Logan's Way Read online

  “Logan? That you?” Logan could practically hear John scraping his hand through his hair. “I’ve been meaning to call. It’s been a rough few days.”

  “Is Judy all right?”

  “Yes, she’s fine, she’s resting.”

  He hesitated a moment. “And the baby?”

  “Yes. Yes, there’s a baby.” John made a strange sound, a strangled laugh, a quiet bark of disbelief. “It’s a girl. Barely four and a half pounds. It was touch and go for a while, but the doctors think she’ll be fine.”

  Logan tipped the phone away from his mouth to allow himself a sigh of relief out of John’s earshot. His heart pounded in his chest. He curled his fingers over his clammy palms. He could feel the droplets of sweat forming on his forehead, right now, here, in the calm of his cabin, hundreds of miles away from the hospital and its antiseptic smell.

  How he hated this weakness in himself, a weakness that seized him randomly—in the shower, while he was driving, in his dreams. He hadn’t been in the emergency room with Judy and John two days ago, swathed in scrubs and his hands stained with blood. He hadn’t been responsible for the life of a mother and a child. There was no reason for him to be breaking out in a cold sweat, no reason for this crushing sense of guilt and responsibility.

  At least, not this time.

  “All right. That’s good,” he said, swiveling the phone back into place and trying to force his voice and his vital signs back to normal. “That’s real good.”

  “I was going to call you,” John said, “but it all happened so fast—”

  “Tell me.”

  “What, all the gory details?”

  He tightened his grip on the phone. “Every damn detail from contraction to crowning.”

  John proceeded to relate the story while Logan watched it unfold in his mind. Logan had delivered enough babies in his time to recognize the warning signs long before John, who was called “doctor” because of his Ph.D. in botany and knew only as much about female physiology as could be related to pistons and stamens. As Logan listened to the tale, images intruded of bare bulbs blinking by the power of failing generators, of women drenched in sweat and screaming in Spanish or Swahili as their wombs knotted within them, as babes were born into his bare hands and washed in tainted water…. Then he reminded himself that Judy lived in Portland, Oregon, where the sheets were bleached clean every day and morphine was fed to a laboring mother through a slender catheter inserted near her spine.

  “…and then they took the baby away and started sticking wires all over her. It was a good two hours before we knew what was going on. All they told us was that she was four pounds, six ounces, and had to be monitored closely.”

  Logan nodded. “They’ll keep her until at least five pounds.”

  Five pounds. The size of a roaster chicken. He’d held five-pound babies in his hands as they struggled to breathe, struggled to live without the benefit of ventilators and antibiotics and heated bassinets.

  “That’s what they told us. She has gained half an ounce since yesterday, which they tell me is a good sign.”

  “A real good sign.”

  “You have to come up and see her, Logan,” John said. “She’s small, but she’s beautiful. And Judy could use you. She doesn’t trust these doctors. But she’d trust your advice. She’d believe you if you told her the baby was going to be okay.”

  She’d believe you if you told her the baby was going to be okay….

  Logan bit down on a retort. He could imagine Judy looking up at him from the hospital bed, her eyes wide, her ears perked, ready to hear only what she wanted to hear. As if his being a doctor somehow granted him miraculous powers of fortune-telling.

  “The doctors there know the situation better,” he said gruffly. “I’d have to look at her chart, monitor the situation—”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Logan heard the skepticism behind the sound and chose to ignore it. John knew what had happened in Mexico. John knew—and Logan didn’t want to talk about it. Not now, not ever. Then he heard the sound of a woman’s soft footsteps coming down the hall.

  “You’re in good hands, John,” he said. “But while you’ve been whiling away your time in a hospital, I’ve had some excitement down here.”

  “What,” he scoffed, “did the racoons get into the garbage again?”

  “I found a naked woman in my shower.”

