Shatter (St. Martin Family Saga) (6 page)

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With his peripheral vision, Logan once again noted that when he did something for Michael, even something ordinarily simple, Jessie began to wipe at her eyes. She was obviously conflicted about bringing men around her son. He didn’t want her to worry so much and wondered how he might help her overcome her fears. He wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t hurt either of them, not intentionally. He wanted to say that he was in as deep as she was. But he couldn’t just come out and say that when he wasn’t around Jessie and Michael, thoughts of them bombarded his mind like a fusillade of missiles. She’d think he was nuts. And his mind was nothing compared to his senses suddenly misfiring. He saw the fiery color of her hair in random objects—fruits, coins, cars, seeds. He’d smell the two of them too. And how did a guy tell a woman that without her thinking he was crazy?

Her scent was exotic and almost forbidden, he imagined Eve in the Garden of Eden. Then there was Michael, he smelled like syrup, apple cinnamon, and innocence. They smelled like life, the way life should smell—good and sweet and pure.

Logan liked to be around children, maybe because he’d been a child when he’d lost his innocence, and he was buoyed by the natural goodness and purity that children had. He wanted Michael to keep his innocence for as long as possible.

He wanted Michael and Jessie to be protected.

After dinner Logan and Michael watched the animated movie from the floor while Jessie sat on the couch. Midway through, Michael fell asleep. Logan was distracted when a milky-white leg rubbed across his chest and fingers tugged demandingly at his hair. He grasped the calf and tenderly bit the inner flesh of Jessie’s thigh. She moaned, and Logan gestured at her to be quiet. She bit down on her lip, but her eyes flashed fire.

He stood and positioned her on the couch so he could lie atop her. He pulled the afghan over their bodies and whispered in her ear, “Can you keep quiet, Miss Hunter?” She looked him in the eye with her steel blues and nodded. “Good.”

He unbuttoned her sundress, kissing the exposed skin as he uncovered it. He whispered in her ear, “Pretty dress.” Distracted, he placed a kiss on her jaw and slowly worked his way toward her mouth. “I love this mouth.” He sucked at her bottom lip. “The luscious ripe color taunts me all day.” Her breathing picked up, and Logan could hear her panting in his ear as he refocused his efforts on her dress. Once he had all the buttons undone, Logan parted the dress to reveal her white cotton underwear. He smiled. Her underwear told him that she hadn’t had a lover to dress for in a while. He planned to change that. But still, she was rocking the cotton. He gazed at her body, ran a finger from her neck to her belly. She was far prettier than the dress. He pulled her bra cups down to expose the delicate tips of her breasts and suckled a nipple. At her mewling, he looked at her through his lashes, her nipple still in his mouth, and placed his fingers on her lips to quiet her. She bit down hard on his fingers.

“Shit.”

Her eyes widened at his expletive. Michael’s breathing hitched, and they both held their breaths. When they heard his light snore, they smiled at one another.

Her arms slid under his shirt and her fingers gently traced each of his oblique muscles. As she explored, Logan moved aside the thin barrier of white cotton covering her sex and massaged her soft pussy, surprised at the amount of wetness.
God, what had she been doing under that afghan while he and Michael innocently watched the movie?
Had she been stroking herself? Thinking of him? He whispered, “You’re dripping for me.” She nipped at the fingers still in her mouth, and when he shifted her hands slid into his shorts and freed his cock and rubbed it against her sopping core. God, that felt good. She made him feel good. He shuddered.

He wanted to make her shudder too.

He shifted a bit and used the head of his penis to stimulate her clit, alternating a swirling pressure with light taps. Her clit had grown large, just as it had before, and he liked the size of it, liked that he could see it. Liked knowing she was aroused and wanting him. Her body arched beneath him, and he felt her shudder. Yes, just what he’d been waiting for. He found her opening and inserted himself to the hilt, knowing she could take him. He strained to maintain a deliberate rhythm, slow and steady, and found a pace they could both lose themselves in. And then he settled in to enjoy her. He fondled her breasts, sucked her nipples, and nibbled her neck and jaw. She followed his lead, keeping to the same flow, stroking his back and hips, rocking him gently. He teased her body, teased himself as well, for long and delicious minutes as he made love to her on the couch in her living room.

