Had Laina not died, my life would have been completely different. First, I loved Laina like a second mother and had known her since kindergarten. It was a huge blow to lose her, and her death left a hole in my heart. My mother loved her, too, even though she thought Drake was “unpleasant, volatile, argumentative, toilet-skimming vermin bacteria.”
Second, Logan and I would still be together if Laina had lived. We would be married. We would have children. We would be living on her land, without Drake, as I am quite sure that Laina would have divorced him when she no longer had to worry about Drake having partial custody of Logan. She wanted to protect Logan. Always.
Losing Laina, most especially for Logan, but also for us as a couple, was a crushing tragedy.
26
Bellini
“Bellini,” Logan greeted me outside Lady Whiskey’s. It was eight, and I was finally headed home after ten hours of steady work. The jukebox was playing rock versions of Christmas songs, I was tired of pouring martinis, and the happy noise of the bar had deadened my hearing.
“Hi, Logan.” Oh, cease my fluttering heart.Please! Calm down!He stood about two feet away from me, smiling. Why did he have to smile like that at me? “Why do you have to smile like that at me? Oh gall. I said that out loud.”
He turned off his smile and glared at me. I knew he was kidding around. “Is this better? I’m not smiling at all.”
“You look like a sexy gangster.” It was true. It didn’t appear that he’d shaved today. I loved his thick black hair. After a shower, he pushed it off his forehead with his fingers, and that was about it for styling.
“A sexy gangster?” He glowered. “I’ll take it. Would you like to be my co-gangster?”
I laughed. The red and green Christmas lights on Main Street, linked from one building to the next, glowed in the darkness. Christmas carolers surrounded the town tree, singing through the snowflakes.
Logan had come in earlier, I’d served him his dinner—hamburger, salad, no alcohol, pecan pie—and we’d made pleasant chitchat. He looked so hot sitting there alone…until he was joined five minutes later by a few people we knew from school—a classmate who now owned a cowboy boot shopin town and our former high school history teacher and her husband.
“I would be your co-gangster if I had time. Between running the bar and getting the burlesque show together and making sure my mother is resting, I’m too busy to commit any crimes. It’s very hard to keep her down. Yesterday, she was making Christmas cookies. I don’t think I can be a competent felon with you.”
“Maybe I’ll kidnap you, then.”
I froze. I have an active imagination. I get visions all the time. The vision that popped into my mind was being flung over Logan’s huge shoulder, my rear in the air. He threw me into his truck and “kidnapped” me to a quiet, modern log cabin in the woods. The fire was, naturally, already burning, the lights down low, candles lit. The bed was bouncy, yet firm, and he tossed me onto it. I said, “Let me go!” But the words came out all panty and sexy, and then I opened my arms to him, and he kissed me, and then…
“Bellini?”
“Yes?” I said, my voice whispery as I imagined Logan whipping off my pretty, red, floaty summer dress, undoing my red satin bra with push-ups, which matched my silky red underwear, and then I ripped open his—
“You okay? I was kidding about the kidnapping.” He was about to laugh. I could tell.
“What? Yes. Yes, I know. It was funny. You could kidnap me. I mean…” I coughed as the image cleared. “You could not kidnap me, as I would…uh…protest. Uh, vociferously. Protest. Strongly. I would not go to a log cabin with you.”
“A log cabin?” He leaned back on his heels and rocked. “I love cabins.”
“I love y—” I stopped. “I love cabins, too, for kidnapping. I’m sorry. What did you want to ask me?”
“Do you want to go to the hot spring?”
“What?”
“Let’s go to the hot spring.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“I…”
“We used to go all the time.”
“I remember.” I started to blush. I didn’t know why. Well, yes, I did. I knew what we did in the hot spring.
“You’re blushing.”
