Page 5 of One Night with the Doctor

‘I came second! You should have seen me, Aunty Cal.’

Her heart strings twanged painfully. She hadn’t missed a school event since he’d started pre-school six years ago. But she was trying to step back, give Aleisha a chance to bond with her son.

‘Mummy said I ran like the wind.’

Callie gripped the receiver hard. Her brother, Zack’s father, had been an athletics champion at school. He’d had such promise. Until everything had gone wrong.

‘I bet you did, Za Za,’ she said with a smile.

The nickname she’d given him all those years ago fell easily from her lips but sat uneasily in her churning gut. She wanted him here with a startling ferocity. She wanted to put her arms around his skinny shoulders and hug him tight.

Like the polite little boy she raised him to be, he asked, ‘How was your day, Aunty Cal? How many people did you help?’

She smiled again marvelling at how grown-up he sounded. Callie knew that Zack was very proud of the way his aunt helped people like his father – even if he didn’t really have an understanding of what that meant.

‘Zillions,’ she joked, and laughed as Zack’s boyish giggle warmed her down the phone line.

He was too young to tell him about her day. About her morning on the very bridge his father had thrown himself off eight years earlier. Zack had never really known his dad and his tragic end wasn’t the way Callie wanted him to remember Andy anyway.

She hung up a few minutes later just as a horn beeped outside. Callie looked at her watch. Argh! She was running late and two earrings did not make her dressed for dinner!

Callie thought she must have actually conjured up the commanding redhead from the bridge sitting at the restaurant table when she arrived. After all, he hadn’t really been out of her head since that morning.

But, nope, it was him. He was really here.

‘We meet again,’ he murmured, rising from his chair, a smile playing on his mouth, his eyes taking a run over her body that was far from the brief scrutiny he’d afforded her earlier today and hell if she didn’t feel it everywhere.

Callie wished she’d worn a dress now instead of pin-striped trousers teamed with a soft, white blouse. Sure it sported a deep V neckline, the collar was huge and she knew it looked kinda sexy wearing it up like she was but her khaki wrap dress was a real show stopper.

Then she frowned. What the hell? She didn’t dress to impress any man – certainly not this one.

‘Oh… hey.’ Callie slid a look at her boss. What the hell, Geri?

Geraldine raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve met?’

‘Er… yes, um… he… that is…’ She gestured to the guy standing across from her with that floppy fringe, that voice, that stare and whose name she still couldn’t remember.

She could hardly call him what’s-his-name to his face!

He quirked a brow apparently amused by her verbal groping. ‘Sebastian,’ he supplied. ‘Or Seb. I answer to both.’

Callie nodded, relieved. For a moment. And then realisation slowly dawned. Sebastian? Sebastian Walker? The Sebastian Walker. One of the most eminent and renowned psychologists in the country? Who’d written the modern-day bible on PTSD?

Wasn’t he older?

‘Se… Sebastian…’ Callie stumbled over the name for a second still shocked at his identity. ‘Was the negotiator today.’

And she’d been irritable and rude.

She glanced at him and the intenseness of his gaze stole her breath. It was still there, that thing from this morning. Big and large and growing between them as she took in his casual dress shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, the top two buttons undone.

‘At the bridge,’ she added completely unnecessarily.

‘Hunh.’ Geri glanced from one to the other. ‘What a coincidence.’ Another speculative look before she continued on. ‘Well, as you know, as of next week, he’s the new temporary psychologist at Jambalyn.’

Callie nodded automatically hoping she was appearing a lot more normal than she felt. Bloody hell. This was Sebastian Walker? Donna’s maternity leave replacement?

She hadn’t quite been able to believe it when Geri had told them that he’d applied for the one-year relief position in their lowly community mental health centre. It was even harder to believe that he was the man from the bridge.