Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11) (10 page)

A
s the credits rolled on the fifty-two inch flat screen, Logan looked beside him. Drew was curled up on the far end of the brown leather couch using the armrest as a pillow, and Emma, who was sitting between them, was leaning against Logan’s left arm, both were out cold. He was the lone viewer who had made it all the way to the end of the movie without falling asleep.

Drew and Emma hadn’t even lasted a half hour. Logan could have turned it off and called it a night after getting them to bed, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d stayed on the couch and finished the two-hour-and-forty-five-minute movie.

He hadn’t wanted the time to end. It had nothing to do with the movie, which he’d seen at least a half dozen times before. The reason he’d let the film play to the end was because he had known that, the second everyone headed to their rooms and the night was over, the warmth and comfort surrounding the three of them would be gone.

When Charlie left, Drew had asked if they could have a “movie night.” Logan had seen the flicker of battle in Emma’s baby blues between not wanting to disappoint her son and also needing to get some sleep.

Needless to say, not disappointing Drew had won out. They popped popcorn, and Emma had even whipped up a batch of brownies. Logan had tried to help, but she’d explained that baking calmed her nerves. Apparently, Drew had already known that, because he’d stayed out of her way until the brownies were in the oven.

As soon as they had sat down and started the flick, Logan’s mind had stopped racing. The dark cloud of anger and regret, that always seemed to be hovering over him had lifted. It had been replaced by a peaceful contentment, and even though he was sitting in a dark room, his heart and mind were filled with light.

When the screen went back to the DVD menu, Logan knew that, as much as he might’ve wanted this feeling, this night, to never end, it had.

“Hey, guys. Movie’s over,” he spoke softly, not wanting to scare them.

Both mother and son remained asleep.

“Emma,” he said a little louder.

Still nothing.

Realizing he would have to take more drastic measures, he began to stand up. And instead of waking up, she slumped over. But his arm caught her before she hit the cushion. On instinct, he scooped her up in his arms. Her body settled against his as he made the short walk back to the guest room.

After gently laying her down on the bed, he stood back up and saw that her blonde hair was fanned across her face. He brushed it back, running his fingers through the silky strands.

Letting out a small moan, she turned her head, snuggling deeper into the pillow. As he gazed at her sleeping face, he was spellbound. His eyes took in every feature.

He studied the curve of her dark-brown brow over her lids. Her long, thick lashes resting against the smooth creaminess of her cheek. The rounded tip at the end of her cute, turned-up nose. And then the showstopper—her lips. The plump fullness of both top and bottom matched like mirrored images. Their deep red made Logan want to nip into them to taste their sweetness.

The desire to do just that crashed into him like a semi. He needed to get the hell out of there. Pulling the comforter over her, Logan covered Emma up and tucked the blanket beneath her shoulder so that it stayed in place.

An overwhelming urge hit him with more force than the semi-driven desire had. All he wanted to do was take care of her. To make sure she got the best night’s sleep she could. Never before had he felt so fiercely protective of another person.

Emma made him feel things, things he had never thought he was capable of feeling. Things he had no right feeling.

When he turned around, he was surprised to see Drew in the doorway.

Logan stepped towards him, and Drew moved out into the hallway. As Logan quietly closed the door, Drew yawned and sleepily rubbed his eyes.

“Thanks for taking care of my mom. She’s always the one who takes care of everyone else.” With that, the kid walked down the hall and disappeared into the other spare room, closing the door behind him.

Logan stood motionless. Emotions he was so unfamiliar with that he couldn’t even name them, spread through his entire being.

He’d been responsible for the kid for a total of one and a half days, and it had been fun, but he was also exhausted. How in the hell had Emma done it for so long on her own? Before Andrew had been killed, he’d barely been around. Between deployments and special-ops training, Logan and Andrew had been gone more than they’d been home by a three-to-one ratio.

