Smart, Sexy and Secretive (5 page)

“
I want you to fucking marry
me, Em,” he says.

My heart trips a beat. “Well, that’s
the worst proposal ever,” I joke.

“
Tell me this is real,” he
implores me.

I take his hand and look into his blue
eyes. “It’s as real as it gets,” I say.

He pulls me to my feet.
“Good.”

“
You’re staying the night,
aren’t you?” I ask. He had better be.

He grins at me. “Why should
I?”

“
Because I will be hurt if
you leave.” I’m honest, and his face softens.

“
Of course, I’m not leaving,
dummy.” I thrill at the term of endearment. There was a time a word
like that hurt me, but not from him.

“
Want to go take a shower?”
I ask.

He shakes his heads, nuzzling his
five-o’clock shadow into the side of my neck. “I plan on messing
you up again,” he warns, waggling his brows at me. “I’ll get a
washcloth from the bathroom so we can clean up.” He tweaks my nose.
“You’ll sleep better that way.”

He turns around, and I see
the words tattooed across his hip:
My name
is Emily.

It’s in my handwriting, as if he took
the note and photocopied it over his skin. It’s from when I first
told him my name. I’d written it down for him as a surprise. “You
put my note on your ass.”

“
I wanted to remember it
forever,” he says. He looks deep into my eyes, and tears sting the
backs of my lashes.

“
You did this after I left.”
I don’t need to pose it as a question. I already know the
answer.

He nods. “Loved you then. Love you
now.”

I take his AC/DC shirt from my closet.
I’d unpacked a bit before I went to the club.

“
You had my shirt all this
time?” he asks.

“
It’s not your shirt,” I
grouse. “It’s mine.” I’d taken it with me when I left and slept in
it every night since. “Possession being nine-tenths and all,” I
say. But he’s grinning as I pull the covers back and climb between
the sheets.

“
What kind of sheets are
these?” he asks, sliding his thumb across the threads.

The really expensive kind. “They’re
just sheets.” I don’t want to talk about thread counts or anything
else. I just want him to hold me. He reaches a wet rag toward the
apex of my thighs, and I intercept it. “I can do that.”

He holds tightly to it for a second. “I
like taking care of you,” he says.

My face flushes with heat. “Give me
some time to adjust to having you around, will you?” This is all
new to me, this level of intimacy. I’ve never experienced it
before.

His eyes narrow. “You had better get
used to it quick.” He pats his tatted chest. “Because what you see
is what you get.”

He’s so much more than what people see.
I just wish he knew it as well as I do.

Logan lies down and pulls me onto his
chest. His lips touch my hair. I’m wearing his shirt and nothing
else, and he’s naked. He’s tense beneath me, and his belly flinches
when I lay my hand upon it. The sheet twitches. I look down at
where the covers drape the lower half of his body. I can’t help it.
I lift it up and peek underneath. The crown of his dick arches
toward me.

“
You want to go to sleep?” I
ask.

He shakes his head and rolls me over.
He’s inside me before I can blink, and I’ve never felt more at
peace.

###

The phone rings the next morning,
jolting me out of my peaceful state. Logan is sound asleep, one of
his legs tossed over my naked bottom. His arm is wrapped around my
back so tightly that I have to untangle his limbs from mine to
reach for the phone.

“’
Lo,” I mutter.

Logan lifts his head, his eyebrows
drawing together.

“
Miss Madison?” a voice
says.

“
Yes?” I sit up on my
elbows, brushing my hair back from my face.

“
Miss Madison, it’s
Henry.”

I wipe the sleep from my eyes. “Mmm
hmm,” I murmur. My cheek falls back toward the pillow. Logan’s lips
nuzzle my temple.

“
Miss Madison,” Henry says.
“I thought you’d want to know that your parents just arrived.
They’re on their way up.”

Logan

Emily jumps to her knees and scrambles
bare-assed across the bed. God, she’s pretty, even with her hair
looking like she’s been tumbled in a dryer and the crease of the
sheets across her cheek. I shake out my arm. It’s numb from where
she’s been lying on it. Pins and needles reach from my fingertips
to my armpits.

