Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tate stared at the two women standing in front of both him and Logan. He knew that he had to say something, but he found himself ironically incapable of speech. One minute, he’d been in the middle of the best kiss he had ever received, and the next, he was standing in front of—
My sister.
“Tate?” the all-too-familiar voice questioned again.
This time, Jill stepped around the other woman, who Tate didn’t know, and moved closer. “Oh my God! It is you.”
Tate swallowed several times and ordered himself to, Speak, speak. Open your mouth and fucking speak!
But nothing happened, and Jill continued, “But you were just…just…were you kissing him?”
Yes, I was definitely kissing him, Tate thought, but still nothing left his brain via his mouth.
Finally, Logan spoke up, “Excuse me? Who exactly are you? Rachel, what’s going on?”
But before Rachel—whoever she was—could answer, his sister took another step toward them, and Tate saw her mouth open and shut several times as though she, too, had lost the ability to speak. Jill, however, found it again, much quicker than him.
“I thought you were meeting with Diana, and instead, you’re in here, kissing a…a…”
“A man,” Logan added dryly. “I’m a man.”
“Is this who you’re dating? Does Diana…does she know?”
Jill’s voice had risen to a high-pitched shout, and the questions she was demanding answers to were hitting Tate with the force of a sledgehammer. Still standing mute and apparently immobile, Tate watched Logan take a step toward the two women.
“Look, I don’t know what is going—”
“Wait,” Tate finally spoke up.
Logan looked over his shoulder, and the expression on his face was one of concern. But he also appeared as if he figured this was the moment Tate would take to lie and deny everything. That was the problem. Tate didn’t want to deny one damn thing, and as he stood there, he’d been trying to work out exactly what it was that he did want to say.
Taking a fortifying breath, he stepped forward until he was shoulder to shoulder with Logan, and he looked down at Jill. “This is my sister, Jill. Jill, this is Logan, and yes, he is who I’ve been dating, but he is not the reason I left Diana. That was over a long time ago, months before I even met Logan.”
Tate watched his sister’s eyes widen, as she seemed to take in the information he’d just supplied her with, and then she shook her head. “What?”
“This is Logan—”
“I heard that part, Tate! What are you thinking?” she demanded and spun on her heel ready to leave. “Where’s Diana? Does she know?”
Tate lunged forward and gripped her arm, spinning her back. “You don’t need to—”
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she hissed at him with so much acidity that Tate literally dropped her arm as though it had burned his hand. She glared at him and then shifted her glare to Logan, who was standing deathly silent beside him. “This is disgusting. Mom and Dad will never forgive you for this.”
“Jill,” Tate warned, his breathing stuck somewhere inside his chest, knowing exactly how well this would not go over with his family. As he watched her march out of the office, he called after her, “Jill!” but it was too late.
She was now standing out in the middle of the law firm in front of Diana and Cole, who had apparently come out of the conference room to see what all the noise was about. Diana looked at her best friend, his sister, before raising her eyes to meet his.
That was when Tate felt someone move up beside him, and without turning, he knew it was Logan because Diana’s eyes moved to him, and a scowl crossed her features. Slinging the strap of her purse over her arm, she walked forward and clasped his sister’s arm. When they both reached him, she laughed in a way that was both as ugly as it was spiteful.
“Good luck explaining him to your family, Tate. They already hate you for what you did to me. They’re going to hate this even more.”
Tate knew she was right. Introducing Logan to them was going to be a nightmare, one they were going to have to deal with sooner rather than later.
“This is for me to tell them,” Tate told them both, “not you.”
Jill looked away as though she couldn’t even stand the sight of him.
Diana cackled like the witch she was turning out to be. “Well, we’ll just have to see who gets there first.”
“Diana,” Tate cautioned, becoming more and more pissed.
She completely ignored him, turned to Logan, and said in a voice dripping with malice, “So, do you fuck the exes of all your clients? Or just the men?”