Somewhere around nine thirty, Logan received a call from his father, which he didn’t answer since he had Jessie wrapped in his arms and they were kissing again. They were still wrapped up in one another, with Logan just about to raid the kitchen for pie, when his father called again at nine forty-five. When the signal for a text message chimed, he finally picked up his phone. And when he read
call me
in caps, Logan decided he’d better make contact in case something was going down at the brewery.

He kissed Jessie on the tip of her nose and said, “I better call my father back and see what’s up.” He walked to the kitchen to avoid waking Michael.

“Hey, Dad, you called?”

“Son, your mother and I need to speak with you.”

“Hit me with it.”

“In person.”

“Okay, tomorrow then.” Logan was getting a bad feeling.

“I’d rather you come out to the house now.”

“Damn, Dad, it’s ten o’clock.”

“Sorry, old man, it’s important.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

Logan told Jessie where he was going, but before he left, he carried Michael to his bed, tucked him in, and kissed his forehead.

Michael woke and whispered, “I want you to be my daddy.”

The straight-shooting words drew a gasp from Logan’s throat. He inhaled raggedly and whispered in Michael’s ear, “I want that too.” Feeling a catch in his heart, Logan patted Michael’s head, and he resumed his light snore.

Logan stood staring, shocked at how the boy had situated himself so deeply into his heart.

He kissed Jessie goodbye, not saying anything about his words with Michael. And drove in silence to his parents. He entered through the gates that had been left open for him and parked at the estate’s artistic fountain. His mother waited at the door. When he reached her, she kissed his cheek.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Of course, Mom, but you guys are scaring me. What’s going on? Is somebody sick? Hurt?”

She motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen, where his father was sitting on a bar stool drinking a soda. She clucked her tongue. “I told you no more sodas, Cliff.”

“Cat, surely you can make an exception right now. Please stop nagging me.”

She pursed her lips.

Logan recognized the pattern established years earlier, but the anger that used to color their arguments was missing.

His father nodded at him and patted the stool beside his. “Why don’t you come sit?”

Logan perched on the stool next to his father, laid a hand on his arm. “Dad, are you okay?” Maybe he was the one who was sick. Maybe that was why Mom was back in the picture.

“Yeah, boy, everything’s fine.”

“Okay then…What’s on your mind?”

His mom left the kitchen, and Logan wondered if that was to give them privacy. His father set intense eyes on him. He fidgeted a bit as his mouth opened and closed, but after a deep breath, the words tumbled out.

“I had an affair with your mother. That is, your biological mother. It had been going on for a while. I’d guess about two years. After you were born, we broke it off.” He exhaled through clenched teeth. “Catherine knew, but turned a blind eye, as society women are wont to do. I’m not proud of my actions, but I could never regret the affair.”

Logan didn’t know how to react, didn’t understand why his dad was telling him this now. He scrambled for words. “Did my father know?”

“No, he didn’t. I want you to know, Dave was a good man. You know your parents were our friends. I don’t even know why or how it happened, but it was like your mother and I had to get together for a higher reason. Lord knows we tried to deny the attraction, but our attempts were futile. I now know why.”

“Dad, what the hell did you put in that Coke?” Logan picked up the can of soda and sniffed it.

“Just Coke.” He shook his head. “Before you were born, Anne and Dave had been married for six years and she’d yet to get pregnant. She desperately wanted to be a mother and when she found out she was expecting, she was over the moon. God, she loved you with everything she had. When you came along, she said you saved her life. She doted on you like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Logan swallowed the lump forming in his throat. He listened intently to what his father had to say. In the back of his mind something wasn’t adding up. One of his professors had said that Logan’s mind was like an active volcano—constantly churning. It was certainly churning now. But he still wasn’t catching on.

He hopped down from the bar stool and started pacing the length of the kitchen. And then, just that quickly, he had it. He whirled toward his father, hands fisted in his hair, and his father sat there calmly sipping his Coke and nodding, silently confirming Logan’s suspicions.

