‘Keeps some consistency for him.’ Kat nodded, understanding it only too well.
Then, before she realised it, she found herself opening her mouth to tell him. To talk about her fostering.
What on earth was she thinking?
Snapping her mouth closed, Kat watched him pour the wine for them both, then took the proffered glass and reminded herself to take only one small sip.
She’d never felt so much like needing to down it in one.
But, then, she’d never met a man quite like Logan Connors before.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT THE HELL was he doing?
She was the nurse who had tended to him in the ER. The woman who had brought his son’s toy around. In a matter of days she would be his colleague. And he never mixed business and pleasure.
And yet here he was, pouring wine and striking up a conversation with her because there was something about Kat Steel that drew him in. Even before that little revelation about the child she’d called Carrie. He hadn’t believed her attempt to cover up for a moment.
With anyone else, he might have found it interesting. With Kat, he found he was intrigued. A score of questions tumbled around his brain, all vying to be asked first. Since when had anyone got under his skin quite like this?
Not even Sophia.
He wanted to know more about her. A lot more.
‘Have you lived in Seattle long?’
He noticed how she dipped her head to take another sip of wine, her eyes sliding away momentarily.
‘I moved here this year. I was in Philadelphia before that.’
‘Long way to move.’ He kept his tone casual, but filed away each nugget of information.
Something fairly significant must have happened to make her move practically across the country. Something that had affected her so badly that she didn’t like to talk about it.
‘How about you?’ she asked. ‘Where were you living before you chose to come to Seattle General?’
Clearly she still didn’t know who he was. Or, at least, who Roberto was. Which meant she still didn’t know that Dom di Rossi, her head of ER, was also Domenico Baresi, next in line to the throne of Isola Verde.
He needed to choose his words carefully.
So what did it mean that he already hated the idea of lying to a woman he barely knew?
‘I originally grew up here, but in the last fifteen years I’ve travelled a lot,’ Logan began slowly. ‘I used to be an army doc, but since I left a few years ago I’ve been doing a slightly different role.’
‘Ah, you’re ex-military.’ She eyed him curiously and he felt that awareness fizzle around them even as they both pretended it wasn’t. ‘That explains it.’
‘Explains what?’
‘The knee in the femoral artery. I thought I’d read somewhere that it was something military physicians were taught. Something about body armour, right?’
‘Yeah.’ An unexpected wave of nausea threatened to wash over him, but he pushed it back. ‘Femoral artery wounds are more and more common as the guys are increasingly using body armour. In the event of an IED, the armour protects the body from the blast but the weak points are where the armour ends.’
‘Ah, where the leg meets the trunk.’ Kat considered. ‘So the armour creates the need for more amputations, by virtue of the fact that it saves the soldier’s life?’
‘Pretty much.’
She eyed him again, and it was all he could not to shift uncomfortably. He got the oddest sense that she was reading him.
He wondered what she saw.
‘So...’ She lightened her tone. ‘Now you’ve come home to Seattle?’
There was no reason at all for him to feel so...disconcerted.
‘Now I’m in back Seattle, yes.’ He tugged his mouth into some semblance of a smile.
‘So Jamie has been here with his grandparents?’
‘No. For the past few years I’ve been fortunate enough that my parents have travelled to me in order to help take care of Jamie. But they are getting older and they needed to come home.’
‘So you followed with Jamie?’
‘He’d have been devastated to lose them. They’ve been such a constant in his life, practically from birth, and, like I said, he’s still going to need them when I’m at work. Besides, I was ready to come home.’
No need to mention Sophia again. He didn’t want to sound bitter or vindictive. The simple truth was that she had her own life to live, and that life didn’t include him or Jamie. Having his grandparents around had filled the void so that, for the moment, Jamie didn’t feel the loss. But as he grew up and other kids talked about their own mothers, Logan knew that day was coming.
Jamie had lost enough, without losing his grandparents as well.
‘I don’t think I even have a home.’ Kat broke the silence suddenly, and he thought it was telling that she didn’t quite meet his eye. ‘I have a big family, and we try to keep in touch, but everyone is scattered everywhere at the moment.’
‘You don’t see them at all?’
‘We try to video message, but with my sister and my cousin in Australia with their respective families, one brother in Canada with his new wife, and my mother visiting my other brother in the UK with his wife and their new baby, no one’s able to come together this year.’
‘Is that why you’re working so many of the holiday shifts?’
Her gaze collided with his, the wine sloshing dangerously around her glass as a renewed sense of awareness crackled around them. It wasn’t what he’d intended, yet neither could be bring himself to regret it. Still, he wasn’t about to let her think he’d been stalking her.
‘Like you said, I’ve been in a few times, visiting my...friend,’ he acknowledged. It wasn’t a complete lie. In many way King Roberto had been a friend to him, as well as an employer. ‘I’ve seen you working there every time.’
