One Night With You (4 page)

“You going to tell me about school or just snap pictures all day?” he’d asked her when they stopped for lunch. When she’d lowered the camera, he had grabbed it away from her. He’d planned on just putting the camera back in the case but he’d looked at her. Grinning, with her hair blowing across her face. He’d snapped a quick picture of her before tucking the camera away.

She had looked happy.

Logan’s lids drooped and he thought of the way she’d looked Christmas Eve. She had been smiling, yeah. She had looked happy enough. But David didn’t make her face glow. She didn’t look as happy with David as she had looked with Logan.

“Why in the hell is this happening?” he muttered.

But he knew the answer to that. It was happening because he had let it happen. Logan closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the windowpane. How many mistakes was he going to make with her? Rushing her like he had. Then, when maybe he should have moved a little faster, he hadn’t.

He should have gone after her. It didn’t matter if she was seeing David or not.

That was what he should have done.

Ain
’
t too late until she says I do
.

But now it was too late. Logan had to do something before she married David but he didn’t know what. It wasn’t purely selfish. Logan wanted her, had always wanted her, but it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t even the bone-deep knowledge that she belonged with him.
To
him. Sounded archaic but hey, there it was. She belonged to him and even though she didn’t know, he belonged to her.

Both of them would be miserable marrying anybody else. He wanted her happy. If he thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she would be happy with David, he’d walk her down the aisle himself. He might drink himself into oblivion and stay drunk for weeks after but he would do it. If it would make her happy.

Slowly, he turned and looked back out the window. She was still out there, high on the ridge. He could do that—give her away to another man. He could do whatever it took to make her happy, no matter how much it hurt him. He loved her—what else could he do but want her happy?

“You’re marrying the wrong guy, Bo.”

Ain
’
t too late until she says I do
.

* * * * *

Bridal jitters.

Hell, these weren’t jitters. Jitters sounded like such a small thing. Like aftershocks or something. She wasn’t having jitters—she was having quakes that would register 6.0, complete with emergency alerts and fire truck sirens.

The warning system was all in her head of course but every time she thought about the wedding, it was with a pealing of alarm bells that made her gut tie itself into knots.

Up until a few days ago, she’d had herself convinced she wasn’t making a mistake. She just needed time to get used to the idea of getting married. She was twenty-five years old. She could take care of herself and had been doing just that since she’d landed her first job, a pure stroke of luck while she was still in college.

Bo had money in the bank, she had a great career and she had a man who adored her. What more could she want? Logically, there shouldn’t be anything.

So why was she so miserable?

From the corner of her eye, she saw a horse and rider approach. She didn’t even have to see him to know who it was. Logan. Nor did she have to see him to react. Her skin felt hot and tight. Her heart banged away within her chest with a force that made her breathless. Her muscles felt like putty. Only one person on earth had that effect on her and she’d been running from him for four years.

Like she sensed her rider’s mood swing, Mist shifted and Bo reached out a hand, soothing the mare.

The bastard always did this to her. She’d had a serious crush on him the entire time she was growing up. Getting away from him at college had seemed to make it a little easier and it had been so damn necessary. Bo liked keeping a certain distance between herself and everybody else. Except her dad, and even with him, there were some boundaries she didn’t want to cross.

Her mother’s death had hit both of them hard and William Martin had always been there for Bo but he never really recovered from Isabo’s death. Bo didn’t ever want to go through the pain her dad had gone through. Sometimes it made her feel like a coward.

Bo looked like her mom, though she did have her dad’s eyes. She’d been named Isabo Dawn, after her mother. She’d been Bo pretty much since birth. Her memories of her mother were vague but they centered around a woman so pretty that she’d looked like an angel in Bo’s eyes. She’d loved to laugh. She’d loved to dance.

Isabo had loved life, plain and simple.

Bo preferred to hide from it. And she’d been doing pretty well, until Logan. He’d shattered her defenses four years ago and if she let him close enough, he’d do it again.

