One Night With You (3 page)

“What kind of fucked-up joke is this?”

Now Will shoved off the doorjamb and gave Logan a look that made him feel about thirteen years old. Graying black brows dropped low over eyes that were the same misty gray as Bo’s. “You have a problem, son?”

Logan closed his eyes and made himself take a deep breath. “Did she say where she was going?”

The hard glint was still in Will’s eyes but he relaxed back against the door. “Milan, I think. Someplace in Italy,” Will said. He shrugged. “Tore her room apart looking for her passport.”

“Milan.”

Milan
?
“
You let her go to Milan
?”

Will narrowed his eyes. “Logan, I don’t much care for your attitude right now. Bo’s a big girl. Legally, I have no say over whether or not she decides to take off to Milan. She can go to Tokyo. She can go to Australia.”

“She’s practically a kid.”
Hypocrite
—
you weren
’
t screwing a kid last night
.

With a shake of his head, Will said, “Bo hasn’t been a kid for a long, long time, Logan. You and I both know that.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his head. Then he studied Logan thoughtfully. “Between you and me…no, I don’t like my baby trotting over to parts unknown. But it’s her choice. She had a call a few days ago. The job in Milan opened up unexpectedly and somebody gave her name. It’s a big opportunity for her. She only had a few days to decide and when she decided to go, I wasn’t going to tell her to pass it up. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

Big opportunity
,
my ass
. She’d run from him. That’s all there was to it.
Slowly, carefully, Logan took another deep breath. “I need to talk to her.”

Will just grunted. “She’s supposed to call tomorrow. I’ll let her know.”

But Bo didn’t call. Even later, he barely got a chance to speak to her. Oh, he tried. She didn’t return his calls. He called her and she either didn’t answer or rushed off the phone before he managed more than, “Hi.” Okay, maybe he didn’t actually say,
Hi
. The first time he’d demanded she get her ass back home.

The second time he’d tried to make some sort of apology but he was pretty sure he’d ended up yelling then too. He had figured he’d wait until Christmas. She’d come home for Christmas. She wouldn’t leave her dad alone for Christmas.

And she hadn’t. But it turned out that she talked Will into flying to her for Christmas. Logan had tried calling again. She’d hung up on him again. He had written her. Sometimes the letters had come back. Sometimes they hadn’t. But she’d never answered.

The days stretched out into weeks and months and by the time Bo finally stopped running, nearly four years had passed.

Chapter Two

Four years later

Logan Wallace was a patient man.

Always had been.

Hell, patient didn’t even begin to describe him. He figured as far as patience was concerned, he ought to rank right up there with the saints. He was content to sit back and wait—watching and debating every little step he took in life. Damn near everything in life could be gotten if one was patient enough. That was what Logan had always believed.

Unfortunately, though, his patience was about ready to bite him on the ass.

Bo’s sudden return home six months ago had come at a seriously bad time for him. She could have come home at any time during the past four years but she had picked a time when he was in the middle of a very ugly undercover case. It had him working nineteen hours a day so he’d decided to wait until he could actually focus completely on her instead of the meth-dealing bastards he was investigating. Working the case from the inside, he was able to make it home maybe once a week or so. Hell, Bo had been home two weeks before he’d even known.

It had taken two precious months to close that case. After everything had been tied up he was finally free to pursue Bo. He’d made a few overtures, called her, gone by to see her but she had retreated each and every time. Even though he’d been pissed off and frustrated, part of him understood. He’d moved too fast last time. Regaining the ground he’d lost was going to take time.

So he had waited, willing to give her all the time she needed after how badly he’d messed up before. But that bad call was going to cost him everything, because during that time Bo had started dating his damn cousin.

And now they were getting married? Who in hell got married after a three-month engagement? And they’d only dated for two months before that.

Married
!
Bo was getting
married
!

