Logan's Calling (3 page)

She pulled away from him, wiping her eyes. 'I'm sorry, you must think I'm crazy. Way to make a first impression on my neighbor.'

'No, not at all.' He already missed the feel of her, the need to be comforted that she had shown him. 'I'm sorry that this,' he scooped up the package from the floor, 'upset you so much. If I'd known, I would have got my gun and run the delivery boy off my porch and told him never to come back.'

She smiled but she didn't take the package from him. 'Would you like a drink, Logan? I have iced tea or soda or something stronger.' 

'Iced tea would be fine.'

She turned and walked down the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house and Logan followed. Her house was laid out exactly the same as his but the decor was entirely different. Where he had bare walls she had framed photographs of people he assumed were her family. There were photos of Sarah and a younger girl hr presumed to be her sister and their parents at a lake, at the Grand Canyon, in a house that wasn't this one and was probably the place she grew up.

The kitchen was much the same as his except that Sarah had painted her walls light green and hung cute rustic pictures of pigs and chickens. On the window sill sat a row of potted cacti. She also had a large wooden table to eat at where Logan ate all his food in front of the TV. Even though he sometimes liked to cook to while away the hours, his kitchen was bare except for a simple clock hanging on one wall.

A chopping board sat on the counter by the sink and arranged around it sat peppers, mushrooms and onions. The smells made Logan's mouth water. He hadn't eaten all day.

'I was just prepping an omelette for later,' Sarah said. She fished in the refrigerator and came out with iced tea, pouring a glass for herself and Logan.

'Shall I just leave this on here?' he asked, setting the parcel on the kitchen table.

She looked at it and took a deep breath as if psyching herself up for something. 'Would you do me a really big favor?'

'Sure, what is it?'

'Would you open that for me?'

He shrugged. 'Okay.' He picked up the package again. 'It's from a J Frazier at Lakeside Road...'

'I know who it's from.' She stood against the counter, both hands gripping the edge tightly as if bracing herself for something.

Logan tore at the brown paper wrapping and let the ripped paper fall to the table. Inside was a black box. 'You want me to open this?'

She nodded slowly, her beautiful blue eyes wide.

Logan lifted the top half of the box away and frowned. Inside was a locket exactly the same as the one dangling from Sarah's neck. A silver filigree heart on a long silver chain. He lifted it to show her but as soon as she saw it she let out a heartfelt sob and leaned against the counter as if she were going to collapse.

Logan threw the locket onto the table and went to Sarah, holding her again.

And this time as she pressed her face against his chest and fisted handfuls of his t-shirt desperately, she sobbed, 'My sister. They have my sister.'

CHAPTER THREE

Help

'Oh God, I'm so sorry, Logan,' she said when the tears had subsided, 'you don't need to be involved in this.' She had been crying for thirty minutes and after saying, 'They have my sister,' she had simply sobbed against Logan's chest saying nothing more. He had let her cry and had simply held her, unquestioning and supportive while she let out her grief. He had no idea what was going on except that she was hurting and he was here to hold her. He wasn't going to push her to tell him what she meant about her sister or why the locket had upset her so much and he knew that she would tell him in her own time.

'Do you want to talk about it?' he offered.

She wiped the tears from her face and nodded. 'Sure but I could use a stiffer drink than iced tea if I'm going to talk about this. How about you?'

He nodded. 'I'll take a Jack on the rocks if you have it.' 

'Let's go sit in the living room.' She led him into her living room which had much more plush furnishings than his own. Two sofas and a leather armchair in front of a glass coffee table, bookshelves lining one wall with a selection of Romance novels along with ornaments and more family pictures. Her TV was in the same spot as Logan's although she didn't have a stack of DVDs alongside it. On the wall where Logan had his New Orleans paintings, Sarah had blown up black and white photos of the forests and lakes in Algonquin Park. 

'Very nice,' he said, admiring the photography.

'I took them myself.'

