Nerves that warned I was slipping into the unknown. When Logan told me he had a plan, it meant there would be action.
He wasn’t going to stand idle.
He was all in.
I worried that might be the greatest risk of all.
I whispered, “Okay.”
“Good girl.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to my forehead when he said it.
A soft sigh.
A humming of need.
The faintest smirk when he stepped back.
“We should go before we’re late.”
He led me out into the main room, helped me into my coat, and pressed his nose to the back of my ear. Inhaling, he murmured, “I think you have me hypnotized, Aster Rose.”
Without question, that was reversed because I walked along beside him to the elevator, leaned into his side as we rode it down, and relished in the feel of his arm linked around my waist like a leash.
Tension bound and built and blinded in the confined space.
A silence that screamed a million things.
Need and regret and far from pure intentions.
When the doors swept open, he guided me to his car and helped me into the passenger seat. He leaned in and reached over to buckle me.
It stole my breath all over again.
He slowly eased back, and his gaze tangled with mine as he went.
If he kept this up, I was going to succumb right then.
He rounded the front and slipped into the driver’s side, and he pulled out of the lot and onto the road. It took all of three minutes for him to be pulling into the valet in front of an upscale steakhouse attached to a hotel.
He was out and to my side in a flash. Opening the door, he extended his hand. I took it, felt the flames that licked up my arm and set fire to my insides.
I sucked in a stealing breath.
I was in trouble. So much trouble.
Leaning closer as he led me inside, his voice was a rough scrape at my ear, “Trust me, Aster.”
I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
But how did we make it past all that had been tainted? Past the ugliness?
Would there be anything left beyond it?
“Lawson,” he told the hostess.
“Right this way.”
She led us to a small table in the middle of the restaurant. It was covered in a black, draping tablecloth and adorned with a large white bouquet of fresh flowers with candles in the middle.