The Summer Cottage

by Lily Everett

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Q & A with the Author

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Jessica Bell studied her boss as he sprawled at the kitchen table, his long legs splayed as if he were reclining on a throne instead of an old-fashioned ladder-back chair. It was the first time in months she’d seen Logan Harrington sitting still, and without his high-tech tablet, spec sheets, or other work-related tools in hand.

  This sojourn to Sanctuary Island was going to work. It had to.

  “If you keep staring at me like that, I might get ideas,” Logan drawled, narrowing his electric-blue eyes.

  Jessica’s long-standing habit of deflecting Logan’s flirtatious comments had her responding automatically. “Have any ideas you want. Just so long as you focus on resting and recuperating, sir.”

  His mood, always mercurial, turned sullen. Folding forward over the table, Logan propped his head on his hands. “I hate it when you call me ‘sir.’”

  Which, of course, was why Jessica did it. To remind them both that their relationship might be full of banter that skirted the edge of unprofessionalism, but at the end of the day, Logan could never be more to her than that.

  Logan Harrington was her job. Nothing more. And, certainly, nothing less—Jessica took her job extremely seriously.

  Hell, at this point, she could write the definitive manual on the care and feeding of brooding billionaire geniuses.

  Burrowing his long, agile fingers into his tousled brown hair, Logan tipped back in the chair and blew out a sigh at the ceiling. It was completely unfair, Jessica reflected. As the person whose job it was to bully Logan into sleeping and eating like a normal human being, she knew for a fact he hadn’t slept more than three hours at a time in months. Ever since he started the new clean energy project, Logan’s idea of a well-balanced meal was a stale pot of coffee with a vodka chaser.

  By all rights, he should be gaunt and pale, with bags under his eyes and stubble on his cheeks. Instead, with his broad shoulders, powerful physique, and expensive haircut, Logan Harrington looked more like a male model than a mad scientist.

  “Why did you bring me here?” he said, all mischief and humor drained from his tone, leaving behind nothing but wire-taut exhaustion. “I have work I need to be doing. The lab…”

  “The lab will not fall apart without you,” Jessica said briskly, moving to the sink to take stock of the cottage’s kitchen amenities. “They’ll call me if they run up against anything they can’t handle, but you left them a nearly finished project. If your techs can’t take your copious notes and run them into the end zone, we seriously need to start a headhunt for better techs.”

  There was no dish towel hanging by the sink, nor were there paper towels on the counter. Jessica hitched up her tailored linen slacks and crouched to investigate the cabinet under the sink for supplies.

  The incident at the board meeting the day before had shoved Jessica into High Alert mode, and she’d hustled Logan out of town before he was recovered enough to put up a fight. So they’d arrived at his grandparents’ vacation home unexpectedly, giving the caretaker no time to prepare the summer cottage for guests.

  But as it turned out that Logan’s younger brother, Dylan, was already staying up at the main house, and knowing Logan’s love of privacy, Jessica was determined to make the cottage work.

  Jessica stood and opened the quaint, vintage refrigerator in the corner of the kitchenette. As she’d suspected, it was completely bare.

  “End zone.” Logan perked up. “A football reference. You like football? You grew up with older brothers, or maybe you were close to your father…”

  Before he could spin one of his elaborate imaginary histories for her, Jessica cut him off. “It’s only an expression. I could just as easily have said ‘hit it out of the park’ or ‘ride the wave.’”

  Logan scowled. “Doesn’t it ever bother you that you know every intimate detail of my life, while I know nothing but your basics?”

  “No.” In fact, that was the way Jessica liked it.

  “Anyway, that’s not the point,” Logan grumped, setting his clenched fists on the table. “Project Reactor might be done, but there’s always more. If I’m not there to direct the lab, who will—”

  “The work will still be there when we get back, after you rest. It’s time for a break.” Jessica kept her voice firm. Logan would attack any sign of weakness. “This island is perfect for that. Look at it rationally. If you run yourself into the ground, the quality of your work will suffer. You need to refill the well.”

  “I don’t buy into those studies,” Logan snapped. “And I certainly don’t need to refill some mythical, metaphorical well. You’re my assistant. You take orders from me, and I’m ordering you to get on the phone and call the company plane to come pick us up. Now.”

  Pushing back from the table with a screech of wooden chair legs on linoleum, Logan made to stand up, but Jessica stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Logan, be reasonable. There’s no place to land a plane on an island as small as Sanctuary.”

  “The chopper, then.” Impatience crackled around Logan like a force field.

  “I’m not calling the helicopter!”

  “That’s it,” Logan snarled. “You’re fired.”

  Jessica gritted her teeth. “For the millionth time, you can’t fire me. I work for your brother—I take my orders from him. It’s my job to take care of you. Let me do my job.”

  “Your job is supposed to be making my life easier, not dragging me off to some backwater island with no decent Internet access or cell service,” he complained.