One picture showed a large wolf padding out of the pines toward the edge of a lake. It was a night shot, a silvery half moon illuminating the scene, and Logan wondered how dedicated someone would have to be to go into the woods at night to snap a photo like that.  'Wow, a wolf. I'm impressed.'

'That's a
Canis Lycaon
, an Eastern Canadian Wolf. The camera is the tool of my trade so I'm used to waiting patiently for just the right shot.' She opened a dark wood cabinet, revealing a mini bar inside and poured two shot glasses of Jack. 'I'll go get the ice. Back in a second.' 

As she left the room, Logan asked, 'Are you a professional photographer?'

'No,' she shouted back from the kitchen, 'I'm a private detective.'

He didn't know how to answer that so he stood looking at the wolf photo in silence, letting this information sink in. He had been totally wrong about her, assuming she worked in an office job for some big company. She was a private eye? He never would have guessed that in a million years. The soft vulnerability he sensed around her didn't lend itself to a hard profession like that.

She returned and handed him a glass, the ice chinking as it floated in the dark amber liquid. Sarah took a seat on the sofa and placed the box with the locket inside on the glass table. Logan took the armchair. He wanted to sit next to her but he had made more progress with her than he had with another human being in the past few years and he didn't want to ruin it by going too fast too soon. Sarah probably didn't even realize what a big thing this was for him, to be here outside of his own house and talking with another person. He didn't even feel uncomfortable and she hadn't mentioned his scars even once or offered him that pity stare he couldn't stand.

'A private detective,' Logan said, 'I never would have guessed.'

'I kind of fell into it, really. You won't have heard of the Cooper Detective Agency.'

'Here in Hope?'

She shook her head. 'It's in Toronto. My dad owns the business. He was a cop but he had to retire early after he fell off a building while he was chasing a drug dealer. His leg got busted up and he had to walk with a stick ever since. He started the detective agency when I was still in high school and I worked there after classes and on weekends.'

'That sounds very Veronica Mars.'

She smiled. 'It was. I got a feel for the cases and I started helping him more and more. I became a full detective in the firm, handling the cases my dad couldn't deal with because of his injury. When my younger sister Amy graduated, she came to work for us too.'

Logan nodded. Not only was Sarah gorgeous, she was smart too. It made him wish even more that he was the person he used to be. If he was the old Logan - strong, alert, unscarred - he might be the type of man a woman like Sarah Cooper would want in her bed at night. She was a perfect match for the man he once was, the Logan who served in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger sniper and seemed fearless in the face of danger. Now he was just a pale shadow of that man. Living in a different country, a different life. 

'A couple of years ago, Amy had a relationship with a man named Jensen Frazier. He owned a rival detective firm called JF Investigations. My dad didn't like him at all and at first I thought that was because of the business competition thing but whenI met Jensen I took a dislike to him too. I couldn't put my finger on what it was but I really couldn't stand to be around the guy. 

'Amy was smitten. Frazier was her first serious boyfriend and she obviously couldn't detect the same thing Dad and I felt about him.'

Logan watched Sarah closely as she spoke. She was so fucking gorgeous. The familiar lust for her knotted his gut like a clenched fist. He took a sip of Jack to distract himself but the liquor burned at his throat, making him feel like his insides were on fire and the only way he could douse the flames was to move over to the sofa, take Sarah in his arms and lay her down on her back while he clambered on top of her. Fucking hell, stop thinking these thoughts. I can't. No one has ever affected me in the way Sarah does.

He felt hot, giddy. 

'Are you okay, Logan?' 

He closed his eyes and nodded. 'Just hot is all.' He needed to get back home, to safety. But even if he made a move for the front door right now, he doubted his legs would carry him all the way before giving up and making him collapse to the floor. He couldn't tear himself away from Sarah. He let out a long exhale and held the cool shot glass to his forehead, rolling it over his flesh and letting the tiny beads of condensation cool him a little.

