AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Come here," he repeated quietly. She'd never had a man talk like that to her, equal doses of irresistible command and compassion, gentle strength and authority, which had her body throbbing as much as her aching heart.
Once his chest took up her vision, he wrapped both arms around her, her hands curled tense against her sternum, mashed between them. "Just breathe. I'm sorry. That was too much, too soon."
She stood in his embrace, rigid. But not withdrawing.
"I wanted too much, too quickly," he said. "You have that effect on a man."
"Yeah, right." But she didn't have the courage to look for the truth. Not right now. His arms felt too good. She should pull away. Instead, she leaned, a little bit.
"Did she . . . did she have a lot of bad days?" The words were muffled against his chest.
He sighed. "She said the good days always outnumbered the bad, until the end. That was when she called you. She loved you, Madison. You were the only thing she wanted, at the last."
"Shit." She closed her eyes tight, pressing her forehead against his chest. "I loved her, Logan."
"I know that. So did she."
"I don't understand any of this. Especially what you felt about her, and how that relates to me. How that can be a good thing. I'm not her."
He straightened, holding her away from him to give her a look that had an edge to it. "I told you I know that already."
"Yeah, but what people say and what they understand about themselves are pretty different. For a long time I told people I wasn't anal and I actually believed it."
His lips twitched at that. Then his expression sobered and she suspected he was considering his next words carefully, a shift in the air that brought the tension back between them. She still didn't move out of his grasp. The touch of his hands was something she couldn't resist.
"At one time," he said, "I found Alice very intriguing. Fascinating. I even entertained the idea of a romantic relationship. But as colorful and passionate as she was, she was really quite grounded." He shook his head. "She explained she genuinely loved everyone so she didn't have to risk her heart on loving someone. She told me you were the brave one. Despite having your heart broken, shattered and stomped upon, you kept looking for the right person to care for it. She said if you ever found the person you could trust enough to let go--the person who deserved your trust--you would finally find that."
He cleared his throat. "She knew me better than anyone, Madison. She told me I didn't want her. I wanted you."
She didn't know how to deal with that, but tears were brimming, a response to hearing what her sister had thought of her. He took the hem of his shirt and dabbed her eyes with it, making her choke on a half chuckle. One nervous hand landed on his bare abdomen. Her fingers pressed into the hard ridges as his head lifted, a different awareness in both their eyes now.
"I need to get home," she said, pulling back from him. She didn't wait for his reply. Instead she grabbed the box off the shelf and pushed out the back door, aware of him standing in the entrance, watching her until she got into her car and drove away.
She felt as though she were fleeing the scene of an accident.
*
Hearing Alice's perspective of herself floored her. She'd never really thought about it, because Alice had always seemed to have a lover . . . or two. But she'd never talked about marriage or commitment. Had she ever?
Madison was still pondering that when she fell asleep. She slept better than she had thus far, alone in Alice's house. She'd slept in her clothes, Logan's sawdust and aftershave scent lingering in her nose. When she woke, she found her arms wrapped around herself, and recalled a dream of strong male arms surrounding her, the way he'd held her at the store.
Usually when she had such dreams, the arms constricted, choking the life out of her. Alice had called them her emotional claustrophobia dreams.
She decided to stay at the house today. Thinking about Logan's overly developed sense of personal responsibility, she realized she'd better call or he or Troy might show up on her doorstep. It was too early for them to be open, which relieved her of the possible chance of talking to him. If yesterday was an example of what being next door to him every day would be like, she wasn't sure how she was going to cope. Or stay away.
As she listened to his voice on the answering machine, she told herself she would not call during off hours to hear that sexy timbre encouraging her to leave a message, telling him what she needed.
"Uh, hi, this is Madison. I'm going to work at the house today. I figured you'd wonder where I was if I wasn't there, and I didn't want you to worry." The words sounded wrong to her, like yesterday had been a far deeper connection than it was, but there was no way to take it back, so she added, awkwardly, "I mean, I know you feel a responsibility toward me because of Alice. So that's why I thought I better call. Bye."
God, she was an idiot. Turning off her phone, she considered what she could do at the house, now that she'd committed her day to it. She didn't have to hang out here. She could go into Charlotte, go shopping, go to a museum. She honestly didn't want to pack up more of Alice's belongings, decide what to keep and what to donate to the local charities.
Going upstairs, she stood outside the one room whose threshold she hadn't yet crossed. It was the spare guestroom Alice had converted into what she called Wonderland, a quirky play on her name. Madison cracked the door, saw a glimpse of color and sparkles, and closed it again.
They'd loved playing dress-up as little girls. The fact they never gave it up had been their shared secret. Every time she came to visit Alice, they would spend at least one night in that room, with a great deal of wine and a full 100-count box of Russell Stover's, playing dress-up with the vast array of costumes. Alice had started the collection with what she kept from her college theater days. The role-playing costumes she bought for the shop had augmented it considerably, things she'd liked enough to buy an extra in her own size. Fortunately it was the size she and Madison shared as adults.
They'd often been mistaken for twins, another reason Madison was so wary of Logan's fascination with her. It wouldn't be the first time one of Alice's cast-off boyfriends thought Madison was a suitable second.
She leaned against the guest room door, remembering the last time they'd spent an evening in that room. She'd been twenty-six, on soon-to-crash-and-burn relationship number three. God, what she'd give to have that night back again.
