She was definitely edging her way into his life and he couldn’t seem to make himself object to it. If anything, he was beginning to...grow accustomed to it.
Kat looked up unexpectedly, flushing as she caught him watching her. And then, flustered, she blurted out a question he hadn’t been prepared for.
‘Have you visited your...employer recently?’
‘Say again?’
‘The whole hospital knows you visit him regularly, and it isn’t in your capacity as an ER doctor. Why?’
Logan wasn’t sure if he stopped breathing.
‘I’m not sure...’
‘It’s just small-talk, Logan,’ she said pointedly, apparently pulling herself together as she threw his earlier words back at her.
He could concede her point. He had asked her personal questions about herself whilst never having told her anything significant about his own personal life.
In a career of being a military trauma doctor, and then another as a bodyguard to King Roberto, he had long since perfected the art of a poker face. Yet right here, right now, sitting across the table from a woman who made him feel...things...he hadn’t felt in years—or ever—he found he couldn’t deceive her.
He didn’t want to.
‘Which question do you want me to answer first?’
Kat stared at him.
‘Any. I know you visit the man you brought in, even though he’s in a coma now. I wondered if...if you felt the accident was somehow your fault.’
It floored him, how well this woman seemed to read him.
‘Maybe I do. In a way,’ he began slowly. ‘My head knows that’s nonsense, but my heart and my gut sometimes think I should have done more.’
‘No,’ she refuted. ‘I read the report. The parts that weren’t redacted anyway. There was nothing more you—anybody—could have done.’
It felt better than it should, hearing her say those words.
‘I know that,’ he conceded slowly. ‘Most of the time.’
‘But you still feel guilty?’
‘It’s complicated.’
She bobbed her head.
‘I guessed as much. But try me.’
And as he sat there, watching her, he wondered if it was time to finally let go of his past for good.
‘Like you said,’ he began, awkwardly at first, ‘I was a military trauma doctor before I became a bodyguard, and I did multiple tours of duty.’
She waited silently when he paused. Not pushing him. Just waiting until he was ready.
Logan drew in a deep breath.
‘During my last tour there was an ambush. I lost some good buddies and I ended up quitting the forces.’
‘And you became a bodyguard? Why not just practise medicine in a civilian hospital?’
He fought back the images that assaulted him. Demons he had battled so many times over the past few years. He hadn’t thought he’d ever get hold of them, but then Jamie had needed him and he’d had no choice. And the longer he’d pulled himself together for Jamie, the more he’d begun to believe that he could heal.