“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow.”
At the thought that she would be face-to-face with “wow” in a few hours, Emma felt something she hadn’t experienced since she was a teenager: butterflies. Instead of telling herself that she was being ridiculous for having a schoolgirl response to the situation or that it was wrong to have them, she decided to do something more productive. So, closing her eyes, she tried to commit to memory everything she was feeling.
Fluttering low in her belly.
Breathlessness.
Lightheadedness.
Damp palms.
She’d been numb for so long that it was like her body was waking up from a slumber that could’ve easily been described as a coma. With all of the sensations flooding her, she started to panic and rethink her plan. After being shut down—numb!—for so long she wasn’t sure that she could handle this onslaught of hyper-awareness.
But what was her alternative? Ready or not, willing or not, her body was responding to the knowledge that she was going to see Logan Dorsey…whether she liked it or not. So, she made an executive decision right then and there that she wasn’t going to fight it. She was going to go with it—in the name of research. Of course.
Chapter 5
‡
“Then we saw a bear. A bear! Justin’s little brother, Noah, said that he saw one yesterday, but I didn’t believe him,” Drew explained with enthusiasm. The kid had been talking nonstop since Logan had picked him up an hour ago.
Emma had been grounded in Dallas due to a thunderstorm. When she’d called this morning to let them know, Drew had filled her in on how he’d met Karina and Ryan and asked if he could participate in the Junior Ranger Program at Mountain Ridge. She’d asked to talk to Logan, wanting to get some more information on what she was agreeing to. After several questions and a Google search, she’d consented. Then there had been several e-mails sent between Logan, Emma, and Amanda, including one with an attachment of a permission slip and a copy of Drew’s medical insurance.
When it was all said and done, he realized she probably had to go through all of those hoops all the time. On a daily basis. By herself. It was obvious by what a great kid Drew was that she was doing a damn good job at it too.
“Justin asked if I was going to be able to come back tomorrow,” Drew said in rapid-fire, anticipation radiating off his body.
“Your mom should be here any time. I’m not sure what her plans are.”
Logan flipped the burgers on the grill. An idea had been rattling around in his head all day to ask Emma if Drew could stay in Hope Falls for a week or two, but he didn’t want to tell Drew. The last thing he would ever want to do was disappoint the kid. Drew was having fun there, and Logan had been falling short on his godfather duties the past five years. At least, of the face-to-face variety.
Every month, without fail, he sent a check. It was intended to help with expenses, but Emma never used it for their day-to-day life. When Logan had insisted on helping, she’d opened an account for Drew’s college fund. Every month, he sent a check, and every month, she sent back a copy of the bank statement showing the increased balance.
He’d promised Andrew that he’d take care of Emma and Drew, so when he’d gotten out of the Marines, Logan’s first stop had been Seattle. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t what had happened. From the first time he’d met Emma, he’d thought she was attractive, but that had been it. She was Andrew’s wife, the mother of his best friend’s child. Logan’s mind had never gone past that.
But then he’d gone to check on them and something had flipped in an instant—like a light switch going from the off position to on—when she’d opened the door that uncharacteristically sunny day in Seattle five years ago. She was wearing cut-off shorts and a white tank top. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head, and her face was scrubbed clean.
At his earlier-than-scheduled arrival, she immediately began apologizing for her appearance, telling him that she’d been writing and the time had gotten away from her. Logan stood on her porch, completely speechless. All he could think was that she was an angel. That she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His eyes locked on her full, pink lips as they moved rapidly while she talked, and he had to stop himself from pulling her into his arms and pressing his lips to hers.
During the years he’d known her before that day, he’d never given her appearance more than a passing thought. To Logan, all Emma had been was simply the woman who made his best friend happy. That day, though, everything changed. He didn’t see Andrew’s wife and his godson’s mother. He saw Emma, and once he had seen her, he couldn’t unsee her.
That trip was supposed to last three days, but he cut it short and left because of a late-night incident in the kitchen after Drew had gone to bed on the second night.
“How old were you?” Drew’s voice popped the memory bubble Logan had been floating in.
He hadn’t heard a word Drew had said. “What?”
“When you had your first girlfriend? How old were you?” Drew repeated as if Logan were a few cards short of a full deck.
“Oh.” He wasn’t sure how to answer that. He’d had sex for the first time when he was fourteen, but that hadn’t been with a girlfriend. Just a girl who’d lived at the trailer park they’d grown up in. She was five years older than he was and had come back home from college over the summer. What had started as her stopping by to give her condolences for his mom had ended in his losing his virginity.
They’d continued hooking up that entire summer until she left again for college. After that, there had been a pretty steady stream of your basic, garden-variety hookups in his life. He’d never technically been in a “relationship.” Never had an official girlfriend. Never told a woman that he loved her, because he’d never been in love. He didn’t even believe in love—at least, not for himself. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been born with whatever gene allowed people to feel that emotion.
There was no way in hell he was going to attempt to explain that to the kid, who was obviously impressionable and trying to figure things out. “I was fourteen.”
