The Summer Cottage (4 page)

Nervous as she was at what she was about to reveal, she couldn’t help being amused
at the typical Harrington male way Logan took up every available inch of space. Even
in the great outdoors, with the vastness of the ocean rolling out into the distant
horizon, Logan Harrington was larger than life.

But he wasn’t the only man she’d ever known who sucked all the oxygen out of a room,
simply by entering it.

Any urge to smile faded, and Jessica was abruptly glad Logan had taken over the seat.
She needed to move around while she told this story, rather than feel stuck in one
place. Trapped.

“Once upon a time,” she began, pacing beside the length of the fallen tree, down to
the torn-up roots and back again, “there was a very young, very naïve Midwestern girl
whose first job out of college was personal assistant to the CEO of a hotel chain
in New York City.”

Jessica sneaked a glance at Logan’s face as she passed where he’d propped his head
on a knot in the tree bark, but his eyes were closed. The fact that he wasn’t looking
at her made it easier for Jessica to go on. “When the young girl met her new boss,
she knew she’d gotten lucky. He was kind, considerate and handsome. He spent time
with her one-on-one, every day, mentoring her. At least, that’s what she thought at
first.”

But she was getting ahead of herself. Forcing her breath to slow and her hands to
stop twisting the fabric at the hem of her sweatshirt, Jessica hesitated.

Without opening his eyes, Logan murmured, “What was the boss’s name?”

Heart pounding, Jessica felt a sick wash of shame as she spoke the name she hadn’t
uttered in five years. “Russ. Russell Owens.”

Saying it out loud broke the numbing, distancing magic of treating this story like
a fairy tale. Not that it was headed for a fairy tale ending.
Stop being a child about this,
she lectured herself silently.
Just get it over with.

“I worked for Russ for three years, but it only took him three months to talk me into
bed. He was good at talking me into things. He hated my apartment—a tiny studio walk-up
on the fifth floor of a building in Astoria that probably ought to have been condemned—and
Russell refused to stay over there. So he found me an apartment on the Upper West
Side, a nice one-bedroom I saw for the first time when he gave me the key and told
me it was already furnished and the rent paid up for the entire year. He bought me
clothes for work, and when I tried to refuse, he hinted gently that my professional
wardrobe reflected on him and his office, so I didn’t really have a choice.”

She had to pause, to get control of the unacceptable shake in her voice. “I know what
you’re thinking. He doesn’t sound like a monster, does he? In fact, I’m the one who
doesn’t come off so great in this story, letting this man pay my bills and help me
professionally in return for sex. I know exactly how that sounds.”

“I promise you,” Logan said, with his eyes still closed though his voice was taut
with suppressed emotion. “You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

Jessica laughed to break the tension, but it came out a little choked and raw. “Right,
of course. You’re a genius—how could I know what’s going on in that giant brain of
yours?”

He sat up in a controlled rush, planting his feet widely on the ground and clenching
his fingers on the rough wooden bark at his hips. “What I’m thinking is that Russell
Owens is a dead man, if I ever meet him.”

Shock dried Jessica’s mouth. No one she’d ever told had reacted this way, including
her own mother. “What?”

“He systematically took control of your entire life,” Logan snarled. “Let me guess
at the next part of the story. He also monopolized your off-work hours so that you
lost touch with your friends. Of course, you had to keep your relationship a secret
at work, and I’d lay good money on him giving you some reason why you couldn’t discuss
it with anyone else, either.”

Jessica swayed in the ocean breeze. A higher wind would have knocked her off her feet.
“I didn’t have any friends in the city, actually. I moved there after college and
got the job at Crown Hotels almost immediately. And the reason he asked me not to
talk about our relationship with my parents was…”

She nearly gagged on the shame of it, the unbearable sense of having been stupid and
weak, led astray from what she knew to be right, but this was the worst of it. Once
she got this out, it was nearly over, and Logan would know everything.

The fact that he seemed to know, or to have intuited most of it already didn’t make
it easier to force the words out.

