Blame It On The Cowboy. Delores Fossen

seconds. If he’d had those seconds, he could have called the ambulance sooner.

      He could have saved them.

      But he hadn’t then. And he didn’t now in the dream.

      Logan chased away the images, and with his head still groggy, he did what he always did after the nightmare. He rewrote it. He got to his parents and stopped them from dying.

      Every time except when it had really mattered, Logan saved them.

      * * *

      LOGAN WISHED HE could shoot out the sun. It was creating lines of light on each side of the curtains, and those lines were somehow managing to stab through his closed eyelids. That was probably because every nerve in his head and especially his eyelids were screaming at him, and anything—including the earth’s rotation—added to his pain.

      He wanted to ask himself: What the hell have you done?

      But he knew. He’d had sex with a woman he didn’t know. A woman who wore turtle T-shirts and had tattoos. He’d learned one of the tattoos, a rose, was on Julia’s right breast. The other was on her lower stomach. Those were the things Logan could actually remember.

      That, and the sex.

      Not mind-numbing but rather more mind-blowing. Julia clearly didn’t have any trouble being wild and spontaneous in bed. It was as if she’d just studied a sex manual and wanted to try every position. Thankfully, despite the Scotch, Logan had been able to keep up—literally.

      Not so much now, though.

      If the fire alarm had gone off and the flames had been burning his ass, he wasn’t sure he would be able to move. Julia didn’t have that problem, though. He felt the mattress shift when she got up. Since it was possible she was about to rob him, Logan figured he should at least see if she was going after his wallet, wherever the heck it was. But if she robbed him, he deserved it. His life was on the fast track to hell, and he’d been the one to put it in the handbasket.

      At least he hadn’t been so drunk that he’d forgotten to use condoms. Condoms that Julia had provided, so obviously she’d been ready for this sort of thing.

      Julia made a soft sound of discomfort. He hoped it wasn’t from the rough sex because he got a sudden flash of himself tying her hands to the bedposts with the sheets. It’d been Julia’s idea.

      And it’d been a darn good one.

      Ditto for her idea of tying him up, too. He wasn’t one to add some kink to sex, but for a little while it had gotten his mind off Helene and what he’d seen in her office.

      Clearly, he hadn’t known Helene at all.

      Logan heard some more stirring around, and this time the movement was very close to him. Just in case Julia turned out to be a serial killer, he decided to risk opening one eye. And he nearly jolted at the big green eyeball staring back at him. Except it wasn’t a human eye. It was on her turtle shirt.

      If Julia felt the jolt or saw his one-eyed opening, she didn’t say anything about it. She gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek, moved away, turning her back to him, and Logan watched as she stooped down and picked up his jacket. So, not a serial killer but rather just a thief, after all. But she didn’t take anything out.

      She put something in the pocket.

      Logan couldn’t tell what it was exactly. Maybe her number. Which he would toss first chance he got. But if so, he couldn’t figure out why she just hadn’t left it on the bed.

      Julia picked up her purse, hooking it over her shoulder, and without even glancing back at him, she walked out the door. Strange, since this was her room. Maybe she was headed out to get them some coffee. If so, that was his cue to dress and get the devil out of there before she came back.

      Easier said than done.

      His hair hurt.

      He could feel every strand of it on his head. His eyelashes, too. Still, Logan forced himself from the bed, only to realize the soles of his feet hurt, as well. It was hard not to identify something on him that didn’t hurt so he quit naming parts and put on his boxers and jeans. Then he had a look at what Julia had put in his pocket next to the box with the engagement ring.

      A gold watch.

      Not a modern one. It was old with a snap-up top that had a crest design on it. The initials BWS had been engraved in the center of the crest.

      The inside looked just as expensive as the gold case except for the fact that the watch face crystal inside was shattered. Even though he knew little about antiques, Logan figured it was worth at least a couple hundred dollars.

      So why had Julia put it in his pocket?

      Since he was a skeptic, his first thought was that she might be trying to set him up, to make it look as if he’d robbed her. But Logan couldn’t imagine why anyone would do that unless she was planning to try to blackmail him with it.

      He dropped the watch on the bed and finished dressing, all the while staring at it. He cleared out some of the cotton in his brain and grabbed the hotel phone to call the front desk. Someone answered on the first ring.

      “I’m in room...” Logan had to check the phone. “Two-sixteen, and I need to know...” He had to stop again and think. “I need to know if Julia is there in the lobby. She left something in the room.”

      “No, sir. I’m afraid you just missed her. But checkout isn’t until noon, and she said her guest might be staying past then so she paid for an extra day.”

      “Uh, could you tell me how to spell Julia’s last name? I need to leave her a note in case she comes back.”

      “Oh, she said she wouldn’t be coming back, that this was her goodbye party. And as for how to spell her name, well, it’s Child, just like it sounds.”

      Julia Child?

      Right. Obviously, the clerk wasn’t old enough or enough of a foodie to recognize the name of the famous chef.

      “I don’t suppose she paid with a credit card?” Logan asked.

      “No. She paid in cash and then left a prepaid credit card for the second night.”

      Of course. “What about an address?” Logan kept trying.

      “I’m really not supposed to give that out—”

      “She left something very expensive in the room, and I know she’ll want it back.”

      The guy hemmed and hawed a little, but he finally rattled off, “221B Baker Street, London, England.”

      That was Sherlock Holmes’s address.

      Logan groaned, cursed. He didn’t bother asking for a phone number because the one she left was probably for Hogwarts. He hung up and hurried to the window, hoping he could catch a glimpse of her getting into a car. Not that he intended to follow her or anything, but if she was going to blackmail him, he wanted to know as much about her as possible.

      No sign of her, but Logan got a flash of something else. A memory.

      Shit.

      They’d taken pictures.

      Or at least Julia had with the camera on her phone. He remembered nude selfies of them from the waist up. At least he hoped it was from the waist up.

      Yeah, that trip to hell in a handbasket was moving even faster right now.

      Logan threw on the rest of his clothes, already trying to figure out how to do damage control. He was the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company. He was the face that people put with the family business, and before last night he’d never done a thing to tarnish the image of McCord Cattle Brokers.

      He couldn’t say that any longer.

      He was in such a hurry to rush out the door that he nearly missed the note on the desk. Maybe it was the start of the blackmail. He snatched it up, steeling himself