Willow Spring (21 page)

“I, uh, kinda figured that,” she said in a teasing way. But at least, again, she was smiling.

“I’m sorry about what happened on the ride, Anna. As the old saying goes, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ And in this case, it really
is
me.”

In response, she gave her head a tilt, her look somehow light and sarcastic and judgmental all at the same time, and it clearly said:
You don’t know what you’re missing.
“Well, if you get over whatever
it
is, Logan,” she said, “you let me know.” Then she gave him a wink and walked away.

When he spotted Jenny and Mick at the nearest game booth, he approached. Mick threw baseballs at milk bottles, apparently trying to win Jenny a big, stuffed cat that he instantly knew Amy would love. “Have you seen Amy?” he asked Jenny.

“Yeah—I spotted her heading to the parking lot a minute ago. She looked pretty bummed out and didn’t even say bye.” Her eyebrows knit. “Is anything wrong?”

Damn. His stomach sank. Upsetting Amy suddenly felt a lot worse than upsetting Anna. “Pretty sure I hurt her feelings.”

Jenny sneered lightly. “That’s not like you, Logan. I hope you’re gonna do something to make it up to her.”

He glanced to the stuffed cats again. They were gray and white, just like Mr. K. And it just so happened that he was pretty good with a baseball, as he’d proved earlier at the dunking booth. “As soon as I win her a stuffed Mr. Knightley,” he said, then got out his wallet and handed over a five-dollar bill to the young guy running the game.

If there was one way to Amy’s heart, he knew it was a cat—stuffed, real, or otherwise. And that was when it hit him squarely in the face—he still didn’t know where he and Amy were going, but in this moment, that was where he wanted to be: in Amy’s heart.

A
my sat in the dark in the bookstore, curled up in the easy chair that faced the wide window, Austen snuggled in her lap. Running her hand through the fur on the kitty’s back was comforting. Cats. They never hurt you. They might ignore you a little sometime, or even misbehave, but they were always there when you needed a friend.

She wore pajamas—well, a large nightshirt featuring a gray cartoon cat and the words
Cat Lady
, a birthday gift from Rachel one year. She’d only come down to the bookstore from her apartment above because she’d felt the need to be in the place she loved most, surrounded by the things she loved most—books. Another comfort. It was less lonely here than the apartment had suddenly felt. Especially since Knightley had been in a persnickety mood. “You could teach him a thing or two about being a good cat,” she told Austen now. She loved Knightley with all her heart, but his unpredictable behavior lately had her feeling a little critical at the moment.

The glow from the streetlamps that lined town square threw shadows of light in the window, illuminating her feet, which she’d now lifted to the coffee table resting between the big chairs. She glanced at her perfectly painted pink toenails—Cotton Candy, selected especially for her date with Logan. “Ha, some date,” she said then.

She still couldn’t believe one minute he’d been ready to kiss her, and the next Anna Romo had dragged him away. “I could have made a stink, I could have pulled at his other arm,” she told the cat in her lap, “but who wants to be in a tug of war over a guy, especially with Anna Romo at the other end.” Even as desperate as she felt in moments, she wasn’t
that
desperate, not desperate enough to lose her dignity. And she’d just had too much self-respect to stand waiting for him at the bottom of that stupid ferris wheel. After all, he’d let himself be dragged onto it. It had put him in an awkward position, sure, but he could have stopped it if Amy’s feelings had been more important to him than Anna’s.

So she’d left. And so it turned out that driving separately had been a blessing. And maybe Logan didn’t even know this had been a date, and maybe that was the way it was meant to be—maybe that meant she could feel a little less humiliated by the whole thing.

“Maybe when all is said and done,” she said thoughtfully to Austen, “I’m just destined to be alone. Maybe one night of happiness is all I get. Maybe that’s . . . supposed to be enough, better than nothing. And at least I won’t die a virgin, right?”

Though the last words had almost come with tears, because the truth was—better than nothing still didn’t equal great. And even as cool and unruffled as she’d acted about it to Tessa the next day—still lost in the dreamy afterglow—deep inside, that one night with Logan had only made her want more. And maybe even worse, it had made her believe there could
be
more, that there
would
be more. She’d begun to believe he could love her, that she could truly have her heart’s desire, that she could make her dreams come true. But now she knew she’d only deluded herself. She’d let that one night cloud her reality. And the reality was: She’d never be the kind of girl who got a guy like Logan. Not for real. Not for keeps.

