by Lori Ryan
Sam heard Tanya squeak and mumble something about paperwork piling up. Sam knew if she turned, she’d see Tanya slinking back to her cubicle, where she’d no doubt crawl under her desk and hide.
But she didn’t turn to check on Tanya. She was rooted to the spot, trying to figure out how to get her foot to either come back up her throat or go down smoothly. Her size nine, chunky-heeled, purple boot that she thought had looked so cute this morning was going nowhere. It was firmly lodged in her throat as a weird, choked sound eked out past it.
Before she could come up with words to try to cover her mortification, Jack grinned and gracefully let her off the hook.
“Jennie, Sam, have you met Logan Stone?”
Sigh. Had she met Logan Stone? No. She hadn’t met him. She’d seen him, though. And drooled over him from across the room at her friend’s wedding three months ago. And she’d dreamed about him.
She’d lusted after his dark eyes and the five o’clock shadow that graced a chiseled jaw and outlined a mouth she wanted to bite. Hair so dark it was almost black. Thick hair she wanted to pull as he, um … so, yes, she’d dreamed about him. Hot, sweaty dreams that she’d prayed never to wake up from. In her dreams, they’d done a lot more than meet, going well past “hello, how are you” to “let me stick my tongue down your throat while we get started on our first-born child.”
Somewhere in the back of Sam’s mind, she knew running her gaze up and down the man’s body was rude, but who could stop themselves?
He stood there all dark and scruffy in dark slacks and a charcoal sweater that hugged his biceps and chest. He looked photoshoot ready, and Sam had a hard time not being grateful that he wasn’t covering himself up with a suit jacket.
She guessed going from BDUs and a flak jacket, or whatever it was SEALs wore, to a business suit was too much. She liked his choice of compromise just fine. She wondered briefly if spinning her finger in the air to indicate he should turn so she could see his backside would be too much.
Yeah. Probably. But maybe?
“Hi, Logan. It’s so good to see you again,” Jennie said smoothly, next to Samantha, putting her hand out to shake the man’s. Samantha continued to stare.
Close your mouth.
Well, at least the voice in her head wasn’t dumbstruck. That was always a positive.
On the negative side of the scale was the fact that Logan Stone had just heard her tirade against her boss’s taste in men.
“And, this is Samantha Page,” Jack said, gesturing to Sam as she forced her mouth to close. “She was going to be showing you guys the ropes and getting you settled in, but I think she’s got some complaints to lodge with HR over your qualifications,” Jack quipped and Sam found her mouth falling open once again.
He was joking about this? She’d called him sex-on-a-stick and he was joking?
Samantha closed her mouth and cleared her throat. “I’m good, Jack. No complaints here. I’ll just, um, I’ll get, um ….”
Oh, my hell. Stop babbling and say something—anything—moderately intelligible. Or burst into flames. Developing the ability to go up in flames right now would be handy.
“Hi,” the man of her dreams intoned, his deep voice washing over every atom of her body, stroking her in a way she’d felt only in her dreams. “It’s nice to meet you, Samantha.” He said the words, but kept his hands shoved in his pockets.
And, with that, in front of Jennie, her boss, and the man whose kids she hoped to have one day, Samantha Page opened her mouth and said, “Gah.”
Logan knocked on the jamb of the open door to Sam’s office. He’d spent the rest of the morning in meetings with his new team and Jack. They prioritized the research projects Jack wanted everyone working on and the acquisitions Logan would be looking into in the coming months.
“Hey, Sam.” Logan watched as Sam’s head shot up, her attention ripped from her computer, which apparently held something enthralling. So enthralling, she hadn’t noticed he’d been watching her for the past few minutes. The woman intrigued the crap out of him. Unfortunately.
She had a habit of rubbing the tip of her nose with her index finger as she focused, then tapping it whenever she smiled as though she’d had a breakthrough or some big “aha!” moment.
