“I just meant, it’s a little Hollywood even for you,” she added, continuing to scrub at her skin, feeling a perverse pleasure in poking at him, knowing he’d hate anything to do with Hollywood. Rowan Argyros might look like a high-fashion model, but she’d come to learn after their—encounter—that he was hardcore military, with the unique distinction of having served once in both the US Navy and the Royal Navy before retiring to form his own private maritime protection agency, a company her brother-in-law had invested heavily in, wanting the very best protection for his Greek shipping company, Xanthis Shipping.

Even more bruising was the knowledge that Morgan and Drakon were such good friends with Rowan. They both spoke of him in such glowing terms. It didn’t seem fair that Rowan could forgive Morgan for being a Copeland, but not her.

“Look down,” Rowan said tersely, gesturing to the streets below. The huge hotel, built in 1925 in a neo-Gothic style, filled the corners of Wilshire, Park View, and West Sixth Street. “That mob scene is for you.”

Still gripping the handkerchief, she leaned toward the window which made her head throb. A large crowd pressed up against the entrance to the building, swarming the front steps, completely surrounding the front, with more bodies covering the back.

It was a mob scene. They were lying in wait for her. “Why didn’t they go in?” she asked.

“I chained the front door. Hopefully your Joe will find the key, or he’ll be in there a while.”

Logan reached for her purse and slipped the handkerchief inside and then removed her phone. “Where did you put the key? Joe can’t stay in there—”

“That’s right. You’ve left him with instructions to manage things at home.” He watched her from beneath heavy lids. “What a good boy.”

She ignored him to shoot a quick text to Joe.

Rowan swiped the phone from her hands before she could hit Send.

She nearly kicked him. “Why are you so hateful?”

“Come on, babe, a little late now to play the victim.”

Logan turned her head away to stare out the window, emotions so chaotic and hot she could barely see straight. “So where are you taking me?”

“To a safe spot. Away from the media.”

“Good. If it’s a safe spot, you won’t be there.” She swallowed hard, and crossed her arms over her chest. “And my father. He’s really dead?”

“Yes.”

She turned her head to look at him. Rowan’s cool green gaze locked with hers, expression mocking. “If it makes you feel better,” he added, lip curling, “it was natural causes.”

Blood rushed to her cheeks and her face burned. Good God, he was even worse than she remembered. How could that be possible? “Of course it makes me feel better.”

“Because you are such a dutiful daughter.”

“Don’t pretend you cared for him,” she snapped.

“I didn’t. He deserved everything he got, and more.”

She hated Rowan. Hated, hated, hated him. Almost as much as she wanted to hate her father, who’d betrayed them all—and she didn’t just mean the Copeland family, but his hundreds of clients. They’d trusted him and he’d robbed them blind. And then instead of facing prosecution, instead of accepting responsibility for his crimes, he’d fled the country, setting sail in a private yacht, a yacht which was later stormed off the coast of Africa—he was taken prisoner. Her father was held captive for months, and as time dragged on, the kidnappers’ demands increased, the ransom increased. Only Morgan was willing to come up with money for the ransom...but that was another story.

And yet, even as much as she struggled with her father’s crimes and how he’d shamed them and broken their hearts, she still didn’t want him suffering. She didn’t want him in pain. Maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she thought she did. “So he wasn’t murdered. There was no torture,” she said, her mouth dry.

“Not at the end.”

“But he was tortured.”

His eyes met hers. “Shall we just say it wasn’t a picnic?”

For a long moment she held her breath, heart thumping hard as she looked into his eyes and saw far more than she wanted to see.

And then she closed her eyes because she could see something else.

The future.

Her father was now dead and so he would never be prosecuted for his crimes, but the world still seethed. They demanded blood. With Daniel Copeland gone, they’d go after his five children. And while she could handle the scrutiny and hate—it was all she’d been dealing with since his Ponzi scheme had been exposed—her daughter was little more than a baby. Just two and a quarter years old, she had no defenses against the cruelty of strangers.

“I need to go home,” she choked. “I need to go home now.”

