by Avery Duncan
“Claire, that isn’t fair at all,” he growled, even as he loosened his hold on her. “If I find it, you promise to say yes and willingly marry me?”
“Yep! Have fun, Logan,” she trilled, almost skipping out of the doorway and to store two doors down.
Logan stood still has Claire ran out of the jewelry store. Great, he thought darkly, turning back to the showcase. The diamonds glittered in their velvet bed. There were too many to pick from, but one of them called his attention.
Still, he didn’t know which one to pick. He’d seen her standing there when they’d first come in. She’d moved away quickly, though, as if feeling guilty. He grinned. So it was an expensive one.
He looked into the case again, closer. There were two... He knew that Claire was serious about picking the right ring. It was one of those two. Something told him so.
Groaning and rubbing his forehead, he leaned into the glass and stared, getting ready for a long-ass talk with himself on how to find the perfect ring. All of his military training left him. Right then, it was between him and those two rings.
Avery walked into the shop, the first thing hitting her the strong smell of plastic, cotton, and air fresheners.
She knew it was the perfect thing to get Logan off her back about marrying him. He wouldn’t be able to find the ring and then she wouldn’t feel so bad about flat-out saying no. Of course, if he did somehow find it...she would have to seel the deal. Her stomach clenched at the thought.
It wasn’t marrying Logan that had her so against it. She would love to be his -- but not if he didn’t love her, which he clearly didn’t. Even she wasn’t stupid enough to call what she felt for him “love”. Lust, maybe. Desire for sure. But...definitely not love. She’d only known him for near a month. That was way too short of time to do any real bonding...right?
Even so, whenever he looked at her...her heart pounding. Her cheeks heated up. Her body burned with desire. And she knew he felt the same. She shook her head at herself. It didn’t matter. Eventually, she would have to leave -- and she knew Logan wouldn’t be able to find the right ring. It wasn’t extravagant or eye catching, so it would go unnoticed by him.
She fingered the plastic wrapping of a random pillow, walking along the aisles and picking her way through everything.
Her thoughts drifted until she heard the jingle of the bell, signalling someone’s entrance. She looked up, seeing Logan.
He gave her a heart-stopping smile before taking her hand, pulling her into his body, and kissing her deeply on the mouth.
“Time to take you home,” he said, bending down again to kiss her. Feeling light-headed and very breathless, Claire nodded...until she remembered something.
“The ring?”
He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “When we get home.”
“But why not right now?” she asked, leaning into his hand despite herself.
“Because I want to do it privately, where I can kiss the living daylights out of you when you say yes without people staring.”
Claire looked at him doubtfully. “You couldn't have found it!”
“I did,” he said, grinning.
Something in his gaze told her that he definitely had.
Her heart almost jumped out of her mouth. “Oh, lord...”
Chapter 13
“You really think you got the right one?” she asked nervously, sitting beside him in his pick-up as he drove back to the ranch. Logan gave her a fleeting, confident look -- she almost melted right there. Every moment she spent with him only got better and better, and every time it got better it made her realize how much she’d never been around a real man before.
Logan was, in all honesty, her first.
She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, though. Was she acting like a teenager? Getting all hyped up and doe-eyed just because the hot guy was paying attention to her? Or was this as natural as it felt like -- like this was meant to be. She scrubbed a hand over her face, too confused to sort out her thoughts.
Claire liked Logan.
She really, really liked him. Just two days ago he’d asked her to marry him. Irrational, out of the blue, yet totally heart-stopping, he’d done a complete one-eighty from when he’d been ignoring her to be with Madison. He’d calmed her after her panic attack, had made her feel like a real woman, and set her body on fire like nothing else could have. It was different -- new. But she knew that if she had the choice, she wouldn’t change anything.
For the first time, she actually felt safe. Bone-deep, meltingly-happy safe. She could almost forget about the election, the worry that someone would recognize her, her father. All of it was at the back of her mind, with Logan at the forefront.
“I know I did,” he said arrogantly, a smirk on his rough, dark features.
She nodded, unconvinced. Even though she had a small, secret fear that he had picked the right ring, he couldn’t possibly have...
“Can’t you just show me right now?” she asked anxiously, biting a nail. She lifted her legs up to her chest and looked at him with big eyes.
“No. You have to wait until we get home. A nice, fine dinner...candle light, perfectly cooked chicken, dessert...” he trailed off, noticing her horrified look.
“Logan,” she gasped. “I can’t refuse your proposal after something like that! Do you know how much of a monster I would be?”
“Ah, but you promised that if I got the right ring, you would willingly marry me.”
“Well -- yes, but... You didn’t find the right one,” she said, faltering. She pulled her finger out of her mouth and glared at him, lips turning into a frown.
“Yes I did. So this proposal is going to be perfect -- and it’s perfectly fine if you cry with happiness,” he teased, knuckling her under her chin. She sniffed, turning her face away from him.
