MAYBE IT WOULDN’T be so difficult working with Logan after all, Kat decided as she strode back across the atrium after her shift was finally over. They’d worked together on another case after that encounter in the hallway and that time it had been as though nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened between them.
She wasn’t sure she liked it. It unsettled her. And it wasn’t helped by the fact that she was still trying to ignore the too-big, too-bright pull of the tree, only now she had the added complication of trying to avoid Logan.
Her body still threatened to melt when she saw him, of course. But if her head could just keep that bit ahead, they should be fine. No one appeared to have noticed the tension between them during that first shout, they certainly hadn’t mentioned it. And Kat told herself that she felt intensely relieved and not at all piqued.
Eyeing the weather outside as she approached the glass doors, Kat pulled her coat more tightly around herself and had her hand on the metal framework when she heard her name being called.
The high-pitched, excited voice was unmistakable.
‘Hello, Jamie.’ She smiled, turning around and just about dropping to her knees as a little blur hurled itself into her arms.
‘Jamie,’ Logan censured him, ‘you can’t just jump on people, champ.’
But Kat simply shook her head to stop him, her arms going around the boy as she inhaled his little-kid scent and held on for as long as he let her, only making herself release him when he pushed himself back to talk to her.
‘We’re going to get new Christmas dorations.’
‘Decorations,’ Logan corrected.
‘Dec-rations,’ he repeated dutifully.
His little body practically shook with excitement, like an over-excited puppy, and his enthusiasm was so infectious it left Kat powerless to resist.
‘Wow.’ She laughed. ‘That sounds super exciting.’
He nodded gleefully.
‘It is. Daddy says I can choose one bubble all by myself.’
‘Bubble?’ she echoed cautiously, her mind whirring.
‘He means—’
‘Bauble!’ she exclaimed, her brain ticking over after a moment.
‘Bauble,’ Jamie pronounced slowly.
Kat’s heart swelled at the pride in his voice.
‘That’s amazing,’ she told Jamie solemnly. ‘Your daddy must trust you very, very much. You’ll have to choose a really special bauble, okay?’
‘Yes,’ Jamie confirmed boldly. ‘You help me.’
‘Oh, no, sweetie, I...can’t.’
But it shocked her just how much she wanted to say yes.
Only a couple of minutes ago she hadn’t been able to look at the Christmas tree because of how painful a reminder it was of being without Carrie. Now her heart was aching because she wanted to accompany Jamie and his father on their Christmas-bauble shopping trip.
She ached to see that wide-eyed, unequivocal belief in the magic of the season that only a young child could show. The way she’d expected this Christmas to be for her with Carrie.
‘Why?’ Jamie’s voice pierced her thoughts and, in a tiny sense, it was a little bit gratifying how crushed he looked. ‘Pl-e-e-e-ease, Kat?’
She should say no. She opened her mouth then closed it again, but didn’t dare look at Logan.
‘I think this is a trip for you and your daddy,’ she managed instead.
‘I’m sure Kat has better things to do than come shopping for Christmas tree decorations,’ Logan cut in, making her jump.
‘Right.’ She stumbled over the word, tugging her mouth into some semblance of a smile and pretending that her head wasn’t screaming at her to disagree. ‘Of course. Lots to do.’
She stood up, her eyes slamming straight into Logan’s.
‘Don’t you?’ he asked, a little more quietly this time.
She hesitated, unsure what to answer. The idea of returning to her empty place was no more palatable than it had been the other night.
‘You’re welcome to come if you want to,’ he went on, just as quietly. ‘I just didn’t want you to feel obliged.’
‘I don’t.’ She shook her head instantly. ‘That is, I wouldn’t. I’d love to join you both.’
There it was again, that infuriating unfathomable expression. And then it was gone, and he was addressing his son.
‘Okay, champ, then that’s settled. Kat can come after all.’
‘Yay!’ Jamie did a little dance in front of them before slipping his hand into Kat’s. ‘C’mon, Kat, help me find dinosaur bubbles.’
‘Baubles,’ she corrected happily, blushing when she chorused it in time with Logan.
‘But,’ Jamie announced imperiously, holding his hand up, ‘first we’re starting with a sleigh ride.’