  As John choked on the other end of the line, Logan swiveled on one foot to eye the woman approaching him across the living room. Lady was the better term. Gone were the gloriously loose, wet red locks. She’d plastered her hair back on her head and imprisoned it in some sort of silver contraption. She’d bound those full breasts, as well. He could tell by the way her bra held them stock-still beneath her simple white button-down shirt. A leather belt cinched her silken pants, whose voluminous folds smothered the firmness and shape of those lovely freckled thighs.

  He wanted to strip her bare again. He must have looked like it, too, for with suddenly glowing cheeks she grabbed the pearls pooled on the coffee table, then dipped her head to fasten them behind her neck.

  “Logan? You still there?” John sputtered. “You’re going to explain that comment.”

  “You’re going to do the explaining to me.”

  “How?”

  “You’re going to tell me why a Dr. Eugenia Van Saun is standing in this living room, claiming she’s got your permission to stay here for two weeks.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. A silent pause. A contemplative pause. A pause that made Logan very, very suspicious.

  “Eugenia Van Saun.” John spoke the name slowly, then sucked in a dramatic breath. “Aw, Logan. I forgot.”

  “You forgot.”

  “Jeez, is it June already? Yes—late June. I forgot all about it. I forgot all about her.”

  Logan could hear John pacing and he could imagine the sight of him, unshaven and ruffled in the glaring white corridor of the hospital.

  Something was up.

  “Yeah, yeah,” John continued, as if just remembering. “Dr. Gene is supposed to be there. We’ve been planning it. I meant to tell you, but with finals and Judy’s problems—”

  “How long have you been planning it?”

  “Well…a couple of months.”

  Logan lowered his voice, turned his back on Eugenia and spoke deep into the phone. “If you weren’t a new father, Johnny-boy, I’d come up there and break both your arms.”

  “I forgot What’s the big deal?”

  “Yeah, you forgot. Like my brother ‘forgot’ I didn’t want him to visit. Like my mother ‘forgot’ that I hate tuna casseroles.”

  “This is legit. Eugenia’s doing some research on those plants I found last year. Remember? I dragged you out to the national park to check on them in March, and you complained the whole way.”

  He did remember that day. Too distinctly. He’d just arrived back from Mexico and had been settling in with John’s help, trying to clear his mind. He’d agreed to tag along with John on one of his nature walks. Logan remembered the smell of the woods, the scent of spring flowers blooming early due to a quirk in the weather—and it reminded him of the thick, choking fragrance of bouquets left on mass graves.

  “If this is legit,” Logan said, forcefully yanking his thoughts back to the present, “you would have warned me so I could clear the hell out of here.”

  “I figured we could make arrangements whatever the situation, so I didn’t bother you with it. I figured I’d let you know…” Logan could almost hear John’s shoulders shrugging. “I guess I messed up.”

  “You’d better enjoy that baby girl of yours.”

  “What?”

  “Because if I find out you set me up, buddy, then that baby will be your last child.”

  “Set you up? Would I do that to an old buddy who has made it clear as glass that he wants to spend the rest of his life as a hermit?”

  Yes. A dark furrow of anger curled inside him. Yes,
John would set him up. His old buddy was as well meaning as the rest of his friends and family. Intruding. Interrupting. Invading his privacy, all for his own good.

  “Though I have to admit,” John continued, apparently oblivious to the storm brewing on the other end of the line, “if I were to set you up, Dr. Gene would be one hell of a blind date. She’s cool and professional and brilliant, and she’s also responsible for the production of more male drool than any other female I know—hey. Wait a minute.” John’s breath caught on a sudden thought. “What did you say before…about finding a woman in the shower?”

  “You heard me right.”

  “Naked? You saw Dr. Gene naked?”

  “Yes in-deed,” he said as the image seared into his brain anew.

  John made a sound that could only be described as a whoop. “Logan, do you realize what a sensation that’ll cause at the next conference? I know some guys who’d give up their grants to glimpse the ice queen without her lab coat.”

  Ice queen. Logan turned and watched the lady shove her hands into the folds of her pants, watched the stretch of the fabric against her firm buttocks.

