squirted mousse into her palm and ran it through her hair. “And what about you?” she said to the face in the mirror. “What’s your excuse? What on earth made you agree to this cozy little weekend getaway in the first place, blondie? Huh? What? Cat got your tongue?”

Debra placed her palms down on the countertop and snorted. Damn. She knew why she’d agreed. Lawyer Logan had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Weren’t lawyers
known for that sort of thing? Despite a plethora of misgivings, she’d given in to the overwhelming temptation to be the woman in Lawyer Logan’s life—if only for a day or two longer. With this awards banquet and the getaway, it was tough not to allow herself to get caught up and sucked in— wooed by the lure of a physical attraction she’d never experienced before and seduced by emotions that were as foreign to her as Sanskrit. She was Debra Daniels, poster child for responsibility and routine. She didn’t have the heart of a gambler. She always played the odds. So, why in Heaven’s name was she here? Now? It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like her. Not like her at all.

Here, away from the distraction of family and the demands of work, she’d given herself permission to examine the enigma known as Lawyer Logan, to take time to really discover Logan Tyler Alexander as a man and not a practical joker or a dream or a misunderstanding. And that, she now realized, had been a serious miscalculation. It only made harder what she’d determined to do. Harder to let him go.

Yesterday he’d taken her to a Cubs game, and he wasn’t the least embarrassed when she rather loudly questioned the umpire’s knowledge of the game. He’d been solicitous and understanding when she got sick on the elevator ride to the top of the Sears Tower, and sick again on the way down.

He hadn’t made fun of her, either, when she sat in gum on a park bench or when she got her purse strap caught in an escalator, and when he left her at her hotel room door— separate, but adjoining his just in case he got lucky, he said, because he respected the space she put between them—he’d kissed her softly, almost reverently. Where she’d gotten the strength to close the door on him and leave him standing in the hallway, she had no clue. She’d stared at their connecting door a good long time, knowing full well she could never, ever open that door or she would open a whole new can of worms. She felt guilty enough as it was. She was setting him up for a gigantic fall, if it turned out Lawyer Logan was the
real deal and she was the one with “issues.” Call her Brutus. Judas. Ms. Benedict Arnold. In the loneliness of her hotel room, she’d wept for the hopelessness of the situation.

This morning when she’d shown little interest in shopping, he was delighted. Instead, they’d walked Chicago’s Magnificent Mile like old friends, comfortable with each other yet very much aware that there was a connection between them that was not for friends only. When his hand snared hers, she let it remain there—the strength of their joined bodies like a band around her heart.

She stumbled out of her hotel room, her vision blurred by tears. She stood at Logan’s door, biting her lip. She dreaded this evening.
Dreaded
it. Worse than her mother’s newest recipe. Worse than dental surgery. Worse than having been Cousin Calvin’s date at his senior prom. She didn’t know if she could go through with this. Her brain told her to make a clean cut. Quick and painless. Cruel to be kind and all that. The problem was, she couldn’t get over picturing herself in a hockey mask with a shiny machete slashing Lawyer Logan’s heart into a bunch of teeny-tiny pieces.

She put her hand up to knock on his door but hesitated. If she saw Lawyer Logan in the state she was in, she’d likely confess everything to him—including the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Hoffa disappearance, and the fact that sometimes in the winter she shaved her legs only from the knees down. Air! She needed air! She scurried away, down the hall toward the stairs.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

Debra slowed her pace. An obviously inebriated and disheveled, rather stout gentleman in an outdated suit that sported wide lapels was having difficulty with his key card.

“Hey, purty lady, what do you say to a drink?” he asked, his speech slurred. Debra caught a whiff of his breath and shook her head. Great, just what she needed: a drunken businessman away from the wife and kids for the weekend and wanting to party till he puked.

“No, thank you,” she said, and tried to step around him.

“Ah, c’mon! Just one little drink,” the partier insisted.

“Listen, I really don’t want to be rude, so if you’ll just let me by—”

“Aw, baby,” he whined, “don’t be cruel.”

