Читать книгу Her Soldier Protector - Soraya Lane - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

CANDACE LOOKED BACK out at the water to avoid looking at the man seated across from her. There was something exciting about being out somewhere different, on the other side of the world, and with someone she hardly knew. And for the first time in forever, she actually felt like herself, like the old her, the one she’d started to slowly lose a few years earlier. When her marriage had started to crumble, so had her self-confidence, and then when her mom had died...she pushed the dark thoughts away and focused on Logan.

“Is this somewhere you come often?”

Logan leaned forward, both hands on his beer bottle. She took a sip of hers while she waited for his response.

“I’ve been coming here for years. Every time I came home from deployment, this was the first place I headed to for a meal,” he told her. “There were three of us with a standing date.”

“As in three soldiers?” she asked, curious.

Logan twirled his beer bottle between his hands. “Yeah.”

Candace could sense there was something else going on, something unsaid, but she didn’t know him well enough to pry. She knew what it was like to want to keep some things private.

“It must have been a relief coming here for the amazing food after what you had to eat over there,” she said, wanting to give him an out if he needed it.

Logan looked up and met her gaze. “It was. There’s only so much dried jerky and dehydrated food a guy can eat, right?”

She laughed, but it died in her throat as their waiter approached the table with an enormous amount of food.

“No way.”

Logan grinned and leaned back as two large silver buckets filled with prawns were placed in front of them. She’d never seen so much seafood in her life.

“You’re telling me that this is just for starters?” she asked, groaning.

The waiter returned with two dishes of some kind of sauce and freshly quartered lemons, as well as a bowl of warm water, which she guessed was for them to dip their fingers in to after eating.

“In Australia, we have a saying that you can’t eat enough seafood,” Logan told her.

“You do?” Candace watched as he picked up one of the prawns and pulled the head off, before peeling the shell.

“No, I just made that up to make you think this was a good idea.” He gave her a wink that made her heart thud to her toes. “If you don’t want to get your hands dirty I can peel yours?” he offered.

“I appreciate the gesture but I think it’s about time I got my hands dirty.” She was sick of people running around and doing everything for her, and tonight was about her just being her. “You show me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“You just have to grab your beer bottle between your palms so it doesn’t get all greasy. Like this,” Logan explained, demonstrating with a quick swig of his beer before dipping his prawn into the sauce.

Candace just shook her head, finding it hard to believe that she’d been performing live in front of twenty thousand people only an hour earlier, and was now sitting at a restaurant, tucking into a meal with the man who’d been assigned her personal head of security. Add to that the fact she hadn’t been asked for even one autograph...it was insane. She shouldn’t have trusted him so easily, but she hadn’t been so relaxed in a long time. Maybe she’d wake up and realize it had all just been a dream, but if it had been, at least it had been a nice one.

She peeled her first prawn and dipped it in the sauce.

“Good?” he asked.

“Amazing,” she murmured, hand over her mouth as she spoke. “You were right.”

They sat in silence for a while, both eating their prawns and sipping beer. Something told her that Logan wasn’t usually a big talker—that he was comfortable not saying anything at all, and she liked it. Where she’d grown up, the men had a motto of speaking only when they’d had something worthy of being said, but her adult life had been filled with men who couldn’t say enough to make themselves sound important.

“So have you always lived in the city?” she asked.

Logan looked up, finishing his mouthful and dipping his fingers in the lemon water to clean them. She watched as he dried his hands on the napkin.

“I actually grew up in the Outback,” he told her, finishing his beer before leaning back in his chair. “I’m based here a lot of the time, but when I’m not working I head straight back there just to be away from the city and out in the open air.”

So, that’s why she felt so comfortable around him. It had been a while since she’d hung out with a country boy.

“Your family all ranch out there?”

He grinned. “We call it farming here, but yeah, it’s my family property.”

Candace paused, slowly peeling a prawn. “So your dad runs the place or a brother?”

Logan took a deep breath, she could see the rise and fall of his chest, before he waved to a waiter and gestured for another beer. He glanced at her, but Candace shook her head—hers was still half-full.

He cleared his throat. “My parents both died a few years ago, and my sister lives on a farm with her husband,” Logan explained. “The property has been in our family for generations, so I’d rather die than sell the place, but I’ve had to have a manager employed while I’ve been serving so the place can continue to run smoothly.”

Candace sighed. “I shouldn’t have been so nosey, Logan. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Sometimes it’s just hard to say out loud, because admitting it makes it real, as stupid as that sounds.”

She knew exactly how that felt. “My mom died a couple of years ago, and if I’m honest, that’s why I’ve put up with my management team for longer than I should have. She was the one who dealt with all that stuff so I could just focus on singing, and I’m still pretty lost without her. She was the business brains and I was the creative one, and it had always been just the two of us. We made a good team.”

Logan took the beer that arrived at their table, his eyes leaving hers to look out at the water. She did the same, because it seemed wrong to keep watching him when he was obviously troubled about what they were talking about. He was silent.

“I didn’t mean to just unleash all that on you,” she apologized. “I don’t usually spill my thoughts so easily, but...”

“It’s nice to tell someone who actually gets it, right?” he finished, gaze meeting hers again.

“Yeah,” she murmured, “something like that.”

“Losing a parent is tough, and it doesn’t get easier, so don’t believe anyone if they try to tell you otherwise,” he told her. “But you do learn to live with it.”

Their table was cleared then and within minutes two large white plates were placed in front of them.

“So these are the bugs, huh?”

Logan nodded, but he was more reserved now than he’d been before—his enthusiasm dulled.

“You just scoop the white meat out of the shell,” he told her. “It’s incredible.”

Candace spread her napkin over her lap, smoothing out the wrinkles, before picking up her fork and following Logan’s lead. He was right—again—the food was great.

“Thanks for a lovely evening,” she told him when she’d finished her mouthful. “It was completely unexpected and I appreciate the gesture.”

He gave her a weird look. “Sounds like you’re ready to leave.”

“No, I’m just grateful that I’ve actually enjoyed a night in someone else’s company. You’ve given me some perspective at a time when I needed it.”

Logan went back to getting every last piece of meat from the shellfish, and she forced herself to stop watching him and just eat, too. There was something so refreshingly real about him.

“Another beer?”

She looked at her bottle and was about to say no, before she changed her mind. “You know what? Yeah. I’d love another. Why not?”