When a loud knock came on the door, she nearly threw the cat up in the air. Instead, though, she just flinched and let out a small yelp that sent Austen scurrying anyway. It was nearly midnight—who the heck would be knocking on Under the Covers’ door at this hour?

Getting up, she headed cautiously to the store’s entrance, conscious of her bare feet and nightshirt, then peeked through the window to see Logan outside. Her sigh of relief was accompanied by a churning stomach, though—she didn’t know why he was here, but she wasn’t in the mood to see him. She felt stupid enough already and would have preferred to keep licking her wounds in private.

Even so, she supposed she couldn’t just leave him standing out there—even in moments like this, she was just too darn polite—so she turned the lock and opened the door. “How did you know I was in here?” she asked by way of greeting.

“Saw you through the window. Well, your feet anyway, on the coffee table.” Darn streetlamps.

She just stood back to let him in. But she didn’t bother turning on any lights, especially considering how she was dressed.

“I brought you something,” he told her, and held out some sort of stuffed animal. Which—drat it all—kind of meant she
had
to turn on a light, to see it. So she chose the small antique Tiffany lamp on one side of the counter, as opposed to the ones overhead, illuminating the room only softly.

And she saw—oh wow! It was a big, stuffed Mr. Knightley. Crap. She loved it. She didn’t
want
to love it, but she loved it and knew it was written all over her face. Cat love was a thing Amy just couldn’t hide. “A stuffed Mr. K,” she said, both happy and sad at once. “He’s adorable.”

“And he only cost me fifty bucks,” Logan said with a slightly sheepish grin.

She raised her eyebrows. “Okay, it’s adorable, but not that adorable.”

“Once I started throwing balls at those milk bottles, I couldn’t stop. Forgot you gotta hit the damn things just the right way. But I really wanted to win this for you. Because I knew you’d like it. And because I’m hoping maybe it’ll somehow begin to make up for me being an ass earlier.” He stopped, sighed, eyes somber. “I’m sorry, Amy.”

Amy drew in her breath. She hadn’t expected him to show up here. She hadn’t really even expected him to know he’d done anything wrong exactly, since maybe he hadn’t even realized they were on a date. Leaving things open-ended after they’d made love had sounded so mature and reasonable at the time, but the truth was that it had just made everything unclear, murky. “Thanks,” she finally said, albeit too quietly for her own liking.

That was who she was, though—quiet, gentle, amiable Amy. So maybe it didn’t really matter how she answered; Logan knew who she was at heart and surely wasn’t surprised by it. There were just moments when . . . when she wished she were more like, say, Rachel. Or even Anna. Moments when she wished she were bolder, tougher, and could just lay things on the line.

She took the big, stuffed version of Mr. Knightley and, for now, set him in the chair nearest the picture window. Then she turned back to Logan in the shadows.

In one way, she wanted to kiss him. Because that was what her body had been aching for since she’d met him at the carnival hours earlier. And because that was what her body ached for
most
of the time these days—kissing, and much more, too.

But at the same time, she kind of wanted to smack him. For letting it come to this. For letting Anna drag him away when, apparently, he
had
realized they were on a date. It had technically been Anna’s fault, but he’d let her mess up what had otherwise been a wonderful night. Well, other than their disagreement about Logan’s recent career decision, but she couldn’t help it—she just wouldn’t hold her tongue on that because it was too important.

“I . . . I need to ask you something, Logan,” she began, trying to summon, from somewhere inside herself, that bolder side.

Yet the question she wanted to ask was scary as hell. Because he might not give her the answer she sought.

“I need to ask you where we stand. And I know the idea of us is new and all, but . . . well, things are different between us now, and I’m not sure there’s any going back, for better or worse. And what you did to me tonight was . . . well, it was just rude. And you’ve never been rude to me in my life—and it hurt.” It had hurt worse than Amy had even known it could, but she decided to keep that last tidbit to herself. He already knew how she felt—no need to embarrass herself with it.

“I know,” he said, “and I’m sorry. I should have broken away from her. I guess I just . . . think of her as fragile.”

