Fyre & Revenge (17 page)

Logan grinned,
a broad expression that completely altered his features. Even the
sound of JJ’s voice was enough to bring back another rush of
memories, things settling into place in Logan’s head and making
more sense now.

“It is. Have I
ever been married?”

There was a
snort from the other end of the phone. Whether it was one of
amusement or surprise Logan couldn’t make out. “I’m not going to
ask what you’re on. No, you’ve never been married. You’ve never
even
contemplated
marriage. In fact, at my wedding you
expressed the opinion I’d suffered temporary insanity as a result
of stupidity. Of course you said this out of Zette’s
hearing—otherwise we’d still be looking for bits of you.”

Logan closed
his eyes, his head dipping. He wasn’t married. Which meant Rae
had
been stringing him a line. His lips compressed into a
thin line, unexpected pain searing through his chest, through his
heart. Intellectually he’d known he wasn’t married, but a small
part of him had clung to the fuzziness of his memories, protesting
that somehow it might, just might be possible.

JJ’s words
squashed that little hope before it took root and flourished. He
sighed and nodded. “I didn’t think so, thanks mate. I’ll let you
get some sleep. You look rough enough with a full eight hours, I
wouldn’t want to see what your ugly mug looks like on less.”

He got a
chuckle in reply. “Cheers mate, I love you too. You owe me an
explanation when you’re up here next weekend. And it better be a
good one. Night.”

“Night,” Logan
said to the dead line, his hand lowering as he slid the phone shut.
His eyes were fixed on the door to the living room. He wasn’t
married—not to Rae, not to anyone. So what was Rae playing at?

* * *

Monday was
always a slow day for Rae, but today she’d been glad to escape into
the tiny office hidden under the stairs. Burying herself in
‘paperwork’ so she didn’t have to face Logan. She nibbled on her
lower lip, staring at the screen in front of her but not
seeing.

She’d spent
most of the day researching memory loss on the internet. The news
wasn’t good. Apparently a random image or phrase, even a piece of
music or a smell, could bring everything rushing back. A ray of
hope for an amnesiac’s
real
family. Not so good for
someone pretending to be family, and those memories were going to
blow her story out of the water.

A hard knot of
worry settled in her chest. What was she doing? This was suicide.
Any moment now Logan would remember and she would lose her house.
For a moment this morning she thought he’d remembered already. When
she’d turned from making the toast he’d been watching her, a hard
look in his eye she hadn’t seen since he’d turned up on her
doorstep convinced Rae Borne was a man. Her father, boyfriend or
pimp.

Pimp! Her face
flushed again, even the memory enough to make her temper simmer.
Mention massage to a guy and nine times out of ten they got the
wrong impression. Even if she was wearing the less than sexy
standard therapy ‘whites’ and ugly clogs rather than stockings and
high heels. It only went to prove how thick some men could be—

“Hey, you
planning on hiding in here all day?” A teasing voice broke her out
of her thoughts. Rae looked up to find Logan leaning in the door, a
soft smile on his face. Her heart turned over in her chest at the
warmth in his eyes. A tiny voice sounded in the back of her mind,
telling her that if only she’d met him somewhere else, under some
other circumstances, and he looked at her like that…

She switched
off the PC, glad the screen was angled away from the door, and
stood. “Nope, all done now. I’d best get dinner on,” she said as
she joined him at the door.

He didn’t move
out of the way, instead he pulled her into his arms and kissed her
gently on the forehead before she could pull away. “All sorted, why
don’t you go upstairs and have a nice hot bath and I’ll have
everything ready for you when you get down.”

The bath was
already run by the time Rae got upstairs, the scent of her
favourite oils tempting her. She shucked her clothing off and
slipped quickly into the hot water to escape the chill. The tiny
radiator in the corner of the room didn’t work well and only kicked
out a minimal amount of heat.

Unlike some of
the other radiators, she had to have her hand on it for a few
seconds to feel any heat. Yet she only had to brush past the one in
the kitchen to get burnt… She really needed to get them sorted out.
But a plumber cost money she didn’t have at the moment. So the
bathroom radiator got turned up and the kitchen one turned
down.

