Simply Scandalous (Simply Series Book 2) by Carly Phillips (non fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

She clapped her weathered hands together. “Thank goodness.”

“Thank goodness what? Someone other than the judge is finally censoring your language?”

“Logan, I raised you, I love you, but you can be thick as a milkshake sometimes. Thank goodness you’re looking out for Catherine. If you don’t let me talk like that about her, I picked right, and it’s finally happened.”

“Your train of thought boggles the mind,” he muttered. “But I’ll bite. What’s finally happened?”

“You’ve fallen hard. I knew you would. Now, here’s the plan.” She talked fast, probably before he could interrupt. “When I realized you were tied up for two days, I took a few liberties.”

He shook his head. She was a whirlwind, and right now, his life was caught dead smack in the middle. Which reminded him. “We still haven’t talked about the closet incident.”

“Oh, I thought you and Catherine already taught me a lesson,” she muttered.

“So, you didn’t like being on the receiving end, did you? Now listen and understand. Much as I appreciate your intentions, your… meddling can’t go on. I’m thirty-one years old, Gran. Would you take it personally if I said butt out?”

“Of course not. But it’s too late for that. You need the scoop and I’m here to give it to you.”

“And I’m here listening.”

“You said at the party you wanted to make Catherine’s dreams come true. And before you ask how I know, I accidentally left the intercom on by the pool house where the bar was located,” she said, unable to meet his gaze.

He blinked hard. “You’re telling me you sat in the house and listened?” he asked, buying himself time to swallow his anger.

“Yes,” she admitted with embarrassment and shame in her tone.

Emma wasn’t malicious nor did she ever mean any harm. But the knowledge didn’t help right now. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, attempting to control his frustration.

The penalty for murder in this state wasn’t pretty, and even though this could be considered justifiable homicide, the jury might take exception to the fact that he’d strangled his eighty-year-old grandmother.

“I only needed to know if I chose right,” she said by way of explanation. “If you two hit it off. Heaven knows you’d never tell me the truth.”

“Only because you react… like this.” He balled his hands into tight fists. The thought of her invading his and Catherine’s privacy had him seeing red. “You might mean well, but you passed the bounds of common decency this time.”

“Actually, I know that, and I’m sorry.” She bowed her head. “But that heart attack scared me to death. Well, not literally, thank goodness, but it meant I had to see you settled down and happy before I passed on. Went to the great beyond. Well, you know what I mean.”

He did. And he understood. Her heart attack had taken years off his life as well. And the reason he let her get away with so much interfering was because he loved her and was grateful she was still around to meddle in his life.

But she couldn’t go to these extremes, not when Catherine was involved. “I already told you I won’t use Cat in any scheme to stop the judge. You should be ashamed of yourself. You claim to like this woman and you set her up, plan to use her…”

Emma rose to her feet, indignation in her posture and a determined look on her face. “I did no such thing.”

“Sit down, Gran.”

She lowered herself back into the booth.

“Well, I set her up with you, if that’s what you mean. But you should be grateful. As for using her, can I help it if her background will infuriate your father and thwart his mayoral plans? But that has nothing to do with why I brought you to the party. I wanted you to meet her. Period.”

“And if we didn’t hit it off?”

“I’d have backed off,” she said with the utmost sincerity.

Logan ran a hand through his hair. If the past two days of work hadn’t been enough, he now had this to contend with. “Then do it. Now.” He imposed as much authority into his tone as possible without being disrespectful to the woman he loved.

She patted his hand, much as she’d done when he was a child. Through the years, the gesture had been oddly comforting. But now it made him wary, and her next words proved his instincts were on target.

“There’s just one more tiny little thing.”

*     *     *

“It’s romantic, Cat.” Kayla beamed, and it wasn’t just the glow of pregnancy lighting her features.

Catherine knew her sister was thrilled by Logan’s daily gifts. No more than she was herself. She stared down at the three gifts laid out on the bed, finding herself at an uncustomary loss for words. Logan did that to her, she thought, warmth spreading through her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You wanted sincerity. Looks like he’s given it to you.”

Catherine nodded. A different box had arrived every day. A box of fairy dust on Tuesday. The card read, “To Make Your Dreams Come True.”

On Wednesday, a snow globe. To an outside observer, the gift held little meaning. But the scene inside depicted canoeing on the Charles River—and a gentle shake showered the boats in falling snow. Snow in the summertime. And she remembered the words on the card: “Miracles Do Happen.”

He was her miracle, and she was enveloped by the aching desire to feel his arms around her. Oh, he was good. The right gifts, the right words. A subtle, mental seduction, she thought. Did a man go to those lengths for one more night of sex?

Making love, her heart said. And that’s where they were headed if she went with him tonight. The third gift that arrived this morning was proof of that. He’d sent a playlist to her phone. The jazz music from the night they’d spent in each other’s arms and a text: “Until We Can Be Together Again.”

She touched her music app