Page 7 of One Night with the Doctor

Frozen in the pool of each other’s light.

It was actually kind of exhausting, this level of awareness. The slow but inexorable build of tension tightening every muscle, sizzling along every nerve ending when all he wanted was to fast-forward to the end and the kiss that he knew, deep in his bones, was the inevitable conclusion.

The kiss that couldn’t happen fast enough.

2

As the evening drew to a close, Callie was aware of Sebastian becoming quieter, his gaze more intent as a weird kind of charge grew and then arced steadily between them. Like an approaching storm.

Laden. Ominous.

It enthralled and frightened her all at once. She knew she should get up and leave while she could but was powerless to its pull. Even when Geri called for a doggie bag for the massive pizza she hadn’t been able to finish and the others took their leave en masse, she was helpless.

Sebastian quirked an eyebrow at them. ‘Coffee?’

‘Kill for one,’ Geri agreed.

‘That would be lovely,’ Callie murmured.

She should have declined. She knew that. But that unruly lock of hair flopping across his forehead overrode all her common sense. No seemed to have been stricken from her vocabulary. Besides, Geri was giving her a lift home so she had to stay.

Right?

Sebastian beckoned a waitress over and they placed their orders. She flirted with him a little and Callie felt extraordinarily miffed and happy to see the back of her until she became aware of a raised voice coming from behind. All three of them at the table turned to look at the hullabaloo.

They were sitting in the alfresco area of a restaurant in Fortitude Valley which sported twinkle lights in the large hanging baskets lining the eaves. The suburb had undergone massive gentrification and was quite hip now with the movers and shakers but there was still some less salubrious areas. With a large client base here and Jambalyn being located a stone’s throw from the restaurant, Callie knew the area well.

A dishevelled man, probably homeless, definitely down on his luck, was asking customers at the tables closest to the street for spare change. A young, preppy-looking man in an expensive suit at a table full of suits had taken it on himself to loudly lecture the unfortunate man, who was shuffling his feet, his head downcast, much to the delight of the other suits.

Callie turned away, unable to witness such callous inhumanity. She felt sick. How could he? What would a guy like that know about the difficulties some people faced and how life could go down the drain so rapidly?

How could he judge so cruelly someone he didn’t even know?

Her gaze fell to her lap and her shaking hands and she twisted them together to still the tremor. Her heart thumped like a gong in her chest and the meal she’d just eaten sat like a lump of lead in her belly.

It was too much on top of everything else today.

Geri placed a hand over hers. ‘Are you okay?’

Callie looked into Geri’s concerned eyes. She could see a frown knitting Sebastian’s brows in her peripheral vision and her gaze darted to him and back again. She nodded but the ugly scene had opened the floodgate on memories she’d been trying to keep at bay all day, from the bridge all the way through to Zack’s little-boy voice, and her lungs suddenly felt too small and there wasn’t enough air.

Sebastian was surprised by the sudden change in the previously animated Callie. She’d gone very pale and there was an unbearable sadness in her expressive, amber eyes. The arrogant fool confronting the homeless man had obviously upset her. After her fearless performance on the bridge today, he’d half expected her to march over and verbally eviscerate the conceited guy but, she looked utterly deflated.

Where was the tall, proud Amazon from this morning, her eyes blazing?

He’d wanted to kiss that woman on the bridge senseless. This Callie looked like she was about to faint and, curiously, he wanted to wrap her up in his arms and shield her from the big bad world. Especially from dickheads like that.

‘Excuse me,’ he murmured.

Sebastian strode over to where the commotion was taking place, drawing level with the table just as the abusive asshole finished suggesting that the obviously itinerant man get a job.

‘Have you quite finished?’

It wasn’t in Sebastian’s demeanour to court danger. In fact, he’d had enough of danger in his life. He was certainly no he-man. He didn’t pick fights or go around looking for trouble. But some things just couldn’t be ignored and this wanker needed to learn some manners.

‘I… I beg your pardon?’ The younger man looked around at his friends and the rest of the people in the half-full restaurant, obviously embarrassed to be called on his appalling behaviour.

Good.