Page 16 of One Night with the Doctor

He sighed and covered himself again. ‘You’re regretting what happened, aren’t you?’

Callie looked at him and frowned. Was he joking? If she lived to be a hundred she’d never regret this night. Sure, she knew without a doubt she was going to regret baring her soul to him, but the sex?

Never.

‘No.’ Her gaze swept the floor again.

He propped himself up on his elbow. ‘Callie, you can’t even look at me.’

Callie almost laughed out loud as she lifted her eyes. ‘I’ve lost my earring, that’s all.’

‘Oh.’ He chuckled. ‘Sorry.’ His gaze fanned over the bed and then he reached forward plucking something from the top sheet. ‘Here it is.’ He held the hoop up.

Callie grinned. ‘Thank you,’ she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and relieving him of it, blindly attempting to hook it in place.

‘So… how do you want to handle this from here?’ he asked.

Concentrating hard on finding the hole in her lobe she frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well… we are going to be working together as of next week. Should we have some kind of game plan?’

The earring finally found its home and Callie turned to face him. ‘We’re not forty-year-old virgins, Sebastian, swept away by a night of fantastic sex. Was sleeping together the wisest course of action? Probably not. But we’re both professionals. I can keep my work life and my private life separate. Can you?’

He nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘We can’t do it again, of course, not while we’re actually officially working together. Definitely no repeats. I don’t think being at the coalface together day in and day out while being sexually involved ever really works.’

‘Usually totally disastrous,’ he agreed.

‘Especially when you’re only here for a year.’

He nodded again. ‘Doesn’t make any sense.’

“Good,” she said, satisfied they were both on the same page. But then she made the mistake of following Sebastian’s movements as he rubbed at the stubble on his chin, the noise an erotic scrape she actually felt against her nipples as her gaze dropped to his mouth and dropper lower still.

Rising from the bed, she dragged that damn sheet up to cover as much of him as possible, ignoring his low, knowing chuckle.

‘I’ll see you next week,’ she said briskly, picking up her bag and striding out the door.

It was done. One and done. He was out of her system. Now, they could work together.

4

Callie had spent all the intervening days and about every spare second of her time over the weekend trying not to think about Sebastian’s imminent arrival at Jambalyn. She’d been cool with it when she’d left his bed the other night but maybe that had been premature.

A knot of nerves pulling ever tighter in her belly could no longer be ignored as she pulled her car into her parking space Monday morning right next to Sebastian’s. She was going to see him again. Today. And every other day for the next year!

A tremor ran through her stomach and she placed her hand against it. Why, why, why had she opened up to him like that? Opening her body to him had been far less intimate in comparison to letting him inside her head.

She felt as if she’d let Sebastian – the Sebastian Walker, for Pete’s sake – cross some sort of line. One she’d never let a man over before. And now he knew. And frankly that scared the hell out of her. How had she confessed something so personal to someone she barely knew?

How?

Annoyed, Callie pulled down her sun visor and inspected her reflection. She fiddled with her hair, checked her teeth for stray food and pouted. Reaching for her voluminous handbag she searched for some lip gloss she knew was stashed somewhere inside, grabbing it triumphantly when she found it almost immediately.

Glancing back up to the mirror, her hand hovered just above her lips. And then sanity returned.

For crying out loud!