Page 6 of Perfect Persuasion (Love’s Second Chance #2)

His early life hadn’t been easy, or happy, or even particularly good.

Logan didn’t know who his parents were, only knew that they hadn’t wanted him.

He’d been pawned off onto a line of foster parents, some caring, others more interested in the extra cash he brought them each month.

At fourteen he’d run away, living on the streets for a year, until an elderly woman had taken him into her home.

Eunice Withers had literally saved Logan’s life.

She’d put him through college and given him the financial backing to build LM.

Eunice had been the only person to ever tell him that she loved him.

She’d died of heart failure eight years ago, and sometimes Logan forgot just how much he missed her. Forgot just how much it meant to have someone close their arms around him, to say those words and mean them. I love you.

Inexplicably, he thought of Claire. His house was so empty, so cavernous. A maid came to clean it three times a week, but beyond that, Logan was entirely alone, with the exception of his cat, Caesar. But Logan was growing weary of watching late-night TV with a fat, purring feline.

Was Claire lonesome too, by herself in her sister’s house?

She didn’t even have a cat to keep her company.

Of course, she did have an ex-husband. She’d probably called him the second Logan’s ass cleared her doorway and the two of them were necking right now while Logan was mooning over her in his car. God, he was pathetic.

Disgusted with himself, he hit the garage door opener and drove inside.

He killed his engine and got out of the car when the eerie sensation that he wasn’t alone hit him.

He spun around, tensed and ready for an assailant.

But it wasn’t an assailant standing behind him.

It was Derek Shaw, one of Logan’s oldest, most trusted friends.

“How goes it, Monroe?” Derek asked, his voice sounding a little odd, discordant almost.

“Derek.” Logan caught his friend up in as manly a hug as they could both muster without feeling as though they had sacrificed their masculine pride. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry.” Derek cocked his head to the side, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his pants. “I followed your car into the garage. Hope you don’t mind. This place almost has tighter security than I used to have.”

Logan frowned, wondering how in the hell Derek had gotten there. “Where’s your car?”

“Not here.”

A familiar dread sank into his gut. “Come inside.”

They headed into the house and passed through a mud room which led directly to Logan’s enormous kitchen. He flicked on a light and popped open the refrigerator, looking at Derek over his shoulder. “Need a drink?”

“Thanks, but no,” Derek said, casting him a grin that looked more weary than anything else. “Unless you have bottled water?”

Logan rummaged around on the shelves, found a bottle of spring water, and tossed it to Derek before pulling out one for himself.

He’d been about to grab a beer given the night he’d had, but he didn’t want to make Derek uncomfortable by drinking in front of him.

From the looks of things, Derek had just emerged from another extended stay at the Starling Foundation, a nearby rehabilitation center.

It would explain why his friend had gone radio silent in the last few months and hadn’t returned a single call, text, or email.

Logan had come to know the clues well enough by now.

“I took a taxi here from Starling, but you weren’t home, so I decided to wait. Hell,” Derek laughed, a bit uncomfortably, “it’s not like I have anywhere to go. I didn’t want to check into a hotel and have the paparazzi up my ass.”

Logan unscrewed his water bottle. “You know you’re always welcome here.”

Derek seemed to cave in, sinking onto a barstool that flanked the kitchen island.

Logan didn’t think he’d ever seen his friend look so tired or so depressed.

And he’d seen a hell of a lot over the years with Derek.

They’d been foster brothers here and there and had forged a bond that not even time or Derek’s celebrity could break.

“Trina wants a divorce,” Derek said finally.

“Christ, I’m sorry,” Logan murmured, striding across the kitchen to take up residence on the stool next to his friend. “I know how much you love her.”

Derek’s eyes were tortured, matching the haggard purple half-moons beneath them.

“She’s screwing another man. I called to ask her to come pick me up at Starling and he answered.

She got on the phone and told me that it’s over.

Just like that. They just wrapped a movie together.

Hell, what do I expect? Half of me hates her, Loge, but the other half can’t blame her.

I’m a goddamn wreck. I haven’t had a decent role in the five years we’ve been together, and when I’m not in B-movies, I’m in fucking rehab. ”

“You’re not a wreck,” Logan denied, though in truth, he knew that Derek was in the midst of yet another downward spiral. This certainly wasn’t his first.

Derek Shaw had once been a Hollywood staple, a brand-name actor with looks that rivaled Brad Pitt’s.

But that had been before Derek had become jaded by the LA scene and addicted first to prescription drugs and then to alcohol.

Since his downfall, Derek had been in and out of rehab, reduced to small roles in box-office flops.

To make matters worse, his wife, Trina Wade, was the latest Hollywood leading lady.

Her movies turned to gold, while Derek’s continually sank like lead, sending him into depression and back into the dangerous cycle of addiction.

“How the hell did I get here?” Derek stared down into the contents of his water bottle as though he might find the answer there.

“Do you remember when we were young, Loge? We had dreams. You wanted an ad agency, I wanted to be an actor. It was a one-in-a-million shot of them coming true, but they did. Only I fucked mine up.”

“You’re too hard on yourself.” Logan paused, thinking that even though his dream had come to fruition, he still didn’t feel like it mattered. Not enough, anyway. “You’re thirty-four. You have all the time in the world to get to wherever you want to be.”

“Up until last night, I thought I wanted to be with my wife.” Derek laughed again, the sound impossibly bleak.

“She’s probably been screwing around the whole time we’ve been married.

To tell you the truth, I suspected it before, I just never wanted to believe it.

I mean, who wouldn’t cheat on a washed-up drunk who used to be a famous actor? ”

“Don’t beat yourself up.”

“That’s what somebody said to me at rehab,” Derek continued, peeling at the label on his water bottle.

“This woman came up to me and said, ‘Hey, aren’t you that guy who used to be in the movies?’ That’s who I am now, ‘that guy’.

Nobody even remembers my name. I’ve been in rehab so many times that the gossip sites don’t even report it anymore. ”

“Then stop pitying yourself and start to do something about it,” Logan said bluntly. It was the self-pity that dragged Derek back down every time, and they both knew it.

“I keep thinking about Trina,” Derek said, sounding even more dejected than before. He tore the label in ragged horizontal strips that fell to the island’s polished marble surface.

Logan clapped his friend on the back, startling him out of his Evian bottle-induced reverie.

“Derek, I’m going to tell you something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time.

Five years, in fact. I never liked Trina, not from the moment I met her.

She was just another pretty face trying to hitch her wagon to a big-name star for her own publicity.

And it worked. She treated you like shit, and she never tried to help you battle your addictions.

The woman had you at clubs every night. What did she think would happen?

I’m not saying it’s her fault you fell off the wagon, but she could’ve been more supportive.

She was too damn busy trying to further her own career to give a shit about you. ”

“Funny you say that, Loge.” Derek shot him a half-smile.

“That’s what she told me on the phone, the part about not giving a shit about me, I mean.

I did love her though. At least I think I did.

To be honest, most of the time we were together, I was drunk or high on something. Things tend to blur after a while.”

“The hell with her,” Logan said, wishing he could follow his own advice and forget about Claire. “Did you eat supper yet?”

“Nope.” Derek tossed back the remainder of his water. “Order me a pizza?”

“You got it.” Logan headed for the telephone.

“Loge?”

Logan turned back to Derek in midstride, thinking again that his friend looked like total hell.

“Do you mind if I crash here for a while?”

Logan shook his head, a wry smile curving his lips. “This place has twenty-one goddamn rooms. You can stay forever, if you want.” God knew he would never be able to fill them all. At least with Derek here, things wouldn’t be quite so quiet.

And Logan wouldn’t feel quite so alone.