LITMIR.BIZ

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And where will you be staying? Have you made reservations at the motel in town?”

      “No. I’ll stay here with you.”

      He looked so certain, so set on his goal. She couldn’t stop herself. She touched the side of his face. The stubble-rough skin felt wonderful—too wonderful.

      She jerked her hand back, thinking how much one thoughtless touch could do. In a moment, she’d have no backbone left. Whatever he wanted, she’d just go along.

      “You can’t stay here,” she said in a breathless tone that convinced neither Logan nor herself. “It’s out of the question.”

      He pressed his advantage. “Look. You’re alone here. The baby’s due any day now. I don’t even see a phone in this cabin. How will you call for help if there’s an emergency?”

      She tipped her chin higher. “I’m in no danger. The main ranch house is nearby—you must have driven past it to get here.”

      He nodded. “I stopped in there for directions, as a matter of fact. And it’s too far away. You could have trouble reaching it, if something went really wrong.”

      “I have a cell phone. I can call for help if I need to.”

      “You’re telling me that a cell phone actually works out here?”

      “Yes.”

      He made a small chiding noise. “Not very dependably, though. I can see it in your eyes.”

      “It doesn’t matter. I’m perfectly safe here.”

      “Not in your condition. You know you shouldn’t be alone.”

      He was starting to sound way too much like her cousin. Zach—and Tess, too—had been nagging her constantly of late, trying to get her to move to the main house now that her due date was so close. She kept putting them off.

      She did plan on moving, as soon as the baby came. Tess already had a room ready for the two of them, with a nice big bed for her, and a bassinet and a changing table and everything else that the baby would need.

      But right now, Lacey felt she was managing well enough. And the cabin did please her. She had music—a boom box and a pile of CDs in the sleeping nook. She read a lot and she sketched all the time. Lately, since just before she’d come to Wyoming, she’d discovered that she no longer had the kind of total concentration it took to work seriously on a painting. But that was all right. She sensed that it would come back to her, after the baby arrived—no matter what Xavier Hockland, her former teacher and mentor, chose to believe.

      And certainly she could manage to make it to the main house when her labor began. Tess could take her to the hospital from there.

      Logan began prowling around the room. He stopped by the big stove. “What do you use to heat this place?”

      “Wood. Lately, the weather’s so mild, I hardly need heat, though. And if I do, I only have to build one fire, in the morning. By the time it burns down, it’s warm outside.”

      “How do you cook?”

      “Same thing. I build a fire.”

      “You’re chopping wood in your condition?”

      She made a face at him. “No. Zach takes care of it. He keeps the wood bin out in back nice and full.”

      “But you have to haul it in here and build the fire yourself?”

      “It’s not that difficult, Logan.”

      “Heavy lifting is a bad idea at this point. Your doctor should have told you that.”

      “Logan. Come on. Stop picking on sweet old Doc Pruitt. I only carry in a few pieces of wood at a time. There honestly is no heavy lifting involved.”

      He marched over to her again. “You need help around here. And even if you won’t marry me, I think I have a right to be here when my baby is born.”

      She opened her mouth to rebut that—and then shut it without making a sound. He was right. If he wanted to be here for the birth of their child, who was she to deny him?

      “Who knows?” he added. “You might even need a doctor in a hurry. Then you’d be doubly glad that I stuck around.”

      Score one more for his side. She could go into labor any time now. If, God forbid, anything should go wrong before she reached the hospital in Buffalo, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor at her side.

      And who was she kidding, anyway?

      Beyond the issues of her isolation in the cabin, of a father’s rights and Logan’s skills as a physician, there was her foolish heart, beating too hard under her breastbone, just waiting for any excuse to keep him near for a while.

      It astonished her now, to look back on all those years growing up, when the name Logan Severance had inspired in her a feeling of profound irritation at best. Logan Severance, her sister’s perfect, straight-A boyfriend, who played halfback on the high school football team, took honors in debate and went to University of California in Davis on full scholarship. Logan Severance, who seemed to think it was his duty to whip his sweetheart’s messed-up little sister into shape. He was always after her to stand up straight, carping at her about her grades, lecturing her when she ran away or got caught stealing bubble gum from Mr. Kretchmeir’s corner store.

      Sometimes, she had actually thought that she hated him.

      But not anymore.

      Now she knew that she loved him. She had figured that out last September, on the fifth glorious day of their crazy, impossible affair. It turned out to be the last day. As soon as she admitted the grim truth to herself, she had seen the self-defeating hopelessness of what she was doing. She had told him she couldn’t see him anymore.

      He had called her three times after she returned to L.A. She’d found his messages on her answering machine and played each of them back over and over, until they had burned themselves a permanent place in her brain. She had memorized each word, each breath, each nuance of sound…

      “Hello, Lacey. It’s Logan. I was just—listen. Why don’t you give me a call?”

      “Lacey. Logan. I left a message a month ago. Did you get it? Are you all right? Sometimes I… Never mind. I suppose I should just leave you alone.”

      “Lace. It’s Logan. If you don’t call me back this time, I won’t try again.”

      She had started to call him a hundred times. And she had always put the phone down before she went through with it, though she had known by his second call that she was carrying his baby, known that eventually she would make herself tell him.

      Known he would come to her as soon as she did.

      And that once he came, it would be harder than ever to send him away.

      He smoothed a coil of hair back from her cheek. She savored the lovely, light caress.

      He murmured so tenderly, “Say I can stay.”

      She put off giving in. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about marriage. It’s out of the question, Logan. Do you understand?”

      His eyes gleamed in satisfaction. “That’s a yes, right?”

      “Not to marriage.”

      “But you’ll let me stay here with you.”

      “Just until the baby’s born. After that, you have to go. We can make arrangements for you to see the baby on a regular basis, and we can—”

      He put a finger against her lips. “Shh. There’s no need to worry about all that now.”

      She pulled her head back, away from the touch of that finger of his. It was too tempting by half, that finger. She might just get foolish and suck it right inside her mouth.

      His grin seemed terribly smug.

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