An Innocent in Paradise (14 page)

He and Grace were already waiting in the limo when Aidan climbed inside. Logan ignored his brother's fulminating glance and breathed a sigh of relief when Eleanor arrived a few seconds later. They all drove to the airport in companionable silence.

Aidan assisted Eleanor out of the car and they walked to the jet, leaving Logan to say goodbye to Grace.

Standing on the tarmac, Logan kissed her goodbye. “You'll still be here when I get back?”

“Yes, of course,” Grace said with a smile. “I still have a few weeks of work to do before I have to go back to Minnesota.”

“Good. I'll see you in a few days, then.” He kissed her again, then turned and walked away.

“Have a good trip,” Grace called.

“Hell,” he muttered. A glance at the plane and his twin standing in the open doorway watching him reminded Logan that he still hadn't asked Grace about the stupid note. And if he didn't, Aidan would rag his ass for the next three days. He turned back to her. “I keep forgetting to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

“You passed a note to Sally the other night in the bar. What did it say?”

She flinched and her face turned pale. “You saw that?”

“Yeah,” he said, warily watching her reaction to what should've been a simple question. “What was in that note?”

Grace turned around and grabbed the limo's door handle, trying to escape. “I don't have to tell you.”

“Grace,” he said, reaching for her, “do you have something to hide from me?”

She glared at him. “Well, of course I do. And you have
things to hide from me. People have their secrets. It's human nature.”

“What was in the note, Grace?” he asked, his tone deadly quiet.

Her jaw was set in a stubborn scowl and as much as she tried to hold to her convictions, Logan continued to stare her down. Finally, she broke, and exhaled heavily. “Fine. I gave her directions. Are you happy?”

“Directions to what?” he shouted. “Her G-spot?”

“Oh, for God's sake, Logan,” she said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “Sally doesn't need help finding her G-spot.”

Oh, he so didn't need to know that about his soon-to-be new mother. “Then what? Just tell me.”

She huffed and puffed and fumed, and Logan had the strongest urge to kiss her senseless. But first he needed to know the truth.

She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. “She wanted directions to the hot springs. There, are you happy?”

Seriously? The hot springs? That was the big secret? Logan frowned at that. “Why would she want to go there?”

“You're kidding, right?” Grace rolled her eyes, then slapped her hands on her hips and said, “She wanted to take your father there, but she didn't want anyone else to know that they were sneaking off to have wild jungle sex.”

“Oh, no, no, no.” Logan stumbled back a half step, pretty certain that his own face had grown pale, too. Grace had just painted a picture in his mind that he would've been perfectly happy never to have seen in his entire life.

And if not for Aidan bugging him to find out, he never would have. It would be his pleasure to share that horrifying mental image with his twin.

“And don't you dare tell her I told you,” Grace said, her voice stinging with aggravation.

“I won't, don't worry. In fact, I'm going to do everything I can to forget you ever told me.” He stared at her for another ten seconds, then began to chuckle. “Jesus, Grace.” He laughed out loud, then yanked her close and planted a hot, wet kiss on her lips. “God, I'm going to miss you.”

She pressed her palm against his chest. “I'll miss you, too, Logan.”

He gave her one more hard, fast kiss, then turned and jogged to the plane. Still laughing, he climbed the stairs, then spun around and waved goodbye one last time.

G
race was a pathetic mess. She missed Logan terribly, and he'd only been gone one day. What in the world would she do once she was back home in Minnesota? Once she left Alleria, she would never see Logan again. So wasn't it about time she pulled herself together and figured out the best way to deal with the pain?

But a long, sleepless night wasn't the way to get used to anything. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Logan. A tight ball of misery lodged in the pit of her stomach, reminding her with every breath that this was just the beginning. That leaving Logan would be the hardest thing she had ever done.

By morning, she was exhausted and feeling sorry for herself, so she spent several hours in the rain forest, hiking and searching for more spore sites. But even her research couldn't fill the void that was building inside her. That
evening, she worked tirelessly in the cocktail lounge and even stayed an extra hour later to help the others.

She loved the camaraderie among the waiters and bartenders and busboys. Sometimes she wished she could just go and be a waitress because the people were so much more fun than academics. Sad but true.

But even though she wished she could stay on the island forever, she knew she needed to get back to the laboratory. She had important work to do there. Besides, this wasn't her world. Was it? She'd lived her entire life in academia. Could she honestly leave it all behind? Could she really see herself living here in paradise?

“Oh, dear,” she whispered, and tried to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat as she watched Dee laugh at something Joey said. She thought of Logan and all the nights he'd stood at the end of the bar waiting for her. And that's when it struck her that she really could live here forever. And the realization scared her to death.

Working all these long hours had done little to take her mind off missing Logan. It didn't help that tonight everyone was talking about the possibility of a tropical storm off the coast of South America turning into a hurricane as it headed north toward Alleria. She didn't want to be in a hurricane without Logan.

