Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11)

by Melanie Shawn

  “No.” Logan shook his head.

  Then Drew called his name from the three-point line. When he saw Logan look over, he set up—like Charlie had shown him—and shot. The ball sailed through the air and went in the hoop with a swoosh.

  “Damn. He’s pretty good,” Levi noted as he and Logan clapped for the kid’s three-pointer.

  “Yeah, he is,” Logan agreed. The dark cloud that he hadn’t felt hovering above him since Drew showed up at his door returned.

  The thought of Drew going back to Seattle, playing games Logan wouldn’t be at, felt…wrong. Over the past few days, he’d really bonded with Drew. When he’d first showed up, he’d only wanted to talk about his dad. It was hard at first. But they had still managed to get through it.

  However, now they talked about Mountain Ridge, Drew’s friends at home, how much he hated math. They still talked a lot about Andrew, but Logan felt like he was really getting to know Drew as a person, not just Andrew’s son.

  He liked it. Almost as much as he hated the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about Emma. Because he couldn’t. Not even for one minute.

  Chapter 13

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  Emma stretched her neck as much as she could as she exhaled loudly. Then, straightening her back, she reached her arms above her head and extended them as far as they would go, hoping to get her blood flowing. She released them to her sides, she shook them out and blinked several times before placing her hands back on the keyboard.

  She was determined to finish—oh, and start—this pivotal scene before Drew came home. The last few days, she’d been able to complete her word count before dinner and then she, Drew, and Logan would play games or watch a movie. Her son had told her last night that it was his favorite part of the day, and that was saying a lot, because he loved being at Mountain Ridge.

  A part of her was worried he was enjoying it so much because it felt like “family time” to him. The last thing she wanted was for Drew to get the wrong idea. They weren’t a family. She and Drew were a family and Logan was Drew’s godfather, but she and Logan were nothing.

  Drew was smart. And he had dealt with enough in his life. If he liked playing games and watching movies with Logan, then so be it. Who was she to rain on his parade?

  Which meant she needed to write.

  “Okay, no more YouTube. No more Facebook. No more checking my e-mail. I have to write,” Emma mumbled to herself under her breath, which was not at all unusual. She talked out loud all the time when she was writing. Sometimes to herself, sometimes to her characters, sometimes to her life in general.

  Staring at the cursor, which was mocking her by blinking on a blank page, she tried to summon some of the inspiration she’d felt after her rendezvous in the kitchen with Logan. That scene had poured out of her because she’d been able to key into the dominate male.

  But this scene… This was the scene where Sean came home and surprised Tina, who’d been having a “no strings” relationship that consisted of only hot, sweaty sex with Kade for the last month.

  She wanted the scene to be sweet and the reunion to be what all of her readers were waiting for, but she was just so…ugggh. Worked up. Apparently, sexual frustration wasn’t an easy thing to decompress from. It hadn’t really been an issue for her until now.

  For years, she’d successfully shut down that part of herself. Thankfully, being around all the girls at Book Club had reinvigorated the romantic in her. How could being surrounded by that many happily-ever-after tales not?

  But the other part of herself that had been reawakened had nothing to do with the women she’d met and everything to do with the brooding sex-on-a-stick godfather to her son. How one man could ooze that much sex appeal and not be aware of it, she had no idea.

  “Write. Just start typing,” she instructed herself.

  “Coming!” I yelled as I practically tripped over my own feet while rushing out of the bathroom. I haphazardly wrapped a towel around myself and tucked the corner in the middle so that it would stay in place.

  There was another pounding rap on the door.

  I couldn’t have been in the shower for more than fifteen minutes. I had no plans to meet anyone. Kade had left for a business trip with his new firm this morning, so I knew it wasn’t him. If it was Mr. Sands from 5A complaining about my music again…so help me.

  People play music. You live in an apartment. Get over it.

  Just as I reached for the knob, there came another rapid-fire pound, pound, pound.

  Seriously!?

