Mad Enough to Marry - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,33

three months as well as a couple of subcontractors who are interested in full-time employment instead of scrambling for job after job."

**Someone has to find the work," his father pointed out.

'*That will be me." Logan waited for Jonathon to launch some doubts on that score, promising himself he wouldn't bother to tell his father he already had two large renovations Uned up and the verbal promise of a third. He wouldn't bother telling the old man that he still planned on doing a lot of the work himself, too.

Instead, his father surprised the hell out of him by merely nodding. He looked away, then back at Logan. *'Have you spoken with your mother lately?" he asked abruptly.

Logan bUnked. **Not since we all had dinner together the other night."

Jonathon nodded again but then let silence fall.

Puzzled, Logan cleared his throat. *'Uh, Dad. Did you drop by for some reason? I notice you have papers with you." It's not as if he'd avoid whatever his father's purpose was anyway.

Jonathon bUnked, seeming to awaken. Then he looked down as if noticing the papers for the first time. *'I don't know why I brought these in with me," he said slowly. *'I was on my way to drop them... somewhere."

It sounded as if Logan's mind-like-a-shark father couldn't remember where that *'somewhere" was. Alarms pinged. **Are you feeling okay, Dad?"

His father shook his head, as if clearing it. *'0f course. I'm okay. Everything's okay. Everything wiD

be perfectly okay as soon as you give up this foolish notion and come back into the fold."

Over his dead body, Logan thought, but he smiled pleasantly yet again. '*No, Dad. Fm going to hold on to this foolish notion, but thanks for your good wishes all the same."

His father didn't even catch the edge of sarcasm in Logan's voice. After a few more minutes he left, with only another odd comment about Logan's mother. *'She wasn't home on Monday night for martinis."

**God," Logan muttered, as he returned to his work. *'No martinis on Monday night." How did the old man's world keep turning?

It was his world that recaptured his thoughts, though. More precisely, how it would be changed depending upon what words would drop from the delectable lips of one blue-eyed brunette when she returned home today. He supposed she might assume she had more time to make her decision, but Logan was discovering he wasn't as patient a man as he'd always thought.

"Logan?" The sound of that familiar voice calling through his still-open front door was almost eerie. It was the voice of the personification of that very patience.

''Cynthia?" he caUed out. "Is that you?"

He made his way back to the foyer, and sure enough, it was Cynthia Halstead. Though rumors of their long-expected engagement had always been greatly exaggerated, he had dated her almost exclusively for several years.

Standing in the entry, she tossed back the long fall of her straight blond hair and gave him a tentative smile. '*So this is where you work?"

"And Uve,** he reminded her. They'd ended their romantic liaison before his change in careers and residences, but he still occasionally talked to her on the phone.

Their relationship had been so cool it hadn't adversely suffered from the breakup, strange as that might sound. The people most disturbed by it seemed to be their parents, who had dreamed up a marriage when Logan and Cynthia were in their cradles.

*'How are Peter and Meredith?" he asked poUtely. *'And your brother?"

*T.J.'s fine. Mother and Dad..." Her slender hand flapped, and then she stepped past him. Her walk was fluid, one of those runway-model saunters that ate up space but didn't seem to go anywhere at the same time.

Logan trailed her passively. Cynthia was a part-time model and he was accustomed to the way she used movement to rev up her thought process. She wasn't dumb—and hated that stereotype—^but if she wasn't moving, she had a tendency to shut down her brain. She'd shared with him once her technique for sitting still in a makeup chair or under a photographer's lights for hour upon hour. To keep herself from screaming in boredom, she'd flat-line her mind, achieving an almost catatonic state, sort of like a bear going into hibernation.

Of course, no one with those miles of long hair and

legs resembled a bear, but the simile had stayed with him all the same.

Once she'd made a complete tour of the downstairs, she whirled to face him. *1 was really, really angry with you."

He stared at her. *'Huh?"

**When you