Up In Flames (15 page)

He was getting suspicious. While that irritated me, he was right to be.

I’d let some man who hated me today touch me last night in ways Logan wouldn’t even dream of.

I was almost convinced I never wanted to see Cole Carson’s face again, but then I remembered the way it had looked that first day we met at the swimming hole and I knew I’d die a slow death if I never did see it again.

Logan, Dani, a handful of his teammates, and another handful of girls we’d either graduated or gone to school with were laughing and tying on their shoes, taking up half of the bowling alley.

I rolled my shoulders back and pretended life was great. I’d never been happier or more confident with the direction it was taking.

Yeah. That confidence booster fizzled flat.

Logan noticed me first as I made my way to the crowd. He patted the guy he’d been talking with on the arm and came towards me. His arms were already open before he’d made it halfway.

“Hey,” he said, sounding concerned as he tucked me close. Those familiar arms, the ones I’d felt around me hundreds of times, didn’t disappoint. I melted into him a little and pushed the differences in how Cole held me aside. That was all a moot point anyways. “You don’t look so good,” he whispered, rubbing the middle of my back.

“I don’t feel so good,” I replied, burrowing my head down deeper into his shirt. Inhaling that familiar smell of soap and leather. It didn’t matter how many times Logan showered, he always smelled a bit like the leather of his baseball glove.

“You want to talk about it?”

I did. I didn’t.

But I needed to.

“Yeah,” I said. “How about afterwards?”

Logan nodded. “Okay. Whenever you want.”

Might as well get it out in the open tonight. What I’d done with Cole, the fool I’d been to think there was this deep, earth-shattering thing between us. No matter if I wanted to marry Logan or call it off tomorrow, I needed to tell him. He deserved to know the truth.

I didn’t let myself think about the repercussions of telling him. I would have been paralyzed if I did, so I just focused on one step at a time.

“I was so worried about you last night when your dad called.” His arms tightened around me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.” That was true. However, my actions told a different story.

“Where were you?” he asked. “I searched all our normal places. I was just heading towards the old swimming hole on your Grandma M’s land when your dad called and let me know you’d made it back.”

That would have been ideal in the worst possible way. Logan stumbling on a half-naked, sleeping Cole, demanding to know if he’d seen his girlfriend, Elle Montgomery. Cole smirking at him with a sleepy smile and saying something about how he had seen her recently. She’d just been curled around him moaning his name.

“I just needed to . . . get away,” I answered him.

“From what?”

From you
was my knee-jerk response, but it wasn’t only from him. I wanted to get away from myself, too. From the person I’d become thanks to letting everyone else make the decisions in my life.

The longer my thoughts went down this path, the closer I got to tears. The heavier the guilt weighed down on my back. The closer I got to telling him where I’d been last night and, more importantly, what I’d been doing.

I was about to open my mouth when a finger poked my shoulder. “I’d tell you two to get a room if I actually thought you’d use it the way it was meant to be used.” Dani’s voice was unmistakable. “And abused.”

I heard the eyebrow pop in her voice, promptly followed by Logan’s long sigh. He tolerated Dani because she was my best friend, but that was the only reason. He wouldn’t have said two words to her if it wasn’t for me because Logan and Dani were about as opposite as two people could get. And no, the irony that my best friend and my boyfriend were polar opposites was not lost on me.

“Mind if I borrow your blushing bride for a minute?” Dani didn’t wait for Logan’s reply before she gave my arm a swift tug.

I went with her because I was too tired to fight. I gave Logan an apologetic shrug, but his attention was already being taken over by one of his teammates. Like that, I was forgotten.

Or at least that’s the way it felt.

“Hey, friend,” Dani said, cordoning us off to the side. “Or should I call you stupid, stupid girl?”

When Dani was on the rampage, it was best just to let her get it out of her system.

“Please, for the love of women everywhere, please tell me you weren’t just about to tell Logan you’ve been playing with the fire hose of one of the new smokejumpers in town?”

My mouth dropped. Somewhere around the fire hose part.

“Please confirm you are not that stupid,” she said, snapping her fingers in front of my face when I remained quiet. “Anytime now.”

