Chapter 13

Completely confused, Brooke looked left across the crowded National Mall at the stately Greek columns of the National Gallery. Which was closed at seven o’clock at night. Then she looked right to the red-tiled roof of the National Air and Space Museum. Also closed. Then, of course, her gaze landed straight ahead at the wide marble steps of the U.S. Capitol. Since she wasn’t on one of those double-decker red tourist buses, Brooke had no idea why they were here.

She hadn’t hesitated for a second when Logan asked her to meet him at the Metro station. First of all, because he was probably still sort of shell-shocked from meeting his sister two days ago. Definitely in need of fun, TLC, or both, which was right up Brooke’s alley. Secondly, and more selfishly, because Logan made her feel good.

Even though their afternoon with Madison had had more than its fair share of awkward moments, Brooke still enjoyed just being with him. His easy manner, ineffable sensuality, and utter manliness pushed all her buttons to go. Time with Logan was fun and, more importantly, effortless. No posing, no working hard to make the right impression, like she did with real dates. Being with Logan was all the goodness of hanging with a close friend, topped off by the awesome extra of the super-duper sexiness he’d grown into.

When you got an old friend back, you clutched all the harder at every opportunity to be with him, because now you knew the emptiness of him being out of your life. Which wasn’t to say that she’d consciously missed Logan over the years. Leaving high school automatically meant leaving people you cared about behind. Friendships changed, ebbed and flowed across the years—that was just the way of it.

But with him back in her life, she so strongly remembered their—well, she’d use his word—comfortable friendship. Teenagers often weren’t that close with the opposite sex when not dating. They’d known their friendship was looked at as weird back then. Other people not getting it didn’t stop them, though. It didn’t stop them from always finding things to talk about. To tease about. Things between them always just clicked. And now all those pieces fell into place again just as easily.

Thirdly, and most obviously, she’d agreed to meet Logan because she’d be insane to pass up a beautiful summer night with an incredibly hot man whose low laugh brought goose bumps to her skin.

But he’d been mysterious about the plan for the evening the whole trip on the subway. “I don’t understand why we’re here,” she complained. “Congress is in its summer recess. Besides, even if it weren’t, you don’t strike me as the type who wants to brush shoulders with lobbyists for giggles.”

“God, no.” He playfully yanked at the single thick braid hanging halfway down her back. “Bite your tongue, woman. Lobbyists wag their tongues all day long and don’t do a lick of solid work.”

She widened her eyes and pressed a hand to his mouth. “Bite your tongue. You might get a glove slapped across your face, and challenged to a dual for saying something like that out loud in the shadow of the Capitol dome.”

“Brooke, when I finish a day’s work, I’ve saved a life. Built something. Or torn a broken structure down so something else can be rebuilt in its place. I know I’ve contributed. Made a difference. At the end of a lobbyist’s day, they’ve changed a vote. Not someone’s mind, but a vote for some bartering or bribing reason.”

Now he’d gone and made her picture him in dashing hero mode. Which wasn’t just sexy (although washboard abs showing through a sweaty tee was one heck of an image). More so, it made her respect Logan so darned much. She taught for—sort of—the same reason. To know that what she did all day made a contribution to society. That in at least some small way, she was helping to shape lives.

But it brought an obvious question to mind as they waited out traffic in front of the marble peace monument. “If you’re so anti-politics, why do you stay in D.C.?”

“For their soccer team, of course. D.C. United all the way. Baseball, too. And don’t get me started on the mouthwatering goodness of the District Chophouse.”

“Sports and steak. I’m guessing there are a few other major cities that could handle those requirements.” Brooke laid her denim jacket across her purse. She didn’t know the plan, but it’d protect against either a breeze or, more probably, mosquitoes. “Seriously. Why do you keep coming back here as a home base in between your trips around the world?”

“Seriously?” Logan crossed his eyes. Waggled his eyebrows. Then he stuck his thumbs in his ears and waved his fingers. Adorably ridiculous. Logan didn’t get in silly moods too often, but they were always worth the wait. Had always cracked her up. “Is that the kind of date this is going to be? A serious one?”

Date? Date? Brooke looked down at her plain white tank, tucked into a yellow-and-navy-striped maxi-skirt. Sure, she’d tossed on a chunky yellow crystal necklace, but that didn’t change the fact that she was essentially wearing T-shirt fabric head to toe. Toes shod in flat, unsexy sandals that made it easy to walk to the Metro. She’d dressed to meet her old friend Logan. Not to flirt with a date.