  Whoever was behind it was going to get a piece of my mind. Throwing the door open, I yelled my frustration. “I said I was comin—”

  But every ounce of irritation and annoyance drained out of me at the sight of the knocking offender. My heart did more flips than Mary Lou Retton at the ’84 Olympics.

  “Sean?” I wasn’t sure why his name came out sounding like a question. I knew that it was him; an older, taller, muscular man version of the boy who had held my heart in his hands since I had been a preteen, but it was still him.

  A smile I hadn’t been sure I’d ever see again appeared on the face I’d loved since I was nine years old.

  “I see you weren’t expecting company.”

  Eyes I used to feel like I could drown in traveled down my body and then up again.

  My own peepers shot down, and when I saw that I was dripping wet, in nothing but my towel, the shock wore off and all of my senses came back to me.

  “Can I come in?” Sean asked, his voice sounding deeper than I remembered.

  “Oh my God, come in!” Pulling my towel up, I stepped to the side of the doorway so that Sean could enter. Looking down at the ground, I tried to take a moment to get myself together.

  Before the door clicked shut behind him, I found myself pulled into a pair of arms I’d been in hundreds of times before, pressed against a body I’d hugged just as many times, yet somehow felt completely foreign to me.

  As Sean tightened his hold around my waist, bringing me into even more intimate contact with his body, I froze. He buried his head in my neck. Strands of my wet hair fell against him.

  “I missed you,” he spoke against my neck.

  Hearing Sean say the words I’d been waiting to hear in person since he’d left nine years ago made a lump form in my throat. It was more than I could take. I started to feel claustrophobic, like the walls were moving in on me. So I did what my therapist had suggested I do: list the reality of the situation so it didn’t feel so overwhelming.

  Sean is here.

  He’s hugging me.

  He said he missed me.

  Sean. Is. Here.

  The listing thing wasn’t working. In fact, it was making all of my symptoms worse. My chest was so tight that I was having a hard time breathing. I needed air. I needed space.

  Pulling away from the arms of my first love, the man whose last name I’d doodled on all of my notebooks from sixth to tenth grade, I tried not to let the fact that I was on the brink of hyperventilating show. “When did you get into town? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? How long are you staying?”

  He didn’t answer me. Instead, he ran his hands through my dripping hair then cupped my chin as his thumb grazed my cheek. The look in his sea-green eyes was one I’d never seen before, one that made those flips in my belly ramp up to dryer-on-full-speed level.

  Then he rested his forehead against mine.

  This is new.

  Had Sean kissed my forehead? Yes. That was kind of his go-to move. Had we ever been forehead to forehead? Skin to skin? No.

  It felt very intimate.

  “I just got here. I wanted to surprise you. Indefinitely.” His voice dropped and had just the right amount of scratchiness to it, which sent a chill down my spine.

  I closed my eyes, and his fingers slid down my jaw and around my neck.

  What is happening?

  My eyelids flew open.

  “Did I answer all of your questions?” he rasped.
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  No, not by a long shot! What the hell do you think you’re doing just showing up out of the blue like this? Why are you here? my inner voice screamed.

  But my outside voice was a little quieter as I heard myself whisper, “Why are you here?”

  Again, his arm wrapped around my waist, and with one tug, he eliminated the space between us. “I’m here because I love you, Tina Spencer. I’ve always loved you. I’m here to do what I should’ve done nine years ago.”

  Holy shit! This can’t be happening. I must be dreaming. There was no way Sean Landers was in my house, declaring his love for me.

  Maybe I’d fallen in the shower and blacked out and this was all a delusion. That was the only plausible explanation for what was taking place.

  I had no idea if this was a dream or a hallucination or what, but whatever it was, I needed to know what he “should’ve done nine years ago.”

  “What are you goin—”

  Before I even got the question out, Sean’s lips were on mine. He wasn’t just kissing me—he was claiming me.

