But that didn’t mean she could stop.
‘Actually, I have a bit of gossip,’ another of their colleagues said as she appeared suddenly, sliding into a chair and beginning to quickly tap in some notes onto the computer as she spoke. ‘Hottie hero is actually called Logan Connors.’
‘Is he?’ Elsie shot Kat a triumphant look.
‘There’s more,’ the nurse continued. ‘You know the new ER doc due to start next week? Well, apparently this Logan Connors is the guy.’
The revelation walloped into Kat. Surely that couldn’t be true? She’d barely survived half an hour in a room with the guy. How could she be expected to work alongside him? How could anyone be expected to work alongside him?
She edged away, trying to clear her head as her colleagues crowded in closer, as if to try to contain their fervour.
‘Mr Comic Book God?’ Elsie clapped her hands in glee.
‘Guess you’d better make it Dr Comic Book God.’ Their colleague sniggered. ‘I wouldn’t mind being examined by him.’
As the conversation continued, Kat took her leave, going to check on each of her patients before returning to check on the lab results. All the while telling herself that the churning sensation in her belly had nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of having to work with Logan Connors.
With any luck, they would be on different shifts.
So why didn’t she believe that was what she really hoped for?
Never, in over a decade of being an ER nurse, had Kat Steel ever felt quite so...disquieted by a patient.
In fact, the only other time she’d felt anything other than professional empathy for a patient had been almost five years ago, but under vastly different circumstances.
Back then, the patient had been Carrie, an eight-month-old baby who had fallen down a set of concrete stairs onto her head when her parents had been having yet another drunken brawl and failed to see her crawling to the steps.
As Kat had bustled about the resus bay with the rest of the team, trying to hook up the monitors to the little girl, who had been lying so still and silent on the enormous black gurney, Carrie had reached out with her chubby hand and had gripped Kat’s hand tightly.
So tightly. Even now, if Kat closed her eyes, she could almost feel Carrie’s tiny fingers clutching her thumb, as surely as if the little girl had reached into her chest and stolen Kat’s very heart.
Love. The purest, most selfless, most beautiful thing. It made a person whole. It made them soar. It made them move heaven and earth for the thing they loved with all their heart.
Which was why, when she’d realised that social services were removing Carrie from the parental home, Kat had pulled in every favour she humanly could as an ER nurse, and as a foster parent with over four years’ experience at that point, to make sure that Carrie would be going home with her.
For three glorious years she had been Carrie’s foster mum, never daring to hope that one day she could be more than just the foster mum. She’d taught the little girl how to walk, talk, play and even just laugh. Lord, how she’d loved the sound of that little girl’s laughter.
She doubted she’d ever hear it again.
Abruptly, Kat shook her head free of the memory before the waves of bittersweetness—swelling higher and higher above her right now—could crash over her and send her splintering into pieces where she stood. A wipe-out on the floor of the busy ER—just what all the rushing doctors and nurses needed.
Get a grip.
‘Hey, I’ve got a minute before my trauma comes in.’ Gemma appeared at her elbow as Kat was preparing to transport one of her patients up to CT. ‘You okay? You look a bit...agitated.’
For a moment Kat considered telling her friend. But what would she say? That she had a crush on the hot new doc, just like everyone else? It sounded so banal. So, instead, she feigned a smile.
‘Just a bit tired,’ she fibbed. ‘And I’ve got to wait for a porter for my lady. It’s been a long week.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Gemma rolled her eyes dramatically, instantly believing her. Which only made Kat feel that much guiltier. ‘I can’t wait for Thanksgiving. Are you seeing family over the holidays?’
‘Nope, I’m working.’ Her cheeks were beginning to ache from smiling so much, and she pretended that she didn’t feel a stab of pain at the question.
‘What? All the holidays?’
‘Yeah.’ She couldn’t let anyone see what it cost her to offer such a nonchalant shrug. Even Gemma. ‘My family are scattered all over the place these days. We try to video message, but no one’s able to make any trips this year.’
And there was no need to mention that she’d run away from them when they’d most wanted to be there for her because, in some perverse way, seeing them glowing with the happiness and love of each of their own families had only made her own pain all the more acute.
She’d turned down every offer to visit because she’d just wanted to be alone. Possibly even needed to be alone. This was going to be her first Christmas in years without Carrie.
The Christmas that she’d been planning in her head before she’d got the news that she wasn’t destined to be Carrie’s new mommy after all.
Even now, the memory left her chest feeling as though it was being gripped in a vice.
Better to let anyone who could spend time with their loved ones. She just wanted to get her head down, work and not have to surface again until the whole painful season was over and done with.
‘What about that date you had with that lush doctor from...where was it... Ortho? It was a third date, wasn’t it?’
‘I cancelled,’ Kat admitted reluctantly.
‘What? No way? Why?’
‘I just...wasn’t feeling it.’
Not exactly a lie...just not the whole truth either.
‘Oh. Pity. He was cute.’ Gemma looked momentarily thrown, but regrouped quickly. ‘Oh, well, plenty more fish and all that.’
‘Right,’ she agreed, as smoothly as she could.