Debra stuck her bottom lip out and blew, and her bangs went flying. She tried to sidestep him again. “I’m not your baby, and you are no Elvis,” she said, and turned her back on him to retrace her steps.

The tubby drunk surprised her and grabbed her arm. “I bet you’re one of those snooty, hotshot attorneys,” he growled.

“No,” Debra said, shaking her head. “I’m
with
one of those snooty, hotshot attorneys. So, if you will please let go—”

“Suppose you think you’re too good to bend elbows with a lowly Burger Boy franchisee,” he said.

Debra winced. Burger Boy?

“Not at all,” she responded. “But I’m too smart to bend elbows with a tipsy Burger Boy. Sorry.”

“You’re not very friendly.” He tightened his grip on her wrist.

“Bingo,” she said.

“You could use some lessons in manners, missy.”

“And you could use some lessons in the effects of grease on cholesterol levels. Have you ever eaten one of your burgers?” she asked, then made a point of checking out the belly hanging over his belt. “Strike that,” she said.

“You’ve got a real smart mouth on you,” Burger Boy charged. “You sure you aren’t one of them lawyers?”

Debra smiled. “If you knew me better, you’d know how badly you’ve just insulted me,” she said. “However, if you will let go of my arm, I’ll forget this little incident ever happened,” she said.

“Maybe I’ll consider it—if you ask real nice,” he said.

Debra inclined her head. “Oh, but that
was
asking nicely.
This
is asking not nicely.” Using one of the moves her two-timing trooper ex-boyfriend had taught her, Debra reached out and grabbed Burger Boy’s thumb, twisting it hard at the
point where it and his index finger met. She took her other hand and grabbed his free arm to bring it behind his back, exerting increasing pressure on his shoulder and elbow the higher up she moved his hand. She shoved his nose against the wall and blinked. Cool! It really worked! Even cooler: she’d actually had the courage to try it! Hey, what do you know? She was growing. Changing. Performing restraint techniques on a stranger seemed a little extreme, but, she went with it nonetheless.

“Listen, Burger Boy,” she said. “This little encounter with you promises to be the high point of my evening, so if you don’t want to have this Burger Boy convention you’ve no doubt looked forward to forever cut short by a trip to the ER for medical attention, or to the jail on public intox and disorderly conduct charges, I suggest you take that little key card you were having so much difficulty with, and stick it in the door and haul your Burger Boy butt into your room to sober up. Does that sound like a plan or what?” She exerted the teensiest additional pressure on his hyperextended arm, and the guy yelped like a dog whose tail had been trodden on.

“Uh, yes, lady…uh, ma’am…uh, miss. That sure sounds like a very good idea. An A-number-one plan. Top-notch. Sound advice. I’ll do that. Thank you. Thank you.”

Debra released her hold on the now sheepish entrepreneur and jabbed her index finger between his shoulder blades. “No tricks now, Burger Boy,” she said.

“Oh, no, sir. I mean, ma’am. Er, uh, miss.”

“Call me ‘Bond,’” Debra said, stepping way out of her comfort zone and trying hard not to giggle. “Jane Bond.”

Burger Boy didn’t appear to catch the joke. “Oh, thank you, Miss Bond,” he stammered. “I’m sorry. You see, I don’t normally drink. All right. I never drink. Ever. Don’t know why I did tonight. Peer pressure. That’s it. Peer pressure. Uh, if you ever get down Peoria way, Miss Bond, there’s a free Burger Boy burger with your name on it,” he said.

Debra crossed her arms. “Are you threatening me?”

“Threatening? Oh, no, I was just—”

She let him see the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, uh, I see. You were making a joke. That’s funny.”

Debra looked on as he maneuvered the card into the slot and the green light finally went on. He opened the door and stepped inside.

“One more thing, Burger Boy.” She wagged her finger at him. “A piece of advice. Those fuzzy navels? They’ll get you every time,” she said, and grabbed the door handle, giggling at the startled look on the portly putz’s face as she closed the door on it.

