Logan's Way Read online

  “I’ve decided we should stop pretending.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “I’ve decided we should stop pretending.”

  Logan’s chest brushed the hardening nubs of her breasts. “Pretending,” he continued huskily, “that we don’t want each other.”

  Ginny couldn’t seem to find her tongue, to protest as she should. He was too close. His lips hovered a kiss away from hers, his large body loomed warm against her.

  “I want you, Ginny. I’ve wanted you since I walked in on you and saw you as naked as the day you were born.”

  She made a sound. She didn’t mean to. It slipped through her lips, half a moan, half a protest. The heat rose between their bodies like steam. His eyes blazed with passion. This was where she pushed him away, she thought. This was when she told him she wanted nothing to do with him. But she couldn’t.

  He curled his work-hardened hand around her waist and thrust the other into the tangle of her hair. “I want to be deep inside you. I want to make you mine.”

  Ginny stopped thinking. There would be enough time tomorrow to wonder how she, a frigid, heartless professor, would suddenly be so hot and eager and willing with this stranger. She couldn’t begin to understand it now, when her brain was so fogged with desire for Logan. So…she let herself go.

  Dear Reader,

  I’m so glad you picked up Logan’s Way, my second venture into the exciting world of Harlequin Temptation.

  I will always remember this book as the one I wrote in the dark. You see, as I prepared to do the research for Logan’s Way, I was nine months pregnant. The baby—my third—was born before I could check out a single book. Juggling the responsibilities of three young children made leisurely trips to the library impossible. Then a friend introduced me to the World Wide Web. Now, with the click of a mouse, I had the world at my desk…if only I could find time to get there! Can you guess when I did? At the 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. feedings…in the dark!

  Now, if any of you can give me advice on how to calm a teething baby while writing a sexy love scene…drop me a line at Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  Happy reading!

  Lisa Ann Verge

  LOGAN’S WAY

  Lisa Ann Verge

  TORONTO NEW YORK LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  1

  IT TOOK HIM A WHILE, but Logan Macallister finally realized that there was a naked woman somewhere in his house.

  He hovered in the shadows of the hallway just outside his bedroom, staring at the pool of silky clothing at his feet. A soft skirt stretched a splash of color across the worn carpet. Fragile, eggshell-colored lace formed the flimsy outline of a pair of high-cut panties. Logan folded his big body down and hooked a finger inside the back of a high-heeled shoe. He lifted it to eye level and glanced at the famous designer’s name scrolled in gold along the curvy inner arch. A match, he thought Its sexy mate lay teetering on a mat, back by the kitchen door.

  His thoughts leapfrogged as he glared at the shoe, still radiating warmth from its owner’s foot. He became aware of the sound of water rumbling through the pipes. He squinted into the bedroom, and deeper, through the half-open door of the master bath, where he glimpsed a corner of his shaving mirror, shoved carelessly away from the base, its flexible arm stretched to the limit. A layer of steam fogged the silver surface.

  Apparently, the female stranger was in his shower. Very naked and very wet.

  His blood flow shifted, heading for points south. Logan filled his lungs with air to try to restore some oxygen to his brain. He regretted the action immediately, for along with the rush of air came a subtle, sexy fragrance emanating from the silky puddle of women’s clothing. The scent rushed to his glands.

  He let the shoe drop and shot to his feet. This wasn’t what he’d expected when he’d turned into the driveway minutes ago and saw another car parked on the gravel. He’d assumed it was some member of his damn meddling, overprotective family. His mother, or one of his sisters, visiting from Montana. He’d expected to find them flitting around, clucking at the disarray of the house, doing his laundry, bearing enough casseroles to keep him in dinners for a week—staunch in their belief that a well-made casserole could cure any ill, real or imagined. Or one of his brothers, wanting to crash for the weekend, determined to take Logan out and get him good and drunk—their cure for any ill, real or imagined.

  As if with one good bender or a few good meals he could forget everything that had happened.

  He glared through that bathroom door, as if he could see through plaster and tile to the naked invader. Whoever this woman was, she wasn’t family. His sisters didn’t wear Italian leather pumps, or the kind of sheer hose that shimmered against the hallway carpet. Neither did his mother. Neither did Mrs. Napoli, his nearest neighbor in this one-horse town in Washington State, and about the only woman he’d bothered to strike up an acquaintance with. Now that he thought about it, he should have been clued in to that fact the moment he’d pulled into the driveway. No one he knew drove the latest model Saab, or cared to, when a good solid Ford would do just as well.

  An image of the saucy wisp of a waitress who’d eyed him in the diner just outside of town yesterday lit up in his mind, stirring his blood. He’d been reminded that his hormones still ran hot, despite three months of hermitlike solitude. Then again, that waitress didn’t look as if she could afford to own the string of well-matched pearls strewn across his coffee table. Or the gossamer clothing tossed so carelessly throughout the house. Nor did that waitress have the throaty sort of voice now humming Mozart in his shower.

