Swept Away By The Seductive Stranger. Amy Andrews
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had inherited enough money from her grandfather to buy a small cottage. ‘I’m not. And you don’t look like you’re of retirement age either. You’re, what? Thirty-five?’
She’d been wondering how old he was all night and this seemed like as good an opener as any.
‘Close,’ he murmured. ‘Thirty-four. And you?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Ah...’ He gave a long and exaggerated sigh. ‘To be so young and carefree again.’
Felicity laughed at his teasing but was struck by the slight tinge of wistfulness. ‘Oh, no,’ she teased back. ‘You poor old man.’
He grinned at her and every fibre of her being thrilled at being the centre of his attention. ‘Seriously, though,’ he said, sobering a little, ‘why the train?’
‘My grandfather was a railway man through and through. Fifty years’ service as a driver and he never got tired of trains. Of talking about them, photographing them and just plain loving everything about them. We’d go on the train into the city every day when I used to stay with them in the school holidays and he’d take me to the train museum every time without fail.’
He frowned. ‘Didn’t that get boring after a while?’
Felicity shook her head. ‘Nah. He always made it so exciting. He made it all about the romance of train travel and I lapped it up.’
‘Romance, huh?’ He raised an eyebrow as his gaze dropped to her mouth. ‘Smart man.’
Felicity’s belly flopped over. ‘That he was.’
If tonight was anything to go by, her grandfather was a damn genius.
She stared into the depths of her frosty glass as her fingers ran up and down the stem. ‘He spent his entire life saying that one day he was going to take my grandmother on the Indian Pacific for a holiday of a lifetime. Then, after my grandmother died when I was twenty, he used to tell me one day he and I would go on it together. He died last year, having never done it, but he left me some money so...here I am.’
The backs of Felicity’s eyes prickled with unexpected tears and she blinked them away.
‘Hey.’ His hand slid over hers. ‘Are you okay?’
‘God, yes,’ she said, shaking her head, feeling like an idiot. Way to put a downer on the pick-up! ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to get so maudlin. I’m stupidly sentimental. Ignore me.’
‘Nothing wrong with that.’ He smiled, removing his hand. ‘Better than being cold and hard.’
Felicity returned his smile. She appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood. Sometimes, though, she had to wonder. If she was a little more hard-hearted she probably wouldn’t fret so much about her patients or become so personally involved. It would make it much easier to leave it all behind at the end of the day.
‘What about you?’ she said, determined to change the subject. To get things back on track. ‘Why the train?’
‘I guess I’m a bit like your grandfather. Always loved trains. Doing all the great train journeys of the world is a bucket-list thing for me and when I had to travel to Adelaide I thought, Why not?’
It was stupid to feel any kind of affinity with a man—this man—because he was a train guy. Especially when up until about eight hours ago she hadn’t even known him. But somehow she did. Her grandfather had always said train people were good people and, even though he’d been biased, right at this moment Felicity couldn’t have agreed more.
Callum was ticking all her boxes.
‘So...’ He took a sip of his whisky. ‘Felicity...’
Goose-bumps broke out on her arms and spread across her chest, beading her nipples as he rolled the word around his mouth. She’d never heard her name savoured with such carnal intensity. It sure as hell made her wonder what it would sound like as he groaned it into her ear when he came.
Lordy. Another box ticked.
‘Is that a family name?’
She cleared her throat and her brain of the sudden wanton images of him and her twisted up in a set of sheets. ‘Nope. My mother just liked it, I think. And I don’t really get called that anyway.’
‘Oh?’ He frowned. ‘You get Fliss?’
Felicity grimaced. ‘Flick, actually.’
‘Flick.’
He rolled that around too but it didn’t sound quite the same as when he’d used her full name. She didn’t hate the nickname, she’d never known anything else, but she didn’t want to be a Flick tonight.
Tonight she wanted to be Felicity.
She shrugged. ‘My cousin couldn’t pronounce my full name when she was little and it stuck.’
He lazed back in his chair, his long legs casually splayed out in front of him, the quads moving interestingly beneath the fabric of his trousers. ‘You don’t look much like a Flick to me,’ he mused.
Felicity’s pulse fluttered as she suppressed the urge to lean across and kiss him for his observation. The sad fact was, though, in her everyday life she did look like a Flick. Her hair in its regulation ponytail, wearing her nondescript uniform or slopping around in her jeans and T-shirt.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, raising her glass to him and taking a sip.
‘My brother calls me Cal.’
Felicity studied him for a moment. ‘Nope. You definitely don’t look like a Cal.’
‘No?’
Felicity smiled at the faux wounded expression on his face. ‘No.’
‘What do Cals look like?’
‘Cals are the life of the party,’ she said, happy to play along. ‘They’re wise-cracking, smart-talking, laugh-a-minute guys. You’re way too serious for a Cal.’
He laughed but it wasn’t the kind of rumbly noise she’d come to expect. It sounded hollow and didn’t quite reach his eyes. Crap. She’d insulted him somehow. Way to turn a guy off, Flick.
She had to fix it. Fix it, damn it!
‘Anyway,’ she said, hoping like hell she sounded casual instead of panicked. Nothing like ruining their evening before it had progressed to the good bit. ‘I like Callum. It’s very...noble.’
A beat or two passed before he laughed again, throwing his head back. It was full and hearty with enough rumble to fill a race track. It rained down in thick, warm droplets and Felicity wanted to take her clothes off and get soaking wet.
The laughter cut out and he fixed her with his steady gaze. ‘Just so you know, I’m not feeling remotely noble right now.’
Felicity’s belly clenched hard and she swallowed. Eep! This was really going to happen. He downed his whisky and put the glass on the table. ‘Would you like to come back to my compartment?’
She cursed her sudden attack of nerves. But this wasn’t her. She didn’t do this kind of thing. Could she pull it off?
‘Hey,’ he said, leaning forward at the hips and placing his hand over hers. ‘We don’t have to. I just thought...’
Yeah. He’d thought she was interested because she’d practically done everything but strip her clothes off and sit in his lap. God, she must look like some freaked-out virgin. Or some horrible tease.
Felicity could feel it all slipping away. She didn’t want to pass this up, damn it, but she hadn’t expected to feel so...conflicted about it when it came to the crunch.
So she did what she always did in lineball calls. She picked up her phone.
He quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘What