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