Let Me Be the One (15 page)

She’d been gone an awfully long time.

Maybe the grocery store was a cover.

Maybe she wasn’t coming back after all.

But she left Wally here. She made Wally promise not to hurt him.

He hung the second load outside. While he was out there, Wally carried out two boxes and loaded them into a truck. When Logan had finished hanging the laundry, he went back in and vacuumed the rugs. The sound of the vacuum drowned out Wally’s thumping. Would she take the desk? The shelves? They were hers from before. She’d never let him buy her better ones.

The bathroom downstairs was in as bad a shape as the one upstairs. No one would want to come home to this. He started working on it, peering out the window every few seconds for her car.

How long could it possibly take her to run to the store for a few things? She usually set a land speed record there.

But Wally had thrown out every single thing in the fridge including the mustard, and she probably needed to scout around for stuff he needed.

They needed.
Please God, let it be for stuff they needed.

He went down to the basement to check the laundry. It was spinning. So was his head. He sat on the washer until it stopped. Then he loaded everything into a basket and hauled it upstairs.

She was unpacking a plastic grocery bag.

“You came back.” He dropped the basket and hugged her.

“Of course I did. I said I would.” She leaned her head against his chest. “I stopped at the farmer’s market to get some corn and some salad stuff. Did I take too long or something?”

“No. I just wondered. You’re usually quicker.”

She frowned at the basket he’d dropped on the floor. “You’re hanging all the laundry out? You don’t like the laundry hung out. Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”

“I don’t—I guess…” He worked his fingers into her hair. “It just took you a long time.”

“Logan, I promised I would come back from the grocery store.”

“Will you come home?”

She turned her face away and closed her eyes. “Please, Logan…”

“Not now,” he finished for her. He leaned down and kissed her. “I’ll go hang up the clothes.”

Outside, he hung the current load and took down the first one. Except for Wally loading boxes into the back of his truck, it could have been any normal day. When he walked back in, Suzi was on the phone. She had a pot of water boiling on the stove. “Well, thank you, Jason. I’ll keep that in mind. Tell Cassie I said hello. Bye.” She hung up the phone.

“What did Jason want?”

“To see if you were sober.” She started chopping something. “He’s called a couple of times, and apparently every time you answered, you were hammered.”

He didn’t even remember talking to Jason. Who else had called or tried to talk to him? He didn’t even recognize most of the dishes, now dry and stacked on the kitchen table. A couple belonged to his mom. Shit, when had his mom been by, and how bad had he been for her to leave him like this? “What are you making?”

“Jell-O. You need fluids. Don’t worry. I bought Cool Whip. I’m making potato salad, too. And I picked you up some hot dogs and veggie burgers because those are easy to cook.”

Easy for him to cook. She could cook anything she set her mind to. Which meant she wasn’t staying no matter how fast he cleaned or how he dried the laundry. Logan sat down at the table. “Is it time now?”

“Time for what?”

“Time to talk.”

“No Logan, it is not time to talk. The time to talk is over.”

“It can’t be. You wouldn’t have come back if it was.”

Wally walked through the room carrying two more boxes. A large, sweaty reminder that it was time for her to pack her things. The bastard had amazing timing.

“Logan, I can’t continue the way we have been.” She plucked a piece of potato out of the boiling water and tested it.

“So I’ll change.”

“I’ve heard this tune before.” Suzi poured the potatoes into a strainer. Steam curled around her head.

“I know, I know.” He moved to stand behind her. Brushing aside her ponytail, he kissed her neck, and she shivered. Her neck was the best public place to touch her, and she loved when he kissed her there. He loved kissing her there, too. The velvet texture of her skin and the neat curve reminded him of more private nooks. “Sugar, listen. I’m serious this time,” he whispered. “I’ll do therapy or whatever you want. We can do couples counseling.” He slid his hands around her waist. She had such a tiny waist he could almost wrap his hands all the way around.

“How am I supposed to believe you?” Her voice had the squeaky thread of tears in it. “You’ve made promises like that before.”

“But this time I know what it’s like when you leave me, and I can’t take it.” He dipped his tongue behind her ear, testing that sweet sensitive spot. “Please, sugar. You can see I can’t live without you.”

