Club Destiny 1 Conviction (28 page)

“I’ll take care of the bill.”
Logan declared as he watched Heather hold back tears.

“I’ll make sure to let Jim know
what happened and that I had deliberately manipulated the situation. Then, I’ll
have him call Xavier to explain everything.”

“Let’s just leave this between
us. You can let Jim know that we settled everything, and there are no longer
any issues to address. I’ll advise Xavier that it has all been handled.”

“Thank you, Logan. I’m so sorry
for making a fool out of myself. I’m sorry that I made you come all this way.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad we
had this talk. It is possibly the closure we both needed in order to move on.”
Logan stood from his seat as Heather did.

The two of them shook hands one
last time, and he watched as she made a graceful exit. When the waiter came
back, he ordered one last drink and stared at his cell phone again. It was
definitely too late to call Sam, but at least he would be back in Texas
tomorrow, and he could see her then.

~~  ** 
~~  **  ~~  **  ~~

The office was oddly quiet when
Logan walked in at ten on Monday morning. The earliest flight he’d been able to
catch had delivered him to DFW International Airport about an hour before and
he had headed straight to the office.

Xavier had already left a message
asking how the meeting went on Sunday. He didn’t want to go into detail about
how Heather deceived him into coming out there, so he decided to wait until he
arrived at the XTX campus before he talked to him. He could easily bypass the
conversation if he saw the man face to face.

As he walked across the third
floor toward his office, he noticed the majority of the people who occupied the
cubicles were missing. He glanced down at his watch and realized Sam was
probably concluding her Monday morning staff meeting. He would have to catch up
with her and hopefully convince her to let him take her to lunch.

But, first things first.

He went straight to Deanna’s desk
and noticed the small, chipper woman did not appear too happy. “Good morning
Bridg, what’s up?”

“Oh. Mr. McCoy, I didn’t realize
you were here yet.” She started and stood quickly from her desk. “How did it go
in California? Is everything ok with the contract?”

“Things are fine. It was quite
amusing, to say the least.”

“Really, How so?”

Logan knew Deanna liked to keep
tabs on how things went in regards to his business dealings, so he figured he
could share the information.

“Well, it didn’t turn out
anything like I thought it would. I was supposed to meet with Jim Campbell, but
he had something come up so he couldn’t make it. The interesting part was that
I ended up having dinner with Heather.”

Deanna was just about to comment
when she turned to address someone standing behind him. He turned around and at
that moment, his heart began pounding loudly in his chest.

“Good morning, Sam. How did your
meeting go?”

The look on her face told him one
of two things. Either her meeting didn’t go well, or, which he was inclined to
believe, she had overhead his comment about having dinner with Heather.

“Sam?” Deanna’s concerned tone
caught Logan’s attention, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from Samantha.

“Is everything ok?”

Sam briefly glanced over at
Deanna, then back at Logan. For a second she actually looked lost, confused
even. Then, right before his very eyes, Sam’s entire demeanor changed, she
masked any emotion he’d thought he had seen, and she turned her attention to
his admin.

“Sorry. I’m fine. I need to… I
just need to go return some phone calls.” With that, Sam left Logan staring
after her.

Before he could cover his own
mask of concern, Deanna caught his eye. Logan had known Deanna a long time,
long enough for the woman to know when something was wrong. Thankfully, she had
the decency to keep what she had seen to herself and turned the conversation
back to his trip.

“So, you said dinner with
Heather. You mean Heather Knight?”

Logan couldn’t see Sam anymore,
so she had high tailed it across the third floor to her office. From where he
stood, he could see that the door was shut, and she was likely inside planning
his death.
Shit
.

“Yes. Heather Knight. It was all
a mix up, but everything is fine with the At Last contract. We have nothing to
worry about.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Deanna
responded, but she didn’t offer him the pleasant smile she often shared with
the world. Instead, she turned back to her computer, dismissing him.

Hoping to hide out in his own
office long enough for Deanna to forget about what had just happened, Logan was
startled when Deanna called out from behind him.

“Logan, is something going on
that I should know about?” She briefly glanced at Sam’s office door to give him
a hint as to what she was referring to.

“No. Nothing is going on. I need
to go check my calendar. Let me know if anything urgent comes up.” He replied,
slamming his office door behind him.

~*~*~

Sam sat at her desk, staring
blankly at the screen. Had she heard Logan correctly? Did he say he had dinner
in California with Heather, his ex-girlfriend? Apparently she’d been right to
question the spur of the moment trip, halfway across the country. On the
weekend.

Shit
.

How could she be so stupid?

She remembered thinking that it
was a little strange that he headed out to California on a Friday night to take
care of an issue with a contract that was already
signed
and
finalized
.
Maybe that wasn’t the reason after all. Maybe he really went to see Heather.

She glanced down to see that her
hands were shaking. Not only were her hands shaking, but her heart was beating
frantically. It was happening all over again. She had allowed herself to care
about someone, and she was being kicked in the gut one more time.

Sam felt the fury turn to rage
deep inside. She couldn’t believe how stupid she had been. She had fallen for
Logan McCoy, her boss, and now, here she was, sitting in her office, in near
tears. This was not what she should have been doing. There was too much going
on with the current project that she should have been focusing solely on.
Instead, she had come to Dallas to play sex games with her boss. What the
fuck
had she been thinking?

Quickly, she logged on to her
computer to see what she had going on for the rest of the day. Her calendar was
actually clear for the next few hours and the only pressing meeting she had was
her project update with Logan’s staff this afternoon. Well, he would just have
to fucking wait. She needed to get some air.