Of course, Brooke wanted to have sex with him again. Thought about it pretty much nonstop. But their fling on the island had pretty firm guidelines. One-night stand. No-strings fling. She didn’t want to presume. She certainly didn’t want to complicate the unexpectedly great resurrection of their friendship. They’d touched a ton every time they’d seen each other in D.C. Kissed.

But could they be friends with benefits? When Logan could get called away again to some disaster halfway around the world? Did he want that? Did she? There were strong reasons not to hook up again. Hooking up, however, was vastly different from dating. Which did he want? Which could she safely do without risking her heart? The answers weren’t obvious at all. Not to her, anyway.

So Brooke hadn’t pressed Logan. She hadn’t attached a formal title to whatever it was they were doing. She’d gone with him to meet Madison as a friend. As support. And yes, she’d walked away wondering, Now what? Keep the status quo as just friends? Text him something suggestive to get him back in her bed? Poke a little to see if he was open to a relationship? With her life turned upside down and Brooke having zero idea of what to do next with it, was a relationship the last thing she needed to complicate things?

After biting her lip, she said, “Um…I didn’t even know this was a date. Officially.”

“Man. Then I’ve screwed this seven ways to Sunday.” He scratched the back of his neck. Shot her a sideways look of wide-eyed incredulity. “You really didn’t know?”

“No.”

“It’s Friday night, Brooke.”

Oops. Being unemployed mixed with just coming off vacation meant Brooke had completely lost track of the days of the week. She took in his outfit with fresh eyes. An ironed blue and peach madras shirt. Tucked into his shorts, not hanging out. Navy deck shoes instead of flip-flops. No five-o’clock shadow. Logan looked great. Too great for a random subway ride and stroll. Now it made sense. Now the fact that they were on a date was, in fact, incredibly obvious.

“You make an excellent point. I probably should’ve noticed that clue.” She’d play defense for a second. Make him spell it out. Because yes, a woman needed to hear the words. She needed to be officially asked out. Just to prevent any murkiness. “But as much as I enjoyed meeting your sister—and nursing you after your fight—we haven’t had a real date yet.” They kept accidentally falling into situations that brought them together. Situations that lacked focused intention. Or a label.

“I know. That’s what tonight’s about.” Logan took her hand. Tenderly folded both of his hands around it like a sexy clamshell. “Do you remember admitting that you’d always crushed on me?”

Whoa. “Only after you admitted to always having a crush on me,” she countered. Who said what first totally, absolutely mattered.

“Well, I thought about it back then. What it’d be like to date you. Where we’d go. What we’d do.”

Brooke bit back a sigh. A sigh of wistfulness for her younger self and missed opportunities. And she bit back a curse for the bad timing that evidently plagued her sophomore, junior, and senior years. “Was there kissing involved in those imaginings?”

“Escarlata, I was eighteen.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her knuckles and then led her across the street. “Yeah, there was kissing. And more.”

Shooting him a sideways, sultry look, Brooke asked, “How much more?”

Logan leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I plead the Fifth.”

“Or maybe you could show me later?” Brooke needed to load up the big flirting guns. Make up for no perfume, minimal makeup in the sticky summer heat, and the utter lack of flirtation for the last fifteen minutes.

“Like I said, that’s the idea. Here’s the deal: I thought about bringing you here back then. For our first date. So tonight I thought I’d take you on the date I wanted to take you on in high school.”

God. So romantic. Maybe her flat sandals were a wise choice after all, because she’d have fallen off her wedges in surprise at his inherent sweetness. “Logan. That’s just lovely. Thank you.”

Except…now they stood on the U.S. Capitol grounds. A black uniformed Capitol policeman cradled his semiautomatic rifle mere steps away. “I’m confused. The Capitol—it’s more of a field trip than a date.”

“Right. Because I’m all about sitting in the gallery watching a bill get filibustered?” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the reflecting pool. “Look straight ahead. Down the Mall.”

Brooke stared down the rectangular expanse that connected the Capitol to the Washington Monument. It was jam-packed with people sitting on the lawn, sprawled on blankets and low beach chairs. Then she spotted the reason why—the giant movie screen in the middle. Everything clicked into place. “You brought me to Screen on the Green?”

“Yep.” Logan jammed his hands in the pockets of his khaki cargo shorts. Kept his head down but looked up at her through those too-long-to-be-fair eyelashes of his. “Is it too corny?”

Oh, yes. In all the very best ways. Like a Gidget movie from the fifties (which Brooke watched whenever she was sick), or parking at a drive-in movie theater (which she’d never done—yet). “It’s iconic. A classic summertime District tradition that I’ve always wanted to attend. But only with a handsome boy.”

Logan turned in a circle as though looking for one. Shrugged his shoulders. And then he popped a bicep that made Brooke’s eyes pop, too. “Would you settle for a hot slab of beefcake?”