What’s wrong?
I sign when I can feel my fingers
again.

Parents are
here
, she signs back.

She slams the phone down and runs to
her closet.

Shit. Her parents are here? This is not
how I anticipated meeting them.

Don’t just lay
there.
She shoves my leg.
Get dressed.

She runs out into the living room and
comes back with my clothes and shoes, throwing them at me. I knock
my shoes to the floor like I’m brushing a bug from my
face.

Emily just rolls her eyes and shoots me
a glare.

I jump up and start putting my clothes
on. I’ve been in some funny situations before, but this one is the
most worrisome. This wasn’t how I wanted to meet them. I wanted to
be dressed nicely, shaved, and looking like someone who could be
good for their daughter. I pull my thermal shirt over my head and
grit my teeth.

Fuck. I guess I’ll have to make the
best of it.

I jump into my jeans, and Emily rushes
to the bathroom to brush the snags out of her hair. I get dressed
all the way down to my shoes because I want to have shoes on to
meet her parents. One of my socks is missing, but I don’t have time
to look for it. I follow her and squirt some of her toothpaste onto
my finger so I can “brush” my teeth. I run my finger over my teeth,
and she grins at me over her toothbrush.

I spit and rinse my mouth out, and she
does the same. She darts past me, but I wrap my arm around her
waist and drag her back to me. She’s only halfway protesting as she
laughs against my lips.

Behave
yourself
, she scolds.

She puts on a pot of coffee, and I
stand there with a cup under the spout instead of the pot, and I
replace it with the empty pot and rush to the kitchen table as soon
as it’s full. I open her newspaper and turn quickly to the word
search. I fill it up with words that will make it look like I’ve
been working on it for quite some time.

My pencil is poised over the newspaper
when her parents walk in the door.

Did they even
knock
? I sign to Emily.

She shakes her head and
winces.
Thank God Henry called.

Her father raises his eyebrow as soon
as he sees me at the table. Then his eyes narrow, and he stares at
me. His eyes take in my tats, which go all the way up my neck and
down to my wrists. I never want to hide them, and in truth, his
perusal makes me want to pull my sleeves back so he can see every
last one. But something tells me he won’t be impressed.

“
Mom. Dad.” Emily motions
toward me. “This is Logan.” She motions back toward them. She’s
signing while she talks, and I kind of wish she’d stop.

Her mother rushes forward. “Logan,
darling,” she gushes. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

My heart leaps at the thought that
Emily talked about me while she was gone. Maybe she longed for me
the same way I longed for her. “It’s wonderful to meet you,” I say
as I stick out my hand.

She bypasses it and wraps her arms
around me. She squeezes me tightly and doesn’t let go for a moment.
Then she steps back, her hands still on my upper arms. She
squeezes. “Goodness, you’re a solid lump of man, aren’t you?” she
says, smiling. She winks at me. “I can see why Emily is so
enamored.”

Heat creeps up my face.

Emily’s dad shoves his hands into his
pockets and rocks back on his heels. He nods at me, and I think he
grunts. I wouldn’t know if any sound came out of his mouth, but I
can tell he just made a noise. One that would dismiss me if I could
hear it.

I stick my hand out toward him. “Mr.
Madison,” I say.

Begrudgingly, he reaches for my hand
and takes it in a firm grip. I force myself not to squeeze back
when he tightens his grip in warning. Instead, I take it. I let him
be in control because he’s her father for fuck’s sake. I don’t like
it, but I take it.

“
Logan came to have
breakfast with us,” Emily rushes to say. She puts her hands on top
of ours and pries her father’s fingers back. He lets her. I shake
the pain out of my hand when he releases it.

He takes in the crease still etched on
her cheek and her lack of makeup. “I’m certain he did,” her father
says.

