“Or so her family believes.” She gave another light laugh. She had to be careful here.
She didn’t want to trip any alarms with this man. Logan Callahan had the ability to dig deep into a person’s background, uncover all their secrets. If he managed to uncover even the slightest deception, he would completely distance himself. She couldn’t afford that. Not if she wanted to learn the identity of a killer.
“You mentioned you’re an orphan…?” he finally asked as she felt him glance down at her.
“My parents are dead.” She shrugged. “They were killed when I was young.” She didn’t want to discuss it. Not here and now.
His hand tightened at her back, slid to her hip and drew her closer.
“Yeah, you’re right, John Corbin would strenuously protest your friendship with his granddaughter,” he said, mercifully changing the subject. They crossed another street and stepped onto the street they both lived on.
“Corbin, his son, his daughter-in-law, his cowboys, their wives, their children, their business associates.” She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Sounds like the Corbins,” he agreed. “Hell, it sounds like the barons, period. Not one of those families has much worth where decency is concerned.”
And he should know. He was the grandson of one of those barons. His grandfather, Saul Rafferty, along with John Corbin and Marshal Roberts, Rafer and Crowe’s grandfathers had disowned the three of them. They had nearly destroyed them and it had only been in the past year that they had won the twenty-year-old battle for the inheritance that each of their mothers had left them.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have to deal with them, thankfully. And Anna’s different. At least, so far. She’s still a good kid.”
But she worried, Skye admitted. Anna was still young, still impressionable, and possibly so very easy to turn into the puppet John Corbin wanted, under the right circumstances. Or with the right betrayal.
“Looks like we’re home.”
She walked beside him as he led the way to the thick, tall evergreens that all but created an impenetrable curtain across the large side yard the two houses shared.
The bricks of the patios were less than thirty feet apart on the other end of the house where another heavy line of the thick evergreens grew. It created a hidden oasis between the houses. The one point that couldn’t be spied upon unless the spy were in one of the rooms facing it.
“Thank you for walking me home.” She slid his shirt from her arms, though she didn’t comment on the friends.
She didn’t want to appear the least bit curious about him or his family, let alone the friends of his parents. The curiosity ate her alive sometimes, but she had to be careful or she could destroy six months of dedicated work to get close to this man, to get close enough to make herself a target. If the Sweetrock Slasher had a partner who was still at large, Skye intended to draw him out.
She had never believed that Lowry Berry had been working alone, and from what the new deputy, John Caine, had learned, she was right.
Logan took his shirt slowly, his expression still, his gaze considering as he watched her.
Skye pulled her keys from her pocket and unlocked her door. She hesitated for a moment, then gave him a quick smile and a wink.
“Sleep well, cutie,” she drawled before turning to go inside.
“Skye, stop this game you’re playing.”
Before she could evade him, his fingers curled around her arm and he pulled her back to him.
Skye found herself suddenly flush against him, staring up at him in shock as the hard imprint of his erection pressed into her lower stomach.
Swallowing tightly, the feel of the heavy shaft beneath his jeans sent a spike of trepidation racing through her. She now had proof that he wasn’t exactly small in that department.
“What game?” Oh God, who knew that finding the strength to sound innocent would be so hard?
Then he was pushing the fingers of his free hand into the back of her hair, clenching, sending sharp spikes of sensation racing across her scalp, he tugged until she was staring up at him, eyes wide.
“Logan, you’re acting strange.” The accusation was nearly laughable. He was almost, just almost, doing what she wanted him to do.
Kissing her.
His lips were just a breath from hers. The scent of him, the taste of him, so close.
But she was not making that first move.
He had to want her bad enough.
He had to be unable to resist her.
But he hadn’t reached that point yet. But he was so close.
Then he released her—slowly. His fingers loosened in her hair reluctantly as if he had to force them to do so. Soon he was stepping away from her.
“You’re playing with fire,” he growled.
She had to resist the urge to smile. “I never play with fire, Logan. Getting burned sucks.”
And that was no more than the truth. She had no desire to fall in love with him, but she wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with him for a while. Besides the fact he was hotter than hell, and the fact that he drew her as no other man ever had, there was no way she could accomplish her goal if she didn’t get into his bed.
She was setting herself up as bait. To do that, she needed to be Logan’s lover.
CHAPTER TWO
He was making a mistake and he knew it.
Each time Logan made his way to the patio door and looked out toward the soft light glowing from Skye’s living room window, he knew it was a mistake.
A week had gone by since the Social. She hadn’t shown up at the town’s weekly get-together, and Logan had returned early because he was sick of waiting on her.
What a hell of a mess.
He was thirty-three years old and he’d managed to never let a woman get past his guard.
Definitely in the past twelve years he’d made damned certain no woman pierced the shield he kept around his heart.
It was a requirement, keeping his heart solitary, yet, here he was, watching her. And that was just one of his problems.
His dick was spike hard, throbbing with a hunger that was damned hard to deny, and he was standing there like a f**king teenager staring into his best girl’s window.
Son of a bitch, he was coming to a pitiful end and he knew it.
He’d told her to stop playing games, and she’d done just that, if she had been playing one at all. He wasn’t so sure anymore.
Had he become so suspicious over the years, so hard and certain that everyone had ulterior motives that he couldn’t accept someone for who and what they were? Was it impossible for him to accept that a woman could just want him?