It was easier to tell Gemma what she wanted to hear than try to explain a reluctance Kat wasn’t sure she herself even understood. Still, by the way her friend was chuckling, Gemma had bought into it.
‘You’re incorrigible, Kat Steel. You must have more doctors running after you than any other nurse in this place, and you’re the one who goes around “not feeling it” with anyone. What was it you told me when you first came to Seattle? “Have a bit of fun? No strings, no hassle”?’
‘Yes, well.’ Kat scrunched up her face. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘You never even gave it a chance!’ Gemma exclaimed.
‘That’s because, right now, my idea of a bit of no-strings, no-hassle fun would be curling up in a big comfy chair with a hot chocolate and a good book.’
Before she could stop it, another image of Logan flitted into her head. What were the odds that she would ‘be feeling it’ if it was with him?
‘Geez, Kat, how old are you?’ berated Gemma good-naturedly. ‘Thirty-two or seventy-two?’
‘It isn’t good, is it?’ Kat admitted.
‘It’s a damned disgrace,’ her friend teased.
But anything more they might have said was cut short by the sound of the emergency doors swishing open and EMTs racing in a gurney, and Gemma dashed off quickly, leaving Kat to wait for her porter.
* * *
She spent the last couple of hours of her shift busying herself with ferrying patients, booking in new arrivals, taking bloodwork, putting in IV lines and fluids, and administering medications. She cleaned up a knife wound from a kitchen accident, ready for suturing, and prepped a woman with shortness of breath and respiratory distress for a chest X-ray. And she restocked her assigned rooms.
All of it doing frustratingly little to shake thoughts of Logan from her brain. She couldn’t erase that intensi
ty of his gaze from her mind. And when she thought of the way he’d conducted that frank assessment of her—even if it had only lasted for a moment—her body felt as though it couldn’t decide whether it was too hot or too cold.
He’d got to her in way no one else had in a long, long time.
Ever, a voice whispered, before she stamped it out quickly.
Which was why dating guys as decent as Chris from Orthopaedics ought to be the perfect antidote to the commitment of her past life, before she’d dropped her entire life to move to Seattle—a city where no one knew her. Or her story.
Casual dates and girls’ nights out. All the things she’d never done—or wanted to do—as a foster mom.
So why wasn’t it as easy and fun as it sounded like it should be?
Why was Logan Connors the first thing to make her feel something—anything—in almost a year?
It was nonsense.
Maybe she could go for a run when her shift ended here tonight? Clear her head and train for the charity Santa Run she’d entered last month—another activity she was pushing herself to do now that she was alone, with time on her hands.
Anything to stop her from going around in circles in her mind.
* * *
The little boy came out of nowhere near the end of Kat’s training run in the park, the glint of the winter sun off the distant Seattle Space Needle almost blinding her so that when he raced out of the bushes, only to stop dead as he saw her hurtling down the path, she almost didn’t spot him.
With a startled cry she leapt over him, like she’d somehow entered a steeplechase when she hadn’t been paying attention, twisting around to ensure he wasn’t hurt.
‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’
Glancing around for a parent or guardian, Kat crouched down beside him. He couldn’t have been much more than about four, with a shock of black, curly hair and rich, dark eyes that brimmed with tears as he cast his gaze around wildly.
‘Where’s your mommy?’
He shook his head, still searching past her.
‘You don’t know?’ Kat interpreted, tilting her head to the side to try to get his attention. He strained to keep looking past her, but she tilted her head again. Reluctantly, his eyes alighted on her.
‘Don’t have a mommy,’ he told her. ‘Want Nana.’
The words walloped into her chest, landing a direct hit and winding her. How was fate so cruel? Kids like this who didn’t have a mommy, and people like her who desperately wanted to be a mommy. For a long moment she couldn’t reply. Then he turned his frantic gaze on her.
‘Doc Twence?’
‘Doc Twence?’ she repeated carefully, her brain frantically trying to work out what the little boy was saying.
‘Doc Tewence.’ He nodded, sounding it out carefully, the way that Carrie used to do.
She stuffed down the bittersweet memory.
‘Doc Terrence?’ she tried cautiously.
The boy bobbed his head emphatically, making her feel as though she’d won the lottery.
‘Doc Twence,’ he confirmed. ‘Doc Twence.’
‘Your name is Terrence?’
His disdainful expression said it all and, despite everything, Kat had to swallow a gurgle of laughter. There was no artifice with kids, you always knew where you stood with them.
Which was more than could be said for plenty of adults.
Shaking the thought from her head, Kat dragged her mind back to the present.
‘Doc Terrence is your daddy?’ she tried again, though she was beginning to suspect who Doc Terrence might be.
‘Doc Twence is a terrydac.’
‘Doc Terrence is a terrydac?’ she rolled it around on her tongue, her brain switching up a gear. But this time it didn’t come. Still, she could go with her gut. ‘Doc Terrence is a toy?’
‘Not toy,’ he scoffed, his eyebrows knitted together in a perfect little-boy frown that seemed to reach inside her chest, grab hold and pull. ‘Din’saur.’
‘Terrence is a dinosaur? Terrence the terrydac...hmm, he’s a pterodactyl?’