* * *

Rowan had been watching the emotions flit across her face—it was a stunning face, too. He’d never met any woman as beautiful. But it wasn’t just her bone structure that made her so attractive, it was the whole package. The long, thick honey hair, the wide-set blue eyes, the sweep of her brows, the dark pink lips above a resolute chin.

And then the body...

She had such a body.

He’d worshipped those curves and planes, and had imagined, that night three years ago, that maybe, just maybe, he’d found the one.

It’s why he became so angry later, when he discovered who she was, because he’d felt things he’d never felt. He’d felt a tenderness and a connection that was so far out of his normal realm of emotions. What had started out as sex had become personal. Emotional. By morning he wasn’t doing things to her, he was making love with her.

And then it all changed when he discovered the pile of mail on her kitchen counter. The bills. The magazine subscriptions.

Logan Copeland.

Logan Lane Copeland.

It had blindsided him. That rarely happened. Stunned and then furious, he turned on her.

Many times he’d regretted the way he’d handled the discovery of her true identity. He regretted virtually everything about that night and the next morning, from the intense lovemaking to the harsh words he’d spoken. But over the years the thing he found himself regretting the most was the intimacy.

She’d been more than tits and ass.

She’d meant something to him. He’d wanted more with her. He imagined—albeit briefly—that there could be more, and it had been a tantalizing glimpse at a future he hadn’t thought he would ever have. But then he saw it and realized that he wanted it. He wanted a home and a wife and children. He wanted the normalcy he’d never had.

And then it was morning and he was trying to figure out the coffee situation, and instead he was dealing with a liar-deceiver situation.

He wasn’t in love. He wasn’t falling in love. He’d been played.

And he’d gone ballistic. No, he didn’t touch her—he’d never touch a woman in anger—but he’d said things to her that were vile and hurtful, things about how she was no better than her lying, crooked, greedy father and how it disgusted him that she’d bought him with money that her father had embezzled.

He didn’t like remembering that morning, and he didn’t like being responsible for her now, but he could protect her during the media frenzy, and he’d promised his friend and her brother-in-law, Drakon, that he would.

“There’s no going home,” he said tersely. “Your place must be a zoo. You’ll be staying with me until the funeral.”

Her blue eyes flashed as they met his. “I’m not staying with you.”

“Things should calm down after the funeral. There will be another big story, another world crisis, people will tire of the Copelands,” he said as if she’d never spoken.

“I have a job. I have clients. I have commitments—”

“Joe can handle them. Right?”

“Those clients hired me, not a twenty-four-year-old.”

“I did think he looked young.”

She lifted her chin, and her long hair tumbled over her shoulder, and her jaw firmed. “He’s my assistant, Rowan. Not my lover.”

“You don’t live together?”

“No.”

“Then why would you tell him to manage things at home?”

Her mouth opened, closed. “I work from home. I don’t have an outside office.”

“Yet he was genuinely worried about you.”

She gave him a pitying look before turning to look out the window. “Most people are good people, Rowan. Most people have hearts.”

Implying he didn’t have one.

She wasn’t far off.

His lips curved faintly, somewhat amused. Maybe if he was a teacher or a minister his lack of emotions would be a problem. But in his line of work, emotions just got in the way.

“The tin woodsman was always my favorite character,” he said, referencing L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

“Of course he was,” she retorted, keeping her gaze averted. “Except he had the decency and wisdom to want one.”

CHAPTER TWO

“SO WHERE ARE WE GOING?” she asked as the minutes slid by and they continued east over the city. Los Angeles was an enormous sprawl, but she recognized key landmarks and saw that they were approaching the Ontario airport.

He was slouching in his seat, legs outstretched, looking at her from beneath his lashes, not at all interested in the scenery. “One of my places.”

He acted as if he was so casual. There was nothing careless or casual about Rowan Argyros. The man was lethal. She’d heard some of the stories from Morgan after her night with Rowan, and he was considered one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

And she had to pick him to be her first lover.

Genius move on her part.

