Fic: A Conversation a few days into a Heat Wave (R/LoVe)
Title: A Conversation a few days into a Heat Wave
Author:
spyhop
Pairing/Character: Logan, Veronica
Word Count: 3355
Rating: R (sexual situations, language)
Spoilers: All of series, Season 1,2,3
Disclaimer: I do not have any claim to the VM universe, I just miss it
Summary: More conversation from the future. Veronica rates Logan’s ass and overshares. The start of Junior Year at Hearst.
Author note: Takes place in the same AU as the Conversation a few days before Christmas and the Conversation a few days before Sophomore Year
They have avoided touching for a year and a half. Freshman year’s end to junior year’s beginning. They don’t always fight but they never enter a zone where an arm tap or even a light hug becomes vaguely comfortable, kisses hello are trouble. Their physical beings refuse to give up the intensity and both know volatile well enough not to tempt fate and themselves.
Neither is sure if it is death by inches or just a struggle for maturity
but they are really trying to be friends. And two or two and one half slipups notwithstanding, it is working. It’s nowhere close to satisfying or complete but both respect the other for the effort.
But even in Southern California a heat wave is unpredictable and once Veronica finds the picture and gladly obsesses over its contents there really is only one way for the spark to burn.
The thermometer has hovered about the 95-degree mark and this close to the shore that means apocalyptic. More than that it’s actually humid which is both disorienting and disheartening for a California girl.
Day six of the heat wave and the apartment is stifling. She should go out in search of air conditioning but the temperature and her mood have stolen her will to locomote. She’s stuck and sticky, shorts and a spaghetti strap tank just too much cotton, too much thread to bear on her skin. Tiny rivulets of sweat make their way continuously down her back, temples and, most irritatingly, behind her knees.
She’s sitting at the kitchen counter, where she has the best chance of catching a cross-breeze from the open windows. Luck is not with her as the air sluggishly and stubbornly refuses to cooperate in operation cool her the frak down.
Her laptop is open in front of her and an ancient fan wheezes and rotates in the living room. She isn’t happy with the new information the computer has given her so she’s going into its past. She’s bought a new backup drive which she has named Cuddles McDrooly. She’s trying to move her photos to this new archive while simultaneously editing and deleting.
The work photos are easy. She separates active cases from closed ones, saves those worth another look, sorts, files and renames. It’s repetitive and soothing. She can forget about the sweat and everything in her overheated brain.
Then she comes upon a series that leaves her uncomfortable in her skin for an entirely different reason.
They are taken at the Grande during an afternoon after they had both turned in long and taxing mid-term papers that would count dear to their final grades. She remembers being proud of him, all the time and hard work and the reward merely to produce words on paper. She regrets not risking embarrassment and saying it out loud.
She finds her favorite. In it he is facing away from her. His shoulder and hip right arm to the elbow lean flush against the doorway as he holds a phone to his right ear. His head is tilted, cradling the earpiece as he orders a late lunch for them. As a surprise, hidden under the tablecloth on an interior shelf, she’ll soon find butter pecan sundaes carefully preserved in overflowing crystal bowls of ice, a small sealed thermos of steamy butterscotch nestled alongside.
He’s wearing a soft grey long-sleeved thermal weave henley and although she can’t see it in the picture she knows all the front buttons are unbound, by her hand, leaving enough slack material that the sleeve floats down and around his left wrist.
Said wrist is jutting out by his hip, anchored by his thumb, as his fingers disappear around the front of his jeans. She pictures them warm and close tucked inside the pants, curved around his pelvic bone and skimming the impossibly soft skin there.
His left hip is cocked out in space, accommodating the sinuous curve of his body. His jeans frame and fall around his rear perfectly. They are his favorite Kasil jeans and although the price offends her practically she craves them. They emphasize the long and lean of leg with his left straight and his right bent to carelessly wrap one ankle about the other.
She stares at the picture for a good long while as an idea forms. She laughs, loud in the airless apartment and starts clicking. She’s never been to the Rate Your Ass site but since Dick is a charter member and Mac designed the interface she’s unworried about her ability to figure out the mechanics of nominating an ass for celebration.
