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‘Food.’
‘When?’
‘Whenever you’re done here.’ He wasn’t jealous of the bond Evie shared with Max. He wasn’t.
‘One more round,’ said Max and Logan nodded.
‘Max’s happy,’ he said as his brother turned away.
‘Very,’ replied Evie. ‘There’ll be no living with him after this. He’s going to drive the workmen on this project bonkers. Fortunately, I have a solution. Her name’s Juliet Grace.’
‘She’s going to distract him?’
‘Not at all. Juliet’s a construction manager with forty years’ worth of high-end project management under her belt.’ Evie smiled sagely. ‘She’s going to control him.’
Evie made Logan feel wanted. There was no other explanation for the warmth in his body and the smile that came so readily to his lips. Easy to make an effort to fit in when a person felt wanted. Cost him nothing to satisfy people’s curiosity about what he did for a living and to grin and wear it when one of them asked him where he’d been all Evie’s life. ‘He’s mine,’ Evie told them more than once. ‘All mine. I saw him first.’
‘But I have a puppy,’ called Kit. ‘I bet Logan likes puppies.’
‘I have goldfish,’ said another pure soul.
‘I have breasts,’ said Evie smugly and Logan almost choked on his beer as Kit pouted and the men around him roared. She knew how to handle her subbies, damned if she didn’t.
‘Max, you got another brother?’ asked Kit.
Max shook his head and met Logan’s gaze with an affectionate one of his own. ‘One’s enough.’
‘Cousin?’ asked Kit, and Max glanced back at Kit with a quick grin.
‘She’s married.’
‘Guess you’ll have to do,’ said Kit with a devil’s slow grin.
And Max blushed.
Logan leaned in towards Evie and she made it easy for him by tucking into the circle of his arms. ‘Did my brother just blush?’ he whispered in her ear.
‘You’re very astute.’
‘Are they—?’ Shock robbed him of words.
‘Not yet.’
‘But has he ever—?’ Still no words.
‘You mean has Max ever? Not that I know of, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Kit’s not the type to persist when he knows the other guy’s straight. And he has been persisting. Which means Max hasn’t yet given him a definitive no.’
‘Who is this Kit?’ he wanted to know. ‘What does he do?’
‘Protective,’ murmured Evie and wove her fingers through his. ‘I like that. Kit’s an electrician. Runs his own company. Subcontracts on big commercial jobs, mainly. Shopping centres. Stadiums. High rises. Jobs that are worth his while. Subcontracts for us every so often on jobs that aren’t always worth his while.’
‘Fancy that.’
‘Yes, he does.’
Logan looked from his brother to the tanned, blue-eyed blond called Kit, who’d abandoned his pursuit of Max in favour of watching football on the big screen. Was Max really falling for this man? Did that mean he was reassessing his sexual preferences? Or had he always been looking in that direction and Logan had just never noticed? God! Logan was going to have to rethink every last memory of his brother that he had. ‘How did I miss this? I need to get home more.’
‘Your brother thinks the world of you, Logan,’ said
Evie, and there was something approaching seriousness in her voice. ‘Wouldn’t hurt.’
Logan watched the game on the big screen for a moment or two before turning his attention back to the man who apparently had a puppy and wasn’t afraid to use it. ‘Hey, Kit. What’s the score?’
‘Nil all.’ Kit shot them a darkly amused glance. ‘I’ll let you know if anyone scores.’
Evie grinned.
‘Next time, warn me,’ muttered Logan.
‘Next time, call me when you’re coming to visit,’ countered Evie. ‘And I will. They’ve been circling one another all week. Best show in town. Mind you, that’s what Max says about us.’
‘Evangeline, do you and Max have any distance between you whatsoever when it comes to your personal lives?’
‘Some.’ Evie held up her forefinger and thumb an inch or so apart and turned her head so that she could see his eyes. ‘We’re friends who work together. We’re in each other’s face all day and we know what’s going on in each other’s lives. There’s no lust. It shouldn’t bother you.’ Apparently she could see that it did. ‘You shouldn’t let it bother you,’ she said firmly, and brought his hand up to her lips and pressed a quick kiss to the knuckle of his thumb.
Eventually, the MEP crowd thinned. Max kept smiling but seemed somewhat preoccupied. The swaggering Kit had ambled over to the snooker tables in the far corner of the room and started playing. Money was changing hands. Kit looked as if he was working towards finding trouble. Logan eyed the rest of the sharks over by the pool tables. He wouldn’t have to wait long.
‘Ready to go find something to eat?’ Max asked them, with a swift glance in Kit’s direction.
‘Your call,’ said Logan, for it was Max’s party. ‘He coming too?’
Max shot him a sharp glance.
Logan shrugged and raised an eyebrow. Acknowledgement, if that was what his brother wanted. An innocent question if not.
‘I—ah.’ Max glanced Kit’s way again and this time the other man turned around and caught his eye. Long glances were exchanged before Max turned away. ‘No. I don’t know what I’m doing there. Probably not a good idea to do it in front of you two.’
‘Stay here, then,’ offered Logan. ‘See if your pool-hustling friend wants to grab a bite to eat with just you and then stumble around all you want. Who’s going to see?’
Max laughed tightly. ‘He’ll see. Lord, I’ve got no experience with this. None.’
‘Chances are Kit knows that,’ offered Evie.
‘You don’t mind?’ asked Max gruffly, and his question wasn’t just for Evie. Max was looking at Logan with something that looked a lot like pleading.
‘It’s your call,’ he said again, not knowing what other assurances to give his brother, and hell would freeze over before he started dishing out advice. ‘I’ll run with whatever you want.’
