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

railing and watched the gentle waves break over the sand.
    She didn't know herself at all anymore, didn't know if the choices she'd made had been for the best, and didn't like the realization. It unsettled her, made her question the way she'd lived the past fifteen years. Made her wonder if this trouble at ViOPet hadn't occurred, if she would've ever quit playing it safe and taken the type of risks her father had. Or risks of a more personal nature, like the one drawing her closer to Logan.
    She gripped the rail tighter, hearing air whoosh from his seat cushion, the slap of his sandaled steps across the deck.
    "Hannah, I don't mean to pry. I certainly don't want my life opened for inspection."
    So her assessment had been dead on. As she'd known it would be. From the corner of one eye she saw him scrub both hands through his hair in patent frustration.
    "Reading people is a hobby of mine." He shook his head harshly. "No, an obsession. I have to know what makes a client tick."
    Squinting against the morning sun, she studied his face. Interest and curiosity lay firmly etched in the deep slash between his brows, the tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes. "How much do you want to know?"
    "Everything."
    He flashed a blinding grin and she eased her guard. "That could take a while."
    "Fine," he mouthed around a forced yawn. "I'll just lie down and snatch some Z's."
    With a fist jammed on her hip, she gave him a one-eyed glare, doing her best to knock him down a peg. "I'm I boring you?"
    "No. Just trying to get you horizontal."
    "Yeah, in your dreams," she answered, more flustered than she dared admit.
    His face darkened, grew grim, turbulent, a storm cloud brewing over the open sea. "I do have some wild ones."
    "I remember," she answered softly, the memory of the beach and Logan's misery fresh in her mind.
    "Then you know we both have our secrets." The wall was back up. He returned to his chair, shoved the sunshades in place. "Can I ask one more question?"
    "Why not?"
    "Why yellow?"
    Back to the car, she thought, wishing it was that simple, knowing he was still talking about her life. "Honestly? I needed a touch of sunshine. Yellow seemed to do the trick."
    Several minutes passed in reflective silence. "You haven't been happy for a long time, have you?"
    Time for more honesty. "Not since about fifteen."
    "What happened?"
    "My father got sick during my freshman year in high school and had to be put on permanent disability." Absently, she scraped away a piece of chipped paint on the railing. "He worked at a chemical plant that produced new pesticides."
    She took a deep breath, thinking back to those first hard weeks of denial, the following months of acceptance, and the ensuing months of waiting and watching his health decline. "He wasn't the only one to have the complaints, but was the only one to speak up."
    "Which didn't sit well with the company," Logan said, finishing her thought.
    She responded with an inelegant snort. "They offered all the right words. Claimed to have followed every safety precaution, every federal law. It didn't matter. By the end of that year he required constant care."
    "And your mother insisted on taking care of him herself," Logan added with amazing insight.
    She nodded. "That kind of love is rare. She tended to him. I tended to everything else. Started working during my sophomore year to supplement the insurance. Mother couldn't work because she couldn't spare the time away from him."
    "Couldn't or wouldn't?"
    "Does it really matter?"
    "Only if you resent her for it."
    Her gaze locked with his, then ricocheted away. "I never resented her. Only the situation and the fact that no matter how much I did it didn't change a thing."
    "That's tough on a kid."
    Her lungs burned, smothering her anew with that long-forgotten crushing sensation, that unbearable weight pressing down. She drew in a tight breath, surprised to find she could. "What choice did I have? He was my father. Who was I to complain when he'd