And she told herself there was nothing in the least romantic about that at all.
‘Well, that’s the second colleague from the hospital to have seen us,’ Logan observed a few hours later as they left yet another store with yet another Jamie-selected tree ornament.
The little boy’s hand was still firmly lodged in Kat’s—clearly his mother had been right about his son craving a younger female presence in his life.
‘It’s okay.’ Kat turned around to answer him. ‘We’re just talking about innocuous topics like the traffic. And the weather.’
It took Logan a moment to realise that she was teasing him. He wanted to tease her back, but that was a skill slightly out of his wheelhouse.
‘You might not be laughing when those two colleagues tell the hospital that they saw us together,’ he pointed out instead.
Not that there was anything they could do about it now. He waited for the stab of regret to hit him. But it didn’t come.
‘You’re very much about being ordered and correct, I think.’ She tilted her head at him. ‘About protocol.’
He hadn’t really considered it like that before, Logan realised. But it made sense. First in the military, then as a bodyguard, his life had been about keeping things neat and squared away, whether it was his kit or the separation of his personal and private lives.
‘I suppose I am,’ he conceded eventually.
Except he’d been breaking his own rules ever since Kat had come into his life. And he could pretend it was about the way she had clicked with Jamie, but that would be pretending there hadn’t been that...frisson between them that first day when she had examined him.
‘At least, that’s the way I usually prefer it,’ he amended.
‘So it bugs you that colleagues have seen us together?’
He knew it ought to. But he found he felt remarkably, uncharacteristically, carefree.
‘Actually, no.’ Logan leaned on the doorframe and folded his arms over his chest as Jamie and Kat stopped to admire a Christmas-themed model train set in a window. ‘People love a good gossip, whether it’s those two or someone else.’
‘Those three, actually.’ She wrinkled her nose as though in apology. ‘There was someone you probably didn’t recognise in the last shop we went into. I just didn’t like to say anything.’
‘I guess that’s a new supply chain for the rumour mill, then.’
And even then he didn’t care, he was having so good an evening with Kat. Plus, it had turned out that her presence was helping him to connect a little better with his son.
He’d always thought he and Jamie had a good bond, but Kat had a knack of being able to interact with him on topics he’d never before considered but which seemed so obviously perfect for a four-year-old once she’d highlighted them.
‘You’re really good with him.’ The words tumbled out as the stood at the crossing and Kat entertained Jamie by singing funny kids’ Christmas tunes.
It had been intended as a throwaway remark, but something flitted across her features, too fast for him to read, reminding him of that night at his house when she’d mentioned the child she used to mind. Carrie or something.
Now, like then, she made a point of deflecting, putting it down to her nursing skills, and Logan nodded, as though he agreed.
But he filed it away for another time.
If he wanted to get to know Kat Steel a little better, then he had a hunch that the key lay somewhere in that.
For now he just watched her, and how happy Jamie was to have her around, and he felt more relaxed that he had in a long time.
Clearly Jamie was crying out for a younger female in his life, and he’d fallen for Kat’s charms—he couldn’t fault his son’s choice. And, all right, Kat might not be a long-term solution, but it was working for Jamie, and bringing him out of the shell he’d started to retreat into. When he weighed everything up, Logan calculated it could be good for his son—just as long as he kept some distance from Kat and kept reminding Jamie that she was just a temporary person in their lives,
And if that was also his own take-home message, then so what?
‘Daddy, Kat, look at all the trees,’ Jamie enthused a few moments later as they turned the corner to see the square full of Christmas trees—at least one hundred of them—all decorated differently.
Logan grinned as Kat allowed herself to be dragged along by the little boy as he—carrying the bags—merely lengthened his stride to keep up. They had enjoyed the sleigh ride, been to Santa’s grotto, and wandered through a snow village with little wooden sheds decorated to look like life-size gingerbread houses. Jamie had been thrilled and awestruck in equal measure.
But even Logan had to admit that the waves of trees, all decorated in their own unique way—some quirky, some traditional, and some absolutely breathtaking—looked pretty damned spectacular.
‘It’s the Christmas tree parade,’ Kat realised. ‘The public can judge them. Gemma told me about it—her niece entered a tree this year. You can buy tickets and there are several categories you can judge, like Most Beautiful, Most Fun, Most Original, et cetera, and you get to choose your favourites.’