  As her fingers clicked over the keys, Emma bit the inside of her lip and tried to focus on what a kiss felt like. What lips touching hers felt like. What being claimed felt like. But, instead, her mind immediately drifted back to the brown-haired, brown-eyed Adonis who was currently working on a bike he was building in the garage.

  She thought about what his kiss would feel like. What his lips would feel like. What being claimed by him would feel like.

  His mouth had to rank in the top five of her “Logan Dorsey Favorite Body Parts” list. Making it to the top of that list was quite an accomplishment considering its competition. Eyes. Hair. Hands. Chest. Butt. Legs. Arms. Neck. Back. She could go on and on and on and on. There wasn’t any part of him that wasn’t panty-dropping hot.

  But he never acted like it.

  Does he know how sexy he is?

  She honestly couldn’t call it.

  Most guys who looked like him, who got the attention from women like he did, would be cocky or at least acknowledge it. But Logan wasn’t like that. When she’d told him about the two “ladies”—and she was using the term loosely—who’d stopped by the other day, he hadn’t even tried to figure out who they were. In fact, he’d looked a little irritated about it.

  Which was weird. He was a single man in a new town, and for it being a fairly small town, everywhere she looked, she saw a young, attractive person. Of course, some of them were probably tourists, but all the better. Wouldn’t that be most men’s dream scenario? Have fun with a hot chick for a few days, a week tops, and then they go home and a new crop comes through.

  As she tapped her thumb on the side of her computer, her stomach turned. She remembered that Andrew had said that Logan always kept his hookups to himself. In fact, the only time she’d ever met one of his girlfriends was when they’d surprised him with going to breakfast and Lia or whatever her name was had happened to be with him.

  She and Drew were probably putting a big-time wrench in Logan’s player game. Her son was over the moon about staying with the man who was consuming her mind day and night, but she was starting to think that it wasn’t such a good idea.

  Sure, she was enjoying the extra help with Drew, but at what cost? Constantly being in Logan’s vicinity was driving her insane. Was having an extra pair of hands around really worth her sanity?

  Hmmm, hands. Logan’s hands were so…manly. Large. Capable.

  No. She didn’t need to be thinking about that. Kissing. She needed to remember what lips against hers felt like, what a tongue sweeping in her mouth felt like.

  Maybe she should Google it…

  Or hit her head against the wall…

  It was a toss-up.

  *

  Logan placed his hands under the hot water and scrubbed the grease off with a loofah rock. He tried not to let out the frustration he was feeling through his task. If he did, he was scared he’d take his skin off. Working on bikes used to be the one thing that made sense to him. The one thing he could do to shut out the rest of the world.

  Now, that had changed.

  All he could think about was her.

  Her hair. The way it perfectly framed her face, giving her an angelic glow.

  Her eyes. The way they lit up, sparkling with life every day when Drew came home from Mountain Ridge.

  Her lips. The way she mouthed the words she was typing as she typed them.

  Her strength. The way she was totally competent and capable, strong and resilient, and somehow, at the same time, vulnerable and soft.

  Today, he’d sealed the gas tank and replaced the cables, which meant he could move onto his favorite part of the build: the bodywork. But he hadn’t felt the usual rush of satisfaction and anticipation that always accompanied this milestone in the restoration process. Instead, he felt…restless. His mind had been preoccupied, to say the least.

  His phone rang as he was drying his hands, and he looked down and saw that Justin was calling. Logan’s gut clenched at the thought that something might be wrong with Drew. Today, the boys were going on their first white-water rafting trip as junior guides. The rapids could be very unforgiving.

  Logan answered before the second ring. “Hey.”

  “Hey, man. Hold on…” Justin’s voice was barely audible above a lot of laughing and talking in the background. There was a rustling sound, and then Justin spoke louder but away from the speaker. “Guys, I’m on the phone.”

  Logan recognized both the voices that said, “Sorry.” Drew and Noah. The second he heard Drew’s voice, his entire body relaxed.

  “Hey, I’m headed out to drop Noah off at home. I can swing Drew by your place. Save you a trip,” Justin offered.