The kitchen door banged behind them.

Suzi jumped.

Fucking Wally.

Suzi eased away from Logan. “Please don’t make this harder than it is.”

“It doesn’t have to be hard.” But it was, in more ways than he wanted to think about. Just touching her turned him on. If Wally hadn’t walked in, he’d have forgotten all about talking her into staying in favor of seducing her. Seducing her always had worked before. Two birds, one stone. He glared at Wally. “Did you need something?”

Wally gave him a hard stare, and then turned to Suzi. She must have given him the order to stand down because he stomped up the back stairs.

Suzi dumped the potatoes into a glass bowl and threw the celery and onions she’d been chopping on top. “I stocked you up with enough food to keep you for at least a week. I’m assuming you’ll go out some. The house already looks better, but you should call the cleaners and the lawn guys.”

“Do you want to come home, Suzi?”

“Have Emily come in and look around first. This isn’t an average job. The carpets need cleaned. The drapes need washed.” She squeezed mayonnaise into the bowl. “It’s going to take her a few days to do it all.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

She mixed the potato salad. “I was pregnant, Logan.”

Logan took a step back and grasped the edge of the table. “Was?”

“I lost it. Right after the party.”

The party. “I didn’t know.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“Of course, it would have. Do you really think I’m that big a monster?”

“Logan, it shouldn’t have made a difference whether I was pregnant or not,” Suzi shouted.

“Don’t ask me trick questions and get pissed off when I answer them wrong.”

Suzi snatched up the bowl and smashed it on the floor. “She was sucking your fingers.”

“It was an accident.”

Wally thundered down the stairs.

“An accident?” she shrieked.

“I spilled some of my drink on my hand.”

“That is what napkins are for, Logan. Napkins!”

“What is going on?” Wally growled.

“We’re having a fight. Is that all right with you?” Logan yelled at him. He buried his hands in his hair. More than life, he wanted to walk through the potato salad and glass, bend Suzi back against the counter, and remind her why she loved him. He could take a few cuts. He deserved the pain.

“It’s time to go.” Wally stepped over the mess and grabbed Suzi by the arm. “Come on. You need to be out of here.”

Suzi resisted for a second, staring across the room at Logan. Tears streaked her beautiful face. Then she let Wally lead her out. Logan followed and watched Wally help her into the truck. As Wally drove away, he put his arm around Suzi’s shoulder. Logan should be glad she had somebody to take care of her, but he couldn’t get past wanting to beat the shit out of Wally.

He went back into the house and sat at the kitchen table, watching the potato salad spoil on the floor. All she took this time were books. Her clothes were still upstairs in their closet. She had bought him healthy food that was easy to fix and had given him instructions on how to clean up the place, but she never said she wasn’t going to come back. In the bedroom, she had told him she couldn’t come home if he stank. Didn’t that mean she wanted to come home? Hadn’t she given him the answer?

The mayonnaise on the floor was turning clear, and the shadows were getting long. He had to do something. Too bad about the potato salad. Suzi made the best potato salad.

After he’d cleaned up the kitchen and taken down the laundry, he sat down with the phone. The cleaning service was hesitant to return, but agreed when he promised a nice bonus. The lawn service told him to fuck off. Apparently, he’d thrown bottles at them, and the high weeds in the front yard were now laced with broken glass. He’d have to find another service and hope they hadn’t talked to the first guy, otherwise he’d be out there mowing his own lawn. He also picked a therapist at random from the phone book and made an appointment.

Last, he dialed Jason. “Hey, you called before.”

“And Suzi answered. How goes things?”

“Wally hauled her out of here a couple of hours ago.”

“Wally?”

“He’s kinda her personal security guy.”

“She brought a bodyguard?”

“Yeah. She brought a bodyguard.”

“Did she need one?”

He should have remembered that Jason fell into Suzi’s protector camp. Greg always said the first time a guy met Suzi, he didn’t know whether to fuck her or protect her from all the other guys who wanted to fuck her. As a married man with sisters, Jason had gone for protector. “No. I would never hurt her. You know that. I just didn’t want her to leave until we had a chance to talk.”

