The Billionaire's Kiss (Scandal, Inc)

by James, Avery

  Logan laughed and looked around. “Yeah, what were you thinking?”

  Callie reached into the picnic basket and pulled out a blindfold. Logan perked up at the sight. “If you’re asking me to trust you, you’ll have to trust me too,” Callie said.

  “A blindfold?” he asked.

  She watched his excitement. He had no idea what she had in store. “Yeah, the rest is a surprise.”

  “What’s next, handcuffs?” he asked.

  He really did only think of one thing. “Play your cards right, and we’ll see.”

  Without another word Logan took the blindfold from Callie and covered his eyes. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Easy there, killer. We still have some wine to drink, besides, the reservation isn’t for another hour and a half.”

  “What am I supposed to do with the blindfold, then?” He slipped it back above his eyes like a headband.

  Callie grinned. “I can think of a few things, but they’re probably best saved for later.”

  Logan yawned and pulled out his phone. He kept looking over at Callie as he tapped away at a message.

  “Talking to anyone good?” She asked.

  “Just writing myself a little note,” Logan said.

  In the bright afternoon light, Callie couldn’t see what he was writing, but she was fairly sure that it wasn’t a note to himself. Try to trust him, she thought, if even just for one day. See if you can do it. What’s the worst that can happen? It wasn’t like he could get into too much trouble on their date. Besides, she wasn’t planning on letting him out of her sight anytime soon.

  ***

  Callie watched the smile spread across Logan’s face as soon as he stepped foot into The Independent. She stopped him in his tracks and adjusted his blindfold to make sure he wasn’t peeking from under it. But there was no way for him to have seen anything. She had been careful. She had even driven the car up and down every hopelessly quaint side street in Newport just to throw his sense of direction off before heading to the brewery. There was no way for him to have known where they were going. She had even gotten lost once or twice along the way herself. Maybe she didn’t give him enough credit for his perceptiveness.

  “You chose well,” Logan said.

  “You don’t even know where we are yet.”

  Logan laughed. “I know the uneven pavement outside of the front door better than I know the path between my bedroom and the bathroom. I know the sound that front door makes when it opens, the feeling of the antique wood planks on the walls on the way in, and I know the smell of the brewery as well as almost any other, but the real giveaway was the sound, the people talking and laughing, the lull of the ocean outside the windows.”

  “I figured you heard me make the reservation.” Logan turned away and tried to hide his grin, but Callie could tell something else was up. “Nice speech, but how did you know?”

  “After the night when you kissed me at the bar and ran off, I had your name added to a list. Whenever you so much as step foot inside this restaurant, I know. I got a call earlier about your reservation for two. I had thought it was a joke.”

  Callie pulled the blindfold off. “Way to ruin the surprise.”

  “Oh come on, I thought it was great, the way you drove around for half an hour. To be honest, it took me a while to figure out what you were doing, I thought you were lost.”

  Callie’s patience was growing thin. “If you keep this up, only one of us will be getting lost.”

  Logan held his hands up in the air. “I’m done. I promise.”

  “Good, because I’m starving,” Callie added. She made note that the hostess was the same one she had impersonated on her first trip to the microbrewery, and she felt nervous until she took her seat in a back corner of the restaurant. The table was hidden away from the main dining room. Above it, a dim filament bulb hung from a weathered brass fixture, casting a warm glow over the table. She had to give him credit. Logan sure did know how to set a mood.

  After they had ordered dinner, their conversation turned back to more personal matters. And now that she felt more comfortable letting her guard down around him, Callie felt free to admit something she had barely even admitted to herself. “Sometimes I wish I were more adventurous. I’m always the one cleaning up messes, and I’m never the one making them. It would be fun for once to act with abandon the way you get to.” She surprised herself by saying it because she had always prided herself on being dependable and drama free, but it was true, every word of it, and she felt like Logan was the kind of person who could understand exactly what she meant.

  “Well, you don’t need my permission. Just decide what you want to do and go do it,” he said.

  “It’s not that easy. It’s never that easy. I have expectations to live up to. When this is over and the bill either passes or fails, I have to head back to DC and take the reins of one of the top crisis management firms in the country,” she said. “I have to be perfect at all times. I spend 15 hours a day fixing other people’s problems. I don’t have time to do things for myself.” Why was she getting so defensive about this? After all, she had been the one to bring it up.

  “We all have expectations to live up to. Do you think my parents didn’t want me to make something of myself? My brother and I were supposed to be titans of industry, renaissance men, everything you could dream up. Now look at us. He’s out west playing forest ranger, and I’ve pissed away a decade of my life. I’ve bitterly disappointed my family, but I’m not going to let that get to me. Sometimes you have to decide what you want and go get it, regardless of the cost, regardless of what people think.”

  Callie didn’t want to sound impertinent, but she couldn’t keep from pushing back a bit. “I know you lost your mother when you were in college, but I lost mine when I was just a kid. My father worked all day every day on Capitol Hill, my sister basically raised me. The people at Haven Communications are my family. I can’t let them down. They’re all I have.” Why was she saying this? She wanted to clap her hands over her mouth and just stop. She was ruining a perfectly nice evening for no apparent reason, but she couldn’t help it. She just felt like this was something she needed to tell him if they were going to have any chance of having a relationship beyond the week.

