Tempting the Deputy Page 14

  And now she was bloody addicted not just to the sex, but to the moments afterward, when he would wrap his arms around her and she’d feel safer and more secure than she’d ever felt before in her life. Logan Tate made her feel special, important, cherished.

  Which was of course bonkers, because they hardly knew each other—and she didn’t yearn to feel cherished or special anyway.

  Get real, Charlie. This is simply the epic sex talking; that’s what you’re really addicted to.

  But if sex with Logan was all she was addicted to, why did everything else about him, and all the things they’d done together in the last ten days—that didn’t involve getting naked—feel so important?

  The evening spent watching Lyle play guitar at FlintWorks, when Logan had tried and resolutely failed to teach her the Texas two-step. All the meals they’d shared together while chatting about their different activities during the day. And worst of all the horse rides they’d taken over Double T land, through the pine forest one frosty morning, or into the foothills of Copper Mountain one afternoon while Logan was roping the last of the pregnant cattle to bring them down to the calving pens.

  As if the way Logan could make her body feel wasn’t bad enough, she had developed an addiction to his company and even to the land itself. Montana’s wide-open spaces, its rich palette of greens, blues, and golds, and the breathtaking vistas he’d introduced her to on the Double T had left her spellbound.

  Even the authentic rhythm of life on the ranch had seduced her. And being with Logan, seeing how he fit not just into the wild untamed landscape but also the settled secure life in the ranch house, had only seduced her more.

  She knew in her heart, that just like the man, she could photograph his home for the rest of her days without ever uncovering all its secrets.

  She lifted the print out of the developer as the timer clicked off, then slipped it into the stop tray—to prevent the image becoming overdeveloped—and reset the timer for another minute.

  Even in the ruddy infrared glow she could make out the strong lines of Logan’s face and body, the disks of his nipples, the shadows cast over his expression by the cowboy hat he had tipped over his forehead… And the dark mark of the scar over his left breast.

  She’d already prepared and catalogued a series of digital color shots from the shoot and, as she’d promised him, had worked in Photoshop to eliminate the scar. But as she tilted the tray to fix the black-and-white image, her breathing slowed.

  This was the image she wanted to use. Stark, simple, and effortlessly seductive.

  Because what Logan thought of as an imperfection, an ugly reminder of his childhood, to her represented his strength and compassion—and all the things about his personality that showed the strong, beautiful man who had risen like a phoenix out of the ashes of that abused child.

  They hadn’t talked about their pasts since that afternoon, but the more time she spent with Logan, the more she watched him interact with Lyle and the other ranch hands and the folks in Marietta and even with her, she could see that streak of goodness and strength that went so much deeper than his rugged good looks or his insane sex appeal.

  Logan Tate was a keeper.

  She plucked the image out of the fixer with her tongs, and switched on the main bathroom light. She dropped the print into the pool of running water in the bathroom sink and pulled out one of the earlier prints that had been rinsing long enough.

  As she pinned the other shot of Logan—his eyes focused on her—to the line she’d strung across the room, the wave of melancholy overwhelmed her.

  One day some other woman would hook Logan, would fall in love with him and make babies with him and take his mother’s place as the mistress of the Double T.

  But that woman could never be her, because unlike Logan, she had never had any staying power.

  Maybe right now she didn’t want to leave the Double T, was anxious at the prospect of having to leave Logan and Marietta once the project was done, because she’d become addicted to the pace of life here and the time she spent in his arms. But eventually the wanderlust would return—most likely just when she’d convinced herself she could stick, that she wanted to stick. And once that happened she’d feel trapped again. The way she had in boarding school, or after her parents’ funeral.

  She just didn’t do commitment and trust. She didn’t consider it a weakness; it just wasn’t who she was. Or could ever be. However much of a stealth snuggler she’d become.

  At the moment she was enjoying discovering all the many facets and layers and complexities of Logan Tate—and reveling in the physical pleasures of having insanely hot sex with him—but eventually she would have to pull herself back from the edge.

  Or risk falling right off a cliff—into an uncharted land that had all but destroyed her sense of self and self-worth as a child. The problem was figuring out when to pull back. And how. Before it was too late.

  The thump on the door made her jump. “Dammit, Charlotte, have you been washed down the goddamn drain? You’ve been in there for hours. It’s close to midnight.”

  She wrenched open the door, to find Logan on the other side wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms and a scowl.

  “I told you not to wait up for me,” she said, even if her heart did a little jump and skip at the concern shadowing those deep blue eyes.

  When exactly had she become one of Logan’s responsibilities? And how did she feel about it? Not as irritated as she should was the answer—if her jumping, jiving heartbeat was anything to go by.

  He thrust his hand through his hair. “And I told you I can’t sleep knowing you’re busy developing pictures of other guys naked while you should be in bed with me.”

  Her answering smile was quick and entirely inappropriate. She didn’t like possessive guys any more than she appreciated overprotective ones. When exactly had it become so cute on Logan?

  “What the heck are you smiling about?” he said, going the full grumpy. “I’ve got to be up at five tomorrow to head up to Copper Ridge with Tad and fix some fencing. Give me a damn break, okay, and come to bed.”

