Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 78576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
I turn and face an amazingly handsome man. His hair is blond, with some silver at the temples. His eyes are sparkling blue—though not quite as sparkling as Dave’s.
But I’m not here to think about Dave. Dave stood me up.
“That’s kind of you,” I say.
He holds out his hand. “I’m Logan Templeton.”
“Madeline Pike.” I take his hand.
He lifts mine and lightly brushes his lips over the back of it.
I feel a slight spark but nothing amazing. More the fact that an older and obviously accomplished gentleman is paying attention to me.
“Do you come here often?” he asks.
“Only once before.” When my father was in the hospital with a heart attack and the Steels treated us to dinner here, but Logan doesn’t need to know that.
“Are you waiting for anyone?”
I narrow my gaze. “Maybe I’m waiting for you.”
My cheeks warm. Did those words just come out of my mouth?
“That’s what I like to hear. What do you do, Madeline?”
“I’m a life coach.” It’s not a lie so much as a statement of my future. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
He raises an eyebrow. “Really? That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, I really enjoy my work. It’s very inspiring. What do you do?”
“I’m here on business,” he says. “I’m an attorney in Denver.”
“Really? My sister’s studying to be an attorney. And my soon-to-be brother-in-law used to be with a downtown firm. Now he’s the city attorney for the town of Snow Creek.”
Garrett raises his eyebrows. “Don Steel?”
“Yeah. He’s engaged to my sister Caroline.”
I’m not sure why I’m not using our nicknames. All I know is that I’m talking to a guy who’s probably in his late thirties or early forties, so telling him my name is Maddie seems kind of infantile.
“Interesting,” he says. “So you have a connection to the Steel family, then.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many connections I have to the Steel family.”
He cocks his head. “More than one?”
“Yeah,” I say dryly. “Apparently you don’t read the society pages.”
“I can’t say that I do.”
“My sister Aurora is engaged to Brock Steel, and my brother Jesse is engaged to Brianna Steel.”
“But you’re still unspoken for, I hope,” he says.
“I am free as a hawk soaring above the sunlit sky.”
Where did that come from?
“And like the hawk, are you looking for prey?” His eyes dance.
Garrett slides my drink in front of me, and I take a sip of the sour liquid before I reply to Logan.
“I’m always looking for something,” I finally say. “What it is depends on how the evening progresses.”
I’m so not being myself.
This man is handsome, but he’s way too old for me. Jesse had a conniption about the difference between Brianna’s and his ages. Logan could easily be twenty years my senior.
“May I ask how old you are?” I ask bluntly.
“I’m forty-one. How old are you?”
“Thirty-one.”
I purposefully place myself ten years below him. If he knew I was only twenty-two, he’d probably run for the mountains.
Not that I’m expecting anything to happen, but he’s good for my ego at the moment.
“Thirty-one?” He looks me up and down. “You must have some good genes. You don’t look a day over twenty.”
“Thank you.” I take another sip of my drink.
“Garrett, I’ll have a scotch, neat. Macallan if you have it.”
“Anything for you, Mr. Templeton.” Garrett gets to work on the drink.
Logan’s not wearing a wedding ring, which doesn’t surprise me, given how strong he’s coming on. But if he is out of town on business, he may have just taken it off.
“Are you married?” I ask blatantly.
He lifts his left hand. “You see a ring on this finger?”
“No, but that wasn’t the question.”
He chuckles softly, a low rumble. “I’m not married, beautiful. Are you?”
“Do you see a ring on this finger?” I hold up my hand in front of his, allowing our fingertips to barely touch.
No ring, but I am wearing the pendant Dave bought me in Paris. Right now it’s burning as if it’s branding my flesh.
Logan grins. “No, I don’t.”
I take another sip. “I’ll be honest with you, though. I just got out of a relationship.”
“Now that is interesting.” He trails his finger over my forearm. “Because I did too.”
Again a tiny spark skitters across my flesh, but it’s nothing compared to the fireworks that erupt inside me when David Simpson is near.
But Dave Simpson isn’t here. Something came up—something clearly so important that he couldn’t even bother to text me and tell me he had to break our date.
Garrett slides Logan’s scotch in front of him.
“Thank you.” Logan slides a hundred-dollar bill across the table.
Maybe I’ve been hanging around with the Steels too much, but the hundred-dollar bill doesn’t even make my eyes widen.
“So you want to get out of here?” Logan asks.
I swallow, tamping down the nervousness erupting in me. “I think I’d like to finish my drink.”
“Okay. Let’s finish our drinks.” He looks out a nearby window. “The night is young, after all.”