Her Sinful Secret--A scandalous story of passion and romance, Page 2

  Any one of his men could do what he was doing. He should have sent anyone but himself.

  But Rowan wasn’t about to let anyone else near her. He told himself it was to protect them—she was a siren after all—but with her in his arms, he knew it was far more personal and far more primal than that.

  He didn’t want any man near her because even three years later, her body belonged to him.

  * * *

  Logan struggled to open her eyes. Her head hurt. Her thoughts kept scattering. She was being carried up and up. They were moving, climbing, but climbing what? She could hear breathing as well as the sound of heavy, even thudding close to her ear. She was warm. The arms holding her were warm. She battled to open her eyes, needing to focus, wanting to remember.

  She stared hard at the face above her, noting the jaw, a very strong, angular jaw with a hint of dark beard. He had a slash of cheekbone and a firm mouth. And then he looked down at her, and the sardonic hazel-green depths sent a shiver through her.

  Rowan.

  And then it started to come back. Joe saying there was a problem. Something with her father and then Rowan appearing...

  She stiffened. “Put me down.”

  He ignored her, and just kept climbing stairs.

  Panic shot through her. “What’s happening? Why are you carrying me?”

  She wiggled to free herself.

  His grip grew tighter. “Because you fainted, and you’re bleeding.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. You smacked your head on the edge of the stage when you fainted, probably have a concussion.”

  “I’m fine now,” she said, struggling once again. “You can put me down. Now. Thank you.”

  “You won’t be able to make it up the stairs, and we’ve got to get out of here, so don’t fight me, because I’m not putting you down,” he said shortly, kicking the door to the roof open. “And if you don’t like being carried, then next time don’t be clumsy. Faint somewhere soft.”

  “Where’s Joe? I need Joe!”

  “I’m sure you do,” Rowan gritted as they stepped into the dazzling California sunshine. “Don’t worry, he’s following with your things.”

  “My things? But why?”

  “I’ll fill you in once we’re in the air. But enough chatter for now.” His cool gaze dropped and swept from her face down her neck to the swell of her breasts. “You’re not as light as you like to think you are.”

  But before she could react, they were at the helicopter and the pilot was jumping out and opening the door. Rowan was putting her in the helicopter in one of the passenger seats but she turned in his arms, leaning past to find Joe.

  “Logan,” Joe said, trying to reach her.

  Rowan kept his arm up, blocking Joe from getting too close. “Put her things down,” Rowan directed, “and step back.”

  But Logan grabbed Joe’s sleeve. “Handle things at home, Joe. Please?”

  Joe’s dark eyes met hers and held. “Where are you going? When will you be back?”

  “She’ll call you,” Rowan said drily. “Now say goodbye.”

  “Tomorrow’s event,” Logan said.

  Joe nodded. “We’ll make it work. I’ll make it work. Don’t worry.”

  And then Rowan was climbing into the helicopter and the pilot began lifting off, forcing Joe to run backward to escape the intense wind from the churning blades.

  “Nice boy,” Rowan said, shutting the door as Joe scrambled to safety. “Definitely on the young side, but so much more trainable before twenty-five.”

  Logan shot him a furious glance. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Your lover, whatever.” He shrugged. “It’s not for me to judge what you do with your father’s money—”

  “I don’t have a penny of my father’s money.”

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t his money. His embezzled billions.”

  She ground her jaw tight and looked away, chest aching, eyes burning, mouth tasting like acid. She hated him...she hated him so much...

  And then he leaned over and checked her seat belt, giving it a tug, making the harness shoulder straps pull tight on her chest.

  She inhaled sharply, and his fingers slid beneath the wide harness strap, knuckles against the swell of her breasts.

  “Too tight?” he asked, his gaze meeting hers, even as her nipples tightened.

  “With your fingers in there, yes,” she choked, flushing, her body now hot all over. The linen and cotton fabric of her cream dress thin enough to let her feel everything.

  He eased his hand out, but not before he managed to rub up against a pebbled peak.

  And just like that memory exploded within her—his mouth on her breast, alternately sucking and tonguing the taut tip until he made her come just from working her nipple.

  Her response had whetted his appetite. Not content with just the one orgasm, he devoted himself to exploring her body and teaching her all the different ways she could climax. It had been shocking but exciting. She’d been overwhelmed by the pleasure but also just by being with him. He’d felt so good to her. She’d felt so safe with him. Nothing he did seemed wrong because she’d trusted him—

  Logan bit into her bottom lip hard to stop the train of thought. Couldn’t go there, wouldn’t go there, not now, not when her head ached and the helicopter soared straight up, leaving the top of the old Park Plaza Hotel building so quickly that her stomach fell, a nauseating reminder that she still wasn’t feeling 100 percent.

  She put a hand up to her temple and felt a sticky patch of blood. She glanced down at the damp crimson streaking her fingers, rubbed them, trying not to throw up. “I know you specialize in rescue and intelligence, but isn’t the helicopter getaway a bit much?”

  Rowan thrust a white handkerchief into her hands.

