hour.”
“Ah.” His very white smile broke across his face, carving lines into his lean, tanned cheeks. “Good.”
Elena stiffened. “Yes, well, I’m sure she’ll have much better success.”
“Damn it, Elena.” Logan’s smile died and he pushed his dark gold hair behind his ears. It was longer than she’d ever seen it, almost messy, and it fell forward again immediately. He pushed at it once more, an awkward movement, as if he didn’t know how to manage the new length. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”
“How did you mean it then?” Oh, she was proud of herself for how cool she sounded. Almost uncaring.
He muttered something under his breath. “I—”
The rest of his words were cut off by a trumpet fanfare from the speakers set up nearby. Almost immediately a line of teeny tiny girls in pink tights, leotards, and tap shoes shuffle-stepped onto the stage. The line leader carried a sign proclaiming them to be Miss Bunny’s Tapping Tots. Applause erupted from the crowd around them.
Logan said something to her, but it was lost in the first notes of “The Good Ship Lollipop.” Elena shook her head and pointed at her ears to indicate she couldn’t hear, bringing her attention back to the bill in her hand.
She held it mutely up to him.
He shook his head.
She shook it in his face. “A mistake,” she mouthed.
When he didn’t respond, she gritted her teeth and grabbed his arm to tow him somewhere quiet. She was due at her second job in less than an hour.
The art show was set up a little ways from the stage, and the panels on which the paintings were hung muffled most of the music. Elena halted in the first aisle and faced Logan. “This is your money,” she said, holding out the bill. When he’d dropped it in the bowl, she hadn’t immediately noticed its denomination because she’d been distracted—okay, fine, dazzled—by their kiss.
A small smile playing over his wide mouth, he pushed his hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking down on her. He was a rangy six-one or six-two, much taller than her five-feet-and-almost-five-inches. Maybe that was why he always managed to make her feel like she was on her first date.
Or maybe that was because he had been her first date.
“That’s the kissing booth’s money,” Logan said.
She frowned at him. “Do you need glasses or something? This is a thousand-dollar bill!”
He shrugged. “You don’t think you’re worth it?”
She swallowed a sound of annoyance. This is what he did to her. He either made her feel clumsy, cross or a lethal combination of the two that played havoc with her self-control. “Logan.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s no big deal.” Her voice was even, reasonable. Very mature. “You accidentally put the wrong bill into the jar. Give me five bucks, I’ll give you this back, and we’ll be fine.”
He laughed. “We haven’t been fine since—”
“Since my best friend started going out with your brother.” Her path and Logan’s hadn’t crossed for years, but then Annie and Griffin had fallen in love.
“I was going to say we haven’t been fine since the night we met.”
In an instant, Elena’s mouth dried. She’d been newly sixteen, newly orphaned, new to town. He’d been eighteen, golden, a man in her eyes. Her heart jumped around in her chest just as it had done then and she felt the flush of sexual arousal bloom over her skin, just as it had done then too. He’d awakened her that night.
Then a week later humiliated her.
Her fingers tightened on the crisp paper and she looked down at it, then back up to his face. “What game are you playing?” she said slowly.
Now it was his turn to look annoyed. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why would you put this much money in the fishbowl?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. His hand lifted. Fell to his side in a fist. “You are too much work,” he finally ground out. “Can’t you just accept it as a donation?”
A thousand dollars for a kiss? A thousand-dollar donation for prom decorations? Her face felt stiff and she remembered all over again that Logan’s family owned Chase Electronics, the biggest employer in town. He’d grown up within the walls of an estate that was on California’s historic register.
“Pardon me for not understanding how little this is to the privileged set,” she said. “On my side of town a thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
“Elena, I didn’t mean it like that.” He shook his head, sighing. It sounded like frustration. “Would you believe me if I told you I wish it wasn’t always like this between us?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him how he wished it was between them. But that was dangerous, much too much like truly wishing, and though Logan had once upon a time awakened her with a kiss—kisses—she’d given up on princes and happy-ever-afters long ago.
Over his shoulder she spotted her sister with Tyler Evans, turning the corner to the next aisle. Elena frowned, her constant niggle of worry over Gabby growing as she caught sight of the teenagers’ entwined hands.
“Fine then,” she told Logan, shoving the thousand-dollar bill back into her pocket. “I’ll make sure your money gets to the committee.” Without waiting for his response, she trailed behind Gabby and Tyler.
Logan trailed her.
She turned her head to look at him. “Why are you following me?”
“Because, damn it, I’m never satisfied with the way things end between us.”
There was something hot in his eyes. She hated when he did that. At will, it seemed, he could put a sexual burn into his gaze. She was sure he did it to fluster her, so of course she’d die before she’d let him know that look made her knees quiver and her stomach flutter.
“Stop doing that.” She made sure she sounded irritated.
He shook his head, then put his hand on her arm, halting her movement. “Elena…”
Her body was trembling, it was horribly embarrassing, but it was. She tensed her muscles, hoping he wouldn’t detect her helpless reaction to his touch. What an unsophisticate he’d consider her if he knew.
“Elena.” His voice softened, hoarsened. That heat in his brown eyes was melting the strength she counted on for survival. “You are so madden—”
“Elena! Someone bought my painting!”
At the sound of her sister’s voice, Elena found the will to pull away from the spell of Logan’s gaze and touch. She turned to face the approaching Gabby, Tyler a bit behind her. “What, Gabriellita?”
Gabby’s
