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‘YOU DON’T HAVE any Christmas decorations at all,’ he noted a couple of hours later when they’d finally stopped reaching for each other and realised they were hungry for something else altogether.
So now they were sitting in her pretty, homely kitchen-living-room-diner, eating take-out that they’d ordered and chatting as if they were an actual couple.
Logan realised he liked the sound of that more than he might have thought.
It was peculiar, the way Kat seemed to have unlocked some door inside him, and suddenly all these possibilities that he would have balked at—even up until a few weeks ago—no longer felt so outlandish.
It was like a light was spilling out from behind that door, with Kat the source of it. And Logan wasn’t quite sure how to contain it all. Or even if he wanted to.
‘I didn’t get around to it,’ she answered automatically, and they both knew she was lying. ‘Fine. I didn’t want to. Christmas isn’t...well, it isn’t my favourite time of year.’
She didn?
??t offer anything more but this time he wasn’t prepared to let it go.
‘Really? That surprises me.’ He shot her a grin. ‘You have a ton of photos of what is clearly a great family unit. And the way you’ve been getting into Christmas with Jamie I’d have thought you loved this time of year.’
‘Don’t flash me your best charm-the-awkward-patient grin!’ She arched her eyebrows at him, but she was laughing. ‘But, yes, they are photos of my family.’
‘One of your brothers is in the UK and one is in Oz?’
‘You remembered?’ She seemed surprised.
‘I remembered the fondness with which you talked about them. I know you miss them.’
‘I do.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I keep promising myself I’ll visit them. Maybe one of them next year, and the other the year after.’
‘If you don’t have your own family.’
He didn’t know what had made him say it but her face clouded over instantly.
‘I won’t have my own family.’ Her teeth were gritted.
It was as though she was trying to hold the admission back but couldn’t contain it.
Surely he ought to feel guilt that he was the person prying something so clearly personal out of her? But he didn’t feel anything like guilt. If anything, he felt something urging him on all the more.
‘Want to talk about it, Kat?’
For a moment she just stared at her almost empty plate. Abruptly, her head snapped up and she glowered at him.
‘No. I don’t.’
‘You’re sure? Because you look like you want to talk.’
She narrowed her eyes at him.
‘We went through this in that pavilion. We agreed—again—that this thing between us was about sex. Nothing more.’
‘It’s just a question, Kat.’ He feigned nonchalance.
‘A very personal question. We had sex, I opened my body to you.’ Her words were choppy. Unrehearsed. ‘I didn’t agree to open my personal life to you.’
The silence stretched out between them, and he could feel her fury and something else—something altogether too much like fear—bouncing around the room. He wanted so badly to understand, even though he knew it was none of his business. But not now. Not yet.
He needed to break this silence between them.
‘Great sex.’
