Alone With You (Cabin Fever Series Book 1)

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Enjoy this excerpt from LOST WITH YOU, Book 2 in the Cabin Fever Series

  About The Author

  ALONE WITH YOU

  by

  Lisa Ann Verge

  Living With A Hot Stranger Wasn't The Plan

  Jenny is sure the cabin is hers, until she steps out of the shower to surprise a brawny man in her bedroom.

  Leaning his six-foot frame against the doorjamb, Logan strips off her towel with his gaze and asks what the hell she's doing in his cabin.

  His cabin? She has a key from the owner. Turns out he has a key from the owner, too.

  No way is she taking on a hot-as-sin roommate. She isn’t a people-person in the best of times. How is she going to get any work done under the glow of that slow-fuse grin?

  But it's only for two weeks. Hardly long enough to seduce her…never mind melt her frozen heart.

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  Publishing History

  ALONE WITH YOU © 2020 Lisa Ann Verge

  ISBN 978-1940963198

  This novel was previously published in print as LOGAN'S WAY, © 1999, by Harlequin Enterprises

  Digital Edition published by Bay Street Press LLC, 2020

  Cover design by Kim Killion

  Digital formatting by Lisa Ann Verge

  All rights reserved. No part of this book, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, may be reproduced in any form by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It took him a while, but Logan finally realized there was a naked woman in the cabin.

  He stood in the hallway just outside the bedroom, staring at the pool of clothing at his feet. A skirt stretched a splash of color across the carpet. Fragile lace formed the outline of a pair of women’s panties. Logan crouched and hooked a finger inside the back of a high-heeled shoe that still radiated warmth from its owner’s foot. He lifted it to eye level and glanced at the designer name scrolled along the curvy inner arch. A match, he thought. Its sexy mate teetered on the welcome mat by the cedar cabin’s front door.

  What the hell?

  Hearing the rumble of water through the pipes, he turned his attention to the master bedroom, with its frilly curtains and ruffled bedspread. The door to the master bath stood ajar. He could just glimpse a sliver of mirror fogged with moisture. The vision was blurry, but a woman definitely occupied that shower. She was very naked and very wet.

  For a sharp second, his limbic brain took over. His blood flow shifted, heading south. Logan filled his lungs to restore oxygen and sense to his brain. Along with the rush of air came a subtle, sexy fragrance from the silky puddle of woman’s clothing. The scent bulleted to his glands.

  He let the shoe drop. This wasn’t what he’d expected. When he’d come home to find a rental car parked on the gravel driveway, he’d assumed the visitor was some member of his meddling family. His mother, or one of his sisters, flying in to surprise him from Montana. He expected to discover them flitting around the place, clucking at the disarray, doing his laundry, cooking up a storm, staunch in their belief that a good meal could cure any ill, real or imagined. Or maybe it was one of his brothers, wanting to “crash” for the weekend, determined to get him stinking drunk—their cure for any ill, real or imagined. As if one good bender and a few good meals could make him forget everything that happened.

  Whoever this woman was, she sure as heck wasn’t family. His mother and sisters didn’t wear Italian leather pumps. Neither did Mrs. Napoli, his nearest neighbor in this one-horse town in Washington State, the only woman he’d bothered to strike up an acquaintance with. Now that he thought about it, he should have figured out his visitor was a stranger from the first. No one he knew would rent the latest model Saab, when a good solid sub-compact Ford would take them anywhere a road led.

  Then an image lit up in his mind, of the waitress who’d winked at him in the diner just outside of town yesterday. She’d reminded him that his hormones still ran hot, despite months of hermit-like solitude. Then again, that waitress didn’t look as if she could afford the string of pearls he’d seen on the kitchen table. Nor did that waitress have the throaty sort of voice now humming Mozart in the shower. None of that mattered, anyway, because he wasn’t of a mind to be ambushed by any woman. Sex would just bring complications. He refused to invite anyone into his messed-up life.

  The pipes rumbled to a sudden silence. Wooden rings clanked as the intruder drew the shower curtain back. He should say something. Call out to her. Warn her of his presence. Let her know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t entertaining guests. Give her time to collect her clothes and her dignity. But that was his Montana breeding talking, his mother’s chiding voice, and it was fading fast under the rising anger that his most recent domicile had been invaded – even if it wasn’t really his home, and even if the invader wore smoking hot underwear.

  He stood in the bedroom doorway, crossed his arms, and leaned a shoulder into the frame, just as the intruder emerged wearing nothing but a glaze of steam. He glimpsed a slim, rosy figure and full, pear-shaped breasts for only a flash of a second, before she gasped and swathed all that lovely flesh in a very ratty, very short towel.

  But he’d done some branding in his days, on the ranch where he’d grown up. It only took a second to mark a beast for life. Now he stood amid a ghostly smell of smoke, feeling scorched.

