“I need to say something. Will you just hear me out before you reject me?” He stood and held a hand out to her. “Please?”
“Okay,” she agreed. Putting her hand in his, she let him help her up off the floor.
Leading her around the tree, he stopped in the spot where his brother had stood earlier that evening. “A few long years ago, I stood right here in this very church and waited for someone who never showed. A few short weeks ago, I just wanted to get in and out of this church with some of my pride intact.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Shh... Let me finish.” He took a step back. “A few hours ago, I stood right here looking at you and realized that I wanted to be the groom. I wanted to be someone’s husband. Your husband.” He dropped to one knee in front of her. “I don’t have a ring. I don’t have some elaborate proposal planned. But I love you. Will you marry me?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
One week later
THE FIRE CRACKLED brightly as Dex put another log on the flames. “Now, this is my idea of how New Year’s Eve should be spent,” he said as he walked back over to the couch and pulled the blanket back up over himself. “Just me and the love of my life, tucked away in a honeymoon cabin nestled in the Smoky Mountains.”
They were only a few miles from his parents’ house in Westfield, but this single-bedroom cabin afforded them the privacy that a newly engaged couple desired. They’d spent most of the week between Tommy’s wedding and New Year’s Eve with his family. Instead of staying for the party his family had planned, they’d decided to end the year snuggled up in front of a fire, just the two of them.
Lena placed her hand on his chest. She admired the way the shiny diamond Dex had slid on her finger on Christmas morning sparkled in the firelight. “I think when we do get married we should come back here. This place is perfect. I’ve never been happier than when I’m here with you.”
“I haven’t upheld my end of the bargain though. You met my family, dealt with all the drama with my ex, and we skipped out on going to LA for the gala to come here instead.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I feel a little guilty about that.”
“You have nothing to feel guilty about.” She ran a single finger along his jaw. “It was my decision not to go to California and subject you to the scrutiny of my parents.”
He shrugged. “I have to meet them someday.”
“Why?” She saw no reason to force him to meet parents who had never put her best interests at heart. “You actually deserve the credit for the decision. If you didn’t love me so much, and hadn’t taken me home to show me what a real family looks like, I would never have known just how bad my family dynamic really was. You gave me the confidence—no, that’s not the right word—the courage to stand up to them and refuse to accept their treatment of me any longer.”
“You deserve so much better than that.”
Dex gave her a newfound respect for herself that she hadn’t known possible. For years, Lena had only been sure of herself when clad in scrubs and within the walls of a hospital. Outside, she was a different person, and when with her parents, she was even less than that. Her family’s constant scrutiny and relentless inquisition made her a shell of a person.
But with Dex’s love, she felt strong. Like she could face anything, and even stand up to her parents. She’d called them and told them she was engaged and while they were still screaming about that fact, she’d informed them that she was not only not attending the gala, but that she wasn’t moving back to California either.
“And I found something...someone better.”
Dex cupped the nape of her neck, which felt just right. The gentleness of his touch sent a warm tingly feeling down her spine. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
“I don’t mind hearing it again.”
If they lived to be one hundred and he told her one thousand times a day, it would never be enough. His lips brushed hers in the lightest ghost of a kiss. Her heart beat faster at the feel of being in his arms. Like breathing, she needed him close. His kiss fed her soul like oxygen fed her lungs.
“It’s hard sometimes for me to believe how much my life has changed in less than a year.”
He tickled her side. “Try less than a month.”
“You’re right about that.” She laughed. “And to think, I almost didn’t agree to your initial proposal. If I hadn’t agreed to be your fake girlfriend, I’d have never become your real fiancée.”
That was a truth that she hadn’t managed to wrap her head around yet. She’d been so close to passing on an amazing man simply because she’d been scared. It was a hard thought to accept that she might have missed out on all this because of fear.
A slow, easy smile lit his face and brightened his face like the fireplace brightened the room. “Imagine how things would have turned out if I’d brought Belinda home as my fake girlfriend instead. I could have been engaged to a woman who came to the relationship not just with kids, but grandkids as well. I could have been a grandfather. I gave that up for you.”
Lena laughed. “Well, you’re mine now. Belinda will have to find her own surgeon to marry.”
“Is that right?” he asked, and his gaze dropped to her lips. “So, getting back to the idea of that wedding and honeymoon, when did you have in mind?”
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out this other great read from Allie Kincheloe
Heart Surgeon’s Second Chance
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Bodyguard’s Christmas Proposal by Charlotte Hawkes.
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The Bodyguard’s Christmas Proposal
by Charlotte Hawkes
CHAPTER ONE
IF TWELVE YEARS as an ER nurse had taught Kat Steel anything, it was that there were two things that travelled ridiculously fast around a hospital. One was a winter flu bug. The other was gossip. Right now, the latter was rife.