  His shoulder was rock hard with tension under her light touch. Blowing out a breath, Jessica played her trump card. “Logan. You collapsed in the middle of a presentation to the entire board of Harrington International. You are going to take the time you need to get healthy. Period. If I have to sit on you to make you slow down for a while, I will.”

  A glimmer of interest lit Logan’s intense blue eyes. “I could be into that.”

  She ignored him and continued, “I don’t ask for much from you. But I’m asking now. Please, give Sanctuary Island a chance.”

  He glanced aside, jaw working, and Jessica’s heart quickened. He was close to giving in, she could feel it.

  But when he met her eyes once more, head canted to one side in sudden calculating consideration, her blood froze. She knew that look.

  Logan Harrington had one of his genius ideas.

  “How much is it worth to you?” he asked. “Me here on this island, soaking in all the mind-numbing serenity and wasting days of my life when I could be working. What would you be willing to give me in return for my time?”

  The rush of heat to her core was as shocking and confusing as it was unwanted. Jessica dropped her hand from Logan’s shoulder and backed up a step.

  Anger mixed with disappointment curdled in her stomach. As much as Logan flirted, as many times as he’d come on to her, she never thought he would stoop to emotional blackmail.

  “I’m not goin
g to sleep with you to get you to do what’s right for your own health,” she snapped.

  Genuine surprise flashed across his expressive face. “What? No, Tink, that’s not what I meant.”

  Jessica stared into his wide eyes and felt her anger dissolve. She believed him. And that nickname—Tink, a play on her last name, Bell, and the fact that Logan considered her fine-boned features pixie-like—gave her the usual, undeniable thrill.

  She hid how much she liked the nickname with the ease of long practice. “What did you mean, then?”

  Arching a brow, Logan warned, “You might not be any happier about this. But here are my terms: for every day I waste on this island, you answer one personal question.”

  Jessica sucked in a breath, an instinctive denial on the tip of her tongue. Before she could say anything, Logan held up a hand. “I’m talking full and complete answers, to my standard of satisfaction—no simple yes or no. I want details, specificity.”

  What Logan was asking was dangerous—to her mental health, if nothing else. Jessica knew him. He wasn’t going to be satisfied with inane questions about her favorite color. If she gave her insatiably curious, demanding boss this opening, he’d make the most of it. He wouldn’t be happy until he knew all the secrets she’d worked so hard to bury.

  But … Logan needed this. He needed to rest, and he also needed a puzzle to solve, something to keep his brain just stimulated enough without overloading his system.

  “So. What do you say?” He crossed his arms over his chest, drawing her gaze to the play of muscles under his T-shirt. For a guy who rarely took time off to hit the gym, Logan was ridiculously ripped. Must be all the heavy machinery he lifted in his lab, building his prototypes.

  Tilting up her chin, Jessica planted her feet and mirrored his stance. “One question per day—and in that day, you eat what I tell you to, sleep when I tell you to, and in all other ways follow my instructions to rebuild your strength, or that day’s question is revoked.”

  Those wickedly arched brows quirked up, and she knew she’d surprised him. Good. She was surprising herself, too. But this was a chance she had to take. If she could get him to listen to her, the way he rarely did back in New York … if she could get him to let her in enough to help him …

  “You’re actually agreeing,” he said, wonder lightening his voice.

  “I promised your brother I’d take care of this situation.” Take care of you, Jessica added silently. “You know me. I do whatever it takes to get the job done. Sir.”

  His reflexive frown at the honorific lifted Jessica’s sprits. She could do this. She could bare a bit of her soul and her past to keep Logan on the island long enough to heal, without forgetting the essential truth.

  Logan Harrington was her job. Nothing more, nothing less. And if anyone knew the dangers of mixing business and pleasure, it was Jessica Bell.

  Chapter 2

  When Logan agreed to Jessica’s terms, he hadn’t counted on his old pal, insomnia, showing up to make it impossible to keep his word about sleeping on command.

  But here he was, staring up at the sloping ceiling above the loft bed, eyes dry and burning and sleep nowhere on the horizon. The silence of the empty cottage pressed in on him like a weight. And his preferred methods for shutting off his brain long enough to get to sleep—sex and alcohol—were unavailable for the moment.

  Frustration at his inability to conquer his own body, to simply give in and let sleep knock him unconscious, seethed through his veins like an unscratchable itch. To distract himself, he considered the most enticing dilemma he’d faced in quite some time.

  What question should he ask of the elusive, mysterious, impenetrably professional Jessica Bell?

  He considered what he knew of her already. Over the years since she first appeared in his lab and laughed at him when he ordered her to stop tidying and get out, Logan had discovered shockingly little about what made his personal assistant tick—other than her dedication to efficiency and competence.

  In fact, he barely knew more than he’d gleaned from hacking into the Human Resources department’s secure servers and reading her résumé.

  Jessica Anne Bell, twenty-eight years old, bachelor’s degree in communications from Illinois State, previous work experience as the personal assistant to the CEO of a chain of luxury boutique hotels.

