Logan's Calling (2 page)

'I...err...I have a delivery.' He held up a brown package about the size of a deck of cards. 'But it isn't for you. So I'll just...' He edged away to the porch steps.

'If it isn't for me then why are you knocking at my door so fucking early?'

'It...it's for your neighbor. She isn't home...probably gone to work. Miss Sarah Cooper. I thought maybe you would take it in for her. It has to be signed for or I'd just leave it in her mailbox. I'm sorry, Sir.' He backed away across the lawn, almost reaching the sidewalk before Logan's voice halted him.

'I'll take it for her.'

The young delivery man paused. 'You will?'

What the fuck was he thinking? If he did this, he would have to speak with her. She would get to see the freak next door close up and personal and realize what a hideous beast he was. No, this was crazy. He should just send the delivery guy on his way and make him come back later when Sarah was home.

The boy was on the porch now, pressing buttons on his palm device. He handed it to Logan. A plastic pen dangled from a cord attached to the device. 'If you could just sign here, that would be great.'

Logan scribbled over the screen with the plastic pen and handed it back. In return, he got handed the small package for Sarah.

'Thanks.' The delivery guy almost ran to his van and was roaring off down Arroyo Street even before he had closed his driver's door.

Logan closed the front door against the heat and went into the living room, placing the package on his wooden coffee table next to a pile of old action paperbacks. The room was furnished with an EZ chair in front of the TV and a sofa Logan never used. A couple of paintings hung on the walls - both of a woman dressed in fifties clothes sitting outside a jazz cafe in New Orleans (Logan presumed). He had never been to New Orleans and the paintings had no connection to him at all. They just added some color to the otherwise bare walls. A stack of DVDs and Blu Rays towered next to the TV. Action movies and Westerns mostly.

Sitting in the EZ chair, he stared at the innocuous-looking box. A white sticker had Sarah's name and address typed neatly onto it and in the top right hand corner stamped in green ink was an address that read,  'J Frazier, 229 Lakeside Road, Great Bear Lake, Ontario .' 

Who was this? A new man in Sarah's life? Logan knew that she had never brought a man home in the year she had lived next door but that didn't mean she didn't have a boyfriend. He had to face it, a woman looking like her was bound to have at least one man in her life. He had often wondered about her seemingly solitary existence. It seemed like a waste of a damn good woman. If 'J Frazier' was her man then it made sense.

But it didn't stop Logan from feeling a twisting ache in his gut.

Like he ever had a chance with her anyway.

So the question remained what should he do with this little package? Deliver it in person? He sighed, imagining how that would go. The delivery guy's pitiful expression was not one he wanted to see on Sarah Cooper's face. He couldn't handle that. No, just put it in her fucking mailbox and forget about it. It must have been the early hour affecting his brain when he had ideas about using this to meet his sexy neighbor. Early morning craziness.

He swept up the little parcel and headed for the front door with it. Might as well do it now and get it over with. Then he could forget about the whole thing and go back to bed. And maybe when he woke up he could shake Sarah out of his mind for good.

With a hand on the front door handle, he checked himself. Was he really going to go out wearing only his robe? Fuck that. He got enough stares in the street without exposing himself. They all knew about the scar running down his face but there was no need to show them the rest of the ugly collection. 

There was plenty of time to get this package into the next door mailbox. He had no idea what Sarah did for a living but she usually left her house at seven and returned around three. She wore pant suits usually or business-blouses and black skirts and she looked incredible in every outfit she wore. Probably an executive in the city, even though she often wore casual clothes when she left the house. It wasn't too far from Hope to Toronto and she could easily commute in her silver Buick. Maybe she knew J Frazier from work. Maybe he visited from another branch of the company. He was probably an executive like her, leering at her during high-powered meetings and taking her back to his hotel afterward for some high-level fucking. Or maybe they couldn't wait to get to his place and they fucked over her desk, in a corner office overlooking the city.

