Mad Enough to Marry - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,38

the door to his apartment, then stalked into the extra bedroom to drop the luggage once again. When he returned to the living room, it was to see his mother looking around with appreciation, Elena hovering behind her.

**Lx)gan,*' his mother said, "I had no idea what a beautiful house this is. You've done wonders."

He grunted. *'Reuben, the guy who owned it before me, remodeled this apartment and the other one."

'*But Logan has done all the work on the first floor," Elena put in. **You wouldn't beheve how much he's accompUshed."

Sexual frustration, he could have told her, was behind all the progress. And just when he'd hoped to channel that energy into a much more natural, interesting direction...

''Mom," he said, "how long are you planning on staying here?"

"As long as it takes," she answered vaguely. She smoothed her hair and then looked down at her hands.

She was still wearing her wedding ring, Logan noted. He cleared his throat. "Well, uh, Elena and I were just about to go out and eat."

"Why don't you shower first, dear." Her gaze shifted to Elena. "Then I'll take you both out to dinner."

Several hours later he found himself sitting on the

floor in the parlor in front of the big-screen TV, surrounded by women.

It sucked.

His mother had commandeered one of the ratty re-cliners. Gabby and Elena squished into the other. Worse, the females had also taken over the remote control and were clicking between some made-for-TV movie starring a soap hunk they all recognized and a program that depicted a real-life labor and delivery of a real-life baby.

Just as a hospital-gowned mother-to-be emitted some spine-chilling moans, Logan heard the phone ringing upstairs.

He said he heard it, anyway.

Once inside his bedroom with two closed doors and the stairway between himself and the women, he dialed a familiar number. The housekeeper at the Chase estate answered. When he asked for his father, she said he wasn't at home. Nor was Mrs. Chase, she added in her pleasant voice.

*'I know," Logan responded with a heavy sigh. Mrs. Chase had definitely moved in with him, despite all his not-so-subtle hints that she'd be more comfortable elsewhere.

Replacing the phone on the receiver, from far away he heard the sound of female laughter. Wincing, he resisted the urge to hold his aching head. What could they find so funny about he-men or human birth?

But maybe they were laughing at the great big cosmic joke on Logan. His effort to extricate himself from the family business and from family expecta-

tions had now landed him smack-dab in the center of his parents' separation—and just as he had the woman who was the ultimate, freakin' fantasy of his life inches from his bed.

Another round of laughter from downstairs made the dull pounding in his head turn to a roar.

Because Mrs. Chase was now in residence at the Victorian, Elena figured the plan of Logan's that she'd agreed to was at the very least indefinitely postponed. She told herself she was grateful—^now she could use the time to explore some very sensible and quite rational second thoughts.

But then she unlocked the front door of the house late Friday night, and found Logan in near-darkness, lying in wait for her.

She stayed where she was, hand clutching the doorknob. He was truly lying in wait—his long body, illuminated by the meager glow of a light left on in the original kitchen, was stretched out on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, his head pillowed on what might be a roUed-up drop cloth. Coward that she was, she considered avoiding him by turning around and leaving the house. But she'd already spent ten hours at her day job followed by another two-and-a-half assisting the Friday-night class at the cooking school. She didn't have the energy.

So, instead, she shut the door behind her and trudged warily toward the silent Logan, tensed for whatever he wanted and whatever pressure he'd exert on her to get it. Would he suggest they go out for a

drink or maybe a late movie? Although she wasn't in the mood to be social after a day as long as this one, she was also fresh out of the starch she needed to resist him.

As she drew closer, she could see he wasn't going to make it easy for her either. His soft-looking cham-bray shirt was unbuttoned to reveal a wide, tantalizing slice of his hard, wide chest. Gaze glued there, she hesitated again.

Tell him no, she reminded herself. No way, no how —

Well, she