Playing Love's Odds (A Classic Sexy Romantic Suspense) (17 page)

"Oh Logan, what have you done to me?" She pressed her fingers against her lips.

The next second he cried out, a painful, strangling sound, and lunged upright in the chair. Hannah crossed the deck and dropped to her knees between his legs. He looked at her, his eyes wild and unfocused, then shook his head and tried again, this time driving punishing fingers through his hair, making fists in the length at back.

Hannah reached up and circled his wrist, rubbing her thumb over his, urging him to let go. His eyes, still glazed and cloudy, met hers for a brief second before he closed them, shutting her out. At last he untangled his fingers from his hair and allowed her to draw both his hands away.

She could only guess what sort of nightmares had the power to bring him to this state of near panic, to reduce him to inflicting pain upon himself.
Did the physical anguish ease the mental?
she wondered, holding his fingers in hers, stroking the backs of his hands.

"How long has this been going on?" she whispered as much to herself as to him.

His eyes shifted behind closed lids. He smiled a crooked smile, enough of one to let her known he wasn't about to give her a serious answer.

"About a minute or so but you're welcome to keep it up as long as you want," he said in a voice gruff with sleep and hurt. He cocked one eye open, then the other, and frowning, made a quick visual sweep of her body.

"I hope you don't mind," she began, "but it was either wear this, the prom dress, or the centerfold get-up."

"I vote for centerfold," he said flexing his fingers into the material covering her legs.

"No doubt you would," she retorted shooing his hands away.

He obliged, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back. For several minutes they stared at one another and Hannah could tell the effort it took for him to put on this phony front. His breathing came in shaky fragments, the pulse in his neck racing at breakneck pace.

Then, without warning, he came to his feet. She gripped the frame of the lounger to keep from being upended. Snagging the cigarettes lying on the deck table, he lipped one out of the pack and paced the deck, inhaling the unlit tobacco.

What was eating at him? What torment had he seen or suffered—or caused—to turn him into a bundle of nerves? She knew the consequence of pain first hand, but this,
this
was different. He strode back toward her, stopping to offer his hand.

"I need some fresh air," he mumbled, the cigarette still dangling from the skin of his lip. "You feel like a walk?"

What a funny thing to say, she thought, surrounded as they were by more fresh air than one man could breathe in a lifetime. "As long as it's a short one," she answered, placing her hand in his.

She followed him down the stairs, slowing as they reached the bottom. Her gaze moved from the white T-Bird to the red Mustang convertible parked under the carport next to it.

"Logan?"

"Yeah?" he answered distractedly.

"Whose car is that?"

He pulled up at the bottom step. She stopped one stair directly above. For a long minute she thought he wouldn't answer. Finally, he glanced over his shoulder, his eyes full of indecision. "Mine."

"The Mustang, not the T-Bird," she clarified wanting to make sure he understood.

"The Mustang is mine."

"It wouldn't be a false assumption, would it, for me to think it's the same one I saw sitting in your parking lot? The same one that got doused in a sudden rainstorm?"

The only hint of his broken control came when he snapped the cigarette in half and thumped it across the carport.

"The Mustang is mine," he repeated, none too willingly.

"And you prefer rain water to the car wash."

Hands braced on hips, he hung his head with an aggravated shake. "You're not gonna let it go, are you?"

The stair gave her a two-inch height advantage. She took it all, wanting a clear, honest answer. "I don't understand. Why would you subject a gorgeous piece of machinery to that kind of damage?"

The look he gave her backed her up another step. He took two at a time until he towered over her. "C'mon," he growled, lacing his fingers tightly through hers and pulling her behind him at a gentle, though insistent, pace. "Let's walk."

She shot a last confused look at the cars and circled under the staircase to hit the beach. The touch of Logan's palm against hers, his fingers curled around hers, was nice. More than nice. Comfortable. Like their hands belonged together. Just as comfortably, they matched their steps through the loose-packed sand.

Logan chose their destination, stopping no more than twenty yards down the beach where discarded trees created a manmade dune and abandoned fence posts formed a makeshift bench.

