by Soraya Lane
“What say we paddle to shallower water, soldier?” she asked.
Logan tucked her under his arm like he was a lifesaver and headed for shore. “Done.”
CHAPTER TEN
“THIS IS A pretty extravagant barbecue,” Candace said, smiling up at Logan as he finished ferrying food over to the table.
“I only have one chance to impress you with my grilling, so I wasn’t going to take any chances,” he told her with a wink.
She laughed as she looked at her plate. “I probably should have made us a salad. You know, so that there was something green on our plates.”
“What, you don’t like my carnivore special?”
Candace looked at the array of meat on her plate and couldn’t wipe the grin from her face. He’d done his best to impress her, but she was guessing that aside from grilling meat, he really didn’t have any other culinary skills. She slipped Ranger a piece of steak under the table, no longer scared of the big dog’s constant presence.
“It’s really beautiful here, Logan. I never knew what an amazing country Australia was.”
He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the sky. It was almost dark, but Candace could still see his face perfectly. They’d lit candles and placed them on the table, but it wasn’t quite dark enough for them to need the extra light.
“It’s paradise,” he admitted. “Even when I stay here for weeks without leaving, I never stop appreciating how beautiful it is.”
Candace wished she could have stayed longer, that she’d just taken Logan up on his offer to stay here while he was away, but she also knew that doing that would be putting off the inevitable.
She looked up at the sky, at the inky blackness peppered with white, and then turned her focus back to Logan.
“What do you say we finish dinner then turn in for an early night?” she asked.
“I think,” he said, reaching for her hand across the table, “that you might just be a mind reader.”
*
Candace was finding it hard to fall asleep. She’d snuggled up to Logan after they’d made love, and he’d promptly fallen into a deep slumber, but she couldn’t stop thinking about leaving. About the fact that their holiday romance was almost over. Or that at any moment he could have one of his nightmares and end up thrashing around beside her.
She knew that he’d snuck out of bed the night before, because she’d woken to find him gone. He’d slept in another room, and then come back to their shared bed early in the morning. But tonight he’d fallen asleep without probably even meaning to.
Candace tried to shut off the overthinking part of her brain and closed her eyes, listening to Logan’s steady heartbeat beneath her, enjoying the warmth of his body. But just as soon as she’d relaxed, as if on cue, his heart started to race so loud that she could hear it. Before she had time to move, he was yelling out, his arm thrashing, smashing into her face as she tried to roll out of his way.
“No!”
“Logan, wake up!” she screamed, landing on the floor and yanking a blanket with her to cover her naked body.
Ranger was at her side, confused, and she held on to him as Logan leaped up, looking like a wild man in the moonlight spilling in through the windows.
“Candace? Where, what...”
Then he saw her and his shoulders dropped. He looked horrified at what he’d done.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he murmured, walking around the bed and reaching a hand out to her. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Logan, you can say sorry all you like, but you need to do something about this,” she murmured, knowing she couldn’t just pretend like he was okay, act like everything would be fine just because he’d managed to talk to her about his nightmares. “You need help.”
“It won’t happen again, I can sleep in a different room, I...” He ran a hand through his hair before walking a step backward and sitting on the bed.
Candace stood up, her body shaking as she lifted a hand to her face, touching gently across her cheek.
“Logan, you hit me,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion.
He stared at her, raised his hand then let it fall to the bed beside him. “Candace, I...” Logan took a deep breath. “Did I hurt you?”
“Logan, you need to talk to someone. If not me, then a professional, but you can’t torture yourself in your dreams like that every night. It has nothing to do with you almost hurting me, and everything to do with you hurting yourself by not getting help. This isn’t just going to go away.”
“I don’t have a problem and I don’t want to talk about it. I can deal with this on my own,” he growled out. “And for the record, what happened just now has everything to do with me almost hurting you. I don’t care about me, but I sure as hell do care about what I could have done to you.”
Candace closed her eyes for a beat. “Yeah, I think you do have a problem, Logan. One that could be fixed if you weren’t so scared about facing your past.”
He stood up, hands clenched at his sides. “This was a mistake. We don’t even know each other and now you’re trying to tell me...you know what, I think we’re done here, Candace. I am who I am, and I can’t change that.”
Candace was done with being patient, because Logan was being a bullheaded macho male now, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it. She didn’t care if she’d had a fantastic time with him—they also had to deal with reality. Maybe she’d been right to doubt her ability to make a judgment call when it came to men.
“I think you’re right,” she said, jutting her chin up and wishing she was taller. “Whatever this was, it’s over.”
Logan stood and stared at her, like he was going to reach for her, going to say something that would turn the entire situation around. She waited, never even blinking as she watched him for fear of crying, but in the end, he turned and walked out of the room.
“I think we should leave tomorrow,” she said, willing her voice not to crack.
“Yeah, first thing in the morning.”
