Wild (The Ivy Chronicles #3)(21)

He turned to leave, his hand going to the switch to turn the light back off. “Sorry,” he repeated.

“Wait.”

He stopped and turned.

I swallowed. “It’s late. Your brother wouldn’t want you driving back this time of night.” I sucked in a breath. “And neither do I.”

He leaned a shoulder on the wall again, crossing his arms over that broad chest of his. “I’m not angling for an invite to stay the night—”

“I didn’t say you were.”

He continued to stare, his keen eyes discerning in a way that made me want to fidget.

“Look, you stay on the futon like usual. I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t,” he returned.

I blinked.

“You shouldn’t trust me,” he repeated, looking me up and down slowly. “I’m not like the guys you’re used to.”

What guys were those? Harris barely touched me by the end of our relationship. And the last couple of guys I dated pawed at me and slobbered over me and then broke up with me when I didn’t jump into bed with them. I didn’t want Logan to be like those guys.

My mind made up, I turned and plucked a pillow off the bed. Grabbing my fuzzy blanket from the foot of the bed, I marched to the futon and dropped both items, suddenly annoyed enough not to care that I was in my underwear just a few feet away from him. “There you go.”

A corner of his mouth lifted and he shoved off the wall. My heart dropped into my stomach at the sound of his footsteps on the hardwood floor, coming closer.

Suddenly I felt so . . . alone with him. Acutely aware that we were the only two people inside the building.

“You sure about this?” He walked toward me with measured steps and I wasn’t so clear what it was he was asking me anymore.

I pointed. “The couch,” I clarified—maybe just as much for myself as for him. “Yeah, I’m sure you can spend the night there.”

“Thanks.” He stopped before reaching the couch, looking me up and down again in my scanty attire. The sweep of his gaze caught on my guitar where I’d tucked it between the futon and side table. “This yours?” He sank down on the futon and picked up my guitar, settling it on his lap.

I took a protective step forward, my hand reaching out before I could stop myself. He looked up, lifting his eyebrows, not missing my involuntary move, “I’ll be careful,” he murmured, a smile playing about his lips. “You play?”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “A little. I used to. N-not really.” God. I was babbling.

“No?” He plucked at a few of the strings. “Then why do you have it?”

I lifted the guitar from his hands. “I used to keep it in the back of my closet. Just haven’t gotten around to putting it away yet.”

“Back of the closet, huh?”

“Yeah.” I walked across the loft and opened the tiny closet where the vacuum barely fit and stuck my guitar inside, making sure it was secure before closing the door.

I turned around and gasped, nearly yelping at finding him directly in front of me. He moved like some kind of cheetah. Silent and swift.

His clear blue eyes flicked over my shoulder to the closet. “So you’re a ‘closet’ guitar player?” He grinned. “You know you’ll feel better if you just own it and come out to the world.”

“Very funny. Do I look like the musician type to you?”

“I don’t know.” He lifted one broad shoulder in half a shrug. His cotton shirt looked soft and inviting, hugging his chest. There was no mistaking the ridiculousness of the body under that shirt. “What does a musician type look like?”

I had a flash of my father in the one picture I had of him. Aunt Charlene had given it to me. She told me a child should know what her father looked like, and then she told me to never let Mom know I had the photo. I hid the photo in the middle of a book, taking it out often over the years to examine it and search for evidence of me within the features of his face. I would study it for hours. Days of my life were lost to that photo.

The edges were curled with age now, the paper slightly faded. He was wearing an Eagles T-shirt and holding me like I was something fragile. But there had been something in his velvet brown eyes—eyes so like my own. Tenderness. Love. At least I thought I saw it there. I convinced myself it was there. I was only a few months old, all swaddled up in a blanket. His dark blond hair hung in straight strands to his shoulders. His face was narrow, handsome with taunting eyes. A guitar hung on the back of his chair. Like it had to be close. Like he could never be far from it.

I knocked the image from my head and focused on Logan again, watching me, waiting for my response. “I don’t know. Just not me.”

I backed away several paces before turning around. Like I was afraid to present him with my back. At my bed, I slid beneath my fresh sheets, my eyes trained on him as he moved back to the couch and began to undress. First his shoes. Then he reached back behind him and grabbed the collar of his shirt with one hand, pulling it over his head in one smooth motion. My mouth dried. Un-flipping-believable.

He was like some guy in one of those calendars my aunt Charlene always hung on the front of her fridge, ignoring Mom’s protest that they were vulgar. Maybe I was like my aunt. Minus the five hundred cats. Or maybe that was my future. Eccentric Cat Lady with a calendar full of guys who looked like Logan. God. That was a tragic thought. Especially when I had the reality right here within reach.