Page 8 of Target Me
Any shred of remorse I might have felt was waning at a rapid rate as I considered just kicking him in the balls a second time.
“Are you going to let me talk?”
“No.”
Screw this.
I raised my knee, ready to kick again, and Logan flattened his body against mine, holding me in place with his hips and effectively removing the range of movement needed to hurt him. Bastard.
“I’m rather fond of my dick. If you even think about kicking it again, you’ll be kissing it better.”
“Promise?” The word was out of my mouth before I could call it back, but it had the desired effect. His eyes heated before he blinked and backed up.
“Stop changing the subject. Where. Were. You?”
I sighed and, rather than answering, started off in the direction of his truck.
“Avery.”
My feet stumbled over the next step, but I resolutely kept moving. I was done here, and despite what he thought, I owed him nothing. He was an agent for my father.
Nothing more.
It didn’t take long for him to catch me, but at least he stopped demanding answers. The drive home was a lot more tense than the drive out, weighed down by words unspoken and resentments that belonged to others not present.
As soon as we reached the house, I took off, hiding myself away in my attic sanctuary while Logan stomped around doing God knew what downstairs.
Eventually, hunger and the need to shower drove me downstairs, and after satisfying the latter, I wandered into the kitchen as the setting sun barged through the French doors in an obnoxiously blinding display that made me wish I’d stayed upstairs. Tying my wet hair up into a messy bun to keep it out of the way, I went into the fridge to find two plates of chickpea curry ready to heat.
“Bless you, Luciana,” I muttered, sliding one of the dishes into the microwave to heat.
When I was younger, Luciana had made it her mission to teach me to cook. To this day, we joked that I was her kryptonite. Her one impossible challenge. I had curdled scrambled eggs, repeatedly burned toast, and after we had to call the fire department during an unfortunate venture into cooking rice, we had decided it was better for everyone involved if I didn’t try to do anything more than make coffee or microwave pre-prepared food in the kitchen.
Perching on a stool to wait, I looked around the lower level, wondering where Logan had gone. Maybe I’d managed to scare him off already. The thought was funny until I looked through the back doors and remembered that someone had stood out there, just the night before, and photographed me. As much as I didn’t want to think about it, there was a threat against me. Even if I wasn’t the intended target, I sure was stuck in the crossfire.
None of this was about me. Not the threat, not the protection. It was all about him. My father.
Through the light of the setting sun, a figure moved quickly toward doors. Heart pounding, I slid from my stool and backed away until I stood in the shadow of the entrance hall.
If this was someone looking for me, I’d run out the front door. I could make a quick escape and worry about the house… never. There was literally nothing in the house I actually cared about.
The figure moved right up to the doors until their shadow stretched across the floor, almost touching my feet, then opened the door and stepped in.
The breath left me in a rush as a sweat-soaked Logan slipped his shirt over his head and used it to mop his forehead. Muscles. Lots of muscles.
His biceps bulged as he dragged the shirt over his neck and down his ribbed stomach, and I wondered what kind of discipline he needed to maintain that kind of definition. He was a masterpiece. The kind of body you’d expect to see on the cover of one of the romance novels I had on my bookshelves upstairs. No discrete covers for me. If people didn’t like what I was reading, they could fuck off.
He turned to close the door behind him, and I barely suppressed a gasp at the sight of a scar that sloped from the crease of his neck diagonally down to the back of his right hip. The edges of it looked rough, as though the medic who had tended him hadn’t had much skin to work with. I shuddered, wondering what the story behind it was, and considered leaving him his privacy.
The merry beeping of the microwave took us both by surprise. Logan whipped around, immediately spotting me in the entrance hall, then moved toward the kitchen in search of the unexpected noise.
“It’s the microwave. There’s a plate of dinner in the fridge for you too, if you’re hungry,” I said, following him into the tight space in case he decided to pull a gun on the whitegoods. He grunted, pulling his shirt back on and checking my heated plate—as though worried it could still pose a threat.
“Look, I think we got off to a bad start. Go wash up, and I’ll heat your plate up. We can have dinner together and get to know each other.”
He eyed me cautiously, as though wondering what the motivation behind the offer was. I couldn’t have told him, because I didn’t know myself. All I knew was that I was spending the next however long with a guy I was insanely attracted to but knew nothing about. This was going to either be an exercise in getting along or identifying a fatal flaw I could take advantage of. I honestly couldn’t have said which.
“Deal,” he said finally, brushing past me and pulling clothes out of his duffel bag.