  “You have me,” Logan said. The earnestness of his statement surprised her. He reached across the table and held her hand. “You have me, Callie. I will support whatever decision you make, but you should be whoever you want to be. You don’t need your sister telling you how to live your life. You don’t need anyone to make your decisions for you. Live a little. I promise, it won’t kill you.”

  She let out a long breath and shrugged her shoulders. “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Well, hang around drinking with me a little longer, and maybe it will be. I mean you’ve already got a blindfold. Like I said, I have a few ideas of how to use it.”

  Callie laughed. Instead of killing the conversation, her admission had brought her closer to him. She reveled in each glance he gave her across the table, laughed at every joke. By the time the food arrived, she barely felt hungry. She just felt elated to be with Logan in the moment living for herself and no one else. By the time they were done, she wanted nothing more than to pull him into a back room and have her way with him. “Get me home,” she said, “Or I’ll be forced to take you here and now.”

  Logan leaned over in his seat and looked across the rows of full tables. “As much as I support risk taking, I think we should probably hold off until we get back to the guesthouse or the yacht.” Of course, by the time they made it back to the guesthouse, they didn’t even wait for the door to close behind them before they threw themselves at each other.

  Eighteen

  As soon as they were inside the house, Logan let instinct take over. He didn’t even bother shutting door behind himself. He didn’t bother turning on the lights. He had to have her. Right there, right then. The wine and the beer and the flirting had filled his head with pleasant
haze, but he wanted more, he wanted her. The first kiss was hot and hard, and just increased his desire. Logan wanted to rip off her clothes and kiss every inch of her, her breasts and her stomach and her back. He wanted to bury his face between her legs and make her cry out in excitement again and again. He scanned the room and tried to plot his next move, but Callie kissed his neck and ran her hands over his chest. Damnit, he couldn’t think when he was around her. He couldn’t wait another second. The bedroom was too far. The couch was too far. He reached down and pulled her up into the air, placing her on the kitchen counter as he pulled his shirt up over his head.

  Callie’s hair was half over her face, and he brushed it aside as he kissed her again. She had pulled the straps of her dress down off her her shoulders, and it made him weak in the knees to see how beautiful she looked in the moonlight that flooded in through the windows and the open door. God she was beautiful. Whenever the light changed, or he saw her wear her hair a different way or he saw her from a different angle, or she caught him looking at her and glowered at him with those gorgeous eyes, he was reminded of how beautiful she was, how every line and angle of her body was perfect. She pulled her dress up over her head and tossed it onto the floor. There in the half dark, for half a moment, as he reached down and kissed her stomach, he wondered what he had done to deserve such an incredible woman, but then he pulled moved lower and felt her heat and his desire took over again. He grabbed her thighs and her ass as he kissed between her legs and listened to her cry out. Each moan of pleasure made him want her more, and as her body tensed with climax, he knew he couldn’t wait much longer to be inside her.

  He fumbled with his belt and let his pants drop to the ground as Callie kept her legs wrapped around his neck. He wanted to make her come again, he wanted to make her as delirious with desire as he was. He was so hard it hurt. He had never wanted anyone this badly in his life, and yet he wanted to wait, he wanted her to feel this too. “Logan,” Callie moaned between cries of delight, “I need you. Please, I need you. Take me to the bedroom.”

  He picked her up and carried her across toward the bedroom. Her body trembled as he kissed her and slid his hands up her back. Each one of her heavy breaths just made him more excited. She ran her hands over his bare hips and grabbed his erection, running her hand over it as he placed her down on the bed. He moaned. As he climbed into bed and kissed her again, positioning himself on top of her, he wondered how a woman like her had fallen for him. Then he drove himself deep inside her, and the world grew quiet, and he pushed into her again and again until a pleasure beyond words cried out inside him, and he realized that Callie was shouting too, her cries crashing through the room in rhythm with his thrusts until finally, she dug her fingers into his back and he closed his eyes as the breath rushed from his lungs as he came.

  “Logan,” Callie half moaned, half-whispered as she tried to catch her breath. He stayed there, inside of her, and he kissed her collarbone, and slid his fingers through hers as he listened to her breath. He wanted to fall asleep inside her like that. He wanted to wake up with his body tangled in hers, and he wanted to see that grin on her face as she told him not to be so much like himself.

  “Callie,” he whispered after a long silence. Shit. This wasn’t just sex anymore. He was in love.

  ***

  Logan had been lying in bed next to Callie for the better part of an hour, letting himself drift in that gray area between hazy contentment and sleep, but when his phone phone buzzed on the nightstand, he jolted up and grabbed it. He had forgotten all about the text he had sent earlier in the day. Why the hell did Jack have to get back to me right now? Couldn’t he wait for the morning? Out of everyone in the world, Jack should have been able to guess what he was up to. Logan rubbed his eyes as he scanned through the message. “I’m free tomorrow morning. 8am work for you?”