Even as Kat silently navigated her way around the small cluster of colleagues at the nurses’ station, all typing up notes or getting their next shout, the air was positively buzzing. The downtime was one of the pitfalls of cases coming into the ER in fits and starts on some days.
‘I mean, seriously, did you see the guy?’
‘Of course I saw him. How could anyone miss him?’
‘I missed it. I was with the woman in bay two. What happened?’
‘He was like some kind of superhero.’
‘Yeah, I’m calling him Comic Book God.’
‘For pity’s sake, Gemma, you’re such a nerd.’
But there was no malice in the last comment, and Kat couldn’t help but smile.
She might have only been at Seattle General for the past eight months, but she’d quickly discovered that Gemma was funny and kind, and a self-proclaimed comic nerd. She was also the closest thing Kat would describe as a real friend.
As if reading her thoughts, Gemma looked up and caught her eye.
‘Did you see him, Kat?’
There was no question who they were talking about. After all, it wasn’t every day that a gurney raced through the ER with one patient astride it, their knee rammed into the femoral artery of an older man who’d lain, unconscious, beneath him. Evidently the man—or indeed, superhero—had been doing all he could to plug the bleed and save the older man’s life.
At least until Dom di Rossi, their Head of ER, and the rest of his team could stabilise him enough to get him into Theatre.
‘Yeah, I saw him. But I was dealing with the female passenger who came in with them.’
‘Oh,’ Ge
mma moved slightly away from the group so that no one else could hear. ‘I saw her, she looked very...autocratic.’
‘Yeah, nice, though. Clearly more concerned about her fellow passengers than herself. She refused an X-ray. Insisted on seeing Lucas.’
‘Lucas Beaufort?’ Gemma named another ER doctor.
‘The same.’ Kat shrugged. ‘But don’t tell the hyenas. They’ll only read something into it.’
‘You know I won’t.’
Picking her way around the group to collect the notes for her next patient, Kat ignored the rumourmongers and pretended that she wasn’t interested. That the whole incident hadn’t looked like some incredible Hollywood action film.
It was irritating that she couldn’t seem to shake the man out of her head. Like he’d somehow locked himself in there. The intense focus on his face. And...something else. Something she couldn’t quite identify.
‘Admit it, Kat, even you can’t have failed to be impressed.’ Another nurse dragged her back to reality, and back to the conversation about the superhero patient.
‘It was certainly...unusual,’ she conceded, after a moment.
Because, after Kirk, if anyone should be immune to men—even those who looked like comic book gods—then surely it should be her?
‘Kat?’ The low voice of one of the hospital managers snagged her attention and Kat turned gratefully as a tablet was pressed quietly into her hands. Anything that could spare her from thoughts of her perfidious ex was to be welcomed.
‘Your next patient. I trust you’ll be discreet.’
‘Of course,’ Kat confirmed, glancing down at the electronic notes before the hospital managers summoned her along.
Logan Connors.
She was about to locate the patient in the main ER when the manager shook her head.
‘Not in there. This way...’
Making their way out of the general ER to the VIP patient area, they hurried along the wide corridors to the private rooms, right to the most restricted section.
Who were these people?
But there was no time to consider the question. The door to one of the rooms opened as someone went inside and, for the briefest moment, Kat glimpsed Emilia Featherstone, Seattle General’s Head of Orthopaedics, who had collected the elderly man from the gurney earlier. Then, as Kat hurried along, the door closed again and her attention was snagged by another figure standing on the other side of the corridor with his back to her, almost as if on guard. As he turned his head to talk to her approaching manager, Kat startled, and then something rolled low in her belly.
The guy from the gurney—Comic Book God. Surely he couldn’t possibly be her next patient?
She stood, rooted to the spot, as her manager bustled back down the corridor to her, the man clearly reluctant to follow.
As they neared, she realised that the name Comic Book God wasn’t nearly a lofty enough term to describe this hulk of a man, who was mouthwateringly tall, big and fit.
Very fit. In more than one sense of the word.
‘This is Logan Connors,’ the manager introduced Kat, the very nature of how this was happening warning her that he was also to be treated as a VIP.
Even his real name had a tinge of superhero about it. Or perhaps that was just her...projecting. There was no doubt about it, the man was attractive.
More than attractive. Even frowning at her, as he was.
‘I don’t need to be looked at.’
There ought to have been a law against any man having such a rich, seductive voice, especially when they looked like this one did. And especially when they were practically growling.
‘I’ll leave him in your capable hands, Kat,’ her manager declared, turning to walk back down the corridor as she mouthed at Kat to convince him.
She had to be kidding.
‘Thanks,’ Kat muttered, instead. ‘Mr Connors...’
‘Logan.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m not being looked at. But if you’re going to call me anything, just call me Logan.’
She swallowed.
‘Okay,’ she began, ‘Logan... You’re going to have to let me check you over.’
