‘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.
Feeling it. Well, Logan certainly made her tingle, from head to toe. She felt turned inside out just from the way his eyes swept over her.
She flushed guiltily and Gemma seized on it instantly.
‘Aha!’
She’d certainly imagined it...that night. She’d spent an indecently good proportion of the night imagining how kissing Logan would feel.
Even now, her heart skipped a beat at the mere thought of it.
Totally inappropriately.
‘It’s none of your business. Also, I don’t sleep with every guy who takes me out on a date,’ she said primly instead, as Gemma gave a heavy sigh, her disappointment evident.
‘You don’t sleep with any of them,’ she complained. ‘And, okay, I’m not saying you should do the hokey-pokey with all of them, but you’re supposed to be free and single, and having at least a little bit of what you fancy.’
‘Yes, I know, but—’
‘Nothing serious, you said,’ Gemma reminded her. ‘Just having some fun.’
‘I am having fun,’ Kat insisted.
Though she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince most. The truth was that the only thing she’d really wanted was to be Carrie’s mommy. No amount of dating was going to make her forget that—although she was trying.
Much like the way she was trying to pretend that Logan’s face wasn’t flashing through her head every time her friend mentioned sex.
A call on the emergency phone interrupted their conversation, much to Kat’s relief.
‘Seattle General, ER.’ Grabbing a pen, she began to make notes, twisting the paper around as one of the doctors quickly scanned it and mouthed that they would run the shout. Then Kat reached for the loudspeaker and announced the adult trauma call as the team came quickly together to get the rest of their equipment organised. Within ten minutes the team was all prepped and the patient was being hurried in.
One of the emergency responders was trying to hold down flailing fists in an attempt to prevent the man from being hurt as the gurney raced along and also avoid getting hit themselves.
As Kat’s team stepped forward, the doctor leading the shout called timings for transferring the patient from the emergency responders’ equipment to the hospital bed and then it was up to Kat and Gemma to keep him from sitting up.
‘This is Adam, late thirties. He was discovered by his neighbour in the front garden of their apartment block. Posterior head injury. He has a blood coming out of his left ear, a pulse of seventy-one. There’s evidence of alcohol intoxication and he’s very combative. Because of the head injury we’ve had to tape his head securely to the blocks and the oxygen mask, but he keeps trying to rip them off and he keeps lifting his head to sit up.’
The atmosphere in the team instantly shifted. The blood from the ear was suggestive of a skull fracture, so now they were not only concerned about a significant head injury but also about any possible neck injury as well. If the patient wasn’t going to be co-operative, then it was going to be that much harder to keep him safe. Experience told her that the best course of action now would be to get the man to CT.
‘Okay, thanks.’ Elizabeth—the doctor running the shout—stepped forward to her patient. ‘Hello, Adam, I realise you’ve had a drink, but can you tell me what day of the week it is?’
For a moment the patient stopped flailing, pausing long enough to think.
‘Friday. No...’ He blinked, clearly confused. ‘Saturday.’
‘Okay, and—’
‘No. It’s Sunday.’
‘All right, and can you tell me the month?’
‘November...wait, December.’ He tried to push himself upright as Kat and Gemma hastily pressed him back down and told him not to move his head. ‘No. November.’
The confusion was evident, but it was impossible to tell whether it was injury related or as a result of the alcohol. Kat could smell it on him from where she was standing, and she doubted it had just been the one drink.
‘I want to go home,’ he growled, lifting his hand suddenly and flailing his arm again.
Immediately, Kat twisted over, avoiding the fist, to hold his head down.
‘All right, Adam.’ It was a necessary skill to be able to keep your voice amiable yet firm enough that the patient would listen, but not so firm that it provoked them. ‘Try not to move, mate, we don’t want you to injure your neck.’
‘I think we might need to sedate him or we’ll never get him into CT,’ Elizabeth commented.
Not ideal, given the nature of the head injury, but without sedation it was likely that he would cause himself more damage if he kept trying to free himself and they weren’t there to restrain him.
For the next twenty minutes they completed the rest of his obs, worked to temporarily remove the blocks and the collar to enable them to sedate him. Then Elizabeth took him to CT with a smaller contingent, freeing Kat up.
As Kat headed back to the nurses’ station to pick up a new case, she certainly wasn’t expecting to be greeted with a pterodactyl toy. It sat behind the counter, its toy bead eyes seeming to lock with hers.
Kat’s heart pounded hard and fast.
‘Where did that come from?’
Another nurse lifted her head from where she was making notes.
‘Someone brought it in. They found it in the park and dropped it off here. Apparently it has “Doc Terens” scrawled on it so they thought it might belong here.’
‘Doc Terrence,’ Kat managed, the beat of her heart so loud now that it was almost deafening her.
It was hard to believe the rest of the ER couldn’t hear it.
‘You know who it belongs to?’
‘Pretty sure,’ Kat muttered, telling herself it was coincidence, plain and simple. Not some sign.
Not fate.
So why was she keeping the toy owner’s identity to herself? And why was something suspiciously like excitement rolling through her like a train gathering speed down a hill?