  Unless he left in the next two hours, he wouldn’t be able to make it to DC. Logan knew what that meant. Jack was trying to duck him. With everything they had been through together, Logan knew when Jack was avoiding something. Why even text back then? Logan knew the answer. If Jack didn’t text, Logan would only keep at it. This was his way of trying to shake him.

  Callie rolled over and mumbled, “Is everything alright?”

  No, he wanted to say. The only thing in the world that he wanted was to stay there in bed with his arms wrapped around her, but for the first time in his life, he was trying to do the right thing instead of the easy thing, and he didn’t want to tell her. “Yeah, Callie, everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

  Logan leaned over and kissed her temple. He buried his nose against her hair and inhaled. She smelled so wonderful. Why the hell couldn’t he just stay in bed with her? She shifted and raised her sweet, soft lips against his. If he had been standing, that kiss would have brought him to his knees. He knew that if he didn’t leave at that moment, he’d never leave. “Callie,” he whispered, “I wish I could stay with you tonight, but something came up and I have to head out.”

  “Right now? Should I be worried?” she asked. “What time is it?”

  “It’s half past one. I have to meet with a vendor in Boston early in the morning. I’ve had the meeting on the books for weeks, but something just came up and there’s no way for me to skip out on it. God, I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

  “Do you want me to come?” Callie offered. “We could make a day of it.” She lifted her arms and yawned. Then she shifted again and pressed her curves against him. If she was trying to get him to stay, she was doing a damn good job.

  “I wish,” Logan said, “but you and I both know that if you come with me, I won’t be able to concentrate.”

  “Well, we could always figure out a way to calm your mind until the meeting,” Callie said. She was still half asleep, and her words jumbled together as she spoke.

  “I can’t.” Logan turned over and rolled out of bed.

  “You’re turning down sex?” Callie asked. Logan still wasn’t sure she was awake.

  “What can I say? You’ve left me very satisfied, but I have to go. I wish more than anything that I could spend the next week doing nothing but lying here in your arms.”

  “What happened to doing what you want?”

  “What happened to responsibilities?” he asked. If only she knew why he had to go, she’d understand, he thought, but he didn’t want to get her hopes up, and he didn’t want her to think he was doing this just to win points with her. He was going to hash things out with Jack Coburn because it was the right thing to do, whether or not it came back to bite him in the ass.

  He leaned in and kissed her again on the cheek. “I’ll call in the morning once the meeting’s out.” Then he kissed her again.

  As his lips pressed against her cheek, Callie smiled. “Bring me back something good,” she said.

  “Are you asking that as my girlfriend?” God. As soon as he said it, he realized he couldn’t take the words back. He, Logan Harris, the man who perfected the one night stand had just asked someone to be his girlfriend. What the hell was he thinking?

  “Is that what I am now?” Callie asked. She suddenly seemed much more awake.

  “I don’t know. It depends on whether or not you want me to bring you back something. I feel like girlfriends and wives get gifts.” Did he really just say wife? Christ, he needed to stop before he ended up on one knee asking for her hand in marriage.

  “In that case, bring me back something big,” Callie said. She kissed him and rolled back over.

  Hopefully I’ll bring you back the biggest victory of your career.

  ***

  Callie lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. It had been an hour since Logan had left, and as soon as he had stepped out the door, she hadn’t been able to sleep. She felt restless, on edge. She didn’t know whether or not to trust him. She didn’t want to be jealous or suspicious, but, frankly, she had no idea what to think of anything that had just happened. After all, he had just asked her to be his girlfriend. W
hy on earth would he say that? Why would he do that and just leave? Sure, the electricity between them was so strong that it nearly crackled each time they touched, but he was hardly the type of guy who dated, never mind the kind of guy who considered someone his girlfriend. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was hiding something else.

  If he was hiding something from her, the whole girlfriend question could have been a way of masking his deceit, or maybe he felt forced to put a label on their relationship. Either way, why in the hell had he left in the middle of the night? It had barely been more than a day and half since she had admitted what was going on to Logan, and it hadn’t even been a day since she had pledged to be completely honest with him, but she couldn’t help but wonder if she should check up on him to see if he was telling the truth about where he was going. After all, she did have access to his calendar and his emails. If he really had an appointment, she’d be able to see so right away, and then she could rest easy.

  She looked over at the clock. It was well past three in the morning, and she wondered if Charlotte was still awake. She needed someone to talk to, and she couldn’t think of anyone else. Callie couldn’t bring herself to call, though. She already knew that Charlotte say something about Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights and how she would kill for a chance to spend any amount of time with a guy like Logan. Callie played through the rest of the pretend conversation in her head, all of the positives and negatives about taking Logan at his word or snooping on him and violating whatever trust he had left.

  Why couldn’t he have just stayed? She wished that could be by her side again. What she had felt with him that night was more intense than anything she had ever felt before. Sure, the sex was incredible, mind-bending even, but it was more than that, there was an emotional connection, an openness that she had never had with anyone before. It had started long before the sex, much earlier in the day when Logan decided they needed to clear the air. How was it possible for him to run out into the night after feeling what they felt together? What would happen to that openness if she went ahead and spied on him? It just felt so wrong.