Meeting His Match

by Tia Souders

  Instead, she sucked in a breath on instinct as her heart leapt to her throat and she prepared herself. He’d try to prove his point. His ego was so monumental. He thought he’d kiss her and she’d, what? Fall at his feet? Beg for more? Melt into a puddle of goo?

  Marti’s spine turned to steel even as her lips tingled in anticipation because he was about to try to make his point and fail.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LOGAN

  KISS HER. GOOD.

  His sister’s advice was the only thought in his head when he hovered only inches away from Marti’s rose-bud lips. If anyone were to prove how good losing control could feel, he was convinced he was the man to do it.

  All he had to do was cup the side of her face. He’d smooth his fingers over the soft curve of her jaw. Her throat. He’d kiss the smirk right off those petal-pink lips.

  Her lips were so close he could taste them.

  Prove it.

  He slid his hand to the base of her skull. The beat of her pulse punched his palm. A sharp intake of breath. He angled her head, watching as her eyes fluttered closed. Thick lashes fanned the tops of her cheekbones.

  His own chest squeezed.

  When he kissed her, he wanted her to feel it with every ounce of her being. Like a clap of thunder. The blare of a drum. He wanted it to shake the very foundation of her beliefs.

  But just as he lowered his lips to hers, he paused.

  She expected this, maybe even wanted it. Why?

  So she could say he was wrong.

  If he kissed her now, she’d be completely unaffected by it. He’d never get another chance to prove his point. The Queen of Single would never lose control, not with all her shields, and swords, and armed guards.

  When he kissed her for the first time—and he would—it would be on his terms. Her guard would fall. Her knees would buckle. The breath would rasp from her lungs, and he’d leave her drunk with his kiss.

  With a grin, he tipped his mouth up and pecked her forehead.

  She blinked her eyes open. Surprise flickered through all that ocean blue. The air between them coiled, tense as a live wire. They stared at each other, the silence stretching like a rubber band. Until his phone buzzed, and she glanced away, the spell broken.

  He leaned back in his seat, disappointed at the interruption, and picked up his phone. When he glanced down at the screen, he sighed. It was Allison. He’d been waiting for her phone call all week—dreading it.

  With a heavy heart, he shoved the phone in his pocket.

  “Someone important?” Marti asked, but her light tone did little to hide her annoyance.

  “Sorry to cut this short, but I have to go.”

  Her eyes turned to ice, and he regretted the words the second they left his mouth. But what choice did he have?

  He stood and reached into his back pocket where he took out a wad of cash and waved the waitress down. After he gave her the money and paid the bill, he quickly collected his jacket, and glanced at Marti with regret.

  She barely looked at him as her mouth pressed into a tight line.

  He took a step toward her, then stopped himself. He’d just lost any headway he might have made tonight. Nothing he said would change anything, and he couldn’t tell her about Allison, not yet.

  Breaking boundaries and tearing down walls couldn’t be done in a day, including his own.

  IT ONLY TOOK FIVE MINUTES to arrive at the familiar brownstone off Broadway in northern Manhattan. Five minutes of dread. Regret. Guilt. He wished it had taken longer.

  He stepped out of the cab and slid on his sports coat, then made his way up the small walkway to her front stoop.

  At one time, this place felt like home. Not anymore. That was another lifetime.

  His stomach roiled as he rang the doorbell and waited. The sound of footsteps grew closer, followed by the click of the lock. The door swung open, and he stood face-to-face with a woman he once loved. The woman he was supposed to marry.

  “Allison.” His voice rattled in the brisk air.

  She offered him a saccharine smile in response and waved him inside.

  He entered with a tentative step. Familiarity swept over him. Little had changed in the space throughout the years they had been apart.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Allison stopped by the wet bar and lifted a decanter of an amber-colored liquid.

  “No, thanks,” he said as she poured some for herself into a fresh glass. But she wasn’t fooling him. By the smell of it, this wasn’t her first drink. Nor would it be her last.

  “You never were much fun,” she said with a laugh.

  The insult rolled off his back. There were a million cutting remarks he could throw back, but bitterness and anger were exhausting. He had learned a long time ago to let go of both.

  “How about some dinner? Are you hungry?” she asked, taking a sip from the tumbler. The ice rattled in her glass, grating on his nerves.

  “No, I was actually at dinner when you asked me to stop by. You said it was urgent.”

  “You were on a date?”

  Logan swiped a hand through his hair, uncomfortable with the trajectory of her questions. “Something like that.”

  “With that girl from PopNewz?”

  So she had read the papers.

  Logan assessed her interest with caution. “It’s . . . new.”

  Allison curled her lip in disgust, then turned away from him. Making her way to the sofa, she sank down into the soft brown cushions, staring intently at the contents of her glass.

  He gave her a minute. It was clear she was collecting her thoughts.

  A moment later, she lifted her amber eyes. “Did you forget?”

  “No,” he rasped. He didn’t forget. Forgetting would be a blessing. He wished he could. Then maybe he could get through a single day without this weight on his chest holding him down.

  Instead, he simply chose to cover it up in the hopes it would remain hidden. There was a huge difference between ignoring something and forgetting it.

