Page 10 of Perfect Persuasion (Love’s Second Chance #2)

Logan just shrugged, a smug grin curling his lips. “I never lose. Never. So you better get used to accommodating me when it comes to the baby. Because if you don’t…” He shrugged again, the smug smile going into full bloom.

Logan stalked into his living room, so angry he could ram his fist through a wall.

Derek looked up, in the middle of watching Logan’s flat screen, devouring a pepperoni pizza, and scratching Caesar’s big, white belly.

Upon seeing his master enter the room, the cat issued an inquisitive meow, but didn’t bother to budge from his sprawl across Derek’s lap.

“Traitor,” Logan muttered, glaring at Caesar as he began pacing the length of the living room.

“Hello to you too,” Derek said dryly.

“Not you,” Logan clarified, tugging absently at his left earlobe. “The goddamn cat.”

“Trouble at the office?” Derek asked rather unconcernedly around a mouthful of pizza.

“Sort of.” Logan stopped in his tracks, looking at his friend. “You’re going to be an uncle.”

Derek nearly choked on his pizza, but took a swig of the bottled water at his side to wash it down. “You didn’t say you were involved with someone, Loge.”

“I’m not.” Logan laughed self-derisively. “Well…hell, it’s complicated. She’s a coworker in the middle of a divorce and we got carried away on a business trip a few months ago, and now she’s pregnant.”

Derek whistled. “Sounds like a role in a movie I was offered a few years back.”

“It does sound like a movie plot,” Logan agreed, sending his friend a wry grin.

“A bad movie plot, like one of those Lifetime channel things women go nuts over. I don’t blame you for turning it down.

” He resumed his infuriated pacing. “Christ, Derek. I don’t know how it happened.

I never date coworkers. I’ve always believed in my no-intra-office romance policy.

I’ve never even had a chance of being a father. Not since Abigail, anyway.”

Derek nodded, his blue eyes sympathetic, pitying almost. He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. Both men knew what had occurred and what its effect on Logan had been.

“I still wonder sometimes,” Logan murmured, mostly to himself.

“How would my life be different? I drive by a playground, see the little kids, and I wonder…” He allowed his words to drift into nothingness.

Sharing emotion of any sort wasn’t an especially easy task for Logan.

It made him uncomfortable as hell, in fact.

“You can’t torture yourself for something that’s not your fault,” Derek said.

“Believe me. For a long time, I blamed myself for things that weren’t mine to claim.

It wasn’t until my second trip to rehab that I realized I’d been blaming myself for everything that went wrong in my life. Don’t do that to yourself, Loge.”

“This whole thing just brought it all back to me.” Logan finally grew tired of stalking the room and sank into a chair flanking the sofa. “She was planning on keeping the baby a secret. Claire, I mean. Tonight she just laid it on me and it was like I was eighteen again, frustrated and helpless.”

“But you’re not there anymore,” Derek pointed out reasonably, taking another bite of pizza. “You aren’t a scared kid trying to make something of himself and Claire isn’t Abigail. This is a totally different situation.”

Yes, damn it, it was. But Logan kept hearing Abigail’s voice echoing inside his mind, telling him he wasn’t ready to be a father.

Mingling with Claire’s, telling him he wasn’t human.

Goddamn it, was he that much of a failure?

That the women in his life preferred no baby or no father when faced with the prospect of him as the father of their child infuriated him.

What the hell was wrong with Claire, anyway? He wasn’t a no-one anymore, a kid on the street whose own parents hadn’t even wanted him. He’d made a name for himself, constructed an empire, made something from nothing. He was Logan Monroe. He was someone.

Except maybe Claire could see through him for the impostor he was. When her blue gaze had settled on him tonight, he’d been unable to shake the sense that Claire had examined him, measured him, and ultimately found him lacking.

“Claire thinks I’ll be a shitty father,” Logan found himself admitting. He reached down and tugged his shirt from his pants. Damn it, he was tired of being tucked and wrinkle free. “She said I don’t know how to care about people.”

“Crazy woman talk,” Derek advised sagely, popping the remainder of his pizza crust into his mouth. “Too much Dr. Phil . Trina used to pull that shit on me too.”

“Did you listen to her?” Logan asked, curious even though he didn’t know quite why.

Derek chased the pizza with a long swig of water, then gave Caesar a lengthy tummy rub before looking back up at Logan. “Honestly, Loge, I made a point of never being sober when she decided we should have ‘talks’.”

