Page 34 of Perfect Persuasion (Love’s Second Chance #2)

There was a goddamn siren blaring in Logan’s ear.

Groggily, he swiped in the direction of the offending noise. The warm, silky texture of cat fur tickled his palm. The fog of sleep began clearing from his mind.

It wasn’t a siren, he realized. It was Caesar, making his Hungry Noise.

Logan forced his eyes open and glared at the cat. His head pounded furiously, the after-effects of one too many martinis last night. “Damn you, cat. You’re fat enough. Go back to sleep.”

Caesar glared back from narrowed, yellow-green eyes, unleashing another ungodly howl. A wave of cat breath washed over Logan’s face. The jackhammer inside his skull felt as if it was tearing his head apart.

“Christ.” Logan shoved Caesar from his pillow and the cat landed on his feet with a loud thump on the floor. “I’m calling the Humane Society. They’ve got a little cage with your name on it.”

Caesar emitted another wail of protest.

“Oh shut it,” Logan grumbled. “You know I’d never do that.”

Yet another meow sounded that could have traveled straight from the gates of hell.

Logan’s eyes even throbbed when he opened them.

Damn. Derek had flown out to LA on Wednesday to meet with his divorce attorneys and settle matters with Trina as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

With his friend gone, Logan had allowed himself to wallow in his own self-pity. And now he was paying the price.

Hangover.

He really hated that word, hated it almost as much as the word love, which was the cause of most hangovers anyway.

It sure as hell had been the cause of his.

But drinking himself into a state of oblivion hadn’t had its desired effect.

He still missed Claire like hell and he still wanted to crawl back to her on hands and knees.

The only thing it had succeeded in doing was giving him a bastard of a headache.

Caesar meowed loudly again, jumping back up onto the bed and landing on Logan’s stomach, knocking the wind from his lungs. Was it just him, or had his cat been dramatically putting on weight in recent weeks? God, it felt like it.

“Fine,” Logan ground out, scratching Caesar under his chin. “What time is it, anyway?”

He had to pick up Derek at the airport at one o’clock this afternoon, and before he did that, he had to remove the vodka he’d smuggled into his house in Derek’s absence.

This early after detox, Logan didn’t like to offer Derek any temptation.

God knew how easy it had been for Derek to fall off the wagon in record time in the past.

Shit. His alarm clock read twelve-thirty. No wonder Caesar was meowing like he was on the verge of death by starvation. Logan normally fed him by eight. Double shit. He’d have to rush like hell to the airport now.

Head still pounding, he hefted Caesar from his chest and threw back the covers.

Caesar unleashed a loud meow of protest.

“Damn it, cat.” Logan rushed to his closet, tossed on a pair of pants and a button-down shirt, not bothering to see if they matched. “I’ll feed you in a minute.” Raking a hand through his hair, he rushed from his bedroom and headed downstairs.

Caesar raced ahead of him, practically catapulting himself down the winding staircase in an effort to reach the kitchen first. The click click of the cat’s claws on the tile floor could be heard before Logan made it to the end of the hallway.

Apparently, Caesar had forgotten in his eagerness to reach his bowl that it was still empty.

Cats. Logan began to shake his head, but thought better of it as his headache asserted its presence once more. Loud purring echoed in the silence of the house.

“You really are a dumb bastard, aren’t you?” Logan asked with a laugh, rounding the bend in the hallway and entering the kitchen.

Seated at the island, a sandwich before him on a plate, was Derek. He looked up at Logan’s arrival. “Yes, I am.”

Logan swore. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here? Your plane didn’t even land yet.”

Caesar leapt up on a barstool, then the island, rubbing himself insanely against Derek’s arm. Logan glared at the cat before returning his attention to his friend.

“Actually,” Derek said around a mouthful of sandwich, “it did. I took a redeye flight—finished up things sooner than I thought, but I couldn’t stay. A taxi brought me home.”

“Shit.” Logan raked a hand through his hair again. “Why’d you take a taxi? Now every tabloid photographer on the East Coast is going to be lurking in my bushes.”

Derek frowned. “I tried calling, but you didn’t answer. If the tabloid thing bothers you, I can leave. Now that I’ve officially filed for divorce, they’ll be crawling all over me. They always want fresh blood.”

