Page 76 of Perfect Playbook

To top that off, there was no use Nino being heretonight when I can barely look up from the kitchen table, so he’s at my dad’s. My stomach entangles with thousands of competing thoughts, knots to match the ones in my neck.

Just then, I hear the beeping of the front door keypad, seconds later, the door closing. Logan’s home.

“Hey, hey…” he says, coming into the kitchen. “Wow. A lot going on here… for tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I say, crunched over my current pattern. I don’t glance up, hoping I can stay focused now that my biggest distraction is here. I barely think about anything apart from my son and Logan these days.

He wanders over to the kitchen area, his footsteps casual and laid-back, which is the total opposite of how I’m feeling right now. For some reason, it riles me up that he’s all relaxed.

It doesn’t make sense to be annoyed with Logan at all. But on top of all the work I have to do, I’m low on sleep anyway. Our call last night had me tossing and turning until the moon that filters in through the crack in the curtains was replaced by the sun.

I adored the way he was last night. He’s giving me way too many glimpses of the man I convinced myself no longer existed. That, coupled with still smelling his cologne on his pillow right next to me, got me hot and bothered. I should have just rubbed one off, released it all, but I refused to fantasize about himagainwith my fingers under the covers. But now, I’m tense. Sexually tense.Andwork tense.Andmom tense, so to say I’m tightly wound is an understatement.

Logan comes over next to me at the table, close enough to me to smell his scent of the day—fuck-me musk and cedarwood.

“Wow.” He’s genuinely impressed. “You really went for it. Are all these squares going to be tiles?”

“Mm-hm.”Go away and take your ravage-me-now smell with you.If I don’t make eye contact he’ll eventually get bored of asking me questions I don’t have time to answer.

He saunters back behind the island, clanks around in a cupboard for a glass, then goes to the fridge to use the water dispenser. The fridge buzzes more loudly than usual, and water splashes like a monsoon behind me in the cup.

I sigh out a breath to relax and remind myself Logan has been nothing but helpful. He helped get me this job. He’s taking Nino to school tomorrow. But it seems his help is something of a Trojan horse. It comes with a whole lot of consequences, namely me wanting to throw myself into his arms as haphazardly as I did back in college, and it really irritates me. I grit my teeth and continue to will him out of this room.

Instead, he sheds his jacket onto the back of the chair right next to me. I can’t help but dart my eyes over to where he’s slung it. He’s now towering over me, inspecting my work, his bulging biceps and forearms with veins of a virile beast peeking out of the short sleeves of his black tee. Just under that fabric is that damn tattoo.

I glance up. As if he couldn’t get any hotter, he has on a backward baseball cap.

It’s nature’s most cruel joke. Why do men get to maintain their looks for years and years and not women? I’m about the same age as him, but with a diminishing metabolism (which hardly worked before), and popping out a baby, has left my body looking like it’s been in the trenches. Logan looks, well, maybe even better. He’s more man than he was before but with the same coy, boyish dimple that makes women swoon over country boys.

I drop my gaze back to the work at hand but can’t seem to figure out where I left off.

His meddling continues. “So what’s the inspiration for the cake?”

I clench my jaw, again, and don’t glance up. “Santorini.”

“Wow. It’s going to be insane when you’re done.”

“IfI get done, Logan.”Take the hint.

I can’t concentrate with him this close; his energy pours down on me, landing over me like a cloak of lust.

I clear my throat loudly, but he refuses to pick up on my cues and leans on his hand right up next to me. Even his fingernails are sexy.

“Why did Hughes want this cake?” he asks breezily.

“They got engaged in Greece.”

“Ah.”

He lingers.Please don’t sit.

He sits next to me with legs wide, his knee hitting my thigh under the table with a delightful sensitive pressure.

“Where’s Nino?”

My heart drops all over again hearing my boy’s name. Missing his first day at Longbrook is gut-wrenching. I want to be there for the memory. I want to be there if he struggles. Selfishness claws at my insides, but I can’t do anything to fight it off. I need a career to help my little family, but my career at the same time takes me away from it. A woman’s paradox. Why the hell don’t men feel this way?

I need to give Logan a shove or I’ll be absolutely screwed for tomorrow, and this means too much to me and Antonio to be polite any longer. I stand, the chair scraping the floor and nearly falling over.

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