Christie Ridgway - Mad Enough to Marry

Since she generally caused bad days—his—he was unsure how to answer. “What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.

“Everything,” she muttered, looking away. “You name it.”

Logan’s blood chilled. Something was wrong. Could it be man trouble? He hadn’t heard she was seeing anyone, and God knew it would take a special kind of man to knock that boulder-size chip off her shoulder, but…. But it made him damn angry to think someone could have gotten to her heart, then broken it. “Is it a man?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she answered, but still, she didn’t sound like herself and she didn’t meet his eyes.

“Who the hell is he?” Logan demanded.

She shot him a startled, sidelong look, then shook her head. “No, no. It isn’t like that.”

Not good enough. He still didn’t feel relieved. “What exactly is it like then?” he pressed.

That got her bristling again. “Logan—”

“What’s the trouble?” he said through his teeth, his anger unexpectedly jumping to match hers. “Tell me now.”

“Oh, fine!” Her gaze slammed into his. “If you really want to know, I’ll admit it. The trouble is this.” Her hand flew wildly in the direction of the empty fishbowl, and she made contact, sending it rocking. “It’s mortifying, okay?”

Ah. Well. Logan felt his surprising, unfamiliar surge of anger instantly subside into something quite different. Not that her words were anything to get all worked up about. Except that Elena O’Brien, the toughest, prickliest, least-likely-to-surrender woman he knew, had just admitted out loud she actually possessed normal, human feelings.

Suddenly the prospect of kissing her didn’t seem quite so dreadful after all.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, then smiled. It felt like a charming smile. “Hmm. Well. I may not be able to do a lot of things, but I can do something about—” he gestured toward the fishbowl “—that.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, her mouth bunching up. She could have been sucking on a lemon. “Don’t you dare!”

It occurred to him he should possibly be insulted by her apparent distaste. “What’s wrong now?” he said grumpily, hoping like hell she wasn’t going to be thorny about this.

“Logan.” Angry heat flared in her eyes. “Don’t you dare think about kissing me.”

Damn her. She was going to be thorny about this, and here he was, about to do her a favor.

Then her eyes narrowed even more. “Oh, I get it now. You think you’re doing me a favor, don’t you?”

While he tried to look properly wounded by her correct guess, she propped her hands on her hips and stomped closer to the counter. “Listen, Logan. I don’t need your pity.”

She was close enough that he could detect her scent. She wore an exotic fragrance that smelled like flowers heated by the sun. Logan tried thinking of some response to what she’d just said, but his head was suddenly spinning again.

She could tell that too. Her eyes rolled. “Uh!” She spun away.

He reached out, grabbed her wrist.

Elena froze. A tremor ran down her back then her head turned slowly toward him. She looked at his hand on her, then looked at his face. “Let go of me,” she said.

“No,” he answered. Her arm was quivering against his hand and Logan didn’t know if it was outrage or embarrassment or some combination of both. He hauled her closer, so that only the narrow wooden counter separated them.

Her breath was coming so hard and so fast that her astounding breasts were heaving against the cotton of her shirt. Staring at the sight, his brain whirled again and she almost used his distraction to pull away, but then some instinct deeper than lust made his hold tighten possessively.

“I don’t want your pity,” she said again.

“Pity,” he repeated. “You don’t know how much I wish I was going to do this out of pity.” He crowded closer to the counter, getting closer to her.

That flush was running up her neck again, past her mouth, over her cheeks. Her chin lifted. “Why is it then?” she hissed. “Don’t tell me. I can guess. It’s—”

“Don’t.” It was his turn to say the word. “You’re in the kissing booth and I’m buying one kiss. Hell, Elena. Let’s just leave it at that.”

He bent his head. He hadn’t kissed her in eleven years, since she was sixteen and he was eighteen. He hesitated now, because the memory of those kisses wasn’t something he was quite ready to relinquish. The reality of kissing Elena couldn’t be as good as he remembered.

Her body was trembling again and her eyes were snapping blue fire, but she wasn’t trying to get away and he knew he couldn’t get away with retreating from this kiss. Hell, it had been leading to this for the past few months, ever since they had met again. It was probably plain good sense to get it over with.

He covered her lips with his.

She inhaled sharply at the contact and he froze. Her body shook, and he dropped her wrist to cup her shoulders with his palms. He slid his tongue between her lips. Not into her mouth, just between her soft, full, how-could-he-have-forgotten-their-decadent-taste? lips.

She inhaled sharply again, unwittingly drawing in his tongue, and Logan’s senses, instead of whirling like the dervishes he expected, heightened. Focused.

From her throat came the tiniest of moans, the sound vibrating against his tongue. Her flower-scent bloomed around them and he tasted her desire in the heat of her mouth and in the way her tongue slid against his, as if she had to know its texture, too.

All his muscles tensed, every one, everywhere, going rock-solid. He pressed her mouth harder, took the kiss deeper, and even though he felt his blood rush through his body and his heartbeat jump to unprecedented speed, his mind remained crystal-clear, as if to sear this new kiss in his memory.

His eyes opened, and he saw hers as languid slits of blue, like pieces of hot summer sky. He saw it all in them: the attraction, the arousal and then he saw something else.

Vulnerability.

Oh, hell.

Blood pounding and every nerve howling in protest, Logan broke the kiss, slowly but surely easing Elena away. He knew she was staring at him, but he refused to meet her eyes. Instead, he concentrated on getting his breathing back to normal, while one hand slid into his pocket.

Just that morning he’d met a friend and traded his Beemer for a well-worn pickup and some big-billed cash. He pulled the wad of bills out now and looked at them, the numbers on the corners making as little sense to him as the advanced calculus formulas had in college. Blinking, he focused harder, found the one he wanted, pulled it free.

Still without looking at her, he dropped it in the fishbowl. Grover Cleveland’s face fluttered to the bottom.

He turned to go.

“Wait.”

Reluctantly he swung back and looked at Elena. She was completely recovered, he was relieved to see, except for the slightly swollen appearance of her lips. Her blue eyes were back to their usual cool and the one brow she raised was just as confident and saucy as always.

“The senior prom committee thanks you,” she said.

Logan released a silent sigh, immediately understanding the remark’s significance. It wasn’t Elena who thanked him, but the prom committee. Whew. He nodded, and found he was recovered enough himself to touch his forehead in a casual, two-fingered salute.

He turned and ambled away, feeling as if he’d just dodged a deadly bullet. Some sixth sense had warned him against letting that kiss go any further. He knew that if he’d made Elena helpless in his arms, she would never have forgiven him. And he knew he would never have been able to forget Elena.

Her shift in the kissing booth over, Elena O’Brien pushed through the crowd in the direction she’d seen Logan take after he’d left her. Her fingers touched the folded bill stuffed in her pocket. It was the only thing that kept her going after him.