She posts from one of her as-yet-unused addresses, created for future cases. She doesn’t try to hide her tracks because A. if asked Mac will certainly crack the trail and B. there is no way Logan won’t know the picture is hers. She takes the picture to Photoshop and darkens the hair and softens the background to preserve all anonymity. Then she posts with a plea to “Help me make this the #1 ASS. Check it out, it’s fully deserving of the title. Vote and comment please.”
Mission accomplished. Joke set. Game on. Whatever. Motive murky. Backsided compliment at best. Low blow at worst. Definitely something. She’s not sure of his reaction but in the heat and in her mind all she wants is the confrontation. Good, bad, but never indifferent, she’s craving a contact high.
The day it hits number one she picks up a celebratory crushed ice white chocolate mocha and takes Backup down to the beach with his favorite break in time to watch the sunset. It’s early September and the last of the wildfires has left enough ash and turbulence to embolden the pastel sunset with dark scarlet curlicues and violet arabesques.
She scans the parking lot for cars and the beach for pedestrians. Finding none, she slips the pitbull off leash and watches the run of crazed abandon down to the waves. She fixes her sunglasses securely about her face and climbs atop her truck’s hood, steeling herself against the engine’s warmth as she watches her dog and admires the horizon.
She shifts lazily as Backup goes still, pointing, of sorts, at a noise in the lot. A black Range Rover pulls alongside her and if wind fancied itself prophet howls would be heard.
Logan parks so that his passenger window is even with Veronica’s profile. And even though the window tint and the dark wraparound sunglasses and the fact that she stubbornly keeps her face toward the surf he can see the challenge in her eyes and the barely suppressed grin on her face.
He lowers the window and turns down the radio so that Jack Johnson is just a shimmer of sound, easy notes and mellow vibe melding seamlessly with the sounds of the waves and gulls.
Logan turns the key to accessory and maneuvers his way into the opposite seat. He plays her game and, too, studies the horizon as zealously as any sailor before entrusting his soul to the whims of the ocean.
“You could have just called,” he says.
No reaction. Well no verbal reaction. His voice soft and gravelly, mumbles and rumbles its way along her ear and around her neck causing the slightest raise in her eyebrows and a small dry swallow.
Veronica still looks toward the sand but has no idea where her dog is.
Logan tries again.
“Great day for my ass,” he says loudly.
This brings laughter. Long whooping, hiccupping sobs of laughter, bubbling up from unknown depths and awakening muscles long unused. The laughing is joyous, raucous, crazy and unwarranted really, but still necessary and welcome to a girl long denying herself the truth. The truth that given anything from the tragic to the ridiculous, from the mundane to the heinous, from fire to ice and everything in between, this boy, this exact one, is the one she needs by her side.
And also true, she sees now, is he knows it, has always known it and, if she can manage to let him, will always know it.
She’s always been the one to bolt, the one to believe the worst, the one that gets out before the fallout. He makes his mistakes, fashions his atonement, weathers it, takes the blame and somehow stays. He’s the hero. She just never gave him his proper title.
Her laughter slowly subsides and she notes with relief that Backup has jumped into Logan’s car and is comically lounging on his lap as both males study her with amusement and confusion.
She sits up and then slides onto her stomach so that she can look directly into Logan’s eyes as she rests her elbows on the truck and cradles her head in her hands. It’s deliberately cute and she can’t help smiling as she removes her shades. She head tilts and he laughs.
She speaks and her voice breaks on his name, “Logan. You’re the hero.”
She knows he understands these certain words; some of the many they’ve used between them. At first to tease, then to hurt, then to heat, then to still and hurt again; it is always words. And as long as they’re talking they’re hoping. It’s only when they stop trying to cause the reaction in the other that it will be over.
And then Veronica laughs again. Because Logan, the king of zing, the headmaster of snark, the man with a wit like Indy’s whip, is speechless. He’s touched and shocked because to be put in company with Veronica’s other hero is unthinkable.
His face tenses with the need to acknowledge her statement, as close to an “I love you” as any “yeah” issued under duress. He can’t figure out exactly how to respond and he’s saved from having to by her smile. He gets it, she knows it, it’s enough.
