Chapter 168

“You need to break up with her,” I told Logan later, when he came over to see me in the evening. He’d barely just come through the door. I probably should have waited a minute before bombarding him.

“Let me take my jacket off first,” he said. Walking toward my two-person table, he shucked off his coat and draped it over the back of the chair. After inhaling a great big breath, he turned and looked at me. “Okay. Tell me what you are talking about, from the beginning.”

So I did, starting with how Tina called me arrange a lunch meeting, and ending with how, after being stood up for thirty minutes, I returned to find Tina eating with Logan.

Logan’s frown grew progressively deeper as my story progressed. “She must have called you right after she called me. She arranged both our lunch meetings at the same time.”

“She doesn’t like me,” I said.

Logan sighed. “No, she doesn’t. But we can’t just drop her, not when she is such a rare find. She’s agreed to keep up this ruse, do you know how rare that is? Most women would have moved on.”

“She’s trying to sabotage me,” I said.

“She’s petty. That’s not the same as sabotage. Maybe it’s for the best if you stay away from her from now on.”

I was already going to do that for sure, but it felt strange not having him entirely on my side on this.

“My friends think she’s going to try to push me out of the way,” I said, “So that she can have you all to herself.”

I expected laughter or perhaps a sarcastic remark against my friends. Instead, Logan pushed a frustrated hand through his hair.

“If that’s her intent she’s going to be sorely disappointed,” he said.

“She will?” I asked weakly.

I hated how vulnerable I felt. Tina was beautiful and rich and allowed to be a couple with Logan in public. It would be so much easier for him to be with her. They seemed more a match than Logan and I ever could be.

Lowering his hand, Logan looked at me. “Of course, Hazel. You are my wife.” He made it seem so simple.

Immediately, my heart melted for him.

He held his arms open for me and I quickly rushed to be held within them.

“Tina will never come between us,” he whispered as he placed a soft kiss at my hairline.

“She’ll try to,” I said.

“Maybe.”

For a moment, I held him and he held me and everything was perfect. Yet my nagging insecurities could not be so easily squashed.

“Hazel.” Logan lifted his hand to my cheek and coaxed my face up toward his. He didn’t say a word more than that, but I felt the spark ignite between us. When he leaned down to kiss me, everything seemed to slot into place and my worry was pushed to the backseat once more.

Logan didn’t stay the night, but the sheets still smelled like him when I woke up. I lingered in bed, ignoring my first alarm, just to press my face into the pillow that so quickly had become his and inhale his scent.

Most of the night, he’d whispered words of assurance and affection into my skin. Tina felt more an afterthought now than ever before. Logan and I were whole, and she was an unfortunate necessary addition in appearance only.

Logan cared for me. Whatever she did would change that. I was more confident of that now than ever before.

My snoozed alarm started beeping again and with regret, I dragged myself out of bed to face the day. Grabbing my phone, I dragged my feet on the way to the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I was adding toothpaste to my toothbrush, my phone buzzed with a text.

Strange. People didn’t typically text me at six in the morning. Maybe spam?

Unlocking my phone, I’m surprised to see a text from Maria. I click on it.

WTF, she wrote in all capital letters, followed by a link to a news website.

Curious as to what could have Maria so upset so early in the morning, I put my toothbrush in my mouth and then clicked on the link.

Reading the headline, my toothbrush fell right out of my mouth.

I never dressed so quickly in my entire life. I made it to work at quarter past seven. The lights are still dimmed from the night before. No one else is in the office except Logan, typing away at the computer on his desk.

When I burst into his office, he glanced up in surprise. “Hazel? It’s still early, isn’t it?”

I don’t have anything to say.

I made exactly one stop on my way to work this morning, and it was to buy a newspaper. I couldn’t believe my eyes when Maria linked me an article on a website. I needed to see the words in print.

News like this made the front page, albeit below the fold.

Silent as the grave, I walked right up to his desk and threw the newspaper down onto it.

The offending article matched the one I had seen on the website.

Logan Hatfield and Tina St. Louis Set to Tie the Knot.

Logan’s confused smile instantly vanished. He grabbed the paper with both hands and lifted it closer to his face. The man didn’t need glasses. I was sure he could read it just fine.

“There must be some mistake,” he said.

“You don’t know anything about this?” I ask.

“Of course not,” he said, lowering the paper back down. His focus shifted onto me. “You can’t honestly think that I would do something like this.”

I didn’t want to think so, no, but then I’d never really expected Logan to start seeing another woman at all, for pretend or otherwise. Maybe a fake engagement was just the next logical progression. After that, maybe a fake marriage.

Would they live together to keep up the ruse? Maybe they’d adopt a few children to keep up appearances.

Meanwhile, what would I be expected to do? Stay in the shadows and wait patiently for it to finally be my turn to be Logan’s wife for real?

God, why did I ever agree to something like this? I knew it was going to hurt me. I could see the writing on the wall, but I pressed on anyway.

Anything for Logan, to have him and hold him. But did I really have him when the world thought he belonged to someone else?

Logan, watching my face, saw the shift in me. Maybe I went too quiet. Maybe my eyes got a bit too damp.

He stood up at once and, rounding his desk, came to stand before me.

I backed up a step.

“I didn’t arrange this, Hazel,” he said. “Tell me that you know that.”

I wanted to believe that, and to trust him. But this was all so much.

That paper should have said our names. I hated being Logan’s little secret.

But what other choice did I have? To be known was to be lost. I was not the kind of woman Logan’s grandfather, or anyone in high society, would approve of.

“Logan, I…”

Out in the main office, the lights clicked on. Our co-workers began filing in.

Whatever I had been about to say was lost.