The Summer Cottage (6 page)

“Nope. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I head over there and swim laps until my arms
are too tired to pull me out of the pool.”

“Does it help?”

Logan considered. “The whole place is deserted in the middle of the night. I like
the privacy, the quiet. Swimming is one of the few things that can get my brain to
shut down for minutes at a time.” Running a hand down the length of her spine to make
her shiver, Logan grinned. “That’s another way. But if you’re asking whether the swimming
helps me get to sleep afterward, the answer is no.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jessica said with a slightly breathless undertone to her usual
brisk, businesslike voice. “I’ve been researching insomnia, and one of the things
doctors agree on is that exercise is good—but early in the day. Exercising at night
throws off the body’s rhythms, and it can actually wake you up instead of tiring you
out.”

“Hmm.” Logan hitched his legs apart so that Jessica’s hips settled more securely against
the part of him that was becoming aware that the most gorgeous woman Logan knew was
still pressed naked and yielding along the length of him. “So you’re saying that since
it’s getting late, we definitely shouldn’t have sex again?”

“Not if you want to sleep through the night.” Jessica gasped, her thighs falling open
almost unconsciously as she arched her back.

“Sleep is overrated.”

Damn it. That made Jessica freeze up in his arms, her eyes narrowing to emerald slits.

“No,” she said firmly, pressing up on her hands to hover over him. “It really isn’t.
You’re sleeping another full night tonight, Logan. If that means we sleep separately
to avoid temptation, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Unacceptable.”

Logan paused, startled. Jessica stared down at him, equally surprised.

“But … you don’t sleep with other people,” she said slowly. “I mean, you sleep with
women—nobody knows that better than I do, but when you’re done, you usually wander
back down to your lab and nap at your desk.”

“Or go back to work.” Logan raised his brows. “Not to correct you, as the foremost
expert on my mating habits. Should I be flattered that you paid such close attention?”

“It’s my job to pay attention to you,” she reminded him repressively. “You don’t like
to have strangers in your personal space.”

“I bring women to my apartment all the time,” he protested.

Jessica gave him the slightly pitying glance she used when he was being particularly
oblivious. “Sweetie. Your apartment is where you store your clothes and other stuff.
The lab is where you live.”

Sucking in air to keep arguing, Logan stopped with his mouth open. He didn’t actually
have an argument to make. Jessica was right, on a fundamental level. “Hmm. That doesn’t
seem healthy.”

“You think?” She quirked her brows. “So … maybe I had a point about this sojourn to
Sanctuary Island?”

Unwilling to concede that yet, Logan returned doggedly to the main issue. She might
be right about this island, but when it came to the question of sleeping arrangements,
she was dead wrong.

“I want you in my personal space,” he stated with rock-solid certainty. “In my bed.
Even if all we do is sleep.”

Jessica tried to hide the smile that tugged at her full lips, but she wasn’t entirely
successful. “I suppose I don’t really qualify as a stranger. No point running from
me to avoid intimacy. I’ve picked up your dry cleaning and taken care of your personal
grooming for the last three years. We’re already intimate.”

Relieved that she’d identified the variable that made this equation come out differently
from every other time he’d had sex with a woman, Logan traced the tip of one finger
down the center line of her face.

“I like sleeping beside you,” he mused, rummaging through his feelings to figure out
why. “Maybe because I trust you to have my back, to wake me up if something happens.”

That adorable crinkle appeared between Jessica’s auburn brows. “What could happen?
Logan?”

He realized she must be able to feel the way his heart suddenly kicked in his chest,
and the way his body stiffened until it probably felt as if she were lying on a wooden
plank. Making a conscious effort to relax, Logan twitched his shoulders against the
sofa cushions and forced an analytical tone.

“There’s no big mystery about it. Sleep has been difficult for me since my parents
died—I’m sure you figured out the connection there. But what you probably don’t know
is that their accident…”

He paused, horrified at the break in his voice and the burning sting behind his eyes.

“Oh, Logan,” Jessica said, as if the weight of unspoken memory was crushing her, too,
and to get both of them out from under it, he made himself keep going.

