“Ha ha. Very funny. Mock the gullible girl.”
“You’re not gullible.”
It bothered him when Emma put herself down. She did it fairly frequently. She would say that she was flighty or forgetful if one thing slipped her mind. If she dropped something, she’d say that she was a klutz. If her hair was up in a bun or a ponytail and she wasn’t wearing makeup, she’d say that she was a mess. The other night at dinner when spaghetti sauce had dripped on her shirt, she’d said that she was a slob. This morning when she’d noticed she was wearing two different socks, she’d said that she was a lost cause.
It was always done in a playful joking way, but he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Shrugging, she placed her feet on the ground and rubbed her hands down her jean-covered thighs. “Maybe not anymore. But I was. Believe me. Gullible. Naïve. I had a very sheltered childhood.”
All Logan knew about Emma’s parents was that they’d kicked her out and disowned her when she’d gotten pregnant. That was all he needed to know about what kind of people they were. Complete assholes. You would have to be to abandon your teenage daughter when she was expecting your grandbaby.
When Andrew had told him about the pregnancy, Logan had offered to go to their house and beat the shit out of her father. Andrew had said that it wasn’t necessary, but the offer still stood. Logan wasn’t any less upset about it now than he had been ten years ago.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to let you know that Justin is dropping Drew off on his way to take Noah home.”
Like clockwork, Emma shook her head in disbelief as she looked at the time in the corner of her computer. “Oh wow. Is it that time already?”
A wide smile spread on his face.
Damn. He didn’t think any other woman on this planet could possibly be as cute as Emma was. And in line with the pattern that had formed since she’d showed up, his chest constricted.
She clicked the save icon on her document and blew out a loud breath that sounded a lot like frustration before hopping out of her chair and heading towards the doorway he was standing in. “I better get dinner started.”
When he didn’t move, she looked up at him.
“What?”
“Is everything okay? Is banging your head against the desk your normal writing process?”
“Oh…um…yeah.” She stumbled over her words as her face flushed. Then, pursing her lips together, she nodded once before saying, “Yep. That’s all part of the process.”
She wasn’t a good liar.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she answered defensively.
It was none of his business how her writing was going. But something inside of him just wouldn’t drop it.
“You bang your head over nothing?” he asked.
“It was just… I am just having…writer’s block,” she explained.
He had a pretty good feeling that wasn’t the entire story. “What are you working on? Does talking about it help?” he asked, pushing something he should let go.
“No,” she shot back as the flush on her cheeks deepened and she tried to step around him. When he didn’t move, she lifted her hands, flailing them animatedly as she explained, “It doesn’t… It’s not… It wouldn’t help.”
His line of questioning was clearly flustering her, but he persisted anyway. Part of being a good detective—undercover or not—was knowing when you were on the trail of something significant. Everything in his being was telling him that he was.
“How do you know? I might be a good sounding board.”
Letting out a forced laugh, she shook her head and once again tried to move around him. He didn’t budge.
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said. “Not for this.”
Widening his stance, he grinned. “Try me.”
For a moment, she stared up at him. He wasn’t sure if she was going to tell him to kick rocks and leave her the hell alone or push past him without saying a word. Either way, he didn’t see this ending well. He’d been walking a fine line, and he was pretty certain he’d just crossed into the no-go zone.
After several seconds, her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms with a determined defiance he found sexy as hell. “Fine. You want to know what I’m working on? Why I was banging my head against the desk?”
He tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help it. She was cute when she was irritated.
“Yes. I do.”
“I am trying to write a kissing scene, but I can’t because I can’t remember what it feels like to be kissed.” Her voice shook as she continued. “Really kissed.”
“What?”
She used arms for emphasis as she spoke. “I haven’t kissed anyone in over six years, and I can’t write the scene because I don’t remember what it feels like to—”
Logan’s head lowered, and his mouth covered hers in hungry urgency, cutting off her explanation. The second their lips touched, his world stopped spinning. Nothing existed except the feeling of her sweet, soft kiss. Then he cupped her face, and her lips parted on a soft moan, so he slid his tongue between them.
After tilting her head to the side, he held her in place as their tongues met, swept, and circled each other in a tantalizing frenzy. She met him with equal desperation, fanning the consuming flames of lust. He’d never wanted, needed, craved something as much as he needed this kiss.
As he fed off the deliciously sensual sweetness of her intoxicating kiss, arousal spread through his body with so much power that he locked his knees so they didn’t buckle. His body was screaming with carnal ache as wave after wave of rushing, all-encompassing passion crashed through him.
Her arms wrapped around his neck as she pressed her body against his. While he held her head in place, his other hand moved down her back before wrapping around her waist, roughly tugging her to him. Her body molded into his perfectly.
Wanting to feel, to taste, to memorize every second of this kiss, Logan slowed the pace of their frenzied exploration. He softly brushed his lips against hers before he once again swept his tongue inside her warm, wet mouth, lazily licking, sucking, stroking her tongue in a long, drugging kiss.
“Mom, I’m home!”
Logan stepped back, releasing her with the speed of the highly trained ninja she’d accused him of being. They stared at each other for a split second—both trying to catch their breath—before her baby blues darted to the front of the house as Drew rounded the corner of the hall.
