Page 37 of Wicked Love
Madelyn
“Have you found anything?” I asked, glancing from the apartment’s sofa over to Logan where he was perched at the kitchen island. He was in the middle of making a face at his laptop’s screen. He’d been poring over the extensive collection of records he could now access from the hospital all day.
He tore his gaze from the screen to look at me with a frustrated shake of his head. “Not much. I’ve looked at everything from the first few months before your dad’s death so far, and no unexplained illnesses or outright poisonings are coming up. But we don’t know exactly when his suspicions were raised or how oldthatcase was when he stumbled on it. And he might have noticed some detail that I wouldn’t.”
“Well, if you see anything that you thinkcouldbe strange, let me know. I might be able to tell.” I wasn’t totally confident in that offer, since Dad had accumulated a lot more medical expertise than I had by that point in his life, but it’d be worth trying.
“Of course.” He paused, and his attention shifted to Beckett, who was sitting at the other end of the sofa. The mafia heir had stuck around even after Slade and Dexter had needed to leave for afternoon classes, waiting to see what we might dig up. “And if Maddie can’t tell, maybe that friend of yours, the toxins expert, could?”
A small smile crossed Beckett’s lips. I suspected he was pleased that Logan had suggested his connections might be useful instead of snarking about them like he had so often before. “I’m sure she’d be happy to help. What about that name you mentioned from Mr. Silver’s notes—the Baldwin file, I think it was?”
Logan nodded. “I already searched for that back when we first came across the mention, as well as I could at the time. But I went looking for any Baldwins again now that I have better access, and I didn’t turn up any patients with that last name across all of the records that’ve been digitized.”
My stomach knotted. “Maybe Doom’s Seed or whichever of his underlings were involved realized it’d be key evidence and erased it.”
Gloom crossed Logan’s face. “That’s definitely possible.” He dipped his head and pinched the bridge of his nose with a grimace. “I’m going to keep searching, but my eyeballs feel like they’re going to fall out of my head from all this staring at the screen. I think I should take a quick break.”
“Don’t wear yourself too thin,” I said quickly, with a rush of a different kind of concern. He put too much pressure on himself as it was.
“Don’t worry about me.” He got up and walked to the fridge. “Anyone else want a soda?”
“I’m good,” Beckett said.
I waved away the offer, my mind veering back toward the problem at hand. A rough sigh escaped me. “I wish I could do more to unravel all these threads. I hate not knowing what’s really going on—now or back then. And it seems like the mystery just keeps getting bigger and more complicated.”
“You’ve been so focused on trying to figure it out. Maybe you need a break too.” Beckett scooted closer and lifted one of my socked feet onto his lap. He ran his thumbs over the arch with just the right pressure to send a tingle of released tension racing through me. “This is about your dad. I can only imagine how stressed out you are over it. But it’ll be easier for you to put the pieces together if you can relax enough to give your thoughts some space.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Are you a psychotherapist now too?”
He laughed. “I’m just speaking from personal experience, as someone who ends up in a lot of stressful conflicts.”
“Hmm.” I couldn’t help pushing my foot into his massaging fingers as he worked the muscles over. It did feel incredibly good. “I think I like your theory as long as this is the solution to it.”
Beckett aimed a slow smile at me that sent a much more heated tingle to other parts of my body. It occurred to me abruptly that this was the first time I’d let him touch me at all intimately since I’d found out the truth about him.
I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to touch me a whole lot more while looking at me with all that affection and desire in his gaze. My own hunger unfurled from low in my belly.
“You know,” I said quietly, “I’m glad that you stuck around through everything—I’m glad that you insisted on helping. And not just because of what it means for the investigation.”
Beckett paused for a second, obviously recognizing the significance of the statement. His smile widened and softened at the same time, and he reached for my other foot. “I’m glad too.”
I became abruptly aware of Logan standing at the edge of my vision. He’d come around the island, standing a few feet away from the back of the sofa, studying me and Beckett. Watching Beckett’s deft fingers run over my foot in a way that had my eyes rolling back and my lips clamping against a groan of approval that I didn’t think would reduce the tension still in the room.
My stepbrother didn’t say anything. He barely moved, standing perfectly still, his fingers clamped around the bottle of craft soda he’d grabbed without raising it to his lips.
I started to tense up again, wondering what he’d do when he snapped out of his frozen state. Would he yell at Beckett for touching me? Try to bully him out of the apartment? Or maybe snap at me for allowing the massage in the first place?
Then Logan spoke, his voice low but steady. “There are ways we could help you unwind that are a lot more effective than just a foot massage, you know.”
My pulse hiccupped as his implication sank in. It obviously wasn’t lost on Beckett either. The other guy’s fingers paused against my foot, and he glanced over at Logan assessingly. “We?”
Logan’s stance remained taut, but the corner of his mouth curled into a hint of a smirk. “If you’re up for that.”
“You’re serious?”
I couldn’t blame Beckett for feeling the need to double-check after the way Logan had responded to him before. Even after what he’d just said, it was still a shock to see my stepbrother lift his shoulders in a casual shrug. His voice stayed firm.
“It’s become incredibly clear that you care about Maddie just as much as I do. And I’m not really in a position to criticize any other part of your life, considering what I’ve gotten myself into.” Logan’s gaze slid to me, both heated and tender. “I want to see Maddie happy. If that means having you on board, I can deal with it. I’ve been responsible for too much of herunhappiness already.”