Sometimes, sometimes, reality turned out to be a million times better than the fantasy. “I guess I could…” Brooke swung her arm, extending her hand in invitation, which he seized before she hit the downward arc.

“Great.” An excited smile lit up his face. It gave him a boyish eagerness that was like jumping in a time machine and suddenly being with the boy she’d known in high school. “I’ve got a picnic waiting for us down on the lawn.”

Well, that was…crazy. “You mean you just left a picnic basket and a blanket in the middle of hundreds of people and expect it to be there when we arrive? I think all your time in villages the size of a shoe box has softened your city smarts.”

“Wrong. Just the opposite,” he said with an in-your-face smugness. “I’m so citified I have people to take care of it.”

“You hired a blanket-sitter? Or did you make your butler do it?” God, it cracked her up every single time she was reminded that these five rugged guys had a butler. And she’d darn sure keep teasing Logan about it at every opportunity. No matter how much sense it actually made.

“Nah, I’d never drag Jerry into this swamp. Talk about below his pay grade. Friends are the ones who do your dirty work. Riley and Josh are down there on guard duty. After we show up, they’re hitting the bars. And maybe taking with them whichever women they talk off the Mall in the next ten minutes. They both saw this as a big pickup opportunity.”

“We get dinner and they get sex. A win-win.” Ironic, though, how one couple’s sweetly romantic date would feed into a no-strings hookup. “So what happens for the next ten minutes?”

A hard tug on her hand spun her into his body. Brooke felt all of his muscles through the thin material of her outfit. Corded biceps. Rippled abs. Thick thighs. And, of course, the hardness just above his thighs pressing into her abdomen. Logan secured her—needlessly, since Brooke was exactly where she wanted to be—by dropping his fists at the small of her back. Then he smiled down at her, those golden-brown eyes melting with a heat that took her breath away. “Kissing, hopefully.”

Oh, she wanted to do exactly that. Just…not here. Brooke took a lot of things for granted in her hometown. She didn’t freak out at every car with diplomat plates. Didn’t squint to see if every chopper overhead was Marine One. But the seat of government demanded at least a little bit of decorum. Not to mention the policeman who probably wouldn’t be thrilled with adult PDA right in front of him.

Laughing, she pushed out of his embrace. “Logan, I’m not going to stand on the front steps of the Capitol and make out with you for ten minutes.”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. We’re going to do it in here.”

Taking her hand again, Logan hurried her down the path, past some overgrown bushes, and through a thick brick archway. The red-tiled roof dipped low and the brick walls of the hexagonal structure were patterned with a basket-weave design. A fountain burbled in the center. Benches lined the walls between all three doorways, and a tiny grotto was visible through ornamental grating.

It was pure, fanciful romance. Brooke loved it. “What is this place? How have I never seen it before?”

“Lots of stuff gets ignored in the shadow of the Capitol dome,” he teased. “Equal rights, fair wages…”

“Cut it out. If this is truly a date, there’s definitely no talk of politics allowed.”

“It’s the Summerhouse. Added by the original designer of the Capitol grounds himself. Remember, this was a pain-in-the-ass swamp when they built up the city.” Logan gestured to the fountain. “The idea was to have a place for people to stop on the long walk up Capitol Hill and grab a drink.”

Brooke dipped her fingers in the burbling water, then hitched herself up to sit on the fountain’s wide stone lip. “It’s charming.”

“It’s secluded,” Logan stipulated. He positioned himself between her legs. “Before we join that mass of humanity on the Mall, I need to be alone with you. I need you, Brooke. In fact, I find myself needing you all the time.”

“Really? Me, too, you.”

“Honestly? I don’t know what to do about all this need. What it means.”

“Mmm-hmm. How to deal with it,” she added in a low murmur, lightly tracing the rim of his ear, and then along the strong, sharp line of his jaw.

“Yeah. How it’s even stronger than when I wanted you in high school. It’s like having the flu.”

“Watch it, Marsh,” she warned. “You’re dangerously close to backtracking out of romance land.”

“When I have the flu, I feel totally out of control. Like something else has taken over my body. No matter how hard I work or wish, I can’t affect it. Just gotta ride it out. That’s how my need for you feels.”

Okay. That ended up being what she now recognized as Logan’s version of romance, which was totally him, totally sweet, and more than good enough for Brooke. “Well, there is one thing you can do. To feel more in control.” In the most serious tone she could muster—which completely belied the smile she felt teasing up the corners of her mouth—Brooke said, “I prescribe kissing. It’ll cure whatever ails you.”

Logan wrapped her braid around his fist, over and over until he’d tilted her head back. And then he took her mouth. Poured all the need he’d mentioned into the deepest, hottest kiss of her life.

