“More to the point, then, did Kate go?”
“No. She fell off the radar completely. Nobody could track her down.”
“Okay, then. Yeah. Eighth grade. By the back gate to the embassy of Albania.”
That froze her hand. “Eighth grade? Seriously?”
“Told ya I remember. Every last detail. Right down to her vanilla lip gloss. She tasted like cake frosting. Just like I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life. The moment you took care of me. Right down to your lipstick that makes me think of the coral reef off of Fiji.” Logan’s other hand reached up to cup her cheekbone. His eyes locked with hers. Their breathing synced up. It was, in fact, the only sound in the room besides the laboring AC. “With those eyes greener than a ripe Russian gooseberry.”
Oh, wow. That intense stare of his, combined with the husky tone of his voice, made Brooke realize just how much of a compliment his slightly odd comparison was meant to be. It gave her chills. And it touched her heart that he used memories from his word travels to make her feel special. Logan was right. It was a moment. A frozen-in-time moment of connection and attraction. One of those moments that almost always leads right to toe-curling sex. Or the first slip of those all-important three words…
This was nuts. She was reading too much into it. The man hadn’t slept in seven thousand miles, give or take. Nothing he said should be taken too seriously at this point. Deliberately lightening her tone, Brooke said, “I’ll have to take your word on that one. I’m not really conversant with Russian gooseberries. Maybe on my next spring break I can hoof it over there to make the comparison.”
Logan’s hand fell back to rest on his chest. His eyelids closed once more. “You won’t be going anywhere. I’m never letting you off this couch.”
His reaction—no, his overreaction—tickled her. “Geez, I get the feeling that if I threw in a neck rub you’d offer to marry me.”
Cracking one eye slightly, Logan said, “Might be nice to at least test out that theory…”
“Has no one ever cared for you before? Cuddled you to make you feel better?”
He shuttered his eyes again. “Not really.”
The answer either made him quite sad, or quite shallow. Brooke didn’t want to assume the man she thought so honorable was just an indiscriminate sexual alley cat. On the other hand, Logan could be all noble and devote his life to saving other people, rebuilding their lives…and still be a horndog. It was ridiculous, given their utter lack of a future, but she had to know.
Trying for a jovial, one-of-the-guys, slap-on-the-back type tone that she completely did not feel, Brooke said, “So you’re all about the hookup?”
“Not on purpose. Not the way Knox is. Was. I’m just never home long enough to start something real. And I don’t lead women on. So yeah, it ends up mostly being hookups. For convenience. Which is better than being alone. More fair to everyone involved, too.”
Omigosh. The matter-of-factness with which he admitted to settling for what scraps of affection he could squeeze in between trips absolutely devastated her. Brooke liked romance. She enjoyed being caught up in the thrill of getting to know a new person. Getting to discover how to be a couple with him.
Being surrounded by hundreds of hormonal high-schoolers might amp up her yen for romance on the deep and dramatic side. Not to mention all the rom-com movies that, instead of alcohol, she used to chase back the effects of a bad day. Teaching with a hangover was a bad idea, no matter how extenuating the circumstances. So yes, Logan’s lack of being cuddled and doted upon kind of broke her heart. Even if she was fairly certain that he himself didn’t necessarily feel there was anything lacking.
“You know, friends with benefits usually equals sex. I get the feeling that in your case, you’d want the benefits to just be my petting your head.”
His eyes snapped open. “This is heaven on earth right now. Because of the whole black-eye, pounding-headache thing. But don’t think for a second that I wouldn’t leap at the chance to have sex with you instead.” Logan’s thumb brushed across her bottom lip, then gently teased along the line of her top lip. “Anytime. Anywhere.”
God. She believed him. She wanted to take him up on it, too. And not just for the opportunity to defile the loathsome pink velvet couch. But it’d be wrong. Selfish. Logan needed comfort right now, not excitement. Brooke only let herself kiss his thumb. “Let’s see how long it takes for the ibuprofen to kick in before making any plans for the rest of the day.”
