* * *
‘Kat?’ Logan opened the door and, for a second she though
t she saw something flash though his eyes moments before he frowned. ‘What are you doing here?’
Kat ignored that punch in her gut, the one that told her she wasn’t here just for the one hundred per cent altruistic purpose of reuniting a sad four-year-old with his favourite dinosaur, no matter what she’d tried to tell herself a few hours earlier.
Still, she plastered a bright smile on her lips and held her trophy aloft.
‘I found something.’
‘My God, I can’t believe it.’ Logan swung the door open wider, inviting her straight in.
Whatever apprehension he’d had when he’d first seen her standing there had disappeared the instant he’d seen the toy. Clearly, he put his son’s needs ahead of his own concerns, which told Kat a great deal about the man.
And then she pulled herself up quickly because she wasn’t here to learn about the man. She was just here to return a toy.
And if she believed that...well, more fool her.
‘Go through, first door on the right. He’s barely slept since yesterday. I’ve tried to distract him all day, we’ve been to the park and the zoo, and now he’s just settled down to watch half an hour of television.’
It shouldn’t be that hard to get her legs moving. With a slight lurch Kat moved forward, dutifully walking down the corridor and in through the door indicated. There on the sofa sat a glum Jamie, evidently fresh from a bath in pyjamas and race-car slippers.
His dark-ringed eyes testified to the lack of sleep and those eyes were glued to a kids’ programme. Puppies on some kind of rescue mission. She recognised it only too well from Carrie, and her chest pulled a little tighter.
Still, this wasn’t about her. This was about a little boy and his current best bud dinosaur.
Backing up a step until she was no longer in sight, Kat lifted the pterodactyl and poked its head past the door as she made a soft roar sound. There was a pause, and then a loud gasp.
‘Doc Twence!’
Kat heard the distinct sound of Jamie bouncing off the couch and scurrying across the room, and she was only just able to kneel down as the four-year-old flung himself at both her and his pterodactyl.
An invisible hand reached between her ribs and clenched at her heart. Squeezing it. Making her wonder if she would ever breathe again.
‘You find Doc Twence.’
‘Found,’ Logan corrected gently from behind Kat. ‘Kat found Terrence.’
‘Found,’ Jamie choked out joyously, his arms squeezing her neck so tightly that it almost hurt.
Almost.
For a moment Kat couldn’t stop herself from burying her head in his neck as she hugged him back. That little child scent was so wonderfully, painfully familiar.
So like Carrie.
And then she shut the painful memories out and forced herself back from the little boy.
‘I think Terrence missed you,’ she managed. And if her voice sounded a little thicker than usual, well, who was to know? ‘And he’s all cleaned up, so I’m guessing you can probably have him tonight for bed.’
‘You cleaned the toy?’ Logan muttered above them.
‘At the hospital.’ She twisted her neck to try to look up but Jamie’s grasp was too tight. And she wasn’t really trying that hard. ‘Who knows what adventures Terrence got up to?’
‘I didn’t even think about it.’
She didn’t miss the note of self-censure in his voice, but now wasn’t the time to delve into it. Instead, she spent the next ten minutes speculating with the blissfully happy four-year-old about where his dinosaur might have gone, and what wonders he might have seen, the television programme utterly forgotten in the little boy’s joy.