Free Playing Love's Odds (A Classic Sexy Romantic Suspense) by Alison Kent

problems alone, keeping to the solitary safety of what he knew, the same way she did. They'd both established their boundaries and both knew to maintain their distance in order to survive. So why did she want to intrude on his solitude, to find out why he hurt, when she didn't want him doing the same in return?
    She switched on the forlorn-looking lamp. The bulb flickered, cast a weak circle of light on the floor, then fizzled and popped, like knowing it didn't have the strength to chase away Logan's darkness. Neither did she. Nor would she make the effort to do so—not if she wanted to keep from getting mixed up with his ghosts.
And if you tell yourself that a bazillion times you might begin to believe it, Hannah.
    With a defiant click, she flipped off the switch then turned, lured by the sheet of crystal glass boldly spanning the front wall. The panoramic view provided her with a perfect sense of calm. Instinctively she knew this was why Logan loved it here. This soothing perception of all being right when in reality so much was wrong.
    A movement on the deck caught her eye. Logan sat sprawled in a redwood lounger, sun-toasted legs spread wide, sandaled feet negligently dragging the wooden plank floor. Her briefcase sat open between his thighs. Sunglasses shielded his eyes but failed to conceal the worry lines fanning out to his temples. He was going over her notes so she wasn't surprised to see them.
    A tantalizing stripe of hair bisected his flat belly before disappearing under the jagged edge of a T-shirt that boasted 'Surfers Do It To The Motion Of The Ocean'. The breeze rippled the top of his hair and whipped through the length in back.
    Beefcake. Pure beefcake. Hannah swallowed hard and told herself she wasn't hungry. The reminder didn't gel. The tender hollow of feelings buried close to her heart cried out with fierce longing. She chose a deck chair five feet away from his. It still seemed too close. His intense stare penetrated the opaque lenses. She felt it to the pit of her stomach.
    "So what's the deal?" he began, as if they'd been having this conversation all along.
    "What deal?" She tipped her chin back, hoping the heat of the sun would mask the heat of attraction warming her face.
    "Your car. Seems a bit impractical."
    "And yours isn't?"
    "Hey, boys will be boys."
    She cocked her head to one side. "What about girls?"
    "They can be boys, too—" he dropped his glasses down a notch and gave her a rakish once over "— but I like it better when they're women."
    "Oh, please!"
    "Begging already?"
    She rolled her eyes. "You're hopeless, you know."
    "So I've been told. And you're avoiding the subject."
    "C'mon, Logan. It's only a car."
    "No, Hannah. It's a foreign excuse for a tin can."
    "What do you consider your T-bird?"
    "One-hundred percent American." His grin flashed two-hundred watts. "A renegade. One of a kind. Just like me."
    "And you enjoy it."
    "Hell, yeah I enjoy it. What's the use of having a sweet machine like that without milking it for all it's worth?"
    "Then you should understand. I wanted something fun and spirited to take me away. I wanted to blast down the road and forget," she added softly and could have bit her stupid tongue.
    Whisked away by her innocent confession, one that gave Logan an opening she knew he'd take, the teasing mood vanished. He pulled the sunglasses from his face and slowly placed them on the table.
    His voice dropped an intuitive notch. "Are we talking about cars here? Or life?"
    Perceptive didn't begin to describe him. Uncanny, wasting no time with romantic notions or preliminaries, he cut to the heart of the matter. Her heart. He had no right to dissect her like a specimen in a biology class. Or to take her apart bit by bit and put each piece back together like a puzzle. Especially when he was right. So damned right.
    She eased from the chair and made her way across the deck, her measured steps as stiff as her determination not to break. Palms down, she leaned against the