‘Can we choose, Daddy? Please?’
‘It’s good fun,’ Kat encouraged, not even attempting to hide her bias.
‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ Logan laughed, and she nodded so preposterously that all he wanted to do was cup her face and kiss her.
‘It’s like that,’ she told him blithely, completely oblivious to his less than platonic thoughts.
‘All right,’ he agreed, setting the bags down to pull his wallet from his pocket.
‘No, these are on me.’ Kat put her hand on his, a bolt of electricity shooting through him at the mere contact. She snatched her hand back, tellingly, which let him know she’d felt it too. ‘You’ve paid for everything else tonight.’
Then she was darting away with Jamie holding one hand before he could say anything, and he was glad because he wasn’t sure what he would have said.
It was strange, the things that made an impact of different people. For him, that simple gesture unlocked a slew of emotions from him. In three years with Sophia, she had never—not once—offered to pay for anything. She’d expected people to indulge her. Always. And they had, because she was pretty, and flirty, and exceptionally practised at being manipulative.
How had he fallen for it for so long?
Except that he already knew the answer. Mild PTSD, the army doctors had called it when they’d...encouraged him to leave after that final tour. Grief at the loss of his buddies.
He’d thought Sophia had been his saviour. An outgoing, breezy, fun-loving girl to breathe air back into his dying life.
He’d realised too late that she was demanding, volatile and avaricious. Well, perhaps not too late, or else he wouldn’t have his incredible Jamie now. But certainly she hadn’t helped to pull him up from that dark pit he’d been in.
King Roberto had done that. Though the old man would say Logan had done it for himself in the end.
‘Right, here we go.’ Kat bounced back into sight with a deliriously happy Jamie, his little hand still firmly lodged in hers.
‘Okay, you get five tickets each and the categories are written on each of them. Come on, sweetheart, let’s read them together and then we’ll go and look at the trees. I’m sure I saw one with wellies all over it.’
‘Wellies?’ Jamie chortled into his hand in typical four-year-old fashion. ‘Not real wellies.’
‘Oh, yes. Real, bright red wellies,’ Kat assured him. ‘I think it was probably the coastguard’s Christmas tree. What do you think?’
‘I think that’s getting my...’ checking his tickets, Logan was determined to join in the fun ‘...quirkiest ticket.’
Kat beamed at him, and he couldn’t stop his chest from tightening at her approval.
‘Well, now, wait just a moment, we should see what else is out there first, don’t you agree, Jamie?’
‘No. Quirky wellies.’ Jamie grinned up at him, and his heart swelled with happiness.
Even as she waggled her finger, Kat laughed.
‘Oh, siding with your daddy, huh? I see how it is.’
For the next half-hour or so they wandered up and down, admiring the trees and choosing their winners, although the latter part became ultimately a matter of choosing one of any of the nearest trees as Jamie’s attention began to wane.
And once again Logan marvelled at how instinctively Kat picked up on Jamie’s mood changes a fraction ahead of him, and he was supposed to the parent.
‘Time to go home, champ?’ Logan asked, as Jamie wrapped his arms around his leg and nodded.
‘Do you want me to take the bags so that you can carry him?’
Another touching gesture that Sophia would never have made. Not that she’d have even stooped to come to somewhere like this in the first place. Not even for Jamie.
Not unless some VIPs were attending and it was an opportunity for her to network. Or, in simpler terms, social climb.
‘Thanks, but they’re pretty heavy,’ he declined, dragging himself back to the present. ‘But if you can lift him onto my shoulders I can carry him too.’
‘Yay! Shoulder ride.’ Jamie applauded, but for the first time all night it was slightly muted, his tiredness showing through.
Logan bent his knees and dipped his head as Kat lifted Jamie up.
‘I guess that’s me, then.’ She smiled as he stood up again with his son. ‘I’d better be heading home.’
And Logan realised he didn’t want her to go. He wondered if it was just his imagination—or wishful thinking—that her smile looked slightly fixed.
He scanned his brain for something, anything, to say, but it came up with nothing. Probably for the best. There were a million reasons why her coming back to his apartment was a bad idea. Not least to avoid a repeat of what had happened last time she’d been.