Logan blinked his eyes purposely, a trick he’d used during his years in special ops when he needed to clear his mind and refocus. Like the click of an old slide show projector, Logan moved to the next frame in his mind.
He focused solely on Samantha as a co-worker, not as an erotically tantalizing woman with a kick-ass body he’d love to get his hands on. It was an exercise he’d be doing a lot of, if they were going to work together.
He had no business getting involved with anyone with the state his head was in. He needed to focus on planting one foot in front of the other, right now. On just making sure he made it through the day without losing the shit that seemed to be swimming around in his head for brains nowadays. There wasn’t time for anything other than that, and sure as hell not with a woman like Sam.
“Jack told me to come see you at two. He said you’ve done some of the preliminary work for us on a few of the companies he wants to look into,” Logan said, a little intrigued with the way she openly ogled him from head to toe.
She didn’t even seem to realize she was doing it. It was almost comical how blatantly she allowed her eyes to skim him from head to toe. If it wasn’t so comical, he might squirm under the scrutiny, but nothing about her gaze made him uneasy.
“Sam?” he prompted when she still hadn’t answered him.
“Hmmm? Oh! Lunch.”
“What?” He didn’t know what she meant. He hadn’t mentioned lunch and it was already two o’clock.
Her eyes cut to the small clock that sat on the corner of her desk and he heard her murmur quietly about it being lunchtime already. He wondered how often she forgot to eat when she was into something. And how often she talked to herself, even when there was someone else in the room.
“Uh,” she said almost distractedly as she leaned over and used her mouse to save something on the screen before locking the computer. “I need to go eat lunch. Come with me and we’ll talk while we eat?” She picked up her purse and faced him.
“Uh.” Real suave, idiot. How to explain that he brought lunch so he wouldn’t have to leave the building? “I, uh already ate.”
“No biggie,” she said, seemingly unfazed. “You can have dessert.” She walked to the office door as though she expected him to follow her, and follow he did. Like a freaking puppy. What the hell was wrong with him?
As they stood by the elevator, Sam cocked her head to one side, her expression thoughtful. As he waited to see what she’d do, trying to decipher the maddening scent that had to be a pheromone of some sort, he noted she was even taller than he’d thought. She must be close to six feet tall.
So close to his own six feet two inches in those boots, he wouldn’t even have to duck his head to close the space between them and taste those full lips of hers. He imagined they’d taste like cherries or strawberries, but that was probably only because of the berry red lipstick she wore.
He didn’t expect it at all when Samantha reached a hand out and squeezed his bicep. Her hand felt too damned good over the cotton of his shirt. She ran her hand up to his shoulder, her fingertips grazing lightly over his collarbone. Hell, if that didn’t send a message straight to his groin. The expression on her face was almost analytical in its intensity. Her touch was clinical, but his body didn’t seem to give a damn.
Great. A hard-on at the office on his first day. What a proud moment.
“Hmm. It really is just like a romance novel.” She left the odd statement out there and turned to enter the opening elevator doors, as though she hadn’t just felt him up.
Logan felt a grin on his face and another laugh he hadn’t expected bubbling up in his chest. Luckily, the strange way her mind worked intrigued him enough that his dick started to settle down in his pants and he was
able to follow her.
Catching up, he let one hand fall to her elbow for no other reason than he wanted more contact with her. He leaned in close. “What’s like a romance novel?”
Samantha froze and turned round eyes on him. “Damn, I said that out loud? Have to stop doing that,” she seemed to admonish herself, stabbing the button marked L for Lobby in brass letters.
“Did I—” she cut herself off as she glanced at his shoulders.
He laughed. “Feel me up? Yes. That wasn’t happening in your head, either.”
Logan put his back against the wall and turned to face the double doors. Standing shoulder to shoulder, she turned to him with one of the most earnest expressions he’d ever seen.