  Then there were the details he’d observed over time: long naturally red hair with a slight wave to it, green eyes in a fair-skinned, oval face. High, clear forehead, straight nose, pink mouth shaped for smiling. His gaze frequently caught on her pert chin with the tiny indentation in the center—a genetic trait inherited from one or both of her parents.

  Which was the sum total of what he knew about her family. He didn’t even know where she’d grown up—her deliberate, thoughtful speech patterns contained no discernible accent.

  Jessica didn’t cake on the makeup like some women Logan knew, but she wasn’t a bare-faced natural girl, either. She favored classic, sophisticated fashion, preferring to fill her wardrobe with little black dresses and well-fitted pantsuits in jewel tones rather than chasing the latest trend, and since she was tall and slender as a model, everything looked good on her.

  It was possible Logan had devoted quite a bit of time to gathering information on his assistant.

  Only because she’s a mystery, he consoled himself as he laced his fingers together behind his head. She’s the one puzzle I haven’t been able to solve. And once I get the answers to some burning questions, I’ll never be distracted by her again.

  Downstairs, the cottage door swung open, letting in the scent of roses on the warm evening breeze. Jessica was back from her exploration of the island, and from the rustle of plastic bags, Logan surmised she’d also stopped in to whatever quaint general store this island boasted, to secure provisions.

  He tracked her progress from the cottage door, across the bare hardwood floor of the miniscule living room to set the grocery bags down on the kitchenette’s tiny table. She spent some time unloading whatever she’d bought, cupboards opening and closing, the refrigerator making a soft whir as it clicked on. It was oddly relaxing. Logan felt his muscles soften against the mattress as some unnamed tension flowed out of him.

  Until he heard the light click of Jessica’s heels on the stepladder leading up to the loft above the living room, where Logan was supposed to be sleeping.

  Before her head cleared the top of the ladder, he’d turned onto his side and shut his eyes, evening out his breathing into a slow, deep rhythm. Jessica paused for long enough to get Logan’s heart pounding with the possibility that she’d call him out for faking it and refuse to answer a question later.

  But finally, he heard the soft tread of her retreat down the stepladder, followed by the quiet snick of the downstairs bedroom door closing. Excellent, he’d fooled her. Smiling to himself, Logan settled in to wait a reasonable amount of time before coming back downstairs to demand his daily Q & A session.

  The next time he opened his eyes, bright morning sunlight suffused the loft, along with the smell of fresh-brewed coffee.

  Hauling himself up off the mattress was surprisingly difficult. He’d slept straight through the night for the first time in he didn’t even know how long, but he didn’t feel nearly as rested as he would have hoped. Instead, his body ached as if it had been tied in place for the past nine hours, his limbs weighted down with stones.

  He managed to get down the stepladder without falling and breaking his neck, but it wasn’t easy. When he finally felt the cold hardwood floor under his bare feet, he exhaled a grateful sigh.

  “I told you I should be the one sleeping up there.” Jessica’s no-nonsense voice from behind him sent a pleasant shiver up Logan’s spine.

  “Tonight,” she declared, “we’re switching. You can take the bedroom, I’ll take the loft.”

  Logan shrugged, not wanting to start the day with an argument. He’d be sleeping in that loft, though. Just because he hadn’t reliably slept thro
ugh the night since his parents died, that didn’t make Logan a child to be coddled and ordered around.

  Dropping into the nearest kitchen chair, Logan dredged up a winning smile. “You made coffee. That’s why you’re my favorite, Tink.”

  “I’m your favorite because your brother pays me well to make sure your needs are met,” Jessica corrected absently. Most of her attention was focused on the frowning scrutiny of Logan’s face.

  He rubbed a hand over his whiskery jaw, hiding a wince at the thought of how rough he probably looked. Meanwhile, he realized sourly, Jessica was pressed, perky perfection in her fitted cobalt-blue fleece sweatshirt and a pair of black spandex workout pants.

  Hoping to induce her to turn around so he could get a peek at the hind view, Logan picked up the coffee cup set out with the plates and silverware in the center of the table. He waggled it beseechingly, making his best puppy dog eyes.

  But instead of filling the mug with the sweet nectar of life while bending over the kitchen counter in those tight black pants, Jessica said, “You actually slept last night. I checked on you.”

  “Yeah, so?” It wasn’t a lie, Logan reasoned, since he had actually dropped off.

  “So why don’t you seem refreshed and rested?”

  Logan shrugged. “When I go through long periods of having trouble sleeping, I kind of acclimate to not sleeping. Then when I do finally manage a full night, my body doesn’t know how to handle it. I wind up groggy, still tired.”

  “That’s awful! Is that normal?” Worry created an adorable crease between her brows. It probably didn’t say anything great about him that he loved that look on her face.

  “Might not be normal, but normal is boring.” Logan shrugged. “Anyway, it’s been happening since I was a teenager. It used to bother me, but I’ve lived through it every other time. I’ll live through it this time, and next time, too. No need to call out the National Guard.”