All the more reason to marry David
, she told herself. She liked David. She even loved him. He was funny. He was sweet. He made her laugh. She’d marry him and in a year or two, they would talk about having kids.

Maybe. The kid thing was still a maybe for her. She might be able to maintain distance with those around her but having kids would shoot that straight to hell. So the jury was still out on that one. David had already told her that it was her decision.

Bo grimaced. Too often, David’s answers were along those lines.
Whatever makes you happy
,
Bo
.

Lately, Bo had been thinking,
How about an argument
?
If an argument will make me happy
,
will you give me one
?

David didn’t argue. He persuaded and cajoled or he went along with her. Bo hated to admit it but that was fast becoming boring.

Logan
’
s never boring
. The minute that little voice whispered those words inside her head, Bo wanted to scream. No. Logan wasn’t boring. Her palms went damp just thinking about him. If she took off now, she just might be able to avoid him. She’d been doing that for too long.

Ever since
… Bo winced and shied away from that thought. She didn’t want to think about that night. She couldn’t think about that night.

“You going to take off running again, Bo?”

Shit. She took a deep breath and hoped her nerves weren’t showing on her face. She’d gotten very, very good at hiding her emotions but Logan tended to shatter her control.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bo lied as she looked at him. Mist shifted a little as Logan and Dervish drew closer. Absently, Bo stroked a hand down the mare’s neck. She made herself look at him as she responded and wished she hadn’t.

“Don’t you?” There was a smile on his face. A cool, knowing smile that was completely maddening. And sexy as hell. Everything about Logan was sexy as hell. He was just an inch or two taller than her. She was five-nine and she liked being able to meet his eyes head-on, without looking up.

She loved his shoulders. Always had. She loved watching him while he worked with his brother in the stable, worn cotton clinging to the sleek muscles underneath. She liked how he looked in a suit. An agent with the local DEA department, Logan was just as comfortable in a suit and tie as he was in denim and cotton. He spent a lot of his time undercover, which meant he spent more time in the casual clothes but he could wear a suit better than most of the male models Bo had met.

He was better looking than most of them too. Hard, male looks instead of glossed up pretty-boy looks. Thick chestnut brown hair that curled just a little when he forgot to cut it, eyes the palest brown. When she’d first met him, he’d had dimples when he smiled but over the years those dimples had deepened to slashes that bracketed a mouth that wasn’t as hard as it looked.

She ought to know. That one night had forever imprinted the memory of how that mouth felt. She realized she was staring at his mouth and she jerked her eyes away but not soon enough.

He smiled a slow, lazy smile that seemed to say he knew exactly what she was thinking about. Blood rushed to her cheeks. Damn it.

Bo had been dealing with her feelings for Logan for a long time and she knew damn well that if she let him in on how nervous she was, it would be that much worse. She took a deep, slow breath. Even if she was still blushing, she made herself look back at him and answer. “No, Logan. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And it wasn’t a lie, not right now. The look in his eyes could make her forget her name, so recalling something he’d said thirty seconds ago was difficult.

He didn’t push. He glanced around and nodded to her camera. “You’ve been sitting out here for a while. Something wrong?”

Only an entire world of things
, Bo thought but she didn’t say that. “Just thinking.” As she spoke, she lifted the camera and snapped a picture of him. He didn’t blink. Logan had been around her long enough to know that a camera in her hands rarely remained unused. She had hundreds of pictures of him. More than anybody else in her life, though she’d never let him know that.

He was still smiling but the smile changed, grew sharper, almost icy. She suppressed a shiver and snapped another picture. “Thinking about your wedding?” he asked. His tone was silky smooth. If it wasn’t for that smile, she’d almost believe that he was just expressing casual interest.

Yeah
.
Casual
,
my ass
, she thought sourly. “Just thinking.”

He urged Dervish a little closer, until they were practically knee to knee. He leaned in and said, “About what? You look so serious for a girl who ought to be riding high on the world right now.”

