try again.
But these few days away from Grace had made him realize how much he wanted to try. The thing was, his world felt empty without her. He couldn’t wait to get home to see her. He wanted to know how she’d spent her days, wanted to hear what was new with the spores.
It was staggering to realize that he’d actually fallen in love for the first and last time in his life.
He tested the words over and over again in his mind and when he was certain that he wasn’t going to be struck by lightning, he decided to say them aloud.
“I’m in love with her.”
Aidan buried his head in his hands.
As they climbed down the stairs and stepped onto the tarmac, Aidan slung his arm around Logan’s shoulder and said, “Wonder if Dad and Sally are in some hot tub in San Francisco right now…how did Gracie put it? ‘Having hot jungle sex’?”
“Oh, man.” Logan slapped his hands over his ears and started humming loudly.
Aidan laughed uproariously, then calmed down and admitted, “Okay, I’m going to say something I never thought I would. I like her, bro.”
“Good,” Logan said, knowing he was talking about Grace. “Because I’m in love with the confounded woman and that’s all there is to it.”
“If you had to take the fall, she was a good one to pick. So if it matters to you, you’ve got my blessing.”
“It matters,” Logan admitted, glancing at his twin. “Thank you.”
Aidan grinned. “Let’s go tell her the good news.”
The brothers strolled across the lobby wheeling their luggage behind them.
“Oh, Mr. Sutherland,” Harrison, the concierge, called out. “I have a letter for you.” He pulled an envelope from his desk and rushed over to the twins.
Aidan took it, glanced at the envelope and handed it to Logan. “It’s for you.”
Logan stared at his name on the envelope. He might’ve waited to open it when he was alone, but something niggled at him and he opened it right there. A minute later, he let the note drop to the floor.
Aidan picked it up and read the words. “She left? She just left? What did you do to her?”
Logan shook his head, too dumbfounded to answer.
“Come on,” Aidan said, pushing him forward. “We’ll go to your room and call her.”
They made it to Logan’s room, but before they could get inside, Dee came running up the hall. “There you are! Why did you do it?”
Logan scowled at her. “Close the damn door.”
Aidan pulled her inside and led her over to the chair in front of Logan’s desk. “Sit. Talk. Tell us what you know.”
“I don’t care if you’re my boss. What you-he-you-” she looked from one to the other of them. “What Logan did to Gracie was just plain mean and underhanded and-”
“What did Grace say?” Aidan demanded since Logan was staring into space.
“He knows what he did,” Dee said, pointing at Logan. Then she pointed at Aidan. “For Pete’s sake, which one of you is which?”
“I’m Aidan,” he said. “Now tell us everything that happened.”
Logan sat behind his desk with his elbows resting on the surface and listened to Dee’s story.
When she was finished, Aidan scratched his head. “What the hell?”
“We’re not killing any spores,” Logan muttered.
“That’s what she said,” Dee insisted, then shook her head in confusion. “She left the bar to get her sweater and the next thing I knew, she was in her room crying her eyes out about you paving over the rain forest.”
“It was her pink sweater,” Logan murmured. “I remember seeing it and meant to bring it to her.”
“Right,” Dee said. “She came in here to get her sweater and all hell broke loose. It wasn’t enough for that creep Walter to break her heart, but then you had to come along and-”
“Who the hell is Walter?” Logan said, his voice belonging more to a growling animal than a normal human.
Dee told them the whole ugly story of Walter’s betrayal and how much it had messed up Grace’s life. Then Dee took off, leaving the men to brood on their own.
Logan stared at his desk for a long time, until he realized it wasn’t his desk he was seeing but the thick pack of old blueprints he’d left spread out here. The new ones were on his desk in the corporate office down the hall. “Oh, crap.”
“What?” Aidan said.
“She saw the old plans,” he said, tapping the blueprints.
Aidan got closer and peered at them. “Those are two years old.”
“I know. They’re completely obsolete. But she must’ve seen them and jumped to the conclusion that I was going to pour cement over the freaking palmetto grove.”
“She thought you betrayed her.”
Aidan frowned as he beat the edge of the desk with his knuckles. “Now we know why she left in such a hurry.”
“Damn it,” Logan said, letting loose a sigh loaded with frustration.
“Look, just call her and tell her she’s wrong.”
“Hell, no,” Logan said, his eyes focused on the blue site map in the corner of the wide sheet. “She didn’t even trust me enough to ask me about any of this. She just assumed the worst and took off. Who’s betraying whom?”
There was a knock on the door.
“Now what?” Aidan said. He opened the door and a guy slapped a blue-backed form at him.
“What is this?”
“Injunction,” the guy said. “You’ve been served.”
Logan prowled his office like a caged animal. It had been three days since Grace had left, three days that he’d spent chastising himself for falling for a woman who was willing to leave him without a word. Grace had walked out on him as easily as the mother he barely remembered. As easily as his cheating wife had driven away from him that night four years ago.
So much for love.
As he paced around his desk for the tenth time, he saw the injunction sitting there and his anger festered all over again. He stared at the new blueprints and the contracts stacked on the conference table, then back at the original site map that had caused all the trouble in the first place.
And a plan began to form in his mind.
Grace was miserable and utterly confused. Always in the past, she’d been able to count on science to clear up any questions for her. But what she still felt for Logan simply wasn’t logical. If this was love, why did it have to hurt so much?
She had tried to bury herself in university life again but she found that world was no longer a good fit. Heck, maybe it never had been, only she hadn’t had a choice. Now, all she could do was remember Alleria and how she’d spent her days working and her nights loving Logan.
Still, that part of her life was over and so she’d applied for funding and was waiting to hear back. It had warmed her heart to hear that Phillippa and two department heads had written to protest Walter’s funding, threatening legal action. Phillippa promised that as long as she had breath in her body, Walter wouldn’t get away with stealing Grace’s work. Knowing Phillippa, Grace was sure it was only a matter of time before Walter was dragged into court with his tail between his legs. A good thing, because now more than ever, Grace needed her research funding. It was all she had left.
She forced herself to work. It was the one thing that had been there for her throughout her life. And now that she’d lost Logan, work was especially important.
