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Logan had been in love twice in his life He&039;d been in lust a number of times He&039;d experienced extreme interest or heavy like, but love had only knocked him down and out twice The first had been in his late teens, when both he and the girl of his drea to handle it

They&039;d burned each other and their love out with passion, jealousies, and a kind of crazed energy He could look back at that tiia and affection

Then there was Rae He&039;d been a little older, a little smarter They&039;d taken their tie They&039;d both wanted it, though soereement to an He&039;d loved her, and north here she&039;d wanted to be Needed to be, he corrected, and he&039;d figufed, naively as it turned out, that he could plant hi plans up to her and her mother, with some input fro, splashy, croedding with all its poood job up north At least in theory But he&039;d been restless and dissatisfied in the beehive of it, and out of place in the urban buzz

The s the treated boards on the roof of a twelve-foot pergola He was just too small-town, too small-time, to fit into the urban landscape

He hadn&039;t thrived there, and neither had his s he knew in retrospect they should have dealt with, compromised on, overcos fester and grow until they&039;d pushed the two of theht, but in opposite directions

She&039;d been in her element, and he hadn&039;t At the core he&039;d been unhappy, and she&039;d been unhappy he wasn&039;t accliht down to the roots when it wasn&039;t treated

Not all her fault Not all his In the end they&039;d been sh, to cut their losses

The failure of it had hurt, and the loss of that once-pro about the lack of scars There were just some scars you had to live with

The client wanted wisteria for the pergola He instructed his crehere to plant, then took himself off to the small pool the client wanted outfitted ater plants

He was feeling broody, and when he was feeling broody, he liked to work alone as ing on boots, he waded in to sink them Left to the, but held in containers they&039;d be a nice pastoral addition to the water feature He dealt with a trio of water lilies the sas They liked their feet wet, and would dance with color on the edge of the pool

The work satisfied him, centered him as it always did It let another part of his mind work out separate problems Or at least chew on them for a while

Maybe he&039;d put a sarden he planned to build at hoht try soround plant It see Stella would like

He&039;d been in love twice before, Logan thought again And now he could sense those delicate taproots searching inside hirow He could probably cut them off Probably He probably should

What was he going to do with a wo kids? They were bound to drive each other crazy in the long ter He doubted they&039;d buh, God, when he&039;d had her in bed, he&039;d felt singed But they ht wilt, as he and Rae had wilted That was more painful, more miserable, he knew, than the quick flash

And this ti boys to consider

Wasn&039;t that why the ghost had given hiood kick in the ass? It was hard to believe he eating in the stea about an encounter with a ghost He&039;d thought he was open- - until he&039;d come face-to-face, so to speak, with it

The fact was, Logan realized now, as he hauled mulch over for the skirt of the pool, he hadn&039;t believed in the ghost business It had all beendressing or legendary stuff to hiood story, and the south loved a good story He&039;d accepted it as part of the culture, and ht happen to someone else Especially if that someone else was a little drunk, or very susceptible to atmosphere

He&039;d been neither But he&039;d felt her breath, the ice of it, and her rage, the power of it She&039;d wanted to cause him harm, she&039;d wanted him away From those children, and theirto find the identity of alked those halls

But a part of hiht Would they all be better off if he stayed away?

The phone on his belt beeped Since he was nearly done, he answered instead of ignoring, dragging off his filthy work gloves and plucking the phone off his belt

"Kitridge"

"Logan, it&039;s Stella"

The quick and helpless flutter around his heart irritated hi forms in my truck"

"What for to nagto nag you about anything" Her voice had gone crisp and businesslike, which only caused the flutter and the irritation to increase

"Well, I don&039;t have time to chat, either I&039; as you are, I&039;d like you to schedule in a consult I have a customer who&039;d like an on-site consultation She&039;s here now, so if you could give me a sense of your plans for the day, I could let her know if and when you could meet with her"

"Where?"

She rattled off an address that enty lanced around his current job site, calculated &039;Two o&039;clock"

"Fine I&039;ll tell her The client&039;s name is Marsha Fields Do you need any more information?"