She continues to smile as she turns around to study the sunset once again. The sun is very low on the horizon and ten minutes should see it sunk. Logan grins. He and Veronica are unusually proficient at masking the gut wrenchingly serious with decidedly casual. Hiding or shielding? Probably both he decides.
He channels both snark and indignation as he asks, “How exactly does that picture tie into this epiphany?”
“Your ass showed me the light,” she crows, “Maybe it has healing powers; you should take it on a philanthropic tour.”
“Charity? You always said I should go pro,” he reminds, drily.
“Mmmm,” is her succinct response.
“But now you’re thinking ‘Share the ass, save the world?’” he says.
“I’m not sure I could share that much,” Veronica says, her voice softer, her eyes studying his profile.
“Yet you begged a #1 ASS rating for me,” he says.
“The only two people who could positively ID that gorgeous boy are right here,” she states emphatically, “It was anonymous, not really sharing. And I hardly begged, those people knew their king when they saw him.” She sniffs in mock exasperation and then starts giggling.
He joins in her laughter and asks one more pressing question, “Exactly where do you keep that picture of me. I’d never seen it.”
Her hesitation is momentary but he seizes on it.
“What were you doing with that photo Ms. Mars?” he asks wickedly.
She swallows and explains, “I was consolidating files.”
“That what you’re calling it nowadays?” he says as he smirks at her resultant blush. Point to Ass, he thinks, and then laughs.
She feels her blush and hears his knowing laugh and plots revenge.
“Oh that picture?” she says, and then drops her voice a register, “For consolidating files? I do so much better than that.”
She continues with his full attention, “I mean the photo is literally chart topping but it doesn’t do the boy justice in the least.”
Non committal grunt issues from the boy. One eyebrow quirks in challenge.
“No,” Veronica continues, “When I see that boy, he turns around. And everything else just fades away. There’s nothing but the look in his eye, the warmth from his skin and the need to remember to breathe.”
“He looks at me and I’m holding the camera guiltily, because I know he has been hurt by picture taking,” she says, her voice soft and compelling, “I swallow and hope he knows it’s just an excuse to stare at him.”
“I think he does know because he takes three steps toward me and the camera is on the floor,’” she continues, “His hands are on my face and hip and my shirt is sliding over my ribs.”
“His fingers are gliding over my skin and the heat from the friction is nothing compared to the temperature shifts inside me as I become both light-headed and heavy-eyed,” she says, “He has to hold me up as I try to press as much of me as possible against him.”
“The tips of his fingers grip and release my side before taking the shirt completely off,” she says, “And then they’re back swirling and teasing at my collarbone, against my neck and then holding my head as you just start to kiss me.”
The change from “him” to “you” is electric within Logan’s body and he experiences his own temperature change as his jeans are suddenly tight and one hand kneads his neck and the other stretches out against the top of his thigh.
Veronica rolls her head to the side stretching her neck and shifting her chest and body. She’s on her side with one knee tucked up and one sliding over the side of the vehicle. One of her hands is under her cheek and the other rests lightly on her stomach. Logan can’t take his eyes off of her.
Her eyes are on his as he takes in her relaxed pose. Once his eyes make it to her face she smiles and says, “Hi.”
He stutters out a strangled laugh and says, “Hey, yourself.”
The sun has disappeared beneath the line of surf and sky and the shadows add resonance to Veronica’s next question, “Do you want to know what I really miss?”
The afternoon’s swoops of subject and tone have so looped Logan that he has no idea what sort of answer awaits and so he does.
“I miss your eyes. I see them everyday, because I’ve come to see I can’t stand not to,” she says, “But I’ve lost the right to really look into them, to watch you thinking, to feel you when you see me, to really know you.”
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her arms out, “All the heat has me in definite overshare mode.”
She leaves him breathless. Vulnerable, sharing Veronica is one to be treasured but at the same time he hears more than wistfulness in her answer. If he chooses not to push her he has to decide between the heavy and the light response here.
He goes with the light and says, “Is there always so much introductory material when you’re -ahem- filing?”