‘Ah. Right.’ She wrinkled her nose. He couldn’t explain how such a simple gesture made him want her all the more. ‘Then, yes, I suppose I have been trying to keep myself busy.’
There was clearly more to it, but he chose not to press her on it for the moment. It was as though he needed to take a moment to remind himself where his boundaries were. As if he wasn’t entirely convinced he had full control over himself where this woman was concerned.
‘I’m even doing a charity run in the park next month. I haven’t been running for years.’ She emitted a slightly nervous laugh, and he liked it that she seemed equally...thrown.
‘Is that the Santa run I’ve seen advertised around the place?’
‘That’s the one.’ Another laugh. ‘I got caught up in the hype.’
‘Are you entering as part of a hospital team?’
‘No, just me.’
He was almost tempted to suggest joining her. He bit his tongue just in time.
This wasn’t what he did. There hadn’t been anyone else for him in the three years since Sophia had left. His life was about Jamie, and about ensuring that little boy felt he had all the parents he needed between his father and his grandparents. Logan shouldn’t need to have to keep reminding himself that he didn’t have time for relationships. He didn’t even have time for dalliances.
He’d never had to remind himself of it before Kat had turned up.
Yet this was nice. In his apartment, drinking wine, with a woman like her. He couldn’t remember ever doing anything like this with Sophia. His ex-wife had been all about being in the best hot spots in town. Or, more accurately, being seen to be in the best hot spots. She’d been all about glamour, and social standing, and networking.
She’d called herself an influencer. He knew now what that word really meant.
Logan let his eyes roam over the woman opposite him. Kat was so different from Sophia. From any woman he’d ever met before. And though h
e couldn’t have pinpointed exactly what it was about that that snuck under his skin, all he knew was that she made him...yearn. Though he couldn’t have even explained for what.
And surely that, alone, was the most dangerous thing about her?
* * *
It was only when there was a noise down the hall, and Logan excused himself to check on his sleeping son, that Kat finally thought to check her watch.
She’d been here for hours.
Hastily, she reached over to place the wine—her third glass, already half-empty—on the coffee table and stand up. She’d lost all track of time.
Truth be told, she’d lost all track of herself. Long since ceasing to recognise the woman who was chatting about her life in Seattle, her globetrotting family.
She could even pretend that it didn’t hurt to talk about her family. And, oddly, in a way it didn’t.
And even though all the topics steered carefully away from anything really personal—like her childhood in hospitals, Kirk, or Carrie—it had nonetheless been the closest she’d come to removing the smiling, happy mask she was sure to always wear.
Their conversations had weaved together. Light and easy one moment, more personal and revealing the next. And all the while she watched his mouth, altogether too sensual as she told herself that it didn’t do things to her. Observed his hands and pretended she wasn’t imagining them all over her body. Roamed his body with her eyes and battled not to imagine it naked beneath hers. Or on top of hers.
Or any way he wanted it at all, actually.
It was definitely time to get out of here.
Softly, not wanting to disturb Jamie any more than he might already be stirring, she moved through to the hallway, plucking her scarf off the coat hook and winding it around her neck once, twice.
She was just swinging her coat on when she heard Logan coming around the corner.
‘You’re leaving?’ his low voice rumbled down the hallway.
She painted a bright smile on her lips and was careful to be quiet.
‘I had no idea of the time. I hope we didn’t disturb Jamie.’
‘He usually wakes up around now and needs to go to the toilet. If you can call that dreamlike state waking. But he’s already back asleep now.’
‘That’s good.’ She nodded, still with her coat half-on.
‘You don’t have to leave.’
You do, she told herself sternly. This is your boss. And you’re already having inappropriate thoughts about him. What is another hour going to do?
‘I really ought to,’ she hedged.
‘Sure,’ he agreed, and she told herself she’d imagined the fraction of a second of hesitation in his voice. ‘Let me help you.’
And then he was striding towards her, helping her with her coat and lifting her bag off the hook to pass it to her.
The worst of it was the feeling of deflation. The realisation that she would have readily stayed, if only he’d insisted. That she’d hoped that was exactly what he’d do.
‘Thanks,’ she managed, her tone more clipped than she might have preferred.
It was impossible to shake the impression that he was trying to distance himself from her, and she had no idea why. Inside, she sagged even further, though she kept herself standing tall and upright, even as she lunged for the door...at exactly the same time that he lifted his arm around her and leaned across to turn the latch.
She backed up rapidly, but there was nowhere to go and suddenly she was sprawled against the wall with Logan’s body pressed against hers.
Hotter, and harder, and so much more...male than even her fervent imagination had fancied.
Kat froze. She felt edgy. Jittery. Like she was standing on some precipice and the slightest thing—even a hint of a breeze—could make her topple over.
All she could feel was those acres of muscle pressed against her, and all she could hear was her breathing, growing more ragged, more telling by the second. She never moved her hands and yet, without warning, her bag thudded to the floor and there they were, splaying over his impossibly solid pectoral muscles.