Max glanced back towards Kit again, and that was enough for Logan. ‘We’re going. You’re staying. Not sure I ever want details.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Max and with a wry nod he headed towards Kit.
Evie tucked in beside Logan as they left the pub. She put her hand in the crook of his arm and every time her shoulder brushed his Logan felt tension leave his body. It was the most relaxed Logan had felt in over a week. ‘What do you want to eat?’ she asked him.
‘Thai?’
‘Perfect.’
Even the way she said perfect was perfect. Evie embraced the now better than anyone else he knew.
‘Damn, I’m glad you’re here,’ she said, bumping his arm this time and making Logan grin. ‘What brings you here? Apart from me.’
Cocky. Entitled. And damned if he didn’t love that about her too.
‘I came because of Max too. I just wanted to be here when the civic centre decision came through.’
‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘Good for me. How long can you stay?’
‘I have a morning flight to Perth. I need to be back in London in three days’ time.’
Evie stopped abruptly. ‘One day? Not even that?’
‘Work’s a little crazy right now. I’m sorting it.’
‘Why didn’t you say so earlier?’ Evie’s hands were on her hips, her eyes telegraphing irritation. ‘We could have left that pub an hour ago. You could have been in my bed by now. Where’s your brain?’
Nowhere close by.
There was a shadowy shopfront doorway just a few steps away and Logan took full advantage of it, pulling Evie into the darkness along with him and backing her up against the wall. He’d been holding back all evening, knowing that the eyes of people she worked with were on them. Never undermine the boss’s authority. Golden rule of business, so he’d packed his need to stake his claim on her away and kept his hands and his mouth to himself for the most part.
But there were no work colleagues watching them now.
Threading his fingers through hers, Logan brought Evie’s hands above her head and leaned in to capture her lips in a kiss so deeply consuming that he feared he might forget his own name.
Though there’d be no forgetting hers.
Evie moaned, deep down in her chest, and her fingers closed tightly over his.
A gasp from Evie as he moved on from her mouth and set tongue to that little V between shoulder and neck. A whimper from him as her body arched in search of his. Hands at her waist now, gathering her close.
‘Logan, please. Let me take you home,’ she whispered, with her hands in his hair and her mouth to his temple. ‘Please, before I come apart. There’s food in the fridge, I can feed you if you’re hungry, just—the things I want to do to you—I don’t want an audience. Just you.’
Logan groaned and loosened his hold. ‘Hire-car keys are in my front pocket,’ he told her and groaned anew when she found them. ‘I swear the car’s around here somewhere. Back the other way.’
So they went back the other way and found the car and Evie drove them home. He didn’t touch her until the door of her apartment shut behind her. He didn’t dare. And then he dropped his overnight case by the door and looked at her and then she was in his arms and sanctuary was his along with salvation.
He didn’t want to have to take control tonight; he’d never be able to maintain it. But she didn’t ask it of him, just got busy with the removal of his clothes until it was skin on skin and hunger driving them, no room for any other edges between them this time.
Too many stairs to make it to the bedroom and the sofa was right there, soft and wide and the cushions could go and he could be on his back with Evie sliding over him, right there, for ever there.
Owning him heart and soul.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_c62532ae-c9a7-5f78-8d8f-e4d95c19a881)
LOGAN left before dawn. ‘Got to be in Perth this morning,’ he whispered against her lips and Evie opened sleep-heavy eyes and smiled, because although he was dressed in a business suit and tie, the conventional clothes, he still had sex god stamped all over him as far as she was concerned.
‘Do come again,’ she murmured and fell back asleep in the time it took him to cross the floor and reach the stairs.
When she woke again, she woke alone, but the memory of last night stayed with her. Of Logan’s acute pleasure and her own, and the memory made her stretch lazily and smile and roll over into his side of the bed just so that she could close her eyes and breathe in the scent of him on her sheets. She scrubbed her face against the pillow, ran her hand over the not-so-smooth-any-more sheets.
‘Morning,’ she murmured. Wherever he was.
And she wondered how long it would take him this time, before he returned to her again.
Easy enough to give a man his freedom if Evie’s heart weren’t truly in it and they were simply travelling the friends-with-benefits road, but that wasn’t the road they were on, she and Logan.
And it was getting ever more difficult to let him go with a smile and pretend that she wasn’t totally lost in him, more so now than she had ever been.
New day. A working day—at least she still had that. Not to mention a project that would keep her on her toes for the next eight months. There were management tiers to put in place. Checks and double checks when it came to the quality of the work. There were plenty of things to be going on with.
Where did Logan say he was going to be today?
Running her hand up under Logan’s pillow, she felt the jab of something pointed and hard. She pushed the pillow aside and curled her hand around the brightly coloured paper thing and brought it in for closer inspection. Her lips curved when she finally recognised what it was: a folded-up paper parasol, the kind they put in cocktails. She’d asked for one once.
And Logan had remembered.
Evie rolled over on her back and popped the parasol and twirled it between her fingers before tucking it behind her ear.
Time to be grateful for the richness of life and the moments of sheer joy to be found in it. Like last night, when she’d first spotted Logan in the pub. There could be no hellos like that without a goodbye. As of last night she was very fond of Logan’s hellos.
‘Atta girl, Evie,’ she whispered by way of a pep talk. ‘Concentrate on those.’
There were five more hellos over the next two and a half months. Evie never got to go to Dubai or to London, for both she and Max had underestimated the management required to take on a big job and expand the business at the same time. Their bad; and the only way to fix it was to work their butts off and pray that the people they currently had in place would hold. Kit had been worth his weight in gold. If Max didn’t make Kit family soon, Evie was tempted to do it for him.
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