He arched his back. Cocked a knee. Sighed in a way Brooke would call blissful if it hadn’t just come out of more than six feet of the most rugged man she knew. “I thought it’d be hard to relax after that fight. You make it easy, though.”
Uh-oh. They’d been down that road before. Her ego still had the bruises to prove it, no matter how unintentional. “You’re not about to call me comfortable again, are you?”
Rueful laughter rumbled from his throat, vibrating through her thighs. “No way in hell. I learn from my mistakes. Just consider it my half-assed way of saying how much I appreciate you giving me this escape hatch for a few hours.”
“No problem.” Brooke’s self-same ego stopped her in the nick of time from admitting just how much she enjoyed having him in her home. On her lap. Beneath her fingers. “Do you think you’ll be able to smooth things over with Knox once he apologizes?”
Logan dragged his palm down his jaw. “Shit. Chances are better than fifty-fifty that I’m the one who needs to apologize to him.”
That was…unexpected? Confusing? Brooke stilled her hands, bracketing his head between them. “For defending your sister’s honor?”
“The opposite, actually. For not believing that he loves her. Or for not realizing it in time.” Logan swung his feet sideways to the floor and sat up. But it was as though he immediately missed her touch, because his hand shot right back to rest on her knee. “I fucked up. Good intentions, blah blah blah. Knox is the most infamous pussy chaser in the District. Of course I knee-jerked into assuming he’d discard Madison faster than the condoms they used. I’m his best friend. I know him, inside and out. I know his moves. His M.O.”
“Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Ha—I don’t need to.” Logan put the peas back on his bruised eye socket. “Knox did it for me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. It’s okay. I’ve gotta laugh about it eventually. Because the joke was on me. Knox loves Madison.”
Wow. Brooke would’ve put money on Knox staying a proud bachelor for the rest of his life. Being one of those old guys who blatantly peeked down the scrub tops of nurses who bathed him in the nursing home. “You’re joking.”
“Bizarre, isn’t it? I’ll bet there’s a bookie somewhere in Southeast D.C. who lost a shit ton of money on the odds of Knox ever slowing down, let alone settling down.”
“Everyone has an experimental phase. Usually it’s in college. And with the same sex. But maybe Knox just wanted to try on stability for size.”
“It’s way past that.” Logan gave a cartoonish leer. “Although we’re totally coming back around to the full details on whatever the heck you did in college. Knox loves my sister so much that he’s engaged to her now. Before I’ve even met her.”
“Engaged? Really?” Brooke let that sink in for a minute. From the dazed expression on his face, Logan was trying, too, but hadn’t gotten there yet. “You can’t be mad at him for having sex with her if they’re engaged.”
“I’d bet you those fancy, five-hundred-dollar shoes women drool over—”
“Jimmy Choo.”
“Whatever. I’d bet you a pair of those they had sex before he put a ring on it. On her. Jesus, what’s wrong with me?”
“Um, you don’t know Madison. At all. And you do know Knox and his history. Like I said, don’t beat yourself up. Take some time. Before you come around and apologize to him.”
“He ordered me not to see her until I calmed down.”
“That was
sweet. Gentlemanly.”
“I have to figure out how I feel about all of it. First. Before dumping any of this clusterfuck on her. I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t have the first flying-fuck of an idea of where to start.”
His confusion tugged at her heart. “I’ll help you,” Brooke blurted.
Logan’s phone went off. It vibrated. It pinged. And it rang. Logan pulled it out and winced. “God, we live in a town smaller than a ferret’s asshole.”
“Is that a random factoid, or do you have a point?”
“I’ve been spotted. Someone told my dad I’m home.”
“Weren’t you just on a satellite radio show? I’d say several million people know that you’re back in D.C.”
“That’s fucking annoying. I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go. Thanks for…well, everything. Again.”
And just like that, Logan slipped out of her living room in a hurry. Without any time for a real goodbye. Again.