Although to be fair, he’d never touched her with anything but sensitivity and expertise. His hands had made her feel more beautiful than she’d ever felt in her entire life. His caress had stirred her to the core. It would have been easy to imagine that he cared for her when he’d loved her so completely...

But he hadn’t loved her. He’d pleasured her because she’d paid him to, giving her a twenty-thousand-dollar lay.

She swallowed around the lump filling her throat. Her eyes felt hot and gritty as she focused on the distant flight tower. She didn’t want to remember. She hated remembering, and she might have been able to forget if it hadn’t been for the one complication...

Not a small complication, either.

So she regretted the sex but not the mistake. Jax wasn’t a mistake. Jax was her world and her heart and the reason Logan could battle through the constant public scrutiny and shame. Twice she’d had to close her Twitter account due to Twitter trolls. She’d refused to shut down her Instagram, forcing herself to ignore the daily onslaught of scorn and hate.

She’d get through this. Eventually. The haters of the world didn’t matter. Jax mattered, and only Jax.

“So which home are we going to?” she asked, trying to match his careless, casual tone, trying to hide her concern and growing panic. Jax’s sitter left between five and six every day. Even if Joe went to the house to relieve the sitter, he was merely buying Logan a couple of hours. Joe had never babysat Jax for more than an hour or two before. Joe was a good guy, but he couldn’t care for the two-year-old overnight. Knowing Joe, he’d try, too, but Logan was a mama bear. No one came between her and her little girl.

“Does it matter?” he asked, pulling sunglasses from the pocket of his jacket.

So very James Bond. Her lip curled. He noticed.

“What’s wrong now?” he asked.

She glanced away from him and crossed her legs, aware that she could feel the weight of his inspection even from behind his sunglasses. “Morgan told me how much you love your little games.” She looked back at him, eyebrow arching. “You must be feeling very powerful now, what with the daring helicopter rescue and clandestine moves.”

“I do like your sister,” he answered. “She’s good for Drakon. And he for her.”

Logan couldn’t argue with that. Her sister had nearly lost her mind when separated from her husband. Thank God they’d worked it out.

“Hard to believe you and Morgan are twins,” he added. “You’re nothing alike.”

“Morgan chose to live with Dad. I didn’t.”

“And your baby sister, Jemma, she just chose to move out, even though she was still a teenager.”

Logan swung her leg, the gold buckle on her strappy wedge sandal catching the light. “You’re not a fan of my family, so I’m not entirely sure why we’re having this conversation.”

“Fine. Let’s not talk about your family.” His voice dropped, deepening, going almost velvet soft. “Let’s talk about us.”

Let’s talk about us.

Her entire body went weak. She stopped swinging her leg, her limbs suddenly weighted even as her pulse did a crazy double beat.

Us. Right.

She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could tell from the lift of his lips that he was enjoying himself. He was having fun, the same way a cat played with its prey before killing it.

She could be nervous, show fear, try to resist him—it was what he wanted. Or, she could just play along and not give him the satisfaction he craved.

Which, to her way of thinking, was infinitely better.

She smiled at him. He had no idea who he was dealing with. She wasn’t the Logan Lane he’d bedded three years ago. He’d made sure of that. “Oh, that would be fun. I love talking about old times.” She stared boldly into the dark sunglasses, letting him get a taste of who she’d become. “Good times. Right, babe?”

For a moment he gave her no response and then the corners of his mouth lifted even higher. A real smile. Maybe even a laugh, with the easy smile showing off very white, very straight teeth. The smile changed his face, making him younger and freer and sexy. Unforgivably sexy. Unforgivably since everything inside her was responding.

Not fair.

She hated him.

And yet she’d never met anyone with his control and heat and ability to own a room...and not just any room, but a massive ballroom...as if he were the only man in the entire place. As if he were the only man on the face of the earth. As if he’d been made just to light her up and turn her inside out.

Her heart raced and her pulse felt like sin in her veins. She was growing hot, flushing, needing...and she pressed her thighs tighter.

No, no, no.

“We were good,” he said, still smiling at her, and yet his lazy drawl hinted at something so much more dangerous than anger.