Heat zipped thought her. If that didn’t sound like the most cringeworthy come-on, she didn’t know what would.
But how could it not?
He was possibly the most beautiful, most masculine man she’d ever seen in her life, with a strong, square jaw that made her palms itch just to reach out and trace it, and teeth so white that it was impossible not to imagine them against her skin.
It had been impressive enough watching him sail in on that gurney but now, almost face to face, Kat felt a ripple of something else—something she didn’t care to identify—cascade through her.
Fighting to regulate her suddenly erratic breathing, Kat wrested her gaze from him and glanced over his shoulder to the private room where Dr Featherstone and her colleagues were still with the other MVA victim. The man whose life this Logan Connors—Logan—had saved by compressing the older man’s proximal right iliac artery.
Given the extent of the damage, he would have needed to apply upwards of one hundred and twenty pounds of pressure to stop exsanguination within seconds—something a first responder might have needed his entire upper body to manage—yet Logan had managed it simply by ramming his knee onto the critical point.
Ten minutes ago she hadn’t thought it possible. Now, looking at the man standing in front of her, looking for all the world as though he was hewn from granite, she thought maybe she could believe anything of him.
He truly looked as though he could move mountains. Shape worlds.
Ridiculous, fanciful notion, she snorted inwardly.
He was probably just an ex-military guy. He certainly looked like one. And that compression technique was one she thought she remembered hearing military physicians were taught—to plug a main artery like that.
Not that it made any difference who he was, or what he’d done.
‘Your...father...is in good hands,’ she hazarded.
Instinct told her they weren’t father and son, but Logan’s protectiveness of the older man was unmistakable. Even for a hospital accustomed to protecting VIP identities, the secrecy around these patients was unusually high.
And Comic Book God was looking particularly fierce.
She told herself it was the fact that he was standing there, so strong and upright, as though he had just arrived at some posh gala, the most well turned-out man there. As though he wasn’t clearly injured or bloodied, or his clearly expensively tailored suit ripped and sullied with bloodstains.
And, somehow, that only made him look all the more...sexy.
You’re being ridiculous again.
Shaking her head, Kat battled to focus. This wasn’t like her. It wasn’t what she did.
She prided herself on her reputation as an efficient, kind, approachable ER nurse, liked by patients and colleagues alike, just like all the nurses who had made her own childhood, spent in and out of hospitals, so much more bearable.
And above all—just like those nurses who had cared for her—Kat strived to be very, very good at her job.
She did not strive to feel unsettled.
Ever.
Which only made it all the more incomprehensible that, standing face to face with Comic Book God, she found herself...rattled.
Unexpectedly, that gaze slammed into hers, and this time she realised his eyes had to be the most incredible, piercing blue she’d ever seen. Pinning her to the spot. Making her feel as though he could peel back every layer of who she was, and leave her exposed and vulnerable, for the world to see.
And then they scanned her up and down. Checking her out. And everything...compressed inside her.
You’re being ridiculous.
She pasted her best smile on h
er face and held her hand out to indicate a vacant consultation room.
‘If you’d like to go into there, Mr... Logan.’
Not a single muscle twitched. He remained standing, feet shoulders width apart and arms folded over his chest—only making it seem all the broader, and stronger.
‘I already told you,’ he growled at last, ‘I don’t need to be checked over.’
The steely blue gaze swirled with emotion. For a moment she felt swept up in the maelstrom, her breath catching in her throat until, just as suddenly, they masked over and she tumbled to the ground—shut out. Relieved and bereft all at once.
He was acting like it was his duty to put the man in that room in front of his own health. But surely he could see that it benefited no one to stay outside a door when they had an entire team in that room?
‘I understand that you’re concerned for your friend—’ Kat tried her usual tack of empathy, but right now it was all she could do not to melt under his laser glare ‘—but he is with our best team right now. And we are obliged to check you over. You could have internal injuries and not even be aware of them.’
‘I don’t have internal injuries. I’m fine.’
‘You’re covered in blood,’ Kat pointed out as evenly as she could.
Right up until that startling gaze walloped back into hers, leaving her feeling oddly winded.
He glanced down in evident surprise.
‘It isn’t my blood,’ he declared after a moment.
‘If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to ascertain that for myself.’ Her voice sounded strange. Haughtier than she was used to.
Logan Connors was getting under her skin, and she wasn’t sure she understood why, much less cared for it.
His eyes gleamed, as though he could read her thoughts. Slowly, he unfurled his arms and lifted them out to the sides in invitation.
Or in challenge.
‘Fine. Be my guest.’
Either way, a tiny thrill threaded its way along her spine. Wholly inappropriate—not that she seemed to be listening, no matter how sternly she tried reprimanding herself.
A Nurse, a Surgeon, a Christmas Engagement Page 16