“Mom, I love white-water rafting!” he enthused, totally oblivious to anything out of the normal.
“Awesome! Come tell me about it while I make dinner.” Emma’s voice was shaky, and Logan wanted to pull her into the room to make sure she was okay.
“I’m sorry,” Logan whispered as she brushed past him.
She didn’t acknowledge his apology. Maybe it was because Drew was already talking a mile a minute about his adventure. Maybe it was because she hadn’t heard him. Or maybe it was because she was as pissed at him as he was at himself.
As she and Drew headed into the kitchen, he cursed under his breath. What the fuck had he been thinking? He hadn’t. That was the problem. He hadn’t thought about repercussions. He hadn’t thought about Andrew. He hadn’t thought about anything except kissing Emma.
He didn’t know how he was going to make this right, but he had to.
Chapter 14
‡
“Can we, Mom? Please,” Drew pleaded, giving Emma the biggest puppy-dog eyes he had in his puppy-dog-eye arsenal.
A twinge of guilt twisted inside her as she answered, “I’m not sure, bud. Maybe.”
As a mom, she was used to feeling guilt. It came with the job. She felt guilty about having to work. She felt guilty if she couldn’t afford to buy Drew all the things his friends had. She felt guilty that he’d lost his dad. It didn’t even matter if it was technically her fault or not—she still felt guilty.
That didn’t make feeling it now any easier,
because she was contemplating depriving her son of the movie night she’d agreed to just this morning because she’d just played tonsil hockey with his godfather and needed to compose herself before she sat in a darkened room with him.
“Okay,” Drew sighed as he looked back down at his plate and pushed his broccoli around with his fork.
All through dinner, she’d been counting the minutes, even the seconds, until it would be over so she could go to her room and scream into a pillow. Or jump up and down, collapse from sheer joy. Something. Anything to celebrate the monumental event that had taken place in the hallway.
Holy jalapeño, had that kiss been hot!
If her lips hadn’t still been tingling with awareness, she might’ve thought she’d hit her head so hard on the desk that she’d hallucinated. She felt like Tina, like the only logical explanation was that she’d passed out and imagined the entire encounter.
But, just like Sean had really shown up at Tina’s door, Logan had really kissed her. And it hadn’t been a friendly kiss. She’d felt that kiss all the way down to her toes—and everywhere in between.
As she cut a piece of chicken while Logan and Drew discussed the bike Logan was restoring, she marveled at how she could’ve forgotten how good kissing felt. How intimate. How all encompassing.
Then she tried to remember if it had ever felt like that. Had she ever kissed someone and genuinely felt like she’d needed them more than she’d needed oxygen, or water, or food, or anything?
“Mom, did you hear me? I said that Amanda said to tell you that they have plenty more stories if you need more research,” Drew said before reaching for his can of soda.
“Oh, okay. Tell her I said thanks so much.” Emma still couldn’t get over how nice all the women she’d met were. Not fake nice, either. They were the real deal.
“Research?” Logan asked.
She’d been avoiding looking at him and hadn’t spoken even a word to him the entire dinner because she was terrified that, if she did, Drew would somehow know that something had happened between them and they’d be caught. Which was ridiculous on several levels.
First, her son didn’t have ESP. He was not a mind reader, either. Thank God for that. If he were, Emma would’ve traumatized him for life with all the not-made-for-TV thoughts she was having about the man at the end of the table. Second, she was an adult. She could look at a man who had just had his soft lips on hers, his wet tongue sliding against hers, his firm body pressed…
“Mom, Logan asked what kind of research?” Drew prompted.
Okay, here goes nothing.
Smiling and shaking her head like she’d been lost in thought—which she had been—she set her fork down and looked across the table. When she met Logan’s gaze, she reverted back to her most common nervous behavior. Talking fast.
“Oh, sorry. Um, just relationship stuff. Sometimes, for research, I interview couples about their road to happily-ever-after. I never use the couple’s exact stories. It’s more just an inspiration. Like a moonlight dance under the moon, or a countdown to a kiss, or a name one person calls the other. It’s fascinating to me how people feel when they fall in love.”
“And people just…tell you those personal things?” Logan looked genuinely horrified at that prospect.
And just like that, all the tension she’d felt all through dinner, all the fear that things had changed permanently, all the anxiety that the dynamic between her and Logan had been irreversibly damaged—it all evaporated.
“Yeah,” Emma laughed. “I can’t believe it, either. But they do.”
“Wow.” Logan smiled, and she knew he felt it too. The same relief she did that things were okay between them.
“So, what did you feel like when you fell in love?” Drew asked.
“What?” Emma’s head spun to look at her son.
Did he think she was in love with Logan? She wasn’t! Maybe he had picked up on some of the vibes she’d thought she was hiding.
“With dad? How did you feel?” Drew took a large bite of chicken.
“Oh…um…well….” Her cheeks heated.
Why had she thought he was talking about Logan? Where had that come from? It didn’t matter though. She needed to answer her son’s question before it became obvious the direction her mind had headed.