She stayed in
the bath until it started to turn cold, luxuriating in the scented
water. Living on her own she didn’t often get waited on, or have
her dinner cooked for her. Another side of Logan she hadn’t
expected, would never have expected from the bullish attitude when
they’d first met. Getting out of the bath, she wrapped a towel
around herself for the short dash across the landing and into the
dubious warmth of the bedroom.

With the chill
nipping at her, she briskly rubbed herself dry and dressed in her
usual evening attire of jeans and a t-shirt, coupled with a pair of
fluffy purple monster slippers. Not the sexiest thing in the world,
but the floors in the house could be damn cold.

Finger combing
her loose hair, she padded down the stairs and pushed the door open
to the main room. A step inside the door she froze, eyes wide as
she looked around.

The room was in
darkness, lit only by the gentle glow of candlelight. Light from
the candles on every surface dotted around the room. Soft music
played in the background, a gentle romantic track from one of her
favourite CDs. The fire crackled in the grate and on the hearth,
and on one side, out of the heat, sat an ice bucket complete with
what looked like a bottle of champagne.

Rae blinked in
surprise. Where had that come from? She didn’t even
own
an
ice bucket! Venturing further into the room she knew her surprise
would be etched on her face. Usually she was pretty good at
concealing her feelings, but this had totally blindsided her.

“Oh there you
are. I thought I’d have to send out a search party,” Logan called
from the kitchen. Rae headed that way, only to find it had been
given the same treatment as the main room. He’d set the table for
two, an intimate little scene with candles in the centre. Logan
smiled over his shoulder from the counter. “Have a seat, I’ll be
done in a moment.”

Rae nodded, not
trusting herself to speak as she slid into a seat and looked
around. A lump formed in the back of her throat. No one had ever
gone to this much trouble for her before.

A plate was
slid in front of her. Chinese. Chicken fried rice if she wasn’t
much mistaken. Her favourite. Surprised, she looked up, her eyes
meeting his warm blue ones.

“I’m not much
of a cook I’m afraid.” Logan took his seat at the other side of the
table. “Plating a takeout is about as much as I do in a
kitchen.”

Rae picked up
her fork and started heaping the little bits of chicken into the
middle of her plate so she could eat the rice first. It was a bad
habit—something she did with a lot of food—separating it out into
separate foods and eating them one by one. Perhaps a nervous habit
or something, her therapist side said.

“How did you
know I loved chicken fried rice?” She looked up, a frown on her
brow. “Did you remember, I mean?” Considering their situation she’d
be amazed if he had.

He shook his
head, digging into his own dinner. “Nope, I’m afraid not. You’d
circled it on the takeaway menu next to the phone so I took a
guess.”

Rae let out a
sigh of relief and applied herself to her meal. Logan kept up a
light flow of conversation she couldn’t help but respond to.
Surprisingly, he was entertaining and funny, regaling her with
anecdotes from the daytime TV he’d been forced to endure all
day.

“You should be
banned from watching TV,” she told him as she cleared the dishes
away, only to have them firmly taken away from her. “Tomorrow I’m
stealing the remote. You can go out for a walk or something.”

He gasped, an
expression of mock horror on his face as he shooed her towards the
main room. “Torture! I get out of the hospital and you want to send
me out into the wilds of the countryside. Who knows what’ll happen
to me out there! I might get lost and die of hypothermia.”

Rae shook her
head. “Wuss,” she teased, and disappeared into the main room with a
small squeal as he flicked the tea-towel out at her.

On automatic
she checked the fire, using the poker to stab at the coals and bed
them down. Putting it back in its place in the corner of the
hearth, she turned her attention to the bottle in the ice bucket.
Her slender fingers reached out and turned the bottle gently to
read the label.

