Page 27 of One Night with the Doctor

Callie would be lying if his close attention and the hushed awe of his wow didn’t go to her head a little. But that still didn’t negate the practicalities. ‘It’s six hundred dollars.’

He nodded slowly, his teeth playing with his bottom lip for a beat or two. ‘Trust me, it’ll be the best six hundred dollars you ever spent.’

Callie tried really hard not to think about those teeth rubbing against her painfully tight nipples and failed. Thankfully the presence of the shop assistant hovering in the background stopped her from doing anything stupid.

‘It’s frivolous,’ she protested half-heartedly.

He shrugged. ‘What’s wrong with frivolous?’

There was nothing wrong with it, Callie knew that, but working where they worked, knowing what they knew about the harsh realities of life for so many people, it seemed like an incredible indulgence.

The heat and hunger in his eyes however, overruled all her sensibilities. When did she ever get anything this exquisite, just because? And she did have a credit card, after all.

Glancing at the shop assistant, she said, ‘I’ll take it.’

Sebastian knew the minute he walked into the function that night that Callie was already there. He couldn’t see her but the hairs on the back of his neck were standing to alert, just as they had that afternoon when she’d emerged from the fitting room looking better than any woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

And then the crowd seemed to part and he caught a flash of purple and there she was, her head thrown back, laughing in that all-out way of hers at something someone in the little crowd around her was saying.

His heart practically stopped. The deep purple suited her colouring and the dress hugged and flared in all the right places. She looked like a movie star on a red carpet or a model poised at the end of a catwalk.

He’d seen her in jeans and T-shirts, in tailored trousers and silky blouses – hell, he’d even see her naked. But this Callie was something else again. Yet another facet to the woman who seemed to have many – girlie Callie.

And girlie Callie was a sight to behold.

That afternoon in the boutique she had looked amazing. Tonight, with her eyes heavily kohled and her hair loose around her shoulders rather than bunched in a hastily constructed ponytail, she looked sensational.

It was hard to believe she had to be talked into the purchase and hell if Sebastian hadn’t been a hair’s-breadth away from telling her he’d pay for it. But he’d stopped. Deep in his bones he’d known it would be a very bad move. And probably have had the opposite effect.

A woman who’d told him only a couple of hours prior she wouldn’t sleep with him certainly wouldn’t let him pay for an expensive dress.

Luckily, she hadn’t been unable to resist its allure.

She tipped back her head again and laughed, one hand at her throat absently toying with a chain of sparkly baubles glistening in the magnificent crystal lights overhead. Chandelier earrings also dazzled in the light and drew his gaze to her neck.

To her bare shoulders. To the expanse of flesh above her cleavage. To her actual cleavage and the shadowy V of her breasts.

As had happened at the restaurant that first fateful night, people turned and looked at the sound of her laughter and Sebastian could see more than casual interest in several appreciative male glances.

A sharp nudge to his ribs brought Sebastian back to his surroundings. Brent Cartwright, an emergency physician at the Royal Melbourne and one of his oldest friends, handed him a beer.

‘She’s a bit of all right.’

Sebastian frowned at Brent, who went through women as though the Apocalypse was upon them, and thought, over my dead fucking body, dude. ‘She’s not your type.’

Brent hooted and clapped him on the back. ‘Oh, and what is my type?’

‘Younger, blonder. More party, less…’

Brent raised an eyebrow. ‘Less?’

Sebastian looked his friend straight in the eye. ‘Substance.’

Clearly impervious to insult, Brent laughed. ‘I don’t know, Seb, that dress has party girl stamped all over it.’

Sebastian frowned at the naked appreciation in Brent’s eyes. That dress had him stamped all over it.

‘Callie is not the party type.’