  ***

  Jen Vance lunged for the table lamp on the nightstand. In some corner of her mind not fried by shock, she reasoned that this intruder would have to clamber over the bed between them to reach her. That would slow him down long enough for her to swing the bottom-heavy lamp at his head. If she aimed well, it would knock him out. Or at least disable him long enough for her to dial 9-1-1.

  She curled her hand around the cool base and yanked it until the cord ripped out of the wall. Her heart pounding, she hiked the lamp over her shoulder and stared down the intruder. He had hooded eyes and wild black hair. A blinding white T-shirt bore witness to a powerful chest.

  “Stay back,” she said, struggling to hold the lamp while keeping the towel fixed in place. “I’ll use this, I swear it.”

  “Darling, you don’t need a weapon to knock me out.”

  Switching the lamp to one hand, she seized the cell phone she’d left on the bedside table. She lifted the cell phone so he could see it, saying, “I’m calling the police
now.”

  “You do that.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “I see that.” He crossed his feet, clad in scuffed cowboy boots. “Let the cops know I’m here.”

  “Just—” She pressed a ‘9,’ her thumb shaking “—leave!”

  “Oh, I ain’t leaving, Red. Not until I know who you are, and what the hell you’re doing in my cabin.”

  “Your cabin?” She pressed ‘1.’

  “My cabin.” He pointed with his chin. “My lamp. My shower.” His voice dropped. “My towel.”

  The towel threatened to slip. She tightened her elbows against her ribs. He was lying. She knew the owner of this house, and he wasn’t a piercing-eyed cowboy who lacked only a Stetson and an oversized belt buckle to complete the picture. This morning, she’d found the house key exactly where Dr. Springfield had said it would be—hidden in a secret compartment of the cast-iron turtle under the geraniums. This was the right house. This was the wrong man.

  Yet the hulking giant in the doorway looked as annoyed as she was stunned, standing here dripping with her legs pressed together.

  She said, “This cabin doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Doesn’t belong to you, either.”

  “I know the owner, and he’ll have something to say about you staking a claim.” Her thumb hovered over the last ‘1,’ but she didn’t punch it as a doubt crept in. Her intruder didn’t seem afraid, nor was he threatening her physically. He just stood there and took in an eyeful.

  “We arranged this months ago.” She swiped to her calendar to check the date. “We’ve been juggling our schedules. Two weeks, he told me, I’d have this place to myself. Dr. Springfield made no mention of a surly houseguest who never learned to knock on a—”

  “Springfield?” He straightened up. The guy was six feet two, maybe three. “John Springfield?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the hell would John bring you here?” The cowboy gave her a look-over rough enough to qualify as exfoliation. “He’s got a wife expecting his first child in a few weeks.”

  “Yes?” The cowboy was angry, there was no faking the fierceness of his look, or the way he leaned those impressive shoulders into the room. “So?”

  “You’d better start explaining, Red. John’s not the type to cheat, even with a woman who looks like you.”

  A drop of water slid down her inner thigh and paused at the back of her knee. Did this guy really just jump to the conclusion that she was here for an extramarital affair? The implication was beyond ludicrous. Not just because she and John had been colleagues for years. Not just because John was head-over-heels in love with his wife. But because no one had ever accused her of being a cheating lover before. It turned her mind upside down. How her ex-boyfriend would laugh his ribs sore if he’d heard this accusation. You’re as heartless as the tin man, he’d said as he’d dumped her. And just as bloodless and cold.

  “You’re not denying it,” the stranger prompted.

  “Oh, I deny it.” She set the lamp back on the bedside table, put her phone beside it, and shifted the towel for better coverage. “I’m Dr. Jennifer Vance, of Clark University. Dr. Springfield is a colleague of mine.” She eyed the intruder the way she eyed certain students who had difficulty keeping their gazes above her chest. “I’m here on a research project, with Dr. Springfield’s blessing.”

  His pause lasted one thick moment. “John didn’t say anything to me about you.”

  “Dr. Springfield said nothing to me about a surly houseguest, either. He has an arrangement with the university to rent out this cabin to researchers involved in the university’s projects.” She eyed him, from the form-fitting jeans, to the white T-shirt, cowboy boots, and unruly hair. “I still don’t know who you are.”

  “Macallister,” he barked, his face twisting in annoyance. “Logan Macallister. And John wouldn’t invite someone down here without telling me first.”

  “He’s been busy.” She squinted at him. “How well could you possibly know him, if you haven’t heard the news?”

  It was a wonder his gaze didn’t burn the cotton towel, the only thing between her and complete nudity.

  “I heard the news from a colleague yesterday,” she said, “when I couldn’t get through to John to remind him I’d be arriving. The baby Dr. Springfield’s wife was expecting made an early appearance.”

  “What?”

  “Several weeks premature, so I’m told. According to his secretary, John—Dr. Springfield—hasn’t left the hospital since.”

  “Damn it.”

