The Billionaire's Kiss (Scandal, Inc) (23 page)

“So this is what it takes? Apparently it isn’t enough for a woman to be rich and famous and beautiful. You need someone who’s lying to you, and using you?” Veronica asked. “So if I had just lied to you, things would have worked out between us?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
 

“I heard everything. Did you think stepping ten feet away would really keep me from hearing? You two were yelling. I’d be surprised if they didn’t hear you out on the street.”

“You don’t understand how things are between us,” Logan said. “Whatever reasons were for coming here, she and I have something real.”

“You and I had something real.”
 

“We had sex. Twice, while we were both drunk. You were looking for an excuse to break off your engagement, and I was willing to give it to you. That’s not something. That’s about as close to nothing as you can get.”
 

“You didn’t seem to mind at the time.”

“Well, things have changed, Nikki. I’ve changed.”
 

Veronica climbed up into the seat next to Logan. “Face it, you and me, we’re not like her. We’re not like ordinary people. We take what we want when we want it, and we don’t have to worry about the consequences. If you want the truth, she should probably be the one thanking me. God, imagine what would happen if she really fell for you, and a few months in, you decide that you’re bored. What would happen when the cutesy nicknames and the trips to Crate and Barrel, picking out fabric patterns  finally got to you and you decided you needed some real fun. You’d come back to me, or someone just like me, and you’d break her heart. She’d be scarred for life, all because you thought you could be something you weren’t.”

Logan snorted a short, hard laugh. He reached down, turned the ignition and revved the engine back to life. “Thank you for saying that. It was exactly what I needed to hear.” He knew what he had to do. He pulled out his phone and searched for a signal. It was time to set things straight.

Sixteen

Callie had been pacing back and forth across the living room for hours with her mind racing and her fists clenched. When she had first gotten Logan’s text, she had wanted to throw her phone across the room. She must have read it a dozen more time to make sure she hadn’t missed something. “Meet me at the bar. We need to talk.” There was no apology, no anger, nothing, just a summons. Here she was, falling apart, and he couldn’t even call?

The rules were simple, when someone was trying to screw you over for their own personal gain, you didn’t take her hand and jet off on a goddamn speedboat with her.
What the hell was he thinking?
If anyone with a telephoto lens had seen him and Veronica walking together, it was all the background she needed to release her sex tape into the world. Logan was playing directly into her plan, and it seemed like he was doing it on purpose. Maybe Hank had been right. This could be Logan’s way of sabotaging everything because he didn’t get to have everything his way.
 

She needed to figure out the best course of action. Short of hopping on a plane and writing off any future business from the Harris family, she didn’t see anything she could do. The way things were going, she doubted that she’d be able to salvage anything from this mess. Amy and everyone else back in DC would be livid when they found out how Callie had let her personal attraction to Logan get in the way of her job.
 

She was angry at herself too. Helping to pass this bill was supposed to be one of the good assignments, one of the few that she could be proud of. She had let herself lose track of that because Logan looked good with his shirt off.
 

But there was so much more to him than that, and the thing that worried Callie the most, more than the threat of personal and professional humiliation was the idea of losing Logan. He was smart and funny, and, when she was with him, she felt alive in a way she hadn’t felt in years. Somehow she had jeopardized all of that because she was too much of a coward to tell him the truth from the beginning. “Logan, I was sent here to keep an eye on you, but the truth is, I fell for you.” It wouldn’t have been hard to say at any point. She could have prevented all of this if she had just been honest with him.
 

Callie stopped pacing and leaned over the kitchen counter. She had a dull pain in her gut and a sharp pain in her head. She had been such an idiot, and he had every right to be mad at her. It didn’t matter if she was angry because he had left with Veronica. Callie had lied to, or at least misled him for the entire time she had been in Newport. So that was it. She had to make things right. She texted him back, “See you at 7.”

She swallowed hard and headed to the bedroom to get dressed. She knew she must have at least some clothing that Veronica hadn’t touched. She grabbed a pair of jeans and a cotton tee. She didn’t want to dress up. She didn’t want to feel glamorous. She just wanted to get this over with and
 
explain everything to Logan. One way or another, she was going to make things right.

She got in her rental car and drove the short distance from Hank’s house to Thames Street. The paparazzi must have gotten word that Veronica had left, because Callie didn’t see anyone at the driveway gate. Veronica had probably tipped them off herself. Callie didn’t even see another person until after she had parked the car a few blocks away from the wharf. She had been glad to be alone as she tried to think of what to say. The rain had lifted, and the sun had started to filter through the clouds. There was barely any breeze, and the warm sun felt good on her face, but she couldn’t help the pit of despair she felt in her stomach.
 

Halfway down the wharf, before reaching The Independent, she stopped and leaned against a building. She closed her eyes and tried to think of the right words to tell Logan what he meant to her. She tried to think of how to explain the warmth and security she felt whenever she was with him. Before she opened her eyes, she felt a familiar tap on the shoulder. She had barely known Logan for a few weeks, and yet she’d recognize that touch anywhere.

Logan stepped back and looked at her. “You look terrible,” he said.
 

“Gee, thanks,” Callie said.

“Come with me,” Logan said, holding out his hand. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
 

“I need to tell you something too,” Callie said.
 

“It can wait.”
 

“I don’t think it can,” Callie protested. “I need to tell you this before we go anywhere.”
 

Logan looked around at the people on the street. He looked like he was wondering if Callie was going to make a scene.

“When I came here, I was told to do two things. The first was to keep you out of trouble, and the second was not to fall for you. I’ve failed at both.”
 

“You haven’t,” Logan said. He stepped forward and wrapped his fingers around Callie’s hand. “Come on, let’s talk somewhere more private.” He led her down to the dock that stretched out into the harbor behind his restaurant, leading her down the long, wide pier until he reached the end, and then he turned Callie toward a small row boat in the last slip.