Lethal man.

She’d wanted him that night and the fascination was back, slamming into her with the same force of a two-ton truck.

Something in her just wanted him.

Something in her recognized something in him and it shouldn’t happen. There was no reason for someone like Rowan to be her type...

“It was you,” she said, feeling generous. And what harm could there be in the truth? Because he was good—very, very good—and he was making her feel the same hot bright need that she’d felt during the bachelor auction. And it’d been forever since she’d felt anything sexual, her hunger smashed beneath layers of motherhood and maternal devotion. “You have quite the skill set.”

“Years of practice, love.”

“I commend your dedication to your craft.”

His dark head inclined. “I tried to give you value for your twenty grand.”

She didn’t like that jab. But she could keep up. He and the rest of the haters had taught her how to wrap herself in a Teflon armor and just deflect, deflect, deflect. “Rest assured, you did. Now, if I knew then what I know now, I might have given you a few pointers, but I was so green. Talk about inexperienced. Talk about embarrassing. A twenty-four-year-old virgin.” She shuddered and gently pushed back a long tendril of hair that had fallen forward. “Thankfully you handled the old hymen like the champ you are.”

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

Everything felt different. The very air was charged, seething...pulsing...

She gave him an innocent look. “Did I say something wrong?”

Rowan drew off his sunglasses and leaned toward her. “Say that again.”

“The part about the hymen? Or the part where I wished I’d given you a few pointers?”

His green eyes were no longer cool. They burned and they were fixed intently on her, laser beams of loathing.

She’d finally gotten a rise out of him. She had to work very hard to hide her victorious smile. “But surely you knew I was a virgin,” she added gently. “The blood on white sheets...?”

“It wasn’t blood. It was spotting.”

She shrugged carelessly. “You probably assumed it was just from...vigorous...thrusting.”

His eyes glowed and his square jaw turned to granite. “You weren’t a virgin.”

“I was. And don’t you feel honored that I picked you to be my first?” She glanced down at her hands, checking her nails. She must have chipped one earlier, when she fainted and fell. She rubbed a finger across the jagged edge and continued conversationally. “You set the bar very high, you know. Not just for what happened in the bedroom, but after.”

He said nothing and so she looked up from her nails and stared into his eyes. “I can’t help but wonder, if I hadn’t climaxed during each of the...sessions...would you still have called me a whore?” She let the question float between them for a moment before adding, “Was it the fact that I enjoyed myself...that I took pleasure...that made me a whore? Because it was a very fast transition from virgin to whore—”

“Virgins don’t spend twenty grand to get laid,” he said curtly, cutting her short.

“No? Not even if they want to get laid by the best?”

* * *

He’d stopped smiling a long time ago. He had a reputation for being able to handle any situation but Logan was giving him a run for his money.

If it were any woman but Logan Copeland, he’d be impressed and maybe amused. Hell, he’d been amused at the start, intrigued by the way she’d thrown it down, and given it right back at him, but then it had all taken a rapid shift, right around the time she’d mentioned her virginity, and he didn’t know how to fight back.

She’d been a virgin?

He didn’t do virgins. He didn’t take a woman’s virginity. And yet he’d done her...quite thoroughly.

Dammit.

“You’re taking my words out of context,” he said tightly, trying to contain his frustration. “I didn’t call you a whore—”

“Oh, you did. You called me a Copeland whore.”

He winced inwardly, still able to hear the words ringing too loud in the kitchen of her Santa Monica bungalow. He could still see how she’d gone white and the way her blue eyes had revealed shock and then anguish.

She’d turned away and walked out, but he’d followed, hurling more insults, each a deliberate hit.

He despised the Copelands even before the father’s Ponzi scheme was exposed. The Copelands were one of the most entitled families in America. The daughters were fixtures on the social scene, ridiculously famous simply because they were wealthy and beautiful.

Rowan grew up poor and everything he had, he personally had worked for.

He had no time for spoiled rich girls.

How could shallow, entitled women like that respect themselves?