Son of a bitch. Married to Logan’s cousin. David McNear had always had a thing for Bo. Logan had known that. Hell, half the men in the county had a thing for her. But Logan had also known that Bo was
his
. He’d waited for her. He’d bided his time. Six years older than she, he had sat back and watched as she’d gone from coltish teen to rebellious coed to sleek, sexy, svelte woman. And he had waited.

She was his, after all.

He’d known it the minute she had climbed out of her father’s truck when she had moved into the old ramshackle farmhouse across the road from his parents’ home. Logan had taken one look into those big, misty gray eyes and he’d known. He’d felt like a damn pervert for it too—in his sophomore year in college and drooling over a high school girl.

He had brooded every time she had batted her lashes at some high school punk and he had silently gritted his teeth through the three years she had been away at college in Chicago. Bo had graduated from high school a half year early. She’d also been taking college courses in high school so she had graduated from college a full year early.

That damn investigation. If it hadn’t been for that, he could have gone after Bo the minute she returned to Kentucky. Instead he had been forced to wait two long, awful months and that had given David the chance to work his way into Bo’s life.

“I’m going to kill the bastard.” Shit. What if David had touched her? Logan clenched his hands and fought the urge to plow his fist into a wall. If he killed David, it would make the next family get-together really tense.

Logic dictated that it wasn’t completely fair to blame David. David didn’t know how Logan felt about Bo. Hell,
Bo
didn’t know how Logan felt. She’d been running from him for close to four years now.

Since that night, their second date. The night he’d fucked her blind, marking her, binding her to him. Or so he had thought. But when he had gone to her the next day, she’d already left. Spent almost four years running around the globe. Milan, Tokyo, London. When Bo did something, she did it to the extreme. He knew that about her but he hadn’t expected her to run from him.

He still didn’t understand why she’d run, or really why she had been avoiding him. Each of her visits home had been quick and spur of the moment. Will never knew when to expect her. The few times he had seen her on those random visits, she was careful never to be alone with him. As often as possible, she’d avoided seeing him altogether.

She wouldn’t talk about that night. She acted like she’d rather that night had never happened and part of him wished it hadn’t, because now he had even less of her than before. Before, they’d been friends. Now?

Now, it felt like—nothing.

Logan had been terrified of rushing her again after how badly he had screwed up before. He’d wanted to give her time. He’d screwed up, after all, by moving too fast and scaring her away. If waiting was going to be the penance he had to pay in order to win her back, so be it.

All that time, Logan had waited so patiently—all those years while she was busy growing up, while she was in college—he’d waited all that time. But then when it was the most critical that he take care, he’d moved too fast and scared her away.

He didn’t think he had any other choice but to give her a little more time. He loved her more than he loved to breathe and he knew they belonged together. He could wait until she saw it. Even if it killed him. He’d been telling himself that ever since she had run away. It was the only way he stayed sane.

When she hooked up with David, just the thought of those two together had been enough to have him seeing red but he had kept it together because he
knew
Bo belonged with him and sooner or later, Bo would come to her senses. A few months, that was all it would take for Bo to see that David wasn’t right for her. A few months and she’d be bored out of her mind.

But he’d waited too long.

Instead of dropping David after a few months, she was marrying him.

“Bastard,” he muttered. David had been one of Logan’s best friends growing up. They were close and not just because they were related. But Logan wanted to pound his cousin into the ground.

Marrying
Bo. No. No fucking way.

Maybe Logan should have tried to talk some sense into her sooner. Like the second he’d seen that rock on her hand. But give a guy a break—he’d been in shock. What in hell was she thinking? Marrying David.
Shit.

Apparently a prolonged engagement was a load of bull too because in exactly two weeks, they were walking down the aisle at St. Paul’s and Logan was expected to be one of the groomsmen. “My ass.”

“You’re a moron.” The words echoed in the room and Logan wondered if he had gone and lost his mind over this. “You’re talking to yourself again.”

Logan glanced back and realized that Dustin was standing at the doorway to his office. It looked like his brother had been standing there a while. “Go away.”

