Fyre & Revenge (22 page)

“Honey, are you
in? You’re waiting for me in bed aren’t you, you sexy wickle
beast?” The high, giggling voice made Rae wince. It was the kind of
falseness she always associated with bleach blond hair and false
eyelashes thick enough to be mistaken for a couple of
caterpillars.

But ‘sexy
wickle beast’? What kind of self-respecting woman used that sort of
language once they were out of their teens? The kind who used
another of Rae’s pet hate phrases—‘ickle bunny.’
Ickle
was
not a word,
wickle
was not a word. These women needed to
get a dictionary. Or better yet, Rae would buy them one. Then beat
them to death with it.

“I wondered
when this would happen.” Logan pulled the sheet over his waist to
cover his nakedness an instant before the door opened to reveal the
owner of the voice.

Tall and blond,
she was the supermodel type Rae could imagine on Logan’s arm. Which
bizarrely made it worse. Rae was short, and had always struggled
with those extra pounds padding her curvy frame. Supermodel she
wasn’t. Not even for a guy with a bad squint and beer goggles.

The newcomer’s
jaw hit the ground as her eyes swept over the bed. Registering not
only Logan but Rae huddled against the headboard as she wondered
how the hell she was going to explain about this one. And what did
Logan mean about ‘wondering when this would happen’?

“Who the fuck
are you?” the other woman demanded, her eyes narrowing as they
focused on Rae. “Logan, did you pick up a stray again?”

Bitch! Rae
didn’t care who the bloody hell she was, that comment was uncalled
for. She opened her mouth to say something catty to the underfed
stick insect when Logan rolled to his feet. The light from the
hallway fell across his face and Rae shivered. It was like looking
at a different man, not the lover she’d been with all night. The
look in his eyes was cold, hard. Ruthless.

“Carrie, I told
you… It’s over.” Logan’s voice was bored as he pulled his trousers
back on. “I’ll see you out and I’d like my key card back please.
Rae, get dressed. You and I need to talk.”

Rae watched
with wide eyes as Logan ushered the complaining Carrie out. He
knew. The look in his eyes as he said the last sentence,
you
and I need to talk
, said it all. He knew she wasn’t his wife,
knew she’d been leading him on. Her stomach lurched, coiling in on
itself as she sat for a moment in the darkness. He knew…

She slid from
the bed in a slow movement, gathering up the clothes that had
fallen to the floor en route to the bed. Moving as though in a
dream she pulled them back on, fastening her skirt as she padded
over to the door. Pausing for a moment with one hand on the
darkened wood, she listened.

The sounds of a
muffled argument filtered through the apartment to her. She winced
as it ended on an angry exchange, voices raised before a door
slammed. She hovered, biting her lip. Should she wait in the living
room for Logan? Or wait for him to come and find her? She’d never
done this, the talk after she’d pretended to be someone she wasn’t,
so she wasn’t up on the etiquette.

Logan’s voice
summoning her from the main room solved her dilemma. Smoothing her
crumpled skirt over her thighs Rae lifted her head and walked out
to face the music.

* * *

He stood in
front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that formed the wall on one
side of the penthouse apartment, the city in all its glory
showcased behind him. But beautiful as the view was, Rae’s
attention was all on Logan.

He watched her,
his hands in the pockets of the pants he’d pulled on, his pale eyes
unreadable. She swallowed nervously and walked further into the
room, her chin up despite the nerves and guilt turning her stomach
into a lead weight.

Something was
wrong. He’d told the other woman it was over. Rae wasn’t stupid, a
man didn’t just tell his wife it was over and she left with nothing
more than a few sharp words. Besides, the clothes in the closets
were too big for… Carrie was it? Even Rae could see the woman had
been something stupid like a size zero. The clothes were only
around a size smaller than she took, which was definitely nowhere
near size zero. Not by a long shot.

Her eyes
wandered over him when he didn’t speak, taking in the breadth of
his shoulders, the toned physique. He was a tall, lean man, the
strength in his wiry frame surprising. The top button of his pants
was undone, the faint trail of hair disappearing under the fabric
enough to make her mouth go dry and her unfulfilled body
clench.