  “It’s only two weeks away,” she added.

  “I know.” Logan swallowed. It was barely three years ago—at the midpoint of his residency. The one where he helped deliver her child—still, lifeless, blue—his first patient lost.

  “What do you think she would look like?” Tears filled her eyes. The pain darkened the amber of her eyes to molasses, and his stomach lurched.

  “Like you.”

  She stared a moment longer, her throat bobbing with emotion before she swallowed it down, then blinked. And just like that, she tucked it away.

  Standing, she closed the gap between them and tipped her gaze to his. “I need to get away. I can’t be here. Everything is just a reminder.”

  Logan nodded, expecting this. “How much do you need?” he asked, knowing she wanted money without needing to ask. It was what she always wanted.

  “I think I’ll go to Europe for Christmas . . .”

  “How much?”

  “Two grand should do it.”

  Two thousand dollars would sting. But it was a small price to pay to ease her suffering, to relieve his guilt. He couldn’t erase the past, but he could make amends, and if his checkbook was the only way he could do it, then so be it.

  Logan slipped his wallet from his back pocket, removed a blank check and a pen from his coat. The black ink looped and swirled with his signature, and then he thrust it toward her. “Is that all?”

  She bit her lip, staring down at the square of paper in her hands. “Is it real?”

  Logan cast her a wary look. “What?”

  “With the girl, Marti. Do you really care about her?”

  He tensed. Even if he had an answer, it wouldn’t be the right one for her. “We’re dating,” he said, evasively, hoping she’d drop it.

  “She doesn’t want a husband or a family. But I . . . I do.” Allison met his eye. “I could tear this check up, right now,” she said, her meaning hanging in the air between them. If you’d just be with m
e. “We could make up for all that was lost.”

  Logan moved his hand to the empty ache in his chest. “We’ll never be anything again. You know that.”

  “I made a mistake.”

  “And so did I,” he snapped, then closed his eyes, instantly regretting it. Would she ever let him live it down?

  It was a mistake—all of it. Proposing. Staying with her for so long. Trusting in his attending physician when he needed to trust his gut.

  He blinked his eyes open again. Not a day went by where he didn’t wish he had made a different choice, called in another doctor for a second opinion about her pregnancy, insisted she see someone else. But he’d made his bed. Now he had to lie in it. He had chosen to listen to someone he thought knew better, while Allison knowingly made a choice to hurt him by cheating on him, then lying about the paternity of her child. For that, he could never forgive her.

  He had moved on with his life—vowed to be a better doctor and to learn from his mistakes. He’d spent the last three years trying to make up for his past.

  It was time she did the same.

  His chest burned, a hollow ache around his heart. Her words didn’t come from love. It had taken him many months after she gave birth and he discovered her infidelity through the autopsy report to accept she had never loved him. Instead, she spoke from a place of pain, greed, and jealousy. She didn’t love him any more now than she had years ago when she cheated on him.

  She stared at him, her forehead creased with tension, her posture rigid, hungry for a fight. But he refused to give her what she wanted. Fighting implied he cared.

  He shoved his wallet back into his pocket, along with his guilt and forced a neutral expression. “Enjoy your trip,” he said as kindly as he could, then turned and made his way to the door.

  “Glad to get rid of me, huh? Does it make it easier to forget you didn’t save her?” she called after him, and as he let himself out, he hated that she was right. Because his feet couldn’t move fast enough.

  And he did feel relieved.

  She’d be gone for the anniversary of her baby’s death. The reminder of how he failed to save his fiancés child would diminish with her absence. The guilt clamping around his heart would loosen its grip, and he could pretend like Hidden Heartbeat wasn’t at least in partial atonement for his mistakes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MARTI

  AFTER HER EVENING SPENT with Logan, Marti did what any sane twenty-something interested in learning more about a man would do. She stalked his social media.

  Curled up on her bed with Fuzz at her feet, Marti clutched her cup of coffee and scrolled on her laptop.

  She wasn’t proud of herself, though she had refrained this long. That had to count for something. Besides, she was merely doing her due diligence. There was something to be said for truth in reporting, and if she was supposed to be in a relationship with him, then she needed to know more about who Dr. Logan Love really was. The man behind the stethoscope and paper mask.

  If there were skeletons in his closet, she’d find out.

  After a longer-than-necessary chunk of time in which she discovered he liked Grey’s Anatomy—shocker there—Imagine Dragons, and Mexican food, she came across the good stuff. The kind of stuff she was looking for. A woman.

  Three years down his feed, there were some rather interesting photos of him and a pretty blonde. They were cozy. Close. You could tell just by the way he looked at her that whatever he felt for her was beyond friendship. The adoration in his eyes was unmistakable.

  Marti’s stomach clenched uncomfortably.

  The photos of them dated back years. There were pictures of them on vacation together, dates, family picnics, and outings. But the most recent made her breath catch. It was from New Years. Logan’s arm wrapped around her, smiling for the camera. A modest-sized diamond winked on her left hand, while the other arm curled protectively around her protruding stomach. Below, the caption read, “Cheers to our future together with our little girl.”