Taking a little piece of her heart with him, whether he knew it or not.
Chapter 9
Logan didn’t bother looking through the house for his father. Sunday afternoon, post-golf, not at the club, meant he’d find Adrian Walsh in only one room of the sprawling Bethesda house where he’d grown up—and yearned to get out of. He took the stairs two at a time up to the third-floor loft. The place where his mother had relegated his dad’s hobby of model airplane construction. So as not to interfere with the “flow” of the rest of the house.
Jesus. He hadn’t even seen his mom and he was already irritated just by the memories that hit as he barreled down the gray hallway.
“Dad?”
“Finally, the Prodigal Son returns.” His dad rose from behind a desk crowded with paint pots, brushes, tweezers, and tiny parts. “Get over here—or is an extra ten feet too far for you to go after coming all the way from Kazakhstan?”
“For you, I’d even go twelve feet.”
The jumble of emotions clogging Logan’s head cleared for a minute. This was his dad. The man who’d taught him how to play soccer, and shave, and read to him until he lost his voice when Logan had chicken pox. The guy who understood Logan’s need to disappear for months at a time to make a difference for what sometimes amounted to just a handful of people.
So yeah, he got a hug.
Most of the time they kept their greetings to manly handshakes. But each and every time Logan came back from a disaster site, his dad gave the kind of rib-crushing hug Logan had gotten as a kid. He folded him in arms still muscled from tennis and golf and racquetball—his parents used every cent of their membership fee at the country club, and then some—and held on wordlessly. As if proving to himself that Logan was truly home, truly safe, and not a figment of his imagination.
Honestly? Logan didn’t mind it one bit.
A few backslaps later they eased apart. Logan looked at the face that would probably greet him in the mirror in twenty years. The Marsh family genes were strong. They both shared the light brown eyes, thick hair that in his dad’s case was still every bit as dark as his son’s, and a broad forehead.
Then it hit Logan. Those genes were in Madison, too. Would she share their eye color? Their hair? Would he be able to pick her out in a roomful of strangers? Immediately see the family resemblance?
Damn.
“How are you, son?” his father asked as they settled onto the gray, brushed-velvet couch opposite the slanted windows.
Velvet couch…that made Logan think of Brooke’s place. He’d felt more peace on that couch, on her lap, than he had in he didn’t know how long. But knowing the drill, he was able to answer the question his dad always asked, with the same response he always gave. “Back in one piece, per your instructions.”
Dad insisted on driving him to the airport for each mission. Then at the drop-off, he ordered Logan to stay safe first and save lives second. While routine, it was a pretty great send-off, always reminding him of what he was leaving behind.
Squinting, his father braced an arm on the back of the couch to lean closer. “Really? You look a little the worse for wear.”
Logan’s hand instinctively went—too late—to hide the cut on his eyebrow.
Crap.
The fight. Which he damn well wouldn’t mention. Because Logan refused to bring up Madison in this conversation. The fight with Knox had proved that being jet-lagged and exhausted wasn’t the right way to go about such a potentially charged topic. He’d catch up with his dad. Pretend like there wasn’t a giant flaming paper bag of emotional shit that had just landed at his doorstep. Then go home, sleep for probably two days straight, and figure out what to do next.
“It’s nothing.” He shrugged it off. A feat that was much easier now that Brooke’s ibuprofen had finally kicked in. “An incident on the second-to-last airplane, with luggage that wasn’t stowed correctly. The flight attendant made it up to me with extra pretzels.”
That surprised a rueful laugh out of the man who considered business class to be roughing it. “Traveling in style as always, I see.”
“Not quite as much this time around. It took some serious airport hopping and a couple of tin cans with propellers to get me back. I got waylaid by Hurricane Danielle. I had to hole up on a Caribbean island to ride out the worst of it.”
“Whoa. Was it bad?”