  The cowboy turned and bolted out of the room.

  ***

  It took Logan a dozen texts and four calls before John finally picked up his cell phone.

  Logan came right to the point. “What the hell happened?”

  “Hello to you, too.” John’s voice sounded like he was walking fast through a very long hall. “Hospitals and clinics must be different in South America, Logan, but here in Washington State cell phones aren’t allowed on the maternity ward—”

  “Yeah, yeah, just—is Judy all right?”

  “Yes, she’s fine, she’s resting.”

  His gut knotted. “And the baby?”

  “A girl.” John burst into a laugh of pure wonder. “Barely four-and-a-half pounds, though. It was touch-and-go for a while, but the doctors say she’s healthy and strong.”

  Logan tipped the phone away from his mouth so John wouldn’t hear his exhale of relief. Sweat formed on his forehead as he tried to get a hold of himself. There was no reason to panic, no reason for this crushing sense of guilt and responsibility. At least not this time.

  “That’s great news, John,” Logan said, swiveling the phone back into place, forcing his vital signs back to normal. “Now tell me everything.”

  “What, you want all the gory details?”

  “Every damn one. From first contraction to crowning.”

  As John told the tale, Logan unfurled it in his mind. He’d delivered enough babies to recognize the warning signs of early labor long before John had, John who was called ‘doctor’ because of a Ph.D. in botany. As Logan listened to the narrative, images intruded of bare bulbs blinking by the power of failing generators, of women drenched in sweat as their wombs knotted within them, as babes were born into his bare hands and washed in tainted water. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that Judy lived in Seattle where the sheets were bleached and morphine was fed to a laboring mother through a slender catheter inserted into her spine.

  “…and then,” John said when he came to the end, “they took the baby away and stuck wires all over her. It was a good hour before we really knew what was going on. All they told us was that she weighed four pounds and six ounces. She has to be monitored closely.”

  “They’ll keep her until at least five pounds.” The size of a roaster chicken. He’d held smaller babies in his hands as they struggled to breathe without the benefit of ventilators and antibiotics and heated bassinets.

  “She’s already gained half an ounce since yesterday,” John said. “She has her father’s appetite.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “Come up and see her, Logan. She’s small, but she’s beautiful. And Judy could use you. She doesn’t trust these doctors. But she’d believe you if you said the baby is going to be okay.”

  “The doctors there know the situation best.” And his being a doctor didn’t make him a seer. “It would take me a while to get up to speed—”

  “Really, Logan?”

  John’s weary skepticism oozed through the line, too thick to ignore. John knew what had happened in South America, as did Logan’s college friends Dylan and Garrick. Those three buddies were the only ones he’d felt compelled to confide in. Logan had made them swear never to speak of it again.

  Hearing a woman’s footsteps coming from the bedroom, he seized the opportunity to change the subject. “While you were away, there was some excitement here in the north woods.”

  “
What? Did a bear get into the garbage again?”

  “I found a naked woman in my shower.”

  John choked in surprise on the other end of the line while Logan eyed the woman approaching the kitchen from across the living room. Lady was the better term. Gone were the gloriously loose, wet red locks. She’d plastered her hair back and imprisoned it in some sort of silver contraption. A leather belt cinched her silken pants, whose folds smothered the firmness and shape of those freckled thighs.

  She grabbed the pearls pooled on the table, then dipped her head to fasten them behind her neck.

  “Logan? You still there?” John sputtered. “Explain yourself.”

  “You’re the one who has some explaining to do.”

  “How?”

  “Dr. Jennifer Vance is standing in this living room, claiming she’s got your permission to bunk here for two weeks.”

  Silence fell on the other end of the line, interrupted by the sound of an automatic door whooshing open and closed. John’s pause kicked up a new storm of suspicions in Logan’s mind.

  “Aw, Logan.” John sucked in a dramatic breath. “I forgot.”

  “You forgot.”

  “Is it June already? Yes—late June. Damn, it’s not even listed in my calendar, but I did exchange emails with Jen—Dr. Vance.” Logan could picture John, unshaven, pacing in the sunshine outside the hospital as he scrolled through his emails. “Yeah, yeah, she’s supposed to arrive today. I promised she could have access to the cabin right after the semester ended. With all the difficulties of Judy’s pregnancy, I forgot to block out the weeks—”

  “Playing the absentminded professor again?”

  “Dude, this was an honest mistake.”

  “Mmmhmmm.”

  “I didn’t set you up! Dr. Vance’s visit has a legit academic purpose. She’s doing some research that’s associated with mine. Remember when I dragged you out to the national park in March, and talked about the paper I was working on?”

  Logan didn’t remember the paper but he remembered the day. He’d just moved into the cabin and his mind was still a jagged mess. Logan remembered the loamy scent of the Washington rain forest, the cloying odor of spring flowers blooming—reminding him of bouquets left on graves.