“And you didn’t.”

“No, we started yelling, and she broke a bowl on the floor. It was just—it was bad. It’s probably good Wally got her out of here. But I can fix this. I know I can.” Through the phone, he heard Cassie say something.

“Cassie wants to know what you’re doing to fix it.”

“I’m getting the house cleaned and the lawn taken care of. The place was kind of a mess when she got here.”

“So were you.”

“So was I.” Logan hung his head.

“And what about the problem with groupies?”

“You know what they’re like.”

“I do, and I’m still married to a woman with a thing about faithfulness. What are you going to do about groupies?”

Picking a therapist had been a lot easier than admitting to starting therapy. Logan guessed sticking to it was going to be harder yet. Might as well get the little stuff out of the way. “I made an appointment with a therapist. I want to figure out what I have to do to not make the same mistakes.”

“Mistakes?”

“You know. Getting caught up in that.”

“Bear once told me to remember that groupies are hamburgers, and I’ve got filet mignon at home. And my filet has a shotgun. Ow!”

The
ow
had been preceded by a smacking sound and followed by the murmur of Cassie giving Jason further instructions. Logan crossed his fingers because that was all he could do at this point. Cassie and Suzi were close. Her opinion would carry a lot of weight. Cassie on his side might very well get Suzi back by his side.

“You are going to stick with the therapy.”

“I am. I swear. I can’t lose her, Jason.”

“Okay, we’ll try to help.”

* * * *

“Jason talked to Suzi today,” Marc said when Brian answered the phone.

“He did?” Brian held his breath, trying not to give anything away. Every lead he’d followed had come up empty. No one admitted to having any clue where she was. And she fucking called Jason? Why Jason? “Where is she?”

“She answered the phone at Logan’s.”

Brian’s stomach hit the floor. He hadn’t intended to hope and had convinced himself he wasn’t, but there it was. “So they’re back together?” Because he needed to twist the knife.

“No.”

Brian sat up. A “no” was hopeful, at least from his perspective. “Then what was she doing at his house?”

“Moving out.”

Now
that
was promising.

“She took along Wally, and when they got into a fight, he dragged her out.”

“Wally?”

“Her bodyguard.”

Brian picked up the folder full of dedication pages from her books. He’d printed them out so he could make notes on them. There it was. She’d dedicated
The Power Behind
to
Mrs. Helen Wheals for the great name and Wally Henderson, the best security a girl could have.
’ He’d found an email for Wally, but never gotten a response. “Wally Henderson?”

“Yeah. I just talked to that bastard, and he said he hadn’t heard from her.”

“You know him?”

“Sure, I’ve met him a couple of times. I called him a few days ago because I knew he was tight with Suzi, and I wanted to know if he’d heard from her.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I don’t remember. Shows, hotels, studios. Who the hell knows? I’ve bumped into him a couple dozen times. He’s a huge guy. You can’t miss him.”

“Often enough to have his number.”

“At least I’m not badgering Suzi’s publisher.”

Brian licked his teeth. Lying was going to make things worse. “So I called her publisher. I was concerned.”

“All of them.”

“I’m a customer, and I thought they might have information. Anyway, how do you know?”

“Because they told me when I called them.”

Brian wondered if he should stop worrying about Logan and start worrying more about his bandmates. No, not Marc. He’d worked too hard to catch Alex to leave her, even for Suzi. Ty wasn’t even in the running. But if he and Marc were tracking her, how many other guys were too? “So did you call Wally again?”

“The bastard didn’t answer his phone. He’s avoiding me.”

Just like Jason must be avoiding me
. What did he know? Had he figured it out? Is that why he was keeping the news about Suzi going to Logan’s from him? When Marc branched off into another conversation, Brian made the appropriate noises to convince Marc he was listening.

Why would Jason keep the news from him? He might be plotting something. He would want to keep Suzi and Logan together because he hated to see a relationship fail. Couldn’t he see that Suzi was far too good for Logan? Cassie could be behind this, too. She liked Suzi and had a pathological need to make sure everyone was happy. If she was trying to get Suzi and Logan back together she’d…