“I apologize. I don’t have an internal filter. I’m the only one in my family who was born without one. It used to embarrass the heck out of my sisters. I always said the wrong thing in front of their boyfriends. I never fit in at school. I would have been a total pariah if it weren’t for my sisters and brothers paving the way for me.” Samantha sighed and he bit back a grin. “Anyway, I just never managed to grow a filter so you’ll have to excuse my random babbling from time to time.”
Logan felt the corners of his mouth twitch as he nodded. “Got it. No problem. Ignore random babbling.”
The hell he would. He loved the random things she said. They were funny, and when she combined them with actually reaching out and feeling him up? He could get on board with that in a heartbeat.
Logan held the elevator door open when they landed in the lobby. The crowd of people moving in and out of the four units that made up the elevator bank of the large building kicked an unwelcome agitation into high gear. He gritted his teeth as they moved through the crowd and tried to get Samantha to begin babbling again.
“How many sisters and brothers do you have?”
“Three older sisters and two older brothers.” Her smile was wide as she answered.
“The baby then, huh?”
“Yup. And, they never let me forget it.”
Logan paused when they hit the sidewalk and looked in both directions. To an outsider, he probably looked undecided about where to go. He stretched his neck, tilting his head from side to side, attempting to relieve the strain tightening his muscles. The back of his neck always felt like chunks of calcite were grating into each other in there. Always grating and grinding, setting his teeth on edge.
“What’s good around here?” Logan turned to Sam as he spoke and noticed her studying him.
Sam nodded to a place across the street to the right. “I usually go to the bagel place. They have sandwiches and great coffee and they also serve breakfast all day if you want it. Or there’s a Mexican place farther up the street. When it gets warmer out, make sure you try the Thai cart that parks across the street. They have really fantastic Pad Thai, but they won’t show up for another few weeks.”
Logan nodded. “Bagels work.” They stood side by side near the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Logan edged his way to the back of the small group of people waiting there and let his eyes roam.
A crushed soda can lay in the gutter only feet from them. A parked car sat three yards down. A van idled beside it, double parked with no driver in sight. Logan took another step backward and shot a glance to the light. Still no sign of the little lighted man that would tell them to cross. His fists clenched and unclenched and he realized he had fallen into the patterned combat breathing that had become a way of life out on an op.
Lost in the moment, he was shocked when Sam put her hand in his. She pulled him several yards back, toward the edge of the building, away from the crowd and the cars.
“I prefer to wait in the shade,” she said simply, letting go of his hand and turning to watch the light at the corner. She studiously avoided his gaze.
Shade, my ass. It was in the forties and, if not cloudy, certainly not sunny by any means. Although he hated that she might have noticed his tension, he felt the tightness in his chest ease.
It was a little thing, waiting that short distance away, but having his back to the building and just a bit of space gave him back the ability to breathe. He was able to think clearly and rationally instead of listening to the screeching alarm bells in his head. And, he had a feeling she knew exactly what she was doing, but wasn’t going to make a big deal of it.
Logan glanced down at her again as the light changed and they took off toward the bagel place, crossing the street just a little behind the crowd. They were quiet while ordering their food at the walk-up counter, but Logan picked up the subject of family again when they found seats near the back of the restaurant. Sam nodded and followed him when he pointed to the booth against the wall.
“So, is your family nearby?” he asked. The restaurant was on a corner, with two entrances, one on either of the facing streets. He popped the top on his bottled iced tea and took a large gulp, letting his gaze take in the people surrounding them.
A family with two young kids at the table next to them; four men in suits on the other side; a few tables with only one person, all looking like they came from the surrounding office buildings. Two police officers in uniforms in the far corner.
From his position, Logan could watch the two doors, but he wasn’t so close to either entrance that people caught him off guard when opening the door. As Samantha began to talk, he found the churning in his gut slowing. He could almost pretend he was normal in her presence. She sure as hell did a good job of acting like he was, even though he was pretty sure nothing was getting by her.
Sam nodded. “My parents are in Massachusetts, an easy drive on the weekends, and most of my siblings are spread out in this area. Two in New York City, another in New Jersey, and two in Philly.”