It bent Brooke backward to where she almost lost her balance. To where there was nothing beneath her feet and only the sky in her sight line, and the intensity of Logan’s kiss made her feel like she was floating. The spray from the fountain cooled the back of her neck. Just before Brooke was sure to hit the water, Logan cinched her in tight at the waist. That move stole her breath away. Except that she was pretty sure she’d forgotten to breathe as soon as his lips touched hers.

Suddenly swollen and tight, her breasts were mashed against his pecs in a way that made her wish they were naked again. So that she could feel his chest hair, rough and manly and so darned much a turn-on, scratching against her skin. Naked again so that they wouldn’t have to stop after a few kisses.

Logan let go of her braid to skim his palm over her back, her arm up to her shoulder, down the curve of her breast. Almost as if he was trying to touch everywhere at once. Funny, since her hands were doing the same across his powerful lats and down the inverted vee of his ribs, to his narrow hips, right above where her legs curled around his.

They were scarfing each other down. Nips at his wide lower lip. Quick nibbles at her earlobe that raced shivers up her spine and back down again. Gulps of air in between kisses like scuba divers surfacing from the deep, and then more long, wet, hot tangos with their tongues.

If they had enacted this particular scene back in the day, Brooke thought the potency of Logan’s attraction and desire might’ve taken her aback. Now all she did was mirror it. Because this man—gorgeous to look at, self-sacrificing and noble on the inside, with a dry humor that popped out just often enough to keep her grinning no matter how serious the situation—brought her to life. He lit a fiery torch of joy and yearning and lust and appreciation and sheer happiness in her.

Logan shifted so that she sat flat on the edge of the fountain once more. Eased off with a final long lick along the line of her lips. “There. That’s what I wanted to do to you back in high school,” he declared.

“For the record, I would’ve been on board with all of this.”

“Guess I can check it off my to-do list. Only other thing that’s been on there as long is learning how to pop a wheelie on a motorcycle. Since I’m in no rush to crack my head open, I think I’ll leave that one unchecked. It got added before I became acquainted with the fleetingness of my mortality, tumbling down a cliff in the Alps.”

She’d heard stories, seen social media mentions over the years. Logan might not want to somersault onto asphalt, but he had plenty of daredevil in him. Cliff diving, hang gliding, skydiving…he’d still pushed the envelope a bunch of different ways. Evidently, that fateful trip still shaped him, though.

“I guess you’re not the boy you were back at Roosevelt Prep.”

“Hell, no. But nobody is. Life happens. It sends you in unplanned directions. Even how we were friends but had to skip the dating thing left an imprint. Don’t you think life is different than what you pictured it’d be?”

“You mean if we’d gone on this date ten years ago, would we accurately have predicted who we are now?”

“Yeah.”

If only…“God, I wish I could’ve seen the future. Not even the whole thing. Just a week, a day, even an hour. Five minutes,” she said fervently. “Five minutes would’ve made all the difference.”

“In what? Picking the winning lottery numbers? Running into a movie star when they taped House of Cards?”

“I could’ve saved a life. I could’ve saved Sarah’s life. I could’ve stopped her.” The words tumbled out, unbidden. Definitely unwelcome. Darn it. Brooke had gone days without the memory poking at her. Now was sooo not the time to have it reemerge.

“Hey. What’s this about?”

Rats. Way to spoil what had promised to be a really fun evening. “It’s not really a first-date topic.”

“We’ve known each other for almost fifteen years. I already know your favorite movie and that your favorite candy bar doesn’t exist because you’d rather have cheddar and sour cream potato chips anytime, day or night. So everything’s fair game.”

“I don’t…I can’t…Talking about it isn’t good for me.”

He frowned at her. “Says who?”

“My parents. My therapist. The other teachers at Roosevelt Prep. They claim that talking about it, over and over, keeps it fresh in my head and stops me from moving forward.”

“It sounds like it’s already popped fresh into your head tonight. So tell me. That’ll sweep it the rest of the way out.”

“Logan, you’re essentially here on a layover. You don’t want to get tangled up in my knotted life.”

“Screw the future. Be in the moment. I’m here now. So I want to be here for you, just like you’ve been here for me these past few days.”

It wasn’t just the quietly caring tone. It wasn’t just the grounding of his hands surrounding hers. Those were superficial salves to her deeper wound. The bigger revelation, the thing that changed her mind in a blink, was the unassailable truth to Logan’s offer. How could Brooke argue with that logic? Why not live in the moment? Shouldn’t that be the biggest takeaway from the story she’d now share with him? That the future came with zero guarantees—so be present?