“You didn’t tell me you were coming.” So early. Now. When I was minutes away from holding her in my arms again.
“Nice way to greet a friend.” Concern appeared in the line between John’s brows and he looked Logan up and down and then glanced around the room. “I called your cell twice and left a text message but you never…. Hey, what’s that hanging from the ceiling fan?”
“Make some coffee, John.” Logan stepped close and seized the bedroom door, standing between John and the room. “I could use some, couldn’t you?”
“Ah, sure, Logan, but—” John stumbled back as Logan partially pushed the door closed “—is that a skirt on the floor?”
“You’re seeing things.” Logan kicked the cloth back, getting his bare foot tangled in the opening. “Sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations.” He tried to shake the ripped skirt off his toe. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
John’s face lit up in the dimness of the hallway. Logan would have laughed at his friend’s incredulous expression, if this were a laughing matter.
“Coffee.” Logan demanded, giving his old friend an eye he couldn’t possibly mistake. “I’ll be out in a few minutes and then you can tell me why you decided to drop by unannounced.”
Logan closed the bedroom door.
He turned to see Jenny’s bright red head just peeking above the edge of his bed. “That was Dr. Springfield.”
“I heard.” She pressed her cheek against the sheets. “You didn’t tell me he was coming.”
“I didn’t know he was coming.”
“Doesn’t he have a newborn baby? And a wife just out of the hospital?”
“Last time I checked, yeah.”
“Then what’s he doing here?”
“Ruining our morning.”
She caught his eye and rose, nymph-like, from a frothy tangle of sheets—sheets she struggled to hold tighter to the body he wanted to pleasure again so badly his balls ached.
She whispered, “He saw my clothes.”
“He didn’t see you.” Logan kicked up the remnants of the skirt he’d ripped off her last night. “But he did jump to a conclusion.”
She dropped back down to sit in the pool of sheets. She pressed a hand against her forehead as if against a headache.
“Hey, Jenny, it’s no big deal.”
“I know. But he’s a colleague.” She dropped her hand. “I’m embarrassed.”
“But it’s his bad, not yours, for showing up unannounced.” For her sake, he’d have to spin this situation somehow. He couldn’t exactly lie to his friend. “I’ll distract John in the kitchen so you can get dressed.”
Logan searched the carpet for his shirt, seized it and yanked his arms into it, while Jenny tip-toed around like a cat, gathering up her damp shirt and discarded bra. Her jaw looked raw and pink, he noticed, as he pulled the hem of his shirt down over his abdomen. Stubble burn, he thought, and wished that he could hold her head, turn her face, and kiss the pink part better.
Damn it, he hadn’t wanted the morning after to unfurl like this. He wanted to take it slow in the morning, hold her close, see the expression on her face when he touched her, bury his nose in the nook between her throat and her jaw, breathe in the scent of her. This new bond between them was fiercely physical but also felt as fragile as glass.
But now he had John to contend with, Jenny’s own work colleague, muddying the whole situation. He thrust his hand through his tangled hair. If there was one thing Jenny didn’t need after last night, it was a colleague of hers grinning and leering and making dirty jokes.
“Logan?” She shuffled around the room, still wrapped in a sheet, with a wad of discarded clothing under her arm. “Have you seen my panties?”
“Yeah.” His throat tightened as his gaze strayed to the ceiling. “Look up.”
As Jenny suppressed a squeal, Logan slipped out the door and closed it behind him. He strode through the hallway, inventing stories to explain to John why he was in bed at noon in a bedroom strewn with women’s clothing. He supposed he could write the incident off as a wild one-night stand with some nameless partner—except that John certainly must have noticed that there was no sign of Jenny anywhere else in the cabin, though her car was still parked in the driveway, and no other evidence of any another female present.
Bad timing, the annoyance kicked him. As consenting adults, he and Jenny didn’t have to answer to anybody about their personal lives, but Logan understood her discomfort being discovered in all but flagrante delicto by a colleague. After last night’s fireworks, Logan realized now, more than ever, why she used a frosty, uber-professional demeanor to keep interested colleagues at a distance. Jenny was knock-out gorgeous. Of course she wanted to dim that light so it didn’t blind the many male colleagues she needed to interact with on a professional and intellectual level. He felt a surge of testosterone, that such a woman would choose to drop her guard for him, but he couldn’t let himself strut like a rooster in front of John. Right now it was his job, as the man Jenny had chosen to share herself with, to make sure his buddy understood the protocol required going forward, both personally and professionally.
The moment he turned into the kitchen, he saw John’s rangy body sprawled on one of the kitchen chairs, with a grin the size of Montana splitting his face.
John kicked the chair up on its back legs, stretching his knobby knees. “Here I am thinking, poor old Logan, stuck up in that godforsaken country cabin with that workaholic colleague of mine, probably ranting and raving over the loss of his privacy—”
“What the hell are you doing here, Springfield?” There’d be no hiding the truth, but his hand itched to wipe that grin off John’s face.
“I was having convulsions of guilt, Logan, over putting you two in this situation. Been thinking about my screw-up for days. So I decided to take a ride up