As she tried to gather her thoughts, she realized that Drew had asked a lot of questions about Andrew, but he’d never asked her anything about how they’d met or his parents’ relationship. All of his questions had been centered solely on what Andrew had been like. What kind of things he’d liked. What he’d thought was funny. What music he’d liked. What movies he’d liked. If he’d snored or not. If he’d been good at school. How many girlfriends he’d had.
Emma took a deep breath and tried to answer her son’s question. “I…was really young. I think I’ve told you I met your dad on the first day of high school. He was a senior, and all the freshmen—and sophomore, junior, and senior girls, for that matter—were talking about the fact that he and the girlfriend he’d had for two years had broken up over the summer.”
Emma smiled. She hadn’t thought about the day she’d met Andrew in a long time. “All day, every girl I saw was trying to get his attention. I remember I thought he was so good-looking and funny, but I was shy. Plus, his last girlfriend was the head cheerleader, the most popular girl in school, and everything I wasn’t.”
She chuckled. “Anyway, right after the last class of the day, I was at my locker. I felt a tap on my shoulder, so I turned around and your dad was standing there with a piece of paper in his hand. I was so in shock that Andrew Locke was right in front of me that I don’t think I said anything. I just stared up at him.
“He handed me the piece of paper in his hand and said, ‘I think you dropped this.’ I looked down, and it just had a phone number on it that I’d never seen. I figured it must’ve been a mistake, so I shook my head and told him that it wasn’t mine. When I tried to hand it back to him, he had a pen and paper out, and he said, ‘I know. It’s mine. And I think it’s only fair that you give me yours.’”
“He said that?” Drew asked, smiling.
“Yep.”
“Did you give it to him?”
Sighing with a reminiscent smile, Emma nodded. “Yes, I did. I really didn’t think he’d call. Actually, I thought it was a prank. But, about an hour after I got home that afternoon, the phone rang, and I picked it up and we talked until dinner. Then, the next day at school, he sat with me at lunch and walked me to my classes. And I think, by the end of the second day at school, I was already in love with him.”
“Whoa. Two days. My dad had game,” Drew emphasized.
Both Logan and Emma laughed, briefly looking at each other.
“Yeah, he did,” she confirmed.
“Logan said that dad loved you too. He said that when the guys would make fun of him, he didn’t care because he said he had the best and you don’t mess up having the best.”
“He did?” Emma’s eyes began to water as she glanced over at Logan.
“He did.” Logan nodded, holding her gaze for a moment before looking over at Drew. “Your mom was it for him. You know, he told me about the first time he saw her.”
“What did he say?” Drew asked excitedly.
Emma was all ears. She had no idea what Logan was about to say.
“He said that it was at lunch on the first day of his senior year. He was headed to the parking lot with his friends. Because he was a senior, he got to go off campus. When he realized he’d forgotten his new Braves hat in his class, he told his friends he’d catch up with them and he went back to get it. When he was walking across the quad, he saw the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen before. She was sitting by herself, reading a book.
“He told me that he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He just stood there, watching her. The next thing he knew, the bell rang and lunch was over and everyone was going to their next class. He never made it to get his hat. Didn’t make it back to
his friends. Didn’t have lunch. He said he spent math and science trying to figure out how he could get her number, which normally wasn’t a problem for him, but your mom made him nervous.”
Drew’s head fell back and he laughed. She guessed, to a ten-year-old, being nervous about a girl was pretty funny.
Logan grinned as he continued. “So he came up with a plan to give her his number first. He said, when she was standing at her locker, she looked so beautiful he almost lost his nerve. But then he saw some guys walk by and check her out and he knew that, if he didn’t make his move, some other idiot would. So he manned up and tapped her on the shoulder.”
“Just think. If he chickened out, I wouldn’t even be here.” Drew shook his head. “That’s crazy.”
Emma nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Not a day went by that she didn’t think about Andrew, but she didn’t get new information about him. Hearing something she hadn’t known brought back a lot of emotions she’d thought were behind her.
When Logan’s eyes met hers, there was sadness in them. He missed Andrew, too.
They all ate in silence after that. She was pretty sure all three of them were thinking about Andrew. Looking over at the empty fourth chair, she felt the reality again that he was gone. He wasn’t going to sit there.
No matter how much she loved him, which she did. No matter how much she missed him, which she did. No matter how much she needed him, which she did. He was never going to walk through the front door. Never going to hold her. Never going to kiss her like he needed her more than anything else in the world.
As she cut her chicken, she noticed the ring she still wore on her left hand. Maybe it was time to…
“Oh, Mom, I almost forgot. Justin and Amanda are taking a group up to the falls tomorrow night and they’re camping up there. He said that, if it’s okay with you, Noah and I can go and help out. Can I? Can I go?”
“Ummm…” It took her a moment to switch gears. This entire night, she’d felt like she was swinging on an emotion pendulum, from one extreme to another. But if there was one thing she’d gotten good at over the last few years, it was hiding from Drew any emotional baggage she was carrying. After taking a deep breath, she said. “Let me talk to Amanda to get a few more details and I’ll let you know.”
Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11) Page 14