by Kristi Gold
From that moment forward, every bit of her surroundings seemed to disappear. The only sound she heard happened to be Logan whispering sensual words in her ear about what he wanted to do to her, what she was doing to him right then. Some of the comments could be considered crude, but she regarded them as the sexiest phrases she’d ever heard. He knew all the right buttons to push and, boy, did he push them well. The pressure began to mount, bringing with it pure pleasure on the heels of an impending climax, compliments of Logan’s gentle, right-on-target strokes. And when the orgasm hit all too soon, Hannah inadvertently dug her nails into his upper arm and battled a scream bubbling up from her throat.
She’d never been a screamer. She’d never been in a pasture with her pants down around her knees either, being tended to by one outrageously gorgeous, sexy guy who knew exactly how to treat a woman.
Hannah was suddenly consumed by the overwhelming need to have him inside her. Yet when she reached for his fly, he clasped her wrist to stop her. “Not here,” he said. “Not now. This was all for you.”
She focused on his beautiful face, the deep indentations framing his mouth. “But—”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m going to be fine until we get back to the house.”
She lifted her head slightly, with effort, to look at him. “What are we going to do when we get there?”
“I’m going to show you my bed.” He favored her with a grin. “That is, if you want to see it.”
Who was he kidding? “I seriously thought you would never ask.”
* * *
Logan could have gone with spontaneity, but he wanted this first time between them to be special. More importantly, he needed Hannah to know she meant more to him than a quick roll on the ground, instant gratification, then over and out. She’d begun to mean more to him than she probably should.
Taking her by the hand, he led her into the master bedroom and closed the door behind them, determined to shut out the world and any lingering reservations.
Hannah remained silent when he tossed back the covers then guided her to the side of the bed. “Take off your shoes.” And that would be the last thing she’d remove by herself if he had any say in the matter, which he did.
While she sat on the edge of the bed and took off her sneakers, he sat in the adjacent chair to pull off his boots. Once that was done, he lifted her from the bed and back onto her bare feet. He saw absolute trust in her eyes after he pulled the T-shirt over her head and tossed it aside. He noticed some self-consciousness in her expression as he removed her bra, and unmistakable heat when he slid her jeans and panties to the floor. She braced one hand on his shoulder for balance as she stepped out of the remaining clothes, a slight blush on her cheeks when he swept her up and laid her on the bed.
The sun streamed in from the open curtains covering the windows facing the pasture, casting Hannah’s beautiful body in a golden glow. He needed to touch her. Had to touch her. But first things first.
Her gaze didn’t waver as Logan stripped off his shirt, but she did home in on the ink etched in his upper arm. He’d have to explain that later. Right then he had more pressing issues. After shoving down his jeans and boxer-briefs, he opened the nightstand drawer, withdrew a packet and tossed it onto his side of the bed. He returned his attention to Hannah, who looked more than a little interested in his erection, her eyes wide with wonder.
She caught his glance and smiled. “I didn’t realize you were that happy to see me.”
Happier than he’d been in a long, long time. “I’m ecstatic to be here.”
“So am I.”
Relieved to hear that confirmation, Logan claimed the empty space beside Hannah and remained on his knees to allow better access. As he slid his fingertip between her breasts, pausing to circle each nipple, then moved down her torso, Hannah’s breath caught. And when he replaced his hand with his mouth to retrace his path, he would swear she stopped breathing altogether.
When it came to sex, the advantage always went to women—they required little to no recovery time. And although his own body screamed for release, he was bent on proving that fact.
Logan nudged her legs apart to make a place for himself, then planted a kiss right below her navel. He didn’t linger there long because he had somewhere more interesting to go. An intimate place that needed tending. When his mouth hit home, Hannah jerked from the impact. But he didn’t let up, using his tongue to tease her into another climax. And as far as he could tell, this one was stronger than the last, apparent when she dug her nails even deeper into his shoulder.
He’d waited as long as physically possible to make love to her completely, and that sent him onto his back to reach for the condom. In a real big hurry, he tore the packet open with his teeth and had it in place in record time. He moved over her, eased inside her and called up every ounce of control to savor the feel of her surrounding him.
He’d learned long ago how to take a woman to the limits, but he also learned how to shelter his emotions in recent years. His sexual partners—and they’d been very few and far between—had been a means to an end. No commitments. No promises. Only mutual physical satisfaction. Up to that moment, he hadn’t realized how empty his life had become. Until Hannah.
He minimized his movements as he held her closely. He wanted it to last, if not forever, at least a little while longer. But nature had other ideas, and the orgasm crashed down on him with the force of a hurricane.
Logan couldn’t remember the last time he’d shaken so hard, or the last time his heart had beaten so fast. He sure as hell couldn’t recall wanting to remain that way for the rest of the day, in the arms of someone he’d known for such a short while. But at times, he’d felt as if he’d known Hannah for years.
When she moved slightly beneath him and sighed, he took that as a cue his weight might be getting to her. But after he shifted over onto his back, she asked, “Where are you going?”