  “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” Growing up without much, Logan had been forced to accept charity as a kid. So as an adult he hated taking favors from anyone, but in this town, he was quickly learning to make exceptions to his rules. Plus, he’d taken Noah home several times, so it was more of a quid pro quo than a favor.

  “No problem. He’ll see ya soon.” Then Justin hung up.

  As Logan pushed the device back into his pocket, he felt…off-center. He’d never felt so scared and helpless so fast when there was no reason to. Sure, he’d been scared shitless during some of the missions he’d been on. And he’d experienced some pretty sketchy circumstances in his undercover work. That had been different though. Anyone with half a brain who didn’t have a death wish would’ve been scared in those cases.

  No, he wasn’t exactly in touch with his emotions, but normally, he knew why he was feeling what he felt, even if he couldn’t identify exactly what it was. This situation had totally stumped him. Why in the hell had he been scared to get a phone call that had turned out to be totally innocuous?

  He didn’t like it.

  Blowing out a harsh breath, Logan ran his fingers through his hair and tried to shake the off-balance sense that was hanging on him like a monkey on his back. Since he didn’t have to pick Drew up, he figured he should give Emma the heads-up.

  Stepping in through the kitchen, he saw chicken thawing for dinner. They kind of had a routine now. He’d never lived with anyone as an adult, so he wasn’t sure how it normally worked. But Logan, Drew, and Emma had quickly fallen into a pattern. They worked like a well-oiled machine.

  Mornings, they were up by dawn. Emma made breakfast and they all ate together. Logan hadn’t even missed his sugary cereal. After that, Logan would take Drew to Mountain Ridge and then go for a run, shower, and work in his garage. Emma would go into her writing cave, as she called it. In the evening, Logan would pop his head in and let her know that he was going to pick the kid up. To which she’d always, without fail, look at the clock in surprise that it was already “that time.” He’d tell her not to make dinner, that he would take care of it. Then, without fail, she would disregard his instructions. Every night, he and Drew would come home to the smells of a delicious meal being prepared.

  Last
night, when he’d called her on it, she’d said that she liked preparing food for people she cared about. The light that had glimmered in her eyes when she’d said it had let Logan know that she meant it.

  She’d obviously been talking about Drew. But it hadn’t stopped his heart from pounding faster at the thought of being included in that group.

  All of his life, he’d thought that any kind of commitment was a trap. That the only person he could really depend on was himself. Of course, he trusted his brothers and his cousin and Andrew when he had been alive. Any one of them would do anything for him. They didn’t count. He was talking about domestic situations.

  Now, after having spent time with Emma and Drew, he could see the appeal. Probably because there was nothing romantic going on between him and Emma. If there had been, then he was sure it wouldn’t have been the same.

  No. It would be better, a voice in his head piped up.

  No. It would be wrong, he answered back in his own voice. Which immediately led him to the realization that talking to himself wasn’t a good sign.

  As he came to the end of the hall, he heard a distinctive thumping sound. When he stepped into the doorway of Emma’s room, he found the origin of the pounding noise. Emma was sitting cross-legged in her chair, leaning over, and banging her head against the desktop.

  Logan paused, feeling like he was interrupting a private moment. But when she continued, he decided to speak up. That couldn’t be good for her.

  “Does that help?” he asked, his voice carrying in the small space.

  “Ahh!” Emma screamed as she spun around in her swivel chair, her hands clutching the armrests, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Sorry,” he said, trying not to laugh. It wasn’t funny—or it shouldn’t have been. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I just didn’t hear you.” She swallowed hard and placed her hand over her chest. “You’re pretty stealthy. Like ninja-level stealth.”

  “That makes sense. I’m a trained ninja,” he said in a flat tone.

  “You are?” Her brow furrowed as she tilted her head to the side.

  He stared at her, waiting for her to realize what she’d just asked. After a few beats, she grinned as she did what could only be described as a half eye roll.