Mad Enough to Marry - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,30

again, Elena."

''What?"

"Don't start about me and Tyler." Gabby's face flushed and she sounded annoyed. "You're not my parent."

"No, but I'm the closest thing you have to one," Elena retorted, trying to hold on to her own temper. "I'm just trying to make sure—"

"That I don't jeopardize my future as Gabriella O'Brien, M.D." Gabby's eyes were blue fire, but her voice now cooled to ice. ' 'You want to be sure I don't get off the course you've set by getting caught up in my painting or getting caught up by a man who will dump me the way our father dumped our mother."

Before Elena could think of an appropriate response. Gabby was already at the front door. "Well, I'm tired of that boring old story. Maybe you can interest Logan, but I'm done with it."

Logan. As the realization that he'd witnessed the embarrassing exchange sank in, the front door slammed shut behind Gabby.

"Well." Not knowing what else to do, Elena stood and began stacking plates, looking forward to escaping alone to the kitchen.

But Logan instantly followed her lead.

She shook her head at him. "You don't have to help."

"I want to.*'

She shook her head again. **Really. It's my dish night. But I...I should apologize for what we just put you through."

**Would you like to talk about it?" he asked quietly. "My shoulder is perfectly willing to be cried upon."

*'Cry?" Not in front of him. Not ever. Her spine steeled. 'I'm not much of a crier. Especially over a minor skirmish with my little sister."

His golden eyes searched her face, but then he shrugged. **You know, Elena, you are the toughest cookie I ever met."

She smiled at him. **Now you're talking." When she carried the dishes toward the kitchen, she didn't even mind him trailing behind her. A tough cookie like herself could handle him and think about the argument with Gabby later.

While Elena started filUng the kitchen sink, Logan leaned against the opposite countertop, as if he didn't have another place in the world he'd rather be. *'I assumed your father had passed away," he said after a few minutes.

Elena stiffened, then forced herself to relax. She'd just said she could handle Logan, right? "No. He's a lawyer in his family's firm in L.A."

''His family? Isn't that family yours too?"

She was glad her back was turned, because tough cookies didn't show emotion and she didn't know if she could talk about her father without doing so. "My father and his family want to forget all about me and

Gabby. He took a job with legal aid and married our mother—^she was a cocktail waitress at his favorite Mexican restaurant—^as rebellion against his stuffy parents. For the next ten years or so, my mother and father lived together in wedded un-bliss."

'*Then what happened?"

She shrugged. *'His snobbishness overcame his need to rebel? He was more embarrassed of us than he was interested in making a point? You'd have to ask him. I only know that when Gabby was bom, he gave up slumming, his Mexican-American wife and his two daughters. I believe he's now a civil litigator and the proud father of three sons in prep school."

"Jesus, Elena." Without her noticing, Logan had snuck up behind her, and now he touched her hair. 'Tm sorry—"

*'Not for me." She whirled to face him, defiant. "You better not be sorry for me."

He tucked her hair behind her ear. "No, sweetheart. I'm sorry for your father. Sorry that he doesn't know Gabby. Sorry that he doesn't know you."

Elena swallowed, fighting off the weak, silly urge to step into Logan's arms. He wasn't supposed to know her either! She was supposed to be keeping him at a distance and not letting him past her guard.

She firmed her jaw and looked into his eyes, will-mg herself to give nothing away. "I think that you should go."

Logan gazed at the cool mask of beauty that was Elena's face. She was kicking him out again.

Damn her.

He'd gone quietly, even willingly, the other night, though she'd been half-naked in his arms. With the taste of her perfumed skin still on his tongue, he'd managed to walk away from her.

Conversation with Elena, let alone near-copulation with Elena, was a complication to his life he'd known he didn't need at the moment.

He'd been aware too, that he'd left her as sexually frustrated, as sexually hurting as he was himself. A consolation. Even retahation—^it only seemed fair that they both suffered.

But what she was feeling now wasn't physical pain. He could tell she was emotionally