Logan's Way

by Lisa Ann Verge

  “He came home early one day, when I was a teenager,” she said. “He didn’t do that very often. He’d been in surgery since the night before,” she continued. “One of his patients was a young boy who needed a new liver. My father got a phone call at dinner the night before with the news that a good match had been found. The surgery could go ahead immediately.”

  His jaw felt like lead. “So the boy died.”

  “Yes,” she said. “He died on the table. And my father came home and sank into a chair with his head in his hands. He knew if he’d put off the surgery, that boy could have lived another year. Maybe two.”

  “Your father took a calculated risk. The boy might have survived and lived eighty more years.”

  “Yeah, but maybe the boy would have been stronger if he were older, more able to survive the surgery.”

  “Or too weakened by his failing liver,” Logan said tersely. “It was a judgment call.”

  “Exactly,” Ginny responded. “And because his judgment proved wrong, my father spent the next few years wrestling with demons.” She rubbed her hands on her upper arms as if she were cold. “At the time, I’d been toying with the idea of going to medical school. But Dad’s experience put me off that idea forever. So much responsibility.” She wandered around, edging closer toward him. “I knew I didn’t have the courage to accept the inevitable.”

  “What?”

  “That one day, I would be too exhausted to catch a critical symptom.” She shuffled to a stop in front of him. “Or I’d get too comfortable in my work and miss something in an examination. I’d misdiagnose a child. Or watch a patient die on a surgeon’s table because I’d overestimated his strength. I’m not perfect enough, Logan. Neither are you.”

  He stood there with the stars swirling above his head, staring into Ginny’s eyes and telling himself that he’d heard this before. He’d been warned of failure in medical school. It was inevitable. He’d been warned of the “God syndrome.” He’d even been told, after he quit, that he was throwing away a brilliant career over his failure to save a child who never would have lived, even if he’d diagnosed her the first day she’d come under his eye.

  Ginny had said the same in such a way that the brittle shell he’d erected over his heart shattered into a thousand pieces in his chest, leaving the throbbing flesh sore and tender and vulnerable.

  She understood.

  He stood there as the first drops of rain splattered from the sky. The raindrops pattered on the grass, dripped in heavy droplets from the leaves. A cool wind whipped under the boughs, swirled around them and dampened their skin with dew. Ginny’s hair, unbound, shone in the dim starlight. Her eyes gleamed with moisture.

  Words escaped him. Not because he had none, but because all of a sudden, he had too many. Where moments ago he’d been deflated, now he was so full of sentiment that he couldn’t speak for all the words in his heart.

  So he raked his fingers through her hair, cupped her face in the palms of his hands, tilted her chin up so he could look into those eyes. He had the odd feeling he’d done this before, a thousand times before—and that he would do it a thousand times more in the years to come.

  Damn. There was no escaping the truth anymore. He’d fallen hopelessly in love with Ginny Van Saun.

  SOMETHING HAD CHANGED. Ginny felt it the moment he kissed her. As sure as the bright hot day had ceded to a cool windy night, something had changed abruptly and permanently between her and Logan.

  She couldn’t put it into words. She knew only what she felt. Above and beyond all other sensation, she felt Logan’s pain, like a vibration rippling through his body, palpable and heartbreaking. She yearned to stroke all that hurt away, run her hands over his face and murmur in his ear, let him know that she felt his pain, acknowledged it, understood it and would give all her body and soul to make it fade away.

  How strange for her to feel this way. What did she know of easing other people’s pain when she’d been so inadequate at easing her own? And why now, of all times, was she so openly, so willingly giving of herself, when she knew that this relationship was doomed within a week’s time?

  She couldn’t think straight. It was as if they were kissing for the very first time. His hands felt warm against her face—tender and gentle and wonderful. His lips felt different—firm and commanding as always, but gentle, too. Coaxing. Eager, but willing to savor.

  Savor she did, following his lead blindly as her lids fluttered dosed. She tilted her head this way, then slid it that way, catching her breath as he drew her lower lip into his mouth, then slipped his tongue across her teeth. She spread her fingers wide on his chest and felt the pounding of his heart against her palms.