“So, nothing to
say for yourself,
Mrs. Fyre?
” he asked dryly after a long
moment. “What a pity, I was hoping for yet another entertaining
story. You do seem to be rather adept at them.”

“Ho—How long
have you known?” Rae refused to rise to the bait, trying to present
a cool, confident front even as she quaked in her boots. Well, bare
feet were more accurate at this point.

“Long enough.
What I want to know is why.” The last wasn’t a question, it was a
statement. A demand uttered with the unshakeable confidence of a
man who was used to being obeyed.

Rae opened her
mouth to speak but he held a hand up, cutting her off.

“Don’t. Spare
me the next outlandish tale or fairy story. I know what you were
playing at. You were screwing me, using me to keep that sorry
little house of yours. Hoping I’d go soft on you out of some sort
of emotionally based sympathy or something.”

Rae winced at
the harsh tone, her cheeks flaring with colour as he approached.
Moving so close she had to look up to see into his eyes. She
refused to be cowed or frightened. She’d done nothing wrong; it was
the hospital that had made the mistake about her identity, she’d
just not corrected them. And as for the rest, she hadn’t gained
anything from Logan because of their supposed relationship. They’d
just had sex. Which wasn’t a crime; they were both consenting
adults.

“You aren’t
married at all, are you?” she asked. It was the only answer that
made sense. “That woman… Carrie… She wasn’t your wife was she?”

He shook his
head, a snort of laughter on his lips. “No. Carrie isn’t the
‘marriage’ sort of girl, shall we say?”

“So what’s with
the clothes in the closet… if you don’t have a wife? What were they
doing there?” Rae looked him directly in the eyes, looking for an
answer to at least some of her questions. There were others she
didn’t want to ask, like where the loving, affectionate guy he had
been went. Disappeared in the blink of an eye.

He shrugged, a
dismissive gesture.

“Games within
games, sweetheart. I warned you not to play with me when we first
met, remember?” he asked, arching his eyebrow.

“Tell me I’m
wrong, tell me you weren’t just screwing me to soften me up.” He
looked down at her, rage swirling in the depths of his pale blue
eyes.

“I can’t.” Her
voice was soft, barely heard. He was right, that’s what she had
been doing. That’s exactly what she had been doing.

“But that was
when I thought you were human, with a heart to reach out to.” She
whispered, her courage in the face of his anger only extending to
an answer, not the volume of the answer. She was surprised she
could talk at all past the tightness of her throat.

He laughed, a
derisive little chuckle. “Honey, I’m a lawyer. We don’t have
hearts. You’d do well to remember that.”

Rae fought the
urge to step back, nearly flinching as he brought his hand up. His
lips compressed as he flicked the top button of her shirt open.

“We are,
however, practical people.” His voice was silk over steel, a
terrible combination that had all her survival instincts yelling at
her to run, get out. Get as far away from this man as she could.
“So I’m going to give you another chance to achieve what you set
out to do…”

Another button
flicked free, the gap in the front of the shirt widening to reveal
more of her creamy flesh. Rae swallowed, her eyes searching his.
“What do you mean?”

Logan smiled, a
predator’s smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m going to give you
another chance to save your pretty little house.” He flicked the
last button free and pushed the satin back from her full breasts.
“And you’re going to do it on your back sweetheart, just like you
planned, or you can walk out now. Your choice.”

She hadn’t
walked out, and a week later Rae was in hell.

Oh, Logan was
looking after her well. Her mortgage and bills at home were all
being taken care of and would be as long as she stayed, he’d
assured her. She sat at the breakfast bar in the palatial kitchen
and pushed fruit around her bowl with a spoon. Logan had left
earlier, after their morning sex session, and she hadn’t bothered
to get dressed. There wasn’t much point; Logan didn’t require her
company until lunch anyway. He had a business meeting with a friend
of his—the other half of the property development company she’d
thought was his main job—and she was required to put in an
appearance. She sighed, fed up with the way he was showing her
off.