“Is this another one of your toys?” Callie asked. “It’s very pretty, but I really think we should talk.”

“I do too, and I think we’re trying to say the same thing. Will you get in with me?”

“I don’t know if I’m in the mood to head out to the yacht tonight.”
 

“We’re not going to the yacht.”
 

“Where are we going?” Callie asked.

“You’re going to have to trust me,” he said.

Callie shot him a glance as if to ask “why wouldn’t I trust you?” Only after did she realize how strange it was for her to trust Logan so completely after so little time together. Yet, if he said he wanted to bring her somewhere in a tiny rowboat, she would let him.

Logan walked over to the small boat and motioned to Callie. He held her hand as she lowered herself in. “Put on your life vest,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances.” Logan stepped into the boat and untied it from the dock. He leaned against the edge of the pier and pushed the tiny craft out into the harbor.

Callie leaned back and watched Logan grab the oars and begin to row. As he pushed farther across the harbor, the sounds of the restaurants and shops along the shore began to recede, running together in one low hum, which became barely more than a whisper in the distance. As he rowed on, the wind began to pick up, and Callie listened to the rhythm of Logan’s strokes and the waves lapping against the hull. In the distance, Callie could hear the sailboats in the distance, their halyards and pulleys clanking against their masts in the evening breeze, but soon that too faded away, until all that was left was the boat beneath them and the open water.

It never occurred to Callie to feel afraid. Normally, she would have balked at the idea of taking such a small boat into open water, but Logan exuded a quiet calm, and she knew she was safe with him. Logan stayed quiet as he rowed, flexing his whole body with each stroke of the oars. The way he pulled the boat across the water seemed effortless, like it was an extension of his body. He breathed in time with his strokes and the crashing of the swells against the hull.

Darkness had started to fall. Behind her, Callie could see the lights of the Newport Bridge and the fort out on the point. Logan kept rowing, farther and farther out.

As the land receded farther into the distance, and the sun dipped below the horizon, Callie finally cleared her throat and spoke. “Logan, why are we out here.”
 

“I need to explain something to you about myself,” he said. He stopped rowing and let the boat glide forward. As it slowed, it gently rocked back and forth in the water.

“Is there a reason why we had to come out in this boat for you to do it?” she asked.

“This boat saved my life,” he said.

“What do you mean? Like you were drowning and someone in this boat plucked you out of the water?” This was all a bit confusing.

“In a figurative sense, yeah. In a literal sense, no. I built it. A few weeks ago, right after you had gotten here, you asked me why I am the way I am. I didn’t answer you, but I’ve been trying to figure out a way to explain things to you. My mother died when I was in college. It was late spring. I hadn’t thought much of her being sick. She had been sick on and off for years, and when her health went downhill, I didn’t come back home until it was almost too late. I flew back to Wyoming from Boston, and I spent a week by her side. That’s what I was thinking of as I rowed out here. I was thinking about the last time I saw her. I wanted to stay with her until she got better, but she insisted that I go back to school and finish the semester.
 

She knew me better than anyone, knew that I would get in trouble if I didn’t have something to occupy my time, knew that I was best when I had a concrete task before me, something tangible, so she arranged an internship here for me over the summer. She loved the ocean, you know. She loved this town and the big house on the water. The internship was with a boat builder.
 
She thought it would do me good. Anyway, that last day, the last time I saw her, I made her promise me that she’d stick around long enough for me to finish this boat and bring her for one last trip around the harbor.

“Logan,” Callie said, leaning forward and placing her hand over his, “I had no idea.”

“She died a week later,” he said.
 

Callie could hear his voice break as he finished the sentence. In the half dark, she thought she could see tears on his cheeks. She took a long slow breath and tried to keep from crying too. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
 

“Don’t be,” he replied. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to share this with you. The week after her funeral, I flew back to Newport and started the internship. Within a few days, the builder knew why I was there. I worked twelve hours a day, cutting and scraping and molding the wood, working and reworking every last detail. I channeled all of my frustration and anger into this boat, all of my heartache. I had been a terrible son. I had done so many things wrong, but I swore I would do everything I could to do this right. No detail was too small. No imperfection could stay. I must have redone the finish a dozen times before it came out right.
 

“I vowed not to stop until perfect, and then one day, it was. Every inch was complete, and I wasn’t angry anymore. I was still sad, but I felt like she was there with me, telling me it was time to let go. When everything had set and cured, it was mid fall. That afternoon, I had driven down from Cambridge, and it was raining a fine, cold mist when I put the boat in the water. I rowed out, into the dusk. I put my head down, and I rowed and rowed and rowed until I rounded the point and reached the open ocean. I rowed until my hands were raw and my lungs felt like they were on fire. I rowed until the land in the distance faded away to small pinpoints of light on the horizon, and then I stopped. Out there in the ocean, the clouds had lifted away, and the night sky was the clearest I had ever seen. I knew she was there with me, watching over me. Then the wind picked back up and I knew she was gone.

“Why am I the way I am? Why haven’t I found a nice girl and settled down? What will happen if I fall in love? What if I fall completely for someone, and I lose her? I don’t think another boat will save me.”

Callie leaned forward and kissed Logan, pulling her body tight against his. She could taste the salt on his lips, and she could feel his heart thumping in his chest. The warmth of his kiss rolled through her, and she relaxed herself against him as he wrapped his arms around her. She hadn’t expected this from him. Every time Logan was sweet and genuine instead of cocky and smooth, it threw Callie for a loop, but nothing would have prepared her for what he said next.
 

“Stay.”

“What?” Callie asked.
 

“Promise me you’ll stay. Here with me, somewhere else with me, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just promise me you’ll stick by me.”