She rises to the bait, answering, “Depends whether I’m going electronic or manual.” She sports both a sly look and definite blush.
“Electronic?” he repeats.
“Intimidated?” she answers.
He lets out a true laugh, inviting, and says, “Hell no. Bring it baby. I love power tools.”
Eyes widen as she grins. “It’s not that big,” she admits.
He replaces his grin with a serious face. “Please never say that to me again,” he begs.
They share an easy laugh and then sense another shift in tone. It’s quiet and getting darker, the heat seems to have broken as a cool breeze travels in from the ocean.
Logan leans into his backseat and comes out with a jacket. He leans up and out of his window to fling it over Veronica’s body. She takes it gratefully and snuggles into its scent as much as its cover.
“Thanks,” she says. She sees it is the jacket she gave him last Christmas and she’s sure the moisture in her eyes is just from the chill in the air.
“What do you want Veronica?” he asks.
She swipes at her eyes as she says saucily, “Nothing you can’t handle repeatedly, in the same night even.”
“Veronica?” he questions, a plea to get her back on his topic and his attempt to suss out what he’s hearing beneath her words.
She takes a deep breath and says quickly, as if she might convince herself to stop, “A date Logan. Not a friends thing, not a remain interested in your life but maintain enough distance to staunch the pain. But a date with all the implications and ramifications, a date with you - that is what I want.”
She pauses to listen to him breathe and then continues, “But I know it’s been a long time and we’ve created something workable. So I guess what I want first is to know what you want?”
He answers unexpectedly, “It’s not the heat. Not only. What’s going on in there?” He taps his head and points to hers for emphasis. He is far from immune to her pleading but he is determined to have as many facts as possible before his inevitable surrender.
She half smiles, she knew he’d know there had to be a big brain pain catalyst to her free and easy sharing. She’s half impressed and half insulted that he is able to keep digging for information around all of her purposeful innuendo.
She sits up, wrapping her arms around her knees. She looks small and barricaded as opposed to her relaxed lounging of the past thirty minutes.
It’s a minute before she speaks. “Mom - Lianne,” she says, self-correcting automatically, “I think she’s renting an apartment near Santa Barbara.”
She looks at him and he nods.
“I have these programs that check for bits of information about her and there’s been a check on what I think is her credit by an apartment complex in Goleta,” she says, “I can’t be totally sure because I haven’t positively linked the alias to her.”
Logan points his chin in the direction of the freeway. “I’ve got a full tank - four hours, you up for a road trip?”
She smiles and swings her legs down the side of the truck.
“No but thanks,” she says, “I think I’m going to let this lead go.” Her facial expression lets him know that she is as surprised as he is. “Santa Barbara is nice. I hope that Evelyn McCain gets the apartment.”
Both know it’s not forgiveness exactly, but Veronica isn’t going to interfere. It’s a step.
He smiles up at her. He sees cheeks red and face flushed from all the confessions and her unwrapping from a jacket that’s more an artwork of love than a piece of clothing and he thinks that all they need is time and maybe another heat wave and definitely more talk about filing.
She bounces lightly down to the ground and hands him the jacket through his window. “Thanks for listening,” she says as her fingers bump his briefly under the leather.
She turns and pulls open her truck door. She seats herself in the driver’s seat as she hears the Range Rovers ignition catch and its engine rumble. She looks out her window as Logan reverses so he can see her.
“About that date,” he begins, and Veronica holds her breath, “I’m going to call you. And I’m going to ask you to dinner. And I’m going to pick you up and make nice with your Dad. And I’m going to be thinking about kissing you goodnight. And I’m going to think about it until it happens.”
He stops to smile at her and look at her and let her look at him.
Then he says, “So don’t lose your phone, okay?”
She grins and reflexively touches it on her dashboard. “Okay.”
She starts the SUV and then suddenly remembers. She has a moment of anxiety and guilt. She looks over to see Logan grinning.
“Don’t worry, Backup is asleep in my backseat,” Logan says, “I’ll follow you home. He’s too big a baby to move twice.”
She laughs and pulls out off the lot.