She snorted.
Now of course, she knew better. Logan wasn’t a property developer.
No, he was a rat bag lawyer who’d wrapped her up in his sick little
game until she didn’t know up from down. She’d thought she was
being clever, playing him along, but she’d ended up the one being
played.

Now, she was
his mistress—until he got bored of her. His plaything in bed in the
vain hope he might not foreclose on the bank that held her mortgage
and she could keep her house. She was just a tart, prostituting
herself for a pile of bricks and mortar. She shoved the bowl away
with a little more force than she intended, watching dully as it
slid to the end of the counter and disappeared, shattering on the
floor seconds later.

On automatic
she moved around to clear the mess up, grabbing paper towels to mop
up the milk and fruit mixture before she piled the broken pottery
on top. Her mind was only half on what she was doing as her
thoughts churned over and over in her head. Was the house worth
this? Worth degrading herself by sharing a guy’s bed for it?

No…
yes
, a tiny voice in her head shouted. It was when love
was involved. Rae blinked, starting in surprise. Pain lanced
through her fingertips and she hissed. Blood welled brightly at the
end of her fingers, the skin sliced across the tops by a
razor-sharp edge on a piece of the broken bowl.

“Oh fuck it!”
She stood up, rushing to the sink. Holding her bleeding fingers
over it, she grabbed a tea towel to stem the flow of blood. Paper
towels just wouldn’t do it, they’d break up and the last thing she
wanted was bits of wadded paper in a bad cut.

She wrapped her
injured digits in the towel and pressed hard to stop the bleeding.
Tears welled abruptly, overflowing onto her cheeks to splash into
the bowl below. She loved him. Somehow, somewhere along the way,
she’d fallen in love with the guy she was pretending to be married
to.
Idiot
, she berated herself. He was supposed to fall
for her, not the other way around.

She certainly
wasn’t supposed to fall for him now, not when he knew and he was
just using her for sex. A convenient temporary mistress who was so
pathetic she’d do whatever he wanted for a chance of keeping her
house.

She lifted her
head, the steel in her spine reasserting itself as she dealt with
the cuts on her hand. She was not a toy to be played with and
no
house was worth losing self-respect over. Her lips
compressed as she admitted the truth, her heart breaking.

Logan didn’t
love her, he never would. She laughed bitterly, the sound ringing
around the empty kitchen. Her plan had been doomed to failure from
the start. To fall in love with someone, you had to have a heart in
the first place. She’d thought… Hoped, maybe… The sweet man he had
been before they came here… She shook her head.

“Get it
together Rae, he was playing you all along. That guy didn’t exist,
he was as made up as Mrs. Fyre.” She admonished herself, her voice
firm as her tears dried on her face. She might love him, but this
was a bad situation. There was no way she could stay now, not with
how she felt about him. It would destroy her. “Face facts, get your
act together and walk away whilst you still can.”

* * *

Something was
wrong. Logan knew as soon as Rae stepped through the doors of the
restaurant and paused in the doorway, looking around for them. He
leaned back in his chair, his fingers idly turning the stem of the
glass in his hand. His eyes lingered on her, appreciating the lines
of her figure, the curve of her waist as it flared into wide hips.
She was gorgeous, beautiful but in a real way. A way that was
striking when compared to the plastic ‘beauty’ of the women he
usually associated with. Models or wannabe movie stars, rich trophy
wives trying to hold onto the looks that had landed them their
husbands in the first place.

The only ‘real
woman’ he knew other than Rae was the wife of the man who sat
opposite him. JJ wasn’t newly married, but some problems had kept
him and Zette apart until just before the birth of their daughter,
so he still had the ‘honeymoon’ look. The look of a man completely
and utterly besotted with his family. Logan had spent the last half
hour being shown pictures of them on JJ’s cell phone, the proud dad
eager to show off what seemed like hundreds of near identical
photos.

Trouble was,
Logan could understand it now. Even a month ago he’d have tolerated
JJ’s behaviour with amusement and rapidly brought the conversation
back around to business. Today he’d happily studied each picture,
his mind’s eye envisioning a similar scene in the future. One in
which
he
was showing off baby photos. He smiled to
himself; maybe that day wouldn’t be far off.