“You barely know me. Why on earth would you even...want to go through with this? And -- and I barely know anything about you,” she gasped, eyes going wide. “For all I know, I could be engaged to a psychopath!”
“Tonight, over dinner, I’ll answer anything you want to know,” he promised, turning onto the gravel road that led to his house. “But I’m going to ask the same of you.”
“You already know everything you need to,” she muttered defensively. What would he do when he realized she was nothing but a spoiled, little rich-girl that wasn’t good for anything except being a social butterfly? Her father had never let her have fun. She’d done college, done parties for her father, been introduced to the political world at an early age -- and what was that doing for her now?
Her shoulders curled. She could cook the best meals, fake the nicest conversations, get along with anyone that was thrown in front of her -- but real life? Ranch life? Doing normal, every-day things? Logan would be marrying the equivalent of a rock.
Feeling deflated, Claire didn’t respond back to him but stared out the window. In only a couple of minutes, they were pulling up his sweeping driveway and parking...behind three black Tahoes.
She looked at Logan, questioning. She’d noticed that people other than his ranch-hands rarely came to his house. They’d definitely not parked in his driveway before. “Do you know who that is?” she asked, watching his face turn blank, almost expressionless.
He got out of the car, coming around and opening her door for her. Feeling worried, she took his hand and followed him to the door, where he opened it without pause.
She heard several loud voices all talking at once.
Logan looked at her before they rounded the corner and entered the kitchen.
She came to a dead stop.
There, standing around the kitchen table, were four hulkingly huge men. They all had black hair, all had tan skin, and all looked like they could eat her alive. She pulled her hand out of Logan’s and ran from the room, eyes bulging, about to puke.
Logan watched her run from the room, brows drawn.
“That the girl?” one of the men asked. Logan nodded and glared
at each of them.
“Great timing,” he muttered, hating that he would have to wait to show her the ring till later.
“We are known for showing up fashionably late,” quipped another one of them.
“You mean, you are,” growled a third man.
“No, I don’t think so. I remember that recital that you agreed to do for your niece… Pansy-ass all dressed up in a tutu, running down the center of the stage because we got in late from our mission,” said the second man. Logan rolled his eyes, sitting across from at one of the high-stools that was placed on under the table.
Two of the men chuckled.
“Don’t fight. You already scared her off,” he said, trying not to laugh. These men had been in his group since the very beginning. He trusted them with his life – but he wouldn’t trust them in an argument. They got pretty nasty sometimes and Claire had already run from the room, green in the face. “Where are you guys setting up?”
“We already have our stuff in the basement. Staying at a hotel would be too far out to get here in time if anything happened. Plus, I bet you have better food than they do.”
“Doubtful.” He heard some soft patters from upstairs and assumed it was Claire running around. He could see her up there, running around in circles like a chicken with her head cut off, still freaking out. He chuckled mentally. “So how are you guys doing?”
The four men were giants.
Blake, Luke, Eric, and Nathan. They were all brothers, so they had similar dark looks yet completely different personalities. Logan had almost grown up with them -- in the military. They’d seen things, done things, and heard things that no one else had before. They were their own group of brothers, even if Logan had dropped out of service.
“Doing good,” Blake answered, picking up an apple from the center-piece bowl and taking a crunching bite.
“How’s Kale doing?” Kale was the general coordinator of their division. Logan had been right under him in the authority department.
“As jacked up as ever,” Luke said, glaring at apple that Blake held. The man could eat a whole cow -- Logan had seen it happen with his own eyes. Luke always told him he was going to turn into a fat, unfit couch potato because of the amount that he could eat.
“Marly and him still get into it?”
“All of the time,” Blake laughed, taking another chunk out of the apple. “Even when the world is about to end, them two just scream and bitch at each other like they have nothing else better to do.”
Nathan cut in. “So tell us about what’s happening.” He was normally the mini- leader of the group, more serious and tightly strung than the other men. Logan normally chose him to get things taken care of - the other men would do it, but it would take them twice as long because of all the arguing. Still, no matter what, when it came down to it -- the men in front of him were the best when it came to protection and intel.
“I know you’ve all heard about Senator Campbell’s daughter dying in a car accident. It’s all over the news right now -- especially since he is still planning to go on with the campaign. Claire is set on leaving if anyone other than us finds out who she really is -- and I won’t have it. I need you guys here for backup until Wednesday.”
“What’s happening on Wednesday?” Nathan asked.
Logan grinned, pushing a hand through his hair. “I’m getting married.”
There was a dead silence.
And then the whole room erupted with roaring, ear-deafening laughter.
Chapter 14
Claire heard the booming laughter, even from her closed-off room upstairs. Logan hadn’t come up to get her -- were they eating him alive, like they were going to do to her? Her eyes widened and she crept down the hall slowly, trying to cease the creaking that emitted from the floors with a quick hush in its direction.
The stairs were the most dangerous. The first step she took had the stairs screeching at her, as if trying to warn her to stay away from the kitchen. Feeling ridiculous, she straightened her shoulders and mentally flipped the stairs off.