She watched Logan go and didn’t falter until he shut the door behind him. Then she collapsed onto the bed, face buried in the pillow and sobbed like she’d never cried before in her lifetime.
After so long protecting her heart, not letting anyone get too close to her, Logan had snuck past her defenses and managed to hurt her when she’d least expected it. When she’d thought there was nothing he could do to wound her. She should never have let herself be put in this situation, should have protected her heart instead of being vulnerable to Logan. Letting him get closer to her had been a stupid thing to do, and she should have known better.
Either way, there was nothing she could do to stop the pain shooting through her body like a drug being pumped through her veins. Whatever she’d had with Logan, it was over, and no matter what she tried to tell herself, dealing with never seeing him again was...
She swallowed the emotion that choked in her throat, refusing to let it sink its claws in to take hold. But the pain was too much, the ache in her heart...
Unbearable.
*
Logan slammed his palm down onto the kitchen counter and hung his head. He was a total idiot. A bloody fool. And because he was incapable of dealing with his problems, he’d just walked away from the one woman he could have just been himself around. Who didn’t care who he was, what his family name was, or what he’d been through. The one person who had simply been trying to help him.
Candace had given him a chance to open up and be himself, to acknowledge the nightmares that woke him almost every night, that haunted him, and instead he’d walked out on her and as good as told her it was over. All because she’d been brave enough to confront him, to try to get him to admit that he needed help.
Logan slumped forward, exhausted and unsure what he was supposed to do next. He should have turned around and walked straight back into his bedroom, begged for her forgiveness and just admitted he needed professional help, but his pride or some other stupid emotio
n was stopping him. He’d never acknowledged what he went through every night to anyone other than Candace, and talking to anyone else, dealing with it properly, wasn’t something he was ready for.
He’d told Candace so much, had admitted so much to her that he’d hardly ever spoken to anyone else about, and yet when it came to admitting his shortfalls, acknowledging his true weakness...
Logan sat back, took a deep breath and straightened his body. The best thing for both of them was for this to end now, to stop things before they went any further when they both knew there was no future for them as a couple anyway. The whole idea of bringing her here with him had been stupid. Ridiculous even.
If that was true, though, then why did ending things with Candace seem like the stupidest thing he’d ever done in his life?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“SO I GUESS this is it, then?”
They’d both been silent on the journey back to Sydney, and now they were standing outside the plane, Candace’s luggage sitting on the tarmac. Logan had Ranger on his leash, at his side, and he’d asked someone to come and get all of Candace’s things. Which gave them about another five minutes together.
“I’m sorry things had to end this way,” Candace said, not taking her sunglasses off.
Logan didn’t hesitate—he stepped forward, took her handbag and put it down, before wrapping her in a tight hug. He shut his eyes as she tucked into him, snuggled to his chest, her arms holding him just as tight around his waist. She probably hated him for what had happened, but he wasn’t going to let her get on that plane without at least trying to show her what she’d come to mean to him.
“I’ll never forget you, Logan. No matter what,” she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.
Logan kissed the top of her head, before putting his hands on her arms to hold her back. Her eyes were swimming with tears when he pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, and if he wasn’t fighting it so hard, his would be, too. All the times he managed to stamp out his emotions on tour, and here he was about to cry. Because this was about more than saying goodbye; this was about him being forced to deal with his past, with his terrors.
“One day, when you’re old and gray, surrounded by ten grandchildren, you can smile and think about the naughty Australian vacation you had when you were a young woman,” he told her, staring into her blue eyes. “Just promise me that you’ll always remember me with a smile, because that’s how I’ll remember you, even if things didn’t work out as, well, you know.”
Candace shook her head, like she was trying to shake away her emotion.
Logan bent down to kiss her cheek, tasting the saltiness of her tears as she let him touch her skin.
“Goodbye,” she said when she broke away.
Her bags were being loaded onto a cart behind them, and he knew it was time for her to go. They should never have even crossed paths in the first place, which meant they’d always been on borrowed time, and after the way things had gone last night, he was lucky she was even talking to him right now.
Logan watched as she gave Ranger a hug before straightening.
“You, my boy, are very special, you know that? I think I might just like dogs now that I’ve met you.”
“Goodbye,” Logan said as she walked away.
Logan waved then thrust his hands into his jeans’ pockets, eyes never leaving her as she turned and walked away. Candace was gone, and it was time for him to get on a plane himself and close the final chapter of his life as a SAS soldier. And maybe, just maybe, he’d think about what she’d said to him.
It was goodbye to the job he’d loved, and the woman he could so easily have fallen in love with, all in one day. Time to move on. Pity it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. All he could do now was take his life one day at a time, and figure out what his future held. Because right now he was more confused than he’d ever been, and he also knew he’d been a jerk for not sucking up his pride and admitting his shortfalls to her. Because Candace had been there for him like no other woman probably ever would be.