A new voice sounded. “That was quite a move. Care to try it out on a snooty, hotshot attorney?”

Debra whirled, her laughter fading to nothingness at the breathtaking picture Logan presented in his dressed-to-kill formal attire.

There ought to be a law
.

Logan’s hand curled around her wrist. “Show me your moves, Bond, Jane Bond.” His voice was soft, sensual, and oh, so tempting.

Debra gave a nervous laugh, as skittish as a foal separated from her mother for the first time. “Oh, that.” She shrugged. “It was something I picked up.”

“From your trooper friend?”

Debra shrugged again. “Good old Suzi. I’d forgotten she mentioned him at my parents’ cookout. Sometimes I wonder if I would recognize her with her mouth closed,” she remarked.

Logan smiled and pulled her to him. “I thought for a moment there I was going to get to play the hero and rescue you from the clutches of Burger Bob.” His fingers began a featherlight trek up her arm.

“Boy,” Debra said, distracted by the touch of his fingertips. “Burger Boy.”

“Hmmmm?” Logan’s other hand began a similar excursion up her other arm.

“It’s Burger
Boy
, not Burger Bob.” Debra struggled to follow the conversation. “I gather you don’t frequent that particular eating establishment.”

“Only when I’m in the mood for grease,” he teased.

Debra looked at him. “How long were you listening?”

“Long enough to want to stuff Burger Bob’s head through the key card insert, and long enough to know that you could manage that on your own.”

She smiled. “Why, thank you, kind sir. I think.”

“I suppose you’ve had quite a bit of experience fending off unwanted attention from strange men?”

Strange men? That had to be the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe if she had performed a defensive move or two on Lawyer Logan early in their association, she wouldn’t be in this fix. As it was, she still couldn’t believe she’d actually assaulted Burger Boy. She’d never before acted on impulse. Said the things she wanted to say. Stood up for herself to this magnitude. In some respects it was exhilarating. And others? Scary as hell.

“I’ve luckily had very little experience with that sort of attention,” Debra heard herself admit. Of course, my experiences with the opposite sex, those few I’ve had, have been less than gratifying. I came to the conclusion some time ago that most men are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Present company excluded, of course.”

There was that lopsided smile again—one that no doubt any woman jurist would look forward to seeing “in chambers.”

Debra shook her head. “I don’t know. You’ve caused me no end of trouble.”

“Ah, but I’m worth it.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that,” she said.

He embraced her. “I could prove it to you. Right now.”

“Haven’t you forgotten a little thing called an awards banquet?” she protested.

“There are things more important than awards,” he replied. “I could prove that to you as well.”

She shivered, uncomfortable with the conversation, especially given the way he was looking at her.

“Be serious,” she said. “You’re the guest of honor.”

“There are honors and there are honors.”

Burger Boy’s door opened beside them. The man saw Debra and his eyes widened. They almost popped right out of his head when he saw the tall, dark, and dangerous lawyer embracing her. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down several times before he slammed the door shut.

Logan sighed. “I suppose we’d better move so that Burger Bob can get to the ice machine.”

“Ice machine?” Debra asked.

“To ice his shoulder.”

Debra smiled. “He’d better get extra for his head. He’ll have a killer headache come morning.”

“Firsthand knowledge?” Logan said, clearly a reference to her excess at the infamous wedding. He put an arm around her waist and they headed toward the elevator.

Dread began to collect in the pit of Debra’s stomach like sludge she’d hosed out of her gutters last week. This was it. The beginning of the end. Her Fiancé at Her Fingertips farewell.
Adios
, Lawyer Logan. A lump formed in her throat.

“Uh, listen, Logan.” She stopped to clear her throat. “Before we go down, I…uh, want you to know that I am…uh, happy for you. You know, receiving the award and all. And I really respect the time and effort and hope you give women who often feel they have nowhere to turn when the legal system lets them down. The work you do is so important, and no matter what, you must continue with that work. No matter what. Do you understand?”