Every time Logan thought about his fallen friend, his body responded the same way it had when he’d slipped off a roof at age ten and landed flat on his back—it knocked the wind right out of him. He tried to take a deep breath and relax, but his chest was tight, like someone was squeezing it from the inside out. His arms were heavy as they hung beside him. His head felt both so light that it might float away, and so full that it might explode.

The station shrink had mentioned that he shouldn’t suppress his emotions. She’d said that he needed not only to identify them, but also “live” in them. Feel them.

If Logan had a shot in hell at returning to active duty, he’d have to see the therapist again, so he figured he might as well try to do what she’d said. His footsteps sounded so much louder than they ever had before as he made his way to the kitchen.

He’d never lived with anyone before, unless he counted sharing a room with his twin brother when he had been a kid and then again when he had been in the military. But as an adult civilian, he’d lived alone. Not once had he even let a woman stay the night.

At first, this was because he never knew when or if he’d have a night terror. Then, once he’d started working undercover, it never seemed safe. In fact, in the last three years, he’d never even brought a woman home to his apartment.

Cool air hit his face when he opened the fridge. Just as he was reaching for a beer, his phone rang. After quickly snatching it from his pocket, he answered on the second ring.

“Yeah,” Logan snapped.

“Wow. So I guess playing house doesn’t put you in a good mood,” his twin brother observed.

Playing house?
“Why are you still up?” Logan asked, ignoring his brother’s comment. He knew he was being an ass. He just didn’t care.

It was midnight in California, and that meant that it was three a.m. in South Carolina, where his brother lived. He had a big fight coming up, which meant he should’ve been taking care of himself.

“I like to mix up my training schedule. I’m pulling an all-nighter.”

From his twin’s cocky tone, Logan had a pretty good idea what kind of all-nighter training was happening, and he seriously doubted that it had anything to do with his MMA career.

Lucas “Lucky” Dorsey had never had to work too hard—or hard at all—for attention from the opposite sex. There’d been a running joke between his brothers that Lucky never kept one woman longer than a toothbrush. He wasn’t a cheater, and he wasn’t scared of commitment. To hear him tell it, he just got bored. He had relationship ADD.

“Training, huh?”

“Yeah. I’m working on my
stamina
.”

“What do you want, Lucky?”

“I had an interesting conversation with Pops tonight. He said that he had a nice
family dinner
with you, Emma, and Drew.”

Leaning back against the counter, Logan ran his hand through his hair and tried not to let his brother push his buttons, something Lucky was an expert at. He might’ve been a world-champion MMA fighter, but he also could’ve easily earned a title in starting shit. Normally, Logan didn’t take shit from anyone. The only exception to that rule was on the other end of the phone. His twin brother had always had a longer rope than anyone else, and more often than not, he hung himself with the sucker.

“If you have a point, get to it,” Logan said flatly.

“My point? So I have to have a ‘point’ to call and talk to my brother? My
twin
brother?”

Logan did something he only ever did while he was talking to Lucky—he rolled his eyes. He also decided to wait his brother out. Chances were, after a few minutes of giving Logan a bad time, Lucky would get bored and lose interest in the conversation. His attention span was about that of a gnat’s—fighting being the only exception.

“Seriously though, dude. Pops said you were acting totally normal around Em. How the hell do you do it?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Logan snapped.

No one knew how he felt about Emma. Not even Emma. So he had no idea what the hell his brother was talking about, but he sure as shit didn’t appreciate the insinuation.

This entire conversation could’ve been a fishing trip for Lucky. Since he had been little, his twin would get wind of something, have a feeling about something, or only know part of a story, and if he wanted to get to the bottom of it, he would “go fishing.” He’d cast his line into the water and see what bit. Unfortunately, if that was the case, Logan had just bit—hook, line, and sinker.

He hadn’t been able to help it though. Hearing his brother even say Emma’s name, especially when he’d shortened it like they were old friends, had caused him to see red. Protective didn’t begin to describe what had flared up in him like dry brush ignited with a blowtorch.

“Whooooaaa. Relax, bro. I just meant that, between the books she writes and, well, how ridiculously smokin’ hot she is, I didn’t know how you weren’t sporting a boner so big it could knock the dinner table over.”