  She had never known that she could want someone so much. They’d spent the day making love. She should be sated by now, sore, exhausted, eager for sleep. But Logan was kissing her in such a way as to make all the lovemaking that came before fade. She yearned for the touch of his hands, for the friction of his skin against hers, for the taste of his flesh under her lips, for the joining…as if for the very first time.

  He dropped one hand from her face, slipped it under her arm and drew her close to him. The warmth of their bodies shielded them against the cold splatter of the light rain. The wind whispered around them, lifted her hair off the nape of her neck, drew them closer in shared warmth.

  He kissed her cheek, her temple. He pulled her tighter. She closed her eyes and nestled in the fragrant nook between his shoulder and his throat. He rubbed his lips in her hair. She breathed in the scent of his damp skin. He would kiss her again, soon, she told herself. She wondered. if he was as overwhelmed as she. This was passion, yes, primitive and strong, passion the likes of which she’d never known. But there was something more, as well. Something growing between them, like a nascent plant fueled by heat and moisture, coaxed from its seedy coat.

  He made a sound like a deep-throated laugh, then murmured something against her ear. Something about her having a really bad sense of timing.

  She burrowed deeper into his neck. She couldn’t think now. It hurt to think when she was feeling like this. She whispered his name. A husky plea. His body flexed at the sound. A vein in his throat throbbed against her cheek.

  He spoke against her hair. “I must be out of my mind.”

  Me, too. She didn’t know whether she’d spoken the words aloud or if he’d just read her mind, for his grip tightened around her. She’d never felt like this before. She’d never acted like this before. Soft and willing and female. Giving her body over to a man she’d known for barely a week. Risking her bruised and tender heart with a stranger.

  Not such a stranger anymore. For he’d trusted her with the secret that was eating him alive. He’d trusted her with his darkest side, his deepest pain. Logan probably felt as vulnerable as she did.

  Logan. Vulnerable. She slipped her arms up around his neck and tightened her grip. Holding him close, and sure.

  “Ginny,” he said sometime later, his voice husky against her ear. “We’re getting wet.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “It’s raining.”

  “Again.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  Logan slid his hand down her arm, then curled his fingers around hers. The touch was electric. He stood looking at their joined hands as if he, too, could sense the current flowing through their interlaced fingers.

  He swiveled in the mud and walked toward the shed, turned off the light and closed the door. Ginny followed along, mute and breathless. The rain splattered on her head and shoulders as they crossed the yard to the deck, then finally ducked into the shelter of the kitchen.

  He was still holding her hand as he tugged her through the kitchen. He drew her across the living room, down the hall to her bedroom. The bed loomed in the dim room, big and warm and inviting.

  He drew her into his arms. He was just the right height, Ginny found herself thinking as she slipped easily into his embrace. Tall, but not so t
all that their lips couldn’t meet comfortably. His shoulders loomed broad enough for a woman to hang a lifetime of joy and wonder upon them…strong arms, lean waist and hips… She flattened her hands as she memorized the move of his muscles under his cotton shirt. Tension stretched between them, obvious in the tightness of his ribs, the tremor of his biceps.

  He slipped his hands through her hair, over her nape and farther down—lightly grazing her spine, down, down, all the way to the sensitive small of her back. He spanned his fingers across her buttocks. He lifted her slightly, showing her in the most primitive way exactly how much he wanted her.

  She laughed—a throaty, sexy sound, so unlike her that she caught her breath at the end of it. Little light permeated the room, only what splashed through the door from the hallway, but his smile had a brilliance of its own. Wide and rakish and knowing. She fell into those intense green eyes that were tinged with passion and something more, something akin to yearning.

  This time she clutched his face and took control of the kissing. She drew him down to her, suckled his lower lip, traced her tongue across the ridge of his teeth. His hands came to rest upon her arms, flexing and tightening, flexing. Tightening.

