Playing Love's Odds (A Classic Sexy Romantic Suspense) (16 page)

"Orange juice or coffee?" Logan asked, waiting for her to wriggle up against the headboard. He placed the tray on her lap, thinking how tousled and sexy and totally unlike Hannah she looked, thinking his thoughts totally inappropriate under the circumstances, thinking, anyway, how she'd look after a night of hot and heavy loving. He took two steps back.

"Oh Logan, you have a bit of chef in you, after all! With a smile tugging up one corner of her mouth, her gaze flicked from item to item on the tray. Her first selection was the orange juice which she downed in one long thirsty gulp.

"More?" he asked, his voice snagged in the back of his throat.

She shook her head. "Looks wonderful." She dipped a spoon into the carton of strawberry yogurt and, eyes closed, let it slide down her throat with a husky, "Mmm."

"Good?" He could barely choke out the word.

"I'm famished. Right now even the Cap'n Crunch looks yummy." She dug her spoon into the bowl and devoured a huge, unladylike bite, a ribbon of milk zigzagging down her chin.

He wanted to lap it up like a tomcat so bit his tongue and jerked the blinds open, allowing beams of morning sun to stream in and illuminate the incoherent corners of his mind. Gingerly, he perched one hip on the end of the bed. "I wasn't sure what you'd like so picked up a couple different things."

"I don't usually eat much breakfast," she answered around a mouthful of crunchy nuggets, reaching for the steaming muffin. "I can't believe I've been denying myself such a culinary treat all these years."

Trying his best to relax, Logan forced a grin. "All part of the service, ma'am."

It was definitely the wrong thing to say. She crumbled the blueberry muffin. Purple inklike blotches stained her fingers. She raised her chin, her haunted, hunted gaze further destroying his resolve to send her on her way. "They tried to kill me."

Guilt ate away at the dwindling core of his conscience. He needed to come clean, to tell her the truth, admit the depth of his involvement. He started to, going so far as to open his mouth. Instead, he shrugged and ended up saying, "Maybe not."

A multitude of reactions—shock, hope, and finally disbelief—flicked through her eyes. "Oh, give me a break." She shook her hand, flinging muffin crumbs across the bed. "Why else would I be fired, then run off the road by the same car that's been following me?"

Her glare pulsed with righteous indignation, the sarcasm in her voice patently clear. Her vehement reaction didn't surprise him. His urge to soothe her did. He stood, leaning one fist against the wall.

Through the window he watched the sand, whipped up by the sudden gusts of breeze, shift then settle. His emotions teetered with the same ambivalence.

"Maybe they were just trying to give you a good scare," he finally said for lack of anything better, anything safer to say.

"Well they've sure as hell succeeded." She collapsed against the stack of pillows, one arm thrown over her eyes in surrender. The pose was deceptive; he knew her that well at least. Hannah was no quitter and that added a dash of admiration to the increasing ache building low in his gut.

He turned back to the window. The siren song of the sea, the one he'd heard and wanted to answer so many times, presented less temptation. Nothing had been the same since that phantom kiss, the one he refused to believe had been real for what the mere allusion was doing to him.

He wanted to crawl alongside her in bed, ease down on the mattress, slip up against her, inside her and console the both of them. But more than that he wanted to assuage himself of this damn suffocating guilt, the realization that everything she'd been through the past month had been at his hands, his fault.

"I'm sorry, Logan. I didn't mean to snap."

With a heavy sigh he turned and leaned against the window sill, stuffing his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. "Don't apologize. Most people wouldn't be as calm about this whole ordeal as you've been."

"Yeah, well, I've had years of practice at being calm." She popped a mashed blueberry in her mouth and sucked the end of her finger clean.

"And that just might help your chances."

She glanced up sharply, pulling her finger from her mouth to ask, "Of making it through this mess in one piece?"

"Exactly."

"What now?"

He shrugged, an indifferent raising of one shoulder that belied the tension pulling a taut rope down his back and straight through his gut to his groin. He wondered if her finger still tasted like blueberry. Or if it tasted like her mouth. "The cops will be looking for the car that rammed you and the truck that lost the barrels. I imagine it's gonna get a might hairy in the upper echelons of ViOPet."

