CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

ALTHOUGH LOGAN WAS doing his best to hide it, Presley knew he was as worried about Del Vecchio as she was. Making love might have taken her mind off the serial killer’s ghost for a few hours last night, but she wasn’t so sure it had done the same for Logan. After the mind-blowing sex in the kitchen, he’d taken her into the bedroom for an encore that had left her so dizzy with pleasure she could barely even remember her own name. Yet the moment he thought she was asleep, he’d pressed a kiss to her cheek, then slipped out of bed to do more research.

She’d wanted to go sit on the couch beside him while he worked, but knew if she did, he would think he was keeping her up and insist they both go back to bed. So, she’d laid in bed and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the clicking of the keyboard as he typed one thing after another into the computer. Every time he got up from the couch, she’d think he was coming back to bed, but then she would hear him grab another book from the shelf and knew he would be up for at least a couple more hours.

Presley had been sure she wouldn’t fall asleep until Logan finally came to bed, but she must have dozed off because the next thing she knew it was morning and she was curled up in his arms. She hadn’t even had any nightmares.

She rolled over onto her side to give him a kiss, then propped herself up on an elbow. “What time did you finally come to bed last night?”

“Around two, I guess.” He reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I didn’t keep you up, did I?”

She shook her head. “Did you learn anything that might help?”

“Maybe. How about I tell you over breakfast? I’m starving.”

Presley considered putting on the tank top and shorts she usually slept in, but she found herself reaching for the sweatshirt Logan had given her to wear that first night and pulling it on instead. He must have approved of her choice in clothing because he gave her bare legs an appreciative look when she padded into the kitchen a few minutes later.

She watched as he cracked an egg into a beat-up plastic mixing bowl. “What are you doing?”

“Making breakfast.” He grinned. “I figured it was my turn to cook.”

“That’s very sweet of you. Can I do anything to help?”

The corner of his mouth edged up. “Just stand there and look beautiful.”

Damn, he always knew what to say.

Leaning back against the counter watching Logan make scrambled eggs, she could almost forget there was a depraved serial killer’s ghost outside the fortified walls of the warehouse waiting to get his hands on her. Although she’d been frightened when Del Vecchio’s ghost had appeared out of thin air again last night, she hadn’t been nearly as terrified with Logan there to protect her this time. She realized now she’d been as afraid for him as she was for herself. While she loved having a hot guy like Logan as her personal bodyguard, she was concerned for him, too. If Del Vecchio wanted to get to her as badly as he seemed to, he was eventually going to eliminate whoever was keeping him from her. Just thinking about what that a-hole might do to Logan made it hard to breathe. She hoped Logan could figure out a way to stop him before that happened.

Still curious if he’d found out anything useful last night, she asked him again once they sat down to have breakfast.

He reached for the pepper shaker. “Not anything that tells me what kind of ghost Del Vecchio is or how to get rid of him. But I did have an epiphany of sorts.”

“What kind of epiphany?” she asked, sipping her coffee.

“That I’m spending too much time talking to other hunters about Del Vecchio and not enough time talking to the things I hunt.” He picked up his fork and loaded it with scrambled eggs. “If we’re ever going to find out what makes his ghost different, we need to talk to other things like him.”

“Where are we going to find a ghost that will talk to us?”

He shook his head. “Not a ghost. Other paranormal creatures.”

“Like what? Vampires and demons?”

“Among others, yeah.”

She bit into a piece of toast. “Isn’t that dangerous? Why would any of them willingly talk to you? I mean, you go around killing them for a living. I imagine that doesn’t make you very popular with their kind.”

“Not usually, no,” he agreed. “But talking to them isn’t as difficult or as dangerous as you might think. Believe it or not, there are a lot of vampires, werewolves and demons out there that are better behaved than your run-of-the-mill ghouls, hellhounds and serial-killing ghost. They have families and jobs. Hell, they even have mortgages. The trick is finding the right paranormal creatures to talk to.”

“How do we do that?”

Logan helped himself to more scrambled eggs. “There’s an underground club in New York City where paranormals hang out. If there’s a place to find out what Del Vecchio is, that’s it.”

“There’s a club for monsters?”

“Yeah. But you probably shouldn’t refer to them as monsters. They tend to be sensitive about that kind of thing.”

She really needed to get out more. “And you think we should go there and ask around? See if anyone knows anything about Del Vecchio’s ghost?”

Logan nodded.

“I suppose that makes sense,” she said. “I’m not trying to sound ungrateful or anything, but why didn’t we try this earlier?”

He took a swallow of coffee. “Because paranormals aren’t known to be the most talkative bunch. While they might know they have nothing to fear from me if they don’t go postal on a human, that doesn’t mean they’re going to talk to me. The only reason I’m willing to go to the club is because we’re sort of at a dead end here.”

Dead end. Not exactly the way she liked to think about it. Of course, he was right regardless of the poor choice of words. They were out of options. At least this might give them something to work with, Presley thought as she went back to her breakfast.

The eggs weren’t bad at all and the toast was even browned nicely. When she mentioned it to Logan, he said he couldn’t take credit for it because the toaster had done all the work. She didn’t agree. Toasters could be very persnickety.

Since she and Logan couldn’t go to the underground club until later that evening and he didn’t want her outside any more than necessary, they hung around his place for the rest of the day. She wondered about the other cases he might be working, but when she mentioned it, he said he’d put them on hold for the time being.

“Right now, my number one priority is protecting you,” he said.

That was okay with her, especially since they spent a good portion of the day trying out various sexual positions she’d read about in the most recent Cosmo, something which Logan was only too happy to do.

He collapsed back on the couch after one exceptionally fun move, his breathing ragged. “Remember what I said that first night at the house in Moores Mill about you needing to do research for the sex in that romance book of yours that doesn't actually exist? Well, I was wrong. You definitely don’t need any lessons in that department.”

Presley laughed and leaned forward to kiss him. “You’re pretty well-schooled in the fine art of lovemaking yourself.”

He chuckled, then surprised her by taking the conversation in a completely different direction. “Is all of this showing up in your journal, by the way?”

She felt her face color. “I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t believe it at the time, but my shrink was right. Writing down my thoughts—all the things that scare me, worry me…excite me—is really cathartic. It helps me relax and keeps things in perspective. You know, focusing on the good things I can control—stuff like that.”

He ran his fingers up and down her arm. “I'm glad it works for you. Wish someone would have suggested something like that to me five years ago.”

She smiled. She really didn’t see Logan as the kind of person to write his thoughts down on paper.

“You could always start one now,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” he said softly. “Or maybe I can help you come up with something to fill another journal entry with?”

She lifted her head to look at him. “A whole journal entry, huh? I’d like to see what you have in mind for that.”

He grinned. “Yeah? Well, why don’t you come over here so we can try out that position you thought two people couldn’t possibly do without being Cirque du Soleil performers?”

She didn’t answer as she smiled and crawled on top of him.