“What was her name?”
“Kayla.”
“How did you—”
Drew’s question was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“I think your mom’s here.” Logan removed the patties from the grill and set them on the plate. Then he headed inside, following Drew, who was already pulling the front door open.
“Hey, buddy! I missed you!” Emma wrapped her arms around her son.
Yellow and orange rays from the sun, which was setting behind Emma, framed her with an angelic glow. Logan had heard of déjà vu, but he’d never experienced it until now. Just like years earlier, he saw an angel on earth standing right in front of him.
Drew hugged his mom back. “I missed you, too.”
When she lifted her head, her eyes locked with Logan’s and his chest constricted. She was so damn beautiful.
“Hi.” She waved awkwardly as Drew stepped back.
“Hi.”
Unlike five years prior, Emma wasn’t wearing cut-off shorts and a tank top. Today, she was wearing a white button-up shirt, a tight, black skirt that ended just below her knee, and red heels that showcased her toned calves. All put together, it gave Logan the overwhelming desire to lick her from ankle to knee.
Trying to shake off that totally inappropriate urge, Logan reached around Drew and grabbed her two suitcases. “Come in. Here. Let me take those.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.” Emma nodded as she entered the house and stood beside her son. “Something smells good.”
“It’s hamburgers.” Drew pointed to the plate Logan had set down on his way to the door.
“Dinner’s almost done. Are you hungry?”
“Starved,” Emma moaned.
The sultry sound shot straight to Logan’s groin. Even though she hadn’t meant the sound as anything sexual, his body had other ideas.
“All I’ve had today was peanuts, Diet Coke, and Doritos.”
“Let me take these to your room and we can eat.” Turning down the hall, Logan was hoping to take the small reprieve to get his body under control before its response to Emma became glaringly obvious.
When he heard the distinct sound of her heels following behind him, he realized that wasn’t going to happen.
“Would it be okay if I freshen up and change before I eat? I’ve been in these clothes since yesterday morning.”
“Sure.” Logan flipped the light switch and set both suitcases inside the door to the room at the end of the hall. “The bathroom is—”
His words evaporated when he turned around and Emma stopped just short of walking straight into his chest. Their intimate position must’ve surprised her as well, because she gasped and took a step back, continuing her backwards motion until her shoulder hit the doorframe.
“Sorry. I’m a klutz, I didn’t mean to…” As she gazed up at him, her voice trailed off. Her train of thought seemed to have done a disappearing act.
They stood face-to-face, only a couple of inches apart in the doorway of the guest bedroom, in total silence. No part of their bodies were touching, but Logan could feel her. The energy between them crackled, causing the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.
His eyes traveled down. The motion of her chest caught his attention as it rose and fell in time with her labored breaths. Her cleavage was peeking out between the folds of her buttoned shirt, causing his mouth to water. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew they couldn’t stay like this indefinitely. He needed to move, speak, or something. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t bring himself to do or say anything for fear of breaking the indescribable spell he’d fallen under.
So he stood there in silence, falling deeper and deeper under her trance, a buzzing of awareness consuming him from head to toe.
*
“Mom, I saw a bear today!” Drew called out from the front room, where she assumed he was playing video games, considering the gunshots and explosions coming from the television.
Taking one step back out into the hall, Emma broke their eye contact and shook her head slightly, dissolving the cocoon of intimacy she and Logan had been in. Then she answered Drew a little more breathlessly than she would’ve liked.
“Wow, that’s amazing. I can’t wait to hear all about it.”
“The bathroom is through there.” Logan’s tone was clipped as he pointed across the room at the door in the far left corner before heading back down the hall.
“Thank you.” Emma’s tiny voice was barely audible. All of her energy was being used up by the uncontrollable hormones that were rioting through her since the moment she’d laid eyes on Logan.
During her ten-hour layover in Dallas, she’d thought she’d prepared herself for seeing the tall, gorgeous, chiseled-to-perfection man she had no business lusting over. As it turned out, there wasn’t enough preparation in the world to immunize her from the sex appeal radiating off Logan like heat off tar on a hot summer day.
His appeal was inescapable and undeniable.
“No problem.” Logan nodded slightly in acknowledgment.
Trying to suppress her body’s resistance to the work she’d put in in an attempt to insulate herself from Logan’s effect, she pushed forward, saying the things she’d planned—and repeated over and over—in her head all day. “Not just for keeping Drew, but for everything. You have no idea how nice it was to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was okay and being taken care of. That he was safe and wouldn’t be getting into trouble and, even if he did, you were more than capable of handling it.”
She probably wasn’t making any sense to Logan. Her thoughts were clear, but when she heard herself say the words, they sounded like she was rambling. At least, to her, anyway. It didn’t help that she hadn’t slept much in almost thirty-six hours, but she wanted him to know how grateful she was.
“I’m not doing this well. Sorry. I’m not so good at talking. Writing is kind of my thing,” she explained.
“Do you want to text me?” he teased.