A burst of laughter shot from Amy’s throat—she couldn’t contain it. “Anna? That girl isn’t fragile. That girl is as tough as nails.”

He looked like he was taking that in, maybe thinking it over, yet only concluded, “Maybe.”

“But you didn’t answer my question.” Lord, it was hard to ask it yet again. Because what if he broke her heart in two, right here and now? But she had to—she just had to. “Where do we stand, Logan?”

When he took on a sad, serious sort of look, Amy instantly feared the worst.
This is it. This is the end of everything that just started, and the end of our friendship, too. Why, oh why, did I have to fall in love with him?

Yet then he held his hands out before him and said, “Honestly, freckles, I don’t know. I wish I did, but it
is
new to me, like you said, and I’m feeling my way through it. All I can tell you for sure is that the other night, by the creek, was amazing, and really special. And what happened tonight . . . well, when I realized you’d left, I felt sick. And I knew things had changed between us in a way we can’t go back from. And that it meant I have to get with the program, straighten up, and figure out how I feel about you, about us.”

Amy bit her lip. All in all . . . well, it wasn’t the miraculous declaration of love she might have been dreaming about. But he wasn’t breaking her heart, either. In fact, he’d just said that sex with her was amazing. And given how long she’d waited to
have
sex—maybe hearing that did feel a little miraculous, after all.

“I . . . know you’ve gone through hell lately, Logan, and that the timing on this probably isn’t great. And so . . . I’m willing to be patient. All I ask is that while you’re figuring it all out, you treat me with the same consideration you would show any girl you cared about.”

“Of course, Amy, and I’m so sorry I dropped the ball on that tonight.” He stepped forward, reached out, and took her hand. “Can you forgive me?”

Fifteen

What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.

Jane Austen, from
Emma

A
my accepted his hand, but what she really felt most in that moment was his eyes. Warming her from the inside out. She knew Logan hadn’t abandoned her tonight on purpose. She knew he was confused, still recovering from what had happened to the Knights, and that he’d had a lot heaped on him lately. And when he’d asked God to drop a girl out of the sky for him, Anna Romo had landed on the town square. So yeah, she could forgive him. She didn’t want to seem like some kind of doormat—she didn’t think she could ever be that, no matter how much she loved him—but their history was long and deep, and she understood that he’d messed up tonight and had come here because he was sincerely apologetic.

So after a long, thoughtful moment, she finally said, “Yeah. I can forgive you, Logan.”

His smile was small, and laced with a tinge of melancholy as he told her, “Thanks. I’m glad. Because . . .” He stopped, sighed once more. “If I ever lost you, Amy . . . hell, I don’t know what I’d do. You’re . . . you’re the one who’s always been there. Always. Even longer than Mike.” She sometimes forgot that, but it was true. His friendship with Mike had formed during their first few years of grade school and little league, but Amy and Logan had played together in the sandbox behind her house as toddlers. He was one of her earliest memories. There’d never been a time when Logan wasn’t a part of her life.

“I . . .” Oh darn it, a lump rose to her throat—but she spoke around it. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, either, Logan.”

Still holding her hand, he let out a sigh and said, “These changes we’re going through . . . they’re hard, but . . . they definitely have their upside.”

This perked her up a little. “Oh?”

That was when his expression grew just a bit lascivious, and though never in her life had she realized she might like that kind of attitude on a man, right now, she did. “Well, it makes it okay,” he informed her, “that I’m getting turned on by the way you look in your pajamas.”

Oh. Lord. Until that moment, Amy had almost forgotten what she was wearing, but now that she remembered, she was almost embarrassed. And certainly confused. “My
Cat Lady
shirt turns you on?”

“Not so much the shirt,” he admitted. “More the way your, uh, nipples, are showing through.”

“Oh . . .” she breathed, glancing down. And sure enough, there in the shadowy light, the peaks of her breasts stood erect, jutting clearly through her otherwise completely unseductive nightshirt.

He stepped slightly closer to her, his look bordering somewhere between romantic and aroused. “Would you slap me if I kissed you right now?”

In fact, she was still dying to be kissed. It was all she wanted in the world. Her body needed it. And her soul needed it. Because just a few minutes ago, she’d been sure she’d lost him forever—at least in the way she really wanted him now—and his being back felt . . . amazing. Yet her strong sense of self-esteem forced her to ask the question that maybe she didn’t really want to know the answer to. “Did you kiss Anna tonight?”