*
Candace boarded the plane and smiled at the flight attendant who took her bag and put it in the overhead cabin. She took her seat, pleased she’d purchased both the first class seats that were side by side. The last thing she wanted was someone trying to make small talk with her, and she sure didn’t want anyone to see her crying.
But there was something different about Logan, and she knew it. There was nothing she could think about him that would change her mind, and there was nothing she could do to pull herself from the mood she was in. After what had happened during the night, and then actually walking away from him...it was all too much. He’d behaved badly and she didn’t regret what she’d said, but it still hurt.
“Would you like a drink before takeoff?”
Candace refused to take her grumpiness out on anyone else, so she forced a smile and nodded. She may as well drink something that would take the edge off her pain, or at the very least knock her out for part of the long trip home.
“Champagne,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “Please.”
Maybe she needed to celebrate the few days she’d just had, minus their argument. She needed to toast it and then forget it, because in the end Logan wasn’t a man she could never have been with. Not when he refused to do something about a problem that was so serious, and not when they lived on opposite sides of the world.
“Here we go, ma’am. A glass of champagne for you.”
Candace took the glass, shut her eyes and took a sip. It was heavenly. She had fourteen hours before she touched down at LAX, and a few more glasses were probably exactly what the doctor would order. She could pass out and sleep until the plane landed.
No more tears, no more feeling sorry for herself. She was a woman in charge of her own life now, she’d met a man who’d changed the way she thought about everything, and she was going home to start over. When she thought about Logan, she needed to learn how to smile instead of frown, and make the memories of her time with him last forever. She needed to simply remember the good times she’d had with him and forget the rest.
Today was the first day of the rest of her life. And if there was one thing Logan had taught her, it was that she had to trust her own instincts and learn to put herself first.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LOGAN STOOD OUTSIDE the plane and stretched. He was exhausted. Not the kind of bone-tired exhaustion that he’d experienced on tour, but he was still ready to collapse into bed and not stir until late the next morning. The smart thing to do would have been to stay in the city for the night, but he’d already let his apartment and his only option would have been to crash at Jamie and Brett’s. He doubted any respectable hotel would have let him arrive with Ranger, even if he explained how highly trained he was, and he didn’t want Jamie’s pity. The way she’d look at him would only remind him of what he’d lost since last time he’d seen her.
“I’m getting old,” he muttered to his dog, bending to give him a scratch on the head. “We were definitely ready to retire.”
Ranger looked up at him, waiting for a signal that it was okay to run off, and Logan waved him on. He threw his pack over his back and headed for the house. So much for planning to be gone only a few days, a week at the most. He’d ended up being talked into spending time with some of the newer recruits in the K9 division, which he was pretty sure was his superior’s way of trying to push him into a teaching position. It wasn’t that he hadn’t enjoyed it—he had, and Ranger had, too—but after so long thinking about coming back home, he was more than ready to make it happen. Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t ready to make any long-term commitments just yet.
Logan stopped when he noticed a light on in the house. Weird. He hadn’t phoned ahead and told the manager he’d be back a day early, which meant they wouldn’t have bothered to go and turn lights on, and...crap. There was smoke coming from the chimney. Either his manager had decided to take some serious liberties and mov
e into the main house, or there was a squatter or someone in there. His sister was away at a conference, and she was the only other person who had a key, and the right, to enter their house.
He broke into a jog, whistling out to Ranger to come back. His dog was trained to sniff out bombs, but he was also a lethal weapon when it came to providing protection when he had to be. Logan knew he was better with the dog at his side than a weapon, especially if there was an intruder.
He moved quietly up the steps, breathing slowly and filling his lungs as he trod, before trying the door handle. It was unlocked. Logan pushed it open, glanced at his dog and tapped his thigh so he stayed right at his side, and closed it behind them. He listened and heard only the low hum of the television, so he walked silently down the hall, pausing to listen before turning into the kitchen. There was a cup on the counter that he hadn’t left there, and a couple of shopping bags sitting on the floor.
Someone had definitely been making themselves at home in his absence, and he wanted to know right now what on earth was going on.
Logan could see the television from where he was standing, saw the closing credits of a movie, but he couldn’t hear anything else. He stepped carefully, not wanting to make any of the wooden floorboards creak, hardly breathing as he saw a foot sticking out. That someone was lying on his sofa.
“What the hell...” Logan’s voice died in his throat as he leaped around the corner of the sofa.
No. He must be dreaming. Seeing things.
He bent to silence Ranger, still staring at the woman lying, asleep, her lips slightly parted, long blond hair messy and covering the cushions beneath her head and shoulders.
Candace. The woman he’d done nothing but think about these past two weeks was actually in his home, lying on his sofa. Logan had been so close to trying to track her down, but he hadn’t even asked for her phone number before they’d parted ways, which he’d been telling himself had been smart, not having any of her contact details.