Irritated, Bo tugged on Mist’s reins, guiding her mare a short distance away. “I’m just
thinking
,” she repeated. “I’ve got an assignment coming up in Alaska, one in Japan, a wedding in two weeks and I’m still trying to keep an eye on my father. He still isn’t acting like himself and I’m worried. I’ve got a million things on my mind, okay?”

If she thought Logan would let it go at that, she obviously didn’t know him very well, he figured. A million things on her mind wouldn’t make her look like that, not if she was happy. She had already looked miserable but when he’d mentioned the wedding, her eyes had gotten darker and her mouth flattened out into an unsmiling line. She had a pinched, pale look that made him think that maybe Bo had as many doubts about her upcoming wedding as he did.

“So are you nervous?”

Those pretty gray eyes narrowed and Bo drawled sarcastically, “Gee, I’m about to become a bride. What do
you
think, Sherlock?”

Logan shrugged. “I don’t know. I think you’re looking kind of miserable. Like you really aren’t looking forward to wearing that white dress.”

Her brows dropped low over her eyes and she jerked on Mist’s reins, putting a little more distance between them. “What in the world do you know?”

He stared at her for a long, silent moment before he finally answered. “You. I know you. And you don’t look happy. You so sure you want to get married, Bo?” He closed the distance between them and before she could move away again, he reached out and grabbed the reins.

She gave him a cool, dismissive glare. “I
am
getting married. Since when have I ever done anything I didn’t really want to do?”

Well, she had a point there. Logan acknowledged it with a grin. “Just tell me one thing. Are you happy?”

Bo blinked. Her tongue slid out and wet her lips. Her voice cracked a little as she repeated, “Happy?”

“Yeah. You know the meaning of the word, right? Are you happy?”

Her lips curved up in a smile, cool and confident. Her voice was rock steady and she never even blinked as she replied, “Yes. I’m happy.” If he hadn’t been looking into her eyes, he just might have believed it.

But those eyes? They were lying.

* * * * *

Late that night, Logan sat in his office, his hand wrapped around a half empty glass of whiskey. The fire across the room had burned down until the only light it gave off was a red glow.

The bottle on the desk had started out half full. Now, even the most optimistic couldn’t call it much of anything except for empty. He was bordering on being really drunk and totally wasted. The whiskey was gone but he still hurt inside. He could empty another bottle and it wouldn’t do anything for that pain.

Bo was getting married. In two weeks. To somebody Logan considered to be one of his best friends. It was going to kill him, he knew it. And her.

His parents had been trapped in a loveless marriage. Bo’s mother had died when she was young and her father hadn’t ever loved another woman enough to remarry. She didn’t understand the hell of being married to somebody you didn’t belong with. But what in the hell could he do about it?

Stop the wedding. Well, yeah. “Could do that,” he said to himself. His voice was so damn slurred, nobody would have understood him. But since he was talking to himself, it wasn’t an issue.

“Stop the wedding,” he mumbled. Then he snorted. “How’m I gonna do that?”

An insane idea, no doubt brought on by his drunken state, danced through his mind. If he kidnapped her, she couldn’t get married.

Could she? Can’t get married if you don’t show up for the wedding. He squinted a little and tried to think past the fog of alcohol. It did make sense.

She might hate him. “She doesn’t belong with him,” he said with the complete, utter confidence of somebody who was either shit faced in love or falling down drunk. Logan was both and he knew it. But the idea still made perfect sense.

Well, maybe not perfect sense. “It’s illegal.” So the plan had one little flaw. Still made really good sense. So maybe it was a little bit illegal but he could always arrest himself after, right?

Logan shoved up from his chair. The room swirled around him and he slapped his hands against the desk to keep from falling over. The room stabilized a little and he tried taking one step away from the desk. So far so good.

If he had a handrail all the way over to Bo’s house, this just might work. But the desk was only so long and if he wanted to keep moving forward he was going to have to let go of it. First step—good. Second step—good.