“When I met Russ, he wore a wedding band.” Jessica wrapped her arms around her rib
cage and held on for dear life. “The minute he saw that I’d noticed it, he gave me
this sad smile and told me all about his marriage and how he and his wife were separated,
in the process of getting divorced.”

“And if you mentioned your affair to anyone, it might complicate and delay the proceedings,”
Logan guessed.

Miserable, Jessica nodded as she averted her gaze to stare blindly out to the horizon.
“I never questioned it. He spent every evening at my apartment! Well, the apartment
he’d paid for. He didn’t sleep over, but that was because he had a long-standing arrangement
with the company to send a car to pick him up from his house, and if he asked them
to pick him up from my place instead—God. He had an answer for everything, so smooth
and plausible and reasonable. Eventually I stopped asking questions.”

“And then,” Logan prompted gently when she broke off.

Wearily, she lanced the rest of the wound and drained the last drop of poison out
onto the ground between them. “And then, after three years of buying me earrings and
bracelets to distract me from the fact that it was never the engagement ring he kept
promising, I found out that he was still married. Not separated, not nearing the end
of a long, drawn-out divorce. It was all a lie—and a clichéd, predictable lie, at
that.”

Logan made a rough noise behind her, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn and face
the pity or condemnation on his handsome, familiar features.

“I should have known better,” she said painfully. “Deep down, I
did
know better. I think that’s what hurts most of all. I compromised myself and my ethics.
I bought into an elaborate but ultimately formulaic and obvious fiction, because I
wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that this smart, charismatic, wealthy man could
fall in love with a nobody from Normal, Illinois. I thought I could have it all.”

Forcing herself to meet Logan’s gaze was one of the hardest things she’d ever done,
but this was important. He needed to understand.

Storm clouds scudded over the blue of his eyes, darkening them with something that
looked more like understanding than pity. Jessica swallowed.

“When it was all over, I had nothing. No friends, no job, no place to live. My parents—they’re
very decent people, very religious. They certainly didn’t raise me to have a tawdry
affair with a married man. In fact, they were so disappointed in me, they sent enough
money for another apartment instead of letting me come back home to live with them.
We don’t talk much, other than holidays and birthdays.”

“That’s … horribly sad,” Logan said, his voice oddly ragged. Or maybe it wasn’t so
odd. He’d lost his parents when he was very young, Jessica remembered, and his relationships
with his brothers weren’t exactly close. So maybe he did get it. But she hadn’t completely
finished answering his question.

“I will never be that girl again,” Jessica told him, as starkly and strongly as she
could. “I never want to be that naïve, that silly or easy to take advantage of. I
never want to wake up in the morning aching with regrets. So that’s why I hold you
at arm’s length, Logan. Because I am tempted … but if I were to give in to the fantasy
of being with you, I’m smart enough now to know that I’d be giving something up in
return. And I’m not willing to sacrifice my self-respect and my career for a moment’s
passion.”

No matter how much the sight of his lean strength silhouetted against the ocean view
made the blood throb in her veins.

Chapter 5

“Satisfied?” Jessica asked, her voice seductively hoarse from having talked for so
long.

Not even close, beautiful.

Logan held himself still as he studied her, scrutinizing her tale from every angle
like a multifaceted 3-D puzzle. “You’ve made your position very clear, and I accept
it.”

The slim line of her shoulders relaxed infinitesimally, as if she’d been unsure he’d
get the message. He almost hated to make her tense up again, but a deep, primal part
of him couldn’t let this go without at least trying to address her concerns.

“But I feel I have to point out,” he continued gently, “that your position rests on
faulty logic.”

Surprise widened her pretty green eyes. Pushing a strand of strawberry-blond hair
out of her face, Jessica put her hands on her hips the way he loved, and stared him
down. “Oh?”

Deliberately relaxing his posture to seem as unthreatening as possible, Logan assumed
his driest, most professorial tone. “Yes. In fact, I spotted numerous irrationalities
in the conclusions you drew from your past experiences. And while I don’t doubt that
those experiences were traumatic…” He paused to breathe through the resurgence of
his intense desire to track down one Russell Owens and take him apart, systematically,
until there was nothing left.

