“I’m not—” She began to deny it, but the arrogant look he directed at her silenced her. Okay, maybe she could occasionally be the smallest bit stubborn, but she was nowhere near as bad as her mother.
Logan’s gaze grew serious and his hand stilled, resting on her nape. “Your mother thinks your divorce is a mistake?”
“Yes.” His proximity and intensity were having ill effects on her breathing capabilities.
“Do you?”
Claire stilled completely, amazed. This was the very first time in all the years she’d known Logan that he’d ever sounded uncertain. He’d always reeked of confidence. Even his full stride spoke of his complete domination of himself and the world around him. Yet he stood before her now, his eyes grave and fierce, a man waiting to be told where he stood.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. In fact, I wish we had divorced years ago, rather than making everything become so hurtful and nasty.”
For a moment, Logan’s mask slipped and Claire saw an expression of stark relief cross his features. It made her heart squeeze for him. He was so vulnerable beneath his veneer of impenetrability. She wanted to take him in her arms and hold him, to make love with him again, this time out of caring and need rather than pure lust. He was like a stray animal she wanted to rescue and tame with tenderness and love.
Love?
No, not love. That was an emotion that had no place for Logan. The two words didn’t belong in the same sentence. These tender feelings she was developing for him were byproducts of the pregnancy. She couldn’t be expected to maintain complete detachment for the father of her child.
Claire couldn’t help herself. She reached out, caressed his face, enjoying the texture of his beard stubble beneath her fingers. “You didn’t shave this morning,” she murmured, her eyes trapped by his.
Before he could reply, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him as she’d been longing to, deeply and open-mouthed. It was a hot, carnal kiss, and it left her wanting more when it was over.
Logan cupped her face in his hands and studied her. “I want to start over with you.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he paused and kissed her again, lingeringly, “that I want us to forget about the past. Let’s start over from this moment, just you, me, and the baby.”
It was her turn to search his gaze. “Why?”
“I want something more than just a forced parental relationship with you.” He lightly caressed the lines of her cheekbones with his thumbs. “I want more.”
“More?”
He sighed. “I can’t define it yet. I want us to explore a relationship.”
Explore a relationship? Claire felt as if the world had shifted, leaving her standing on uneven ground. Where on earth was this coming from, this sudden, gentler Logan?
She opened her mouth to formulate an answer, but he placed a finger over her lips.
“Don’t say anything now. Think about it.” He kissed her again. “Meet me back here at five-thirty and we’ll go to dinner.”
Claire barely managed to acquiesce before Mindy’s voice rang from the intercom, announcing the arrival of Logan’s nine a.m. appointment. Logan straightened her shirt and she re-buttoned his to the collar. It was a peculiar, almost domestic moment that made a lump rise in Claire’s throat.
Feeling acutely uncomfortable with the knowledge of her growing weakness for him, Claire hastily ducked out of his office.
So what did Logan mean when he said he wanted more?
The question tortured Claire for the remainder of the workday. She zoned out in a morning meeting with her creative teams. A trip to the restroom had her mistakenly entering the men’s room around lunchtime. Luckily, no men were actually inside, making use of the glaring white urinals that met her shocked gaze, and she was able to flee to the proper facilities without public humiliation. At lunch, she was turning over Logan’s words in her mind when she accidentally took a sip of Jamie’s Diet Coke. On the return trip, she almost walked into the wrong office. Jamie was convinced Claire had developed a case of pregnancy-induced Alzheimer’s, and told Claire as much when she was packing up to leave for the day.
Claire looked at her assistant’s lacy leopard-print pants, noticing them for the first time as Jamie stood in the doorway to her office. It was vaguely amusing, she decided, to be viewed as if she were a lunatic by someone with such questionable taste in clothing.
“I’m leaving,” her assistant announced. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Wait a second. Tell me your pants aren’t lace and leopard at the same time,” Claire responded, convinced her eyes were deceiving her. Why hadn’t she noticed them earlier? “You can have leopard and you can have lace, but you can’t have them both in one outfit or you run the risk of looking like Peg Bundy in a bridal shop.”
Jamie gave her a trademark roll of the eyes. “That’s all you can think about, my pants? Are you sure you don’t want to walk down to the parking garage with me? You seem like you’re not quite yourself.”
Claire’s attention turned back to her computer and she reread the email Logan had sent her earlier for what could have been the tenth time. Or the sixteenth, but who was counting?