Just the though of that made Logan's blood boil. He had to get a hold of himself or he was going to go crazy obsessing over Sarah. Nothing good could come of it. He needed to stop watching his neighbor's window and turn on the porn channel instead.

Sighing, he set the package back on the coffee table and went upstairs and back to bed. 

As he told himself for the thousandth time that he was going to forget about Sarah, he felt sleep creeping up on him and he closed his eyes.

*

When he opened them again the sun was bright on the wall. He rolled over to check the clock. It was almost two. Fuck, what had happened to the time? Sliding out of bed, he grabbed a pair of jeans and a   Harley Davidson t-shirt and put them on quickly. If he hurried he could get rid of the little parcel before Sarah came home. He had been an idiot to take it in the first place. If he hadn't been so damn stupid he wouldn't be having to worry about getting rid of it now. 

He took the stairs two at a time and picked up the package from the living room. This shouldn't take too long. Just a quick stealth mission to put this in the mailbox by her door then back onto his own property and a few hours by the pool reading Mack Bolan novels and drinking a six pack or two. Today was a good day to get drunk.

He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch and froze.

Her silver Buick was in her driveway.

She was home already.

Fuck.

Logan stepped back into the house and closed the door. His heart hammered in his chest and he felt queasy. He needed to calm down. Just because she was home didn't mean he had to go over there and talk to her. Hell, he could wait until she went to work tomorrow morning if he had to.

No...no he couldn't. What if she was expecting the delivery today and she called the delivery company to find out where it was? What if they told her that her neighbor had signed for it? She would come around here. He had no choice. He was trapped.

He felt like just tossing the damn thing over the eight foot high fence that separated their back yards. Yeah, right...she'd have no doubt who had done that and would probably come over to ask him why he was throwing her mail into her yard.

The cosmic joke was on him and the joke was that he had brought this upon himself. Was he subconsciously trying to sabotage himself, to force his own hand? No, he'd have to be seven kinds of crazy to do that to himself. 

Yet here he was.

'Fuck,' he muttered, pacing back into the living room and running his hand through his hair. This was not good. Not good at all. He strode back to the door, determined to just go next door and get this over with before stopping himself, hand on the door handle, and turning back.

He sat down again, turning the parcel over and over in his hands. How could one small package be causing him so much distress? He never used to be like this and he hated what he had become more keenly than ever.

Maybe if he waited until dark. He could sneak over there and leave it by her front door. A knock to get her attention and he could be back safe in here before she opened the door and found the parcel.

Was this what he had been reduced to? Sneaking around in the dark to deliver a package to his neighbor? He never left these four walls or his yard anymore, shopping online and having everything delivered. He even paid a young man from down the street to mow the front lawn,  unwilling to go out there himself and face the occupants of Arroyo Street. 

Was that it, though? Was it his general agoraphobia that kept him from taking the parcel around to Sarah's house or was it the fact that it was Sarah he would have to face? What if this package was for Fred Jenkins, Logan's neighbor on the other side, or for the MacDonald family across the street? He had to admit that he would steel himself and deliver the package. He would feel damned uncomfortable doing it but he would go next door or across the street and explain that he had taken the delivery and he would pass the package to its rightful owner and do his duty.

The problem was that the rightful owner of this package was Sarah Cooper.

And he had more feelings for that woman than he dared think about.

Sure they were only sexual feelings, what more could they be? Noting more than sexual desire but it still paralyzed him whenever he thought about going around there and meeting her.

Logan, get a hold of yourself. You did your duty in Afghanistan and even when you were shit scared, you didn't let that stop you. That was life and death, this is just the woman next door.

Before he could think any further on it, he was out of the door and striding across his lawn then past her silver Buick to her porch steps. He took them two at a time and knocked rapidly on the front door. His hands were shaking. If his army buddies could see him now, standing frightened on this woman's porch, they would laugh their asses off.

Movement from inside the house, as if Sarah was in the kitchen cooking and set a plate down before coming to the front door. Her heels clicked off the wooden floor as she approached. He could see her through the frosted glass set into the door but the thick glass distorted her image into something like a ghost, getting larger as it came nearer. She turned the bolt on the door and it made a heavy click.