‘Okay, well, thanks for joining us tonight.’ The words felt thick in his mouth.
‘I had fun.’
Another over-bright smile that Logan abruptly decided he hated on sight. His mind whirred for excuses even as he pretended it didn’t.
‘Didn’t you say you lived close to me?’
She blinked, then looked sheepish.
‘Yeah. I do. I pretty much walk past your door to get to my apartment.’
There was no reason whatsoever for him to feel quite so elated.
‘Come to mine. I’ll get Jamie down for the night and we’ll call a cab for you.’
She hesitated, and he knew he had her. Victory coursed through him, though he couldn’t have said why.
And he ignored the voice that said he just didn’t want to admit it.
‘The place looks like amazing,’ she marvelled, as Logan handed her the key to open the front door and he carried a sleeping Jamie inside.
He’d fallen asleep mid-shoulder ride and Logan had been forced to give Kat a couple of the bags after all so that he could carry his son in his arms.
‘It’s like a grotto,’ she continued, stepping a little further inside.
‘Yeah, I know, I might have gone a little overboard, but in a way it’s our first real Christmas together. I was always travelling such a lot.’
‘As a bodyguard?’ she asked wryly.
‘Fine, as a bodyguard, yes.’
‘For who?’
‘You know I can’t divulge that,’ he replied. ‘Feel free to head to the lounge. Or grab some wine from the kitchen. I’m just going to put this little man to bed.’
‘Okay.’ She kept her back firmly to Logan as she headed through to his lounge.
It felt as though she was walking on the softest, fluffiest clouds. He might not have confirmed who his VIP was, but he’d admitted that he’d been working as a bodyguard, which was more than he’d told anyone all day. And she knew that because she’d heard them.
She tried to caution herself that it probably meant nothing. But it didn’t work. She felt special. Trusted by Logan Connors. It was an inexplicably heady sensation.
Wandering through to the kitchen, she stopped and surveyed the scene. A half-mutilated gingerbread man lay next to a knife on a kid’s plate. Like a culinary crime scene. A pile of washed baking equipment sat, clean and dry, on a draining tray.
‘That’s one exceptionally tired little boy,’ Logan announced, stepping into the kitchen through the far door and making Kat jump. ‘Ah. I meant to clear up that horror story before I went out but everything was such a rush, and, well, time got away from me.’
‘No need to explain, I understand,’ she assured him, before realising that she’d almost begun talking about Carrie. Again. ‘And it isn’t too bad. It’s just that poor gingerbread blob. What happened?’
‘No idea.’ Logan grinned. ‘I’ve never baked in my life. I now realise it’s an essential skill that I need to know.’
‘Well, at least learn how to make gingerbread men look like they aren’t gingerbread cacti.’
‘Their undefined forms are the least of their problems. You didn’t have to taste one.’ He hung his head in feigned shame. ‘Jamie was wholly unimpressed.’
‘At least you tried.’
‘It was for the hospital baking competition. He really wanted us to enter.’
‘Is there a booby prize?’ she deadpanned.
‘Funny.’ His lips twitched, and she had to fight to urge to step over to taste them again.
Just like the other night.
Taking a bottle of the festive drink she’d dared him into buying, Logan collected two glasses and led the way back through to the living room, leaving her to follow.
‘I could probably give you a few pointers,’ she announced, out of the blue.
‘Sorry?’
She lifted her shoulders.
‘For your baking.’
‘You bake gingerbread men?’
‘Gingerbread folk, cookies, fairy cakes, you name it. I also make a mean frosting.’ She laughed.
‘For Carrie?’
And, for a moment, Kat could only stare at him. She felt physically winded. Then, just as quickly, she slipped her mask back into place and made herself answer.
‘I was a foster mom.’
‘You were?’
‘Before I moved to Seattle,’ she confirmed. ‘I fostered quite a few kids.’
‘Did something happen?’
‘No, I just...changed.’
He eyed her intently and she tried not to squirm. Could he tell she was lying? He wasn’t stupid. He would know that whatever had happened, it had to be significant. She’d not only moved across the country, she’d also given up a lifestyle she’d loved.
