Mad Enough to Marry - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,20

used to doing for myself."

**I get that. You're independent."

Shaking her head, she stuffed another envelope and moved on to the next, her movements efficient and automatic. '*You don't get it. What I mean is, I have only myself to depend upon. And Gabby is depending on me too."

Logan's fingers stilled. ''There's just the two of you?"

"Yes." She went about folding and stuffing as if they were talking about the weather instead of what she'd weathered in her life. "When I was sixteen my mother died and we moved from L.A. to Strawberry Bay to live with my grandmother. Then Nana passed away two years later and I was given custody of Gabby. I already had my job at the community college and I'd been paying the bills out of my salary for months."

He tried wrapping his mind around what she'd said. "You've taken care of your sister by yourself since you were eighteen and she was...what?"

'*Nine." She looked up quickly, giving him a glare. "And we've done just fine, by the way."

*1 know that. Fve met Gabby. She's pre-med." He added that last bit because he knew it meant so much to Elena.

**Pre-med." Almost smiling, she nodded. *'We did it."

Logan thought over what Elena had said. She didn't accept help well because she hadn't often been offered it. But the truth was, she'd have a blocks-long line of men queued up to fulfill her slightest fancy if she wished it. She was that beautiful.

But she scared them all off.

She hadn't scared him. Not eleven years ago, anyway.

Logan closed his eyes, guilt tasting metallic in his mouth. **Elena..." He opened his eyes. '*We need to talk about that night."

Her gaze flew to his, surprise and something almost fearful on her face. *'That night?" she echoed.

'^Senior prom," he clarified, and saw her relax a little. He knew why. He didn't want to talk about the night they'd first met either. It had been a week before the senior prom and of all the things that were between them, that was the one he'd never examined or tried to explain.

Maybe because he knew he couldn't. Shouldn't. Whatever.

He reached out to put his hand over hers. Her fingers stilled, but she didn't look up at him. '*You don't

know how much I wish I could redo everything about the senior prom," he said.

She kept her eyes down. "Everything?"

She meant the fact that he'd invited her that night. **Maybe," he said, knowing he had to be honest. **Maybe if I could, Fd take that back too."

She nodded once.

He scooted his chair closer so that he could lift her chin with his free hand. *'Not because I didn't want to share that night with you. But because I hate myself for the way it turned out, for hurting you."

As he'd expected, her gaze jumped to his. **You may have humiliated me, but you never hurt me."

*'Cc«ne on—"

*'You come on. Come on to the fact that I'd just lost my mother and been forced to start a new high school nearly at the end of the year. Come on to the fact that I was sixteen, new in town, and the hottest boy at my new campus invited me to his senior prom. Me."

*'When I met you at that party—"

'*We're not talking about that other night!"

'*—^I thought you went to the Catholic girls' school across town. I thought you were a senior too. I think you know that."

Her face flushed, though she pretended she hadn't heard him. ' 'I bought a new dress and shoes with the babysitting money I'd brought with me from L.A. My grandmother curled my hair and Gabby painted my fingernails. They both helped me pick out a bouton-

niere for your lapel. Then the three of us waited for you to pick me up."

Logan looked away, coward that he was. *'I was wearing my tux. I'd washed and waxed my car, refusing to let anyone else touch it. The wrist corsage I bought you was in the refrigerator in the butler's pantry. Annie's mother was our—"

**Housekeeper, I know."

**She saw it and said the white baby roses I'd picked out were perfect. They were tied with a gauzy blue ribbon that I thought was the exact color of your eyes.'*

'*You said you'd pick me up at seven o'clock," Elena reminded him. "And then it was seven, and then seven-thirty. At eight o'clock I thought maybe I'd mixed up the plans and I was supposed to meet you at the high school. My grandmother thought I