  His jaw hardened. He was aroused, yes, titillated by the situation, but at this point in his life this stranger could look like Cindy Crawford and he’d throw her out of his bed. He wasn’t in the mood to be ambushed—by a waitress, by a call girl, by his family, his friends, by anyone. He couldn’t drown the memory of what had happened in Mexico with a bout of quick sweaty sex any more than he could drown it in liquor or his mother’s home-cooked meals. And sex with anyone in this backwater would bring complications. There would be no complications in his house, his life and certainly not his bedroom.

  Why couldn’t the whole world just leave him alone?

  The pipes rumbled to a sudden silence. Wooden rings clanked against one another as the intruder drew the shower curtain back. He took one step deeper into the shadows. He should say something. Now. Call out to her. Warn her of his presence. Let her know in no uncertain terms that he was in no mood for what she was offering. Give her time to collect her clothes and her dignity. But that was his Montana breeding talking, that was his mother’s chiding voice, and it was fading under the rising anger that his home had been invaded—even if it wasn’t really his home, and even if the invader wore very expensive, very sexy shoes. He hadn’t been fit company for anyone in months. Why the hell should he stand on ceremony with a lady who’d busted into his home, then stripped down to get naked and wet?

  He marched to the bedroom doorway. The intruder emerged from the bathroom, toweling off her back, wearing nothing but a glaze of steam.

  He glimpsed the vision for only a flash of a second before she noticed him and gasped. He had only a moment t
o register the sight of the lean redhead, her full, pear-shaped breasts, the impossibly pale pink nipples puckered and swaying with each pass of the towel across her back, the glimmer of dew on the soft hair between her thighs. Only a moment before she swathed that lovely creamy flesh in his ratty old towel.

  But he’d done some branding in his days, on the ranch where he’d grown up. It only took a second to brand a beast for life. Now he stood in the doorway, feeling strangely burned, wondering at the ghostly scent of smoke.

  EUGENIA VAN SAUN REACTED by instinct. She lunged for the table lamp on the nightstand at the far side of the bed. In some rational corner of her mind she reasoned that he’d have to clamber over the bed to get to her, which would slow him down. Long enough for her to toss the bottom-heavy lamp at him. If she aimed well, it would knock him out at the first blow. Or at least disable him long enough for her to dial 911 on the bedside phone.

  She curled her hand around the cool base, yanked it up so hard that the cord ripped out of the wall, and hiked the lamp over her shoulder. She stilled before she lobbed it across the room. The intruder hadn’t made a move. He stood frozen in the bedroom portal, staring at her with wild eyes.

  Wild eyes and wild dark hair, long grown out of its cut. A scruffy shadow obscured the line of his jaw. A white T-shirt bore witness to a powerful chest. Dark blue jeans hugged his hips and legs to the ankle, revealing a pair of scuffed cowboy boots. He stood as still as a post, but Eugenia noted the twitch of his cheek, the heave of his chest, the way his fingers curled white against the doorjamb. With the lamp heavy in her hand she waited and watched, feeling as if she were in the presence of a tightly wound tornado about to change course.

  “Stay back,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll use this, I swear I will.”

  He blinked. Once, twice. Then shook his head as if shaking himself out of a daze. “You don’t need a weapon to knock me out, lady.”

  Husky words, as gritty and raw as his gaze and just as disturbing. Words that left her with no hope that she had protected her privacy in time. She leaned toward the phone, praying as she did that the tuck in her towel would hold. “I’m calling the police,” she warned. “If you’re smart, you’ll—”

  “You’re calling the police?” He slid his arms down the door frame, and then he leaned a meaty shoulder into it. “Well, when you get ‘em, let ‘em know I’ve got someone here, clearly in the middle of breaking and entering.”

  His words seemed odd. They didn’t quite register. “If you leave now, then breaking and entering will be the least of your crimes.”

  “Oh, I ain’t leaving, Red. Not until I know who you are, and what the hell you’re doing in my bedroom.”

  “Your bedroom?”

  “Yeah. My bedroom.” He stabbed the air with his finger. “My bed. My lamp. My shower.” His gaze and his voice dipped lower. “My towel.”

  She pressed the receiver against her chest, muffling the sound of the beeping against the terry cloth. He was lying. This couldn’t be his towel. This couldn’t be his bedroom. She knew the owner of this house, and he didn’t look like this piercing-eyed cowboy who lacked only a Stetson and an oversize belt buckle to complete the picture.

  She cast back upon her trip here, remembered the directions, remembered that she’d found the house key exactly where Dr. Springfield had said it would be—hidden in a secret compartment of the cast-iron turtle perched by the geraniums. No, this cowboy was trying to confuse her. This was the right house. This was the wrong man.

  Yet the hulking giant in the doorway looked as annoyed and put out and angry as she was beginning to feel, standing here dripping, wearing nothing but a towel.

  His towel.

  “You’re lying,” she said, struggling to keep her cool. “This house doesn’t belong to you.”

  “No?”

  “No,” she said, more firmly. “I know the man it does belong to, and he’ll have something to say about you staking a claim.”

