The Bodyguard's Christmas Proposal

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘Logan—’ she began, but he cut her off.

  He couldn’t listen. And the worst of it was that it was less about not wanting to hear what she had to say and more about the fact that he feared she would convince him to carry on.

  He wanted her to say something to convince him to carry on. Instead, he tore himself away from her, hoping that the loss of contact might, somehow, break the spell.

  It didn’t. Which made it all the more imperative that he walk away. Now.

  ‘I need to go and attend to my son. I suggest you let yourself out.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘UGH. YUCK.’

  Logan stared at his son with something approaching amused despair as the little boy pulled a disgusted face at their latest baking attempt, setting it back on his brand new, glittery Christmas plate and sticking his tongue out. The evidence suggested that they were nothing like the cookies Logan’s Nana had baked them all for Thanksgiving.

  ‘I warned you that I had no idea how to bake cookies, champ.’

  ‘Yuck, yuck, yuck,’ repeated Jamie, taking a generous gulp of milk from his plastic cup.

  ‘They aren’t that bad.’ Logan laughed, taking a bite of his own then pulling a face that he imagined to be pretty close to the one his son had made. ‘Okay, they are. I’ll ask Nana.’

  ‘Kat,’ Jamie said firmly.

  ‘Sorry, Champ, I’m not asking Kat.’ He gritted his teeth, determined not to let Jamie see.

  It had been days since that night in the apartment and still, if he turned quickly, he could imagine he could catch a scent of her perfume, he could swear he could taste her on his tongue, and he wanted more. So much more.

  It was crazy, but there it was. Which was why he’d spend the past couple of days putting such much-needed distance between himself and the too-enticing ER nurse.

  She affected him too much. Made him forget who, and where, he was. If he was going to be honest, then she had been getting to him ever since that first time in the hospital when he’d felt her hands on his body, and he’d been turned on for the first time in a long time.

  The last person to get under his skin like this had been Sophia—and look where that had led. Not that he could ever regret his beautiful, sweet son.

  ‘Shall we put up the tree tonight, Jamie?’ Logan lifted the tray and tipped the unappetising—all right, disgusting—cookies into the bin. ‘It’s the first of December tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jamie clapped his hands in delight. ‘Can Kat help?’

  ‘No Kat,’ he answered firmly.

  God, his son was relentless.

  Admittedly, it wasn’t as though he’d been able to stop thinking about her either—or their kiss. It irked Logan that she’d even appeared in his dreams, although in those they hadn’t stopped at merely kissing. In those she had been spread out in his bed, like his own personal feast, or clinging to him, moaning in abandon as he’d buried himself inside her.

  Even now, he had to shake his head as if that could rid it of the unwanted thoughts.

  But what really bothered him, above everything else, was the way Jamie seemed to have taken to her so fast.

  The kid had met her twice, and yet Kat currently dominated his conversations. Even his grandparents had heard all about Angel Kat, and Logan didn’t care much for the encouraging comments they’d tried not to make.

  Like: ‘It would be nice to have a steady, stable, more youthful female influence in Jamie’s life’, or, worse, that it was good to see him starting to ‘come around’ after everything that had happened on that operational tour, and then with Sophia.

  But more than their comments, it was his own errant mind that annoyed him the most, throwing up images of Kat whenever he was least prepared for them.

  Making him take a detour past the ER department while he was making one of his visits to check on King Roberto, just in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Like some besotted adolescent.

  Which was why he was here now, talking to Jamie about all the decorations the four-year-old could imagine for their first real Christmas together, without work taking him away from him. And baking cookies that looked like cardboard and tasted even worse.

  ‘How about your advent calendar?’ Logan tried to distract his son. ‘We need to go and buy one. I was thinking of a train one. You can open a carriage each day.’

  ‘And we can get one for Kat.’

  Logan gave up—he wasn’t going to talk about Kat any more. It was only indulging Jamie. And with each of his son’s attempts to wear him down it was getting harder and harder to refuse. Especially because a part of him wanted to agree for his own selfish reasons.

  But this was his last day of R&R. His last chance to spend quality time with Jamie for a while. He was not going to think about the fact that tomorrow was his first day at work at Seattle General.

  Nor was he going to think about how it was his first medical role back after losing his buddies in that last tour of duty.

  And he was certainly not going to think about how good it would be to work alongside Kat.

  * * *

  The walk through the atrium to Seattle General was as arduous as Kat imagined it would be to trek across the Sahara.

  It had been a difficult enough couple of days as it was, with that last evening at Logan’s apartment replaying in her head on a never-ending loop. Reliving every last, glorious moment of that kiss—right up to the humiliating end.

  She’d even gone running through the park—ostensibly training for her Santa run—every day, just in the foolish hope that she might bump into him and adorable Jamie again.

  And it was perhaps that part that frightened her the most. Without the complication of Jamie, maybe she would have been tempted to do something more about the undeniable chemistry that arced between her and Logan every time they were together. Perhaps some of that no-strings, no-hassle fun that she and Gemma were always laughing about.

  But not with Jamie around. Not when her presence could impact on a four-year-old boy. She knew that only too well from her fostering.

