Page 44 of Destined for the Cowboy

Such an idea had never, ever occurred to him. “I don’t think,” he said, his voice coming out colder than he’d intended, “you throw something away becauseyou’renot good enough.”

She went very still, and her chin came up. Something hot and fierce flashed in those eyes. “And I think spending any time at all thinking about the kind of people who would do what she did, to an amazing human being like you, is an absolute waste. But I’ll leave you to it, if you must.”

And then she was gone, leaving Logan staring after her in more than a little bit of shock. Not at her departure, but at her words.…an amazing human being like you.

At her words, and the simple fact that she had so clearly meant them.

*

Tris felt awfulby the time she got home. She didn’t know why she’d gone off on him like that. It just hurt so much to see him blame himself, as if a tiny child could be responsible for being abandoned in such a harsh, cruel way. Couldn’t he see that what he’d done, the life he’d built—thank you, Bud Dailey, I wish Icould have known you—negated all that? That he had proved his parents—if his father had even known he was a father—so very, very wrong?

She shook her head sharply as she got out of the car and headed inside. Even her thoughts were jumbled, full of starts and stops and side trips. Maybe she needed to sit down and think about herself a little, and why she reacted to him this way. It just hurt to see how hard he was on himself, when he was—she’d been right about this—such an amazing human being.

Logan Fox.

A wild animal and a dumpster.

How could she possibly know how that history would make her feel, if it was hers? She’d grown up with loving parents, and a protective big brother. She’d found a deep, precious love with David. Logan had had none of that. He’d grown up knowing he’d been tossed away like so much garbage. Grown up in a system that, for all its good intentions, so often failed.

And she realized with a sad, sinking feeling that it wasn’t only that he wasn’t used to feeling welcomed, as she had thought after talking to Lark, it was that he knew nothing about being loved.

She closed the door from the garage and leaned against it, staring unseeingly at her kitchen, suddenly breathless.

He knew nothing about being loved. She had meant only that familial kind of love she’d been lucky enough to have in her life, but she couldn’t stop her mind from jumping to the other kind, that once-in-a-lifetime connection to someone that made you understand all the meanings of the wordmate.

But was it once in a lifetime? She’d always thought so, in that romantic way David had teased her about. She’d always laughed at his teasing, admitting that, for a grounded, practical woman like her the flights of fancy were a bit of an aberration. One time she’d tried to point out to him how much of history, both good and bad, was driven by the kind of love she was talkingabout. But he had just shaken his head over her fascination with history. Historical buildings, that he could understand, and the history of the people who had built them, but the great love stories of history? Nope, not interested.

At first, she had felt stung, but then David had added, “Why would I be, when I’m living my own great love story?”

It had been impossible to stay mad at him after that.

But then, she had always found it impossible to stay mad at him. Death, yes, she could stay mad at that, for taking him. But he’d been so sick, so lost, in so much pain, so not David anymore by the end, she couldn’t beg him to keep fighting any longer.

She’d had to let go. She’d had to accept that the huge hole he’d left in her life was permanent. Nothing could ever fill that empty place. No matter what he’d said in that letter.

She hadn’t thought about that, the letter she’d only found after he’d died, in a long time. She’d only read it once anyway—or tried to, through the constant veil of tears—but once had been enough.

She slammed a mental door on the memory, and for good measure locked it. She tried to busy herself, doing housework that didn’t need doing, going over lesson plans for the tutoring sessions coming up that she’d already been over, and over. She grabbed the book she’d been reading, a historical novel that she’d related to since it featured a widow who had had to build her own life alone. But tonight it couldn’t hold her.

It couldn’t hold her because she kept thinking about Logan and his tragic story, as sad as anything she’d ever read. And yet he was who he was, a man with work he loved, a talent rare and special, and the capability to laugh now and then despite the life he’d had. It made her life seem soft and cushy by comparison. And David’s, too. Not that they hadn’t worked hard, they had…but they’d had a strong, sturdy foundation to build on. Logan hadn’t. Until he’d met his mentor, he’d had nothing.

And yet here he was, the man he was, and that did nothing less than amaze her.

She dropped the book on the end table beside her. An image formed in her mind, of the wide-open space of his home, the books piled on the coffee table in front of the couch, remembered when, in passing, he’d rather sheepishly admitted he often fell asleep reading on that couch. She could just picture him, his long, lean form stretched out, probably with his boots kicked off, propped up with the pillows she’d noticed piled at one end next to a serious-looking reading lamp.

The strangest sensation flooded her as she imagined herself sitting there too, reading as he was, in the quiet peace of that remote location, with the sweep of the galaxy over their heads, utterly at peace on this tiny speck in that infinite space.

It took her a moment to realize that the feeling that had overtaken her at that scene in her imagination was also peace, of a kind she hadn’t known in years.

And…yearning.

It had been so long she hadn’t even recognized the feeling. She’d felt the ache, the restlessness for some time now, but hadn’t been able to name it. Until now. Until she finally admitted that she more than liked Logan.

She wanted him.

She wanted that scene in her imagination to end in the only way it could, with them, together, showing those stars above just how carnal two hungry human beings could be.

A ripple of heat went through her, a kind of heat she’d thought long dead and buried. And suddenly peace was the last thing she wanted.

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