The small windbreak of trees at the edge of his house provided a smidgen of shade. He dropped to the ground to lie on his back. Gingerly, Hannah lowered her body to the sturdiest section of the bench, stretching her legs out with a mild groan.

Logan glanced up at the sound. "You should've said something if the walk was too much. We could've turned back."

She shook her head. "I'm okay. Just stiff in a couple dozen places." She pulled her knees to her chest finding the position put less of a strain on her bruises. "Talk to me Logan. About the car."
First
,
she added silently,
then we'll take care of the rest of your nightmares.

"I haven't felt anything ... real ... or good for a long time. You intrigued me, that day in my office. So fiery and righteous. I didn't want you to walk out of my life."

The words flew out in such a breathless squall she figured he'd been holding them in for a very long time. "You sacrificed your car on my behalf."

His laugh was quick, directed more at some inner thought than anything she'd said. "Gideon was a might pissed when he first saw it."

"I can imagine. He rebuilds them and you buy them?"

She thought he shrugged but it was hard to tell since he was lying down. "Something like that."

"I'm surprised you don't have a vintage Corvette tucked away somewhere."

He visibly stiffened, slowly sat up, the damp sand sticking to his back. She wanted to reach out and brush it off, but as if he'd read her mind, he flinched away.

What had she said? Something about a car? "Do you own a Corvette?"

"I did."

The words barely reached her ears. "Did you wreck it?"

"No."

"Sell it?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I used it to kill a child."

That wasn't what he'd meant to say. Of all the things he could've said, of all the things he needed to admit to, that was one confession he'd never intended to make. It was his own desperate secret to keep.

Or it had been until Hannah Evans had wormed her way into what pretended to be his soul. He didn't make a habit of flaying himself open, but for Hannah he'd done so with one hell of a dull-bladed knife.

Reluctantly, he glanced her way, steeling himself for the revulsion, the telling disgust certain he'd see in her eyes. Other than appearing pale, her face was relatively void of expression. She was watching the waves, or the seagulls, or the tiny crabs scuttling across the sand.

For all he knew she was staring at the empty sky. She just wasn't looking at him.

"What happened?" she asked at last, startling him with the simple question. She didn't accuse. She didn't place blame. She didn't condemn or any of the things he'd done to himself. She approached the subject calmly, a feat he'd yet to accomplish three years after the fact.

He drew his knees up, draped his wrists over them and burrowed his toes into the sand, wishing he could dig a hole deep enough to empty himself into. He didn't want to remember. He didn't want to think. Thinking hurt.

It reached inside the shell around his heart and squeezed. Hard.

The story was a long one. One he hadn't told himself in years. Maybe it was time he heard it again. He started with a sigh and at the very beginning. "From day one, my father preached good and evil to all his boys. He didn't come out with it in so many words. It was more in the little things. And by example.

"Anything we screwed up, we fixed. Like the time I borrowed Simon's bike without permission. I had to wash it every week for two months. Didn't matter if it was dirty or if the weather was bad. I lucked out though, compared to Gideon."

He shook his head and laughed softly to himself. "Gid was some kind of hellraiser. Classic bad boy. Souped-up car. Cigarette glued to his mouth." He gave a thoughtful one-shouldered shrug. "Anyway, once Mom was cleaning and found two joints on the floor beneath his bed. When Dad found out about the pot, he went ballistic."

"What did he do?"

It was the first time she'd spoken and, as hard as it was to believe, he'd almost forgotten she was there. He wondered what she was thinking about his trip down memory lane. He wasn't too sure how he felt about it himself. He hadn't been home in long time. Not since ...

"Logan?"

"Hmm? Oh, Gid. Yeah, well I don't know the details. Dad had a deep respect for privacy and Gid sure wasn't talking. His interest in cars really picked up, though, almost like he'd grabbed onto it as lifeline."

"And what about you?"

"Me? The usual teenage scrapes." He thought a minute and a smile made its way across his face at the assorted memories. "Got my ear pierced once. Dad didn't blink an eye. Just gave me two choices. I could let it grow back. Or, if I wanted to look like a girl, I had to get the other one done."