And when he hesitated, her heart sank. “
She
kissed
me,
” he finally said. “A couple of times. But I wasn’t into it.”

“Why not? After all, you’ve been crazy about her since she showed up here.”

He let out a sigh, looking a bit guarded as he said, “I’m not sure. It didn’t feel right. And I won’t lie to ya—I
wanted
it to feel right, because I
have
been attracted to her. But it just didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s . . . about you. Maybe it’s because I was with you tonight. I
am
with you tonight. I . . .
wanna
be with you tonight, Amy.”

Amy drew in her breath. There was a lot to consider here. Anna’s lips had touched his tonight and she didn’t like that—the very thought made her burn with jealousy.

But he hadn’t liked it. And he did like kissing
her
. And he wanted to kiss her
now
.

So after weighing it, she reached a conclusion. One that made her body happy. “You can kiss me, Logan,” she whispered.

The words caused Logan’s eyes to narrow on her with intent. She drew in her breath and almost felt her nipples tighten further.

And then he was stepping up close, so close the heat of his body practically radiated through her, and he lifted his hand to cup her cheek and delivered the most slow, tender, delicious kiss Amy could imagine.

She shut her eyes, let her lips move against his as her body absorbed every nuance of the moment. She couldn’t have dreamed a little while ago that this night would end up a happy one for her, but this was starting to change her mind.

When the kiss ended, she drew in her breath, tried to come back to herself. But a kiss from Logan had the ability to truly sweep her away into what felt like another dimension. A dimension she’d waited her whole life to find—and mmm, it really did exist!
I love you, I love you, I love you.
The words ached to spill from her lips, but she held them in.
Be cool. Even if your notes pretty much told him how crazy you are about him, now is the time to act mature, and to just take this—this night, this moment—for what it’s worth.

“
Kiss me again,” she heard herself demand. But she wasn’t even embarrassed, because she could feel his passion rising along with hers, and what had felt so completely new and tentative the other night now felt . . . more familiar, easier, more like passion between them was the norm.

Logan’s next kiss was just as scintillating as the first, melting down through her like warm molasses. And whereas, before, kissing had felt so . . . almost new, foreign, like a brand new skill she was learning—now she forgot to even think as she kissed him. It just happened of its own volition—her mouth, her body, her whole self, simply followed natural urges. The urge to press against him, to run her fingertips through his hair, across the soft skin on his neck. The urge to lick ever-so-delicately at his mouth—not unlike a cat—and to then press her tongue inward until it met with his. The other night had been like . . . taking first, tentative steps, him guiding her, tutoring her in a way. But tonight she was becoming a woman of her own, exploring her desires, following her whims, letting her body take over.

As their kisses deepened, growing more heated and driven by pure instinct with each passing second, Logan’s palms sank greedily to her bottom, pulling her torso tight to his. And mmm, God, yes, he was hard. And she’d learned already how much she loved that. She loved that she’d done that to him, made that part of him respond in such a primal way. She loved the automatic response—the yearning—it created in her. She loved the power she felt behind it—loved that she felt just a little intimidated by it and yet wholeheartedly wanted it at the same time.

“Oh God, you feel so good,” she heard herself murmur without ever having quite decided to.

“Mmm, you too, honey,” he said. And oh, she liked that as well.
Honey
. She loved being his freckles, yes, but this felt much sexier, especially right now.

And even as one minute he was massaging her rear, his fingers digging hotly into her flesh through her panties, the next he was reaching down inside them, his hands closing over bare flesh. And then—oh!—his fingers dipped lower, lower, until he was stroking between her legs.

She broke the kiss, sucking in her breath—she couldn’t help it. And then she was moving against his touch, welcoming it, and soon found herself practically clawing at his chest.

The next thing she knew, Logan had pushed her panties to her thighs—after which they fell to her ankles. She slid her hands up under his shirt to run them over his stomach, chest. He withdrew his touch to rip the shirt off over his head—and then he took her hand again, this time silently drawing her toward the same easy chair where she’d sat moping when he’d arrived. Well, she certainly wasn’t moping anymore.