He slid his arm beneath her and brought her against his side. “I’m still here, Hannah.”
She rose up and traced one half of the broken-heart tattoo on his upper arm, etched with an A on one side, and a G on the other. “Are these your ex-wife’s initials?”
He’d expected that question, and he decided on a half-truth. “No. They belong to a girl I used to know.” His baby girl.
She rested her cheek on his chest, right above his heart, which was pounding for a different reason now. “She must have been very special, and I’m sorry she broke your heart.”
After another span of silence passed, Logan thought she’d fallen asleep. She proved him wrong when she asked, “You’ve never really considered having children of your own?”
Alarm bells rang in his head. “I’m not cut out for fatherhood.”
She raised her head again and stared at him. “How could you possibly know that if you haven’t even tried it? Or do you just not like kids?”
“I like kids a lot. They’re way the hell more honest than adults. But it takes more than liking a child to raise them right.”
She settled back on the pillow. “I personally think you’d be good at it, for what it’s worth.”
In a moment of clarity, Logan realized Hannah deserved the truth. She had to know the real man behind the facade. It pained him to think about reliving those details. He’d be tearing open an old wound that still refused to heal. He also could be inviting her scorn, and that would be even worse. Still, he felt he had no choice but to be open and honest.
“Hannah?”
“Hmmm...” she murmured as she softly stroked his belly.
“There’s something I need to tell you, and it’s not going to be pretty.”
* * *
Hannah sensed he’d been concealing a secret all along, but was she prepared to hear it? She certainly better be, she realized, when Logan handed her the T-shirt
and panties, then told her to put them on with a strange detachment that belied the sadness in his brown eyes.
While she dressed, Logan pulled on his jeans before sitting on the bed’s edge and turning his back to her. A long period of silence passed and for a minute she wondered if he’d reconsidered confessing whatever it was he felt the need to confess.
“I had a daughter at one time.”
Hannah bit back an audible gasp. She’d expected an affair, a business deal gone bad. Maybe even bankruptcy, although that didn’t make much sense considering he’d purchased a million-dollar home. But she could not have predicated he’d lied about being a father. Then again, that could explain the framed photo she’d found in his desk drawer. “Did you lose custody?”
“I lost her because she died.”
And Hannah only thought she couldn’t be more stunned. “When did this happen, Logan?”
“Almost eight years ago,” he said in a weary tone. “She was only four years old.”
She swallowed around her shock right before her ability to relate to his loss drew her to his side. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Logan.” It was all she could think to say at a moment like this. Now she understood why so many people had been at a loss for words following Danny’s death.
He leaned forward, hands clasped over his parted knees as he kept his eyes trained on the dark hardwood floor beneath his feet. “Her name was Grace Ann. I called her Gracie.”
The truth behind the tattoo. Devastating loss had broken his heart. Not a woman, but a precious child. “I know how badly it hurts to lose a husband, but I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it would be to lose a child.”
“That’s because it’s unimaginable until it happens to you.” His rough sigh echoed in the deathly quiet room. “When Jana got pregnant, we’d barely been out of law school. We were both ambitious and career-minded. A kid hadn’t been a part of the plan. But when Gracie was born, and they put that tiny baby girl in my arms, I thought I’d be terrified. Instead, I was totally blown away by how much I loved her at that moment. How I would’ve moved mountains to keep her safe. And I failed to do that.”
Hannah desperately wanted to ask for details, but she didn’t want to push him. “Things happen, Logan. Horrible things that we can’t predict or prevent.”
“I could have prevented it.”
Once more Hannah didn’t know how to respond, so she waited until he spoke again. If he spoke again.
A few more seconds passed before he broke the pain-filled silence. “I bought her one of those little bikes for her fourth birthday. The kind that still had training wheels. She loved that bike.” He paused as if lost in the memories before he continued. “A couple of days later, I was supposed to be home early to help her learn to ride it. I’d just made junior partner, and I was assigned the case of a lifetime that would’ve netted the firm a windfall. The pretrial hearing went on longer than expected that afternoon, so I wasn’t going to make it home before dark. My job took precedence over my daughter.”
The guilt in his tone was instantly recognizable to Hannah. “You’re not the first man to put work over family when the situation calls for it. Danny missed dinner many times because he had to put in overtime to secure our future.”
“But I had earned plenty of money by then, and so had my wife. I could have turned the hearing over to the associate working the case with me, but I was so damn driven to prove the senior partners had been justified in choosing me over two other candidates. And that drive cost my child her life.”
She truly needed to know what had happened, but did she dare ask? “Logan, I’m really trying to understand why you feel you’re to blame, but I’m having some problems with that with so little information to go on.”