“I’m not traumatized,” Jessica protested with a scathing curl of her lip. Good, he
liked it when she got fiery. Anything was better than the resigned slump of her shoulders,
the deadened tone of her voice, as she recited her litany of regrets. “I learned from
my past mistakes. I
grew up.
Something you could stand to look into, yourself. Sir.”

Logan fought the reflexive scowl. He wouldn’t be derailed by her attempt to push him
away and return to more formal footing—not when he could still taste the sharp honeyed
sweetness of her kiss every time he licked his lips. “As I was saying. What happened
to you sucked. Fair to say?”

She nodded shortly, and he went on. “But the lesson you seem to have learned is that
you can’t have everything. That allowing yourself to feel desire means you risk losing
the job you worked so hard for. That won’t happen. For one thing, I can’t fire you,
whether we sleep together or not.”

“It’s not that I won’t allow myself to feel desire.” Jessica gave him an acid look.
“I simply won’t act on it.”

“Because you wouldn’t be able to look yourself in the mirror the morning after,” Logan
said dramatically, swooning backward to lean his hands on the far edge of the log.

Mottled pink tinged her cheeks, and her knuckles went white where she was digging
her fingers into her hips. “Don’t make fun of me. Just because you have no conscience
or morals to speak of…”

Logan grimaced, sitting up again. “No, sorry. I don’t mean to make fun, it’s just…”
He spread his hands out to his sides in a helpless gesture of don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-trying-my-best-not-to-say-the-wrong-thing-and-failing-epically.

Her lips twitched, and he could tell she wanted to laugh. Or at least snort a little.
Satisfied, he doggedly returned to his argument. “Look, I refuse to believe that you
can’t have it all. You’re one of the most intelligent people I know. Honestly, you
should be running a division at the company, not babysitting me.”

Jessica gasped soundlessly, betrayal showing in her narrowed gaze and thin lips. “I’m
not interested in an unearned promotion. And I certainly have no intention of earning
said promotion in bed.”

Logan almost fell off the log in his haste to stand up. “What? I take it back, you’re
not intelligent, you’re a blithering idiot like all the rest of them. I’m not offering
to promote you in exchange for sex! How did you get that from what I just said?”

Her shoulders were coiled tight with tension under his hands, but she didn’t shake
off his touch. Logan was counting it as a win.

“I … sorry. Maybe I am a little traumatized.” Jessica’s attempt at a smile was the
saddest thing Logan had ever seen. “Russ used to talk about how I was ‘going places’
in the company. ‘Stick with me, sweetness, and you’ll go right to the top.’”

Logan couldn’t decipher whether the disgust in her tone was aimed at herself or at
the King of All Douche Bags, Russell Owens. “Don’t apologize. Seriously. I’m the one
who should be sorry. I didn’t think about how it could sound. And anyway, you’re missing
the point.”

“Oh?” She lifted her chin enough to get him thinking about how close their lips were,
and if he tilted his head to the perfect forty-five degree angle, he could …

“Your point, Logan?” A bare hint of a smirk had one corner of her mouth dimpling distractingly.

Logan tightened his hands on her shoulders for an instant, savoring the warmth of
her flesh through the thin, clingy material of her workout top. “The main point, and
your most egregious failure of logic, is simply this. Russell Owens was—probably is,
there’s no evidence he’s changed—a textbook sexual predator. He targeted an innocent,
unworldly woman in a subordinate position, isolated you from anyone who could talk
sense into you, established complete control over every aspect of your life and lied
to you about his intentions. He knowingly, deliberately preyed on your desire to trust
and your dreams for the future.”

A cynical twist replaced the smirk on Jessica’s lips, but her eyes were soft. “That
assessment lets me off the hook too much, but okay. I certainly grant your premise
that Russ was an exceptionally awful person. So what?”

“So … I’m not Russell Owens. I’m nothing like him.” Logan tilted the corner of his
lips in a maddeningly sexy smirk. “In fact, I’m not like anyone you’ve ever known.
So perhaps you should take this opportunity to get to know me a little better.”