Page 13 of Embattled Return

“Yes. Probably for several days, actually.”

He had no idea how long it would take Palmer to dig into his background, but he needed to be close by, probably.

Logan handed over his credit card and took the room cards the guy handed him. When he turned to retrieve his bags, Marigold was just dragging them through the door. “I would have gotten them,” he said defensively.

She grinned at him. “I know.”

She let him take the handle of the roller bag, their hands brushing. Logan looked at her. The woman hadn’t seemed curious or affected by his injuries, which was a refreshing change.

Reaching into her jacket pocket she retrieved her cell phone. “What’s your number?”

Logan rattled off the digits, and he felt the phone buzz in his pocket with a text message. “If you need anything, let me know. I don’t live too far away from here.”

“I will, Marigold. Thank you very much for the ride.”

She grinned at him. “Any time!” she promised, before turning to head out the door.

Logan watched her ass for a bare moment before turning to head toward the elevator and his room. Dragging the bags through the doors of the elevator, he turned around. His own face stared back at him from the reflection of the elevator wall, flushed and not nearly as handsome as he used to be. One of the hardest things to get used to when he’d been recovering had been the changes in his own appearance. The missing hair at the side of his head he could deal with. If he kept his hair long enough it wasn’t really noticeable anyway. His face, though... It looked like he’d stood too close to a blast furnace, or something, the skin sagging and pulling on the lower edge of his right eye.

He missed just standing up without pain and walking across a room. Little things like that didn’t even occur to you during day to day activities. Not until you couldn’t do them any longer. Since he’d been injured he’d felt like he’d aged about forty years, and he didn’t like it. The doctors said he might get a little better, but to not get his hopes up. More than likely he had a lifetime of pain pills ahead of him.

The elevator doors opened and he pushed through. Glancing at the placard on the wall he headed for his room. Of course it was all the way at the end.

Shoving through the final door, he threw his bags against the wall, locked the door and turned toward the bed. He needed to get off his legs for a while. As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was asleep.

* * *

Marigold didn’t even remember gettingto the car. Her nerves were humming in a way that she’d never felt before. As soon as she’d looked up and seen the scarred man standing in the elevator doorway, and his incredible blue-green eyes, something had clicked inside her, some intangible recognition software suddenly activating.

Logan Vance had to be a bit over six feet tall. With the other LNF men in the reception area, he’d fit right in with the group, with broad shoulders and a strong upper body. Whatever his injury was, it impeded the locomotion in his lower half, but it appeared as if his top half had more than learned to compensate. Though he could have appeared weak with his arms in braces, he really didn’t.

Logan seemed to realize that he fit in as well. There was a bit of a shell-shocked look on his face, like he hadn’t expected to see so many vets in one place like this.

When Gunny Palmer had called her into his office, she’d gone quickly, anticipation humming in her blood. The new guy was standing to the side of the door and as she stood beside him, she realized that they were almost the same height. She wanted to step closer and look at him without his flinching away, study his brilliant eyes and the scars that meandered down the right side of his face, and the thick, dark curls that peeked from beneath his cap, but she didn’t think that would happen. Even as she entered the room, he turned more fully away. She wanted to scream at him that she wouldn’t reject him, but of course, that would be extremely counter-productive.

She put on the offended act for Palmer, but internally she was dancing up and down in excitement. There was some reason she was supposed to get to know Logan Vance, and she would do her best to do it.

Marigold had wanted to seem intriguing and sophisticated, but she was sure she didn’t attain either. It just wasn’t her. She thought she attained comfortable and girl-next-door, which would have to be good enough.

She left him at his door reluctantly. If she could have come up with some bullshit excuse to stay with him she would have, but she had seen the tiredness in his face. Logan needed to relax, so she’d left him alone.

5

“Are you ready?”

John looked up from whatever he was looking at on the tablet, snatching off the wire-framed reading glasses. Shannon didn’t understand why he was so vain. As people got older, they needed to use glasses. It was no big deal.

Crossing the office and circling the desk, she retrieved the glasses he’d hidden in the drawer and slid them onto his face, then sat on the edge of the desk in front of him. “I think these make you look handsome.”

Leaning in, she pressed a kiss to his frowning mouth.

“They make me look old,” he grumbled.

“Sophisticated,” she contradicted, reaching her tongue out to touch his lips.

John drew in a breath. “Senile.”

She giggled. “Doddering.”

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