‘Watching you hang off my brother’s arm doesn’t make me feel civilised, Evangeline. It makes me want to break things.’
Ah.
‘Call off the engagement.’ He wasn’t looking at her. And it wasn’t a request. ‘Turn this mess around.’
‘We need Max’s trust-fund money.’
‘I’ll cover Max for the money. I’ll buy you out.’
‘What?’ Anger slid through her, hot and biting. She could feel her composure slipping away but there was nothing else for it. Not in the face of the hot mess that was Logan. ‘No,’ she said as steadily as she could. ‘No one’s buying me out of anything, least of all MEP. That company is mine, just as much as it is Max’s. I’ve put six years into it, eighty-hour weeks’ worth of blood, sweat, tears and fears into making it the success it is. Prepping it for bigger opportunities and one of those opportunities is just around the corner. Why on earth would I let you buy me out?’
He meant to use his big body to intimidate her. Closer, and closer still, until the jacket of his suit brushed the silk of her dress but he didn’t touch her, just let the heat build. His lips had that hard sensual curve about them that had haunted her dreams for years. She couldn’t stop staring at them.
She needed to stop staring at them.
‘You can’t be in my life, Evangeline. Not even on the periphery. I discovered that the hard way ten years ago. So either you leave willingly … or I make you leave.’
‘Couldn’t we just—’
‘No.’ And then he leaned forward and brushed his lower lip against the curve of hers, and she closed her eyes and tried to pretend that her response didn’t belong to her. That the thrill of pleasure that screamed through her belonged to someone else and that the hint of whisky on his lips wasn’t intoxicating.
‘You can’t marry my brother, Angie. Don’t even think it,’ he murmured against her lips, and brought his hands up to cradle her face, and they were gentle but the tongue that stroked the seam of her mouth open was not, and the kiss that followed was not. The kiss spoke of ownership and anger and a helplessness that Evie knew all too well.
Logan’s fingers tangled in her hair as he tilted her head back for better access to her mouth and the kiss continued. Not tentative. What Logan wanted, he took—that was just his nature, but the way he took it … oh … the sensual way he feasted … She’d never forgotten how deeply his enjoyment of sex had run. A pleasure seeker without equal. Giving it. Taking it. Owning it.
And then he drew back, breathing hard, and wiped the shine from her lips with his thumb, and his breath hitched and Evie plain forgot to breathe at all.
But she could still move, and she needed to move before Max and his mother returned, and there was something else she needed to know as well, so she wrapped her hand around his wrist and dug her nails into the vein, and watched for that tiny flare of pain and what he would do with it. Whether he’d resist it or chase it, and the increased pressure of his thumb crushing her lips into her teeth said chase and chase hard, but the curse that fell from his lips told of a resistance that ran equally deep.
Still fighting his own nature, then. Still that mad mix of sybarite and saint.
‘You have to go,’ he said.
He wasn’t begging. Logan Black did not beg. But it was close.
‘You hate it, don’t you?’ she murmured. ‘What I make you want. What I make you feel. You’ve always hated it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was that why the only place you made for me was on my knees in front of you?’
‘Not only on your knees,’ he offered roughly. ‘I might be on mine.’
Which didn’t help.
‘Break the engagement, Angie. Find a way out of my brother’s business and go far, far away. Stay away,’ he said and abruptly let her go, moving back a step or two for good measure.
‘And then what?’
‘And then nothing.’
‘Being left with nothing doesn’t suit me these days, Logan.’ Evie kept her voice steady and her back straight. No way he could know how her legs trembled and her heart thudded against her ribcage in the aftermath of his touch. ‘I’m not the person you once knew. I’m stronger now. I’m a fighter now and I know what I want. The answer’s no.’
‘So,’ said Caroline Carmichael as she swept into the room, with Max behind her brandishing a bottle of champagne in one hand and a bottle of white in the other. Evie stood on one side of the room, Logan on the other, and Caroline noted the distance between them, and probably the flush on Evie’s face, with measuring eyes. ‘Max mentioned we have a slight problem on our hands. I trust everything’s been sorted?’
Logan said nothing. Instead, he let the silence stretch so thin you could see through it to the turmoil below.
‘Well, one could hope,’ said Caroline dryly. ‘Do sit down to lunch, everyone. I, for one, can’t problem-solve on an empty stomach. And make no mistake, this problem does need solving.’ She eyed her eldest son sternly. ‘Or would you prefer a fractured family?’
Logan’s havoc-wreaking mouth was a thin, grim line, but he pulled out his mother’s chair and saw her seated.
‘Max, you’ll pour?’ said the widow Carmichael and Evie caught a glimpse of the iron will behind the amiable mask.
Max cracked the white and filled his mother’s glass and then Evie’s. ‘You want me to get the Scotch?’ he asked his brother.
‘I’m done with the Scotch,’ said Logan. ‘Scotch is for shock.’ So Max filled Logan’s wine glass with the pale, straw-coloured chardonnay too, and then his own.
So civilised.
They filled their plates in silence. Evie had never felt less like eating. And then Caroline looked across the table at Evie and said mildly, ‘I hear you and Logan have met before.’
‘Yes.’ As Evie fought a blush and lost. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘I heard that too,’ said Caroline, and lapsed into silence while Evie sliced a spear of asparagus into half a dozen little pieces.
‘It seems to me,’ continued Caroline, ‘that if you want this farce of a marriage to Max to continue, the best course of action would be to forget you and Logan ever met.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Evie. ‘I thought that too.’ Twelve tiny chunks of asparagus on her plate now, all lined up to make the whole. Very orderly.
‘Logan?’ said Max, and Evie looked up. No mistaking the question in Max’s eyes or the resistance in Logan’s.
‘Or you can call off your engagement, I buy Evie out of your business and finance you until your trust fund comes in,’ Logan told Max curtly.
‘And where would that leave Evie?’ asked Max.
‘Gone.’
Why was there always a part of her that agreed with Logan? Why?
‘I’m right here,’ she said tightly. ‘No need to talk around me. And you can have my share of MEP when I’m dead, Logan. I thought I made that clear. MEP is mine just as much as it is Max’s and I will not give it up. Not to you. Not to anyone.’
‘No one’s saying you have to give it up,’ said Max soothingly. ‘No one but Logan’s saying you have to give it up.’
Evie reached for her wine glass,