Arabella was surprised to learn Logan lived with his brother. She’d assumed, at his age, he’d live alone although, as she was still living at home with her parents, that was hardly logical.
Maybe it was time for her to move out, too...
They drove in his Jeep to a development of old converted factories in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. It had all the hallmarks of an inner-city area that had undergone some serious gentrification. Potholed streets and buildings covered in graffiti segueing into trendy, cafe-lined neighbourhoods for the upwardly mobile.
“This area used to be a real dive,” he said, “but it’s on the up now. The rent’s a shocker but it’s close to work as well as public transport and there’re great restaurants and nightclubs nearby.”
Arabella wondered how often he went to nightclubs. And did he hook up? She’d bet her last cent the man could pull. “Sounds perfect.”
He grinned as he turned into a driveway. “It’ll do until I find something else.”
“It was very nice of Duncan to take you in.”
“I think he’s just relieved to have someone to split the rent with. But it made moving back to Brisbane much easier.”
Logan pulled into a car park and Arabella glanced at the building façade. Five stories of concrete painted varying shades of black and grey. “It’s very... industrial.”
He laughed. “Yes. The developers wanted to stay true to the history of the area and the building. They won some award for it. Grungy is the new black apparently.”
Arabella got out of the car and he ushered her inside the building. They stopped at what looked like a service elevator and, when it arrived, Logan rolled the heavy door up to reveal a large inner cage structure. He pulled that door open and indicated for her to precede him before shutting both doors after them with a lot of clanging and clunking.
Ordinarily, being alone in a lift with a sexy guy who was clearly into her might well have caused Arabella’s mind to turn to seduction. But not this kind of lift. There was nothing clean and bright and shiny about it. It felt far too mechanical for her liking. It reminded her she was actually in a machine.
Or possibly a Die Hard movie.
The lift creaked and groaned and shuddered to a halt with a huge clunk on the fifth floor and Logan repeated the process of cage opening and door rolling to let her out.
“This way,” he said, smiling at her as he turned to the right and led her down a dark hallway with no ceiling, just the loom of the steel roof struts overhead.
They came to a massive steel door with graffiti and rust patches and a huge padlock. “I’m beginning to think you and your brother might be serial killers and you’re luring me to your meat locker or something.”
Logan laughed as he produced a key. “It’s much cosier on the inside. And Duncan’s on a day shift.”
Which meant they were going to be all alone. Her thighs quivered in anticipation.
Arabella noticed the flex of his biceps and quads as he slid the solid metal door open on its runner. “Wow,” she said, stepping inside and looking around her at the vast open area.
The internal décor was pretty much in keeping with the industrial vibe. Polished concrete floors, exposed ducting and stainless steel were the dominant features. But sunshine flooded in from the towering floor to ceiling windows, giving it a warmth and homeliness belied by the predominance of black and gunmetal grey fixtures.
“It’s...big.”
“Yeah.” Logan grimaced slightly, as he slid the heavy door shut behind him. “Duncan’s compensating for something I reckon.”
She laughed and half turned to face him, sharing in the joke. He was looking more tired now but his smile lit up his face and her chest tightened. For a moment they just stood grinning at each other.
A sudden clattering noise from behind dragged her attention away from him and she turned to find a yellow Labrador, tongue lolling, floppy ears flying, barrelling towards her.
“Oh, apologies in advance for him,” he said. “He won’t hurt you but he might knock you flat with his enthusiasm and lick you half to death.”
Arabella grinned at the dog, extending her palms to greet him as he leapt at her. “Hey, Flash.” She laughed, barely containing his happy wriggling body. “Look at you, you gorgeous boy,” she crooned, her hands on either side of the dog’s face as he leapt around enthusiastically. “What a gorgeous boy you are.”
“What did you say?”
Arabella barely heard him above the dog’s happy little growls. “What?” She half laughed at the overly excited dog who had planted both paws on her chest and was now licking her face. She turned her head to look at Logan and avoid the tongue bathing.
He was very still, staring at her like she’d lost her mind. “You called him Flash,” he said. “You remember Flash?”
She frowned. What was he talking about? “What? No, I didn’t.”
“Yes. You did. Flash!” Arabella jumped slightly at the authoritative tone in Logan’s I-am-the-master voice. “Sit!”
Obviously well-trained, the dog obeyed instantly although, if it was possible for a dog to wriggle its ass and sit, then Flash had mastered it. His tail certainly didn’t stop wagging, swishing like a feather duster along the ground.