"No"

"Fine" He heard the firm click in his ear and found hi up first

By the ti, he was tired, sweaty, and in a better mood Hard physical work usually did the job for him, and he&039;d had plenty of it that day He&039;d worked in the stea stor the worst of it and sat in his overheated truck, rain lashing at the hile they ate cold po&039;boy sandwiches and drank sweet tea

The Fields job had strong possibilities The woman ran that roost and had very specific ideas Since he liked and agreed with er to put some of them on paper, expand or refine them

And since it turned out that Marsha&039;s cousin on her an&039;s second cousin on his father&039;s, the consult had taken longer than it ressed cheerfully

It didn&039;t hurt that she was bound to send more work his way

He took the last curve of the road to his house in a pleasant frame of mind, which darkened considerably when he saw Stella&039;s car parked behind his

He didn&039;t want to see her now He hadn&039;t worked things out in his head, and she&039;d just ress he&039;d made He wanted a shower and a beer, a little quiet Then he wanted to eat his dinner with ESPN in the background and his work spread out on the kitchen table

There just wasn&039;t room in that scenario for a wo to shake her off She wasn&039;t in the car, or on the porch He was trying to deterave a woman like her the notion that she could waltz into his house when he wasn&039;t there Even as he&039;d decided it wouldn&039;t, not for Stella, he heard the watery hiss of his own garden hose

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he wandered around the side of the house

She was on the patio, wearing snug gray pants - the sort that stopped several inches above the ankle - and a loose blue shirt Her hair was drawn back in a bright, curling tail, which for reasons he couldn&039;t explain he found desperately sexy As the sun had burned its way through the clouds, she&039;d shaded her eyes with gray-tinted glasses

She looked neat and tidy, careful to keep her gray canvas shoes out of the wet

"It rained today," he called out

She kept on soaking his pots "Not enough"

She finished the job, released the sprayer on the hose, but continued to hold it as she turned to face him "I realize you have your own style, and your own moods, and that&039;s your business But I won&039;t be spoken to the way you spoke to me today I won&039;t be treated like some silly female who calls her boyfriend in the middle of the workday to coo at him, or like soue you about details I&039;irlfriend or not my business associate?"

He could see, quite clearly, the way her jaw tightened when she clenched her teeth "If and when I contact you during the workday, it will be for a reason As it ht, but he didn&039;t have to say so "We got the Fields job"

"Hooray"

He bit the inside of his cheek to hold back the grin at her sour cheer "I&039;ll be working up a design for her, with a bid You&039;ll get a copy of both That suit you?"

"It does What doesn&039;t - "

"Where are the kids?"

It threw her off stride "My father and his wife picked the dinner there, and spending the night, as I have a birthing class with Hayley later"

"What time?"

"What tiht-thirty I&039;an, or to be placated I feel very strongly that - " Her eyes widened, then narrowed as she stepped back He&039;d stepped forward, and there was nothe tone of that slow smile

"Don&039;t even think about it I couldn&039;t be less interested in kissing you at the moment"

"Then I&039;ll kiss you, and et interested"

"I mean it" She aimed the hose like a weapon "Just keep your distance I want tothe allon today, I won&039;t mind a shower"

"Just stop it" She danced back several steps as he advanced "This isn&039;t a gaet stirred right up when your voice takes on that tone"

"I don&039;t have a tone"

"Yankee schoolteacher I&039;rab, and instinctively she tightened her fist on the nozzle And nailed hile bubbling out of her before she could stop it "I&039;an"

Dripping, he rab, feinted left This time she squealed, dropped the hose, and ran

He snagged her around the waist, hauled her off her feet at the back end of the patio Caught soled, then lost her breath as she landed on the grass on top of hio, you moron"

"Don&039;t see why I should" God, it felt good to be horizontal Better yet to have her horizontal with hi off lectures" He rolled, pinning her "I ought to be able to do what I want on my own land"

"Stop it I haven&039;t finished fighting with you"

"I bet you can pick it up where you left off" He gave her a playful nip on the chin, then another

"You&039;re wet, you&039;re sweaty, I&039;rass stains on ainst his mouth, and she would have sworn the water on both of them went to steam

"I can&039;t - we can&039;t - " But the reasons ere going dim "In the backyard"

"Wanna bet?"

He couldn&039;t help wanting her, so as he fighting it? He wanted the solid, sensible core of her, and the sweet edges He wanted the woman obsessed with forms ould wrestle on the floor with her children He wanted the woman atered his pots even while she skinned him ords

And the one who vibrated beneath hirass when he touched her

He touched her, his hands possessive as they molded her breasts, as they roary on her throat, her shoulder, her breast

She melted under him, and even as she went fluid seemed to come alive with heat, with movement

It was insane It was rash and it was foolish, but she couldn&039;t stop herself They rolled over the grass, like two frenzied puppies He sent and gorgeous and sexy

She cla streaks froed his ue

"Your belt" She had to fight to draw air "It&039;s digging - "

"Sorry"

He levered up to unbuckle it, then just stopped to look at her

Her hair had come out of its band; her eyes were sultry, her skin flushed And he felt those roots take hold