She could not take the double loss.
They had nothing between them except a successful publicity campaign and a mass of cells that would never become anything but another heartbreak.
Nine
New York had been brutal. Johnson’s forty-five-game suspension destroyed the Mustangs’ morale, precisely as Logan had expected when he’d received the verdict.
He’d appealed, naturally, which meant extending his stay longer than he would have liked, but the appeal would take a while to work itself out. Plus, it was strictly a formality; the inquest had Johnson dead to rights, including video of him frequenting the clinic that sold the PEDs.
The whole thing was disheartening.
Once a day, he’d reached for the phone to call Trinity and beg her to fly to New York, just so he could see her. So he could touch her. Hear her laugh, lose himself in her sweet body at the end of a long day of meetings that ripped his team apart. He wanted to be with her, to let her make the horrible reality better.
He wanted more.
But he never dialed. It wasn’t fair to start that discussion over the phone. So he held off until he got back to Dallas. While waiting for his luggage to appear from the bowels of the airport, he texted her.
At the airport. Can I come by Fyra to see you?
God, that was bold. Trinity had a job. He had a job. Jumping off a plane and driving straight to her wasn’t smart. But it was the only thing he wanted to do.
She didn’t text him back right away. Probably in a meeting. He went home, which was what he should have done anyway. The house smelled stale and musty from disuse, even though he’d only been gone for a few weeks. The emptiness crawled onto his last nerve, and he hated it. Why had he bought such a monstrosity of a house when he had no one to share it with?
What was today? Thursday? Maybe he’d see if Trinity would ditch work tomorrow and spend a three-day weekend at his place. He’d never brought a woman home, and he could picture Trinity draped across his bed with frightening ease. She’d like his giant marble garden tub, too, he had a feeling. Or rather, she’d like what he did to her while she was in it, which was practically the same thing.
They could order takeout, or maybe he’d cook steaks on the massive grill in the outdoor kitchen that overlooked the pool. Afterward, he’d strip her down to her bare skin, pick her up and lower her into the hot tub at the north end of the pool, cleverly tied into the design via an outcropping of natural river rock.
He checked his phone, but she hadn’t texted him back yet. His plane had landed four hours ago. Maybe she hadn’t seen the message. He called her this time.
No answer. Fine. She was busy. He’d been gone for a while, and they hadn’t really talked much since he’d left Dallas.
Thursday stretched into Friday, and he made the long trek from Prosper to his office in Arlington. The team was in Pittsburgh playing a three-game series and getting their asses handed to them. Myra had some very depressing numbers regarding the decline in ticket sales, which of course had taken a hit with the double whammy of losing the Mustangs’ marquee slugger and the lack of new, steamier pictures from the club’s favorite poster boy.
But oddly, the most unsettling thing in Logan’s world right now was the distinct absence of Trinity Forrester. He missed her keenly, had for weeks, and he could not seem to focus on anything but the three, maybe four, unanswered text messages he’d sent since landing yesterday.
He’d made a mistake not calling her while he’d been in New York, that much was clear. He had to fix it. But if she wasn’t responding to his messages or the voice mail he’d left, it was entirely possible she’d lost her phone. It happened.
By Friday night, he couldn’t stand it any longer and drove to her condo. Stupid. He couldn’t get into the building unless she buzzed him in, but she didn’t respond. He could see her Porsche in her designated spot in the parking garage from here.
His temper flared. She was here but not interested in seeing him? That was not cool.
The gods of security smiled on him when a well-dressed couple came out of the building and glanced at the flowers in his hand as he skulked about outside.
“Is she not answering? You must be early, then,” the elderly woman surmised with a misty smile, apparently drawing her own conclusions about the situation. “That’s so nice to see.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, because there was really no other answer.
“Come on, then.” She winked and held the door open. Once he was inside...he had no idea if Trinity would even answer the door.
One way to find out. He took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and banged on the door in case she had music on. She answered almost immediately, clearly frazzled, her hair mussed and her ratty sweatshirt a marked contrast to her normal style.