“You going to keep standing there or go out and talk to her?”

Logan closed his eyes. He hadn’t told Dustin a damn thing about his feelings for Bo but then again, Dusty was his brother. They shared the same dark brown hair, though Dusty wore his long enough to pull it back in a stubby ponytail. They had the same long, rangy frame. Dusty’s eyes were a dreamy blue, surrounded with spiky lashes that had put him on the wrong end of serious teasing as he grew up. Half the time, Dusty seemed unaware of anything outside his horses and his land. But Dusty was a hell of a lot more aware than most people gave him credit for.

Dusty was sharp and too damn observant. The two of them knew each other as only brothers could. Logan didn’t have to say a thing to Dustin, because Dustin knew. Dustin probably always knew. Which meant Dustin was probably aware that Logan was losing it.

He turned around and leaned back against the wall. He sighed tiredly and rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s too late, Dusty.”

“Ain’t too late until she says ‘
I do
’,” Dustin said. Then he lifted a shoulder in a shrug and said, “But you’d better say something before then. Can’t believe you’ve let it go this far.”

Logan mumbled under his breath. He looked out the window. Out in the distance, he could see Bo. She was riding Mist—or she had been riding. Right now, though, she was still as a statue.

He couldn’t see her clearly, but he didn’t have to see her face to know it was her.

Marrying David
. The words kept circling through his head like a litany. “Shit. I’m going insane.”

Dustin laughed. “Ya think? Go talk to her, Logan.” But Dusty’s words barely registered and Logan was only distantly aware that Dusty had left.

Going insane
. It wasn’t a far stretch, as far as he was concerned. Insanity would explain how he’d gone this long without saying anything.

He’d gotten measured for a fucking tux. But damn if he’d wear it. David probably wouldn’t forgive him but Logan wasn’t standing up at the church and watching as the woman he loved married somebody else.

He stared at her, watching as she sat on Mist and stared out into the distance. He didn’t know what she was looking at. Probably the impossibly blue sky. The sun was shining so brightly, it hurt the eyes. He could tell she had a camera but even if he hadn’t seen it, he’d know she would have one on her somewhere.

Bo’s cameras were as important to her a cop’s gun. Not just a tool of the trade but something she considered vital. She was probably out there taking pictures of the terrain or the clouds drifting through the sky or something like that.

Logan clenched his jaw. He wanted to hit something. Wanted to beat something bloody—preferably his cousin’s affable face. He just bet that Bo was about as happy as could be, as content as the proverbial cat and cream. Daydreaming about her upcoming wedding and how perfect her life with David was going to be.

At that, Logan laughed. There wasn’t much humor in the sound, though. He felt so bitter, it almost made him sick. He
knew
Bo. Her marriage to David would be sheer hell for her. She’d have David wrapped around her finger and ground into the dirt in no time flat.

David had the problem of wanting to take care of a woman. Coddle her. Protect her. And in Bo’s case, that would be smothering her. She might like the pampering for a while but it wouldn’t take long for the novelty of that to wear off and then she’d be miserable.

Bo didn’t realize it yet but she
would
be miserable.

David would be miserable too. “Stopping that wedding would be doing them a favor,” Logan muttered. He scrubbed a hand over his face and turned away from the window. He caught sight of a picture on his desk. It was the only picture on the desk, one of the very few he had in the house.

It was Bo. He’d taken it himself one weekend when she’d come home from college for few days. They’d gone out riding one fall day and she’d spent most of the time taking pictures with the Canon EOS Rebel her dad had given her just before she left for school.

She had looked so beautiful that day. So happy. So perfect. It had been before she chopped her hair off and Logan could still remember how she’d looked, that long thick hair escaping from the braid to frame her face, her eyes bright with laughter.

He’d wanted to grab her, haul her against him and kiss her until she couldn’t see straight. Then he wanted to strip her naked, spread her thighs and taste her. Fuck her hard and deep and then do it all over again but slower.