Then again, if I really thought about it, more than likely Tommy had killed Elle’s sister and wanted me to spend my time chasing something that wasn’t there. He wanted me to lose my mind thinking about Elle with Michael and wonder if he might do to her what he’d done to his wife. That was much more his game than the fact that a woman had stolen his heart and he wanted to avenge her death. No, he knew that was more my thing.

Regardless, I needed to get back inside to talk to him. See what I could find out about this Priest, but Miles couldn’t make it happen. I guess Tommy had spent a good two days in the clinic, and the explanation that it was a self-inflicted injury wasn’t holding up well with the higher-ups.

The only lead Miles had on where the Priest was located was where the drug deals were taking place, and that turned out to be a dead end. The cokehead Miles had found pointed out three buildings on the waterfront where the deals might have gone down. They all looked alike. No specific location could be identified. Absolutely no fucking help at all.

I wanted more. I wanted to know who the Priest was because (A), if I provided that information, Blanchet would remove my father’s name from all of her files, and (B), now this was personal and I just fucking wanted to know.

The problem was that he was a ghost. The Priest was known on the street, but no one knew his true identity or where to find him.

It was early Saturday morning and Elle was trying really hard to make sure I stayed off the streets, so she’d asked me to help her do a few things before she opened the boutique. The ulterior motive was clear, but I didn’t care; I liked helping her and just being with her made me feel better. Besides, I’d already decided it was time to ask Declan and Miles for more help in finding the Priest.

As I glanced at her, I couldn’t help but feel she, too, had been preoccupied over the past two weeks. I could sense something more was on her mind that she wasn’t telling me. I took the last rung of the ladder and turned to her. “Well?” I asked, vowing to get to the heart of what was eating at her this weekend.

She raised a brow and pointed to the ladder behind me. “Do that again, will you?”

I laughed and for shits and giggles, played along and turned back. My cell vibrated in my pocket and I ignored it. The fun between us had all but been zapped with Killian’s death, but maybe this was the start of something even more. The flirtatious, sexy side I knew she had somewhere deep inside her was blossoming. And I really wanted to nurture what was emerging. Up on one rung, I twisted around. “You want me to go up and down the ladder so you can stare at my ass, don’t you?” I said coyly.

She flushed.

“Well?”

She stepped closer. “It is a great view from down here.”

Overjoyed, I yanked her to me and gently pulled her mouth to mine. “Answer me.”

Her body melded to mine instantly. “What was the question?” she asked, a little breathless.

Lip on lip, a gentle brush meant to be a small kiss. “You know what it was. Say yes,” I murmured with our mouths pressed together.

“Yes, I’ll go.” Her voice was low and I felt uncertainty in her tone.

I pulled back. Looked at her. Knew something was there. Waiting until tonight to talk about it sounded great in theory, but I couldn’t. “Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere?”

Elle took a deep breath and stepped off the ladder.

I followed.

She was wearing tight black skinny jeans, a gray sleeveless top, and a pair of boots. She looked sexy as fuck. “Logan,” she said quietly. “There’s something about myself I should have told you before we let things get so serious. But we went from zero to sixty and I never found the right time.”

My brow creased. “Okay.”

She drew in another breath.

My cell vibrated again, but I was too busy trying to untwist the knot that just formed in my gut to even think about answering it. “Hey, just tell me, because right now I’m thinking all kinds of weird shit, like maybe you have a husband out there and you want to go back to him.”

She shook her head and the corners of her mouth tugged up slightly.

“Phew, okay then, anything else I can handle.”

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. I can’t get pregnant.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I wasn’t sure what the correct response to that was. An “I’m pregnant” might have shocked the shit out of me, but an “I can’t get pregnant”? I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“Let me explain,” she added.

Good, because I was standing there dumbfounded.

She seemed a little lost, and the breath she sucked in tore at me.

“Take your time, Elle. I’m here when you’re ready.”

She blew out the breath she was holding. “Okay, I’m ready.”

I stepped a little closer.

She stopped me from getting too close. “When I was fifteen, my mother started to go into renal failure and needed a kidney transplant. My sister and I were both matches, but my sister was the better match. The surgery was scheduled, but the night before my sister swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and had to have her stomach pumped. Because of this she was no longer a viable donor, and I took her place. During the surgery there was a complication. Once I was closed up my vitals weren’t recovering. The doctors discovered I was hemorrhaging internally and the surgeon had to go back in.”

Step by step, I slowly inched toward her. My heart was beating faster as she revealed more of the horrific childhood she’d had to endure.

She was shaking as she relived what must have been a nightmare. “I was bleeding severely and somehow in the midst of the trauma, my uterine wall had been torn. The doctors tried to fix it, but in the end they couldn’t. Now, I can’t get pregnant.”

I wiped her tears away with my thumbs. “I’m sorry, Elle. That was a terrible thing that happened to you.”

She pressed her face against my hand. “I’ll understand if you want to end things.”

My breath caught in my throat. Was she kidding me? “How can you even say that?”

“Because I’m broken,” she whispered.

“Broken?”

“Yes, I’m barren. And if we stay together, I can’t have your children. I should have told you a long time ago and I’m so sorry I didn’t.” She said it with such sadness in her voice that it hurt to hear.

Everything about her suddenly became very clear. I understood now more than ever her connection to Clementine. I took her hand. “I’m not him, Elle. I’m not your father, and I’m not your old boyfriend. I’m not going to leave you. I’m not either of them.”

She squeezed her fingers around mine. “I know you’re not them, Logan, and right now it might not seem like a big deal, but it is. You’re younger than I am, don’t forget, so maybe you’re not thinking about a family right now, but someday you will. And this is especially important for you because you’re an only child and it means your last name won’t have a legacy. There will be no one to carry on your family name.”

All I could do was stare at her. She was broken, but not in the way she thought. Actually, I preferred to think she was bent and I could straighten her out the way she was doing it to me. I brought my hands to her face. “If the day comes that we decide it’s time to have children, we’ll adopt.”

She shook her head.

“Elle, it’s done all the time.”

Tears were in her eyes. On her cheeks. Sliding down her face. “Logan, don’t you understand? I can’t have your children and you know this now. You should walk away and find someone else. Someone who can give you a family.”

Taking her other hand, I tugged her closer to me. “Just like you once said, I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry, Elle, but I really don’t see this as a roadblock in our relationship. Not in the slightest bit.”

“You’re not mad I didn’t tell you before?”