Page 233 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
“Sorry,” Logan says, tugging on my neck. “Come on, Mac. Time to go.”
I try to shake him off, but he’s got a fucking grip and too much experience holding back his brother sailors in bar fights. “I need to talk to her?—”
“Nope, not now. Not until you both cool down. Come on. We’re gonna have a cigar and another drink.”
I don’t need either of those things. I need the girl who just walked away from me.
“I don’t—” I begin.
“I’m not asking, sir. Come on.”
Logan manhandles me around the corner and back into the elevator. Once his glare breaks through my red rage, I leanagainst the mirrored wall and press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“What did I just do, Lo?”
“Lost your head over a woman. Can’t be the first time.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
I can’t remember ever fighting over a woman. I never fought for Amy. Quite the opposite: I shared her with the worst assholes I knew. She was an innocent and I broke her on them, and I kept breaking her until I married her, and she figured out how to break me.
“I’m just glad you didn’t end up in cuffs,” Logan says. “Theo’s pretty quick to throw his badge around. It’s one of the reasons Emily’s not his biggest fan. I’m glad you listened to reason.”
I didn’t. If Brenna hadn’t moved away from him when she did, I’d have gone for him. The idea that she was just in that room with him, submitting to him, letting him touch her, taking his cock?—
I grind my palms against my eyes to shut out that mental image.
“Lo, I don’t think I can do this.”
He takes my arm and steers me out of the elevator. Down a short hall, he thumbs through another security door and into a huge, glass-enclosed space, dimly lit by the city’s twinkling lights and the soft, blue, backlighting of a round bar in the center of the room. Logan tugs me over to the bar and orders two Padron Family Reserve cigars and two more bourbons, before he steers me to a seating group with a commanding view across the roof and over the city.
I sink into a deep, leather armchair and contemplate how deeply I’ve fucked up.
“We’ve done one scene together,” I grumble to Logan as he hands me a lit cigar and a glass of amber liquid. “But she feels like mine.”
Logan takes a long pull on his own cigar before rubbing his forehead. “This is going to sound judgmental and I’m trying not to be, because you know my history with Emmy, but you’re jumping the gun, sir. I’m not sure DirtyGurl’s built that way.”
She is. I feel it. Or maybe I just want her to be so badly that I can’t envision her being any other way.
“I need to find out. I can’t leave it here, Lo.”
He smokes in silence for a moment and, reluctantly, I join him.
“How do you feel about grand gestures?” he asks at length.
“Such as?”
“Something you feel good about. I’ve made that mistake, sending a woman something I thought would be meaningful to her. I wasn’t sure about it myself, and then she questioned why I sent it, and I had no good answer.”
I blow out a breath. “Call me old fashioned, but in my day, when a man fucked up, he sent flowers.”
“I wouldn’t go down the red roses route with DirtyGurl, but flowers are a solid choice.”
I ponder flowers as I puff on the cigar, trying to savor the rich taste and let it soothe me. “Do they work with Emily?”
Logan grins. He’s such a smitten fuck. “You notice the pink roses that are always on the dining table? I get them delivered every week against the eventuality of me fucking up.”
That wrings a laugh out of me.
