by Lora Leigh
Skye crossed her arms over her breasts. That chill was racing over her again.
“Here, you’re cold.”
Logan stopped, drew the long-sleeved over-shirt he wore off and helped her ease her arms into it.
Chivalry wasn’t dead after all.
“Sure you don’t need it?”
He snorted at her question. “I wear it just in case some little girl is too forgetful to wear her own.”
She had to laugh at that. He was gruff and rarely talkative, surprising her with the fact that he was actually doing more than saying “yes” or “no” to her questions.
“What are you doing in this county, Skye?”
The serious, quiet question almost managed to throw her off guard. She’d expected it long before now to be honest. She was surprised he’d managed to hold off through the months she’d all but ruined the solitude he seemed to seek while he was home.
“It’s as good a place to work as any,” she told the partial truth. “And I needed someplace to hide for a while, I guess.”
And she wasn’t going to talk about it. She had her reasons for being here, and one of them really was to hide for a bit. She was on a forced leave of absence, paid thankfully, while she dealt with a few nightmares from her last case. A case that had touched too close to her sister’s death and the unresolved injustice of it.
But tell Logan Callahan that and he would withdraw so fast it would make her head spin.
“Hiding from choices or a person?” he asked as she pulled the shirt more firmly around her.
“Choices, I guess.” She glanced up at him again with a slight smile. “Sometimes we don’t make the right choices, do we?”
“So why come to Corbin County to hide?” There was still that edge of suspicion.
“I could go wherever I wanted. Besides I have a friend here from school. My last year of private school I was a mentor to a first-year student, Anna Corbin. She suggested I check Sweetrock out and I loved it.”
He tensed, as she had expected him to. “Know Anna well, then?” The question was voiced carefully as though he were now doubting his choice to speak with her, let alone walk with her.
“As well as possible considering her granddaddy hates me.” She gave a light, unconcerned laugh. “An orphan with no connections and few prospects isn’t exactly the type of contacts the Corbins want for their children or grandchildren.” He should know that well enough.
“Ah, yes, the life of privilege,” he drawled. “The princess must have the right sort of friends.”
“Or so her family believes.” She gave another light laugh. She had to be careful here.
She didn’t want to trip any alarms with this man. Logan Callahan had the ability to dig deep into a person’s background, uncover all their secrets. If he managed to uncover even the slightest deception, he would completely distance himself. She couldn’t afford that. Not if she wanted to learn the identity of a killer.
“You mentioned you’re an orphan…?” he finally asked as she felt him glance down at her.
“My parents are dead.” She shrugged. “They were killed when I was young.” She didn’t want to discuss it. Not here and now.
His hand tightened at her back, slid to her hip and drew her closer.
“Yeah, you’re right, John Corbin would strenuously protest your friendship with his granddaughter,” he said, mercifully changing the subject. They crossed another street and stepped onto the street they both lived on.
“Corbin, his son, his daughter-in-law, his cowboys, their wives, their children, their business associates.” She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Sounds like the Corbins,” he agreed. “Hell, it sounds like the barons, period. Not one of those families has much worth where decency is concerned.”
And he should know. He was the grandson of one of those barons. His grandfather, Saul Rafferty, along with John Corbin and Marshal Roberts, Rafer and Crowe’s grandfathers had disowned the three of them. They had nearly destroyed them and it had only been in the past year that they had won the twenty-year-old battle for the inheritance that each of their mothers had left them.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have to deal with them, thankfully. And Anna’s different. At least, so far. She’s still a good kid.”
But she worried, Skye admitted. Anna was still young, still impressionable, and possibly so very easy to turn into the puppet John Corbin wanted, under the right circumstances. Or with the right betrayal.
“Looks like we’re home.”
She walked beside him as he led the way to the thick, tall evergreens that all but created an impenetrable curtain across the large side yard the two houses shared.
The bricks of the patios were less than thirty feet apart on the other end of the house where another heavy line of the thick evergreens grew. It created a hidden oasis between the houses. The one point that couldn’t be spied upon unless the spy were in one of the rooms facing it.
“Thank you for walking me home.” She slid his shirt from her arms, though she didn’t comment on the friends.
She didn’t want to appear the least bit curious about him or his family, let alone the friends of his parents. The curiosity ate her alive sometimes, but she had to be careful or she could destroy six months of dedicated work to get close to this man, to get close enough to make herself a target. If the Sweetrock Slasher had a partner who was still at large, Skye intended to draw him out.
She had never believed that Lowry Berry had been working alone, and from what the new deputy, John Caine, had learned, she was right.
Logan took his shirt slowly, his expression still, his gaze considering as he watched her.
Skye pulled her keys from her pocket and unlocked her door. She hesitated for a moment, then gave him a quick smile and a wink.
“Sleep well, cutie,” she drawled before turning to go inside.
“Skye, stop this game you’re playing.”
Before she could evade him, his fingers curled around her arm and he pulled her back to him.