Arabella would probably have laughed had she not been grappling with what had just occurred. Flash? She had called the dog that.
What did that mean? Her heart skipped a beat as a tiny flicker of excitement fluttered through her chest.
“How did you know his name?”
Her brows knotted together as she peered back into the murky recesses of her brain reaching for an answer, a memory to accompany the name. She shut her eyes, willing it to come. But there was nothing. No memory.
The flicker sputtered and died.
“I... don’t. I don’t know where that came from. I wasn’t even aware I said it.”
She hadn’t been. Had Logan not pulled her up over it, she might still not realise.
“But... he is called Flash so something remembered him?”
A frustrating cloak of darkness met her mind’s eye and Arabella shook her head. “No.”
He took a step towards her, his tiredness emphasising his earnestness. “He was ours. He was an eight-week-old puppy when we bought him to celebrate our one month anniversary.”
His words were low but Arabella could hear the streak of desperation in them. Like if he just said it with enough conviction, she’d suddenly remember.
God. Would this nightmare never end?
“I’m sorry...” She took a step back, an ache in her chest as her heart squeezed painfully. “I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
She glared at him. God, did he think she wasn’t? Her throat constricted. “I don’t remember.”
“Then how did you know his name?” he pressed.
“I don’t know. Maybe you mentioned him in one of our chats?”
“No.” Logan shook his head emphatically. “I haven’t.”
“I don’t remember him, Logan,” she said quietly.
Gently.
She wished she could tell him the opposite. Of all the people she’d wished that about, she felt it most acutely with him. But sadly she was used to this. To letting people down. Seeing the hope in their eyes slowly fade and die.
Feeling wretched and inadequate. Like it was her fault.
“I guess something up there fired off for me to have called him Flash but...”
“Exactly.” He took a step closer, smiling encouragingly at her as if she was a toddler about to say her first word and he was silently willing her to speak. “Something triggered a memory.”
Arabella shook her head even as her heart asked the question. What if he was right? Could it be true? After four years of nothing was it... something? Had the firehouse been something? Excitement flared again. But surely if it was there’d be more? There’d be memories to go with it? She quashed the giddy sense of possibility. She’d learned not to get her hopes up.
Been warned not to.
“No. It wasn’t a memory, Logan.”
Her voice was firm. Sure. It had to be. She had to make him understand. “I don’t know where it came from but I can tell you I don’t remember Flash.”
She glanced down at the dog who actually grinned at her, tail thumping against the floorboards. He was beautiful and she had no doubt she was going to fall in love with that big doggy smile but he wasn’t remotely familiar.
“He’s gorgeous and I love dogs but... I look at him and I... don’t remember anything about him. He’s a stranger to me.”
Logan flinched a little but refused to be deterred. “It has to mean something, surely? Has this kind of thing happened before?”
“No. Never.” The possibility that it meant something glimmered again but the cautions from every neuro specialist she’d seen – and she’d seen many – drowned it out. They’d told her not to get her hopes up. That it was rare for memory to return once it had been taken.
An insidious thought whispered through her head. Rare but not impossible.
“Then maybe it means something?” he continued. “Like your memory might be starting to come back? Maybe coming to Brisbane, meeting me again is triggering it?”
Could that be true? And could she let herself hope? Let him hope? What happened if that was all there ever was? She’d chosen to let go of hope for a reason. Because she believed her doctors and hope had been too hard to maintain in the face of reality.
Hope had hurt like hell.
“Logan.” The ache in her chest intensified as tears pricked at the back of her eyes. It had been a long time since her amnesia had caused her such grief. She’d thought she was used to it.
She was wrong.
She dredged up what the doctors had told her. “If it was going to come back, it would have in the beginning – the chances get less and less the more time that elapses. It’s been four years and there’s been nothing. No people or places, or events. Not even a partial memory.”
“Until today.”
“Please don’t, Logan.” She wrapped her arms around her waist trying to ward off his optimism.
Trying to protect herself from it and his inevitable disappointment. Her inevitable disappointment. So... she ate lunch outside the firehouse. And she’d remembered Flash’s name. Two random things thrown back at her in four years? Not even memories.
Was it because she was here? And would there be more?
She didn’t know. But she did know she couldn’t live every day hoping and wishing while the swirling black abyss in her head drove her crazy with its persistent silence. Her throat clogged and her nose prickled with the pressure from absurdly stupid tears.
“You have no idea how hard this is,” she said, hugging herself harder. “I’m sorry, I know you’re new to all this and this is hard on you, too, but this has been my life for four years and its weird and surreal and took me a good while to come to terms with what the doctors were telling me but I’ve accepted it and I’ve moved on and I can’t do this with you, too.”