And then Logan surprised her with his soft tone.
‘No wonder Jamie took to you so easily. You clearly find it easy and natural to relate to him, knowing just what to say to sweep away his...potential issues.’
‘You’re worried about abandonment,’ she realised. ‘You think that his mother’s...lack of presence will leave Jamie feeling he was somehow at fault? Not good enough?’
She knew she’d hit the proverbial nail on the head by his taut features and locked jaw. But to his credit he dipped his head once in acknowledgement.
‘So she is still alive. She just isn’t in your lives any more?’
The silence stretched between them for an eternity, before Logan finally spoke. Biting out each word.
‘She left when Jamie was sixteen months old. But do you want to know the worst of it? I sometimes feel it would be better if Sophia had died. At least that way I could lie to Jamie and tell him that she’d loved him very much, and she would never have left him if she’d had a choice. But then I feel guilty...’
He tailed off but she knew what he’d been saying and her chest constricted.
‘You wish you could spare your son the pain and the what ifs. That’s understandable.’
It was a dilemma all too easily understood. But another question clamoured for her attention, demanding to be answered. She would just have to be subtle about asking it.
‘But what about you? Would that have been easier for you, too?’
Logan eyed her shrewdly.
‘You’re asking if I miss her? If I still love her?’
So much for subtlety.
‘No. I don’t still love my ex-wife,’ he stated simply, and it was ridiculous how much her heart soared. ‘In truth, I’m not sure that I ever really did. I think I loved the idea of her, but never really her.’
‘Oh.’ Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.
Logan shrugged, as though it wasn’t that big a deal that he was talking to her, opening up to her, but she knew that it was. She could tell.
‘I’d just left the army, not entirely by choice. I was angry, and lost, and in a bit of a grim place. I met Sophia and at first I fell for her bright, vivacious charms. Her partying lifestyle was so far removed from the world I’d inhabited that I could pretend to be someone else entirely.’
She wasn’t sure it sounded like a solution. More like trying to cover an amputation with a sticky plaster. She’d met enough former soldiers in her nursing career to know that the army had often been their lives. When they’d lost it, they’d lost their identities. And a few superficial parties weren’t going to solve that.
Not that she felt she was in any position to voice that to Logan. But then it didn’t matter, because he was continuing by himself.
‘It took me twelve months to realise that I didn’t like the person I was pretending to be. And that Sophia was avaricious, egotistical and self-centred. She used people until she’d exhausted what they could do for her, and then she cast them aside.’
‘She married you because you were a bodyguard?’ Kat guessed.
He pulled a wry face, his gorgeous eyes colouring to a hue she hadn’t seen in them before.
‘She thought it meant a glamourous lifestyle and access to lots of highly connected people. As soon as she realised my—our—life wasn’t going to be like that, she left to move on to the next guy who could give her what she wanted.’
‘But not before she’d had Jamie?’
‘I’ll never regret him,’ Logan said fiercely. ‘He’s the best thing in my life. He makes everything worth it. But the truth is that I’d told Sophia that I wasn’t ready for marriage or a family. She told me she was on the Pill, and then eight months after we started dating she got pregnant.’
Shock wound its way through Kat. Though she didn’t know why, she’d seen it enough on the wards.
‘She knew you would marry her.’
He pulled a grim face.
‘Yeah. We lived on a small island. Everyone knew everyone else, and scandalous news travelled fast. She knew I’d do the right thing.’
‘It must have hurt, though.’ Kat frowned. ‘When she left.’
‘Not for a moment. If anything, the only thing I felt was relief for myself.’
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
He paused, and something she couldn’t identify swirled around them.
‘You think I’m bitter.’ He offered a twisted smile. ‘I’m not. I didn’t love her. For pretty much two of our almost three years together, I didn’t even like her, so I don’t entirely blame her for walking out on me. But I can never understand, never forgive, how she could walk out on our son.’
Kat shook her head.
‘No, I don’t think you’re bitter. I just think you’re more like me that I realised.’
‘Indeed?’ his brow drew tight.
But she didn’t want to explain herself. Not yet. But maybe someday soon. So she did the only other she could think of. She put down her drink, dropped to her knees on the rug between them and looked him straight in the eye.
‘Are we done talking?’