Page 34 of Tattered (Lark Cove 1)

The ache in my chest came back with a fury. “She will, Logan. Just give it time.”

“I don’t have time, Thea.” He stood from the chair and planted his hands on his hips. “I have to leave on Sunday. I have one week. One week to get to know my daughter and build something of a relationship with her. Then I need to wrap this up and get my life back to normal.”

My blood pressure spiked. He wanted to wrap this up in a week? He thought in seven days he’d have a loving father-daughter relationship. It took me longer than a week to decide if I liked a new shampoo.

And what was normal? There was no such thing. His life, the one he was so desperate to get back to, would forever be different. As of yesterday, it wasn’t about him.

“Wrap this up and get your life back to normal?” I repeated.

He shook his head. “That came out wrong.”

“Good,” I snapped. “I’m sorry this has disrupted your life, but you’re going to need to find more than a week for your daughter.”

“Which would be easier if you were in New York.”

“I’m not taking her to New York! She’s starting first grade in the fall. She has friends here. She has family. I can’t give her the life she has here in the city.”

He pointed to his chest as he stepped closer. “I am her family too. And if it’s about money, you don’t need to worry. You’d have the best of everything. So would she.”

We were his charity case now? I pushed off the counter and met him in the middle of the kitchen. “It’s not just about the money. It’s about her lifestyle. It’s about where I want her to grow up.”

“And what about what I want?” His voice got louder. “I should get a say too, especially since I haven’t so far. It wasn’t my fault that I missed the first five years of her life!”

“It wasn’t mine either!” I stood on my tiptoes, inching toward his face. My chest was heaving, almost touching his, and with an angry breath, I realized just how close we’d gotten.

His gaze was heated and the inch between us crackled. Even angry he was gorgeous. The pull between our bodies was just as strong as it had been years ago.

My eyes drifted to his lips. I remembered them being soft but hard. He’d used them as weapons against my skin to render me helpless.

He leaned in, just a bit, tempting me closer.

I wanted to kiss him and snake my hands up his arms. To shove all of my frustration into something raw and physical. I wanted to ignore the heap of problems at our feet and get lost in something sweaty.

But it wasn’t about what either of us wanted.

It was about Charlie.

I dropped my chin and took a step backward. Then another. “She has a lot of questions, and I don’t have answers.”

He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t either.”

“We have to find them.”

“I know.” He nodded. “Let’s talk tomorrow. I think it would be best for me to go before something happens between us that we’ll regret.” Without a good-bye, he turned and left me standing in the center of my kitchen.

Regret. His last word echoed off the red-speckled countertops and yellow-tinged cupboards. It burned my ears.

Logan would regret a kiss with me. Maybe he regretted ever stepping into that hotel bar.

And damn did that hurt. Almost as much as knowing he had no plans to change his lifestyle for our daughter.

After Logan left, while I washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, I pulled myself together. As I did my chores, I shrugged off the sting of his rejection. I reminded myself that only one thing mattered in all of this.

Charlie.

Then I went upstairs and down the hall to her room. She was sitting at her “art center” with her back to the door. Her center was nothing more than a short, square desk pushed into a corner, but it had a small drawer for her special drawing paper and a cup to hold her markers. These days, her legs were nearly too long for the child-sized chair.

That center was the only thing in the room that had any girly qualities. Charlie had shocked me when we’d gone shopping in Kalispell for the table. Instead of going for the white or royal blue as I’d expected, she’d picked pale pink.