“What are you talking—”

“No,” Dani snapped, looking insulted. “Don’t you dare do that to me. Don’t play the innocent card with me. I know what’s been going on and I’m hurt that you’d think by confessing your sins to me I’d tell someone or think any less of you.”

“Liam,” I muttered, not so sure I was such a fan of him anymore. “What did he tell you?”

“The things my best friend should have been the one to tell me,” she said, shoving my arm. “What the hell, Elle? You start having some thing with a guy so damn hot he makes me come just by looking at him and I’m the last to know?” She shoved my arm again. “Not cool.”

I sighed, glancing over at Logan laughing with his teammates. Oblivious. “Not the last to know . . .”

Dani sighed with me. “Damn, Elle. What are you going to do?”

I studied Logan’s face. Really took him in. He was a good man, I knew that, but was he supposed to be my good man?

“I’m going to tell him. Soon.”

“Good, it’s about time you called it quits with zero-sex-appeal boy,” she said, curling her nose. “But I was referring to Cole. What are you going to do about
him
?”

Hearing his name hurt my heart, too. Thinking about him, remembering him, longing for him, and now, hearing his name. Pain, pain, and more pain.

“After the way he acted this morning?” I almost shivered remembering it. “I’m going to do my best to avoid him. He obviously hates me and wants nothing to do with me.” I bit the side of my cheek to keep from welling up.

Dani’s eyebrows went sky high. “You think Cole hates you?” she said, grabbing my elbows and giving me a little shake. “You think Cole hates you.” This time, it wasn’t a question. It was more a statement uttered to make me feel like an idiot.

“No. I know he does.” I glanced over at the rest of the group longingly. I’d rather be heaving a ball down a lane than having this conversation with Dani right now.

“Well, that confirms it then,” she said, patting my cheek.

“Confirms what?” I dodged away from her other hand when it moved to pat my other cheek.

“You really are a stupid, stupid girl.” Without another word, she rolled her eyes at me and marched over to the ball rack. I glared at her while she took her time selecting a ball, rubbing a few in an inappropriate fashion when some of Logan’s teammates stopped to check her out.

If the ball stroking didn’t do it, her outfit did. Dani had showed up in her standard issue garb: tight shirt, short skirt, and loose standards. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of Dani; that wasn’t it at all. I was jealous of her. She knew who she was, was proud of it, and didn’t let anyone push her around. If someone didn’t like her, then forget ‘em. Moving on.

I was envious of the way she’d molded and shaped her life to her liking, but happy for her at the same time as her best friend. I knew I could never express it to Logan. He’d have a coronary if I told him I wanted to be more like Dani, but it was true. I wanted to be more like Dani, in the Elle Montgomery way.

Whatever way that was.

The games were starting, so I headed over to pick out a ball. I was contemplating whether I wanted a pink, light ball or a heavy, dark blue one when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

I felt that familiar energy in the air. I felt
him
.

My breath caught in my chest when I looked up and saw Cole saunter into the bowling alley with a few of his fellow smokejumpers. Complete with a flock of girls following them. Almost a three to one ratio, and Cole seemed to be the favorite, judging from the cluster of batting eyed floozies frolicking around him.

My stomach churned for what was possibly the hundredth time today.

Cole came to a sudden stop as the few other guys continued on towards a lane a couple down from ours. His harem skidded to a stop along with him. Meeting my gaze, his mouth curled up in a way that made me feel a little faint and not in the good kind of way. Extending both of his elbows, Cole glanced between the handful of girls around him and waited.

He didn’t wait long.

Before I could narrow my eyes, two girls had glommed onto his elbows. He peaked a brow my way. That eyebrow said it all.
You were just an appetizer. Why should I settle for one when I can have five?

I couldn’t look away. Cole was a walking train wreck I couldn’t turn away from.

“Hey.” Dani popped in front of me and snapped her fingers. “Ignore the bastard. He wants to play games, you can too.”

“I don’t want to play games,” I whispered.

