Healed with a Kiss (Bride Mountain 3)

She ran her hand affectionately along his raised leg, over hair and tendon and scars. “Ready for brownies and coffee now?”

There was a short silence before he replied, and for some reason she didn’t think he was considering the merits of dessert. But whatever had distracted him, he shook it off and said, “Yeah, that sounds good. Where’d my pants land?”

Giggling, she reached for her robe.

Chapter Ten

Fully dressed, Logan joined her in the kitchen a short time later. He glanced at their pets, who were companionably enjoying treats in one corner of the kitchen, then took a seat at the table. “Spoiling my dog again?”

She smiled and set a plate of brownies and a cup of coffee in front of him. “He thinks I’m spoiling you.”

“So you have been talking to him?”

“I can read his expressions,” she retorted, serving herself a brownie and sinking into a chair.

“Now you sound like Bonnie.” He sipped his coffee, then put down his cup, his expression suddenly serious.

She cocked her head, sensing that there was something he wanted to say. “What?”

“When we were in bed a few minutes ago—you brushed the scars on my leg with your hand.”

“Yes—I’m sorry, does that bother you?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t bother me. Some other people have been turned off by them, though.”

“Seriously? They don’t bother me, other than how I hate thinking of the pain you must have felt when you got them.”

“You’ve never asked questions about them.”

“I never thought you wanted to talk about it,” she said with a light shrug, wondering where this was going. “You told me it was a sports injury from college, and I figured that was all I needed to know.”

“It started with an injury the day after I turned twenty-one,” he confirmed. “I broke my leg playing rugby. It was when they were treating the break that the doctors discovered a tumor.”

She dropped the brownie she’d just picked up. “A tumor? You mean...cancer?”

He nodded, his eyes dark with memories. “It was on the bone. I had surgery to remove the tumor, another operation later to make some repairs, but at least I didn’t have to lose the leg. I had to have chemotherapy—which meant I lost my hair for a while and lost a ridiculous amount of weight.”

Wide-eyed, she looked at his thick, dark hair, at the muscles that strained against his T-shirt. No wonder he was so into health and fitness now. “I...had no idea” was all she could think of to say.

“As you guessed, I don’t much like to talk about it. My sisters don’t mention it because they know I’d rather they didn’t. It’s not like it’s a state secret, but it was a part of my life I prefer not to dwell on.”

“I can understand that.” It must have been a horrible time—for him, for his sisters, for his mother and great-uncle and others who had loved him. “Were you... Was your life in danger?”

“Fortunately it was caught very early because of the sports injury. The cancer hadn’t yet spread, which would have made survival less likely. Worst part was an infection that set in after the second operation. I was pretty sick for a while, but obviously I recovered. I’m completely well now, just have to check in with a doctor once a year, but all my reports are clean. I’ve passed the ten-year survival mark, which is a big deal. The limp will be with me for life, but considering the alternatives, that’s a fairly minor annoyance.”

“No kidding.” She understood a little better why he didn’t like talking about the past. But why was he telling her all of this now?

“You asked about my leg once in Seattle,” he said as if he’d sensed her question. “I put you off then, because I didn’t want to talk about it in a coffee shop. But I can understand why you’d be curious about the scars, so I figured now was as good a time as any to tell you about it.”

“Does it still hurt you?”

He shook his head. “Gets a little sore every once in a while when I overuse it, and sometimes I swear I can tell when it’s going to rain, but it doesn’t hold me back from what I want to do.”

“I always just accepted you’d messed up the leg in a sports accident. Considering the scars and the limp, I assumed it was a really bad break and I figured you’d been though a lot of pain with it. I had no idea you’re a cancer survivor.”

He shrugged and picked up his brownie, avoiding her searching eyes. “Injury, cancer. Doesn’t change who I am.”

She couldn’t help wondering how much it changed who he had been before. Had he emerged from the ordeal with inner scars as well as outer ones? Had he always been somewhat solitary, blunt-spoken and occasionally cranky, or had the illness reinforced that side of him? Now that she’d learned a little more about him, she found herself even more curious than she’d been before.