  Who are you trying to protect? a voice whispered in her head. Just Jamie? Or yourself as well?

  She tried to silence the voice, but failed. Her location probably wasn’t helping.

  It was the first of December and already a massive Christmas tree towered in the hospital’s modern glass atrium. Stunningly decorated—and sweeping up into the glass roof of the atrium—it looked completely and utterly stunning.

  And every last inch of it reminded Kat of last Christmas without Carrie.

  All she wanted to do was get past the evergreen of memories, shrug off this shroud of grief—at least Carrie was happy, and well, and with her parents who hopefully were giving her all the love she deserved—and throw herself into her shift.

  But as she stepped through the door and heard the buzz around the ER department, she just...knew.

  Still, Kat found herself holding her breath as Gemma came hurrying over.

  ‘Guess what?’

  She didn’t want to know. So why was her chest pulling so tight, as if it yearned to even hear Logan’s name.

  Insanity.

  ‘What?’ she managed instead, even forcing her mouth up into a friendly smile.

  ‘You know the VIPs who came in? Especially the one on that gurney...?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kat nodded, pushing the image of Logan’s poker face out of her mind.

  ‘Well, rumour has it that Logan Connors—the guy who saved his life—was actually the man’s bodyguard. And if that isn’t enough, Comic Book God is starting today!’

  How was it possible for her stomach to dip yet soar all at once? Her heart thumped wildly. And so loudly she imagined it could be heard on the other side of the hospital.

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’ Kat had no idea how she sounded so calm and even. ‘We c
an always do with more ER docs, especially at this time of year. So, who’s my first patient?’

  ‘No one, it’s the usual lull before all hell breaks loose later tonight. But, Kat, did you hear me? Comic Book God. Apparently he’s a former army trauma doctor.’

  ‘He should be a good addition, then.’ Even to her own ears her voice sounded tighter, squeakier than normal.

  Gemma didn’t appear to notice. Not that it mattered, because before either of them could say anything more there was another flurry and the doors behind her hissed open.

  ‘He’s here,’ Gemma hissed, redundantly as it happened. Because—just like the other night—all the fine hairs stood up on Kat’s arm.

  Great, that was all she needed—her own personal Logan Connors radar.

  And then she heard the unmistakably smoky tones of his voice, greeting their colleagues and introducing himself. There was no choice but to turn around and look interested. Professional.

  Right up to the moment when his gaze snagged hers. And held. She tried to look away, to move, but there was no breaking free. Kat found herself paralysed, and the worst of it was that some perverse part of her seemed to revel in that sensation.

  It shouldn’t have been possible for him to look any hotter than he had the other night. Yet here, now, in his scrubs, he had to be the most lethally gorgeous male doctor she’d ever met in her entire life. Judging by the reaction amongst much of the female contingent standing with her, she was evidently not the only one to think so.

  Yet even that fact wasn’t enough to set off the alarm bells in her head. Instead, deep inside, her stomach turned and twisted. One knot upon another, upon another.

  Still, his gaze held hers.

  She still could practically taste his kiss on her mouth and before she could stop herself she snaked her tongue out over the lower lip, as if to check. This time her stomach clenched at the way his eyes darkened. And she couldn’t pretend his undisguised reaction didn’t give her a bit of a thrill.

  Right before a disgusted look flitted over his features, and he turned away from her.

  At the kiss? Or at the prospect of them having to work together?

  As she started her shift, something rolled and turned inside her, like a pit of baby snakes was in her belly. And it didn’t stop.

  * * *

  For the next couple of hours Kat worked steadily to care for the patients in her allocated rooms. Her heart both leapt with relief and sank with disappointment every time she called for a consult and a doctor other than Logan stepped into the room.

  She might have known that luck couldn’t last. It was halfway through her shift when she was called to assist on a major incident only to find that Logan was the doctor running the shout. Her skin felt like it was tightening over her entire body.

  All she could do, she decided as the EMTs rushed the patient towards them, was keep her head down, stay focussed, and work her way through it.

  ‘This is Tom—he’s twenty-nine,’ the emergency responder began. ‘He has a history of complex partial seizures and this seizure started approximately thirty-eight minutes ago. We were called by his girlfriend who said the seizure was different from any other she has seen before.’

  Logan nodded his affirmation.

  ‘We’ve put a line in, and we’ve given him two lots of ten milligrams of diazepam. The last ten milligrams were at eleven-oh-three. He had a previous seizure yesterday that lasted for fourteen minutes and was self-terminating. He has recently had a dosage change in medication and has been having repeated complex partial seizures over the last couple of weeks. We’ve got a bag of his medications here.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’ Logan took the bag and began reading out the medications before checking the clock on the wall. ‘Let’s push another ten milligrams of diazepam. Can we also get some phenytoin ready, just in case he still doesn’t respond? Let’s also get some bloods.’

  As Kat and the rest of the team began to move around the patient, Logan turned back to the emergency responder.

  ‘When you said the girlfriend said this seizure was different, do you know what she meant?’

  ‘She said it was just more aggressive. The convulsions were more frequent and more violent than any other time.’

