An Innocent in Paradise (15 page)

“Oh, man.” Logan slapped his hands over his ears and started humming loudly.

Aidan laughed uproariously, then calmed down and admitted, “Okay, I'm going to say something I never thought I would. I like her, bro.”

“Good,” Logan said, knowing he was talking about Grace. “Because I'm in love with the confounded woman and that's all there is to it.”

“If you had to take the fall, she was a good one to pick. So if it matters to you, you've got my blessing.”

“It matters,” Logan admitted, glancing at his twin. “Thank you.”

Aidan grinned. “Let's go tell her the good news.”

 

The brothers strolled across the lobby wheeling their luggage behind them.

“Oh, Mr. Sutherland,” Harrison, the concierge, called out. “I have a letter for you.” He pulled an envelope from his desk and rushed over to the twins.

Aidan took it, glanced at the envelope and handed it to Logan. “It's for you.”

Logan stared at his name on the envelope. He might've waited to open it when he was alone, but something niggled at him and he opened it right there. A minute later, he let the note drop to the floor.

Aidan picked it up and read the words. “She left? She just left? What did you do to her?”

Logan shook his head, too dumbfounded to answer.

“Come on,” Aidan said, pushing him forward. “We'll go to your room and call her.”

They made it to Logan's room, but before they could get inside, Dee came running up the hall. “There you are! Why did you do it?”

Logan scowled at her. “Close the damn door.”

Aidan pulled her inside and led her over to the chair in front of Logan's desk. “Sit. Talk. Tell us what you know.”

“I don't care if you're my boss. What you—he—you—” she looked from one to the other of them. “What Logan did to Gracie was just plain mean and underhanded and—”

“What did Grace say?” Aidan demanded since Logan was staring into space.

“He knows what he did,” Dee said, pointing at Logan. Then she pointed at Aidan. “For Pete's sake, which one of you is which?”

“I'm Aidan,” he said. “Now tell us everything that happened.”

Logan sat behind his desk with his elbows resting on the surface and listened to Dee's story.

When she was finished, Aidan scratched his head. “What the hell?”

“We're not killing any spores,” Logan muttered.

“That's what she said,” Dee insisted, then shook her head in confusion. “She left the bar to get her sweater and the next thing I knew, she was in her room crying her eyes out about you paving over the rain forest.”

“It was her pink sweater,” Logan murmured. “I remember seeing it and meant to bring it to her.”

“Right,” Dee said. “She came in here to get her sweater and all hell broke loose. It wasn't enough for that creep Walter to break her heart, but then you had to come along and—”

“Who the hell is Walter?” Logan said, his voice belonging more to a growling animal than a normal human.

Dee told them the whole ugly story of Walter's betrayal and how much it had messed up Grace's life. Then Dee took off, leaving the men to brood on their own.

Logan stared at his desk for a long time, until he realized it wasn't his desk he was seeing but the thick pack of old blueprints he'd left spread out here. The new ones
were on his desk in the corporate office down the hall. “Oh, crap.”

“What?” Aidan said.

“She saw the old plans,” he said, tapping the blueprints.

Aidan got closer and peered at them. “Those are two years old.”

“I know. They're completely obsolete. But she must've seen them and jumped to the conclusion that I was going to pour cement over the freaking palmetto grove.”

“She thought you betrayed her.”

Aidan frowned as he beat the edge of the desk with his knuckles. “Now we know why she left in such a hurry.”

“Damn it,” Logan said, letting loose a sigh loaded with frustration.

“Look, just call her and tell her she's wrong.”

“Hell, no,” Logan said, his eyes focused on the blue site map in the corner of the wide sheet. “She didn't even trust me enough to ask me about any of this. She just assumed the worst and took off. Who's betraying whom?”

There was a knock on the door.

“Now what?” Aidan said. He opened the door and a guy slapped a blue-backed form at him.

“What is this?”