  Logan…

  Her heart whispered his name, but he broke the kiss as if he’d heard her. He stepped back and waited until she opened her eyes. He slipped his fingers between the buttons of her cotton dress and tugged her deeper into the room, toward the edge of the bed.

  When she’d shimmied into this floral-print dress earlier this evening, she’d done it with the thought of making love to Logan. With such a soft, easy dress, she could feel the breeze slip under the hem and dance teasingly across her bare belly and legs. With such a loose, silky dress, he could slip his hands up her thighs and find no impediment to lovemaking but a pair of satin panties. In the flatbed of his truck she hadn’t bothered to completely disrobe, and they’d made hot and eager love with her skirts bunched around her waist. She’d planned it that way, she’d wanted it that way. Hot sex. Eager loving.

  Now she wanted to curse the long row of tiny pearl buttons that started at the sweetheart neckline and ended somewhere midcalf. Logan was unbuttoning them one at a time. He defeated her attempt to seize the hem of the dress and hike it over her shoulders. Clearly, he wanted to disrobe her this way. He slipped each opalescent button free of its fabric hook, exposing one more inch of flesh to the air. He skimmed the tips of his fingers over the rise of her breast, then, another button loose, he ran the pad of his index finger over the edge of her satin push-up bra. His gaze followed his fingers, and she saw in it an ill-disguised hunger.

  She bated her breath and watched him watch her, watched him make love to her cleavage, slip one hot finger in a line from the front clasp of her bra to the sensitive skin of her midriff. When enough buttons slipped free, he peeled the dress back, exposing her from her shoulders to the juncture of her thighs. He sat on the bed and dragged his hot hands around the cool skin of her back. He pressed his face against her belly. He flicked his tongue across her navel. She grasped his shoulders so she wouldn’t sink bonelessly to the floor.

  The dress whispered as it floated to a silken heap at her feet. Logan stilled and tightened his grip around her hips. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “All of you. Warm and soft and beautiful.”

  A quiver shuddered through her, a swift and aching sensation. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. He found her warm and soft and beautiful. Not awkward and cold and stiff. Warm and soft and beautiful.

  She sank down before him. She settled on her knees and fingered the front clasp of her bra. With one flick, it fell loose. Shaking her hair over her shoulders, she peeled the cups off her breasts, slipped the straps off her arms and tossed the satin bra to the floor.

  With rough hands he fondled the weight of her breasts. He cupped them in his palms and traced the tilt of her nipples, which tightened to exquisite knots of sensation under his touch. She wondered if she would ever get used to the knowledge that he found her sexy and warm and soft and beautiful and worthy of his love.

  Making, she amended swiftly. Worthy of his lovemaking.

  He leaned forward and sucked a nipple deep into his mouth. She let her head fall back until the tips of her hair brushed her buttocks. They’d bargained for a week of hot sex, but this wasn’t sex they were experiencing here, in the silence of this bedroom. They were making love. For the first time.

  He drew in a deep breath as he released her nipple. He hardened his grip around her waist, then dragged her up, over his body, so they were lying upon the bed. Ginny let her legs fall to either side of his hips and felt the urgency of his wanting in the hardness of his loins.

  She dipped her head, took one of the buttons of his shirt between her teeth and tugged. “No fair,” she whispered as she let it fall. “You’re still dressed.”

  “Undress me, Ginny.”

  She slipped off to his side and tugged the buttons free of his shirt. She stretched the cloth off his chest as he’d done to her. She traced the whorls of hair between the hard contours of his pectoral muscles. She flicked her tongue over his dark nipple, then nipped at it gently with her teeth. She took her time with the unveiling, tormenting him as he’d tormented her.

  “So,” he said in a hoarse whisper as she slipped her fingers under the waistband of his shorts, “you weren’t the kind of girl to tear open the presents all at once at Christmas.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, freeing the tails of his shirt. “I did it slowly. Unknotting the ribbon,” she said dreamily, “then picking the tape from the wrapping and peeling it off whole.”

  “I tore it all to pieces.”

  “You wouldn’t know,” she whispered, “by the way you just undressed me.”