She drives down streets so familiar that most of her attention is focused on a truck, two headlights and a smiling boy in her rearview mirror.
Author:
spyhop
Pairing/Character: Logan, Veronica
Word Count: 3355
Rating: R (sexual situations, language)
Spoilers: All of series, Season 1,2,3
Disclaimer: I do not have any claim to the VM universe, I just miss it
Summary: More conversation from the future. Veronica rates Logan’s ass and overshares. The start of Junior Year at Hearst.
Author note: Takes place in the same AU as the Conversation a few days before Christmas and the Conversation a few days before Sophomore Year
They have avoided touching for a year and a half. Freshman year’s end to junior year’s beginning. They don’t always fight but they never enter a zone where an arm tap or even a light hug becomes vaguely comfortable, kisses hello are trouble. Their physical beings refuse to give up the intensity and both know volatile well enough not to tempt fate and themselves.
Neither is sure if it is death by inches or just a struggle for maturity
but they are really trying to be friends. And two or two and one half slipups notwithstanding, it is working. It’s nowhere close to satisfying or complete but both respect the other for the effort.
But even in Southern California a heat wave is unpredictable and once Veronica finds the picture and gladly obsesses over its contents there really is only one way for the spark to burn.
The thermometer has hovered about the 95-degree mark and this close to the shore that means apocalyptic. More than that it’s actually humid which is both disorienting and disheartening for a California girl.
Day six of the heat wave and the apartment is stifling. She should go out in search of air conditioning but the temperature and her mood have stolen her will to locomote. She’s stuck and sticky, shorts and a spaghetti strap tank just too much cotton, too much thread to bear on her skin. Tiny rivulets of sweat make their way continuously down her back, temples and, most irritatingly, behind her knees.
She’s sitting at the kitchen counter, where she has the best chance of catching a cross-breeze from the open windows. Luck is not with her as the air sluggishly and stubbornly refuses to cooperate in operation cool her the frak down.
Her laptop is open in front of her and an ancient fan wheezes and rotates in the living room. She isn’t happy with the new information the computer has given her so she’s going into its past. She’s bought a new backup drive which she has named Cuddles McDrooly. She’s trying to move her photos to this new archive while simultaneously editing and deleting.
The work photos are easy. She separates active cases from closed ones, saves those worth another look, sorts, files and renames. It’s repetitive and soothing. She can forget about the sweat and everything in her overheated brain.
Then she comes upon a series that leaves her uncomfortable in her skin for an entirely different reason.
They are taken at the Grande during an afternoon after they had both turned in long and taxing mid-term papers that would count dear to their final grades. She remembers being proud of him, all the time and hard work and the reward merely to produce words on paper. She regrets not risking embarrassment and saying it out loud.
She finds her favorite. In it he is facing away from her. His shoulder and hip right arm to the elbow lean flush against the doorway as he holds a phone to his right ear. His head is tilted, cradling the earpiece as he orders a late lunch for them. As a surprise, hidden under the tablecloth on an interior shelf, she’ll soon find butter pecan sundaes carefully preserved in overflowing crystal bowls of ice, a small sealed thermos of steamy butterscotch nestled alongside.
He’s wearing a soft grey long-sleeved thermal weave henley and although she can’t see it in the picture she knows all the front buttons are unbound, by her hand, leaving enough slack material that the sleeve floats down and around his left wrist.
Said wrist is jutting out by his hip, anchored by his thumb, as his fingers disappear around the front of his jeans. She pictures them warm and close tucked inside the pants, curved around his pelvic bone and skimming the impossibly soft skin there.
His left hip is cocked out in space, accommodating the sinuous curve of his body. His jeans frame and fall around his rear perfectly. They are his favorite Kasil jeans and although the price offends her practically she craves them. They emphasize the long and lean of leg with his left straight and his right bent to carelessly wrap one ankle about the other.
She stares at the picture for a good long while as an idea forms. She laughs, loud in the airless apartment and starts clicking. She’s never been to the Rate Your Ass site but since Dick is a charter member and Mac designed the interface she’s unworried about her ability to figure out the mechanics of nominating an ass for celebration.