“No one wants to play games,” she said, grabbing the heavy, dark ball before winding her arm through mine and towing me back to our lanes. “But game playing is just part of the package. He’s trying to make you jealous. Insanely jealous right now. What you’re going to do is ignore him and throw that jealous shit back in his face.” She hitched a hand on her hip and took a breath. She was riled up. She was fighting a war and wasn’t taking prisoners.

I wanted to tell her Cole had no reason to want to make me feel jealous. He felt nothing for me, so why would he go out of his way to make me jealous? He wouldn’t.

But it was working.

Especially when he reclined in one of the lane chairs and let a curvy redhead occupy his lap. Bile rose in my throat. I thought we were at a bowling alley, not a strip club, but she was clearly and unabashedly giving him a semi-lap dance.

“Show that bastard two can play this game,” she said, getting her finger in my face. “And show him you play it better.” Grabbing my shoulders, Dani spun me around and shoved me with such force I lurched into the arms of the person in front of me.

“I wasn’t really in the mood for bowling anyways.” Logan smiled down at me, wrapping his arms around me.

My mind melded with Dani’s, as scary as that was, and I knew what she wanted me to do.

It was wrong, it wasn’t what I’d do, but I was going to go with it.

“Me either,” I whispered as I ran my hands up Logan’s chest.

His face didn’t have a chance to iron out with surprise before I popped up on my toes and crushed my mouth against his. I slid one hand behind his neck and the other fisted into the material of his shirt.

Logan tensed at first, he wasn’t used to these kinds of public displays, but it took all of one second of my lips moving over his for him to relax and reciprocate. His hands gripped my face and he kissed me back. Harder than normal, almost frantically. A few of Logan’s teammates gave a few hoots, but Logan didn’t back away from the kiss. His tongue even slid across the seam of my lips before we pulled back from each other.

Logan was breathless and his eyes were excited. This was a side of him I wasn’t used to seeing. I’d almost never seen it. But this kiss hadn’t been about Logan, it had been about Cole. Winding my arms around Logan’s neck, I looked over my shoulder.

Cole’s eyes bored into mine and, if they were weapons, Logan would be dead at my feet right about now. I inhaled sharply and couldn’t look away from him quickly enough.

Dani’d been right. That public makeup session had certainly gotten his attention. Although the attention it had gotten from him made me want to take the whole thing back.

“Wow,” Logan said, tapping the tip of my nose. “I’m not sure what that was for . . . but thanks.”

I doubted if I told him what that “was for” he’d still be smiling at me like I was the eighth wonder of the world.

“You’re welcome,” I said, using Logan’s body as a shield from Cole’s continued glower. After that first flash of murder, I hadn’t looked back at him, but I could intensely feel his eyes from my head to my toes.

“Do you want to stay and play or should we get out of here?”

I’d never heard words like those come out of Logan’s mouth. Was he suggesting we ditch his teammates and friends? Was he hinting he wanted to pick up where we’d just left off a minute ago? Or yesterday afternoon?

The sideways smile on his face suggested that he was. I’d managed to waken the seemingly dormant sex drive in Logan Matthews after two years.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

“We should probably stay and show them how a proper gutter ball’s done,” I said, unable to look into his expectant face any longer.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said. “It’s a good thing one of us is totally selfless.”

The dagger of guilt just drove deeper.

My smile fell flat.

“Maybe later, then?” he said, winking as he headed over to pick out his bowling ball.

I pretended like I hadn’t heard that.

“Damn, that was perfect,” Dani said, popping up behind me and smacking my backside. “You should have seen Cole’s face. I didn’t think that level of pissed could be reached by mere mortals.”

“Remind me why I listen to you and actually take your suggestions?” I muttered.

“Because when it comes to the species that is man,” she made a clicking sound with her mouth, “I’m the pro.”

“And who’s the judge of that?”

“Your sexy ass lover over there who hasn’t taken his eyes off of you yet,” she said, looking in Cole’s direction and grinning.

Then she waved.

“Dani,” I hissed.

“What?” she hissed back, waving again.

I didn’t need to look to confirm Cole was not waving back. If anything, she was getting a different kind of hand gesture.