  They were engaged. And either the woman in the photo had eaten one too many burritos, and she was referring to a Chipotle baby, or she was sporting a nice sized baby bump.

  Marti flopped back into her chair as the air deflated from her lungs.

  He never wore a ring, and though Marti may not know him very well, she knew enough to believe he wasn’t the cheating type, which meant he wasn’t married or engaged.

  But while relationships dissolved into thin air overnight, babies didn’t. So, unless there was some other explanation, from where she sat, it looked a whole lot like Logan Love had a baby. And that meant there was some baby-mama out there somewhere, potentially reading her column, seeing their pictures in the paper, and waiting to pounce.

  “WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?” Blue snapped. She waved a handful of papers in front of Marti’s face before slapping it down on her desk. The glass shook.

  Marti’s gaze darted to the top paper. “Uh, it’s my article for tomorrow’s digital column.”

  Marti hesitantly glanced up to Blue, praying she didn’t look as angry as she sounded.

  Her prayers fell on deaf ears.

  Blue hovered over her cubicle, looking like a platinum viper in her black shift dress, sky-high, heels and dark red lipstick as she sneered down at Marti with her perfectly painted lips.

  “Uh-huh, I got that,” Blue said. “What I want to know is why I’m getting some subpar article on Demystifying the Male Ego when I should be getting an article about your time spent with Logan at the art show the other night.”

  Marti bit her lip. The art show was three days ago, and though she knew what was expected of her today, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to write about Logan again. Not when she felt like she had no idea who he really was. Not when there could be a child involved she knew nothing about, not to mention the possibility of a crazy ex-wife.

  Something about the whole thing just didn’t feel right.

  At Marti’s silence, Blue yanked her article back up and tore it into pieces in front of her face, then tossed them in the air around her. The pieces fluttered around Marti like snow. Little squares fell into her coffee cup, stuck in her hair, and fell to her feet.

  Okay, so she was more than a little upset . . .

  “I thought maybe the public might want something different, an advice piece. Surely, they don’t just want to hear about my love life every second.” Marti’s excuse was brittle, even to her own ears.

  “Are you stupid?”

  “Uh . . .” Marti blinked. Her cheeks flushed, and she opened her mouth but was too stunned to respond.

  “I took you for a lot of things, but stupid was never one of them.”

  Marti frowned, shrinking under Blue’s laser eyes. When she didn’t respond, Blue waved her hands around manically, shouting, “That is exactly what people want. We live in the age of social media, the age of information where everything is everyone’s business. It’s right there, at their fingertips. It’s your job to make them care, to share your life with them. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing these past few years?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Your ratings have climbed since the gala photos surfaced. And after you cozied up to each other at the art exhibit, people were clamoring to get more information. They want to know if you’re really an item. Or if it’s a whirlwind romance. A fling. You need to give them what they want, Marti. And if you won’t, someone else will be standing by to take your place because they’ll lose interest, move on.”

  “But . . .” she spluttered, trying to find an excuse.

  She had nothing. She failed miserably and she knew it. Why couldn’t she just write the stinkin’ article? Lie. Embellish. Stretch the truth. It’s what she was good at.

  “But what?” Blue’s brown eyes blazed.

  Marti swallowed. Her thoughts drifted to the art show. To Logan’s bring-you-to-your-knees eyes. His smile. The way they laughed. Almost kissed. Something told her his abrupt departure had s
omething to do with the baby.

  “It’s complicated.”

  Blue scoffed, then leaned forward, one palm braced in front of Marti on her desk. Her expensive perfume lingered in the air between them as she said, “Welcome to love, McBride. It’s never easy. It’s always complicated. Figure it out. And while you figure it out, tell your readers about it. They don’t want perfection; they want something real. It’s what they’ll relate to. It’s what they’ll understand. The messier, the more complicated, the better. That just makes things more interesting.”

  Marti nodded. She was right. Marti knew she was right, and yet . . .

  “Okay.” She nodded. “You’re right.” She only wished she felt as confident as she sounded.

  “Of course I am.” Blue straightened. “I expect a new article sent to my inbox by midnight.” She turned to leave, then hesitated, her gaze whip-sharp. “And, Marti, you have one chance to pull this off. People are talking. They think you’ve changed, and your ratings are soaring. Don’t disappoint.”

  Marti nodded. The weight of her job landed squarely on her shoulders. “Right. Got it.”

  She watched Blue’s retreating form, then exhaled, blowing a lock of hair from her face and melting onto her desk. What was she thinking, turning in that crappy article?

  She’d better get it together or she’d be out of a job. If that happened, she may as well kiss any chance of living in the city, let alone Manhattan, goodbye. She’d be unemployed. Broke. Moving into her mother’s apartment in Jersey would be her only option. Ugh.

  She needed a piece confirming her relationship with Logan. It would solidify their couple status. But before she could write anything else about him, she had to know if there was a child involved. Faking a relationship for the world was one thing, but dragging someone’s kid into the spotlight was another.

  She felt eyes on her back and turned. Mel stood behind her, hands on her hips, a crease of worry in her brow. “What was that about?”