“No.” Logan crossed the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and pulled out the cat food bag. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. You know you can stay here as long as you want, even if I can’t go outside without being mugged by the paparazzi.”

“It won’t be that bad.” Derek’s tone was grim. “I’m washed up, so not that many will even bother with me. It’s Trina that they’ll be following, especially now that she’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Logan paused in the midst of pouring cat food into Caesar’s bowl. “Is it yours?”

“No,” Derek hastened to assure him, a bitter twist to his lips, “not mine. It’s Billy’s. Turns out they’ve been screwing longer than I thought.”

“Hell.” Logan’s gut clenched at the naked pain on his friend’s face. This was the last thing Derek needed, the kind of news that could send him over the edge again. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Derek said determinedly, stroking Caesar’s back. “It’s water under the bridge. I just want to focus on getting my shit together now.” He paused. “Speaking of which, how goes it with you and Claire?”

Logan shook some more food into Caesar’s bowl, its rhythmic plink plink plink grating against his nerves. “It doesn’t go at all.”

“What do you mean?” Derek pried.

“I mean we’re done. Over. Finished.” He shoved the bag of cat food back into the cabinet with more force than necessary. It caught on a metal shish kabob skewer and tore, food raining out into the cabinet. “Damn it.”

“How can you be done?” Derek pressed. “You’re having a baby together.”

“We’ll be parents to the child, nothing to each other,” Logan said, forcing all emotion from his voice. He didn’t want anyone, not even Derek, to know just how much that thought was killing him inside.

“What? I thought you said you were going to fix things while I was gone.”

He had said as much, but that was before he actually thought the whole thing through and realized he and Claire were better off apart.

Logan loved her. She tolerated him. Besides, he would never be capable of completely opening up and giving her what she wanted, what she deserved.

All he succeeded in doing was making her miserable.

And he didn’t want to dwell on any of that. In fact, he wanted to ignore it all, with a desperation wrought by the raw emotions surging inside him.

“Goddamn it,” Logan burst out. “Stop asking me questions. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Derek countered. “Claire’s good for you. Why do you insist on keeping her at arm’s length?”

He started cleaning up the mess of spilled cat food, angrily stuffing it inside a trash bag.

“Just leave off.” Damn it, why was he constantly cleaning up messes he’d caused by his own carelessness?

All these messes seemed like mocking little metaphors of the one huge mess that was impossible to clean up. His life.

“Loge, when I got here this morning, I opened up your liquor cabinet,” Derek said quietly.

Logan shot his friend a startled glance, a sinking feeling crushing his gut. “Jesus, Derek, tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.” He paused. “But not because I didn’t want to. God knows that after being with Trina—after seeing her with him—I could use a drink more than ever. I didn’t do it because I’m finally beginning to realize that my addiction is destructive. What you’re doing right now is destructive too.”

Logan shook his head. “It’s totally different.

I’m trying to make my life easier, not harder.

Claire can’t stand me three quarters of the time.

I’m just the guy she slept with on the rebound who happened to get her knocked up in the process.

If I weren’t the father of her baby, you and I wouldn’t even be having this discussion. ”

“You’re looking at this all wrong, Loge.”

Logan looked up again and caught Derek in the act of slipping Caesar a hunk of his sandwich. “Damn it. That’s why he’s been getting so fat.”

Derek put on an air of innocence. “You’re trying to change the subject, Logan,” he pointed out. “And for your information, this is the first time I’ve ever given Caesar any people food.”

“Right.” Logan cleaned up the last few pieces of cat food and stood, tossing the trash bag aside. “Just do me a favor and let the whole Claire thing drop, okay?”

Derek nodded. “For now.”

“Forever.”

His friend just shrugged. “No can do. Forever’s a long time.”

Weeks went by. The leaves gave a final, fiery show before turning brown and falling from the trees.

The winds became harsh and cold, nipping Claire’s cheeks on her way to and from work.

Her belly grew into a firm, round ball. She could only see her toes by cocking her head to the side and craning her neck.

Claire pinned the November page of her Impressionist calendar to the refrigerator with a sigh.

In the upper right corner of the block for December first, she’d penned in a countdown to her due date.

Forty-nine days. Less than two months until Baby Thumper arrived.

Excitement fused with awe, washing over her as she looked at that simple number.

Forty-nine.

She couldn’t wait.