“They were on their way home from a charity benefit. It was late. Statistically, there
shouldn’t have been anyone else on the road, they should have been fine—but the one
other driver they encountered happened to be drunk. He ran a red light and plowed
his SUV into their car. The drunk driver walked away without a scratch. My parents
didn’t.”

In spite of the lingering rigidity of his limbs, Jessica melted around him. She tucked
her face into the side of his neck. The smell of her hair was indescribably comforting.

“So one night, you went to sleep,” Jessica murmured, “and when you woke up, your whole
world had changed.”

A faint smile tugged at Logan’s mouth. “Not exactly a mystery where my insomnia comes
from, is it? Unfortunately, knowing the rational cause of the problem has not helped
me to solve it. Until…”

Jessica raised her head, meeting his gaze. “Until?”

“Until you.” Logan struggled with the words for a moment, fighting the sensation of
stripping himself bare. “The evidence doesn’t lie. I sleep better when you’re around.
You make me feel like it’s safe to close my eyes. Because I know you’ll be there when
I wake up.”

With a shuddery breath, Jessica surged up to press her mouth to his. Logan locked
his arms around her shoulders and rolled her beneath him, needy hunger rising like
fire in his blood.

Logan squeezed his eyes shut and lost himself in the warmth and closeness of her body’s
soft, supple welcome—and tried to forget that Jessica had made no promises to stay
with him forever.

Chapter 7

Over the next week, Jessica only caught Logan trying to hack into her phone to check
his e-mail once, and it seemed like more of a reflex than anything else. To her surprise,
he mostly entered into the spirit of the island and did his best to relax. The frequent,
athletic lovemaking probably helped with that.

Also, Logan asked Jessica a new question every day. From her first time—high school
boyfriend after prom, sweet and fun, if not earth-shattering—to her dreams for the
future. Apparently, he’d never quite understood what someone as smart, dedicated and
ambitious as Jessica Bell was doing working as a personal assistant.

She was glad to be able to tell him his instincts weren’t wrong. When Miles hired
her, he’d basically promised that if she put in her time learning the R&D division’s
workings from the unique vantage point of Logan’s lab, she’d be on track to run the
entire division one day.

“Not that I’m in a rush,” she’d told Logan on day five, breathless and still glowing
from the aftereffects of yet another of his devastating assaults on her senses. “Working
with you has been surprisingly rewarding.”

Looking smug, Logan stretched luxuriously until his vertebrae popped. “Of course it
has. I told you we’d be explosive together.”

Jessica only smiled at him with what she knew was a ridiculous amount of fondness.
She was tempted to take him down a peg about his sexual prowess, even if she’d be
lying. But she didn’t want to risk putting any distance between them, even with playful
teasing. She sensed that Logan was connecting with her more deeply than he had with
anyone in a long time.

He’d learned early on to turn inward, to retreat from the world and the expectations
of the people around him, into his own head. He’d even retreated from his family.
And now here she was spending every waking moment growing closer to him.

Since that first day on the island, they’d barely left the cottage. Jessica felt guilty
about it—she ought to be encouraging Logan into the fresh air, playing on his love
of swimming to get him down to the beach for some exercise. But every morning she
woke to find Logan propped up on one arm, watching and waiting impatiently for the
moment he could drag her out of the bed—at least she’d managed to stick to that rule—and
pounce.

So it’s not like we aren’t getting any exercise at all
, Jessica consoled herself as she seeded bell peppers and chopped cucumbers for a
salad on the evening of their seventh day on the island.

The rules she’d implemented to combat Logan’s insomnia actually seemed to be working.
He slept less than she did, but he reported an unprecedented string of nights filled
with uninterrupted sleep. She was cautiously optimistic about that, and every time
she remembered Logan’s confession of how much better he slept when she was around,
a warm glow filled her chest.

All in all, apart from the surprise addition of their shockingly good sexual relationship,
this trip to Sanctuary was going exactly according to her original plan.

Except for one thing.