Hell, no. He pegged that night on Dominica with Brooke one of his top ten. Right up there with winning the last semi-final round of La Sfida Internazionale with his friends before their trip turned epically sideways. The night he’d lost his virginity. The ACSs’ first trip to Knox’s box at Nationals Park. The time they went to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and didn’t sober up for three days straight.
Logan realized he’d been reprioritizing his top ten list in order to scoot Brooke to the top, totally zoned out, while his dad stared at him quizzically. “Sorry. I’m four days past tired. No, the hurricane wasn’t bad at all.”
“Good. I’d have been worried about you if I’d known you were in the thick of it.”
“Which is why I don’t tell you where I am.” It was an oft-repeated argument between the two of them.
The same man who supported his decisions in his role as the head of the Marsh Foundation still worried incessantly in his role as a father. So when Logan left on Foundation business, he responded only in a business manner. He had to shut off the personal part in order to do what had to be done. He shut out missing his friends, his dad, the need to stay connected—which was close to impossible most of the time. Easier to keep his dad in the dark than to deal with the guilt at constant reminders of how much he worried.
“How’d this one go? Your first trip to Kazakhstan, right?”
“Yeah. The flood wiped out everything. We spent a week digging for survivors. Two weeks digging for corpses and then burying them.” That had been brutal. Restacking all the rocks they’d just moved to cover bodies relocated to the edge of the once village. It didn’t matter that Logan didn’t understand a word of the fifteen burial services he stood through. The sentiments had been plainly etched on the grieving, tear-streaked faces of the villagers around him.
His father reached across to squeeze his hand. “It’s hard. But it would’ve been harder for all of them if the Marsh Foundation hadn’t been there to help.”
“I know.” Logan didn’t regret a single moment of the mission. Except for the fact that he’d ducked out before the rest of the team. “Terry and Brian are staying another week to put the finishing touches on the well system. All the temporary housing is in place. We moved the center of the village about half a mile upstream. There’s better placement in regards to the speed and depth of the river at that section. It should prevent this from happening again.”
“Did they fight you on the relocation?”
Logan had a feeling that his translator had glossed over a lot of the pushback. “Some. All sentiment. No reasons that impacted living conditions. So we pushed the same buttons. Reminded them that there would be more burial
cairns next year if they stayed put. Because another flood in that spot’s inevitable.”
“I’m glad to hear you won’t be a repeat visitor.”
“Nope. I’m in no hurry to return, anyway. Nice people, but brutal terrain.” Logan was also not a fan of goat meat. Stringy. Gamey.
“I’m glad you mentioned that. I’ve already got your next mission in the works, and I guarantee the environment will be more to your liking.” His dad pulled a tablet off the leather ottoman that dual-purposed as a coffee table. Pulled up the calendar function and scrolled ahead a few weeks. Angled it to show Logan the box highlighted in yellow. “August 12.”
That was…strange. “You’re just picking a date for the next natural disaster? Are you using Nostradamus? Taking the International Date Line into account?”
“It’s the next Marsh Foundation board meeting. I want you there.”
Son of a bitch. This was the last thing he needed. Too exhausted to sugarcoat it, Logan just drew a hand across his throat. “Nope. Been there, tried that, hated it.”
Depending on who you asked, he’d been given the privilege of attending/being forced to go to a Board meeting when he’d turned eighteen. He was pretty sure he gave himself whiplash that day from all the head-bobbing he did trying to stay awake. Logan had been convinced nothing could be more boring than reading James Joyce. Until that day. He’d rather spend the day in the hard, plastic chairs at the Motor Vehicle Administration renewing his license than sit through another Board meeting. At least the people-watching was decent at the MVA.
“You can’t judge it by one bad experience.”
Dusting off his hands, Logan said, “I can. I did. I am.”
Dropping the tablet, his dad stood. Walked the gleaming hardwood floors to the door leading out to the deck. “You were too young last time. You didn’t have any context. You’d never read through financial statements or worked over a budget. It’s my fault for trying to bring you in too soon in the process.”
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