She posts from one of her as-yet-unused addresses, created for future cases. She doesn’t try to hide her tracks because A. if asked Mac will certainly crack the trail and B. there is no way Logan won’t know the picture is hers. She takes the picture to Photoshop and darkens the hair and softens the background to preserve all anonymity. Then she posts with a plea to “Help me make this the #1 ASS. Check it out, it’s fully deserving of the title. Vote and comment please.”
Mission accomplished. Joke set. Game on. Whatever. Motive murky. Backsided compliment at best. Low blow at worst. Definitely something. She’s not sure of his reaction but in the heat and in her mind all she wants is the confrontation. Good, bad, but never indifferent, she’s craving a contact high.
The day it hits number one she picks up a celebratory crushed ice white chocolate mocha and takes Backup down to the beach with his favorite break in time to watch the sunset. It’s early September and the last of the wildfires has left enough ash and turbulence to embolden the pastel sunset with dark scarlet curlicues and violet arabesques.
She scans the parking lot for cars and the beach for pedestrians. Finding none, she slips the pitbull off leash and watches the run of crazed abandon down to the waves. She fixes her sunglasses securely about her face and climbs atop her truck’s hood, steeling herself against the engine’s warmth as she watches her dog and admires the horizon.
She shifts lazily as Backup goes still, pointing, of sorts, at a noise in the lot. A black Range Rover pulls alongside her and if wind fancied itself prophet howls would be heard.
Logan parks so that his passenger window is even with Veronica’s profile. And even though the window tint and the dark wraparound sunglasses and the fact that she stubbornly keeps her face toward the surf he can see the challenge in her eyes and the barely suppressed grin on her face.
He lowers the window and turns down the radio so that Jack Johnson is just a shimmer of sound, easy notes and mellow vibe melding seamlessly with the sounds of the waves and gulls.
Logan turns the key to accessory and maneuvers his way into the opposite seat. He plays her game and, too, studies the horizon as zealously as any sailor before entrusting his soul to the whims of the ocean.
“You could have just called,” he says.
No reaction. Well no verbal reaction. His voice soft and gravelly, mumbles and rumbles its way along her ear and around her neck causing the slightest raise in her eyebrows and a small dry swallow.
Veronica still looks toward the sand but has no idea where her dog is.
Logan tries again.
“Great day for my ass,” he says loudly.
This brings laughter. Long whooping, hiccupping sobs of laughter, bubbling up from unknown depths and awakening muscles long unused. The laughing is joyous, raucous, crazy and unwarranted really, but still necessary and welcome to a girl long denying herself the truth. The truth that given anything from the tragic to the ridiculous, from the mundane to the heinous, from fire to ice and everything in between, this boy, this exact one, is the one she needs by her side.
And also true, she sees now, is he knows it, has always known it and, if she can manage to let him, will always know it.
She’s always been the one to bolt, the one to believe the worst, the one that gets out before the fallout. He makes his mistakes, fashions his atonement, weathers it, takes the blame and somehow stays. He’s the hero. She just never gave him his proper title.
Her laughter slowly subsides and she notes with relief that Backup has jumped into Logan’s car and is comically lounging on his lap as both males study her with amusement and confusion.
She sits up and then slides onto her stomach so that she can look directly into Logan’s eyes as she rests her elbows on the truck and cradles her head in her hands. It’s deliberately cute and she can’t help smiling as she removes her shades. She head tilts and he laughs.
She speaks and her voice breaks on his name, “Logan. You’re the hero.”
She knows he understands these certain words; some of the many they’ve used between them. At first to tease, then to hurt, then to heat, then to still and hurt again; it is always words. And as long as they’re talking they’re hoping. It’s only when they stop trying to cause the reaction in the other that it will be over.
And then Veronica laughs again. Because Logan, the king of zing, the headmaster of snark, the man with a wit like Indy’s whip, is speechless. He’s touched and shocked because to be put in company with Veronica’s other hero is unthinkable.
His face tenses with the need to acknowledge her statement, as close to an “I love you” as any “yeah” issued under duress. He can’t figure out exactly how to respond and he’s saved from having to by her smile. He gets it, she knows it, it’s enough.
