Swiveling on his barstool, Logan turned just in time to see Emma walk through the door.
Not-too-tight jeans, worn in all the right places, with a stark white shirt tucked into the waistband beneath the faded jean jacket, Emma looked like a rough-edged girl, her look younger than she probably was. Her chestnut hair, ruffled from the breeze, flowed over her collar in tousled waves, and her large brown eyes held the look of calm that Logan rarely saw in a woman’s eyes. Emma raised one hand and threaded her fingers through her hair as she looked around the pub. A smile broke on her full lips when she saw Logan at the bar.
Logan swallowed, intrigued and attracted at the same time. He watched Emma walk toward him and wondered just where this drink would lead. Emma didn’t look easy, but then, Logan knew from experience, he couldn’t tell if a woman was easy by just looking.
“Hey, sorry it took me so long. I swear I caught every light.” Emma slid onto a barstool beside him. “What are you drinking?”
Logan cleared his throat, feeling a strange tightness there. “Water right now. But I’m open to something stronger if you are.”
Emma shrugged out of her coat, tossing it onto the barstool on the other side of her. She began to roll up the sleeves of her shirt, which was unbuttoned down to the curve of her cleavage. “I’m going to have something a bit tamer.” She raised one hand to get the bartender’s attention.
Logan couldn’t help but notice how Emma’s hands looked. No fancy manicure, nails trimmed short. Funny, the jeans and jean jacket fit the impression she was a working girl, but the white button-down shirt didn’t.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked from the other side of the bar.
Emma looked at Logan and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, I guess I’ll have a diet cola.” Logan smiled and glanced at Emma. “Little early for something stronger.”
Emma nodded. “Agreed.” She looked at the bartender. “I’ll have a ginger ale with five cherries.”
Logan’s heart skipped a beat. Ginger ale with five cherries. Christi’s favorite drink when she wasn’t drinking alcohol. Logan picked up his glass of water and shakily took a sip.
“Everything okay?” Emma asked.
Swallowing quickly, Logan smiled at her. “Yeah, I mean, yes. Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”
“You had the funniest look on your face. Like you’d seen a ghost or something.”
The bartender placed their drinks in front of them. Emma leaned sideways and reached for her purse and took her wallet out. She took a few bills out and slid them across the bar. “Keep the change.”
“Thanks.” The bartender nodded and returned to the other end of the bar where he had been going through receipts.
Emma took a sip of her ginger ale, the cherries floating in the center of the liquid, blocked from coming to the top by the ice cubes. “Mmm, good.” She turned to Logan. “So, Logan, what do you do for a living?”
Logan blinked, trying to focus on what Emma was saying. The glass of ginger all glimmered like champagne in the dim light of the pub. “Sorry, I was…never mind. I work at Baker’s. The Jaguar dealership over on the south side.”
“Jaguar. Hmph. Nice cars. Don’t know if I’d ever feel right driving one, but I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.” Emma parked one elbow on the bar. “I wondered why you were dressed so nice, too nice to be sitting on a park bench in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Yes, that.” Logan turned toward her. “Have you ever had a strong calling to go somewhere? Somewhere you don’t usually go at a time you are normally doing something else, like working?” Logan liked the way Emma looked him in the eye when he spoke. It showed she was truly interested in what he was saying. He wished he would have offered to buy the drinks. It didn’t feel right that a woman should be buying when it was their first drink together, even if it wasn’t alcohol.
“As a matter of fact, I have. What was your feeling today?” Emma took a sip of her ginger ale.
“I felt the need to go to the park. I don’t know why.”
“Well, I’m glad you did.” Emma ran her fingers through her hair again. “It seems like I haven’t just sat down and had a conversation with someone in a long time.”
