“Not when you were going to.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“I knew you’d say no.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Claire denied, so caught up in the flow of their verbal exchange that she didn’t realize she’d been duped until she saw the smug grin on his face.
He sauntered toward her, pausing only when he was uncomfortably close. “In that case, I guess I’ll ask you. Will you go to dinner with me?”
“Logan.” She tried to convey annoyance in her tone, truly she did.
“I promise to be on my best behavior,” he coaxed. “It’ll be all business.”
“You won’t change my mind about leaving LM,” she felt compelled to warn. Allowing him to schmooze her into dinner was one thing. Staying on at LM and admitting he was the father of her child was in another spectrum entirely. Claire had absolutely no choice in the matter if she wanted to maintain control over her child’s life and her own. No choice at all.
“I can be a very persuasive man,” he told her, obviously confident that he would get his way just as he did in every other aspect of his life. “Why don’t you go find some more comfortable shoes? Those heels you wore today are sexy as hell, but they have to be murder on your feet.”
Claire didn’t know what to say, so she nodded and told him she’d be right back as she headed upstairs to the guest bedroom she now occupied. Logan had noticed her shoes? And he was concerned about her comfort? He really must be laying it on thick to win her over, she decided as she rummaged through the closet for some sensible shoes. She found a pair of strappy black sandals. When she’d moved into Sophie’s house, she’d brought only a small portion of her wardrobe. Her life had imploded in the divorce, or so it had seemed at the time, and her sister had been the one person in the world who held her together.
Logan was waiting for her at the front door, looking every inch the polite gentleman. He smiled when he saw her, his gaze lowering to her feet. “Red toenails and a toe ring. You surprise me.”
Claire stopped and glanced down at the diamond toe ring she wore on her left foot. She thought it cute and flirty.
“What’s wrong with it?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He rocked back on his heels. “You just seem like a French manicure kind of woman, that’s all. And I’ve always thought toe rings are a little kinky.”
Claire’s mouth dropped open. “Kinky? It’s just jewelry.”
Logan cocked his head to the side, his gaze unnervingly intense and actually cracked a smile. “Is there something you want to tell me, Claire?”
She realized he was teasing her, as impossible as that seemed. Claire grabbed her purse and keys from the side table. “You wish, Monroe. Now are we going to dinner or not? I’m starved.”
He pulled open the door and gestured for her to precede him. His eyes dropped to her mouth. “Not as hungry as I am.”
As she hurried out the door and down the stone walkway to his car, Claire had a feeling Logan wasn’t talking about being hungry for food. And to her peril, the feeling was mutual.
Logan suppressed a groan as he watched Claire from across the table. Seeing her purse her lips and eat her fettuccine was torture. He forced himself to look down at his own plate.
At Claire’s suggestion, they’d come to a cozy Italian restaurant about fifteen minutes from her sister’s home. He’d ordered lasagna, normally one of his favorite meals, and it was delicious. But he’d only taken about four bites of it in between salivating over Claire. She ate her meal with the same uninhibited gusto she brought to lovemaking, making throaty noises of enjoyment and licking her lips. He was amazed he hadn’t just shot off right there at the table. Who the hell had known that watching a woman eat could be so erotic?
Not Logan, or he would have damn well suggested they do something else. Something that didn’t involve the use of Claire’s mouth or tongue. Here he was, with every intention of working his way back into her good graces, and all he could think about was working his way into her bed instead. At every turn, he seemed determined to thwart his own best plans.
Annoyed with himself, he stabbed his fork into his lasagna and forced a bite down his throat. Then another.
“Is something wrong?” Claire asked innocently, dabbing at the corner of her pink lips with a cloth napkin.
He glared at that mouth, willing it to stop taunting him, to grow a hairy black mustache above the upper lip, anything. “I’m fine,” he growled, stabbing his lasagna even harder.
“You look like you’re trying to kill your food,” she persisted.
Logan looked up at Claire. She licked her lips.
He threw down his fork and it rattled against his white plate. “Goddamn it, will you stop doing things with your mouth?”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