She stepped free of the panties as she went, soon straddling his hips in the chair as naturally as if she sat in his lap like that every day. And oh, the crux of her thighs met with that wonderfully hard column within his pants again—and it pressed into her exactly where she desired it most. And now—oh God, she could hardly stand it—nothing but his khaki shorts separated those parts of their bodies. She moved against him—she couldn’t not—and loved how raggedly he breathed as his touch moved up under her shirt to settle on her hips.

After a long, hot kiss, she found herself softly biting his earlobe, then dragging her teeth downward, making him shudder. She had no idea where that had come from, except clearly some bold, animalistic place inside her she couldn’t have imagined until this very moment. And then she was murmuring, “I want you,” against his neck.

“Aw, Amy baby, I want you, too,” he said, his timbre deep, throaty, exciting her even more than she already was.

And then he was lifting them both up a little in order to reach behind him, into his back pocket—and as he extracted his wallet, and then a condom, Amy followed the raw, simple urge to reach for his belt. Undoing the buckle, then unzipping his shorts felt . . . almost surreal. At once natural but also . . . as if she were someone else. It was both easy yet mysteriously new, and it just drove home for her how right it was to be with Logan, how deeply she yearned to cement their connection again.

They both worked to push down his pants, underwear. But somehow the sight of him—his erection—caught her off guard and nearly took her breath away. It was a little lighter in here than it had been next to the creek. And she was in his lap—he was already so close to her. And she didn’t fight the nearly primitive urge to wrap her fist warmly around the rigid shaft now standing between them.

A moan left his throat and their eyes met.

And she was honest, with nothing to hide. “I’m still trying to get used to this—to you
like
this.”

He nodded slowly in agreement. “Me too, with you,” he rasped. “I still kinda can’t believe your hand is around my cock right now.”

Amy drew in her breath. She wasn’t used to hearing him talk like that. But she knew that was how guys thought, and she liked that he was being so open, natural with her about this. So she kept being honest. “I love it, though. I love being with you this way. I love that you want to be inside me right now as much as I want you there.”

“Aw baby,” he murmured, “I do. I really, really do.”

The sentiment pushed her to take the condom he’d opened from between his fingertips into her own. She’d never done this before, but now seemed like a good time to learn.

She bit her lower lip in concentration as she balanced the thin rubber disk at the tip of his erection, then rolled it slowly down onto him, using the thumbs and forefingers of both hands. Part of her didn’t like covering him up, putting even that one thin barrier between them—and yet if it had to be there, it made her feel just a little bit powerful to be the one making it happen.

When he was sheathed, she raised her gaze back to his in time to hear him say, “Ready for this, freckles?”

She simply nodded.

And he curled his hands back over her bottom and lifted her until the juncture of her thighs was poised just above him. And the rest, she realized, he was leaving to her.

And so she lowered herself until the tip of him jutted upward into the exact spot where she wanted it. And then she pressed her palms to his chest, clenched her teeth lightly in anticipation, and sank her body onto his.

The slow yet smooth descent was profound, leaving her to feel impossibly and deliciously full with him. She cried out softly when he was inside her completely. And the small groan he emitted at the same time pleased her deep inside.

Somehow, she’d never felt so close to him, not even the first time they’d made love the other night. Maybe it was about the position, about their faces being so close right now, their eyes connecting. Or maybe it was because the first time had been . . . almost like an experiment, this whole new thing for them, but the second time was . . . getting used to it, and liking it enough to have come back for more.

She never made the decision to begin moving on him, undulating—it just happened. Her body guided her and she knew a pleasure she’d never even dreamed of. Oh God, finally,
finally
. She bit her lip, drew in her breath. Everything inside her seemed to shift and move in precisely the right ways, driving her onward, her pelvis rotating in little circles that grew instinctively tighter and tighter as the pleasure intensified.

She was going to come soon. And she thought it was possibly the most amazing feeling in the world—to know it was on the horizon but to still be moving toward it, and to be sharing it with Logan, a pleasure so thick and perfect and boundless.

Her breath grew thready, came faster. Logan’s hands firmly caressed her hips, her bottom, her thighs. “So, so pretty,” he whispered then, and whether he meant her body or her face, she didn’t even care—she just relished Logan thinking she was pretty in any way whatsoever.