“Me, also.” Logan had a good feeling about Emma. She could be a friend if it didn’t lead to something else, something more. Logan could use a friend. All he had done for the past year was go to work, sell a few cars, and go home to an empty apartment. “Would you like to have dinner?” he asked, hoping for once he’d have a dinner companion. His friends had tried to fix him up with other women, but he didn’t want anything to do with that. He hated being invited to a dinner party only to find out he was being matched up with another single girl who was on the rebound from a bad relationship. That was the last thing he needed, to listen to someone regaling him with a former lover’s bad traits. This was different. Meeting Emma in the park felt right somehow. It would be interesting to know if they got along well. At least well enough to be friends. After all, Logan didn’t know if Emma was single, married, or in a relationship, yet.
“What do you have in mind?” Emma asked, smiling.
Logan noticed how the smile went all the way to her eyes. A true smile, the corners of Emma’s eyes crinkling invitingly. “I’ll leave that up to you. We could get a bite here, or somewhere else. Or I could make dinner. Do you like Italian?”
Emma laughed, the sound rolling over Logan like a roller coaster of happiness. Again, Logan had the sense that meeting Emma was so very right.
“I love Italian,” Emma said when she finally stopped laughing. She glanced toward the bartender, who was still at the far end of the bar, head tilted down, working on his paperwork. Emma looked back at Logan. “I have to ask you something, and please don’t take me the wrong way.”
“Ask.” Logan leaned forward, leaning his elbow on the bar. “I’ll try not to take it wrong.”
Emma met his gaze, his brown eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Are you…married?”
Logan’s stomach tightened. Here was the moment of truth, so to speak. “No. Is that a problem?”
A smile slowly bloomed on Emma’s mouth. “No. Most definitely not.”
“Are you…?”
Emma shook her head and grinned mischievously. He picked up his glass of ginger ale and raised it. “To a chance meeting.”
Logan smiled, feeling more right than ever in this meeting. He picked up his glass of diet cola and touched it against Emma’s glass. “To a chance meeting.”
They both took a sip of their beverage then placed their glasses back on the bar. “So,” Logan began. “Since we’re both on the same single, let me ask you a question.”
“Shoot.” Emma tilted her head invitingly.
“Are you in a relationship?” Logan fought the urge to hold his breath. This chance meeting held the implication it could be much more than what it seemed.
“No. I’ve been single for, well, over a year now. You?”
Logan wasn’t sure how much he wanted to reveal at this point. He definitely didn’t want to dampen the rapport they had with the details of Christi’s death and his loneliness since that day. Maybe once they got to know each other better. “I’ve been single for a while now.”
Emma nodded, obviously pleased. “Then I don’t have to worry about a jealous lover at home, right?”
“No, you don’t have to worry about that.” Logan chuckled.
“Then I wouldn’t mind having Italian tonight now that I don’t have to worry about defending myself or getting caught having dinner with such a handsome man.”
Logan’s face grew hot. He turned away for a moment, shielding the blush he knew flushed his cheeks by taking a long drink of his cola.
“Did I say something wrong?” Emma asked, touching him lightly on the arm.
Warmth flooded through Logan, up his arm, and straight to his heart. The touch was light, but he felt the heat of Emma’s fingertips through the fabric of his shirt. A gentl
e touch, but a caring one. Logan could use more of that. With a deep breath, Logan shook off the sensations he was having, chalking it up to being without another’s touch for so long, and turned back to Emma. “No, of course not. It’s just—”
“Been a long time,” Emma finished for him. “I got cha. Same here.” She removed her hand and picked up her glass, downing the rest of his ginger ale. Then she reached into the glass and plucked out one of the cherries, popping it into her mouth. She pulled the stem from between her lips and dropped it back in the glass.
Trying to lighten the moment, Logan asked, “What sort of sauce do you prefer? Marinara or Alfredo?”
“Alfredo, most definitely. I never was one for red sauce.”
Just like Christi. “Alfredo it is then. I can make a fairly decent pollo carbonera. Can you do garlic bread?”