Sitting in the kitchen were those four big men...and Logan. Her breath rushed from her chest. So he hadn’t been eaten alive. In fact, he liked quite angry. His face was hard, his lips pressed, his arms crossed over his chest. Only one of the four men around the table wasn’t laughing, but even then you could tell he was amused by what was happening.
Monsters didn’t laugh.
So they obviously weren’t monsters.
Feeling somewhat reassured, she gathered her wits and stood straight, making sure she didn’t look too scared, yet not too excited either. If she just acted naturally, they wouldn’t think she was anything special and wouldn’t eat her.
Resolved, she walked into the kitchen and went to Logan’s side.
When he looked at her, all of his anger seemed to disappear and a smile was growing on his face. Despite herself, she smiled back and stood closer to him. He wrapped an arm around her waist -- in front of them! -- and glowered at the men, who had again started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she whispered to Logan, trying to make the fact that she was hiding from them unnoticeable.
“I think the trip made them tired...”
“Bullshit,” one said, snorting. “You know why we’re laughing! I mean...c’mon, you? Getting married?”
Claire was about to feel vastly offended when he continued, saying, “After the last time?”
She froze, but they continued talking.
“And so soon?” another asked -- well, more like roared. He was still laughing, along with the one who had first spoken out.
“Logan,” she said slowly, pulling away from his arm. “What does he mean, ‘after the last time’?”
Everyone went silent.
Even the two loudest men.
She turned snapping eyes at him. “Well?”
He looked between her and his men, obviously not knowing what to do. Then, with a sigh, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I told you I was going to tell you everything tonight. Before you start assuming things, just let me explain...tonight.”
“Yeah, how about not?” she snapped, yanking away from him. Wow. Of course. That’s why he was so quick to jump the gun. “What number am I? And wouldn’t it be easier to take a piece of the cake instead of the whole thing? Are you one of those weird stalker-men that decides he has to marry the girl before he sleeps with her? Then ditches her? What happened to the last one, huh? Did you run her off with Madison or something?”
She’d forgotten that they had an audience. All she could think about was the anger and betrayal she felt. “What number am I, Logan?” Her cheeks were flaming with shame.
“Claire. Calm down. I’ll --”
“Calm down?” she gasped/shouted.
Just then, the intruding men stepped in.
“Logan, man, you shouldn’t have said that --”
“You really have a way with words. Listen --”
“That bitch didn’t mean anything to him --”
“Tried to take all of his money and leave --”
“--he never really liked her--”
“--did it so his brother’s would get off his back--”
“--they didn’t want to be the ones to get hitched --”
“--so Logan and Christina got hitched --”
“--and it wasn’t a really happy marriage --”
“--she was always gone--”
“--out with some other man--”
“--and he didn’t care because he had his--”
“cattle. And then --”
“the divorce--”
“--and as I hear it, you’re the first one--”
“--to be welcome on his ranch since then.”
When they finished cutting each other off, they looked at her with pleased expressions -- at least, two of them did. One of the two remaining men had a bored expression on, and the other one had a stony, expressionless face.
“That’s Blake.” They gestured to
who he was. He had considerably lighter hair than the rest of them, and he had a leaner build. Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t packing.
“Luke,” Blake said, and the said man nodded his head at her, glaring at Blake. She noticed that he did that -- except for when they’d been arguing yet agreeing with each other, he’d been glaring at Blake every other time. He was muscular, with dark green eyes and a flop of hair hanging over his face. It was thick and caught every single glare of the light, and his skin was the darkest out of all of them. They looked like they had Indian heritage -- or they just tanned a lot.
“Eric,” introduced Luke. Eric looked at her indifferently, nodded, and then went back to sitting there.
“And Nathan,” Blake gestured. She looked at the remaining man, the one that had no emotional expression at all. His eyes were unwelcoming, his face set in hard lines, and he had black eyes. There was a story there, she thought, unconsciously scooting towards Logan. She didn’t notice she had until she felt his arm on her shoulders.
Claire didn’t pull away, even though she should have.
“Or they can just do it right now...” he growled.
“Well it’s true,” Blake pointed out, bounding to his feet and going to the fridge. Claire watched him, not knowing what to think besides that she felt really stupid -- and sad for Logan. His first marriage hadn’t been with someone he’d loved--and neither would his second. That is, if he found the right ring...and if he even wanted her after she’d freaked out on him.
“And Luke and I are great with the ladies,” he said, grabbing out a pig slice of pie and coming back to the table, waving his brows at her. She felt Logan growl -- actually felt it. His chest rumbled right beside her head, and she looked up at him, suddenly sad.
Logan noticed and grimaced. “You guys come get me when Glenda comes in. Should be in an hour or so. Do whatever you want, but don’t bother me.”
“Or me!” Claire commanded. She didn’t need to be eaten before she could apologize to Logan.