‘Logan...’
It was unmistakable, that needy note in her voice. So unlike her. And yet so real. Heat blazed between them, so hot that Kat feared she might be burned alive at any moment.
Then she felt it—the breeze that she’d feared—his head dipping so close to hers, his breath tickling her neck. She would never know whether he moved first or she did, but then his lips were brushing hers, tasting, wanting.
The effect of his kiss started in her toes, moving up through her body and leaving every single part of her tingling, even the tiny hairs that stood to attention on her arms.
It was like standing in the centre of a pyre and feeling the flames licking at her, before roaring inside her. Burning hotter, higher, brighter, with every drag of his lips and every sweep of his tongue. She didn’t think she’d ever been kissed so thoroughly, so devastatingly before. Melting her.
If she hadn’t been pinned so deliciously between Logan’s too-perfect body and the hallway wall, she was sure her legs would have given way beneath her.
Her breasts felt swollen, achy and much too heavy. Her stomach somersaulted inside, vaulting off the walls of her abdomen, and lower than that...she throbbed. A violent, feverish pulsing that resonated through her entire body.
She felt entirely too tight in her own body, and too giddy in her head. When he muttered her name, the raw sound made her shiver. Desperately, she shifted against him, pressing her body closer to his, making him pin her even more firmly in place. As she moved her hips again, he slotted into place perfectly, his hard length nestled right where she ached for him most.
And Kat didn’t just topple—she swan-dived.
* * *
You shouldn’t be touching her. You certainly shouldn’t be kissing her.
The words bellowed through his head, one after the other, but he muffled each of them. His mouth revelled in the taste of her vanilla cream lips, his hands in the feel of her silken skin beneath his palms, and something wild and untamed surged through him.
He couldn’t even consider what his body revelled in right now, pressed as he was against her, for fear that she would drive him completely wild.
He kissed her like he’d never kissed any woman, though he couldn’t have said what made it so different. And all the while his libido careened around like he was some kind of sex-crazed idiot.
What the hell was it about Kat Steel that made him forget every promise he’d made to himself?
Then he stopped thinking, because he feared that it might be enough to stop him from kissing her and right here and now he couldn’t think of any punishment more unpalatable than stopping kissing this woman.
So he did kiss her. Over and over again, every slide, every lick, every graze devastating her and laying waste to them both. As though everything that had happened since she’d walked around the hospital corner, barely a week ago, had been leading up to this moment.
To her.
Slowly, delicately he unwound the scarf from her neck, even as his mouth continued to plunder hers, and then, after he’d let it fall to the floor, he lifted his hands to cup her face, his thumbs caressing her jawline as he angled his head for a better fit.
Vaguely, he was aware of her starting to shrug herself back out of her coat, and then her hands were raking over his chest, like she needed to touch him. Like she couldn’t help herself. Logan found he liked that notion a great deal. Perhaps too much. Yet he couldn’t even bring himself to care about stopping.
He hauled off her jacket, his mouth never leaving hers. He traced her jaw with his lips, her neck with the vaguest edge of his teeth, and the hollow of her neck with his tongue. Each exploration elicited more unrestrained moans, making her shiver that much harder against him.
He let his hands investigate
over her top, tracing her, touching her. He took his time learning each curve and every swell. Committed them to memory, and then dipped his hands under her loose top to learn her all over again.
It should have set off alarm bells, realising how much he wanted her. As if he’d never wanted any other woman in his entire life. Certainly not with this hectic, frenzied urgency he felt inside.
He wanted to learn every inch of her. Taste her.
God, how he needed to taste her.
He was losing it, and he didn’t even care. All that heat pouring out of her and into him was almost too much to bear.
If he slid his fingers under the waistband of her trousers right now, he could only imagine what he’d find. How wet she would be. The way she was rolling her hips against him, those greedy little moans escaping such plump, perfect lips, was making him ache so badly that it was almost painful.
‘Kat.’ He barely recognised the growl as his own voice. It sounded so coarse. So restless.
If he wasn’t careful, they were going to end up doing it right here, against the wall. And the worrying part was that he wasn’t even sure he cared. He wanted her so badly.
Suddenly there was a cry from down the hall and Logan crashed back to reality in an instant.
What the hell had he been thinking?
Had he really been kissing—no, necking like a teenage schoolboy—with a woman he’d only just met? About to have sex with her—because there was no denying that had been where they’d been headed—right there in the apartment? All this, when his son lay asleep just down the hall?
Not that Jamie could have stumbled on them, of course. For a start, he had installed a baby gate just by a short flight of five stairs, in case his son woke in the night and came looking for him, only to turn the wrong way in the unfamiliar apartment when he came out of his room.
Nonetheless, it was wholly, unequivocally unacceptable.
‘This should never have happened,’ he ground out, furious with himself.
The Bodyguard's Christmas Proposal Page 5