Logan's Woman (14 page)

Logan brought her back to the showcase that had
held her ring. Her eyes lit on it, despite herself. It was simple
but beautiful, perfect. The other rings might be extravagant, but
she much preferred this one over the rest.

“I think you found one you like,” he commented,
amused. Claire looked away, guilty at being caught, and
shrugged.

“They’re all nice,” she said disparagingly,
turning around to look at him. She hoped he didn’t
notice.

She looped her arms around his shoulders,
shocked at her boldness. By the sudden heat that entered his eyes,
though, she could tell he didn’t mind. Well of course he didn’t,
she thought. He had asked her to marry him, after all.

He leaned down, his lips almost touching
hers.

“But I think you found one
you
really
like.
Which one is it, Claire?” His voice was dark, matching his eyes. He
leaned even closer to her, brushing their lips together. Her legs
started to shake.

“Can’t we find one...later?” she asked, knowing
that touching him was a bad idea. The effect he had on her...
Claire shuddered. Why was it so intense?

“No, we do it now.”

Claire was desperate to buy some time. “Ahh...”
She closed her eyes, trying to think. Then an idea struck her -- a
really good one, too.

“I know!” she said, pulling back from him. He
growled, tightening his arms around her. “How about this -- if you
can guess the ring I want, I’ll agree to marry you.” Never in a
million years would he guess it, she thought, pleased with
herself.

“That easily?” he asked, chuckling.

She nodded, grinning.

“Alright. Well, you look at them and
I’ll...”

“Ah-ah-aaaahh!” she sang,
very
pleased with herself.
“I’m going to look at pillows and
you
are going to pick out the
ring!”

“Claire, that isn’t fair at all,” he
growled, even as he loosened his hold on her. “If I find it,
you
promise
to say
yes and willingly marry me?”

“Yep! Have fun, Logan,” she trilled, almost
skipping out of the doorway and to store two doors down.

Logan stood still has Claire ran out
of the jewelry store.
Great
, he thought darkly, turning back
to the showcase. The diamonds glittered in their velvet bed. There
were too many to pick from, but one of them called his
attention.

Still, he didn’t know which one to pick. He’d
seen her standing there when they’d first come in. She’d moved away
quickly, though, as if feeling guilty. He grinned. So it was an
expensive one.

He looked into the case again, closer. There
were two... He knew that Claire was serious about picking the right
ring. It was one of those two. Something told him so.

Groaning and rubbing his forehead, he leaned
into the glass and stared, getting ready for a long-ass talk with
himself on how to find the perfect ring. All of his military
training left him. Right then, it was between him and those two
rings.

Avery walked into the shop, the first thing
hitting her the strong smell of plastic, cotton, and air
fresheners.

She knew it was the perfect thing to
get Logan off her back about marrying him. He wouldn’t be able to
find the ring and then she wouldn’t feel so bad about flat-out
saying no. Of course, if he
did
somehow find it...she would have to seel the deal.
Her stomach clenched at the thought.

It wasn’t marrying Logan that had
her so against it. She would
love
to be his -- but not if he didn’t love her, which
he clearly didn’t. Even she wasn’t stupid enough to call what she
felt for him “love”. Lust, maybe. Desire for sure. But...definitely
not love. She’d only known him for near a month. That was way too
short of time to do any real bonding...right?

Even so, whenever he looked at
her...her heart pounding. Her cheeks heated up. Her body burned
with desire. And she knew he felt the same. She shook her head at
herself. It didn’t matter. Eventually, she would have to leave --
and she
knew
Logan
wouldn’t be able to find the right ring. It wasn’t extravagant or
eye catching, so it would go unnoticed by him.

She fingered the plastic wrapping of a random
pillow, walking along the aisles and picking her way through
everything.

Her thoughts drifted until she heard the jingle
of the bell, signalling someone’s entrance. She looked up, seeing
Logan.

He gave her a heart-stopping smile before
taking her hand, pulling her into his body, and kissing her deeply
on the mouth.

“Time to take you home,” he said,
bending down again to kiss her. Feeling light-headed and
very
breathless, Claire
nodded...until she remembered something.

“The ring?”

He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “When we
get home.”

“But why not right now?” she asked, leaning
into his hand despite herself.

“Because I want to do it privately, where I can
kiss the living daylights out of you when you say yes without
people staring.”

Claire looked at him doubtfully. “You couldn't
have found it!”

“I did,” he said, grinning.

Something in his gaze told her that he
definitely had.

Her heart almost jumped out of her mouth. “Oh,
lord...”

Chapter 13

“You really think you got the right
one?” she asked nervously, sitting beside him in his pick-up as he
drove back to the ranch. Logan gave her a fleeting, confident look
-- she almost melted right there. Every moment she spent with him
only got better and better, and every time it got better it made
her realize how much she’d never been around a real
man
before.

Logan was, in all honesty, her
first.

She didn’t know if that was a good
thing or a bad thing, though. Was she acting like a teenager?
Getting all hyped up and doe-eyed just because the hot guy was
paying attention to her? Or was this as natural as it felt like --
like this was
meant
to be. She scrubbed a hand over her face, too confused to sort
out her thoughts.

Claire liked Logan.