‘Do you mind if I take it and clean it up so that I can return it to its owner?’
Of course, she could just wait for Logan to start his first shift here and hand it over then. Better still, she could tell the ward manager, who would no doubt keep it safe and hand it over herself once Logan started work.
But surely she owed it to him to warn him that he was hot gossip around here. Not just because of the VIPs who were still in the hospital, but because everyone already knew Logan was going to be starting as the new ER doc.
Then she conjured up Jamie’s distraught face, and told herself that taking the toy round to Logan’s home as soon as her shift ended was being a good Samaritan. Returning Doc Terrence as quickly as possible was about sparing the child unnecessary additional distress. It wasn’t about leaping at the first opportunity to go and see some man she barely knew.
Of course it wasn’t.
‘Sure, go ahead.’ The nurse barely glanced up again. ‘You’ve got a new admission in Room Four. A male in his sixties, presenting with chest tightness.’
‘Right.’ Kat nodded. ‘I’ll get to him now.’
She headed straight over to the room, pushing thoughts of Jamie—and ultimately of Logan—out of her head as she concentrated on her new patient.
Within minutes she had discovered that her patient had recently undergone ablation surgery for a cardiac arrythmia, but that he also had a history of asthma. That meant that his chest tightness and shortness of breath could be anything from atrial fibrillation to an asthma attack.
An echocardiogram and a chest X-ray would confirm which of those diagnoses were correct, but for now her first priority was to assess him, draw labs and carry out an EKG.
It was going to be a busy shift, and for that Kat was very grateful.
‘Kat?’ Logan opened the door and, for a second she thought she saw something flash though his eyes moments before he frowned. ‘What are you doing here?’
Kat ignored that punch in her gut, the one that told her she wasn’t here just for the one hundred per cent altruistic purpose of reuniting a sad four-year-old with his favourite dinosaur, no matter what she’d tried to tell herself a few hours earlier.
Still, she plastered a bright smile on her lips and held her trophy aloft.
‘I found something.’
‘My God, I can’t believe it.’ Logan swung the door open wider, inviting her straight in.
Whatever apprehension he’d had when he’d first seen her standing there had disappeared the instant he’d seen the toy. Clearly, he put his son’s needs ahead of his own concerns, which told Kat a great deal about the man.
And then she pulled herself up quickly because she wasn’t here to learn about the man. She was just here to return a toy.
And if she believed that...well, more fool her.
‘Go through, first door on the right. He’s barely slept since yesterday. I’ve tried to distract him all day, we’ve been to the park and the zoo, and now he’s just settled down to watch half an hour of television.’
It shouldn’t be that hard to get her legs moving. With a slight lurch Kat moved forward, dutifully walking down the corridor and in through the door indicated. There on the sofa sat a glum Jamie, evidently fresh from a bath in pyjamas and race-car slippers.
His dark-ringed eyes testified to the lack of sleep and those eyes were glued to a kids’ programme. Puppies on some kind of rescue mission. She recognised it only too well from Carrie, and her chest pulled a little tighter.
Still, this wasn’t about her. This was about a little boy and his current best bud dinosaur.
Backing up a step until she was no longer in sight, Kat lifted the pterodactyl and poked its head past the door as she made a soft roar sound. There was a pause, and then a loud gasp.
‘Doc Twence!’
Kat heard the distinct sound of Jamie bouncing off the couch and scurrying across the room, and she was only just able to kneel down as the four-year-old flung himself at both her and his pterodactyl.
An invisible hand reached between her ribs and clenched at her heart. Squeezing it. Making her wonder if she would ever breathe again.
‘You find Doc Twence.’
‘Found,’ Logan corrected gently from behind Kat. ‘Kat found Terrence.’
‘Found,’ Jamie choked out joyously, his arms squeezing her neck so tightly that it almost hurt.
Almost.
For a moment Kat couldn’t stop herself from burying her head in his neck as she hugged him back. That little child scent was so wonderfully, painfully familiar.
So like Carrie.
And then she shut the painful memories out and forced herself back from the little boy.
‘I think Terrence missed you,’ she managed. And if her voice sounded a little thicker than usual, well, who was to know? ‘And he’s all cleaned up, so I’m guessing you can probably have him tonight for bed.’
‘You cleaned the toy?’ Logan muttered above them.
‘At the hospital.’ She twisted her neck to try to look up but Jamie’s grasp was too tight. And she wasn’t really trying that hard. ‘Who knows what adventures Terrence got up to?’
‘I didn’t even think about it.’
She didn’t miss the note of self-censure in his voice, but now wasn’t the time to delve into it. Instead, she spent the next ten minutes speculating with the blissfully happy four-year-old about where his dinosaur might have gone, and what wonders he might have seen, the television programme utterly forgotten in the little boy’s joy.
By then it was Jamie’s bedtime, and as Logan put his son to bed Kat found herself left alone in the living room. She shifted nervously on the sofa. Should she leave?