  “It’s not Christmas,” he reminded her with a slow, smoldering grin. “And I’m not a little boy anymore.”

  “I noticed,” she said, freeing the shirt, to expose his taut abdomen. “For me, anticipation was everything at Christmas.”

  For she knew she’d be disappointed in the end.

  The memory assaulted her suddenly. Fiercely. Making her still. Every year, for years on end, she’d had only one request for Christmas. A puppy. A big, sloppy, tail-wagging dog of any breed, of any size, of any age. That’s all she wanted, that was all she ever wanted. Every year, she opened her presents nicely, slowly, hoping beyond hope to find a collar or an engraved bowl inside, with the attendant promise of a puppy to come. But Santa never delivered. No matter how large their apartment, her parents always told her it was too small for a puppy.

  So she’d smiled and thanked them for the designer clothes and the high-tech toys and all the wonderful things money could buy, aching inside for something much more basic.

  The pain and disappointment of those days rushed upon her hard and swift. She realized in a sudden revelation that she’d been lonely…all her life, in spite of all the nannies she’d had growing up, all the girls she’d known in boarding school, the few friends she’d made in college and graduate school. She’d never had the courage to hope for a puppy. She feared rejection. Disappointment

  “Ginny?” Logan touched her cheek, drew her to face him. “Hey, where did you go?”

  She blinked back the bite of tears at the concern in Logan’s face. It was no wonder she was labeled an ice queen. She’d never reached out. She’d never had the courage to try. “Make love to me, Logan.”

  He seized her, rolled her onto her back, kissed her until she felt no more sadness, until she felt nothing but the urgent need to take him, strong and hard, deep inside her. He made short work of his clothing, slapped a hand on her hip and guided himself inside her.

  They rocked on the bed, and all the while he kissed her—her eyes, her cheeks, her lips, the curve of her jaw—he kept kissing her as he moved inside her. She dung to his shoulders, arched her hips to meet his thrusts and made noises in her throat of wanting, of yearning, of anticipation. His fingers dug into her hip as he tensed, held himself
back, waited for her—then she sent him the message, Don’t stop, Logan, please—please—please—

  Don’t ever stop.

  11

  GINNY WOKE SLOWLY. A warm finger of sunlight stroked her face. She blinked her eyes open. Golden early-morning light glowed beyond the translucent curtains and seeped in to chase the darkness from the room.

  She felt strangely content to lie about naked in this warm bed, cool sheets draped across her breasts, and watch the dust swirl in the light seeping through the window. Memories of the night drifted through her mind. Her body felt heavy, loose-jointed, limber yet sore. She absently brushed her tangled hair off her cheek. Her elbow came in contact with something hard and warm.

  Logan lay beside her. He’d kicked off the covers during the night. He lay as naked as he was born, gilded in the golden glow of morning like some sort of ancient Roman god. Carefully, so as not to wake him, she shifted her weight onto an elbow and raised her head.

  The shadow of a beard darkened his face. His hair stuck out in all directions. In rest, his lips were full. Sculpted. Sensual. Oddly boyish. She couldn’t seem to breathe, looking at him like this, for at that moment Logan Macallister was the most handsome creature she’d ever laid eyes upon.

  The lazy warmth and ease she felt upon awakening gave way to the rising surge of her heart. The ballooning sentiment filled her chest, choked her and sent tears to her eyes. Logan. She reached out to touch him, to stroke the bristle that fuzzed the line of his jaw, to cup his face in her hand and turn him toward her, to kiss him in slumber. Instead, her hand hovered, just above his skin. His slow, even breathing fell upon her palm. She drew her hand back. She loved Logan with all her heart and all her soul—it scared her to death.

  How could this have happened? She hardly knew this man who could paint tiny wooden birds so lifelike they looked as if they could rise up and fly. She hardly knew this man who had spent a good part of his life in the more savage parts of the world, giving life and witnessing death. She hardly knew this man…yet looking upon his sleeping face, she felt as if she had known him all her life.