Eyes that were already slightly unfocused.
Julia took the paper sleeve with her room key from her pocket. Except there were two keys, and she slid one Logan’s way.
“It’s not the game,” she explained. “I’m offering you sex with me. No names. No strings attached. Just one night, and we’ll never tell another soul about it.”
She finished off her last tequila shot, shuddered and stood. “Are you game?”
No way, and Logan would have probably said that if she hadn’t leaned in and kissed him.
Maybe it was the weird combination of her tequila and his Scotch, or maybe it was because he was already drunker than he thought, but Logan felt himself moving right into that kiss.
* * *
LOGAN DREAMED, AND it wasn’t about the great sex he’d just had. It was another dream that wasn’t so pleasant. The night of his parents’ car accident. Some dreams were a mishmash of reality and stuff that didn’t make sense. But this dream always got it right.
Not a good thing.
It was like being trapped on a well-oiled hamster wheel, seeing the same thing come up over and over again and not being able to do a thing to stop it.
The dream rain felt and sounded so real. Just like that night. It was coming down so hard that the moment his truck wipers swished it away, the drops covered the windshield again. That’s why it’d taken him so long to see the lights, and Logan was practically right on the scene of the wreck before he could fully brake. He went into a skid, costing him precious seconds. If he’d had those seconds, he could have called the ambulance sooner.
He could have saved them.
But he hadn’t then. And he didn’t now in the dream.
Logan chased away the images, and with his head still groggy, he did what he always did after the nightmare. He rewrote it. He got to his parents and stopped them from dying.
Every time except when it had really mattered, Logan saved them.
* * *
LOGAN WISHED HE could shoot out the sun. It was creating lines of light on each side of the curtains, and those lines were somehow managing to stab through his closed eyelids. That was probably because every nerve in his head and especially his eyelids were screaming at him, and anything—including the earth’s rotation—added to his pain.
He wanted to ask himself: What the hell have you done?
But he knew. He’d had sex with a woman he didn’t know. A woman who wore turtle T-shirts and had tattoos. He’d learned one of the tattoos, a rose, was on Julia’s right breast. The other was on her lower stomach. Those were the things Logan could actually remember.
That, and the sex.
Not mind-numbing but rather more mind-blowing. Julia clearly didn’t have any trouble being wild and spontaneous in bed. It was as if she’d just studied a sex manual and wanted to try every position. Thankfully, despite the Scotch, Logan had been able to keep up—literally.
Not so much now, though.
If the fire alarm had gone off and the flames had been burning his ass, he wasn’t sure he would be able to move. Julia didn’t have that problem, though. He felt the mattress shift when she got up. Since it was possible she was about to rob him, Logan figured he should at least see if she was going after his wallet, wherever the heck it was. But if she robbed him, he deserved it. His life was on the fast track to hell, and he’d been the one to put it in the handbasket.
At least he hadn’t been so drunk that he’d forgotten to use condoms. Condoms that Julia had provided, so obviously she’d been ready for this sort of thing.
Julia made a soft sound of discomfort. He hoped it wasn’t from the rough sex because he got a sudden flash of himself tying her hands to the bedposts with the sheets. It’d been Julia’s idea.
And it’d been a darn good one.
Ditto for her idea of tying him up, too. He wasn’t one to add some kink to sex, but for a little while it had gotten his mind off Helene and what he’d seen in her office.
Clearly, he hadn’t known Helene at all.
Logan heard some more stirring around, and this time the movement was very close to him. Just in case Julia turned out to be a serial killer, he decided to risk opening one eye. And he nearly jolted at the big green eyeball staring back at him. Except it wasn’t a human eye. It was on her turtle shirt.
If Julia felt the jolt or saw his one-eyed opening, she didn’t say anything about it. She gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek, moved away, turning her back to him, and Logan watched as she stooped down and picked up his jacket. So, not a serial killer but rather just a thief, after all. But she didn’t take anything out.
She put something in the pocket.
Logan couldn’t tell what it was exactly. Maybe her number. Which he would toss first chance he got. But if so, he couldn’t figure out why she just hadn’t left it on the bed.
Julia picked up her purse, hooking it over her shoulder, and without even glancing back at him, she walked out the door. Strange, since this was her room. Maybe she was headed out to get them some coffee. If so, that was his cue to dress and get the devil out of there before she came back.
Easier said than done.
His hair hurt.
He could feel every strand of it on his head. His eyelashes, too. Still, Logan forced himself from the bed, only to realize the soles of his feet hurt, as well. It was hard not to identify something on him that didn’t hurt so he quit naming parts and put on his boxers and jeans. Then he had a look at what Julia had put in his pocket next to the box with the engagement ring.
A gold watch.
Not a modern one. It was old with a snap-up top that had a crest design on it. The initials BWS had been engraved in the center of the crest.
The inside looked just as expensive as the gold case except for the fact that the watch face crystal inside was shattered. Even though he knew little about antiques, Logan figured it was worth at least a couple hundred dollars.
So why had Julia put it in his pocket?
Since he was a skeptic, his first thought was that she might be trying to set him up, to make it look as if he’d robbed her. But Logan couldn’t imagine why anyone would do that unless she was planning to try to blackmail him with it.
He dropped the watch on the bed and finished dressing, all the while staring at it. He cleared out some of the cotton in his brain and grabbed the hotel phone to call the front desk. Someone answered on the first ring.
“I’m in room...” Logan had to check the phone. “Two-sixteen, and I need to know...” He had to stop again and think. “I need to know if Julia is there in the lobby. She left something in the room.”
“No, sir. I’m afraid you just missed her. But checkout isn’t until noon, and she said her guest might be staying past then so she paid for an extra day.”
“Uh,