Logan had said something about not being too long as he’d ushered his son from the room, but somehow she felt like she was intruding. The sounds of a still happy, exhausted Jamie floated through the apartment to her ears. And Logan, with his hushed, soothing voice, reading a story to get his son to sleep.
Sounds that were as familiar as they were painful. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to stand up and leave. Somehow it was comforting.
Certainly more comforting than returning to her own silent, empty apartment.
And then, suddenly, Logan’s low voice went quiet and all she heard was a soft padding as he made his way back to the living room.
‘I didn’t think that would take long. He’s shattered, poor kid. Now that his darned toy is home, I think he’ll sleep for a week. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t found it.’
‘You’ll have to buy another.’ Kat smiled. ‘If Carrie loved a particular toy, or jumper, or whatever, I used to buy another. Just in case one ever got lost.’
She didn’t realise what she’d said until he frowned at her.
‘Carrie?’
Horror unfurled within her. She stared at him blankly, her heart racing and her stomach flip-flopping.
‘You have a daughter?’ he pressed, his brows knitted tightly, as if trying to work it out.
It took everything she had to calm the slamming of her heart against her ribs and affect an easy smile. Good job she was so practised at it these days.
‘Not mine. I just took care of her a few times.’
It was a million miles from the truth, but it was as close as she was prepared to get right now. Not that she thought Logan was buying it.
He fixed her with that intense gaze again and it was all she could do not to squirm away from the deep, unsettling sense that he was assessing her.
But then, without warning, he released her.
‘I’ll get us a drink.’
She was grateful for the reprieve, and it was insane just how badly she wanted to accept. Still, something about Logan got under her skin, and that made him altogether too dangerous to be around.
‘It’s okay.’ She shook her head. ‘I only meant to return Jamie’s toy. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.’
‘You’re not overstaying. Call it a thank you for coming out of your way for us.’
‘Really, it isn’t a big deal.’ Heat bloomed through her, staining her cheeks pink. ‘I only live five minutes away.’
Plus, if he could have read the not so altruistic reasons in her head for returning the dinosaur, he probably wouldn’t be quite so grateful. Fortunately, he’d already headed into the next room and couldn’t see the traitorous flush.
She really needed to relax.
‘Red, or white?’ he called through.
‘Um...either.’
As long as it was with him.
There was the clinking of glasses and the pop of a cork, and then Logan was heading back through with two large wine glasses and a bottle of red. As if there was nothing more interesting he’d rather do than sit and share a glass of wine with her.
‘I’m guessing that, by now, the ubiquitous hospital grapevine knows I’m coming to Seattle as a new ER doctor?’
She offered a sheepish grin.
‘Actually, that was one of the other reasons I thought I’d return Terrence sooner rather than later.’
‘So they know.’
‘Yep. The place was buzzing with that particular gem that first day. Before you’d even left after the accident.’
‘Of course it was.’
‘I also heard that you’ve been in regularly to check on the older man. Speculation is rife, of course, but I haven’t even told them that you were his bodyguard.’
‘Who said I was his bodyguard?’
‘You were literally guarding that door when I first met you, you look like a bodyguard and... I saw the exit wound on your shoulder.’
‘Very astute.’
There was no need for that passing comment to make her feel quite so proud. But it did.
‘Not that I’ve told anyone, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘It’s nobody else’s business.’
He eyed her for a moment.
‘I think I believe you. Anyway, I thought maybe you could give me the low-down on the ER department from a colleague’s point of view. Who makes the best ally, and who do I look out for?’
It was a deft conversation redirection, and one that had her stomach doing that strange jig thing it seemed to have taken up. He wasn’t about to confide in her, understandably, but he wasn’t exactly dismissing her either.
‘As in female attention? Dating?’
He looked vaguely amused.
‘More like, who is professionally territorial? I’m not afraid of stepping on people’s toes if it’s in the patient’s best interests, but I like to avoid unnecessary conflict wherever possible.’
‘Oh. Of course.’
Her cheeks flushed. Again.
‘My life is centred around my son right now,’ he added. ‘I don’t have time for dating.’
‘Hence the wedding band. There hasn’t been anyone?’
He didn’t exactly shrug; his tone achieved that for him.
‘A couple of hook-ups. But nothing serious. You’re the first person who has even met Jamie.’
He didn’t mean it that way, she knew that, but it didn’t stop the heat from radiating in her chest. And then lower. Hotter.
‘I guess they haven’t had Doc Terrence to return,’ she joked weakly, and pretended that a part of her didn’t want him to say that it was more than that.
‘Indeed,’ he answered instead.
Which told her absolutely nothing. Or nothing that she foolishly wanted to hear, anyway.
‘His grandparents will be pleased. I think they were beside themselves the first night.’
‘Jamie stayed with them?’ She didn’t know why she was surprised, it wasn’t as though she knew anything about Logan, or Jamie, or their lives.
‘He’s spent most of his life practically living with them, I was away so much. And with the shifts I’ll be working, they’ll still be taking him a few times a week. It makes sense to keep him comfortable going between them and me.’
‘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.