“I can.” She rubbed her palms together as if getting ready to begin a project. “I take it we’re cooking at your place?”
“Would that be okay?”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go today. I think it would be great. The two of us can cook, talk, and get to know each other.” She grinned widely. “Do you have everything for dinner, or do we need to stop for supplies?”
Logan was getting excited about how this day was ending when a few hours ago it had seemed so dismal. “I have all the staples we need for dinner, but if you wouldn’t mind, you could stop and pick up a nice bottle of wine.”
Emma reached over and grabbed her jacket and purse off the bar stool beside her and stood. “That I can do. Red or white?” She slipped his jacket on and flipped her hair out of the collar.
“White, it will go better with the Alfredo.”
Emma nodded. “Tell me where I need to be when and we’re on.”
Chapter Three
After asking the bartender for a scrap of paper and a pen, Emma jotted down Logan’s address and agreed to meet him there in half an hour. Finally, she was beginning to live her life again, and it felt damn good. She quickly stopped at the corner grocery, picked up two bottles of wine, and typed in Logan’s address in her GPS.
Though she wouldn’t be able to drink more than one glass of wine, and she was taking a chance doing even that, having dinner with Logan felt like she was getting on the right track, and she was looking forward to eating, talking, and just spending time with a man. True, it felt a little weird that she had bought the first drinks and he was cooking dinner, but what the heck? It was almost a date, and she wasn’t going to turn down having dinner and some nice conversation with a handsome man.
The only people she had spent any real time with the past year were the doctors and nurses in the rehabilitation facility. They were great, but it wasn’t the same. Emma had no family to speak of, and the family she did have wasn’t worth speaking to. None of them had come to visit her in rehab. Not one of them. Sure, some of her coworkers had come to visit in the beginning, but after she’d been there for a month, they, too, seemed to disappear. She was okay with it. They had other things to do, better things than to visit an invalid who’d just had a heart transplant.
Pulling up in front of Logan’s building, Emma was in luck. There was a parking space just a half block down. She angled the car into the space and grabbed the bag containing the wine from the passenger seat. After locking up, she walked down the sidewalk, taking note of the well-trimmed grass and the spring flowers beginning to bloom in front of the vintage brown brick building.
She entered the vestibule and scanned the names next to the buzzer buttons. Logan’s apartment was number twelve, she already knew, but it was one of those diehard habits people had. Emma always scanned the names even though it was highly unlikely she’d recognize any of them. Just as she reached up to press the buzzer, a name did catch her eye. Clay Archer.
Emma’s hand froze in midair. What in the world was going on today? First, meeting a handsome single man on the day her doctor okayed her to have sex, and now, finding the name of an old lover listed alongside the name of the prospective new lover. Imagine that. Emma smoothed the tip of her finger over the name sticker of Clay Archer. How long had it been? Must be five years now. The old feelings of passion that had burned white-hot between them threatened to come to the surface again.
“Now isn’t the time,” she whispered, the sound unusually loud in the silence of the vestibule. Telling herself she might look into Clay Archer later, just to ask how he’s been, she pushed the buzzer for number twelve.
A small round speaker crackled, and then a voice issued from it. “Emma?” The voice was tinny and slightly distorted, but Emma could tell it was Logan.
“It’s me. Got the wine,” she said into the speaker, finger pressing the intercom button beside it.
A loud buzz sounded, and she heard the latch on the door click. “Come on up,” Logan said through the speaker.
Emma grabbed the door handle and pulled. Stepping through the door and into the building, Emma felt like she’d been mistakenly thrown into a 1940s film noir. The building’s interior looked as if nothing had been changed since it had been built, from the art deco wall sconces to the metal accordion elevator door. She expected someone dressed in gangster garb to come around the corner any minute.
Continuing down the hall, she passed apartment number six, the one the name Clay Archer had been noted next to on the buzzer row. She hesitated only for a moment, the old feelings swirling inside, then walked on, leaving it for another time. She found number twelve at the end of the hall on the left. The door stood ajar, and she could hear classical music playing softly inside.