  “Would it make you feel better if you knew I wasn’t developing shots of other guys?”

  “Huh?”

  She pushed open the bathroom door and ushered him inside. “Take a look for yourself. They’re all of you, Othello.”

  He wandered into the small room, immediately sucking most of the spare oxygen out of it. The slopes and muscles of his back, and those low-riding PJ pants kicked off the inevitable melting sensation in her abdomen.

  She turned off the faucet and lifted her final print out of the sink. After flicking off the excess water, she pinned it to her drying line while he studied the shots already there.

  Awareness rippled through her and she rubbed the back of her neck—maybe it was time to call it a night and get more of what Logan had to offer in bed—and stop panicking about what the future would hold. Because they had no future. And that had always been understood.

  Her obsession with Logan was primarily sexual. Anything else was just the inevitable fallout of how invested in this project she had become. She was getting worried about nothing. Her wanderlust would return as soon as the project was over.

  And Logan was such a guarded, moody bugger, she didn’t need to worry about him falling in love with her. Any more than she needed to worry about her falling in love with him. They’d been living in a false reality the past ten days, spending way too much time in each other’s company.

  She didn’t belong on the Double T any more than Logan could function off it.

  But then he reached up to pluck the photo she had just pinned off the line and bent his head down to examine it.

  She slid her hands around his midriff, unable to resist touching that firm flesh a moment longer, and pressed her cheek to the muscles of his spine. Maybe he wouldn’t belong to her forever, but he belonged to her right now.

  “What do you think?” she asked, when he stayed silent,
the harsh thuds of his heartbeat reverberating against her cheek.

  It shouldn’t matter what he thought of the shot, but somehow it did.

  “You made it look…” He hesitated, taking a deep breath that made his ribs expand under her arms. “You made the scar look okay,” he finished, as if he couldn’t believe it. “How did you do that?”

  “It doesn’t just look okay,” she said. “It looks heroic. And it looks that way, because it is,” she said, saddened that he found that so hard to believe.

  He twisted round, forcing her to let go of him, the intensity in his eyes burning right through the tough shield she had always kept around her emotions to the tender spot that still ached for the little boy he’d once been.

  “How can it be heroic?” he said, his voice hoarse with confusion. “I let him do that to me. It’s humiliating, not heroic.”

  “Oh, Logan,” she said. “Can’t you see? You had a choice. You could have run away.” The way she would have. “Or you could have told everyone what was going on, but you didn’t. You stayed to protect Lyle, and you kept it secret to protect everyone… Even the man who hurt you. To protect everyone except yourself. If you can’t see how heroic that is, then you’re an idiot.”

  *

  Emotion slammed into Logan, closing his throat.

  What the hell did he do with this woman? This woman who made him feel so much more than he had ever felt? This woman who was all wrong for him but felt so right?

  After pinning the single shot back up onto her line, he sunk his hands into her hair, and plundered her mouth. He let the hunger storm through him, in the blind hope that it would obliterate the yearning.

  Wanting anyone this much was never good, but wanting a woman like Charlotte? Wild, mercurial, passionate, and unpredictable Charlotte? That was a recipe for disaster.

  He’d loved a woman once with every fiber of his being—his mother. And then he’d lost her—because his love hadn’t been enough. He couldn’t let himself love and need someone that much again. Especially someone he knew he would never be able to hold.

  But he was finding it harder and harder to resist the pull inside him that got stronger and more insistent each day. The pull to declare his feelings.

  The sex was incredible. So hot and raw and exciting. But much more disturbing were these moments—when she opened herself up to him. When she showed him the compassionate, brave, and generous side of her character that he was pretty sure she kept hidden from everyone else behind her tough-girl exterior. And it was destroying his will to resist her, and resist the strength of his own feelings.

  Threading her fingers into his hair, she plundered his mouth right back, responding with the honesty and hunger he had come to adore.

  He drew away first, and boosted her slim body easily into his arms.

  “You about finished here?” he said, struggling to lift the mood. Struggling to focus on the hunger firing through his bloodstream and not the erratic rhythm of his heart. “Because I’m more than ready to screw you into unconsciousness so I can finally get some sleep tonight.”

  She laughed, the gleam of mischief in her eye as captivating as her impassioned defense of him a moment ago.

  “You’re on, Deputy Hard-Ass,” she said, grasping his shoulders as he toted her out of the tiny bathroom.

  She peppered butterfly kisses along his jaw, which only inflamed the hunger. “But don’t be surprised if I screw you into unconsciousness first.”

  He chuckled as he headed up the stairs, the swell of heat in his crotch making his erection butt against the warm cleft between her legs—but as he dropped her onto his bed and began to tear off her clothes, he’d never felt less amused in his life.

  As he plunged into the tight wet heat, and rocked them both to another vicious climax, he could feel himself falling headfirst into a pit of trouble.

  With no idea whatsoever if he would survive the landing.

  Chapter Twelve

  Charlie waved Ryan goodbye as he drove off toward the bunkhouse, and then she walked into the ranch, her boots crunching on the frosty grass. The screen door cracked behind her, and ricocheted off the headache she’d been brewing all day. She’d spent the drive back to the ranch on her mobile phone busy schmoozing an old friend, who was one of the commissioning editors at Vanity Fair, into doing a feature on the calendar.