Worse, how could America adore them? How could America reward them by filling their tabloids with their pictures and antics? Who cared where they shopped or which designer they wore?

Who cared where they vacationed?

Who cared who they screwed?

He didn’t. Not until he’d realized he’d screwed one of them senseless.

But it hadn’t been a screw. That was the thing. It had been so much more.

Rowan’s jaw worked. His fingers curled into fists. “I regret those words,” he said stiffly. “I would take them back, if I could.”

“Is that your version of an apology?”

It had been, yes, but her mocking tone made it clear it wasn’t good enough. That he wasn’t good enough.

Rowan wasn’t sure whether to be offended or amused.

And then he questioned why he’d even be offended. He’d never cared before what a woman thought of him.

He’d be a fool to care what a Copeland thought of him.

“It is what it is,” he said, the helicopter dipping, dropping. They’d reached the Ontario airport. His private jet waited at the terminal.

Her head turned. She was looking down at the airport, too. “Why here? Do you have a place in Palm Springs?”

“If I did, we’d be flying into Palm Springs.”

“I find it hard to believe you have a place in Ontario.”

“I don’t.” He left it at that, and then they were touching down, lowering onto the tarmac.

Rowan popped the door open and stepped out. He reached for Logan but she drew back and climbed out without his assistance.

She started for the terminal but he caught her elbow and steered her in the other direction, away from the building and toward the sleek white-and-green pin-striped jet.

She froze when she realized what was happening. “No.”

He couldn’t do this again, not now. “We don’t have time. I refuse to refile the flight plan.”

“I’m not leaving Los Angeles. I can’t.”

“Don’t make me carry you.”

She broke free and ran back a step. “I’ll scream.”

He gestured to the empty tarmac. “And what good will that do you? Who will hear you? This is the executive terminal. The only people around are my people.”

She reached up to capture her hair in one hand, keeping it from blowing in her face. “You don’t understand. I can’t go. I can’t leave her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jax.” Her voice broke. “I’ve never been away from her before, not overnight. I can’t leave her now.”

“Jax?” he repeated impatiently. “What is that? Your cat?”

“No. My baby. My daughter.”

“Your daughter?” he ground out.

She nodded, heart hammering. She felt sick to her stomach and so very scared. She’d forced herself to reach out to Rowan when she’d discovered she was pregnant, but he’d been even more hateful when she called him.

“How did you get my number?” he demanded.

“Drakon.”

“He shouldn’t have given it to you.”

“I told him it was important.”

He laughed—a cold, scornful sound that cut all the way to her soul.

“Babe, in case you didn’t get the message, it’s over. I’ve nothing more for you. Now, pull yourself together and get on with your life.”

And so she had.

She didn’t tell him about the baby. She didn’t tell him he was having a daughter, and whatever qualms she had about keeping the information to herself were eventually erased by the memory of his coldness and hatefulness.

Her father had broken her heart, shaming her with his greed and selfishness, but Rowan was a close second. He was despicable. Like her father, the worst of the worst.

Thank goodness he wasn’t in Jax’s life. Logan couldn’t even imagine the kind of father he’d be. Far better to raise Jax on her own than have Jax growing up with a father who couldn’t, wouldn’t, love her.

And now, facing Rowan on the tarmac, Logan knew she’d made the right decision. Rowan might be a military hero—deadly in battle, formidable in a combat zone—but he was insensitive to the point of abusive and she’d never allow him near her daughter.

“You’re a mother?” he said.

She heard the bewildered note in his voice and liked it. She’d shocked him. Good. “Yes.”

His brow furrowed. “Where is she now?”

“At home.” Logan glanced at her watch. “Her sitter will leave at five. I need to be back by then.”

“You won’t be. You’re not going back.”

“And what about Jax? We’ll just leave her in a crib until you decide you’ll return me?”

His jaw worked, the small muscle near his ear pulling tight. “Drakon never mentioned a baby.”

Her heart did a double beat and her stomach heaved. “They don’t know.”

“What?”

“No one knows.”

“How can that be?”

“It might surprise you, but we don’t do big family reunions anymore.”