Page 3 of Now You See Him
Despite how grateful she was for the home that was now hers, she was increasingly aware of how dysfunctional her relationship was with Logan. All of her future plans didn’t include him. What was even more irritating was that he was beginning to stick to her like glue, swearing up and down thatthe house that they’d bought, the one that she’d wanted, was plagued by an evil spirit. Sure, the basement door opened every once in a while, or the lights flickered here and there. There was also a draft that would sometimes come out of nowhere, but that was all par for the course. Despite its extensive upgrading and renovation, the house was old, and there was absolutely no reason for Logan to become like human Velcro.
Okay, there two weird things that she couldn’t explain away. The first was that when Logan wasn’t in the room with her, Tina sometimes felt like she was being watched. Any time she sat in her office alone, it was almost as if she felt his presence in the chair behind her, silently assessing her every move. There were even moments when she was thinking about him and she felt a cold prickle at the base of her neck, the brush of a hand against her lower back before he’d show up.
Then there were her dreams.
The first one happened a few nights prior, and it stunned her to full wakefulness, drenched in sweat, her thighs clenched together, her clit swollen and aching.
She chalked it up to her menstrual cycle and the fact that she hadn’t had sex with Logan in months.
But then she’d had another dream that was even more intense than the last. Desperate hands, a wet mouth on her pussy, and the desperate sound of Logan begging her to stop.
As if he wasn’t the one she was having sex with.
She was starting a new life with a man. Marriage, sex, babies—it was all swirling around in her subconscious…right?
Truthfully, even at the start of her relationship with her fiancé, she hadn’t reacted to Logan with the kind of intensity she experienced in her dreams. She couldn’t really remember a face, but sometimes she’d wake with flashes of a tattoo fluttering in the corners of her mind.
She leaned back in her office chair and looked around the small bedroom she’d converted into her personal workspace. The house had six rooms, including the primary suite, and she’d snagged the last one on the left side of the second floor. Since she’d moved in, she’d purchased an armchair, a coffee table, and a new standing desk for herself. Logan had agreed to work from a room on the other side of the second floor since they both had demanding jobs that required them to be on calls all the time. But that didn’t stop him from interrupting her.
She was about to shut off her laptop to take a break for lunch when there was a knock on her doorframe. She looked up to see Logan dressed in pressed slacks, a button-down shirt rolled to his elbows, and a tie that hung loose around his neck.
“Hi,” he said, his grin perfect and sparkling as always. “I was about to break for lunch downstairs. Are you interested?”
“Sure,” she said. She stood and followed him out the door, and down the hall. “What are you interested in eating?”
He led the way down their wide refinished staircase to the first floor. “We don’t really have much in our kitchen, so we probably have to order from that pizza place again or go to town to get groceries.”
Tina narrowed her eyes at Logan’s back. “Okay, if you know we don’t have groceries, then what were you planning on eating?”
He grinned at her over his shoulder, his attempt at charm failing miserably. “Well, since you used to do the groceries back in New York, I was hoping you’d be willing to go out and bring back some stuff.”
“Logan,” she said with an exasperated sigh.
He crossed the great room into the kitchen and removed a seltzer from the minifridge. “What? I have a call in thirty minutes, and by the time you get back, we can eat together.” Hepressed a hand to his chest and held his tie down as he chugged from the can.
“Why couldn’t you go if you knew that we needed groceries? Or why didn’t you tell me last night, so we made the trip together?”
“More convenient this way,” he said with a shrug.
It was more convenient for him, she thought. More convenient for Logan.
She didn’t have it in her to argue with him, so she walked over to the hooks next to the front door and picked up her purse. Thankfully, she’d tucked her phone in her pocket and didn’t have to run upstairs to grab it.
“I don’t know if I’ll be back in thirty,” she said.
His sheepish smile slipped from his face. “What? Why? It shouldn’t take you that long.”
“If I’m going out for groceries, I’ll run a few more errands as well.” She twisted the front doorknob and stepped onto the porch. Then, with a bit of bitterness that she hated she harbored for this man, she said, “I hope you don’t hear any basement activity while I’m gone.”
The guilt intensified when she saw his face go ashen right before she shut the door behind her. That was cruel of her to mess with him like that, and she’d never been cruel to Logan before. At one point in their relationship, they fit. They worked together like two ambitious people who were able to operate in separate orbits next to each other, like two gears in a well-oiled machine.
Even though he’d manipulated her into going, the crisp breeze was beautiful, and the trees were just starting to show color at the tips of their leaves. Maybe some fresh air and a bit of wandering was what she needed to shake her mood.
Using her GPS, she decided to go to the sandwich shop first. She took her time driving down the back roads that cut throughthe brush and trees that canopied over her car. Tina rolled her shoulders back, as if shrugging off the weight she’d been carrying all week, and put down her windows so that she could feel the bite of air against her cheeks.
Tina pulled into the small gravel lot next to one of the sandwich shops that she’d seen the last time she was in town. There were a few cars parked against the building, so she snagged an open spot towards the back.
When she walked into the shop, she took in the wood paneling, the temperature-controlled glass case with hunks of raw meat, and the family pictures that lined the walls. There was a chalkboard that hung over a small cash register with a selection of sandwiches, some familiar to her and some she’d never heard of before.