  Now all she had to do was get the release forms signed for the shots they were interested in using—and schedule the last shoot.

  She dragged off her coat and placed it on the coat hooks in the hallway, then dug her phone back out of the pocket while she kicked off her boots.

  She typed out yet another text to Jonah Clark, the subject of her last shoot, a thirty-two-year-old search-and-rescue pilot who had proved more bloody elusive than the Loch Ness Monster.

  She pressed send and deposited her camera in the darkroom. Not expecting a prompt reply. Didn’t matter, she might not even be here to do the shoot.

  Anxiety made her stomach tighten as she stuffed the pharmacy bag she’d had hidden in her camera bag into her tote. Working on the project had helped take her mind off the problem she had finally acknowledged this morning, when she’d spotted the bright red P on her phone calendar and realized her period was now late by over a week.

  She’d never been particularly regular, but a whole week? She and Logan had been careful, using condoms every time they’d made love. All except one time. That one time when they’d christened his pickup truck after his photo shoot.

  When she hadn’t been working on the project today she’d been frantically looking up ‘methods of contraception’ on the Internet and discovered that withdrawal was just about the most unreliable, short of using no contraception at all.

  She heard shouting coming from the living room and the backchat of TV sports commentary.

  Standing in the doorway in her stocking feet, she watched Logan and Lyle unobserved as they argued about the chances of the Minnesota Wild coming back against the Chicago Blackhawks.

  The anxiety in her stomach twisted tighter. What would she do if she was pregnant?

  Don’t think about that. Not yet. Not until you know.

  She’d read the instructions in the box three times after buying it that afternoon in town—and knew that to get an accurate result she had to wait until tomorrow morning to pee on the stick.

  She couldn’t tell Logan. She had no idea how he would react, but until she had peed on the stick this wasn’t his problem; it was hers. And if the result came back positive? What then? Did she really want to tell him? What if he wanted her to have the baby? What if he didn’t? Did she even know how she felt?

  The questions kept crashing into each other in her head. She felt like a rudderless ship, colliding into everything and anything.

  Before she’d ever met Logan this would not have been a problem.

  She’d certainly never been dumb enough to let any guy get even close to getting her pregnant. But more than that, she had always had a very clear view of herself. Who she was and what she wanted out of life. What she was capable of and what she wasn’t.

  Motherhood, babies, homes, hearths, love and romance, and all that domestic goddess crap had never been what she was looking for. She was an adrenaline junkie, a free agent, a photographer, a wild child, always looking for the next amazing shot, the next great adventure.

  But somewhere, somehow, in the last three weeks of living at the Double T, of living with Logan—in his arms, in his bed—everything had become confused. So confused she didn’t even know how she felt about the possibility of being unexpectedly pregnant.

  What the hell had Logan done to her? And how did she put it right? Get her sense of self, her sense of certainty back again? Quickly enough to deal with what the pee stick might tell her tomorrow morning?

  The pulse of emotion smothered her chest when Logan’s head turned—as if he’d sensed her standing there.

  “Hey, Charlotte,” he said, the smile that spread across thos
e beautiful lips both sexy and pleased to see her. “Come and take a load off. The Wild are about to make their final power play.”

  He reached out an arm and beckoned her forward.

  “They better hurry up,” Lyle said, not sounding optimistic. “With only five on the clock and Staal in the box.”

  Charlie settled onto the worn couch cushions beside Logan, the emotion choking her when he wrapped his arm around her waist—treating her like she belonged, like this wasn’t just a temporary relationship. Like they were a real couple. The way he’d treated her right from the start, despite all her efforts to keep the distance she usually did. The distance she had somehow lost along the way. And now couldn’t seem to relocate even though she desperately needed it.

  “You want a beer?” he said, considerate and kind, the way he always was.

  She shook her head. “No thanks.”

  “Give me a break, you two.” Lyle slanted them both an exasperated look. “If you’re going to start necking, I’m out of here.”

  “Shut up, Lyle,” Logan said, a good-humored smirk on his face as he sunk back into the seat and nudged Charlie closer. He made a big production of nuzzling at her neck—she would guess for the benefit of his brother who swore on cue—but the spurt of arousal shot through Charlie regardless.

  How come he could still turn her inside out with lust after close to a month of nonstop hot sex?

  “Don’t, Logan.” She pressed her elbow into his ribs.

  He released her, but the look he sent her—concerned and way too perceptive—only made the pulsing in her chest become unbearable. “What’s up, Charlotte? You look beat.”

  “Nothing,” she said, forcing herself to stand.

  She felt the loss of his warmth instantly, which only disturbed her more. If she couldn’t even get up from the couch without feeling as if she’d severed a limb, how the hell was she going to walk away from him?

  “I’ve just got a bit of a headache,” she murmured. “Anyone thought about supper?” she added, desperate for something to do. Anything to do that didn’t involve sinking into Logan’s welcoming arms. Or panicking about the testing kit burning a hole in her tote.