“How do you know she writes books?”

His brother had met Emma a few times over the years when Andrew had been alive, but the thought of him keeping in touch with her turned all the protective instincts that had just erupted in him into raging jealousy.

Maybe the shrink had been right. Maybe he was a single trigger away from a nervous breakdown. Maybe he was even more fucked up than he’d thought.

“She’s a big deal,” Lucky said as if it were common knowledge.

“She is?” Logan hadn’t meant to sound surprised, but he hadn’t really kept up with her career. Mainly because, every time he thought about her, he thought about that night in the kitchen and he would immediately try to push her out of his thoughts.

“Yeah. What rock have you been living under? I mean, I know you were pretty deep undercover, but it’s not like they had you out in Bum Fuck, Nowhere. You weren’t part of Undercover Amish. You still lived in the real world and—”

If he let him, Lucky could travel down this road for quite a while and entertain himself by coming up with new and “clever” ways to mock the fact that he didn’t have a clue about Emma’s career. His brother was talented like that.

“Enough.” Logan only said one word, but thankfully, it worked.

Lucky chuckled, but then he backed off. “Look, I only know what’s up because every single hookup I’ve had for the last few years has had two books on their nightstand.
Fifty Shades
and
When It’s Real
. I didn’t even know that Emma was Chelsea Paige until I picked it up one night from sheer boredom while waiting for some chick to get ready and I saw her picture on the back.”

“You read her book?”

“Books. Plural. Hell yeah, I have.”

Damn. He never had before, but now… Now, Logan felt like an ass because he’d never read any of her books.

His brother continued. “And they are
muy caliente
. Like Mrs. Lynch’s chili hot.”

Mrs. Lynch, their neighbor when they’d been growing up, used to make the boys chili whenever she babysat. Logan had no idea what the hell kind of peppers that woman had used, but it had been so freakin’ hot that their mouths would burn for a week after just one bite.

“Seriously. I can’t believe that you’ve never read them. I just figured, since you and Andrew were so close and you’re Drew’s godfather and all that, you would’ve.”

“I’ve been busy,” Logan replied. But he left out that he’d been busy trying not to think about Emma.

“Well, it’s probably a good idea that you haven’t. I know you think of Emma as some kind of saint—as evidenced by you almost biting my head off at just the mention of her name—and she is a saint. Losing Andrew like that, raising Drew. It’s just, if you read her books, they would inspire you to do all kinds of sinning with that particular angel.”

That ship has sailed. Inspiration has already struck.
“All right, well, thanks for the book report, Lucky. It’s getting late.”

“Late? The night’s just getting started. Stamina, remember?”

“Goodnight, Lucky.”

“Night, bro. Tell Em and Drew I said hey. Oh, and tell her I’m a
big fan
.”

Not a chance.

Logan disconnected the call and sat in his dark kitchen. So many thoughts were filling his mind that they were fighting each other for who would get top billing, but they all centered around one common theme: Emma Locke.

This woman struck more than one chord in Logan. Obviously, she was a strong woman. She’d been a teenage mom. Then she’d been widowed and left with a child at the same time most girls her age were partying it up in college. Instead of crumbling, she’d managed to become a best-selling author and raise an incredible kid.

Still, all Logan wanted to do was protect her. When he’d picked her up and pulled her into his arms, she’d felt so small, so vulnerable. Every protective instinct he had—and some he hadn’t even known he possessed—had risen to the surface of the choppy waters of his consciousness. Then, hearing Drew
thank him
for taking care of his mom had annihilated Logan. Broken his heart, which he’d thought was so hard that it couldn’t have shattered. But it had.

Before he’d even had an opportunity to process either of those things, his damn brother had called. And now, all of those emotions, feelings, whatever the hell they were, were nothing compared to the curiosity Lucky had piqued to the point that it overrode every other thought battling it out in his brain.

What the hell did she write in those books? And why the hell did he want to put his fist through the wall because his brother had read them?