She shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never been engaged.” She didn’t even date that often. That had to be why kissing him had affected her so much.
“Me, neither,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
His mouth curved into a grin. “Do you think I’m way too handsome to still be single?”
Yes. But she would eat Cujo’s kibble before she would ever admit that she found Logan Payne attractive. But she always had. Even during her father’s trial, her brothers had accused her of having a crush on him because she hadn’t been able to stop herself from staring at him.
But she replied with an insult, “I think you’re pretty old to still be single.”
He laughed. “You’re only a few years younger than I am. Starting to feel like an old maid at twenty-nine? Is that why you jumped at my mother’s crazy idea to marry me?”
“Your mother.” Unable to help herself, she smiled with genuine affection for Mrs. Payne. “She’s another reason I’m surprised you’re still single. She’s a wedding planner.”
“And a matchmaker.” He sighed. “She’s the reason my brother just got married.”
“She manipulated him into it?”
He nodded.
“I feel badly for the bride, then.” She could commiserate with that whole manipulation thing.
“Why?” he asked. “You don’t even know my brother Cooper. He enlisted in the marines out of high school and just came home a few days ago.”
“Cooper? He’s the one who was named after your father’s partner?” She shivered at just the thought of implacable Officer Robert Cooper and how his testimony had helped seal her father’s fate.
A muscle twitched along Logan’s jaw and he nodded.
She shouldn’t have brought up his father again. Even fifteen years later, he still felt the loss. So she had no hope of her grief ever lessening. But she would deal with that later—when she wasn’t worried about losing her brothers, too.
“I don’t know your brother,” she agreed. “But I feel sorry for his bride because he doesn’t love her.”
“Oh, he loves her.” Logan chuckled. “He’s been in love with her since they were in high school together.”
“So your mother really didn’t manipulate him into marrying her, then.” Maybe the woman wasn’t some matchmaking mastermind.
“Oh, she did,” he said. “Cooper’s so stubborn he probably would have never admitted to his feelings.”
“Stubborn or cowardly?” she asked.
Logan chuckled. “He’s a highly decorated marine.”
She shrugged. “Even a brave man can be a coward when it comes to love...”
“Sounds like you have a story about that,” he mused. “Is it about your friend?” He’d said “friend” as if it meant something more than friendship and almost as if he was jealous that it might be.
“Why would you ask that?” And why would he sound jealous when he asked?
“I didn’t see any friends at the funeral,” he explained almost nonchalantly, “just your family.”
“That’s why my friend couldn’t come,” she said, “because of my family.”
“He has a problem with your brothers, too?”
She nodded but didn’t bother correcting his misconception about the gender of her friend. Maybe she had only imagined his jealousy, but if he actually was, she liked it—which was odd since she didn’t like him. Sure, she found him attractive—maybe she was even attracted to him—but she still didn’t like him.
“Even if I agreed to it, my mother’s plan would never work,” Logan warned her.
She was afraid of that, too, because she would have to convince her family that she loved a man she really couldn’t stand. And she was no actress—she’d never even been very good at lying.
“And really, all you have to do to stop them from trying to kill me is to tell them to stop,” he said, “because they’ll do what you tell them to.”
If only that were true...then she wouldn’t have to fake an engagement, or heaven forbid, a marriage, if it actually came to that. And it might take marriage to convince her family that she was committed to Logan Payne.
“I’m not so sure about that,” she reluctantly admitted.
“Then even you realize they’re dangerously out of control,” Logan said.
“I never said that!” she exclaimed, horrified that she might have inadvertently implicated her brothers. And, like Logan, she had no proof they were behind the attempts on his life. But thanks to Logan and the threats they’d previously made, she now had doubts.
“They’ve already tried to kill me. More than once,” he insisted. “They need to be brought to justice.”
“You have no evidence,” she reminded him.
“I’ll find it,” he warned her.
“I buried my father today,” she said, her voice cracking with the emotion that overwhelmed her. “Isn’t that enough justice for you?”
Cujo whined and nudged her with his head, as if trying to comfort her. Surprisingly, he wasn’t the only one because Logan’s hand covered hers on the dog’s fur.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he said.
But he wasn’t sorry that her father was dead and he was determined to arrest her brothers. He wasn’t sorry about any of that...
She pulled her hand out from beneath his. If she couldn’t stand his touch, how was she going to convince her family that she loved him? But then she’d had no problem with his touch earlier when he’d kissed her. Her lips still tingled from the electricity of that contact with his.
“We’re here,” she said with a sigh of relief as she just realized that he’d stopped the SUV outside her building. The street side of the ground floor held the storefront for her jewelry business, her workshop was in the back, and her apartment was above it. It wasn’t the greatest neighborhood; that was why she needed Cujo. Even now a car alarm blared and police sirens whined in the distance.
Logan peered through the window and murmured, “This is really where you live?”
She’d never taken Logan Payne for a snob. “You mean because I’m the daughter of a jewelry thief and I live above a jewelry store?”
“I’m surprised you admit he was a thief,” he said.
“He was a thief,” she said. He’d always been honest about that. “But he wasn’t a killer...”
Logan rubbed his temple and groaned as if sick of hearing it. But maybe if he heard it enough he would come to believe it. “I was actually referring to the dangerous neighborhood,” he said as he continued to look around like a cop assessing the potential dangers of his beat. “Now I understand why you have the dog.”
“Your mother is actually the one who brought me Cujo,” she said. After the older woman had heard about her store being robbed, she’d talked an old friend of her deceased husband into giving the German shepherd to Stacy. “He was a K-9 cop.”
“He doesn’t look old enough to have been retired,” Logan said as he scratched behind the dog’s ear, which Cujo loved.
“He was shot,” she said. “In the shoulder...” Like Logan had been shot. No wonder the two alpha males had come so quickly to