Rae was no
expert on champagne. Hell, she wasn’t even an expert on wine. A
cheap and cheerful plonk from the village store was about as far as
her expertise extended. But this looked expensive, very expensive,
if the gold detailed label was any indication. Her eyes widened as
she read the name
Dom Pérignon
. Shit, she’d been right,
this stuff
was
expensive! She remembered drinking it once
at some well-to-do relation’s wedding but she’d never consider
buying a bottle. Hell, she could buy a mobile therapy couch for
that kind of money.

* * *

With the
kitchen cleaned and as near to its former pristine state as
possible, Logan folded the towel over the rail and headed into the
main room. Rae crouched by the ice bucket, checking out the label
on the bottle. She looked up, surprise in her chocolate caramel
eyes. “This stuff is expensive, what’s the occasion?”

Logan hid his
amusement at her bluntness. Actually, for him, the price of the
champagne was irrelevant. Rae seemed to think he was some
small-time property developer, which wasn’t a surprise as that’s
what he’d led her to believe. She had no clue what he really did,
that Jensen and Fyre was merely a sideline. An ambition from his
childhood to play architect and an expensive hobby he could afford
to indulge in.

She really had
no idea what she’d gotten herself into, but he sure as hell was
going to enjoy this game. Enjoy seeing how far she was prepared to
take this whole charade. As a rule Logan hated liars. Deception was
his stock in trade in a way, a sort of legalised deception. He
preferred to think of it more as sleight of hand with the
facts.

But he was
always brutally honest when it came to relationships. His childhood
hadn’t been a good one, his parents more into playing mind games
with each other than looking after their only child. Him. So he’d
grown up seeing what lies could do to a family and it wasn’t
pleasant. As an adult he’d always been up front in his
relationships—his lovers knew he didn’t love them and he wasn’t
going to marry them. He laid the facts on the line from the
start.

Even so, some
balked a little when he ended it, using tear-filled arguments that
left him cold as they tried to claim they’d thought he’d changed
his mind. Pleaded they thought he’d fallen in love with them at
least a little because of his romantic manner and gestures.

All an act. A
part he played more than convincingly and one he intended to play
to the hilt with Rae. In fact, he intended to play this game to the
end, and it was one he intended to thoroughly enjoy. He smiled and
walked further into the room, two glasses in his hand.

“I thought we’d
celebrate… the start of the rest of our lives.”

He bent down to
put the glasses next to the bottle, the crystal clinking as he set
them on the hearth. Reaching out with his free hand he caught her
at the back of the neck, gentle pressure from his fingers tilting
her head up so he could kiss her. He felt the tiny, instinctive
start and ignored it.

When he’d first
woken up after the accident it had bothered him that his ‘wife’ was
wary of him touching her, but he knew the truth now. She was wary
because they didn’t know each other. They’d never been the lovers
he’d thought they were. He told himself that by the end of the
night that would change.

He pulled back
a little to look into her eyes, as though searching for something.
His voice rang with sincerity as he whispered, “I’m sorry for where
we went wrong… Where I went wrong before.” He paused, his lips
quirking a fraction. “And I’m learning enough about myself, about
the way I think, to realise this had to be my fault. I don’t want
to lose you Rae. I’ve only just found you.”

It worked, as
he’d known it would. Women fell hook, line and sinker for the
sensitive, ‘new man in touch with his feelings’ type. An act Logan
played to perfection. Her eyes softened, emotion swirling in the
coffee-cream depths. The sudden darkness in them hit Logan like a
punch in the gut. Sudden, swift arousal racing like fire through
his blood.

With hard-won
control he clamped down on it—this had to be a slow, gentle
seduction. Despite her fiery response when he’d kissed her on his
first visit, he knew if he pushed she’d retreat into her shell.
Using the mask of ‘separated wife’ to keep him at bay.

Which meant he
wouldn’t get so much as a sniff of any action between the sheets
and that was definitely
not
how he wanted things to go.
Tonight he didn’t intend to resort to a quickly concealed jerk-off
on his lonesome. No, tonight he was after the real deal. He lowered
his lips to hers again, touching, teasing and finally tasting. Just
the touch of her lips was addictive as he pulled her closer,
drawing her into his lap as he sat down in front of the fire.