“So you guys are all close?”
She gave a funny tilt of her head back and forth and a little shrug of a shoulder. “As close as one can be to a family of jocks and prom queens when you skipped three grades and were more focused on writing code than you were on fitting in.”
Logan raised an eyebrow. “You hardly seem like a black sheep.”
She shrugged a shoulder again, mumbled something about not quite fitting the mold and quickly changed the subject. He let her.
“What about you? Do you have family nearby?”
Logan shook his head no. “Only my dad and he’s up in New Hampshire.”
“No sisters and brothers?”
“Nope.”
There was an uncomfortable lull and he felt like a jackass for being so short. Family wasn’t something he had fond memories of. His dad was an alcoholic who served as little more than an embarrassment to Logan growing up. They didn’t have a relationship. After Logan’s mother had died when he was seven, he’d essentially raised himself.
Logan had been a bit of an outcast in school as well. He was more into computers and books than a lot of the kids in his school, and he’d been scrawny growing up.
When he’d started getting his ass kicked on the playground every day, he’d signed himself up for karate lessons. And that was how he and Zach met and became best friends. Zach was a brother to him now. They’d taken care of each other. Still did.
Sam cut into his thoughts, and into the stiff silence. “So, Jack has you looking at Kleintech? Is he thinking of pulling the plug on their funding?”
“Maybe not pulling it altogether, but at least sending some of us in to oversee things for a while. It looks like Arty Klein is a brilliant scientist, but not exactly a crack businessman. Jack is pretty sure if we straighten things out on the business side, the technology is still worth the investment. I’m planning to send Jaxon down there next week so he can go over the books and streamline things.”
“Jaxon Cutter.” She looked like she was running through a computer in her head, and from what he’d heard about Sam from Jack and Zach, that made sense. If what they’d told him was true, Sam was easily the smartest woman he’d ever met and he’d worked with some crazy intelligent women in the milit
ary.
Sam could hack just about any program and he wouldn’t be surprised to hear she had an eidetic memory.
She began to spout off what sounded like a summary of Jaxon’s military service record. “Honorable discharge two years ago, Navy Corpsman to the Marines, a couple of bullets took his spleen, a piece of one lung, and his left leg below the knee. A lot of his record is redacted. I thought about hacking it, but Jennie has told me I shouldn’t dig into the personal lives of people I know. Apparently, it’s rude.”
Logan found himself squirming now, realizing Sam had probably read about each of his injuries as well. She might even be aware of the struggle he had even walking some days, after having taken a hell of a lot of shrapnel to his thigh and hip.
Luckily, their food arrived, providing a reprieve. He dug into the chips that filled one half of the green basket set in front of him. Logan steered the conversation back to work for the rest of the half hour and Samantha treated him to more of her “unfiltered” thoughts, including her musings as to whether Jack would be firing her after overhearing her rant that morning.
Logan had to grin at that. He’d heard stories about Sam from Zach long before he saw her at the wedding. Maybe that was why she’d fascinated him so completely right off the bat? Because he’d built her up in his mind over the years.
Sam had been instrumental in rescuing Jack’s wife, Kelly, from human traffickers intent on auctioning her off. Logan was fairly sure that involvement meant no one at Sutton had the authority to fire Sam. Not even Jack Sutton himself.
Logan was quiet as he watched her eat the apple pie she ordered with her sandwich. He hadn’t taken her advice of having dessert, opting to have a second lunch instead. She had been right about the sandwiches. The place was good. But watching her eat the gooey confection in front of her made him want dessert.
Or her. One or the other. Or both. One on top of the other.
Ugh.
He cleared his throat, searching for some topic to clear his head. “Corpsmen are some serious shit. After everyone else is sitting down catching some Zs or eating, they’re still going around checking everyone, patching shit up. They’ve got stamina like you wouldn’t believe. Guts to match.” He’d known some amazing Corpsmen during his time overseas. Respected the hell out of all of them.