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 grinned. ‘Good answer.’
Felicity’s mouth quirked in an answering grin. ‘Good question.’
She flat-out ogled him as he walked to the bar. She’d seen him in the café and had been struck by his presence but he’d seemed so brooding and intense, so closed off she hadn’t bothered to go there. He hadn’t put a foot wrong tonight, however.
Sure, there was still a brooding quality to the set of his shoulders and the line of his mouth, but he’d been witty and charming and great with all the oldies and, good Lord Almighty, the way he’d looked at her had been one hundred percent high-octane flirty.
Nothing brooding about it.
Even the way the man leaned against the bar was sexy. His expensive-looking charcoal trousers pulled nicely against his butt and hugged the hard length of his thighs.
And they were hard. And hot. She could still feel the imprint of them along her leg.
He’d worn a jacket to dinner but had since shed it to reveal a plain long-sleeved shirt of dark purple. The top two buttons had been left undone and about an hour ago he’d rolled up the sleeves to reveal tanned forearms covered in dark hair.
Those forearms had caused a cataclysmic meltdown in her underwear.
He turned slightly and smiled at her and Felicity sucked in a breath. The man was devastating when he smiled and it went all the way to his green eyes. It did things to his face, which was already far too handsome for any one man. Square jaw covered in dark, delicious stubble, strong chin, cheekbones that women would kill for and sandy-brown hair longer on the top and shorter at the sides.
Hair made to run fingers through.
His laughter drifted towards her as Travis handed over the drinks and said something she couldn’t quite hear. She liked how it sounded. How it rumbled out of him. She got the sense he didn’t do a hell of a lot of it, though, which was a shame. That laugh was turning her insides to jelly.
The military should employ him as a secret weapon.
He headed in her direction, his gait compensating for the rock of the train. She probably should be glued to the window, watching the moonlit bush whizzing by, and not be so obvious, but she figured they were beyond the point of being coy and, frankly, he was too damn hard not to look at with his long stride and knowing smile.
He placed her glass down and sat opposite her this time, a low table between them. She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed. Neither, she concluded as he filled her entire field of vision and everything else became pretty much irrelevant.
‘To strangers on a train,’ he said, lifting his whisky glass, that smile still hovering.
She tapped hers against it. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
FELICITY WAS CONSCIOUS of his gaze as it followed the press of her lips then lowered to the bob of her throat as she swallowed. She was grateful for the cold, crisp martini cooling her suddenly parched mouth.
‘So...what’s a young ’un—’ he injected Jock’s Scottish brogue into the words and Felicity smiled ‘—like yourself doing on a train with the cast from Cocoon? Lots