“Bye, Logan.”
I hang up the phone, close my eyes, and take a long breath.
Opening my eyes, I know what time it is.
Time to get this over with.
I walk into my apartment.
CHAPTERSEVEN
Lucy
It’s difficult to focus today.
Thankfully my workload is quite light, and I’m able to spend most of the time thinking about what the heck it’s going to be like, going on a date with Logan Locke.
Leaning back in my office chair to get a better hit of the AC, I remind myself it isn’t a date.
The office is small, with three other colleagues, all of us quiet since there’s a store right below us and sometimes the customers can hear if we’re too loud. This is the main store, the hub.
It’s not a date, I say in my mind, making it a point of really hearing the words in my head.
Maybe then I can accept that.
Jane didn’t help last night. I mean, she did, she was trying to. But she’s not making it easy to accept the truth…that Logan’s just being nice, friendly, a Good Samaritan like he always is.
I’m nothing special. At least not to him.
“How do you know that?” Jane had asked last night. “You’re going to a restaurant. Maybe he’s in the mood for something new.”
I laughed along with her, pretending like that would thrill me, being hissomething new.
But the truth is, I don’t want to be hissomethinganything…I want to be hiseverything, his one, and only woman, as much as he’s my man.
When my boss walks into the room, I lean forward, focusing on my work again. I’m not slacking since I’m getting all my work done, but Barry still likes us to look busy even if we’re not.
I take my thirty-minute break in the park opposite the thrift store office, sitting beneath the shade of a tree and swiping on my phone.
I don’t have to go far until I find it, the thing I’ve been dreading ever since I heard her voice last night on the phone.
Logan Locke and Maxine Waterson: Will She Finally Tame the Playboy?
I know it’s stupid, subjecting myself to this, but I can’t stop.
I find myself going through the photos.
There are four.
The first shows them stepping from a limousine together, Logan’s face as dreamy and intense as it usually is. Maxine is standing close to him, but he’s not touching her, not like he often is with the women in his photos…the photos before we met, before he knew who I was.
And before I knew whohewas…before Dad, before I learned of Never Alone, and before this crush captured me with the threat, the promise of never letting go.
The second shows them posing on the red carpet; again, they’re not touching. Logan stands there with that savage look in his eyes, a light smirk on his lips, staring dreamily at the camera.
The third is of Logan making Maxine laugh.
The fourth is the worst. Maxine has her hand on Logan’s forearm, leaning up to whisper something in his ear. I stare at her dainty, manicured hand on the fabric of his silver suit, imagining my hand there instead, thinking of how firm he’d feel beneath his clothes.