Perking up when she heard Logan pad barefoot into the kitchen behind her, Jessica
kept her gaze on the steady motion of her knife over the cutting board. “Dylan came
down to the cottage while you were in the shower.”

“Hmm,” Logan said, sliding his arms around her waist and hooking his chin over her
left shoulder to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to her jaw.

Jessica shuddered, her unruly body immediately pushing back into the circle of his
embrace, desperate for more of what it had gotten so alarmingly accustomed to in only
a few short days. Struggling to maintain her focus on both her objective and the sharp
knife in her hand, Jessica stiffened her spine. “Yes. He invited us up to the big
house for dessert.”

“I’ve got all the dessert I need right here.” With unerring accuracy, Logan nipped
the soft, sensitive spot beneath her ear to make her jump, then soothed the sweet
sting with his tongue. Jessica bit back a moan and laid the knife down before she
cut off one of her fingers.

“I told him we’d be there,” she said, and immediately felt the way Logan tensed before
dropping his arms. He moved casually to grab a glass from the cabinet beside the sink,
and Jessica watched him go to the fridge and fill it from the jar of green, vegetable-laden
protein smoothie he’d become hilariously addicted to.

“And if I don’t feel like socializing?” Logan finally faced her, kicking the refrigerator
door shut behind him.

Logan never felt like socializing. At least, not with his brother or the nice new
family Dylan appeared to have stumbled into.

“Dylan said he had something important to tell us,” Jessica pressed, determined not
to let it go, or to let Logan sidetrack her, this time. “It’s only dessert. When was
the last time you sat down with your brother—either of them—for long enough to catch
up?”

“Catch up?” Logan sneered and sipped at his drink. “Are we in a race now?”

“Catch up on what’s happening in each other’s lives!” Jessica pressed her lips together,
trying not to let her frustration show through in her tone. “We’re here. Dylan’s here,
along with a woman and teenaged boy who have become very important to him. I don’t
understand why you don’t want to spend time with Dylan. You seemed to get along fine
the day we arrived, when you were giving him advice about how to go after the woman
he loves.”

“It’s not that Dylan and I don’t get along…” Logan put his glass down without finishing
it and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I prefer not to get in too deep with
personal relationships. I’m better with theory, abstract problems and mechanical puzzles.
You know that.”

Jessica kept her tone even with an effort. “So when you go to bars and pick up your
one-night stands, that’s okay.”

Logan shrugged, a cynical twist to his mouth. “Sure. Nothing about that is especially
deep. Or personal.”

“But it takes people skills. You can’t simply grunt while pointing at your groin,
and expect women to follow you to your car.”

With a sardonic twist to his mouth, Logan drawled, “Not exactly, but if I grunt and
point at the
car,
and the car is a chauffeured Bentley…”

“That is pathetic,” Jessica told him bluntly. “I’m embarrassed and ashamed for you,
and for every empty-headed, shallow woman who slept with you for a ride in a limo.”

“A Bentley is not a limo. It’s a work of art, a precision piece of automotive engineering—”

“I don’t care about your car!” Jessica realized her voice had risen an octave, but
she couldn’t seem to bring it back down into normal range. “Why are we fighting about
this?”

“We’re clearing up confusion,” Logan told her. “You seem to think I’m incapable of
social interaction, as if I suffer from Asperger’s syndrome or crippling shyness.
That’s not the case at all. I’m perfectly capable of interpersonal relationships.
I simply choose not to indulge.”

Ignoring the dart of pain his calm, cool statement sent through her chest, Jessica
pulled back her shoulders and stared him down. “Understood. But it changes nothing.
Your brother has something important to tell you. We’re going. Or I revoke your question
for the day.”

“That violates our agreement.” His face darkened. “You want to get me out into the
world—to be healthier and more well-adjusted, yet you want me to start with a man
who has every cause to hate and resent me.”

Shocked at the depth of angry despair in his voice, Jessica choked out, “What? Why
would Dylan hate you? You’re family.”

“Exactly. Whose cuts slice deeper than your family’s? When your parents rejected you
after they found out about your affair, did it hurt more or less than the rejection
you faced at work?”