  She took it, wiping the blood from her fingers, hoping she hadn’t gotten any on her dress. This was a new dress, a rare splurge for her these days. As she rubbed her knuckles clean she could feel him watching her. He wasn’t amused. She wasn’t surprised. He didn’t have a sense of humor three years ago. Why should he have one now?

  “I just meant, it’s a little Hollywood even for you,” she added, continuing to scrub at her skin, feeling a perverse pleasure in poking at him, knowing he’d hate anything to do with Hollywood. Rowan Argyros might look like a high-fashion model, but she’d come to learn after their—encounter—that he was hardcore military, with the unique distinction of having served once in both the US Navy and the Royal Navy before retiring to form his own private maritime protection agency, a company her brother-in-law had invested heavily in, wanting the very best protection for his Greek shipping company, Xanthis Shipping.

  Even more bruising was the knowledge that Morgan and Drakon were such good friends with Rowan. They both spoke of him in such glowing terms. It didn’t seem fair that Rowan could forgive Morgan for being a Copeland, but not her.

  “Look down,” Rowan said tersely, gesturing to the streets below. The huge hotel, built in 1925 in a neo-Gothic style, filled the corners of Wilshire, Park View, and West Sixth Street. “That mob scene is for you.”

  Still gripping the handkerchief, she leaned toward the window which made her head throb. A large crowd pressed up against the entrance to the building, swarming the front steps, completely surrounding the front, with more bodies covering the back.

  It was a mob scene. They were lying in wait for her. “Why didn’t they go in?” she asked.

  “I chained the front door. Hopefully your Joe will find the key, or he’ll be in there a while.”

  Logan reached for her purse and slipped the handkerchief inside and then removed her phone. “Where did you put the key? Joe can’t stay in there—”

  “That’s right. You’ve left him with instructions to m
anage things at home.” He watched her from beneath heavy lids. “What a good boy.”

  She ignored him to shoot a quick text to Joe.

  Rowan swiped the phone from her hands before she could hit Send.

  She nearly kicked him. “Why are you so hateful?”

  “Come on, babe, a little late now to play the victim.”

  Logan turned her head away to stare out the window, emotions so chaotic and hot she could barely see straight. “So where are you taking me?”

  “To a safe spot. Away from the media.”

  “Good. If it’s a safe spot, you won’t be there.” She swallowed hard, and crossed her arms over her chest. “And my father. He’s really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  She turned her head to look at him. Rowan’s cool green gaze locked with hers, expression mocking. “If it makes you feel better,” he added, lip curling, “it was natural causes.”

  Blood rushed to her cheeks and her face burned. Good God, he was even worse than she remembered. How could that be possible? “Of course it makes me feel better.”

  “Because you are such a dutiful daughter.”

  “Don’t pretend you cared for him,” she snapped.

  “I didn’t. He deserved everything he got, and more.”

  She hated Rowan. Hated, hated, hated him. Almost as much as she wanted to hate her father, who’d betrayed them all—and she didn’t just mean the Copeland family, but his hundreds of clients. They’d trusted him and he’d robbed them blind. And then instead of facing prosecution, instead of accepting responsibility for his crimes, he’d fled the country, setting sail in a private yacht, a yacht which was later stormed off the coast of Africa—he was taken prisoner. Her father was held captive for months, and as time dragged on, the kidnappers’ demands increased, the ransom increased. Only Morgan was willing to come up with money for the ransom...but that was another story.

  And yet, even as much as she struggled with her father’s crimes and how he’d shamed them and broken their hearts, she still didn’t want him suffering. She didn’t want him in pain. Maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she thought she did. “So he wasn’t murdered. There was no torture,” she said, her mouth dry.

  “Not at the end.”

  “But he was tortured.”

  His eyes met hers. “Shall we just say it wasn’t a picnic?”

  For a long moment she held her breath, heart thumping hard as she looked into his eyes and saw far more than she wanted to see.

  And then she closed her eyes because she could see something else.

  The future.

  Her father was now dead and so he would never be prosecuted for his crimes, but the world still seethed. They demanded blood. With Daniel Copeland gone, they’d go after his five children. And while she could handle the scrutiny and hate—it was all she’d been dealing with since his Ponzi scheme had been exposed—her daughter was little more than a baby. Just two and a quarter years old, she had no defenses against the cruelty of strangers.

  “I need to go home,” she choked. “I need to go home now.”

  * * *

  Rowan had been watching the emotions flit across her face—it was a stunning face, too. He’d never met any woman as beautiful. But it wasn’t just her bone structure that made her so attractive, it was the whole package. The long, thick honey hair, the wide-set blue eyes, the sweep of her brows, the dark pink lips above a resolute chin.

  And then the body...

  She had such a body.

  He’d worshipped those curves and planes, and had imagined, that night three years ago, that maybe, just maybe, he’d found the one.

  It’s why he became so angry later, when he discovered who she was, because he’d felt things he’d never felt. He’d felt a tenderness and a connection that was so far out of his normal realm of emotions. What had started out as sex had become personal. Emotional. By morning he wasn’t doing things to her, he was making love with her.