The very notion of riding out a hurricane was terrifying to her, but some of the staff were taking it in stride. They had experienced severe storms and hurricanes in the past and were confident that Logan's hotel was so well built that it could withstand the worst that Mother Nature could throw at it.

As Grace returned to the bar for another drink order, she noticed it had grown breezier in the lounge. The man
ager asked some of the men to close the casement windows along the outer perimeter of the room so the guests would be more comfortable.

“It's so chilly tonight,” Dee said, rubbing her arms as they waited together at the bar for their orders. “And I've got a jacket on.”

“I wish I had my sweater,” Grace said after noticing that several of the waitresses were covered up. Dee's denim jacket looked cute over her sarong.

“Why don't you run and get it?” Dee said. “I'll watch your tables for a few minutes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. If you're sticking around to help us, we don't want you freezing to death.”

“Okay, I'll hurry back.”

“No worries.”

Grace left the bar and started walking back to her room, but remembered she'd left her pink sweater in Logan's suite the other night. He'd recently given her a copy of his key card to use when she worked late, so she hurried over to his side of the hotel and used the card to slip inside.

She switched on the light, glanced around the room and saw her sweater on the chair near his desk. She grabbed it, then noticed the thick set of architectural drawings spread out on his desk.

Her curiosity was piqued and she rounded the desk to see what they were. Grace had never seen blueprints before and appreciated the architectural precision of the lines and angles. She smiled as she realized that these were the plans for the sports center Logan and his brother were going to build. He was excited about creating a destination for sports enthusiasts here on Alleria and had described it in detail. That was the reason he'd gone to New York, to meet with the investors and finalize these plans.

Studying the blueprints made her feel closer to Logan somehow. She knew he had studied the same drawings and probably pictured the finished creation in his mind. She tried to do that as she gazed at all the little side drawings and various site descriptions.

And that's when she saw it: the map and description of the location of the gigantic sports complex in relationship to the hotel. North side. Adjacent. Palmetto grove.

“No,” she whispered.

She walked around the desk, certain at first that she was interpreting the drawings all wrong. But she wasn't a dummy, and after ten minutes of studying every sheet in the stack, she knew she had been betrayed. He had lied to her. Okay, he hadn't lied exactly, but he'd clearly avoided telling her the truth as he let her gather her spores and talk about the importance of her research, all the while knowing that he planned to pave over the whole site.

Logan and his brother had every intention of building their sports center directly on top of the land where the spores grew.

She backed away from the desk. Maybe there was some mistake. But she knew there wasn't. So why hadn't Logan said something to her? He knew how important her research was. Had he simply been using sex as a way of distracting her from his plans for eradicating the very spores she'd come there to study?

Or maybe he'd simply been carrying out what he'd promised her from the very beginning. He'd wanted her off the island and he would do whatever it took to get rid of her.

Oh, but that was ridiculous. This wasn't personal. It wasn't about her. It wasn't about her spores. It was just the way businessmen conducted business. Destroy a few billion spores to build a few tennis courts? Sure, if that's
what made money. Never mind the possibility of curing disease and saving lives.

“Oh, God.” Not only would this plan eviscerate the spores but it would destroy the foundation of her life's work. Her funding would dry up and there would be no possibility of continuing her research.

“Stop,” she cried. She needed to calm down and think instead of going crazy. Of course there would still be spores. Logan wouldn't destroy the entire rain forest, for goodness' sake. But the fact remained that he knew how important it was to Grace that the palm trees and their spores be kept safe and intact. And he'd blithely decided to destroy a large swath of it.

“How could he do it?” she mumbled over and over. And how could she have trusted him? That question was more easily answered than the first. She was simply a dimwitted woman who'd fallen in love with a man who didn't respect her or her life or her goals.

With a sharp cry, she ran from Logan's suite and headed for her own. Friends smiled and tried to talk to her as she passed, but Grace hardly saw them. Her mind was churning, her vision blurry with unshed tears and her heart was heavy with a pain she wasn't sure she could survive.

She ran inside her room and slammed the door shut. Then she crawled onto the bed, shivering in humiliation.

She might've lain there for a few minutes or a few hours, she would never be sure. Finally, she stumbled across the room and fumbled in her purse for her cell phone. Stabbing the buttons, she called her friend and mentor, Phillippa, and prayed that she would pick up before it went to voice mail.

“Grace, is that you? It's so late. What's going on?”

Grace quickly explained the situation and was gratified when Phillippa blurted an expletive.

“Why, that lousy spore killer,” she said stoutly, and Grace could picture Phillippa's glasses sliding down her nose. “How could he do this to you? Were you aware that he was so environmentally unfriendly?”

Maybe he was, but despite everything, Grace couldn't bear to hear any criticism of Logan. She just wanted to save the spores. “Do you know how to stop him?”

“Oh, yeah,” Phillippa said. “It's called an injunctive order and we're going to slap it on him so hard, he won't know what hit him.”