Emma placed her fingertips on the door and pushed. The music got a little louder as the door opened. Emma wasn’t sure what the song was, but she liked it. It made her want to smile. “Hello?” she called out, stepping into what must be the living room.
Logan peered around a door frame. “Come on in the kitchen. I’m still cooking.” Then his head disappeared back into what Emma now knew was the kitchen.
When Emma stepped into the kitchen, she saw an amazing sight.
Logan, dressed in an apron, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and no shoes or socks, was swaying to the music while he stirred a steaming pot of pasta.
Emma caught the scent of chicken and garlic and something else she didn’t recognize. She breathed in deeply, savoring the smells of good food cooking in the kitchen. “Nice,” she said, catching Logan’s attention enough to make him turn toward her, spoon held high over the pot.
“You think so?” Logan smiled, although a bit tremulously.
Emma gently placed the bag containing the wine on the glass top of the dining table at the far end of the kitchen. “Very nice. Smells like home.” She turned back toward Logan, only to find him staring at her, the hand holding the spoon absently lowering.
Emma held Logan’s gaze, unmoving. Something had passed between them. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it felt important. “You okay?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Logan blinked, looking very much like someone who had just awakened from a dream. “Yeah,” he said simply, turning back to his pot. “You can put the wine in the freezer so it will chill faster. The pasta is almost ready,” he said without turning from the stove.
Opening the freezer, Emma noted how clean and organized it was then placed both bottles on a shelf on their side. This man was not like the men she usually dated. The apartment looked spotless, and to beat it all, he cooked. And in bare feet with an apron, no less! She took off her jacket and hung it on the back of one of the chairs at the table.
Logan still stood at the stove, stirring first one pot, then another. His shoulders looked slightly slumped, and he was no longer swaying to the music.
Emma walked up behind him and placed both hands on Logan’s shoulders. She leaned forward until her cheek was almost even with Logan’s. He smelled of cologne, a woodsy scent. “Okay,” Emma said softly. “What have I done?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Emma reached around Logan and flicked the two buttons for the burners he was using on the stove to off. “Logan, look at me.”
Dropping the spoon into the pot, Logan sighed.
Stepping back, Emma used her hands to turn Logan toward her. The look in Logan’s eyes was full of sadness. Placing her hands back on Logan’s shoulders, Emma said, “Tell me what’s wrong. What did I say to make you look like that?”
Meeting her gaze, Logan shrugged. “It’s just the ‘home’ comment. This place hasn’t felt like home for quite some time.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad.” She placed the palm of her hand against Logan’s cheek, the slight stubble there causing a tickling sensation on her palm. “What can I do to make it up to you? Things were going so well.”
“I really don’t know.” He raised one hand then dropped it.
“Well,” Emma said, moving slightly closer. “How about this?” Still cupping Logan’s cheek in her palm, Emma lowered her head. The first brush of her lips against Logan’s caused her body to heat. Logan didn’t pull away. Emma closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of Logan’s mouth, so pliant beneath hers, the slight scruff of his stubble against her chin as she deepened the kiss a tantalizing sensation. Emma moved her other hand to the back of Logan’s head and groaned. Mmm, she hadn’t had such a hot kiss in forever.
Logan slid his arms around Emma’s waist, pressing against her as he tilted his head and parted his lips.
Emma didn’t hesitate. Stepping back one step, she pulled Logan with her away from the stove and tenderly slipped her tongue into his mouth. He tasted of Alfredo sauce with the slight tang of garlic, savory and creamy. Her breasts came to attention, tingling with the promise this kiss, this delicious kiss, held. Logan’s fingers clutched at the back of her shirt, and he let out a tiny moan. A wave of heat passed over Emma. She’d better back off before this went too far.
Mirin, Christelle - Emma's Heart (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 2