She hadn’t cried over her lot in such a long time but she was so close over a damn dog right now it was frightening.
She glanced behind her at the huge heavy steel door. “I think maybe I should just go.”
“No.” He reached out a hand, expelling a long breath. It slid onto her forearm and the urge to cry intensified. “Christ, no. I’m sorry.” His thumb stroked along the sensitive skin of her wrist. “Forget it... you’re right. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“I wish I could remember,” she whispered, her throat thick with emotion. “I wonder if you know how much I wish it?”
She wanted to remember everything about him. About them. About Flash. Even the dog looked suddenly forlorn and disappointed in her. Did he remember her?
A tear spilled over and slid down her face. And here she was thinking she’d done all her grieving.
Amnesia – the gift that keeps on giving.
“No, no, no,” he murmured, stepping closer, his big warm body a hair’s breadth from hers. “Shhh. Please don’t cry.” His hand slid to her neck, his thumb caressing the bony notches of her nape as his other hand found her hip then the small of her back, pressing her close, kissing her forehead. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have carried on.”
Arabella shut her eyes, revelling in the solid heat of his body as he dropped light kisses along her hairline to her temple. “I’ve... missed you so much. I just didn’t realise how much until I saw you the other day outside the firehouse. I don’t want to make it hard for you.”
His lips travelled to the tip of her ear and goose bumps erupted as he brushed his nose along the delicate arch. She swallowed back the sob that rose in her throat. It felt so good to be in his arms, to be held by him.
She only wished she could give him what he needed.
Arabella stood in the shelter of his body for long moments, absorbing the warmth and the strength of him before he pulled back slightly to inspect her, his hand leaving her nape to cup her jaw. His gaze travelled over her face, lingering on her mouth.
“I want to be with you. I want you to want to be with me. I want it to be easy.”
It was crazy to want the same things on such short acquaintance but his words wove an intricate web around her, twining around her limbs and her heart.
She wanted it too.
She wanted to be with him and she wanted it to be easy but more than anything right now she wanted to kiss him. To succumb to the thrum in her blood and the desire shadowing every heartbeat.
But if anything his eyes looked more bloodshot and she could just make out the first smudge of darkness forming beneath them. It made her tired just looking at him and she’d had a full eight hours last night.
“You need to sleep,” she murmured, her fingers tracing the smudges before trailing down to the slight indent in his chin. The room was silent other than the faint scratch of her fingerprints on his stubble and Flash’s panting.
“Like I said earlier, I can sleep when I’m dead.” His voice was a deep, sexy rumble that brushed like a physical touch up the insides of her thighs.
Arabella frowned at his choice of words, her finger roaming to the fullness of his bottom lip. Earlier, she’d joked with him about it but right now it didn’t seem funny.
“Don’t say that,” she whispered. “I can’t even bear the thought of it.” She’d only just found him again.
He parted his lips at her touch. “Then come to bed with me.”
Their gazes locked and her pulse fluttered madly in her chest at what she saw in his eyes. Nothing was hidden. It was all laid bare for her to see. Naked desire, blistering passion, intense need.
He wanted her. And, God help her, she wanted him too.
Arabella pushed herself up onto her tippy toes and replaced her finger with her mouth. Soft and tentative. A shy press of her lips against his. But then he groaned and his mouth opened under hers and his arm banded around her waist hauling her in close, so close she could feel both his arousal and the hard bang of his heart.
She opened wider to him, falling into the kiss headfirst, her pulse tripping, her breathing harsh and rapid as she barely managed to keep up with the hungry demands of his mouth. He tasted like coffee and the feel of him against her filled her up until nothing else existed beyond the press and heat of his chest and groin and thighs and the delicious slide of his lips.
It was hot. And crazy. But Arabella twined her arms around his neck and anchored herself to the madness.
He pulled back suddenly, breaking the kiss, his chest heaving as he loosened her hands from his neck.
“Wha...?” She frowned at him.
“Come to bed.” The dimple in his chin played peek-a-boo with his stubble as a smile flitted across his mouth.
He tugged gently on her hands as he slowly walked backwards. Arabella tried hard to coordinate her limbs and not fall down as he led her.
Flash got up to join them but Logan said, “Stay.”
He didn’t take his eyes off her or even raise his voice but the dog obeyed immediately and Logan’s tug became more insistent.
There was absolutely no question she wouldn’t follow.