"So why'd you do it?"

He tossed her his best Logan Burke grin. Straight from the heart of the kid he once was. "It was cheaper than a tattoo."

She finally looked his way, and her answering smile did a lot to settle his nerves. "I don't know. I think you'd look good with an earring. And a tattoo. They'd both suit you."

"A bit of a modern day pirate, huh?"

"A sexy pirate."

He filed her comment away for future reference. He had a feeling when he finished his story, he'd need all the memories of Hannah he could get. He wouldn't blame her for running. He'd been doing it a long time himself. "Yeah, robbing from the rich to give to the poor."

"I think that's Robin Hood, not Blue Beard," she corrected, scooting off the log to sit at his side. "What else?"

One memory, like it had been waiting for an opening, whipped from his subconscious straight into his mind. The full spectrum from sadness to joy, swept through him, leaving his heart racing, his eyes strangely misted.

"There was this other time," he began, voice pitched low. "I couldn't have been more than ten."

"Tell me."

He cleared his throat. "I was playing with the gang I hung out with. This kid, Casey, hit a ball through a window across the street from the playground. They all took off. I stood there and stared at that jagged hole wanting more than anything to high-tail it after them. I couldn't. I kept thinking what Dad would say.

"I walked up to the house and knocked, hoping no one was home," he admitted truthfully. "I was scared outta my shorts. Finally, this old woman answered. She was tiny, like a baby bird, you know." He gestured with his hands, drawing a vague shape in the air. "No neck or body, just this huge head with bulging eyes and a long hooked beak of a nose.

"Anyway, I told her what had happened and that I was going home to get my dad. She only nodded, looking tired and resigned, like she didn't believe a word I was saying."

"What did your father say?" Hannah prompted.

"Not a lot. He didn't have to. I knew he was proud of me."

"He should've been. That kind of responsibility is a big step for a kid to take."

Filled with the irony of her comment, his laugh came out more bitter than funny. "Oh, I took responsibility all right. I spent one day each week for the rest of that summer mowing her lawn to pay for the new window. We got to be friends.

"She was eighty-four years old and had seen a world of change. She told me incredible stories and gave me my first glimpse into reality. Said the world needed more young men like me willing to own up to their actions so those less fortunate wouldn't feel taken advantage of."

"You miss her."

He nodded solemnly, thinking for the first time she'd been his first true friend. "Her name was Maud. She died when I was fourteen." He picked up a shell and scooped the sand between his feet into a trough. "It wasn't until the military that I decided what I wanted to do. Maud was right. Too many people cheat the hand that feeds them instead of working for an honest buck. That's why I started out in corporate security."

"What happened to make you quit?" When he didn't answer, she perceptively asked, "Was it the child?"

It was time to tell her everything. He trusted her to understand. Funny how he'd come to understand the importance of that emotion. Funnier still how he identified it with Hannah. If she could forgive him for this, maybe she could forgive him the rest.

Maybe he had a chance at something good for a change. "I was on retainer with a software conglomerate, not that I did much for them. It was some of the easiest money I ever made and back then money was a big draw. I spent most of it on my cars."

"Gideon's interest must run in the family."

"Gideon has thirty-weight flowing through his veins. Not me. I enjoyed the flash and the perks," he answered sheepishly.

"Like with the football."

"You remember that, huh?" he asked, turning to look at her.

Her smile was perfect. She saw to his soul. "Yeah. I do."

"It's funny when I think of it now. I ate up the attention. And it was just about as phony as it comes. Still, at the time, I needed it. Middle child syndrome I guess."

"People go to drastic lengths to find out who they are."

"Or get so cock sure of ourselves we don't stop to think," he answered, his voice sharp with a telling bitterness.

"Tell me, Logan. About the child."

He dusted his hands together and rubbed his fingers in his gritty eyes, wishing he could blame the rawness on the sand instead of the lack of sleep. Or the strain of reliving this one particular memory.