‘Yes, Doc Terrence is a pter’dactyl,’ the little boy pronounced carefully, before practically jumping up and down.
‘I see.’ Well, at least that was cleared up. ‘What about—?’
‘Daddy!’
Kat was nearly bowled over as the little boy spotted someone over her shoulder, scrambled to his feet and ran past her.
Still, at least it was a happy outcome. She turned around, her mouth open in greeting. And felt her legs turn to lead.
Awareness leapt through her in an instant. That same heady, slightly dizzying sensation that she’d experienced back at the hospital.
‘Jamie, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ He held the boy tightly to him in a hug. ‘Why did you run off like that?’ Turning to her, he said, ‘Well, Nurse Kat, it seems we’re destined to meet again.’ He shot her look that she couldn’t begin to interpret but which nevertheless set off goosebumps all over her skin.
She tried to answer but didn’t know what to say. Was he mocking her? Or teasing her? It sounded ridiculously provocative, uttered in that velvety-rich voice of his that exuded sex appeal.
Or most probably that was her wishful thinking. The guy oozed sex appeal from every single pore. An afternoon around the nurses’ station had revealed that much. And she—unfairly famed for her starchiness where members of the opposite sex were concerned—appeared to be lapping this man up.
How ignominious was that?
‘He was looking for Doc Terrence,’ she told him, fighting to keep her voice steady.
‘That damned toy,’ Logan muttered, but she noted there was no heat in his words. Just the undertone of relief that he’d found his son safe and sound.
‘Bad word, Daddy,’ the boy sniffled, lifting his head for a moment, then dropping it again as Logan apologised to his son. Then to her.
‘It’s the fright.’ She dismissed his apology easily. ‘I asked who he was with, but he didn’t say.’
‘Right.’
‘I hope I didn’t put my foot in it but I asked about his mommy.’ She tried to sound discreet and jolly all at once. As though she wasn’t prying. ‘But he only said he didn’t have a mommy, he had a nana.’
Logan didn’t answer, but what did it say about her that she spotted a tiny tell-tale tightening of his jaw?
It says that you’re paying way too much attention to the guy.
She fought to shut down the reproachful voice but it was apparently on a roll.
And to his private life.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed, her eyes sliding away in embarrassment, trying to focus on the little boy instead of his father. ‘It’s really none of my business.’
Out of her peripheral vision she could see him do that curt nod thing of his and then, suddenly he said, ‘Let’s just say that she isn’t around.’
Kat snapped her head up.
‘Oh, I saw the ring, I just thought...’
‘I keep it on because it deters interest.’
She wasn’t sure who seemed more astonished at the admission, but then those shutters came back down, just as they had back at the hospital.
Kat opened her mouth to convey her condolences then closed it again. If the boy—Jamie’s—mommy had died, wouldn’t Logan have just said that? Instead, he’d been guarded, as though he’d been about to say where she was but had decided against it. Because it revealed too much about him? Or about his boss?
Was it just more secrets and closed doors—like when his party had been brought into the ER earlier? Not that she cared. Seattle General had its fair share of VIPs, but as far as she was concerned patients were patients.
Not that the head of PR would likely agree.
Nonetheless, now she knew that when Logan had reacted, back in that cons
ultation room, to her comment about having someone to care for him, he’d meant his son. Not a woman. Not a wife. Not, apparently, even a girlfriend.
‘Anyway...’ he drew her back to the present ‘...thanks for looking after Jamie. We were lucky you were here.’
‘It’s fine.’ She waved her hand dismissively, unable to shake the idea that she needed to walk away now. Before she found she couldn’t. ‘Anyway...bye.’
There was no reason for that to be so hard to say. She thought he paused for a fraction longer than was necessary and her stomach somersaulted. Then Logan dipped his head instead.
‘Bye.’ He turned around to walk away. ‘Actually...’
She spun back around with shameless haste, not that Logan seemed to notice. He seemed to busy wrestling with his own thoughts.
‘Jamie and I were going to get an ice cream—can I buy you one? To say thanks, I mean.’
Vaguely, she could hear the dim voice inside her head warning her that it was a bad idea. Then another voice drowned the first one out. An ice cream wasn’t going to hurt, was it?
‘They sell coffee, if you’d prefer,’ Logan said, misinterpreting her hesitation.
She carefully ignored the first, logical voice. Instead, she wandered down the path towards them, and felt her mouth curve up into the most relaxed, genuine smile she’d managed all week.
‘An ice cream would be perfectly lovely. Thank you.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘SO, DID YOU sleep with him?’ Gemma asked a few days later.
Images of Logan whirled around Kat’s head as she spun around to see Gemma grinning at her.
‘Sorry?’ She shook her head in shock. How did Gemma even know about Logan? ‘Why would you even think that?’
‘Because you look...different.’ Her friend pulled a face. ‘You’ve got a bit of a...glow going on. I thought you must have met someone. Maybe changed your mind about dating after all?’
‘Changed my mind about dating?’ Kat echoed numbly.
It had just been ice cream with Logan—hardly dating.
‘Yeah. You started feeling it after all?’ Gemma said encouragingly.
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