Page 72 of Winter’s Fire

Why don’t you just go the whole hog and pee on him?

For a fraction of a second, Lucy’s inner sarcastic bitch threatened to twist her lips into a humourless smile, but wrapping mental duct tape around her broken heart took priority. Plunging into a morass of self-pity wouldn’t help anyone—her, least of all.

“Oh Logan, you have to get me out of here!”

The hysterical wail dissolved into the kind of dramatic tears no man could resist. Watching Logan comfort Diana scraped Lucy’s already wounded heart raw, inflicted a pain so profound it almost engulfed her in its suffocating embrace.

Hold on. Don’t break. And above all, show no emotion. You are stronger than this.

~~*~~

They were left alone for the remainder of that day, but in what was to become a pattern for the days that followed, the guards came for Logan first thing in the morning after one of the longest, coldest nights Lucy had ever endured. Curled on her side, she’d counted each excruciating second, unable to rid her mind of the image of Logan and Diana together and the gentle way in which he’d coaxed as much information out of her as possible, to build a picture of where she’d been held and how she’d been brought to their location.

At the crack of dawn, breakfast arrived, and in exchange for the food, the two guards—both built like tanks—dragged Logan out of the cell, while a third kept a gun trained on Lucy and Diana.

In spite of the turbulence of her feelings, Lucy put herself between the semi-automatic assault rifle and the woman they’d tried and failed to rescue. All she could do was watch as Logan was taken away, and when the bolts grated home again, she was left alone with Diana.

“He’s mine.”

Lucy pivoted to face the source of two of the most venomous words she’d ever heard. It was as if a switch had been thrown—Diana was no longer the simpering victim but had transformed into a spitting cobra. “Excuse me?”

“You heard.” Diana made not the slightest attempt to hide her sneer.

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

“I’ve seen the way you look at him. You want him.”

With every fibre of her being, but there was no way Lucy was admitting it. Or at least, she had wanted him—as soon as his arms had gone around Diana, he’d become off-limits for her, so she’d walled up her feelings and turned her back on them. “Miss Carstairs, you’d better have something to eat—we don’t know when they’ll bring food again.”

If she’d hoped to divert Diana’s attention elsewhere, she failed miserably.

“You’re only here because that stupid resort doesn’t allow single people. If it did, I wouldn’t have brought that deadweight of a boyfriend with me.”

While such a callous attitude shocked Lucy, on a different level, she wasn’t surprised by it—it was totally in keeping with the true colours Diana now revealed.

For a moment Lucy wondered what Logan saw in her, but the answer was obvious—he was a man, and to her dying day, Lucy knew she’d never get to the bottom of how the male mind worked.

“You do know they killed him?” In the face of such heartlessness, she felt no obligation to pull that particular punch.

The revelation still didn’t elicit a more humane reaction in Diana. She gave a careless shrug, as if the news meant nothing to her. “Can’t say I’m surprised. His spine took a permanent vacation before we even got here. He was never going to measure up to Logan. Just like you’ll never measure up to what Logan needs.”

Which Diana clearly believed she did. Lucy tightened her grip on her composure. She didn’t do meltdowns, yet right now, she was hovering at the edge of one, and she didn’t like it.

“I hardly think—”

“A woman like you could never be the sub a man like Logan needs.”

The blunt statement slammed into Lucy with an almost physical force. She bit her tongue. She was not going to react to the taunting, no matter how much the two-faced witch baited her. “It’s probably a good idea to get something to eat.”

Try as she might, Lucy found her own advice hard to stomach. She managed a few mouthfuls and made sure she was hydrated, and at the same time put both food and water on one side for Logan. She was also interested to note that Logan’s self-appointed perfect mate saw only to her own needs. The woman was the epitome of selfishness—and yes, vanity too, if the way she constantly combed her fingers through her hair and frowned when they snagged on a tangle was anything to go by.

“We’d better get out of here soon, before my hair turns completely to straw. Do you have a plan?”

Diana’s tone yet again made Lucy feel like the hired help—or would have, if she’d let it get to her. “We’re working on it, Miss Carstairs. We were both unconscious when we were brought here. I’m quite sure Logan will have a better idea of what we can do when they bring him back.”

If they brought him back. If they didn’t blindfold him for the journey. If they hadn’t knocked him out again. Lucy shuddered at the memory of that vicious-looking needle being jabbed into his neck, the last thing she saw as she succumbed to the chloroform they’d used on her.

“I can tell you one thing—we aren’t on Nenufar anymore.”