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‘I don’t hate the idea of kids. I...’
Can’t have them.
She trailed off, horrified at the way the admission hung there, tainting the air. Casting a bleak shadow on what was meant to have been a fun day. Ruining it.
Only Logan didn’t look like his day was ruined. He looked very much as though he was interested. Worse, he looked as though he cared. And she didn’t think she could stand to see the compassion in his gaze.
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It made something inside her shift when she needed it to stay as resolute as ever.
As she stood there, wondering what she could possibly say next, the sky darkened, there was an ominous rumble, and the rain dropped straight from the heavens down on top of them. Soaking them right through.
And still she didn’t move. She didn’t care.
Not until Logan grabbed her hand and ran towards the park’s glass pavilion.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LOGAN DIDN’T CARE much for what was going on deep inside his chest.
This low heat. The dark hunger that seemed to scrape away at him every time he was with this one woman. Weakening and exhilarating him all at once.
The Santa Dash was over and they should be going their separate ways, yet he couldn’t tear himself from Kat even now. He could tell himself all he liked that it was merely about the sexual attraction but he knew it wasn’t true.
She’d been about to tell him something out there, before the rain had started. Before she’d clamped her mouth closed and made it clear that she regretted uttering a single word. It was ridiculous how badly he wanted to know what that something was. That was emotional connection, rather than physical.
It was as though it was another piece to the backward puzzle that was Kat Steel. The kind of jigsaws that Jamie and his nana did together, where the picture wasn’t the one you saw on the box but merely the other side of the so-called camera. A clue. A hint. But not the real person.
It should concern him that he wanted, so badly, to put that puzzle together and understand who Kat Steel really was. A wiser man would have walked away.
But he wasn’t sure he’d been a wise man for the past six years or so. Ever since that last tour of duty. He felt as though he’d been lurching from one thing to another. Isola Verde, bodyguarding. Sophia.
For Jamie’s sake he’d known he needed to ground himself. And since returning to Seattle he’d felt more like his old self. It would be foolish of him to pretend that the time he’d spent with Kat—ice-skating, Christmas decoration hunting, going on runs—hadn’t also played a part.
She’d helped him without realising it. Now he found he wanted to help her, too.
‘Kat—’ he began, but she cut him off quickly.
‘Don’t.’ Her eyes were fixed on his shoulder, staring at it intently as though she could see right through the skin and bone.
He tried to stop himself from hooking a finger under her chin and tilting her head up, but it was impossible. He needed her to look at him. To see him.
It made no sense.
‘Please,’ she choked out.
Reluctantly, he moved his hand from her chin. The questions squatted heavily in his chest. As if it didn’t tear him up to bite them back.
She looked so vulnerable. So broken. She looked the way he had felt six years ago. If only he knew why, maybe he could help her.
But to what end?
Logan’s mind raced, and he was helpless to stop it.
Did she really hate kids so much that she couldn’t bear even a stranger to think that Jamie was her own? And, if so, what did it even matter to him?
It didn’t matter to him.