Skye found herself suddenly flush against him, staring up at him in shock as the hard imprint of his erection pressed into her lower stomach.
Swallowing tightly, the feel of the heavy shaft beneath his jeans sent a spike of trepidation racing through her. She now had proof that he wasn’t exactly small in that department.
“What game?” Oh God, who knew that finding the strength to sound innocent would be so hard?
Then he was pushing the fingers of his free hand into the back of her hair, clenching, sending sharp spikes of sensation racing across her scalp, he tugged until she was staring up at him, eyes wide.
“Logan, you’re acting strange.” The accusation was nearly laughable. He was almost, just almost, doing what she wanted him to do.
Kissing her.
His lips were just a breath from hers. The scent of him, the taste of him, so close.
But she was not making that first move.
He had to want her bad enough.
He had to be unable to resist her.
But he hadn’t reached that point yet. But he was so close.
Then he released her—slowly. His fingers loosened in her hair reluctantly as if he had to force them to do so. Soon he was stepping away from her.
“You’re playing with fire,” he growled.
She had to resist the urge to smile. “I never play with fire, Logan. Getting burned sucks.”
And that was no more than the truth. She had no desire to fall in love with him, but she wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with him for a while. Besides the fact he was hotter than hell, and the fact that he drew her as no other man ever had, there was no way she could accomplish her goal if she didn’t get into his bed.
She was setting herself up as bait. To do that, she needed to be Logan’s lover.
CHAPTER TWO
He was making a mistake and he knew it.
Each time Logan made his way to the patio door and looked out toward the soft light glowi
ng from Skye’s living room window, he knew it was a mistake.
A week had gone by since the Social. She hadn’t shown up at the town’s weekly get-together, and Logan had returned early because he was sick of waiting on her.
What a hell of a mess.
He was thirty-three years old and he’d managed to never let a woman get past his guard.
Definitely in the past twelve years he’d made damned certain no woman pierced the shield he kept around his heart.
It was a requirement, keeping his heart solitary, yet, here he was, watching her. And that was just one of his problems.
His dick was spike hard, throbbing with a hunger that was damned hard to deny, and he was standing there like a fucking teenager staring into his best girl’s window.
Son of a bitch, he was coming to a pitiful end and he knew it.
He’d told her to stop playing games, and she’d done just that, if she had been playing one at all. He wasn’t so sure anymore.
Had he become so suspicious over the years, so hard and certain that everyone had ulterior motives that he couldn’t accept someone for who and what they were? Was it impossible for him to accept that a woman could just want him?
Swiping his fingers through his hair, Logan admitted it was damned hard to believe that anyone in Corbin County did not have an ulterior motive.
He’d spent a week on the computer and on the phone with damned near every contact he possessed in the information business. The background check he’d done on Skye O’Brien had come up as clean.
Well, with the exception of a few too many speeding tickets. And there was that time in college she’d gotten a little too drunk and had propositioned a cop outside a bar.
Normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill, girl-next-door adventures.
And he didn’t want to believe it. Suspicion was a vicious, sharp-toothed demon that gnawed at his mind.
Suspicion turned to hunger as she came into view.
Long, dark waves spilled down her back, and she was wearing another one of those damned, vintage nightgowns that made the animal hunger that already tore at his balls rise to a howl of pure lust.
The black filmy lace looked so damned soft, he ached to touch it. To touch her.
The material molded over her breasts, all the way down to her delicate waist before falling to the floor in a long sweep that trailed majestically behind her.
He wanted to strip it from her body. To peel it slow and easy from her shoulders to her hips and watch it pool at her feet.
Naw, once he got it to her hips, he wasn’t watching anything but those incredible breasts.
Suddenly the soft strains of a sensual R&B instrumental began to fill the night rather than the raucous dance tunes she usually played.
She wasn’t the best dancer he’d ever seen, but damned if he didn’t love watching her move.
She had a natural sensuality to every step she made, to every twist of her hips and every pleasure-loving step she made.
Even now, as she peeked curiously in the direction of his patio, he could see the urge to move to the music eating at her. And he had to grin.
He’d deliberately left the lights out, so she would believe that he was gone. For the past week, she hadn’t danced for him once.
She closed the curtains on the sliding doors and kept the lights down low, and he’d known, fucking known, she was dancing and denying him the chance to watch. But now she thought she was alone.
Scratching at the raspy short beard that covered his lower face, Logan tipped his head to the side and watched as she began to sway.
Slow and easy, her arms lifting above her head, her hips began to move in langorous, sensual circles. Fuck him. He’d never been so hard, so tormented with the need to fuck one woman in his life.
The pulsating, let’s-fuck music drifted like a heated breeze through the night as her movements, maybe not in rhythm to the music exactly, but definitely in rhythm to the hunger raging through him, tormented him.
She was dancing for a lover.
Enticing. Sensual. Pleading for a touch.