"And Neil Harrington is gonna be one sorry dog," Hannah pledged, a vindictive gleam in her eye.

Levering off the window sill, Logan eased down onto the mattress, his thigh bumping into hers. She scooted over, making more room and he took advantage, one hip cocked snugly against her leg. Doing his casual best he asked, "Harrington?"

"My slime of an ex-boss. The one I'd bet a year's salary is behind this." She thought for a minute, fiddling with the muffin crumbs on the tray. "He and his goons will either speed up whatever it is they're doing or hold off until things cool down."

"Hey," he said, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, staying to smooth down the tangled mess. "Who's the investigator here?" The smile she gave him tightened the tension cable holding him together.

"Maybe I should go into the business," she said, "I certainly haven't had any luck in my chosen profession. First I give up med school, then one job after another to look after my mother, and before ViOPet there was the thing with Julian ..."

She stopped and studied the satin binding of the blanket, nervously plucking at the twisted sheet secured beneath his knee. He knew she regretted making that admission but since she'd opened the door he asked, "Why'd you leave Vandale?"

She looked up, her face shuttered, blank. "That's personal."

"Personal like you don't want to tell me? Or personal," he circled a lazy finger over the back of her hand, "like personal."

"Both," she whispered and glanced down.

"He wanted more than you wanted to give?"

She only nodded, her gaze fast on his hand, her breathing a combination of excitable gasp and husky invitation.

"Did he kiss you?" He ran an inexplicably shaky finger over her lower lip, gently soothing the puffy corner she'd no doubt bit open during her tumble down the ravine.

Her tongue darted out to bathe the cut, teasing the tip of his finger before he pulled away. Damp from her mouth, he slid his finger down her neck, catching hold of the voluminous neckline of her nightshirt.

"Did he touch you?" His eyes riveted to the flash fire burning in hers, he slipped his hand inside her shirt. His knuckles grazed side to side over her flesh, the fantasy come true about to break him.

He skimmed one pebbled nipple with his finger and the fire in his belly set his jeans ablaze. Sweat beaded his forehead. He tugged the gauzy fabric lower still until she gasped, a sound more pain than pleasure.

He looked down and found himself stunned by the slash of indigo and muted green running from her collarbone between her breasts to her hip. "Does it hurt much?"

Hannah lowered her head, trying to see what he saw. "Quite a rainbow, isn't it?"

"Hannah, I'm so sorry."

"It's from the seatbelt, Logan. Why are you apologizing?" She lifted his hand, pressed his palm to her cheek, and kissed the inside of his wrist. The gesture, unexpected and incredibly forgiving, rendered him speechless.

He ached with the need to tell her everything, but was too much of a coward. He'd tell her later, when this was all finished, when the loose ends were wrapped up, when the risk of her hating him wasn't quite so high. He'd tell her when hell froze over.

For now all he wanted to do was kiss her. To feel her fire again. To soothe her wounds. To soothe his own.

He leaned forward, brushing his lips over her collarbone, doctoring the bruise with his own bedside manner. She drew in a shaky breath.

He followed the trail of her injury with his mouth, raining feather light kisses as far as he could before coming up against the obstacle of fabric. He wanted to rip it away, to toss it aside, to fling away everything keeping them apart, knowing how stupid he was to be thinking beyond this case.

But he
was
thinking beyond this case. Thinking of quitting the whole rotten business. Thinking he better before someone got dead. Thinking if he didn't taste her now it wouldn't matter.

Hooking one finger in the vee of her neckline, he tugged. He nuzzled up her neck until he found her mouth, that sweet confection that tasted like Hannah. A taste he'd dreamed of for the past several days, a taste he'd thought he'd never feast on again.

The elastic slipped over one shoulder and caught on the peak of one breast. He closed his eyes and remembered how she'd looked on the beach, the full swells shadowed by the moon, the darker tips sweet temptation. He remembered the softness pressed against him, cupped in his hand as he kissed her.

And he remembered she'd almost died. Because of him.