  “Well,” John insisted. “Well, are you going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “C’mon, Logan, put the scientific community out of its misery. What’s the scoop? Are they real? Is she a true redhead?”

  Logan didn’t laugh. He didn’t feel the urge to laugh. John and he had exchanged much cruder comments between them over women just as sophisticated and just as accomplished, all private speculations of the testosterone kind that would never be repeated in polite company.

  This time he didn’t feel like participating.

  “She’s right here, John,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to ask her yourself.”

  Wordlessly, Logan held out the receiver. She looked startled, then composed herself and took it. With a shift of weight, she turned away from him, granting him a fine view of a sweetly curved back.

  He let his gaze slip over the narrow shoulders to the slender waist, to the curves hidden under the folds of her pants, working more on memory than sight to recreate the vision he’d glimpsed for a moment in that bedroom.

  She’d concealed herself well. With more than clothes, he had to admit. The woman had donned an air of coolness from the silver filigree in her hair to the sleek Italian shoes on her feet. It seemed from the moment she’d walked into the room that a rim of minty frost had sugared the windows. Every creamy, tailored inch of her looked the part of the composed intellectual. Which, judging by the sudden technicality of the conversation between her and John, she apparently was.

  Then he realized that his heart was still pounding, his palms were still damp, but for new and different reasons.

  “Dr. Springfield—John,” she corrected, somewhat reluctantly, “please, you don’t have to apologize. It is an understandable mix-up—”

  Her lips thinned as John interrupted her with a whole string of false excuses. She didn’t know John as Logan did. She didn’t know how Logan’s family and friends enjoyed meddling in his life, how everyone else seemed to know what was best for him. She stretched the phone line between manicured fingers and twisted it so it roped around her, pinning her silken pants to her thighs.

  Looking at this redhead with the body of a centerfold, Logan couldn’t argue that there was at least one way Eugenia Van Saun could make him forget—at least temporarily. Unfortunately, the lady didn’t look like the type to go for hot sex on the living room floor.

  “No, John, I insist.” Her voice changed, grew firm and decisive as she finally allowed her gaze to flit to Logan. “We are two rational adults. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Logan sank down into the sofa and folded his hands behind his head, eyeing the lady as she shifted her stance to keep her profile to him. She was dealing with John’s false guilt with understanding tinged with edgy impatience. He suspected she was a lady who didn’t like surprises, who hated the unexpected, who willed the world around her to work at her speed and by her rules.

  Well, he had his own rules to live by these days. And they didn’t include smooth-skinned ladies who bathed their hair with—he closed his eyes to breathe the fragrance a little deeper—with strawberry shampoo.

  Strangely young. Strangely innocent

  “Here.”

  He glanced up into eyes the color of clear tea. Strong tea. Iced tea, with a healthy slice of lemon. Her pearls swayed against her throat, casting shadows into the valley made by the V of her shirt.

  “Here,” she repeated, holding the phone out to him. “John wants to talk to you again.”

  He took the receiver from her hand then cradled it between his neck and his ear. “Well?”

  “She seems to think you two can work something out.”

  “No doubt you counted on that.”

  “It’s two weeks, Logan,” John said. “You can’t handle that?”

  Spoken like a dare. Logan let his gaze amble over her body. She’d shoved her hands in her pockets. Now she wandered around the room, taking some vague interest in the cheap northern landscapes scattered across the paneled walls.

  “John,” he muttered, “you didn’t leave me much of a damn choice.”

  “Good. Good, Logan. Listen, the pediatrician just walked into Judy’s room, I’ve got to go.”

  “Yeah. Right. This isn’t over, John.”

  “I’ll send Judy your love.”

  “Do that. And keep me posted.”

  He hung up the phone and eyed the problem standing before him.