“Injunction,” the guy said. “You've been served.”

 

Logan prowled his office like a caged animal. It had been three days since Grace had left, three days that he'd spent chastising himself for falling for a woman who was willing to leave him without a word. Grace had walked out on him as easily as the mother he barely remembered. As easily as his cheating wife had driven away from him that night four years ago.

So much for love.
Love
. He laughed without humor. What a great cosmic joke. Hopefully this was the last
lesson needed to prove to him that love simply didn't exist. Not for him. Ever.

As he paced around his desk for the tenth time, he saw the injunction sitting there and his anger festered all over again. He stared at the new blueprints and the contracts stacked on the conference table, then back at the original site map that had caused all the trouble in the first place.

And a plan began to form in his mind.

 

Grace was miserable and utterly confused. Always in the past, she'd been able to count on science to clear up any questions for her. But what she still felt for Logan simply wasn't logical. If this was love, why did it have to hurt so much?

She had tried to bury herself in university life again but she found that world was no longer a good fit. Heck, maybe it never had been, only she hadn't had a choice. Now, all she could do was remember Alleria and how she'd spent her days working and her nights loving Logan.

Still, that part of her life was over and so she'd applied for funding and was waiting to hear back. It had warmed her heart to hear that Phillippa and two department heads had written to protest Walter's funding, threatening legal action. Phillippa promised that as long as she had breath in her body, Walter wouldn't get away with stealing Grace's work. Knowing Phillippa, Grace was sure it was only a matter of time before Walter was dragged into court with his tail between his legs. A good thing, because now more than ever, Grace needed her research funding. It was all she had left.

She forced herself to work. It was the one thing that had been there for her throughout her life. And now that she'd lost Logan, work was especially important.

But then, she hadn't really lost Logan, had she? How
could she, when he'd never been hers to begin with? And that line of thinking just made her hurt all over again, so she stared into the eyepiece of the electron microscope and lost herself in the world of spores.

In the background, she heard the door open, followed by several sets of footsteps. It was probably Phillippa and some other lab tech. Whoever it was, she wasn't interested in talking to them. She just wanted everyone to leave her alone to find her way back to some sense of normalcy.

Grace continued to stare at the slide in front of her, marveling at the pace of replication the new spores were exhibiting.

“She's right over there,” Phillippa said.

“Yes, I see her,” a man said.

Chills skittered across Grace's shoulders at the sound of that voice. She pulled away from the microscope and turned in time to see Phillippa step out of the room and close the door behind her.

“Logan?”

“How are you, Grace?”

“I'm…” What was she? Not fine, certainly. Lonely? Miserable? Unhappy? In love?

He didn't seem to need an answer, just walked over and handed her a folded document. “This is for you.”

She stared at the papers in her hand, then back at him. He looked wonderful, although his eyes and mouth showed signs of strain. It didn't matter. He was still the most handsome man she'd ever seen. And the only man she'd ever loved. Tears swam in her eyes, blurring her vision. She whipped around so he wouldn't see her swipe her hand to brush away the tears.

“What is it?” she asked numbly.

“It's a deed to the palmetto grove and that hillside in the rain forest where the wild palms grow. If you'd stuck
around a few more days, I could've given it to you before you left.”

Her hand fisted on the papers and she gawked at him. “What? Why? Why would you do this?”

“Why?” He folded his arms across his chest. “Because now you'll always know for sure that the spores are safe.”

“They're safe?”

He shook his head in annoyance. “Damn it, Grace, you served me with an injunction against building anything on that land in perpetuity. So yeah, they're safe. What I don't understand is why you felt like you had to have sex with me to save the damn spores. You could've just asked me.”

She gasped. “I didn't have sex with you to save the—”

“You didn't trust me, Grace. Don't you know I would never destroy anything that was so important to you?”

“I didn't—”

“Look, Grace. To be honest, it was never about you or the spores anyway. We moved the site of the sports center two years ago.”