He jumped away so quickly he bumped the breakfast tray with his knee, sloshing coffee onto his leg and nearly upsetting the remains of the barely touched breakfast. Hannah steadied the tray. Logan steadied himself, not an easy feat considering how unbalanced he felt, how the very walls seemed to be tilting, the ceiling falling.

"Do you mind?" Hannah asked, lifting the tray.

He took it without a word, watched while she swung back the muffin and coffee splattered covers, and endured when she dangled her legs over the edge of the bed. She was jittery when she first stood, but quickly gained control, smiling up at him with what he could tell was pure female meanness.

"I kinda like you on your toes," she said. "Makes me feel safe. Like I'm in good hands." She tiptoed across the four feet separating them and in all her tousled glory gave him
the look
, the same one he'd seen when he kissed her, the same one he'd seen in his dreams.

Deep down inside, where he was having trouble separating right from wrong anyway, he knew she was up to no good. He was right.

"Logan," she murmured, running one finger around the low-slung, dangerously taut waistband of his jeans and knowing with his hands full he couldn't do a damned thing. "Thanks for breakfast and ... everything. This morning was the best I've ever had. I think I'll take a shower now."

She left him there, standing foolishly in the middle of the floor, and sashayed her shapely backside right out of the room.

He wouldn't have missed it for the world.

"Leave it to a man," Hannah grumbled staring down into the bag of her belongings Logan had thrown together. Cosmetics, a strange assortment of lingerie, a red satin cocktail dress. She hitched the towel tighter under her arms and grimaced, feeling the bruises from her accident more sharply than she liked.

"Where does he expect me to wear this?" she asked herself, shaking two days worth of wrinkles from the dress. She opened the closet, finding it empty but for three lonely looking wire hangers and a box of old comic books. She hung the dress as best she could and considered her dilemma again.

Apparently, Logan had expected her to remain in bed permanently from the looks of what he'd packed. That thought provoked a strange variety of others. Had he been so worried about her that he hadn't thought beyond getting her home to rest? Had bad memories taken precedence over all logical thought?

Or did her really want her in his bed?

The thought of being in his bed snuggled comfortably into her mind. And that surprised her. She wasn't one to take a physical encounter lightly. Her one and only affair had been the culmination of supposed true love. But here she was wondering about Logan, wanting Logan. How could she not after that kiss?

Even more so, how could she not be curious about a man who'd shown such uncharacteristic tenderness, such sensitivity? She touched her lower lip the same place he had, remembering the coiling ache he'd kindled inside her, the place she thought forever numb from lack of response to other men.

Enough. She couldn't stand around naked, thinking more about Logan than about finding something suitable to wear. Or about how she'd come to be here to begin with. Thank goodness he'd grabbed her brush, she decided, jerking it through her hair and deliberating over the dress or the wilted nightshirt she'd been sleeping in the past thirty-six hours. Then she remembered the folded clothes stacked on the dryer in the laundry alcove.

Fifteen minutes later, she left her room dressed in Logan's "Surfers Ride the Ocean’s Motion" T-shirt and the matching fish-trimmed shorts. Working through a sense of déjà vu, she went to find him. And she did, sprawled in a lounger on the deck. Only this time he was fast asleep.

She stared for a minute, her gaze wandering the length of his body. He wore no shirt and his low-slung jeans had crept even lower as he slept. The near-blond dusting of chest hair gilded his skin, the effect more masculine than a heavy pelt, especially as it arrowed down in an eye-drawing line to vanish beneath his threadbare waistband.

A pencil-thin scar followed the curve of one rib down his side. Another shorter scar branched off to disappear under his arm. Her gaze inched back to his face. His hair bore the signs of nervous fingers, like blades of grass crushed under incredible weight. The laugh lines around his eyes appeared more defined as he slept.

She frowned, thinking he should look at ease, not like a tiger poised on the edge of attack. He wasn't relaxed at all, but stiff. The hand laying against his thigh jerked, a spastic tic in his fingers twisted his arm. The dream again.

Even here, safe in his own space, in the light of morning, he wasn't free. She ached to offer comfort, to hell with his demons and her resolve not to get involved. She
was
involved and, if she were to be totally honest with herself, had been since she'd turned around in his office and seen his big bad boy persona covering up that little boy hurt.