She really, really liked him. Just
two days ago he’d asked her to marry him. Irrational, out of the
blue, yet totally heart-stopping, he’d done a complete one-eighty
from when he’d been ignoring her to be with Madison. He’d calmed
her after her panic attack, had made her feel like a real
woman
, and set her body on
fire like nothing else could have. It was different -- new. But she
knew that if she had the choice, she wouldn’t change
anything.

For the first time, she actually felt safe.
Bone-deep, meltingly-happy safe. She could almost forget about the
election, the worry that someone would recognize her, her father.
All of it was at the back of her mind, with Logan at the
forefront.

“I know I did,” he said arrogantly, a smirk on
his rough, dark features.

She nodded, unconvinced. Even though
she had a small, secret fear that he
had
picked the right ring, he couldn’t
possibly have...

“Can’t you just show me right now?” she asked
anxiously, biting a nail. She lifted her legs up to her chest and
looked at him with big eyes.

“No. You have to wait until we get home. A
nice, fine dinner...candle light, perfectly cooked chicken,
dessert...” he trailed off, noticing her horrified look.

“Logan,” she gasped. “I can’t refuse your
proposal after something like that! Do you know how much of a
monster I would be?”

“Ah, but you promised that if I got the right
ring, you would willingly marry me.”

“Well -- yes, but... You didn’t find the right
one,” she said, faltering. She pulled her finger out of her mouth
and glared at him, lips turning into a frown.

“Yes I did. So this proposal is going to be
perfect -- and it’s perfectly fine if you cry with happiness,” he
teased, knuckling her under her chin. She sniffed, turning her face
away from him.

“You barely know me. Why on earth
would you even...want to go through with this? And -- and I barely
know anything about
you
,” she gasped, eyes going wide. “For all I know, I could be
engaged to a psychopath!”

“Tonight, over dinner, I’ll answer anything you
want to know,” he promised, turning onto the gravel road that led
to his house. “But I’m going to ask the same of you.”

“You already know everything you need to,” she
muttered defensively. What would he do when he realized she was
nothing but a spoiled, little rich-girl that wasn’t good for
anything except being a social butterfly? Her father had never let
her have fun. She’d done college, done parties for her father, been
introduced to the political world at an early age -- and what was
that doing for her now?

Her shoulders curled. She could cook the best
meals, fake the nicest conversations, get along with anyone that
was thrown in front of her -- but real life? Ranch life? Doing
normal, every-day things? Logan would be marrying the equivalent of
a rock.

Feeling deflated, Claire didn’t respond back to
him but stared out the window. In only a couple of minutes, they
were pulling up his sweeping driveway and parking...behind three
black Tahoes.

She looked at Logan, questioning. She’d noticed
that people other than his ranch-hands rarely came to his house.
They’d definitely not parked in his driveway before. “Do you know
who that is?” she asked, watching his face turn blank, almost
expressionless.

He got out of the car, coming around and
opening her door for her. Feeling worried, she took his hand and
followed him to the door, where he opened it without
pause.

She heard several loud voices all talking at
once.

Logan looked at her before they rounded the
corner and entered the kitchen.

She came to a dead stop.

There, standing around the kitchen
table, were four hulkingly huge men. They all had black hair, all
had tan skin, and
all
looked like they could eat her alive. She pulled her hand out
of Logan’s and ran from the room, eyes bulging, about to
puke.

Logan watched her run from the room, brows
drawn.

“That the girl?” one of the men asked. Logan
nodded and glared at each of them.

“Great timing,” he muttered, hating that he
would have to wait to show her the ring till later.

“We
are
known for showing up fashionably
late,” quipped another one of them.

“You mean,
you
are,” growled a third
man.

“No, I don’t think so. I remember that recital
that you agreed to do for your niece… Pansy-ass all dressed up in a
tutu, running down the center of the stage because we got in late
from our mission,” said the second man. Logan rolled his eyes,
sitting across from at one of the high-stools that was placed on
under the table.

Two of the men chuckled.

“Don’t fight. You already scared her off,” he
said, trying not to laugh. These men had been in his group since
the very beginning. He trusted them with his life – but he wouldn’t
trust them in an argument. They got pretty nasty sometimes and
Claire had already run from the room, green in the face. “Where are
you guys setting up?”

“We already have our stuff in the basement.
Staying at a hotel would be too far out to get here in time if
anything happened. Plus, I bet you have better food than they
do.”

“Doubtful.” He heard some soft patters from
upstairs and assumed it was Claire running around. He could see her
up there, running around in circles like a chicken with her head
cut off, still freaking out. He chuckled mentally. “So how are you
guys doing?”

The four men were giants.

Blake, Luke, Eric, and Nathan. They were all
brothers, so they had similar dark looks yet completely different
personalities. Logan had almost grown up with them -- in the
military. They’d seen things, done things, and heard things that no
one else had before. They were their own group of brothers, even if
Logan had dropped out of service.

“Doing good,” Blake answered, picking up an
apple from the center-piece bowl and taking a crunching
bite.

“How’s Kale doing?” Kale was the general
coordinator of their division. Logan had been right under him in
the authority department.

“As jacked up as ever,” Luke said, glaring at
apple that Blake held. The man could eat a whole cow -- Logan had
seen it happen with his own eyes. Luke always told him he was going
to turn into a fat, unfit couch potato because of the amount that
he could eat.