Page 54 of Alone With You
“This friend runs a large emergency room.” He shifted his shoulders under the crisp cotton of the oxford shirt. “He offered me a permanent position before my butt hit the interview chair.”
There were the larger implications here, but she could hardly get past the details. “That’s why you’re wearing a suit today.”
He glanced down at himself, as if confused to find himself dressed for an office. “I drove back from the interview this morning. I didn’t have time to change.”
Her head swam. “Things happen fast around you, Logan.”
“Things sure happened fast between us, Jenny.”
Lightning-bolt fast. Too fast to be real. Her head was spinning.
“For six months,” he said, “I hadn’t made a single decision more important than what to eat for dinner.” He pushed away from the bed and took a step closer to her. “And then, out of the blue, you walked into my life.”
“I walked out of the shower.” She hunched her shoulders as he approached, afraid of what was coming. “How could it not have been so hot, so physical?”
“Is it? Just that?”
“This is what happens when you mix proximity and attraction.” The bandage pulled at her throat, but it wasn’t tape that caused the constriction. “Eventually it all blows up. That’s why you’re here to say good-bye.”
She couldn’t look at him. A rumble of voices sifted into the room from the hall. Someone rolled a gurney with a wonky wheel past the door. The clock on the wall ticked past the seconds. She couldn’t bear the odd silence, the ringing in her ears.
“Logan.” She tilted her chin. “I’ve had conversations like this before—”
“Like hell you have.”
“I understand what’s happening.” She absorbed the sharpness of his words without a twitch. “I’m happy that you’ve gone back to what you do best. I’m happy, after all that you’ve suffered, that you found your way—”
“I’m not your asshole ex, Jenny.”
His words choked her silent. Logan Macallister wasdefinitelynot her ex. Her ex wouldn’t have been so gentle. He wouldn’t have bothered to choose his words with such care. She recognized, now, that the relationship she’d had with her ex had been poisoned from the start. She’d made the mistake of sticking with the bastard too long, testing every variable in a vain effort to fix their faulty connection. She’d assumed the problem was withher.But Logan had taught her that love should be effortless, right from the start.
“Jenny.”
His shoes came into view where she stared at the linoleum floor. His warmth swept over her, along with that alluring, musky scent that rippled pleasure through her quicker than any drug.
“You’ve got this all wrong, darling.” His touch was like a spark on her cheek.
Why would she trembling?
“I’m not here to say good-bye.” He urged her chin up with the softest of pressures, until she found herself captured by those green eyes. “I’m here to thank you.”
She swayed a little, her chest hurting at the sudden lack of oxygen.
“I thought I’d lost everything when I left South America. Something in me broke after that tragedy.” His jaw flexed but he didn’t look away. Instead, he leaned in. “When I saw you go limp in my arms, I was sure I’d lose you just like I’d lost that sweet girl. But it all came back to me in a rush. Everything I’ve ever been taught. Clear as if I’d never been away…as if I’d been given another chance. I’ve spent the last six months trying to figure out who the hell I am, and it turns out I’m the same guy I ever was. I just needed to meet a woman who could heal me.”
Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. How could it be that she’d healed him, when he was the one who’d healed her? How many years had she thrown up walls against relationships? How much of life had she missed burrowing into her work? And yet she hadn’t thought about work once since she’d woken up in this hospital. She hadn’t turned her thoughts to crunching the data she’d already collected, or worrying about the delay in the distillations, or the papers she had to write before classes began at the end of the summer. All that had been swept away. Nothing had mattered but Logan, who she loved, even when she believed he was leaving her.
Wasn’t he leaving her? “I heard you over the phone,” she said. “You zipped up your suitcase. You left the cabin.”
“Only for a night, so I could make the trip there and back in time to fetch you out of this hospital.” He pulled a rueful smile. “All my things are still in the cabin, Jenny. Right next to yours.”
“Even the birds?”
“Even the birds.” He cupped her face. His palms barely touched her skin. “You really thought I was leaving you?”
A hot tear slipped out of her eye. “Everything is so strange, Logan. Since I woke up in this hospital. Since Dr. Nguyen told me who you are, I feel like I hardly know you. Or myself.”
“Let’s change that.”