  His jaw tensed. A shadow crossed his gaze. She tightened her grip on the phone as the beeping became louder, more insistent, then clicked to a recording. If you’d like to make a call…

  She shouldn’t be afraid. He didn’t seem to be threatening her in any way. But he was still standing there, after all. Deliberately enjoying the view. And blocking her only exit.

  “You’re right,” he admitted easily. “This place doesn’t belong to me. But I know the owner, and she won’t be pleased,” he said, “to find a naked woman in her husband’s bedroom.”

  “The owner is a man,” she said, ignoring the innuendo. “Or maybe he and his wife own it I don’t know. But I have permission to be here, from him.”

  “I see.”

  “We’ve been on the phone for months arranging this.” She tossed the lamp on the bed with more force than necessary. “We’ve been juggling our schedules, playing phone tag during finals. Two weeks, he told me. We’d have two weeks. Springfield made no mention of a surly houseguest who never learned to knock on a—”

  “Springfield?” he interrupted. “John Springfield?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why would John want you here?” The cowboy splayed his hands on his hips, then gave her a once-over rough enough to scour the hair from her body. “He’s got a wife expecting his first child any day now.”

  Eugenia blinked at him for a moment, uncomprehending. The cowboy was angry. There was no faking the fierceness of his expression, or the threatening way he leaned into the room, but she stood there staring for a minute, not understanding the conclusion he’d jumped to. It was too unbelievable. It was ludicrous. It was too crazy to be taken seriously.

  She managed an incredulous, “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. John’s not the type to cheat Even with a woman who looks like you. So you’d better start explaining, Red. How you know him. And what the hell you’re doing here.”

  The color ebbed from her face, then slowly prickled back. A drop of water slid down her inner thigh and paused at the back of her knee. No one had ever accused her of being anyone’s mistress before. No one had ever accused her of any sexual shenanigans at all. Not her, Eugenia Van Saun, professor, researcher, lecturer. She wasn’t a man’s plaything—she was a scientist. And the only man she’d ever gotten close to had dubbed her the ice queen.

  But this cowboy didn’t know her. He couldn’t know her reputation. To him, she was just a naked woman standing on the far side of a big bed, watching his towel soak the moisture from her breasts.

  For one brief moment she allowed herself to wallow in the thought—allowed herself to fully absorb the shock of the image. For whatever twisted reason, this man saw in her the capacity for raw, illicit passion. It was an illusion, yes, an illusion born out of odd circumstances and obvious misunderstanding, yet it was an exquisite, unnerving, almost pleasurable illusion. For she was no man’s mistress. At the moment she was no man’s anything. She’d come to terms with reality a long time ago: Eugenia Van Saun was as passionless as a codfish.

  “Nothing to say?” His fierce gaze stripped her of the towel again with all the power of two greedy hands. “Then make my day, Red. Tell me John sent you to me.” His voice dipped low and husky. “As a belated birthday present.”

  The shock of his words jolted her all the way down to her toes. A birthday present. As if she were some sort of sexual plaything. A bedroom toy sent to give this rough-voiced, wild-eyed man an afternoon of sweaty pleasure.

  Heat shot through blood turned to ice—warring sensations she couldn’t define, didn’t understand. She thought of how her ex-boyfriend would curl in sour laughter over this. You’re as heartless as the tin man, he’d said as he’d dumped her two years ago. And just as bloodless and cold.

  “My name,” she said, slamming the receiver into its cradle as the illusion shattered in her mind, “is Dr. Eugenia Van Saun, of Clark University. Dr. Springfield is a colleague of mine.” She eyed the intruder hard, the way she’d become accustomed to eyeing certain stude
nts of hers who had difficulty looking at her above chest level “I’m here on a research project, with Dr. Springfield’s blessing.”

  He leaned back; his eyes narrowed. “John didn’t say anything to me about a visitor.”

  “Dr. Springfield said nothing to me about a surly boarder, either.” She shifted the towel across her breasts until it held tight. “It is my understanding that he has an arrangement with the university to rent out this cabin to graduate students and researchers involved in the university’s projects.” She eyed him, the formfitting jeans, the white T-shirt, the cowboy boots, the unruly hair. “So who might you be, Mr….?”

  “Macallister,” he snapped, his face twisted in annoyance. “And John wouldn’t invite someone down here without telling me first.”

  “He’s been busy.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. Which makes me wonder how well you know him, if you haven’t heard the news.”

  The man—Macallister—glared at her, not deigning to ask for an explanation. A fierce glare. The kind of look that made her excruciatingly aware of the bareness of her thighs below the edge of the towel, and the curving trails of water that dripped from her hair to gleam on her shoulders.

  “The baby Dr. Springfield’s wife was expecting next month,” she explained, hating herself for knuckling under but disturbed by his piercing glare more, “made an early appearance. Two days ago.”

  “What?”

  “Several weeks premature,” she added. “According to his secretary, Dr. Springfield hasn’t left the hospital since.”

  The cowboy swiveled on one heel and stormed out of the room.

  IT TOOK LOGAN four phone calls and a lot of frustration before he finally found the right ward in the right hospital and convinced an overworked nurse to fetch a groggy John to the line.

  Logan came right to the point. “What the hell happened?”