Crazy for Her(12)
“No, I did a thorough search this morning and didn’t see any sign of him.”
She raised a brow. “And here I thought you just got up. I suppose you ran ten miles while you were at it?”
“No, only three.”
“Jeez, Logan, you’re getting lazy in your old age.”
“More like I didn’t want to leave you alone for too long.”
“Oh.” She peeked out the window again.
Having him here made her feel safe, but she resented it. He awakened needs she hadn’t felt since Evan died. But Logan wasn’t there for her; it was more like some kind of obligation he thought he owed Evan. How much had she disrupted his life by asking him to come?
Dropping the curtain, she spun. “I have to get out of this house.”
He stopped making faces at Regan and focused on her. “Sure. Give me twenty minutes to shower and change, and I’ll take you out to lunch. You can show me around a little if you want.”
She wanted. “Make it thirty minutes. It’ll take me that long to get ready.”
Dani walked next to Logan as they strolled past a sidewalk café in downtown Asheville. The city, considered one of the most diverse in the country, had something for everyone. With open arms, the town welcomed artists, musicians, and anyone wanting to make a movie. Cold Mountain and The Hunger Games, both filmed around Asheville, were in her DVD collection, and she wondered if Logan would enjoy watching them with her. They passed a small group of men and women in flowing robes dancing around a large tree.
“What’s that all about?” Logan asked.
“They’re Wiccans. The tree is like three hundred years old, but it’s dying. They’re convinced they can heal it.”
He snorted, causing her to laugh. She loved it in Asheville, witches and all. Her annual pass to the Biltmore Estate allowed her to visit any time she wanted. Often, she would take Regan and rent one of their bicycles with a baby seat and they’d spend several hours riding the winding paths, stopping at the pond to feed the ducks. The only other place she might like living as much as she did the mountains was the beach.
Two women dressed in business suits walked past, both eyeing Logan in open appreciation even though he cradled a baby in a carrier on his chest. Dani smiled in amusement. It didn’t seem to matter to them that the woman walking with him could be his wife. He’d insisted on carrying Regan, and she had willingly let him. Just this morning, the man had been terrified of holding her daughter, and now he looked as if he’d been doing it for years.
A display of old, recovered windows caught Dani’s attention, and she pointed to one. “Oh, I love it,” she said of the one with a distressed frame and stained-glass panes. It would be beautiful hanging in front of her bedroom window. She could wake up every morning to see the sun shining through it, all the colors dancing over her walls and ceiling.
“It would be perfect in your bedroom,” Logan said.
She glanced at him and grinned, pleased he saw it the way she did.
He pointed to a mirror. “That one there, you could use it in one of your Regency stories. Picture your hero visiting his mistress with that in her room.”
The mirror was awful, and she loved it. Red velvet covered the frame, and the silhouette of a woman’s nude body was painted in black along one edge. She visualized the scene he’d just described. In the movie running through her mind, the heroine barged into the room catching her betrothed in the act of making love to his mistress in front of the mirror. He would realize what he’d lost when the heroine called off the wedding and he’d have to—
“Dani!”
Jerked back to the present by the urgency in Logan’s voice, she turned toward him. He pulled off the carrier, handing her Regan.
“Don’t move from this spot,” he said, and turned to leave. Stopping, he turned back and wrapped his hand around her upper arm. “Better yet, go inside the store and wait for me there.”
He left her then, jogging away and disappearing around a corner. Where was he going? She started to follow, but glanced at Regan and stopped. Never would she do anything to put her daughter in danger, and she had promised to obey if he ever gave her instructions.
Turning, she entered the store. While anxiously awaiting Logan’s return, she purchased the stained-glass window and—on a whim—bought the mirror. After arranging for the delivery, she browsed around—twice telling the overbearing clerk she didn’t have any questions. Well, she did, but the salesman couldn’t tell her where Logan had rushed off to.
Fists clenched at his sides and chest heaving, Logan stood at the end of an alley as the black Ford F-250 with dark tinted windows sped away. Damn it to hell. If he’d been just a few seconds faster, he would’ve had the license plate number.