Logan angled his body so she would see his right side. He suddenly wished he'd worn a hooded sweatshirt and pulled the hood up. It was a trick he used to pull a lot when he still did his own grocery shopping. And it wouldn't seem so strange to Sarah; it was damn hot out here and he might be protecting his skin from the UV rays. Too late for that now. The door was opening.

She peered cautiously at him as the door opened and Logan immediately felt shame for every dirty thought he had ever had about her. She wasn't some picture in a magazine for him to leer at while he pleasured himself, she was a real woman standing in front of him. She looked beautiful close up. Her blue eyes were large and there was a softness in them as if she were frightened of something or she'd been hurt in the past. Her flawless skin had freckled slightly at the bridge of her nose and that was a cute detail Logan had never noticed about her through the window. She wore gray slacks and a white blouse and Logan wondered guiltily if she was wearing white lingerie beneath it. The blouse was open at the top, displaying a silver locket in the shape of a heart with filigree designs at Sarah's throat.Her feet were bare as if she had come home and kicked her shoes off the moment she got through the door. She probably unbuttoned her blouse at the same time, glad to be back in the rural community of Hope and away from the city.

The cautious look on her face vanished and she smiled as if she recognized him. 'Logan,' she said. Her pupils dilated and she took a rapid intake of breath after saying his name.

That made him forget the speech he had prepared while waiting for her to answer the door, the speech where he explained about the package and why he had it. 'You know who I am?' He realized he had moved his face and was looking at her dead on but her eyes never wavered from his.

'Of course, you're my neighbor.'

'We've never met.' Then he realized why she knew about him. The other residents on the street probably told her about the scarred war vet living next door. His heart sank.

'I saw you on the day I moved here. And I've seen you in your yard from my upstairs window sometimes.'

'Oh...of course.' If he could see her from his window, she could see him from hers. He had never felt her watching him while he was out by the pool reading and his senses usually alerted him to things like that. He really was losing it if his neighbor could spy on him and he was unaware of it. The only person who has been spying is you, Logan, and you know it. His gut twisted at that thought.

She looked expectantly at him, her eyes never going to the scars on his face. 'Is this just a neighborly visit or can I help you with something?' Her smile was so pretty.

He had almost forgotten about the package. He held it up and her eyes flickered to it. Her face seemed to change when she saw it and the softness in her eyes seemed to become fear as if she was dreading what was inside that neat little parcel.

'They delivered this earlier today. It's for you.' He handed her the package.

She took it and looked down at it and swallowed. 'Thanks.'

'Is everything OK?' Now his senses were kicking in. Something was wrong here.

She looked up and he saw tears welling in her eyes. She tried to blink them away but they escaped and streamed down her cheeks. 'Oh God,' she whispered, collapsing against the wall and leaning heavily on it.

Logan's instincts pushed him through the doorway and before he even knew what he was doing, he had her in his arms and she was crying against his chest. 'Please close the door,' she whispered through the tears, 'I don't want the whole street to see me like this.'

He reached back and closed the front door. Sarah grabbed handfuls of his Harley Davison t-shirt and wept. The package was on the floor and Logan couldn't remember when she had dropped it. The feel of her against him and the peachy smell of her shampoo mixed with the subtle fragrance of her perfume were taking all his concentration. He had his arms around her, protecting her from this unseen thing that had made her cry, and he felt like crying himself because this was the most human contact he had experienced in a long long time. He had missed this, the touch of another person and the sense that he was giving them something even if it was just comforting them from something he knew nothing about. He closed his eyes and held her close and tried to store every detail of this moment in his memory like a hoarder who had stumbled upon the most valuable treasure. The weight of her against him as she trusted him to hold her up, the feel of her face buried in his chest and her warm tears soaking through his t-shirt. The sound of her crying as she let him experience her in this vulnerable moment.