She’d spent more than a minute or two in his shower the morning before picturing him naked, sprawled across that sumptuous expanse. And, so okay, maybe he hadn’t been alone. In her imagination.
Today, that was the last thing she could allow herself to imagine. Any possibility that she could use her attraction to him as a distraction from her other issues had died when she’d put him on the spot in front of his entire town. Of course, he hadn’t been real thrilled with her when she’d passed out all over him, either. And goodness knew he’d made it quite clear his opinion of her today was even more dismal. So, she could cross out indulging in an office fling.
He didn’t have to be attracted to her, or even like her. He just had to respect that she could get the work done and that she was the one for the job. Despite the excitement she’d begun to feel about getting back to work again, she still had no idea what obstacles lay ahead for her, what the reality of working another tower would truly be like. However, proving herself to Logan McCrae was all kinds of motivation.
She just hoped she didn’t win the battle only to lose the war. Last night had just been a skirmish. The true campaign had started today.
And time was a-wastin’.
Rather than head down the hallway to check out the remainder of the second floor, she found herself wandering over to the dormer windows. Even at five-foot-five, she had to duck her head, but the twin dormers, with their double-sash windows and cutout eaves, would make charming little alcoves. The windowpanes were a little clouded from years of salt spray covering the exterior of the hard-to-reach windows, but she could see enough to note that they faced the front of the house, with a view across the tops of the thick pine forest that hugged the coastline.
She backed up a step and sank down on the side of his bed, sketching the room as she’d envisioned it, the sitting table, the bookshelves, knowing it was utter folly, but also knowing if she got the images on paper, then they’d be out of her head, freeing her mind up to focus on the real matter at hand.
When she was done, she clutched the clipboard to her chest, and gave in, just for a moment, to the temptation to lie back on the bed. It was like lying on a cloud. Her eyes drifted shut, an entirely new series of images taking over . . . those broad shoulders, big hands, deep voice . . .
“Something I can help you with, Goldilocks?”
Chapter 7
A
lex shrieked in surprise, leaping straight off the bed and grazing the side of her head on the edge of the alcove eave. “Ouch! Dammit!” Crouching, hand to her head, she turned to find Logan standing just inside the door between his bathroom and the bedroom, wrapped in nothing more than a damp, forest green bath towel. Had she been so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard him in there? “Sorry. I didn’t know you were home. Why are you home?”
“Why are you lying in my bed?”
“I wasn’t. I mean, I was, but just for a moment. I was . . . sketching.”
“Sketching.” He nodded toward her head. “Are you okay?”
She rubbed at her forehead, happy to see there wasn’t any blood when she lifted her hand away. “Yeah. I’d be more worried about the wall; I have a pretty hard head. Don’t say it,” she warned.
She shifted the clipboard she was still hugging to her chest, looking at her sketches of the alcoves . . . and, more to the point, not at half-naked Logan. “Just taking a few minutes to get the layout of the house on paper. Then I was going into town to look up the architectural drawings and any other plans filed with the city.”
“You could have just asked me.”
She made herself look at him—which was hard, because part of her mind and pretty much every part of her body was still back in that giant sea of soft linens and thick pillows. With him. Naked. Which was so much easier to visualize now. “I—” She paused, cleared her throat, and dammit, looked down at her clipboard again. But his body matched that voice. And she was only human. “This morning when you left, you made it pretty clear that you were merely tolerating me. You definitely had no interest in helping me. Plus, you have your job, and I have mine. I’m perfectly capable of doing this on my own. I know you don’t believe that. That I’m capable. But I am.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to. Sometimes actions speak louder. In fact, they almost always do—which is why you have no faith in me, and, frankly, I wouldn’t, either, since my actions so far include having a less-than-professional-looking vehicle that breaks down practically in your driveway—”
“It was a flat tire.”
“Trust me, it could have easily been complete engine failure. It failed off and on all the way from Michigan. And it was driven by a tear-streaked woman who immediately up and fainted on you.”
“Well, when you put it like that.”
She caught the corner of his mouth kicking up in an ever so slight grin and wished she didn’t admire the comeback as much as she did. It was exactly the kind of thing she’d have said.
“Saying it was aberrant behavior and far off the grid of who I am is fine—not to mention true—but you don’t really know that. The breaking down and the fainting is all you really know of me. So I’m taking this opportunity to show you the rest of my act.”
He lifted one brow. “By playing Goldilocks?”
She gave him a look that said
really?
and continued. “I explained what I was doing. But if that’s what you honestly think, then I guess that makes you the grumpy papa bear?”