She continues to smile as she turns around to study the sunset once again. The sun is very low on the horizon and ten minutes should see it sunk. Logan grins. He and Veronica are unusually proficient at masking the gut wrenchingly serious with decidedly casual. Hiding or shielding? Probably both he decides.
He channels both snark and indignation as he asks, “How exactly does that picture tie into this epiphany?”
“Your ass showed me the light,” she crows, “Maybe it has healing powers; you should take it on a philanthropic tour.”
“Charity? You always said I should go pro,” he reminds, drily.
“Mmmm,” is her succinct response.
“But now you’re thinking ‘Share the ass, save the world?’” he says.
“I’m not sure I could share that much,” Veronica says, her voice softer, her eyes studying his profile.
“Yet you begged a #1 ASS rating for me,” he says.
“The only two people who could positively ID that gorgeous boy are right here,” she states emphatically, “It was anonymous, not really sharing. And I hardly begged, those people knew their king when they saw him.” She sniffs in mock exasperation and then starts giggling.
He joins in her laughter and asks one more pressing question, “Exactly where do you keep that picture of me. I’d never seen it.”
Her hesitation is momentary but he seizes on it.
“What were you doing with that photo Ms. Mars?” he asks wickedly.
She swallows and explains, “I was consolidating files.”
“That what you’re calling it nowadays?” he says as he smirks at her resultant blush. Point to Ass, he thinks, and then laughs.
She feels her blush and hears his knowing laugh and plots revenge.
“Oh that picture?” she says, and then drops her voice a register, “For consolidating files? I do so much better than that.”
She continues with his full attention, “I mean the photo is literally chart topping but it doesn’t do the boy justice in the least.”
Non committal grunt issues from the boy. One eyebrow quirks in challenge.
“No,” Veronica continues, “When I see that boy, he turns around. And everything else just fades away. There’s nothing but the look in his eye, the warmth from his skin and the need to remember to breathe.”
“He looks at me and I’m holding the camera guiltily, because I know he has been hurt by picture taking,” she says, her voice soft and compelling, “I swallow and hope he knows it’s just an excuse to stare at him.”
“I think he does know because he takes three steps toward me and the camera is on the floor,’” she continues, “His hands are on my face and hip and my shirt is sliding over my ribs.”
“His fingers are gliding over my skin and the heat from the friction is nothing compared to the temperature shifts inside me as I become both light-headed and heavy-eyed,” she says, “He has to hold me up as I try to press as much of me as possible against him.”
“The tips of his fingers grip and release my side before taking the shirt completely off,” she says, “And then they’re back swirling and teasing at my collarbone, against my neck and then holding my head as you just start to kiss me.”
The change from “him” to “you” is electric within Logan’s body and he experiences his own temperature change as his jeans are suddenly tight and one hand kneads his neck and the other stretches out against the top of his thigh.
Veronica rolls her head to the side stretching her neck and shifting her chest and body. She’s on her side with one knee tucked up and one sliding over the side of the vehicle. One of her hands is under her cheek and the other rests lightly on her stomach. Logan can’t take his eyes off of her.
Her eyes are on his as he takes in her relaxed pose. Once his eyes make it to her face she smiles and says, “Hi.”
He stutters out a strangled laugh and says, “Hey, yourself.”
The sun has disappeared beneath the line of surf and sky and the shadows add resonance to Veronica’s next question, “Do you want to know what I really miss?”
The afternoon’s swoops of subject and tone have so looped Logan that he has no idea what sort of answer awaits and so he does.
“I miss your eyes. I see them everyday, because I’ve come to see I can’t stand not to,” she says, “But I’ve lost the right to really look into them, to watch you thinking, to feel you when you see me, to really know you.”
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her arms out, “All the heat has me in definite overshare mode.”
She leaves him breathless. Vulnerable, sharing Veronica is one to be treasured but at the same time he hears more than wistfulness in her answer. If he chooses not to push her he has to decide between the heavy and the light response here.
He goes with the light and says, “Is there always so much introductory material when you’re -ahem- filing?”
She rises to the bait, answering, “Depends whether I’m going electronic or manual.” She sports both a sly look and definite blush.
