Explosive Engagement by LISA CHILDS Page A

Not love life. She wasn’t in love—no matter what she wanted her brothers to believe.
    Garek shuddered. “And I never will be. That’s one mistake I never intend to make.” He turned back toward Stacy with an unspoken plea softening his gaze. “Don’t make that mistake either, sis.”
    He only pulled out sis when he really wanted to get to her. It brought her back to when they were kids. And what he and Milek had done to protect her...
    “It’s too late,” she told him. She wasn’t in love but she’d committed to Mrs. Payne’s plan to protect Logan and to protect her brothers from themselves.
    “It is too late,” Logan said. “And it’s been a long day for Stacy.”
    “Because of you!” Garek said. “Because you crashed our dad’s funeral—because you put her in danger.”
    “He didn’t put me in danger,” Stacy said. But Garek had raised doubts in her mind...and she’d already had enough of those.
    “It’s been a long day,” Logan repeated as if no one else had spoken. “So I’m taking my fiancée home with me.”
    Garek reached for her arm again until Cujo growled, and he pulled back. “Don’t do this, Stace. Don’t you dare go anywhere with him!”
    But Logan was already leading her toward the SUV parked at the curb. Was her brother right? Was Logan actually the one who had put her in danger both at the cemetery and at her apartment?
    What would happen when she was alone with him? Would he finally exact his revenge? Would he kill her?

Chapter Six
    Stacy Kozminski was dead...to the world. She had fallen asleep in Logan’s SUV on the way to his house. So after checking to make certain there was no bomb on his kitchen table, he returned to his vehicle, unlocked it and opened the passenger door.
    Only Cujo lifted his head from the console. Stacy didn’t stir. Her upper body slumped over the seat belt, and her hair had fallen over her face. Fear clutched his heart in a tight fist. Had someone gotten to her without his realizing it? No shot had penetrated the windshield or side glass, though.
    And the doors had still been locked. No one had broken inside. They probably wouldn’t have dared with Cujo guarding her.
    Logan pushed her back against the seat and released the safety belt. Then he brushed her hair off her face and slid his fingers over her throat. Her pulse leaped beneath his fingertips as if she recognized his touch.
    Or maybe she’d mistaken him for someone else. For the friend who didn’t get along with Cujo. Boyfriend?
    “Good dog,” he praised the canine—for protecting her. Then he slid one arm underneath her knees and the other behind her back and lifted her from the seat. Just as she had against the safety belt, she slumped forward—against him. Her face settled into the crook of his neck and shoulder. She murmured and sighed, her breath tickling his throat and causing his skin to heat.
    And other parts of his body tensed...
    How could this woman affect him like this? They had spent the past fifteen years hating each other...or at least he’d thought he’d hated her.
    And not for the reason she and her brothers thought. He didn’t blame them for what their father had done. He blamed them for not accepting it and for continuing to support a killer. And he resented her blaming him for her father’s sentence and for making certain Patek Kozminski served it. Logan had only wanted justice for his father.
    She’d thought he’d wanted vengeance. And she hated him even more than he’d thought he’d hated her. Then she shifted in his arms, burrowing even closer against him—almost into him. But she probably didn’t know it was him.
    She slept deeply, her heavy breaths steadily whispering against his throat. Even when he shifted her in his arms in order to shoulder open the door to his house, she didn’t awaken. Or even murmur again.
    Neither did his whistle awaken her when he called for Cujo to jump out of the SUV and join them inside the house. With the dog