  He’d lied to John. It wasn’t going to be easy working things out He had projects to finish. He couldn’t leave the cabin without abandoning them. Although John’s generosity in letting him stay here had allowed Logan to live cheaply all these months, he still had to pay for food and other expenses from his savings. That balance was like a ticking bomb, fast approaching zero. He couldn’t afford to move away for two weeks. He couldn’t afford to crash in a hotel, even a cheap one. There was no place else he could go that wouldn’t require explanations, that wouldn’t invite questions about his future, involve him in complicated explanations, in casserole dinners and drinking bouts.

  This woman who’d come to a stop behind the recliner, this woman who braced her manicured hands on the leather back, this woman with the steady, whiskey-colored gaze and the voluptuous body had more right to be here than he did. She had real work to do.

  “Seems you were right,” he said as he stood up and hiked his hands on his hips. “You do have permission to shower in my bedroom.”

  “Seems you were right, too,” she countered, crossing her arms over her breasts. “You didn’t have to knock before barging in on me.”

  He could see her waiting for it. An apology. Remorse. He couldn’t muster either over the growing feeling of annoyance. “I didn’t barge in.”

  “No. I suppose you didn’t.” She filled her lungs with air, making those magnificent breasts strain against linen, “In any case,” she added swiftly, “we seem to have a situation here, Mr. Macallister.”

  “Call me Logan.” He narrowed his eyes upon her. “And I’ll call you…Ginny.”

  “Ginny!”

  “Yeah.” He allowed himself a humorless grin, for he’d knocked some of the frost off her—he all but saw it drift glittering to the ground. “It seems the only reasonable thing to duo,” he explained, “seeing as we’re going to be roommates.”

  2

  EUGENIA BIT BACK the exclamation that surged to her throat, but not quickly enough. An undignified squeal escaped her.

  Ginny? He was going to call her Ginny?

  No one called her Ginny. Well…almost no one. The name reverberated inside her, echoing through her past. The last person who’d called her Ginny had been her grandmother—and she had died when Eugenia was fourteen years old.

  “Mr. Macallister,” she said, forcing her senses back to equilibrium, “most of my colleagues call me Eugenia. If that�
��s too much of a mouthful for you, Gene would be fine.”

  “I can get my tongue around quite a few big words, Dr. Van Saun.” His humorless grin turned brittle. “You’d be surprised. But it’s definitely Ginny for you. I think it fits you fine.”

  Then the impact of his shadowed green gaze stripped right through linen and silk for the umpteenth time since she’d entered the room, heating the surface of her bare skin in a way that baffled all scientific explanation.

  “In any case,” she continued, ignoring the tingling of her flesh, “I don’t think it is such a good idea to share this cabin.”

  “It’s the only solution-John would have my head if I shipped you off to a hotel. Or scared you away completely.”

  She gave him an eye and he met it squarely. Scared her away? Shipped her off to a hotel? Well. A twist of anger tightened in her chest. This cretin didn’t seem to realize that it was she who had the upper hand. She was the one who’d obtained permission from Dr. Springfield to continue his research. She was the one who’d made painstaking efforts to reserve this cabin, to take two weeks off after finals and before a summer’s worth of research. This guy looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And according to Dr. Springfield, Logan Macallister wasn’t here to seek a cure for cancer.

  “I don’t intend to be ‘scared away.’ I have some important research to do.” She forced her voice to be calm. “I need a laboratory with a hood and gas lines. I understand that Dr. Springfield has converted the basement of this building into a mini-lab.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be working with flammable solvents,” she continued. “Doing distillations. Wet extractions. I need the services of that laboratory. I can’t do that in a motel room or anyplace else but here. So, you see, I don’t have a choice. I have to stay here to do my work.”

  She waited for him to offer to leave. She didn’t know how much plainer she could get, short of telling him to leave outright. It wasn’t her nature to be so direct. But, after all, he was just “crashing,” according to Dr. Springfield. Taking care of the place in John’s absence. She had legitimate work to do.

  Instead, he scrutinized her, from her pearls to her feet. “I’ve gotta say, Ginny, you don’t look like the mad-scientist type.”