She frowned at him. “But I saw the plans.”

“You saw an old set of blueprints that I was just looking at for reference. So next time you're snooping, check the dates.”

“You were never going to build near the spores?”

Logan studied her for a long moment, his face unreadable. “No.”

She exhaled heavily. “I thought…”

“You assumed I was such a jerk that I would unceremoniously tear up the rain forest and destroy the entire ecosystem of the island just to build a few tennis courts. That makes me sound like a pretty big jackass, all right. No wonder you took off.”

“I—I thought…”

“You thought I was too stupid to understand what it meant to you.”

“No. I've never thought you were stupid.” She groped for the words. “I just thought you didn't care.”

“I cared,” he said tightly. “It was you who didn't care. It was you who didn't trust.”

She tried to blink back the tears but it was too late. Her cheeks were wet with them. “Logan, I'm so sorry. I didn't think you cared about my research.”

“I care about
you,
Grace. You should've trusted me.” He came up close and tapped the deed in her hand. “There are your damn spores. You got what you wanted.”

He turned to leave.

“I wanted you,” she whispered.

He turned back around and laughed shortly. “You're way too smart for that.”

Then he left.

The room was silent except for the sound of Grace's heart shattering. Grabbing a fistful of tissues, she collapsed onto her lab stool and buried her head in her arms.

She didn't know if a body could survive this much heartache. And the fact that she'd inflicted so much pain on Logan made her pain even worse. She wanted to crawl into a hole and hide, she felt so awful. Could her crippled heart withstand this much agony?

A minute later, she felt a hand on her back.

“Logan?”

“It's me, Grace,” Phillippa said. “I eavesdropped through the door. I'm so sorry.”

“Oh, God, I'm an idiot,” she wailed.

Phillippa grimaced. “Yeah, I kind of think that might be true.”

Grace looked up through her tears. “Whose side are you on?”

“Sorry, honey.” Phillippa patted her back again. “But wow, that guy must really love you to give up that land for you. And to come all this way just to tell you so? How do you feel about him?”

Sniffling, Grace rubbed her stomach. “I feel sick and dizzy and clueless and stupid. My heart aches and my throat feels like there's a boulder stuck in there. It's hard to swallow. Everything hurts and I can barely stand up, I feel so miserable.”

“Ah,” Phillippa said, nudging her glasses up her nose. “Sounds like you're in love with him, too. I would say you're probably going to have to do a lot of groveling to get him back.”

 

Back on the island, Logan was making everyone crazy. He would complain to anyone who was willing to listen that he felt used, abandoned and betrayed. And since he was the boss, everyone felt compelled to listen.

He grumbled to Aidan about how pissed off he was that once again, he'd trusted the wrong woman and he would never risk his heart again.

He didn't mention to a living soul that he missed Grace more than he would have ever thought possible. The days were miserable, but the nights without her were torture. He couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat. Hell, he couldn't even enjoy a damn walk on his own damn island because he kept
seeing
her there.

Aidan popped open two beers and handed one to Logan.

“Thanks,” Logan muttered, and took a big gulp.

Aidan sat down in the chair across from him. “Dude, you've gotta stop bitching and moaning to the staff. You're starting to sound like a girl and I think you're scaring the housekeepers.”

“Tough,” Logan said.

Aidan didn't speak for a time and they both drank their beers in peace and quiet. But it couldn't last.

“You know,” Aidan said, “you once told me that part of Grace's charm was that she didn't expect anything from you.”

Logan's eyes narrowed on his brother. “I never said that.”

“Yeah, you did,” Aidan said. “But listen, there's nothing charming about having low expectations. It's heartbreaking, is what it is. Grace obviously learned the hard way to lower her expectations when it comes to a man having feelings for her.”

“Since when did you become a philosopher?”

Aidan spoke through clenched teeth. “I'm just trying to help you out here, bro. It's painful to see you acting like such a jerk.”