Now it was his turn for the
what gives
hand gesture. “Why is everyone suddenly calling me grumpy?”
“Have you heard you? Not exactly lightness and sunshine. I mean, it can’t be easy being police chief in a small town where you know everybody’s business and have to get in the middle of it on a regular basis, so I get it. Unless you’re normally a regular barrel of laughs and it’s just me bringing out the worst. Which, I suppose, is also a fair assumption.” She looked down, shook her head, and blew out a breath. “Yeah. This is so not how I saw this next part going.”
“And what way was that?”
Her brain went immediately to how it had been seeing things just a few moments ago, before she’d been so rudely startled. She shut that right down.
All business, all professional, that’s how. Why don’t I start now?
“Doing my job, doing it well. Just as I always have. Somehow you have a knack for continually finding ways to catch me at my worst.”
“I see it more as stumbling over them, but okay. I’m not doing it on purpose.”
“Neither am I.” With a cleansing breath, she squared her shoulders, forged a bright smile, and faced him squarely. “Let’s try this. I’m going to let you get back to”—her gaze skipped down to the towel and jerked straight back up again—“whatever it was you needed to do. And given I’m under a pretty strict deadline that only a grumpy person would consider reasonable, I’m going to get back to what I came here to do.”
And ignore how much more he does for damp terrycloth than I do.
Okay, so maybe she hadn’t exactly pulled off that bright and sunny part as well as she’d hoped. But he rankled. Standing there, all sex-god perfect with the voice of a fallen angel. Damp, dark curls clinging to his forehead, the perfect amount of manly man-hair matted to his quite beautifully muscled chest, and, worse—far, far worse—those topaz eyes of his that reached right past every barrier she was rapidly throwing up against their too-insightful-for-their-own-good power. Not to mention an attitude that she really didn’t think she’d earned. Much.
Added to that was the fact that while he was all effortlessly godlike, she stood there looking like a pale-faced Mrs. Bunyan, sporting several layers of shapeless tops inspired by the winter lumberjack collection, complete with matching ever-so-not-flattering clunky black work boots. The backs of her legs clad in well-worn denim were pressed against his very big, very manly, ridiculously sexy bed made for sex, and not just any sex, but deep-into-the-mattress take-me-like-you-mean-it sex, the kind she was never going to have, at least not in that bed and not with him. So, it was clear why she was a bit off her game. Not to mention that just the thought of the deep-into-the-mattress thing had her heart pounding like she’d just run up the side of a very steep hill. She made a mental note:
more food, less caffeine
. She really should have forced down the toast.
He didn’t respond. But he didn’t tell her to get the hell out of his house, either, so she took that as a win and turned to exit the room before he changed his mind or before she lost what was left of hers.
She got as far as the foot of the bed.
“That’s not all of you I know.” He said the words so quietly that she realized hers hadn’t been.
She’d been shooting for sunny, confident. Strident was probably a better description.
Okay. A lot less caffeine
. She turned, looked at him. “I’m really not sure I want to know what else you think you know about me,” she said more quietly and quite honestly. “What I do want is more time. This house is . . . well, it’s amazing. Just its endurance alone, the history it’s been through.”
Warming to her subject, she found a source of much needed distraction, something that wasn’t about his naked body and her wanting to jump it, and she let the words flow. “It’s such a strong testament to you and all the McCraes that came before you. I want to find a way to make this work, not because you deserve it or because I do, but because this house deserves it.”
She stepped closer, feeling the tingling in her fingertips, across the back of her neck, down her spine. It was familiar, like an old friend. It was excitement for her work, and she latched on to the comfort of something she understood. “The keeper’s cottage is . . . it’s breaking my heart. I don’t even know its full story, and it breaks my heart, sagging and struggling to remain strong . . . yet failing all the same. And your lighthouse. It’s proud, Logan. It makes me want to know its secrets and its stories, and I want to give it the chance to tell them to another generation. You couldn’t possibly know what that means to me personally, to feel that, to want that, but I can promise you that you won’t find a person more committed to finding a way to make it happen. To making it all happen.”
He stood there, staring at her, saying nothing. His expression unreadable, but his eyes searching, and his chest rising and falling, perhaps, just a little bit faster.
She almost opened her mouth to apologize for making such a dramatic, emotional plea. She was a professional and she was damn good at her job, despite the fact that, with him, she seemed determined to appear anything but. She’d never once begged for a job and she’d be damned if he would make her feel as if she had to do so now. But there was a lot riding on this, more than even she’d realized until she’d opened her mouth and all of that had simply tumbled out straight from her heart. She’d overcome far worse than being denied a contract, but she’d never once wanted one as badly as she wanted this one. Something about the epiphany she’d had out by the stacked stone wall was beating inside her, fueling a rebirth of confidence. Moving forward was painful, and hard, and downright terrifying, but in every possible way it still beat the living hell out of staying where she’d been for the past year.