Her mother drops bags of pastries,
bagels, and assorted other breakfast foods on the table. Emily
starts to unpack the bags, bouncing up on her toes as she does.
She’s padding around in socks, and I can’t help but remember that
one of my own socks is missing. I walk into the living room where I
see it sticking out of one of the couch cushions. I pocket it
quickly, shoving it in the pocket of my hoodie. Her mother follows
me into the room and grins at me, then shakes her finger. “You’re
not leaving are you?”

Not on your life. “No, Mrs. Madison,” I
say. “I was just looking for something.”

She narrows her eyes. “Did you find
it?” She’s asking me about more than just my missing sock, I
think.

I cough into my closed fist to clear my
throat, which suddenly has a lump in it. I don’t know why. “Yes,
ma’am.”

She arches an eyebrow at me, prompting
me to continue.

“
I have everything I need
now that Emily’s back.” I look her in the eye.

“
Stay strong,” she says.
Then she winks at me. She startles and looks toward the
door.

Emily comes from around the corner, her
eyes narrowed. Her dad stands behind her smirking. Someone must
have knocked on the door. She rushes to it, looks through the
peephole, and steps back, muttering to herself. I can’t quite read
her lips.

Emily opens the door, and a man brushes
past her. He’s wearing a button-down shirt, a tie, and kicks that
cost more than my monthly rent. He puts down his suitcase, shakes
hands with Mr. Madison, and turns to Emily. He starts toward her,
his arms outstretched. I step forward to get between them, but Mrs.
Madison grabs my arm. “Don’t,” she warns. “This will work itself
out.”

Emily lets him pull her into an
embrace, but she doesn’t hug him back. She cringes instead. This
warms my heart.

She looks over at me, and I see
something I don’t quite understand in her gaze. Is it pity? For me?
Is she afraid I can’t compete with this man? Who the hell is he,
anyway?

I draw a circle around my
lips, asking her who he is without anyone seeing me. She crooks her
index finger into the sign for the letter
x
. That’s her ex?
Seriously?

Emily’s past has just walked in the
door. And if the look on his face is any indication, he no longer
wants to be in the past. He wants more.

I look at her father, who’s smirking at
me with his arms folded in front of his chest. He doesn’t want the
asshat to be in the past either.

Fine. I’ll knock his ass into the
middle of next week. That’s the only way he’ll ever be a part of
her future.

I take a step forward flexing my
fingers as I go. He’s as big as I am, but I’d be willing to bet his
jaw is made of candy, just like his ass.

Emily

This is not good. Not good
at all. Trip isn’t supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be in LA.
But he’s
here
.

He walks toward me as though we’re old
friends. As though just a few months ago he didn’t call me stupid,
among a few other choice words. As though I hadn’t left him
standing at the altar before my last trip to New York, when I met
Logan. As though I would accept the embrace he tries to offer to
me.

He hugs me, pulling me way too close to
him. I push against his chest, harder and harder until he has to
let me go. Logan’s on his away across the room. I shove Trip back
and slide my hand into the crook of Logan’s arm. I brush my hair
back from my face. “What are you doing here, Trip?” I grit
out.

Logan flexes his fingertips, squeezing
them into a fist over and over. He looks like he could choke the
life out of Trip with his bare hands.

Logan looks at my dad, his eyes open in
mock disbelief. “You didn’t tell her, Mr. Madison?”

“
Hadn’t had a chance yet,”
Dad says, but he’s smiling. “Guess now’s as good a time as any.” He
motions for Trip to continue.

“
Your dad is moving me out
here temporarily. He didn’t like the idea of you being in the city
all alone.” Trip looks at my dad as though he needs reassurance.
Dad nods. Trip grins and acts like he’s going to hug me again, but
Logan places a hand on his chest. Trip looks down his nose at
Logan, like he just smelled something bad. “Who the hell are you?”
he asks. He takes in the way that I’m holding onto Logan’s arm with
all my might, and he drops his jaw for a second. He lets out a
quivery breath. “This is him?” he asks the room. “This is the guy?”
Then he laughs out loud.