'It is hot,' Sarah said, getting up. 'I'll adjust the AC.' She breezed past him and he felt like his sense were heightened for a moment. The swish of her slacks sounded incredibly loud in his ears and the smell of her peach shampoo and perfume sent the receptors in his nose into overdrive. Beneath those fragrances he could detect something else, something subtle but undeniably present. The scent of arousal. Sarah's arousal. It hit his nose like a ten ton truck and drove him wild with longing. 

She reached up to the thermostat on the wall and adjusted the dial. Logan watched the curve of her buttocks beneath the gray slacks. The way her rounded flesh pressed against the fabric, the indent between her cheeks visible, it was like an invitation. Like an invitation to mount her. 

Fucking hell he had to stop this. He was so hard right now that he felt like his cock would rip through the denim of his jeans.

She lingered a little too long at the AC controller and he was sure she pushed her hips out a little, almost imperceptibly, displaying her ass to him. 

He wanted to go up there behind here and place his hands on her hips, pulling him back so her ass touched the hard bulge in his jeans. She would groan at the feel of his hardness and grind herself against him, her softness driving him crazy. He would pull the slacks down, along with her panties and unbuckle his belt with excited, trembling hands...

She returned to the sofa, this time going around the other side of the coffee table and not coming so close to him. Did she know what was going through his mind? Had she sensed the pervert within? The man who watched her through her window while he jacked himself off? No, she couldn't know. He had always been careful to avoid being seen. Besides, the things he was thinking about doing with her didn't seem perverted. They seemed...natural. Like it was meant to happen.

Yeah, right. Wishful fucking thinking.

'You were telling me about Jensen Frazier and your sister,' he prompted her to avoid the awkward thoughts running through his head.

Sarah took a sip of Jack and nodded. 'Logan, are you sure you want to hear all of this? Seeing the locket upset me and I'm sorry I cried on your shoulder.'

'Hey, there's no need to apologize for that. Ever.'

'I just don't think it would be right to drag you into my problems. They're my problems and I need to deal with them. Thank you for bringing the package round but your work here is done.' She smiled but he could see in her eyes that she needed help. Damn if he was going to leave her to deal with this on her own.

'Sarah, you're not dragging me into anything. I'm here of my own free will and you probably don't know how much courage it took for me to come around here in the first place. I don't... I don't get out much. But now I'm here and I can see you have a problem and if I can, I want to help you.'

She took another sip of her drink. 'But you barely know me. Why would you want to help me?'

'Isn't that the neighborly thing to do?' He grinned at her. It felt good to communicate with another person like this. It had been too long, Too damn long. The self-imposed prison he had built for himself next door might be there for self-protection but the life he lived there was barely a life at all. Just being in a different environment made all his senses come alive.

Sarah nodded slowly and smiled. That smile melted his heart. There was no way he wasn't going to protect this woman. No way. 

'I'll tell you the rest of what happened,' she said, 'but I'm not asking for your help. I understand that this is nothing to do with you.'

She was wrong there. If she was in trouble, it was plenty to do with him. No rhyme or reason, that was just the way it was. He knew from the moment that he saw Sarah standing on the sidewalk outside her house the day she arrived in Hope that if she was ever in any kind of trouble, he would be there. It went way beyond sexual attraction and was a knowledge deep inside himself that he would do anything for her.

'Frazier and Amy saw a lot of each other and eventually moved in together. I warned her against it. There were things Amy needed to keep from Jensen. She couldn't do that if she lived with him. I begged her to leave him because she was putting herself and me in danger. She didn't listen. She left our firm and went to work with JF Investigations. We didn't hear from her at all. Even on special occasions like our parents' birthdays, or my birthday, or Christmas we wouldn't hear anything at all from her.'

'Back up a little,' Logan said, 'how could her living with this guy put
you
in danger?'

She looked down into her glass and bit her lip. 'I can't explain that right now.'

He shrugged. 'Okay, tell it at your own pace.'