Her hands lowered, one crossing over her stomach as the fingers of the other slid down her neck, her head tilting back. The hand crossed over her stomach, gripped her own hip before her fingers curled just enough to allow her nails to rake over her hips.
His abs tightened, flexed, as he felt the ghostly sensation of those nails raking over his own hip, rasping over his flesh and sending bolts of sensation to strike at the taut sac of his balls.
Hell, he could jack off to the sight of that and probably come hard enough to lose the strength in his legs. A sight like that begged for sex. Pleaded for a man’s touch. Made him ache to bury his cock between her thighs and demand that her hips sway and roll with just that rhythm.
He was a second from striding across the distance that separated them when a new sound intruded on the night.
At first, Logan was certain he had to be hearing things.
A soft, distressed little whine.
Stepping into the house on silent feet, he grabbed the weapon he kept on the shelf next to the patio doors before moving to the edge of the doors he’d slid open earlier.
There it was again.
“Ease up, little bastard.” The hiss of the demand had his muscles tensing, denial surging hot and furious through his body.
Stepping from the house, careful to stay within the shadows, Logan waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Saul Rafferty had aged in the months since Logan had last seen him. He had been with his wife, Tandy, at the time.
He’d stared at the old couple, and told himself he hadn’t seen the sheen of tears in Tandy’s eyes, or the desperation on her face.
Saul had been just as cold and hard-edged as always. He had led his wife past their only grandchild, continuing on their way as though Logan hadn’t existed.
“Come here, you crying little shit.” Despite the harsh words, Saul’s tone lacked the gruff disgust Logan normally heard in it.
Saul sure as hell couldn’t be doing what Logan thought he was doing.
But he was.
Logan waited silently as the old man made his way around the edge of the house.
In one arm he carried a whining little bundle, in the other, his hand gripped a small Igloo pet house.
“What the fuck are you doing, old man?” Logan shoved the gun in back of his jeans, propped his hands on his hips, and glared at his grandfather.
Saul didn’t even appear surprised.
“I should have known you wouldn’t have the decency to actually be gone.” Anger filled his rasping tone. “Can’t just be up-front can you, boy? Have to keep the damned lights out and pretend you’re not even here.”
The response didn’t even make sense, but the bundle in his arms gave an excited little yip and all but jumped from Saul’s grip.
“You’re not fucking doing this to me again,” Logan snarled as Saul set the pup in the grass. It bounded ecstatically over to him.
Chomping down on the strings of Logan’s sneakers, it gave little baby growls, tugging and begging to play.
The Chinese pug was damned small and cute as fucking shit and he didn’t want a damned thing to do with it.
He didn’t want to remember the one other pup he’d had as a kid, or its death. He sure as hell didn’t want the responsibility of keeping this one alive.
The lights on Skye’s patio flared on, the music shutting down as she became aware of the presence of Logan and his grandfather outside.
“Logan?” she called out to him, the concern in her tone making his chest clench.
Only his two cousins had ever cared what the hell happened to him. What was he supposed to do with a sexy neighbor who now seemed to feel the same?
“Everything’s fine, Miss O’Brien,” he called out, refusing to glance over at her. “Mr. Rafferty is just taking himself and his damned dog and leaving.”
“Keep your voice down,” Saul suddenly s
narled. “You’re stupid, boy, do you know that? Ain’t got an ounce of the sense your daddy had.”
“Don’t.” Logan was in Saul’s face faster than he would have thought possible, definitely before he could consider his actions. He was almost nose to nose with the old man, staring down at him as fury pounded in his blood. “Don’t mention my father. Don’t mention either of my parents. Don’t say their names. You’ve pretended they didn’t exist for over twenty years, and now, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist for you.”
“Sucks don’t it, boy?” Saul responded, refusing to back down. “Knowing we share blood.”
“We don’t share a damned thing, Mr. Rafferty,” Logan sneered.
Saul didn’t even have the good grace to flinch. “Keep hating me, boy. It’s the best thing for both of us.”
“Then stay the hell off my property and keep your damned animals away from me.”
“Your grandmother’s dying, Logan.”
Saul’s comment, so out of character, so outside of the conversation, caused Logan to still, to stare back at him, confused.
“What the hell did you say?”
“She’s dying.” Saul’s voice thickened as he lowered his gaze and stared the pup that suddenly sat next to Logan’s foot, its wrinkled face filled with happiness as it panted up at him. “That one’s from the last litter of her favorite little bitch. The runt. She wanted you to have her. She begged me to bring her to you.”
Begged him?
She’d wanted him to have it for what reason? She hadn’t cared if he lived or died for over twenty years and now all of a sudden, she gave a fuck?
He highly doubted it.
He should tell Saul that he didn’t give a damn, Logan told himself, but he couldn’t get the words past his lips. There had been a time, long ago and far away, when he had idolized this old man and his wife. He had spent hours playing with their puppies and had sat on his grandfather’s knee as Saul read to him.
He’d convinced himself he only imagined those years. They couldn’t have happened.
But they had.