Before she hung up, Phillippa took a minute to warn Grace that Walter's funding had come through. Grace slid down onto the chair, unable to speak. Yes, she would go back and face the grant committee and tell them how he had lied. And she would present them with her own latest findings based on her new collection of super spores. But still, how could the committee have fallen for Walter's lies? How could they have awarded him one cent?

It was a double blow. Now she'd been betrayed on two fronts. She could care less about Walter, but she hated to go back to the university and face all those sympathetic stares. But that would be a piece of cake compared to the way she would feel if she stayed on the island. There was no way she could face Logan after finding out he'd been playing her for a fool all this time. Walter's lies were nothing compared to Logan's betrayal. She'd thought he was different and it hurt to know how very wrong she'd been. So much for all that intelligence she was so famous for.

With a bitter sigh, she pulled her bags out of the closet and began to pack. It was difficult because her eyes were blurry from the tears she didn't seem able to stop.

There was a knock on the door.

For one second she thought it might be Logan. Then her brain cleared. He was still in New York arranging for the
money to kill her career. That would take him another day or two at least. Without even realizing it, anger began to film over some of her pain as she hurried to the door and opened it.

“Oh, Dee,” she cried. “I'm so sorry.”

“Gracie, you never came back to—” Dee stopped and glanced around the room.

Grace realized it looked like the hurricane had already struck. “I'm packing. I need to go home.”

“What's going on?”

“Nothing,” she said, then realized how absurd that sounded, even to her. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she told Dee the whole story.

“It just doesn't sound like Logan,” Dee murmured, shaking her head.

“I didn't think so, either,” Grace said miserably. “But I saw the plans myself, Dee. There's no mistake.”

Dee pulled her close for a hug. “I hate that you're leaving, Gracie, but I understand. It's no more than he deserves, the lying rat-dog. I'm sorry he hurt you.”

“Me, too.”

“Will you call?” Dee asked, standing up and stepping back. “Let me know you're okay? I mean, just because you're leaving doesn't mean we can't still be friends, right?”

One bright spot in a completely hideous day, Grace thought, and hugged Dee fiercely. “Thank you! I will call. I promise.”

After Dee left, Grace continued packing. When she was finished, she called the concierge to ask about flights. That brought on another dismal round of tears. She'd grown to love it here. She loved her friends and her job and the palm trees and the rain forest and the beach and her poor little spores.

And she loved Logan.

In spite of what he'd done, she'd fallen in love with him. And while that meant she had to be the biggest twit in the universe, she loved him and knew she always would. And the fact that he was never going to be hers brought another sharp pain to her chest.

She spent a long night staring out the window at the ebbing storm, and early the next morning, Grace left a polite note for Logan with the concierge, then took the first flight off the island.

 

The jet reached cruising altitude and Logan stretched his legs out on the seat facing him. The meetings were over, the investors' checks were deposited, and the Alleria sports center would soon be a reality. Eleanor walked into the cabin and handed Logan and Aidan each a glass of champagne.

“Thanks, Ellie.”

The mood was festive as they toasted to their success and drank down the cold, bubbly liquid.

“That's good,” Aidan murmured, grinning. “We did good.”

“Yeah, we did good,” Logan said.

Ellie giggled. “Life is good.”

They all laughed, then Logan said, “Man, I can't wait to see Grace.”

“What?” Aidan twisted around to stare at him.

“Aww,” Ellie said, and smiled warmly at him.

Logan frowned. “Did I say that out loud?”

“Yeah, you did.”

He glanced from Ellie to Aidan. “Huh.”

“Ah, hell,” Aidan said in disgust. “Now you've done it.”

“Done what?”

“You've gone and fallen in love with her.”

“Don't be—” He started to protest automatically, then stopped. And thought about it. Hard.

Love.
Just saying the word in his head didn't strike the same raw nerve it had in the past. Did that mean it was true? Was he in love with Grace? The idea didn't rankle him as it had in the past. In fact, it made him smile.

Ever since he'd talked to Brandon out on the beach, Logan had been thinking about things. The past. The future. Love and life. Risk. Trust.

He'd spent half of his life fearing to trust in love. He'd talked himself into marrying Tanya, thinking he should give love a try. But he'd never loved her. The fact that she'd cheated on him was as good an excuse as any to never try again.

But these few days away from Grace had made him realize how much he wanted to try. The thing was, his world felt empty without her. He couldn't wait to get home to see her. He wanted to know how she'd spent her days, wanted to hear what was new with the spores.

It was staggering to realize that he'd actually fallen in love for the first and last time in his life.

He tested the words over and over again in his mind and when he was certain that he wasn't going to be struck by lightning, he decided to say them aloud.

“I'm in love with her.”

Aidan buried his head in his hands.

 

As they climbed down the stairs and stepped onto the tarmac, Aidan slung his arm around Logan's shoulder and said, “Wonder if Dad and Sally are in some hot tub in San Francisco right now…how did Gracie put it? ‘Having hot jungle sex'?”