“Maybe that was part of your problem,” Logan couldn’t help but notice.

“Probably,” Derek agreed, sounding suddenly morose.

“That and my getting wasted and waking up in the wrong bed one too many times. And let’s not forget the boy toy she’s got now.

She told me no one stays married to a fuck-up.

” He sent Logan a self-mocking half-grin.

“See? Things could be much worse. You could be me.”

“It’s looking better from here, trust me.”

Logan’s stomach growled as he watched his friend pull another slice from the open pizza box on the coffee table.

He snatched one up before Derek ate the entire thing himself.

A bit of pepperoni grease oozed onto his white shirt, but Logan didn’t bother to try to clean the spot.

Oddly enough, the idea that he’d just ruined his shirt gave him some sort of perverse satisfaction.

“How would you feel if the woman carrying your baby would rather raise the kid on her own than tell you about it?” Logan asked Derek around a mouthful of pizza.

“I don’t know. Maybe relieved.” He passed a hand over his face. “I’m so fucked up that a kid has to be better off without me.”

“Bullshit,” Logan told him. “You’d be pissed.” He paused. “You’re not so fucked up.”

Derek gave him a look. “You don’t know half the shit I’ve done. But forget about me. You’ll be a terrific father, Loge.”

Logan expelled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Having someone’s vote of confidence, hell, having anyone’s, meant a lot to him.

He had to admit to himself that Claire’s lack of confidence in him had made him take a harder look at himself.

Damn if he didn’t dislike what he saw, didn’t agree with her in at least some small measure.

“What the hell does a kid who never had parents know about becoming one?” Logan shook his head, still uncertain of the situation. Uncertain of himself. “I mean, sometimes it’s all I can do to take care of Caesar and he’s pretty much self-sufficient.”

Having heard his name, the cat shifted a bit, glanced at Logan through one golden eye, and meowed his agreement. But, being a cat, he refused to move away from the hand rubbing his belly. Loyalty, after all, takes a backseat to comfort in the feline world.

“You know what it’s like to be without a father,” Derek quietly reminded him. “That’s all that matters.”

“You’re right.” Logan allowed himself to relax.

The faint stirring of a migraine began to pound inside his brain.

He mentally counted to ten, allowing his gaze to drift to the television.

A chuckle rose in his throat as Betty White’s perplexed face appeared on the screen.

“Christ. You’re watching The Golden Girls ? ”

His friend’s face turned the slightest bit pink. “It’s funny, Loge. Swear to God.”

“Uh-huh.” A full-fledged grin split Logan’s face. Wait until he told—

“Don’t you dare tell anyone,” Derek said, apparently sensing Logan’s frame of mind. “I’d hate to be forced to kick your ass.”

Logan’s grin grew wider. “I’d hate to have to pretend you have a chance of taking me. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to miss your show.”

“Oh you’re so damn funny.” Derek glared at him, but an answering grin tugged at his lips.

“It’s one of many talents,” Logan assured him.

Now this, he could handle. It was the good old days. Friends bickering good-naturedly. It used to be that way once, before careers, rehab, and now babies.

Logan had a persisting feeling that it would never quite be like that again.

Claire barely managed to clear the elevator doors the next morning before Jamie swooped down on her. She grabbed Claire’s arm with two hands and tugged her toward her office. Her pace proved entirely too fast for Claire this early in the morning.

Not only did Claire’s feet already hurt from her trendy yet torturous heels—thanks to water retainage, no doubt—she was also bleary-eyed and sluggish.

She’d crawled out of bed not forty-five minutes ago, and she already needed a nap.

Claire didn’t even know if her clothing matched, and she sure as heck wasn’t performing an early-morning sprint to her office.

She stopped, forcing Jamie to stop too. “Jamie, I don’t jog. At this point, I don’t even manage a brisk walk. So could you explain why you’re dragging me across the office?”

“The King’s on the warpath.” Jamie kept her voice to a whisper, her eyes darting around nervously. “And he’s been down here looking for you.”

Claire was nonplussed. “Then why are you taking me to my office? Don’t you think that’s an obvious place for him to find me?”

“I lied and told him you had a meeting with Liz from Creative.” Jamie tugged again. “He won’t be back for another fifteen minutes, at least. You know how much Liz loves to kiss his ass. We need to go to your office to talk.”

“We can’t talk here?” Claire glanced at the cubicles surrounding them. To her right, a man from accounting was studiously typing at his computer, while staring at them from behind thick, hideous glasses.