Not that he could tell this nurse—Kat—why he’d been so reluctant to leave his employer’s door, of course. The fact was that only a handful of people in this hospital were aware of exactly who their VIPs were, and even fewer of them were aware of the connections the Baresi family had to one of Seattle General’s own consultants.
Not that he was about to be the one to spill that secret.
As the adrenaline rush that had carried him through the car crash, and the aftermath, was beginning to wear off, the sudden realisation that he’d been inches from losing his employer—and maybe even his own life—on the very last day of his assignment hit him.
And then what would have happened to Jamie?
The ugly question was there before he could snuff it out.
When the nurse had brought up the idea of someone out there who loved him, the rush of love and fear had been overwhelming. What would Jamie have done if that car crash had gone a different way?
In that one instant, his four-year-old son would have lost his father. Wasn’t it enough that, for all intents and purposes, he’d never had a mother? What kind of start to life would that have been? His mother abandoning him and his father being killed because of a stupid area of black ice?
Jamie’s grandparents would have looked after him, of course, as they had so often during the whole of his little life. But it was hardly
the same.
Logan slammed his mind shut. But not fast enough to stop something dark, and ugly, from reaching out with its long, twisted fingers and scraping through him. He hadn’t been the best father he could have been, away so much with work. But now he’d quit as a royal bodyguard. Now he was coming back to Seattle for a new life.
Not just back to where he’d been born and raised. But back to his medical career. Back to being a doctor.
As much as he’d known that being a bodyguard instead of a doctor had been the right call—his head hadn’t been in the right space after that last, hellish tour of duty—a part of him had also missed the rush of the medical environment.
He just hadn’t anticipated that his first tour of Seattle General’s ER would be as a patient and not as a doctor.
Which was why it was professional curiosity, he told himself, and nothing else, that kept his eyes glued to Kat as she bustled crisply around the room. Selecting kit, arranging things, making certain she had everything just so, like she was on some kind of mission.
‘Right, I’m going to run my hands over you to check for any areas of discomfort.’
‘Be my guest,’ he commented.
It was completely out of character, but the words had come out before he could bite his tongue. Then Kat wrinkled her nose and he couldn’t have said how, but he knew that was her trying to conceal her embarrassment.
He found that oddly appealing.
And then she began to check him over and his mind emptied until all he could think of was the feel of her hands all over his body. Without warning, something rushed him and he realised that he had yet another reason to want to get out of this room—away from Kat, the ER nurse—as soon as he possibly could.
‘Have you any pain?’ she asked.
‘None,’ he lied.
He could tell she didn’t buy it for a moment.
‘Things will go a lot faster if you’re honest.’ She eyed him critically, a flash of that feistiness again, and he didn’t know why but it made something kick deep inside him.
Focus.
‘What makes you think I am?’
‘Perhaps the fact that you have tiny shards of glass in your skin,’ she retorted, and as his eyes moved to her lips again, he wondered what she’d do if he leaned forward and caught that tart mouth with his. ‘But we can deal with those.’
What the hell was wrong with him?
Logan gritted his teeth.
‘Just clean them up and I’ll be out of here.’
He might have known she’d ignore that.