‘Doc Twence?’
‘Doc Twence?’ she repeated carefully, her brain frantically trying to work out what the little boy was saying.
‘Doc Tewence.’ He nodded, sounding it out carefully, the way that Carrie used to do.
She stuffed down the bittersweet memory.
‘Doc Terrence?’ she tried cautiously.
The boy bobbed his head emphatically, making her feel as though she’d won the lottery.
‘Doc Twence,’ he confirmed. ‘Doc Twence.’
‘Your name is Terrence?’
His disdainful expression said it all and, despite everything, Kat had to swallow a gurgle of laughter. There was no artifice with kids, you always knew where you stood with them.
Which was more than could be said for plenty of adults.
Shaking the thought from her head, Kat dragged her mind back to the present.
‘Doc Terrence is your daddy?’ she tried again, though she was beginning to suspect who Doc Terrence might be.
‘Doc Twence is a terrydac.’
‘Doc Terrence is a terrydac?’ she rolled it around on her tongue, her brain switching up a gear. But this time it didn’t come. Still, she could go with her gut. ‘Doc Terrence is a toy?’
‘Not toy,’ he scoffed, his eyebrows knitted together in a perfect little-boy frown that seemed to reach inside her chest, grab hold and pull. ‘Din’saur.’
‘Terrence is a dinosaur? Terrence the terrydac...hmm, he’s a pterodactyl?’
‘Yes, Doc Terrence is a pter’dactyl,’ the little boy pronounced carefully, before practically jumping up and down.
‘I see.’ Well, at least that was cleared up. ‘What about—?’
‘Daddy!’
Kat was nearly bowled over as the little boy spotted someone over her shoulder, scrambled to his feet and ran past her.
Still, at least it was a happy outcome. She turned around, her mouth open in greeting. And felt her legs turn to lead.
Awareness leapt through her in an instant. That same heady, slightly dizzying sensation that she’d experienced back at the hospital.
‘Jamie, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ He held the boy tightly to him in a hug. ‘Why did you run off like that?’ Turning to her, he said, ‘Well, Nurse Kat, it seems we’re destined to meet again.’ He shot her look that she couldn’t begin to interpret but which nevertheless set off goosebumps all over her skin.
She tried to answer but didn’t know what to say. Was he mocking her? Or teasing her? It sounded ridiculously provocative, uttered in that velvety-rich voice of his that exuded sex appeal.
Or most probably that was her wishful thinking. The guy oozed sex appeal from every single pore. An afternoon around the nurses’ station had revealed that much. And she—unfairly famed for her starchiness where members of the opposite sex were concerned—appeared to be lapping this man up.
How ignominious was that?
‘He was looking for Doc Terrence,’ she told him, fighting to keep her voice steady.
‘That damned toy,’ Logan muttered, but she noted there was no heat in his words. Just the undertone of relief that he’d found his son safe and sound.
‘Bad word, Daddy,’ the boy sniffled, lifting his head for a moment, then dropping it again as Logan apologised to his son. Then to her.
‘It’s the fright.’ She dismissed his apology easily. ‘I asked who he was with, but he didn’t say.’