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 are you doing?’
‘I’m asking Mike what he thinks I should do.’
A bigger frown this time. ‘Mike?’
‘Yeah. You know, the guy in my phone who talks to me and tells me stuff like why the sky is blue and where the nearest hairdresser is.’
He chuckled. ‘Yours is a dude?’
She shrugged. ‘You can choose and Mike sounds like Richard Armitage so it was a no-brainer.’
‘And do you always let your phone decide such things?’
‘Sometimes. It’s the modern-day coin toss, right?’
He chuckled again. ‘Well, this ought to be interesting.’
Felicity grinned as she pushed a button and brought her phone up closer to her mouth. ‘Mike, should I go back to Callum’s?’
The phone gave an electronic beep then a stylised male voice spoke in a sexy English accent. ‘Is he good enough?’
They both laughed then he grabbed her wrist and brought the phone closer to his mouth. Her pulse point fluttered madly beneath his fingers as their gazes locked. A smile played on his mouth again as he spoke into the microphone, his eyes firmly fixed on her. ‘He’s very good, Mike.’
Felicity’s toes curled in her pumps at the sexually suggestive reply. That wasn’t what Mike had meant.
‘Does he know how to treat a woman?’
He didn’t laugh this time, just eyed her intently as he replied. ‘Oh, yeah. He knows exactly how to treat a woman.’
‘Then you don’t need me to decide, Felicity.’
He released her hand, slowly, still holding her gaze with a red-hot intensity. ‘Looks like the ball is in your court.’
Felicity’s heart tripped as he fixed her with a