“Let me do my job, and give me the time to do it right. I know that means you have to put up with me being under your roof, but you’re about to have workers climbing all over the place, so, by comparison, having me here will be a cakewalk. I’ll be lost in the crowd, so to speak. I’ll stay out of your way as best as I can. But I’m here. And I can do this. I’m damn good at it. Let me stop telling you and start showing you.”
He held her gaze for another long moment, too long; then she saw his chest move, heard the low escape of a long, steady breath. “Part of what else I know about you is that you are cocky, stubborn, even a little arrogant.”
She took the comment in stride. “It’s not arrogance when you can back it up.”
“Big words.”
Okay that dig was harder to take. She hated that those two little words had the power to ping her the way they did. But he knew. He knew about her father. Knew she hadn’t been up on a tower since his death. Knew she actually might not be able to do it, despite what she was saying. Knew just how big, in fact, those words were.
And then he was standing right in front of her. “Alex. That was—you’re right, I haven’t been happy about this, any of this, and I’ve said as much. Bluntly. But that wasn’t—I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever be sorry for being honest.” She made herself look up at him and meet his gaze. “You’re right. They are big words. Huge words. The biggest. But I wouldn’t have said them if I didn’t believe they were true. If I didn’t believe in myself. And I do. I do now.”
She was stunned to see the corner of his mouth kick up ever so slightly. He thought this was
funny?
Maybe she’d been wrong about his sense of humor.
“Who are you trying to convince?” he asked. “Me? Or you?”
The mad went out of her before it even worked up a good head of steam. He was frustratingly rational. “Both,” she said, with maybe a little huff afterward.
“More honesty. I respect that.”
“So do I,” she said, hearing the grudging note in her tone. She really wanted to be mad, or at least seriously annoyed. It would make it easier to sustain her energy. She was quickly realizing just how drastically she’d allowed the stress of the past year to take a toll, not just physically, but mentally. Her instinct was to hide that from him, hide any weakness, with bluster and bravado, then work like the devil to do whatever it took to get herself back up to speed, so he’d never have any doubts. Except he already had doubts. Big ones. Because he already knew her weaknesses. She’d laid them all, literally, right in his lap.
“Did Fergus tell you about Jessica?”
Surprised at the sudden topic change, she looked up at him again, into those eyes. And found him staring deeply into hers. The combination of that intensity and that velvety smooth baritone all but rippling over her skin made her throat get all tickly. It might have made her thighs quiver, too. He was standing too close to be having those thoughts and have him not see how they were affecting her. She shook her head, not trusting her voice at that moment.
“The other part of what else I know about you is that maybe I have more insight into what you’re going through and how it feels to take the steps you’re taking than you know.”
Her eyes widened. That was pretty much the last thing she’d expected to hear him say.
It was his turn to momentarily avert his gaze. He took a breath and looked back at her. “Seeing as we’re being cheerleaders for honesty here, I’ll also admit that that was why I was somewhat abrupt with you this morning.”
“Somewhat?”
He lifted an eyebrow at that, but it made her want to smile. What was it Fergus had said? That his nephew could use a good nudge every once in a while? She was finding it came quite naturally to her to want to help him out with that. The thing was, Logan nudged back. Though, much as she hated to admit it . . . maybe she needed it, too.
“Okay, maybe more than somewhat. It was just . . . you remind me of . . . well . . . of a lot of things. Things I don’t think about anymore because I don’t have to think about them. Things that—” He broke off, then seemingly made himself hold her gaze. “Things I thought I didn’t think about because I had overcome them. When, in truth, I didn’t think about them because they still have the power to bother me. A great deal more than I wanted to know they did.”
“I didn’t mean to dredge up old memories. Especially painful ones.”
“Of course you didn’t. You didn’t even know. Your first night here, I didn’t know about your past, about your father. And you still shook me up. Just the idea of you being here at all meant I’d have to deal with the tower and the cottage, and I’m not talking about costly renovations, but about the other reasons I’ve found every excuse in the book to put off dealing with them.”
“And all of that has to do with . . .”
“Jessica Tate. My late fiancée.”
Alex’s lips parted in a short gasp, and she felt pain—sympathy pain, but very real nonetheless—for his loss. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.