After pulling her purse from the
bottom drawer of her desk, Sam made a beeline for the stairs, trying
desperately to hold what was left of herself together. For a moment, she
thought she heard Logan calling out to her, but she didn’t turn to look back.
She just needed to get away for a few hours, get her head on straight and
things would be fine.

~*~*~

“Damn it.” Logan breathed out as
he stood outside of Sam’s office. He’d heard something slam in her office,
what, he didn’t know, but before he could get to her, she had taken off across
the third floor. He couldn’t very well go chasing after her. The entire office
would know exactly what was going on, and he wasn’t ready for that to happen.

Momentarily shocked, and more
than a little concerned, Logan didn’t know where to go. A quick glance back at
his office told him Deanna had been witness to what just happened.

Under normal circumstances, she
probably wouldn’t have questioned it, but thanks to his big fucking mouth and
Sam taking his words entirely out of context, she would be able to put two and
two together.

“Don’t breathe a word of this to
anyone.” He instructed, pointing his finger at her like a mad man. What the
hell was wrong with him? “I’ll talk to Sam and I’ll catch up with you later. I
need to go after her, so please reschedule all of my meetings for later in the
week.”

Thankfully, Deanna didn’t ask,
and Logan wouldn’t have told her anything anyway.

“Damn dude, is the building on
fire?” Alex stood a few feet outside of the main doors as Logan came barreling
through them. “What’s the hurry?”

“I don’t have time right now,
Alex.” Logan grunted, continuing to the parking garage. He didn’t make it far before
Alex stepped directly in his path.

“Whoa. Wait a minute. Could you
possibly be going after Sam? I saw her running through here a few minutes ago
like the cops were on her tail.”

Logan took a deep breath and
looked directly at the other man. “This isn’t any of your business, Alex.”

“You’re right. It probably isn’t.
Although, that has never stopped me before.”

Shit
. Logan knew he wasn’t going to
catch up with Sam, and if she didn’t go to her apartment, he had no idea where
he could possibly find her.

“Man, you need to give her some
space. She was pretty upset if the tears were any indication. I think you need
to let her go.” Alex said as he took a step back.

There wasn’t anything Logan hated
more than a man who stuck his nose in another man’s business. 

“I need to talk to her, Alex. I
need to explain.” Logan stopped glancing at the parking garage because he knew
Sam was long gone by now.

“Explain what?”

“She overheard something, and
from her side of the conversation, it would have sounded pretty bad. I need to
go and clear up the misunderstanding.”

“What was the misunderstanding,
Logan?”

Logan huffed out a breath, then
proceeded to share the story of his weekend from hell. By the end, Alex was
staring at him in wide eyed interest.

“I didn’t have dinner with her by
choice. I was telling Deanna the same thing when Sam walked up.”

“Damn. That’s rough. So what do
you think you’ll accomplish if you go running out of here after her? She needs
some time, and my guess is the office doesn’t know about this little relationship
you’ve got going on, so the smart thing to do would be to stay here and let her
have her space.”

Logan stared incredulously at his
friend. Although he couldn’t believe he was receiving relationship advice from
the king of relationship avoidance, he knew Alex was right. He wasn’t quite
sure how Xavier would feel when he found out Logan and Sam were, in fact,
dating. He didn’t recall that it had ever been an issue, but he didn’t want the
other man to hear about it because it had caused a disruption to his business.

“You’re right. But, don’t make a
habit of becoming Dr. Phil – it isn’t a good look for you.” Logan said as he
stormed back into the building.

~*~*~

Sam drove straight home. She
didn’t know where else to go and at the moment, she felt as though she were on
the verge of an emotional breakdown. The only place she wanted that to happen,
if it had to happen at all, was in the privacy of her own home.

She grabbed her purse, and her
cell phone, climbed out of the car, and managed to make it up the stairs
through a haze of unshed tears.

It only took a second to turn her
phone off. She needed to take away the overwhelming urge to monitor whether
Logan would actually be calling her or not. More than likely he wouldn’t. After
all, it appeared he was into rekindling old flames so he would have no use for
her.

She admitted to herself that she
didn’t know much about his history with Heather, only that, from what he told
her, it ended badly. That didn’t stop people from continuing to care about that
person. Maybe he had been pining away for her and Sam had been a convenient
distraction. It would be just her luck.

She made her way into her
apartment, tossed her purse and her phone on the bar and went into her room. It
was at that moment that the black veil of depression hit her like a brick wall.
She barely managed to crawl into her bed and curl up with her pillow before the
dam broke, and the tears began to fall. It felt as though her heart was
literally breaking in her chest. As she continued to sob uncontrollably, she
forced all thoughts from her mind.

A good cry never hurt anyone, and
Sam knew better than to try and fight it. Pain pierced her so fiercely that she
was forced to close her eyes. Maybe she could go to sleep, and when she woke,
this would all be a bad dream. Only in her dream, perhaps she wouldn’t be the
biggest fool on earth.

She had made the biggest mistake
of all. She had let Logan McCoy ease his way into her heart and shatter it.

~*~*~

A few hours later, hoping he’d
given her enough space as Alex had suggested, Logan attempted to call Sam.
Putting it off had been one of the hardest things he had ever done.

He didn’t want to let the
situation get out of control. His natural desire to fix things was strong, and
this was one of those things he felt he needed to fix. Right now.