“No, this is good practice.” She grinned as she took a breath. “Yesterday was really important, and if you hadn’t stepped up the way you did, I would have possibly lost some life-changing opportunities. So thank you. Really.”
“You’re welcome. Really.” Logan’s eyes shone down at her.
She saw a glimmer there. She was pretty sure it was from amusement, but the romantic in her wanted to believe that it was something else. Another “A” word. Attraction, perhaps?
Before she had a chance to launch a visual investigation to determine the “A” in his eyes, her phone dinged, alerting her to a text.
When she read it, the walls felt like they were closing in on her and she was pretty sure that there was an invisible—but large!—elephant sitting on her chest. “Oh shit,” she breathed.
“What’s wrong?” The concern in Logan’s tone took Emma by surprise, mainly because she wasn’t used to anyone asking her what was wrong.
It almost trumped the fact that the text had knocked the wind clean out of her. She would’ve told him how much she appreciated his worry, but unfortunately, she was too busy hyperventilating.
A part of her mind knew there was enough oxygen in the world to breathe normally. The problem was it didn’t seem to want to go into her lungs. Not since she was a kid and had battled with bouts of allergy-induced asthma, that hadn’t been helped by the humid southern heat, had she experienced this much trouble catching her breath.
“Emma?”
Logan saying her name registered, but it was distorted, like she was hearing it while underwater. Which was appropriate, she supposed, since she felt like she was drowning. Gripping at her chest, she concentrated on slowing her gasps and pants.
“Emma?” Logan sounded even more muffled and far, far away.
When she looked up at him, his face was spinning—or maybe it was the room. Either way, she needed to sit down. Moving into the room he’d put her suitcases in, she stumbled over the corner of a rug. Thankfully, the bed broke her fall. Face first, but it was still a soft landing pad.
The next thing she knew, large, warm hands were wrapped around her upper arms and she was being pulled up to a seated position as her body was turned, her legs hung off the side of the bed. It was odd to feel like a puppet, her body as limp as a rag doll, but she had to admit that having Logan as the puppet master wasn’t all bad. Nope, not bad at all.
Instinctively, her body trusted him. His voice. His touch. His strength.
“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Slowly.”
Her body instantly responded to his authoritative command. It wasn’t like she decided to do what Logan instructed. She’d just done it. Closing her mouth, she inhaled as deep and unhurriedly as possible. Then, parting her lips, she deliberately blew her breath out.
“Good girl. Now, do it again,” he rasped.
And just like the first time he’d spoken, her body obeyed without hesitation. After several more Logan-coaxed breaths, Emma opened her eyes. Logan was kneeling in front of her, his large palms covering her thighs. Her eyes lifted to his, and he continued talking her through the technique that seemed to be combatting her hyperventilation.
Surreal. That was what this was. It was as if she were floating. Like she was weightless and there was a distinct disconnect between her brain and her body. Every inch of her skin and every cell in her entire being was tingling. Whether it was from sexual awareness or a side effect of oxygen depletion, she couldn’t be sure.
Slowly, she drifted back to the present, her faculties returning one by one. Thankfully, it wasn’t a jarring crash. With Logan’s assistance, her return to the here and now was a soft and well-supported landing.
A private smile pulled at Logan’s lips, and his thick fingers squeezed her leg. “Better?”
His one-word inquiry and innocent gestur
e hit her in complete opposition to the gentle return to her senses she’d just experienced. The rumble of his voice combined with the touch of his strong hand, sent a jolt with the strength of a lightning bolt straight between her legs. It was powerful. Impactful.
“Yes.” Emma pressed her lips together and continued to breathe in a steady, deliberate pace.
“Good.” Logan remained perfectly still, his eyes intently surveying her.
The unabashed attention he was giving her was coming in a very close second to wreaking just as much havoc on her senses as hyperventilating had. His stare caressed her like a physical touch. Logically, she knew that was probably only the case because she’d been in a self-imposed wasteland without any kind of man-on-woman contact. Realistically, she knew he was just making a visual assessment of her state. But logic and reality aside, it warmed her from the inside out. She felt something she’d been lacking for quite some time now, but the evidence of the shortage was now inarguably evident and embarrassingly overwhelming.
She felt seen. Special. Cared for.
Knowing that those emotions were tipping the scales of normal responses in the direction of dangerously close to swooning, Emma pushed off the bed to gain some footing back. She would show Logan—and herself—that she was fine and could stand on her own two feet.
Her planned backfired big time when Logan’s sizable hand held her firmly in place, his voice smooth as butter as he asked with a dominant tone, “Just sit for a minute for me, okay?”
Emma nodded and sank back down on the mattress, not trusting herself to speak. She was scared she would reveal one of the many thoughts that were running through her head, which were all variations of, “Yes, sir. I’ll do anything you want.”
At her easy acquiescence, Logan’s grin turned to a full-blown smile that showcased two deep dimples. His thumb ran up and down her inner thigh in what Emma assumed was a comforting motion, but it was anything but comforting. Arousing? Check. Seducing? Check. Titillating? Check. Comforting? Hmmm…not so much.
Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11) Page 5