“Electronic?” he repeats.
“Intimidated?” she answers.
He lets out a true laugh, inviting, and says, “Hell no. Bring it baby. I love power tools.”
Eyes widen as she grins. “It’s not that big,” she admits.
He replaces his grin with a serious face. “Please never say that to me again,” he begs.
They share an easy laugh and then sense another shift in tone. It’s quiet and getting darker, the heat seems to have broken as a cool breeze travels in from the ocean.
Logan leans into his backseat and comes out with a jacket. He leans up and out of his window to fling it over Veronica’s body. She takes it gratefully and snuggles into its scent as much as its cover.
“Thanks,” she says. She sees it is the jacket she gave him last Christmas and she’s sure the moisture in her eyes is just from the chill in the air.
“What do you want Veronica?” he asks.
She swipes at her eyes as she says saucily, “Nothing you can’t handle repeatedly, in the same night even.”
“Veronica?” he questions, a plea to get her back on his topic and his attempt to suss out what he’s hearing beneath her words.
She takes a deep breath and says quickly, as if she might convince herself to stop, “A date Logan. Not a friends thing, not a remain interested in your life but maintain enough distance to staunch the pain. But a date with all the implications and ramifications, a date with you - that is what I want.”
She pauses to listen to him breathe and then continues, “But I know it’s been a long time and we’ve created something workable. So I guess what I want first is to know what you want?”
He answers unexpectedly, “It’s not the heat. Not only. What’s going on in there?” He taps his head and points to hers for emphasis. He is far from immune to her pleading but he is determined to have as many facts as possible before his inevitable surrender.
She half smiles, she knew he’d know there had to be a big brain pain catalyst to her free and easy sharing. She’s half impressed and half insulted that he is able to keep digging for information around all of her purposeful innuendo.
She sits up, wrapping her arms around her knees. She looks small and barricaded as opposed to her relaxed lounging of the past thirty minutes.
It’s a minute before she speaks. “Mom - Lianne,” she says, self-correcting automatically, “I think she’s renting an apartment near Santa Barbara.”
She looks at him and he nods.
“I have these programs that check for bits of information about her and there’s been a check on what I think is her credit by an apartment complex in Goleta,” she says, “I can’t be totally sure because I haven’t positively linked the alias to her.”
Logan points his chin in the direction of the freeway. “I’ve got a full tank - four hours, you up for a road trip?”
She smiles and swings her legs down the side of the truck.
“No but thanks,” she says, “I think I’m going to let this lead go.” Her facial expression lets him know that she is as surprised as he is. “Santa Barbara is nice. I hope that Evelyn McCain gets the apartment.”
Both know it’s not forgiveness exactly, but Veronica isn’t going to interfere. It’s a step.
He smiles up at her. He sees cheeks red and face flushed from all the confessions and her unwrapping from a jacket that’s more an artwork of love than a piece of clothing and he thinks that all they need is time and maybe another heat wave and definitely more talk about filing.
She bounces lightly down to the ground and hands him the jacket through his window. “Thanks for listening,” she says as her fingers bump his briefly under the leather.
She turns and pulls open her truck door. She seats herself in the driver’s seat as she hears the Range Rovers ignition catch and its engine rumble. She looks out her window as Logan reverses so he can see her.
“About that date,” he begins, and Veronica holds her breath, “I’m going to call you. And I’m going to ask you to dinner. And I’m going to pick you up and make nice with your Dad. And I’m going to be thinking about kissing you goodnight. And I’m going to think about it until it happens.”
He stops to smile at her and look at her and let her look at him.
Then he says, “So don’t lose your phone, okay?”
She grins and reflexively touches it on her dashboard. “Okay.”
She starts the SUV and then suddenly remembers. She has a moment of anxiety and guilt. She looks over to see Logan grinning.
“Don’t worry, Backup is asleep in my backseat,” Logan says, “I’ll follow you home. He’s too big a baby to move twice.”
She laughs and pulls out off the lot.
She drives down streets so familiar that most of her attention is focused on a truck, two headlights and a smiling boy in her rearview mirror.