Exposed (Madame X, #2)(34)

“And now?”

“Now I’m okay. You never completely get away from the bad dreams and occasional flashbacks, but you gotta expect that, seeing and doing the kind of shit we did over there.” He pulls the big SUV into a parking spot outside his door, exits, and circles around to open my door for me. “When I said I don’t have any emotional hang-ups, that was a little bit of a lie. I do, sort of, because of how Leanne ended things. I don’t trust easily. But that wasn’t the reason why I didn’t want anything long-term with Billie. I trusted her all right, I just didn’t feel strongly enough to move in together or propose, I guess, and that’s exactly what she wanted. I was cool with just dating, having fun, spending the night together here and there.”

He unlocks the front door of his house, disables his alarm, and closes the door behind us. At this point his dog, Cocoa, a massive chocolate lab, is going crazy, barking fit to burst.

“I’m gonna let Cocoa out now, okay? You ready?”

I nod and take a breath, grinning in anticipation. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I think.”

He goes down a short hallway and opens a bedroom door, and the sound of claws scrabbling on hardwood echoes loudly, accompanied by overjoyed barking, and then finally a bear-sized brown blur hurtles toward me. I’m braced for impact, though, and Cocoa’s saucer-sized paws land on my shoulders and her tongue is slapping me in the face and digging up my nose and trying to do an examination of my uvula. I duck my face to escape her tongue, but she follows me, leaning down to lick and lick and lick, until finally I have to shove her off. She leaps back up and actually hugs me, her paws going over my shoulder, her nose wet in my ear. I can’t help but laugh and feel happy about such an exuberant welcome.

The affectionate joy of a happy dog is balm for a troubled soul, I decide.

Logan slaps his thigh. “Cocoa! Wanna go outside?”

The dog’s attention is snatched by that, and she barks once, a short sharp yip, and hauls across the house for the back door. He lets her out, watches her do her business, and then lets her back in, and she lies down on the floor in the middle of the kitchen near the stove, watching us with her big brown eyes.

He glances at me. “You hungry? I’ve got some leftover shawarma, and half a pizza.” He opens a drawer in the island at the center of the kitchen and withdraws a stack of carryout menus. “Or I could get some takeout. Up to you.”

“What’s shawarma?” I ask.

“Middle Eastern food. Garlic sauce, chicken, rice. It’s amazing.”

I hate to admit that my diet has always been somewhat . . . limited. “Either is fine.” Mostly because I’ve never had either, and I don’t want Logan to leave, and I don’t want to have to leave this house again any time soon.

He lifts an eyebrow. “How about I heat up both, and you can try them and pick. I’ll take whichever you don’t want.”

He rummages in the refrigerator and comes out with a plastic container and a big white square cardboard box. Dumping the contents of the container onto a paper plate, he puts it in the microwave and warms it up, and then transfers the contents of the larger box onto another plate. As the shawarma heats up, the smell begins to permeate the kitchen, and my stomach rumbles. I don’t remember the last time I ate, and suddenly I’m ravenous. The microwave beeps, and he slides the plate to me across the island, setting a fork on it as he does so.

“Give that a try,” he says, and sets the pizza to heating.

The shawarma is possibly the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. Spicy, flavorful, tangy, garlicky. I moan as I take the first bite, and then the second. And then the third.

“So you like shawarma,” Logan says, grinning. He pulls a piece of the pizza off the plate and carefully hands it to me, a string of cheese stretching between us.

The pizza is also delicious.

“I’m not sure I can choose,” I admit. “They’re both so good.”

There’s a stool under an overhanging part of the island, and I pull it out and sit down. Logan takes the stool beside me, setting down two sweating green glass bottles with white labels near the top.

“So we’ll share,” he says, and steals the fork out of my hands to take a bite of the shawarma. I watch him eat, because he’s gorgeous even doing that.

“What’s in the bottles?” I ask, eager to try something else new.

“Beer. Stella Artois, to be exact. Try it.” He hands me one of the bottles, and I gingerly try the first sip.

I’m not convinced at first. It’s bitter, and a little sour. But there’s an aftertaste that hits my taste buds in a pleasant way, and I try a second, longer sip, which goes down easier. Before I know it, I’ve drunk almost half of the bottle, and my head is feeling a little loose and a little fuzzy.

Logan laughs. “Whoa, okay. I guess you like Stella. But then, how can you not?” He gestures at the pizza. “Try the pizza, and wash it down with the beer. You’ll never look at cuisine the same way, I promise.”

“I already don’t,” I say. “I’ve always been on an all-organic, super healthy diet.”

“Vegan?”

“What’s that?”

“No meat, no animal products of any kind. Like eggs, milk, cheese, if it came from an animal, vegans don’t consume it.”