With a hoarse voice Logan said, “For fuck’s sake, I’m almost thirty years old! All those years of feeling like an intruder, an
outsider
, like I was forcing myself on you and your family, and I could have felt accepted had you cared enough to tell me, cared enough to open your mouth just once. Shit.” He fisted his hands, hoping that would keep him from striking out. “Why the hell bother to tell me now?”

“Catherine had wanted me to tell you. She wanted to tell you right after we adopted you, when she noticed you feeling that way, as you say, like an outsider. She’d said it was wrong of me to not tell you and that I was only thinking of myself. Catherine has always been stronger than me. She never once considered herself in all of this. She became so angry about how I handled it all, she left. There were other issues surrounding our separation. The business caused me to spend long periods of time away from home and then of course the affair and well… it was the nail in the coffin as they say.

“Of course she was right.” He wiped at his face with his hand. “I was worried about scandal. If word were to get out about the affair people would talk. There was the contracting business and I had a family and your adoption to consider. Back then I didn’t figure it would matter so much, and we all loved you and accepted you, so I’d thought with time you would come to consider us your family.”

“I didn’t know you were family!” Logan’s voice was louder now. “Sure, I was yours in the courts, but an obligation is one thing, DNA is quite another. There are more freedoms afforded to one over the other. I couldn’t exactly let it be known if I were unhappy with my situation.”

“I guess you’ve noticed your mother and I are together again. She wanted me to tell you. Hell, I’ve wanted to tell you for so long.” He took a swig of his soda. “Were you so unhappy, son?”

“No. Never.”

He wasn’t unhappy. He was trying to come to terms with the fact he’d lost something he’d never be able to get back.

“You guys were great, but I longed to belong in a way…I wanted to fit in with my brothers, be part of a clan. Be a natural part of…” He waved his hand to encompass the house and the property and everything that stood for the St. Martins. He’d wished again and again for the brown hair and the blue eyes. He hadn’t wanted the stigma of his parents’ murders to constantly surround him, but it had. His brothers had mollified him and still did at times. The entire community had handled him like Belgian lace, and he’d been treated differently from the others. He’d wanted to be treated the same, to get into trouble the same way. To be corrected the same way. To be a real St. Martin. Whenever he’d been in trouble, it was always dismissed as something Logan was working through. Logan knew they were not to blame for the way they treated him; anyone would do the same for a kid in his situation. And they’d done the best they could. But he’d always wanted more. And less. He’d wanted to be just one of the St. Martin boys.

“It’s time to put it out in the open.”

His father’s baritone voice made Logan jump. He gasped, “What? You can’t be serious.”

“We have to.”

Logan feathered his hands through his hair. “No. Why would we do that to the family, now, after all this time?”

“I want to make it right for everyone involved.”

“Let me clarify something for you—you said the situation was scandalous at best. You said Catherine left you because of the way the events played out. Is that the way of it?”

His father eyed him intently, as he always did during what the family referred to as a
Logan interrogation
. “Yes.”

“Do you or do you not think this will further alienate me from my family? Especially Cory. They will blame me for all kinds of shit, and
he
will blame me for the day his mother left him.”

“They won’t. I know my children, all seven of them. They love you, Logan. We all do.”

Logan closed his eyes and exhaled. He couldn’t believe what he was going to say, but the words came pouring out of his churning heart. “It’s not often I’m wrong, but I was wrong about this. I spent twenty years thinking that if I just had the St. Martin blood running through my veins, I’d be accepted and there would be nothing in this world that could sever that connection. I was mistaken.”

Using controlled, precise movements, Logan picked his keys up from the counter and walked out. His father called to him, but he didn’t look back. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was responsible for all the problems in the St. Martin marriage. He knew it had been especially hard on Cory since he’d been there to witness his mother’s abandonment. That thought was eroding Logan’s gut like acid. He thought of all the people affected by him and knew he couldn’t go back to Whiskey Cove. Not now. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. Not once they knew what he’d been responsible for.