‘Yes.’ A purr of male satisfaction buzzed through his veins. She remembered him. Had she been checking him out at the same time he’d been ogling her?
‘I didn’t realise you were in the same carriage.’
‘I had some work to do.’ Callum grimaced. ‘I shut myself away for a while. I’m in number eight.’
‘Hey, you’re in nine, right?’ Jock asked Felicity jovially. ‘You’re neighbours.’
Callum smiled at her as he sent a quick thankyou up into the universe. Things were definitely looking up for him. She smiled back and for the first time in a long time his belly tightened in anticipation. His libido had taken a real battering since the accident, so it was a revelation to feel it rousing.
‘So, what do you do?’ Jock asked.
Callum dragged his gaze off Felicity and forced his attention on the couple opposite. She wasn’t the only person on the train and this was the way these social situations worked. You ate a good meal, drank good wine and made polite and hopefully interesting conversation with strangers.
God knew, he needed something like this to get himself out of his head. But he promised himself that later he would do his damnedest to shamelessly monopolise the woman beside him. They might not end up in bed together but he intended to flirt like crazy and see where it went.
‘I’m a technical writer,’ he said.
The well-practised lie rolled smoothly off his tongue. He still wasn’t used to the real answer. Becoming a GP after being an up-and-coming vascular surgeon was taking some getting used to. And he only had to look around at the age demographic of the other passengers in the carriage to know that admitting to being any kind of doctor would probably result in an avalanche of medical questions he just didn’t want to answer.
He didn’t want to be any kind of doctor tonight. He wanted to forget about the bitter disappointments of his career and just be a regular Joe. He wanted to be a man chatting to a woman hoping it might end up somewhere interesting.
‘Oh?’ Thelma asked, as she buttered the bread roll Donald had just placed on her plate. ‘What does that entail?’
‘Just boring things like industry articles and manuals,’ he dismissed. ‘Nothing exciting. What about you, Thelma? Are you still working?’
It was a good deflection and Thelma ran with it. The conversation shifted throughout the sumptuous three-course meal and it felt good to stretch his conversational muscles, which were rusty at best. Felicity, on the other hand, was a great conversationalist and Callum found himself relaxing and even laughing from time to time.
His awareness of her as a woman didn’t let up but the urgency to get her alone mellowed.
Like him, she seemed reluctant to talk about herself, expertly turning the conversation back to Thelma and Jock or himself and more neutral topics, such as travel and movies and sport. Consequently, the meal flew by as Felicity charmed them all. It was hard to believe he’d sat for two hours and not thought once about the accident and its repercussions on his life.
That wasn’t something anybody had achieved in the past two and a half years.
He went to bed thinking about it, he woke up thinking about it, and it dominated his thoughts far more than it should during the day.
He suddenly felt about a decade younger.
‘A few of us are retiring to the lounge for some after-dinner drinks,’ Jock said as he placed his napkin on the table. ‘I hope you’ll both join us.’
‘Of course,’ Felicity said, smiling at their companions before turning that lusciously curved mouth towards him. ‘You up for that? Or do you...have more work to do?’
Callum wanted nothing more than to invite her back to his compartment for some private after-dinner drinks. Their gazes locked and her cheeks pinked up and he wondered if she could read his mind. She was a strange mix of eagerness and hesitancy and Callum didn’t want to push or embarrass her.
But he could see in those expressive grey eyes that she didn’t want him to lock himself away again either.
‘I’d love to,’ he said, resigning himself to sharing her for a bit longer, to go slowly, to drag out a little more whatever it was that was building between them.
Anticipation buzzed thick and heavy through his groin.
* * *
Felicity found it hard to concentrate for the next couple of hours, aware of Mr Tall-Dark-and-Handsome sitting beside her in a way she hadn’t been aware of a guy in a long time. Every time he spoke or laughed it rumbled through his big thigh pressed firmly against hers and squirmed its way into her belly.
There was a sense that they were marking time and she was equal parts titillated and terrified. This being a whole other person thing wasn’t as easy to pull off as she’d thought but she’d never felt so alive either. So utterly buzzed.
Not even with Ned. Sure, he’d been the love of her life and being dumped by him had been crushing, but their love had grown out of friendship and a slow, gentle dawning.
This...thing was entirely different.
Was she seriously going to do this? Pick up a stranger on a train? Or let him pick her up? She might have limited experience of the whole pick-up scene but she was pretty sure that’s exactly where they were heading. When she’d booked her train ticket, meeting a good-looking stranger hadn’t been part of her plan.
But here they were with a night full of possibilities stretching ahead of them.
One by one their companions left, withdrawing to their beds, making jokes about old bones and early nights. Felicity contemplated doing the sensible thing and following them. Retiring to her bed and the moonlit landscape flying by outside her window, tuning into the clickety-clack of the wheels as they rocked her to sleep.
But she didn’t.
‘Well,’ Jock said, standing, helping Thelma up as well. ‘This is way past our bedtime and my indigestion is playing up so we’ll be off too.’
Felicity smiled at them and bade them goodnight, excruciatingly conscious of Callum’s eyes on her as she watched their companions disappear from the lounge.
And then there were two.
‘Whew,’ he murmured, his gaze brushing over her neck and mouth, a smile tilting his lips into an irresistible shape. ‘I thought they’d never go to bed.’
Felicity blushed but she didn’t deny the sentiment. She’d thought exactly the same thing.
He tipped his chin at her martini glass. ‘Another drink?’
She hesitated. This was it. This was the moment. Was she going to be the sophisticated woman on the train or the girl next door?
‘It’s only eleven,’ he coaxed. ‘I promise to have you back to your compartment before you turn into a pumpkin.’
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. The man had a PhD in flirting. ‘Yeah. Okay. Sure.’
He