Logan glanced at her again before returning his focus to the floor. “When I drove up that night, I saw the ambulance and police cruiser parked in front of the house. I tried to tell myself one of the neighborhood teens had been driving too fast and had an accident. But my gut told me something inconceivable had happened, and it turned out I was right.” He drew in a ragged breath and exhaled slowly. “I pulled up to the curb, got out of the car and started toward the ambulance, only to be met by an officer who told me not to go any farther. He said Grace had ridden the bike into the street and a woman driving by didn’t see her, and she didn’t even have time to put on her brakes.”
Hannah felt his anguish as keenly as if it were her own. “Oh, Logan, I don’t know what to say.” And she honestly didn’t. Again.
“Her death was instant, they told me,” he said, as if he couldn’t stop the flow of words. “She didn’t suffer. But we all suffered. My marriage definitely suffered. Jana screamed at me that night and told me she’d never forgive me.”
That threw Hannah for a mental loop. “She blamed you?”
He forked both hands through his hair. “We blamed each other. She blamed me for the bike and not being at a home on time. I blamed her for not watching Gracie closely enough. We both blamed the nanny for leaving early.”
While Hannah pondered all she had learned, Logan went silent for a few more seconds before he released a ragged breath. “We had an alarm on the pool,” he said. “We bought a top-rate security system and had every inch of the house child-proofed. But it wasn’t enough. It came down to one unlocked door to the garage and Gracie climbing on a step stool to open the garage door, and she’d never been a climber.”
Hannah had one burning question she had to ask. “Where was your wife at the time Gracie left the house?”
“Checking her email. She said Gracie was watching a DVD in the den only minutes before she went into the home office, and I had no reason not to believe her. Jana had always been a good mother, even if she had the same drive to succeed as I did. Basically, a few minutes of inattentiveness on Jana’s part, and blind ambition on my part, irreparably changed our lives forever.”
To Hannah, Logan’s wife seemed more at fault than he did. But then she really couldn’t completely blame her when she had been guilty of the same inattentiveness. “Children can be natural-born escape artists, no matter how vigilant the parent. Cassie got away from me in the grocery store once when I wasn’t paying attention to her. It took a half hour and a security guard to find her. I was lucky someone didn’t kidnap her when it would have been so easy.”
“Gracie knew better than to leave the house without an adult,” he said. “Until that night, she never had. I should have suspected she might pull something with the bike when I talked to her that afternoon.”
“You spoke to Gracie?”
He smiled a sad smile that shot straight to Hannah’s heart. “Yeah. I called Jana to say I was going to be late and she put Gracie on the phone so I could explain. When I told her I couldn’t help her ride the bike that night, she was mad as a wet hen and told me she’d do it herself. I said that wasn’t allowed and if she tried it, I’d take the bike away. She pouted for a few minutes but when I promised to help her the next day, and take her to the zoo that weekend, she seemed happy enough. Her last words to me were ‘I love you, Daddy Bear.’ She had a thing for Goldilocks.”
Hannah’s eyes began to mist like morning fog. “I know it’s not the same thing as having her in your life, but at least you’ll always have Gracie’s wonderful last words to keep in your memory bank.”
“But it’s never been enough,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I finally did forgive Jana, but it was too little, too late. And when it came right down to it, she’d been right. I never should have bought Gracie the damn bike.”
A solid stretch of logic, but logic didn’t count for much when it came to guilt and grief. “When are you going to forgive yourself, Logan?”
He looked at her as if she’d presented a totally foreign concept. “Forgiveness is earned, Hannah. I’m not there yet.”
> She wanted to inquire as to how long it might take before he reached that point, but he looked completely drained. “I can tell you’re tired.” Of the conversation and the pain.
He swept both hands over his face. “I’m exhausted.”
Hannah stretched out on her back on the bed and opened her arms to him. “Come lie down with me for a little while.”
For a split second she thought he might ignore her request, but instead he shrugged out of his jeans and surprisingly accepted the solace she offered.
Curled up together, they slept for a while, until the sun had been replaced by darkness. Logan made love to her again, at first slowly, gently, completely, before a certain desperation seemed to take over. “I can’t get close enough,” he said, even though they were as close as two people could be.
“It’s okay,” she kept telling him, until his body went rigid and he released a low moan.
In the aftermath, he brought his lips to her ear and whispered, “Stay with me, sweetheart.”
She caressed his shadowed jaw and almost started to cry over the tenderness in his request. “I’m not going anywhere, Logan.”
“I meant don’t leave on Saturday. Stay another week.”
Temptation came calling, but wisdom won out. “I need to get home to Cassie.”
“I know I don’t have any right to ask, but I need you to be here for a little longer.”
I need you....
Those three powerful words shattered Hannah’s resolve. Cassie would be fine without her for another week, perhaps even happy to have the extra time with her best friend, that much she knew. Gina would be okay with her extended stay as well.
Logan needed her, and it felt so good to be needed. She instinctively knew she couldn’t save him, but maybe if she loved him enough...
Loved him? If she wasn’t completely there, she was well on her way, perhaps to her own detriment. She might regret giving in to that emotion, but she would never regret knowing him or what they had shared. What they would share.