The One That Got Away (5 page)

‘I really don’t. Angie, please—’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Just go.’

Time to smooth down her dress with fumbling fingers and hope to
hell no one saw her on the way to the guestroom. She didn’t understand this man
who lay so unmoving on his bed, one arm behind his head, one hand hooked over
his belt as he watched her through slitted eyes, his erection still straining
against his trousers. Her gaze fastened on his lips next; he had such sexy,
snarly lips.

‘Your mother said something about your father being a man of
strong passions.’ Uncontrollable passions, maybe. Caroline had implied that
Logan had similar issues. Mothers knew these things. ‘Are you close to him?’

‘My father’s dead,’ answered Logan flatly.

‘Oh,’ she said with a grimace. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ So
many things about this man that she didn’t know.

‘No great loss. He died when I was ten.’ Logan closed his eyes
and shut her out, put his forearm over his eyes for good measure. ‘My father was
an abusive, controlling bastard. When my mother finally worked up the guts to
leave him—and me—he blew his brains out.’

Evie stared at him in horrified silence. What did a person say
to that? Where did a person even start? ‘Logan—’

‘Go,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘Please, Evangeline, just go.’

And this time Evie complied.

FOUR

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.