  ‘Understood.’ He swung back to the team, moving forward to the nurse who was about to draw blood and touching the patient lightly on the shoulder. ‘Tom, we’re just going to put a needle in your arm to draw blood, okay, mate? Kat, can you hold his head? Let’s get him out of that soiled clothing.’

  Kat liked it that Logan was caring for his patient, letting Tom know what was going on even though they didn’t know whether the man could hear them.

  ‘Can we keep talking to him, guys? Tell him whatever you’re doing to him, yes? Do we know where the girlfriend is?’

  ‘She’s on her way in. They have a young toddler, so her father was driving to meet her to give her lift and look after the youngster.’

  ‘Right, he has been fitting now for forty minutes. Let’s push the phenytoin. If he doesn’t respond, I think we need to get an anaesthetist in here to put him into a medically induced coma.’

  The team nodded as they began to cut Tom’s clothes away to clean him up and make him comfortable. They all knew that the longer the seizure continued, the longer Tom’s body was being deprived of oxygen, and so the more likely it was that he could suffer brain damage.

  A medically induced coma wasn’t the most desirable option—the anaesthetic would stop the seizure, but Tom would need a tube inserted to enable him to breathe and would have a harder, longer recovery—but it would allow his body to get oxygen, ultimately keeping him alive.

  The team worked quickly and smoothly—Logan was already proving a good doctor and leader—and they were soon rewarded by their patient’s seizure finally beginning to slow and then stop. After checking the patient’s obs, Logan moved to the head of the bed.

  ‘Hello, Tom, mate. Good to have you back. You’re at Seattle General and you’ve been seizing for around fifty-five minutes.’

  Kat watched Logan’s interaction with the drained, exhausted patient, checking everything over again as the rest of the team began to disperse now that Tom had finally begun to settle. A whole room of patients was still out there, and it was no surprise when another nurse poked her head around to ask if Logan was free.

  He stepped to one side and beckoned Kat.

  ‘I want to send him for a CT to make sure there’s nothing new going on in his brain that might have caused him to be fitting for so long.’

  ‘Right.’ She nodded.

  ‘Can you keep a closer eye on him until he goes up?’

  Logically, she knew it didn’t mean anything that he’d chosen to ask her over any of the rest of the team. Yet a tiny part of her wondered if it was because he’d recognised her as a good ER nurse.

  She hoped it was.

  He was clearly such a skilled, experienced doctor, she could tell that he’d already impressed her colleagues. Was it really such hubris, the idea of equally impressing him?

  No, whispered a voice in her head, but what is hubris is the fact that you’re reading so much into everything.

  Irritated with herself, Kat straightened her shoulders and glowered.

  ‘Of course, Doctor,’ she replied professionally, before dropping her voice too low for anyone else but Logan to hear. ‘It is my job after all.’

  No one but her could possibly have seen that hint of a surprised flare in his expression. Thankfully her back was to everyone else so no one could see her expression—or the rising flush in her cheeks.

  ‘I don’t need to be micro-managed,’ she muttered quietly.

  It was so unlike her, yet she couldn’t seem to stop it and, for a moment, Logan didn’t respond.

  If she wasn’t careful, she was going to let Logan’s reaction go to he
r head and start letting herself believe that he was bothered for personal, rather than professional, reasons. But that was just fanciful. Probably as a result of being unable to stop thinking about him for the past few days.

  Then his eyes cleared and he acknowledged her brightly, efficiently. Professionally.

  ‘Thank you, Kat.’

  And as he began to walk away, she berated herself for acting like such an idiot. So much for her earlier self-congratulations on being able to work so seamlessly with the man. Didn’t they always say that pride came before a fall?

  ‘Okay, Tom,’ Kat announced in her cheeriest voice, even though Tom was drifting into a deep and much-needed sleep. ‘Let’s see how you’re doing.’

  With a sinking heart she knew she was going to have to find Logan later and apologise for acting so crazily. And then, just as she reached her patient’s bed, she felt someone take hold of her elbow and steer her down the corridor and into a deserted one.

  Even before she swivelled her head to look at him, she knew that it was Logan.

  ‘What...what are you doing?’

  ‘Relax,’ he commanded. ‘No one can see us. And I want to sort out this problem you have with me.’

  ‘Around here, someone can pretty much always see you,’ she snapped. ‘And, for the record, I don’t have a problem with you.’

  ‘I’d like that to be true,’ he continued, his tone measured. At least that was better than him sounding condescending or patronising. ‘But you’re clearly on edge.’

  She didn’t intend to bristle, but she felt herself doing it all the same. Time for her to make that apology she knew was owing. Kat sucked in a breath.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. It’s just that I always put the patient first.’

  ‘I know,’ Logan agreed. ‘Even if I hadn’t heard such good things about you from your colleagues, I can tell a good nurse from a bad one. And I don’t believe anyone else noticed, but it was apparent to me that you...weren’t entirely comfortable with my presence.’

  She wanted to deny it. She even opened her mouth to do so. But what would be the point when they both knew it would be a lie? Surely it was better all round if she faced up to the truth? Maybe that way they could get over it quicker.