  And then it all changed when he discovered the pile of mail on her kitchen counter. The bills. The magazine subscriptions.

  Logan Copeland.

  Logan Copeland.

  Logan Lane Copeland.

  It had blindsided him. That rarely happened. Stunned and then furious, he turned on her.

  Many times he’d regretted the way he’d handled the discovery of her true identity. He regretted virtually everything about that night and the next morning, from the intense lovemaking to the harsh words he’d spoken. But over the years the thing he found himself regretting the most was the intimacy.

  She’d been more than tits and ass.

  She’d meant something to him. He’d wanted more with her. He imagined—albeit briefly—that there could be more, and it had been a tantalizing glimpse at a future he hadn’t thought he would ever have. But then he saw it and realized that he wanted it. He wanted a home and a wife and children. He wanted the normalcy he’d never had.

  And then it was morning and he was trying to figure out the coffee situation, and instead he was dealing with a liar-deceiver situation.

  He wasn’t in love. He wasn’t falling in love. He’d been played.

  And he’d gone ballistic. No, he didn’t touch her—he’d never touch a woman in anger—but he’d said things to her that were vile and hurtful, things about how she was no better than her lying, crooked, greedy father and how it disgusted him that she’d bought him with money that her father had embezzled.

  He didn’t like remembering that morning, and he didn’t like being responsible for her now, but he could protect her during the media frenzy, and he’d promised his friend and her brother-in-law, Drakon, that he would.

  “There’s no going home,” he said tersely. “Your place must be a zoo. You’ll be staying with me until the funeral.”

  Her blue eyes flashed as they met his. “I’m not staying with you.”

  “Things should calm down after the funeral. There will be another big story, another world crisis, people will tire of the Copelands,” he said as if she’d never spoken.

  “I have a job. I have clients. I have commitments—”

  “Joe can handle them. Right?”

  “Those clients hired me, not a twenty-four-year-old.”

  “I did think he looked young.”

  She lifted her chin, and her long hair tumbled over her shoulder, and her jaw firmed. “He’s my assistant, Rowan. Not my lover.”

  “You don’t live together?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would you tell him to manage things at home?”

  Her mouth opened, closed. “I work from home. I don’t have an outside office.”

  “Yet he was genuinely worried about you.”

  She gave him a pitying look before turning to look out the window. “Most people are good people, Rowan. Most people have hearts.”

  Implying he didn’t have one.

  She wasn’t far off.

  His lips curved faintly, somewhat amused. Maybe if he was a teacher or a minister his lack of emotions would be a problem. But in his line of work, emotions just got in the way.

  “The tin woodsman was always my favorite character,” he said, referencing L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  “Of course he was,” she retorted, keeping her gaze averted. “Except he had the decency and wisdom to want one.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “SO WHERE ARE WE GOING?” she asked as the minutes slid by and they continued east over the city. Los Angeles was an enormous sprawl, but she recognized key landmarks and saw that they were approaching the Ontario airport.

  He was slouching in his seat, legs outstretched, looking at her from beneath his lashes, not at all interested in the scenery. “One of my places.”

 
He acted as if he was so casual. There was nothing careless or casual about Rowan Argyros. The man was lethal. She’d heard some of the stories from Morgan after her night with Rowan, and he was considered one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

  And she had to pick him to be her first lover.

  Genius move on her part.

  Although to be fair, he’d never touched her with anything but sensitivity and expertise. His hands had made her feel more beautiful than she’d ever felt in her entire life. His caress had stirred her to the core. It would have been easy to imagine that he cared for her when he’d loved her so completely...

  But he hadn’t loved her. He’d pleasured her because she’d paid him to, giving her a twenty-thousand-dollar lay.

  She swallowed around the lump filling her throat. Her eyes felt hot and gritty as she focused on the distant flight tower. She didn’t want to remember. She hated remembering, and she might have been able to forget if it hadn’t been for the one complication...

  Not a small complication, either.

  So she regretted the sex but not the mistake. Jax wasn’t a mistake. Jax was her world and her heart and the reason Logan could battle through the constant public scrutiny and shame. Twice she’d had to close her Twitter account due to Twitter trolls. She’d refused to shut down her Instagram, forcing herself to ignore the daily onslaught of scorn and hate.

  She’d get through this. Eventually. The haters of the world didn’t matter. Jax mattered, and only Jax.

  “So which home are we going to?” she asked, trying to match his careless, casual tone, trying to hide her concern and growing panic. Jax’s sitter left between five and six every day. Even if Joe went to the house to relieve the sitter, he was merely buying Logan a couple of hours. Joe had never babysat Jax for more than an hour or two before. Joe was a good guy, but he couldn’t care for the two-year-old overnight. Knowing Joe, he’d try, too, but Logan was a mama bear. No one came between her and her little girl.

  “Does it matter?” he asked, pulling sunglasses from the pocket of his jacket.

  So very James Bond. Her lip curled. He noticed.

  “What’s wrong now?” he asked.