AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Logan lifted an eyebrow.
“You know, Mexican food? Remember the restaurant down the street I mentioned?”
Logan laughed as his stomach rumbled in response to her questions.
“That’s yes, right?”
He smiled and nodded, extending one leg under his desk to push at the chair that sat on the opposite side. The chair moved out a few inches in invitation to Sam.
“That’s a yes,” he said, and moved several piles of papers to make room on his desk. Sam opened the takeout containers and shoved a napkin and plasticware across the desk to him.
The sound that came out of Logan’s mouth when he looked at his lunch was half groan and half indefinable gurgle of wordless appreciation.
Hell, this woman could somehow read what he wanted all the time. That fact would have unsettled him more if the smell of a combo plate of enchiladas, chimichangas, and rice and beans smothered in rich sauces and guacamole, hadn’t distracted him.
Logan continued to moan as he scooped oversized bites of the steaming food in his mouth, but stopped to glare at Sam when he heard her laughing at him.
“Sorry.” She raised her hands in front of her as if in apology but the impish grin on her face said she was anything but sorry.
“I like food. What can I say?”
Sam nodded and bent her head over her own food, eating with almost as much enthusiasm as Logan, but when Logan burst out with, “Jessica Rabbit!,” her head popped up in surprise.
“Excuse me?” Sam blinked at him.
“Jessica Rabbit. I’ve been trying to figure out who you remind me of all this time and it just hit me. It’s Jessica Rabbit. I mean, your hair is black not red, but other than that—” He broke off as if he was making all kinds of sense and she should be able to understand what he was saying.
Apparently, she didn’t.
“Don’t you know who Jessica Rabbit is?”
Sam only nodded at him.
He shrugged. “Well, you look like her.”
“No. I don’t. She’s all … all … gorgeous and hot and … all … all …”
Logan’s grin was irrepressible. “She’s tall and voluptuous and sexy as hell. Exactly like you.”
He went back to eating, but he could feel Sam’s gaze on him so he raised his gaze to hers again. “What?”
He could see the gears in that gorgeous brain of hers cranking a mile a minute as though she were calculating something and not coming up with the right answer. “It’s a compliment, Sam. Nod your head. Smile. Say thank you and move on.”
“Oh. O-okay,” she said and went back to her food, but the pinched brows stayed as she continued to fuss at the problem in her head.
Logan laughed but went back to eating. He had a feeling Sam would need to puzzle over things for a while on her own. No one else would be able to convince her of her beauty. She’d likely go home and somehow reduce the issue to numbers and equations and look for proof. And, damn how he wanted to be the one to give her that proof.
There was a time when Logan would have looked at a woman like Samantha and known right off the bat he shouldn’t be with her. It was the old problem of Sam being a woman made for marriage, and long-term love. Commitment.
She didn’t have the personality for one-night stands or short-term romance. Logan’s life hadn’t matched her needs until now. When he’d been in the Teams, his life had been a revolving door of deployments and training, with no room for a relationship in between. Sure, some of the guys had married, some even making it last for a while.
But Logan just never got how you could walk away from a woman you loved and stick yourself in the middle of the hellholes they went into and not lose your mind with worry. Or be distracted as all hell wondering how she was, if she was holding up all right or worried to pieces for his safety. He’d watched too many men tell one of their buddies to give a final message to a woman back home. He didn’t want to be that man.
Now that he was home for good, that was no longer an issue. In fact, Logan had begun to crave a longer-term connection with someone, the sharing of a life. The only problem was, he was enough of a man to know this wasn’t the time for that. He wasn’t whole enough right now and he honestly couldn’t say when he would be whole again. He didn’t feel like he could start something with Sam until he had found a way to beat this demon that seemed to be chasing him. If he could only fix what was broken in him, then maybe, just maybe, he’d be man enough for her.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said, slowing down on his food now that he’d satiated the worst of his hunger. “I’m on level seventeen. I hope you’re adding new levels soon.”
Sam looked up, surprise in her eyes again.
