Bossing the Virgin(20)

“What’s wrong?” I ask, standing up. “Did the meeting not go well?”

I thought that he would be walking in cheerier than I’d left him this morning, but if anything he looks more upset. His blue eyes are dark and stormy. He comes over, and to my surprise, cups my face and kisses me, slow and deep. My body responds, melting against his, begging for more. I’m out of breath by the time he pulls away.

“I’m better now,” he says softly. “Come on, I want to take you out for lunch. I can explain everything then.”

It takes everything in me to not reach out and pull his body close again, but Logan’s mind is on something else so I nod and grab my purse. He picks out a Peruvian restaurant that’s just opened to rave reviews for lunch. The place is packed despite the fact that we’re here a half hour before noon. This is what I’m hoping for Red Canyon Steakhouse too. Once we’re settled and the waitress has taken our orders and menus, he sighs.

“The meeting,” I prompt.

“It didn’t go well,” he says with a shake of his head. “It turns out that the one responsible for it all is Kevin, my father’s oldest friend. He’s been at the company since the start, and I’m worried about what it’ll do to morale when people find out. It came as a shock to me even.”

“Why would he have done such a thing?” I ask, shocked. Even in such a short time I’ve been at the company I know all about Kevin. In fact, many people credit him for keeping the company going for as long as it did.

“Kevin was angry that my father picked me to succeed. In fact, that’s why father was working even though he could have technically retired. He just didn’t want to hand over the reins to anyone else. Kevin thought that after all his work, it deserved to go to him, and when my father refused, he decided he’d take the company for himself anyways. He was systematically bleeding the company dry.”

I gasp.

“That’s, that’s terrible,” I say softly. “At least your father never found out that his best friend was doing such a thing to him.”

I know betrayal and just how much it can do to a person. But Logan snorts.

“Somehow I doubt that he didn’t know. I think it was more like he chose not to know. The company was having problems. Even if Kevin did his best to hide them at first, there’s only so long before the cracks start to show. And instead of trying to do something about it, he hid it too, because he couldn’t stand to face that it was falling apart,” he says flatly. “My father was an idiot for letting his pride get in the way.”

“He trusted his friend,” I protest. “You can’t blame him for that.”

“I can. What he did was foolish and almost destroyed things for everyone. Instead of seeking help from someone, he chose to pretend it was all okay, and it put him six feet under.”

His words stab into my gut. My hands clench at the cloth napkin on my lap. I feel ashamed and I don’t know why.

“Hey, let’s forget about all that,” he says, sensing my tension and reaching a hand out to mine. “I took you out to lunch because it’s all done with finally. We can relax. As long as the relaunch goes well, I think Red Canyon Steakhouse is in the clear, and I think that deserves a celebration, don’t you?”

But the last thing I feel like doing is celebrating.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“It’s happened to me too you know,” I say, the words slipping out before I could stop them. I hadn’t intended on telling Logan. “In my first relationship. We had been friends for a while before we got together, and I never had a reason to suspect him of cheating. But he had, right from the start. He was always so attentive, so, well, perfect. And he had never done anything like it before when we were just friends either. In fact, I didn’t even know until Violet told me. I didn’t believe her because there just weren’t any signs. It never even occurred to me. I laughed at her when she mentioned it. I thought she was jealous.”

I feel completely raw and open, a feeling I haven’t felt with anyone in a very long time. I glance up to Logan’s face, trying to decipher his expression.

“Do you think I should have known too?”

“No,” he says automatically. Pauses. “I just wouldn’t have imagined that it would have happened to you.”

“What do you mean? You think that I would have realized that something like that had happened and done something about it?”

“I don’t think that. It was your first relationship after all. All the clues pointing toward his behavior-”