The Single Dad's New-Year Bride

Hailey snorted. ‘No, I’m short. There’s a difference.’ She had lost weight over the last year, the effects of what had happened overseas shadowing all areas of her life. But Hailey doubted that her generous curves were under any real threat of fading away.

‘How tall are you?’

‘Five foot neat.’

No wonder he felt like he was towering over her. At four inches over six feet—he did! He kind of liked it, though. It made him want to tuck her under his wing. ‘Wow. That is short.’

Hailey’s breath caught at his light teasing tone and the smile that took his features from sexy to the next level. Whatever the hell that was. Sublime? ‘Don’t let it fool you. I came top in my self-defence class.’

Callum laughed. ‘Really?’

Hailey drew herself up as high as she could and jutted her chin out. ‘Really.’

Callum quashed his smile. ‘I’ll have to remember that.’

Hailey placed a hand on his chest and pushed him gently away until he was a full arm’s length from her. ‘Just you see that you do.’

Callum saw the look of steel harden her soft brown eyes. ‘Look, Hailey, I’m guessing the whole New Year’s Eve thing is kind of freaking you out. I’m sorry. I promise I don’t usually go around kissing women I don’t know.’ Hell, these days he just didn’t kiss women—period.

Sorry? He was sorry? For what? For freaking her out or kissing her in the first place? She shouldn’t feel miffed. But she did. ‘You’re apologising for kissing me?’ Good. That was good. Wasn’t it?

‘No. Absolutely not.’ The actual kiss may have been no more than a peck but the way it was still zinging through his body it may as well have been a full-on, open-mouthed smacker. Callum hadn’t felt such ardent desire since Annie. It felt good to have that rush again. That buzz in his blood. He certainly wasn’t going to apoligise for it. ‘I’d do it again. No hesitation.’

She swallowed. ‘Oh.’

Of course he hadn’t meant right now but her lips had parted on that last word and her face was turned up, her mouth looking very inviting indeed. What would it be like to indulge in more than a chaste, oh-so-close-to-her-mouth kiss?

He took a step back. They were in a panroom, for crying out loud! At work! He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway. My point is…’ he said, groping around his brain for the point he was trying to articulate. ‘The point is, it happened. I don’t think we need to let it affect our working together. Let’s just chalk it up to a bit of moonlight madness and get on with it. OK? I don’t want you ducking in and out of rooms, avoiding me, ad infinitum. It won’t happen again.’

‘You just said you’d do it again,’ she pointed out, her brain still stuck back at that part of the conversation.

‘I meant that night. I’d do it all over again the same way. I couldn’t think of a better ending to a New Year’s Eve ball than kissing a girl with sparkly legs.’

Hailey smiled despite her mind still being foggy with his nearness. ‘It can’t happen again,’ she said firmly.

Callum frowned. ‘You didn’t like it?’

‘No, I…’

He smiled. ‘Ah. You did like it?’

Hailey crossed her arms and gave him a hard glare. She barely knew him and yet already he could tie her in knots! ‘Don’t be putting words in my mouth, Dr Craig.’

‘Ooh.’ He laughed at her frown. ‘You liked it a lot.’

Hailey felt her temper rise as heat flared in her cheeks again. She daren’t admit just how much she had liked the brief touch of his mouth. ‘It was a peck on the cheek,’ she said disparagingly. ‘My brother-in-law could have given it to me.’

Callum raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that a challenge? Is that your way of asking for something…more?’

The remaining oxygen evaporated and her eyes were drawn inexplicably to his mouth. More? How could something so wrong seem so…tantalising? A couple of years ago she’d have leapt at him. That mouth would have been on hers in a flash. But she just wasn’t that girl any more.

‘You need to get this straight,’ she said, deliberately dragging her eyes away from his lips. ‘I’m not in the market for a…an affair, and even if I was, which I’m not,’ she emphasised again, ‘I don’t get involved with colleagues.’

Callum could see the determination in the jut of her chin and her steady brown gaze. He could also see something else. A quick flash of pain before she shuttered it. ‘Is that a standard policy for you or a once-bitten kind of thing?’

Hailey’s breath caught in her throat and her mind stuttered to a halt for a brief second. Had that been a wild guess or had she given something away? She forced herself to casually check her watch while she ordered her scattered thoughts. ‘Don’t you have rounds?’

Hmm. A chink. Hailey had definitely been burned. Big time if he wasn’t mistaken. Callum regarded her for a few seconds. Well so had he and he wasn’t keen to put himself in a position of vulnerability again either. He nodded. ‘So we’re OK now?’

Hailey nodded too. Anything to get him out of the room. It seemed to have shrunk considerably since he’d entered. ‘Of course.’

‘It’s behind us?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Forgotten?’

‘There was no kiss.’

Callum smiled. ‘Kiss? What kiss?’

Hailey smiled back at him. He touched his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute as he slowly backed out of the room. She sagged against the sink. If only it was as easy as that.

The phone was ringing when Hailey ventured out of the panroom a few minutes later. Callum’s team had gathered in the nurses’ station. They were ignoring the phone. Tina, the ward clerk, had left for the day.

Hailey looked at the medical officers. Callum, a registrar, two residents and two med students. ‘No, it’s OK,’ she said, half bemused, half annoyed. ‘I’ll get the phone.’ It never ceased to amaze her how immune to ringing medical staff were.

‘Hi, kids’ ward, Hailey speaking.’

‘Hi, Hailey.’

‘Yvonne?’ What was 2B’s NUM doing, ringing her? She should be here.

‘Can you do Callum’s round? I’m caught up in this funding meeting and I need to stay because they’re discussing our equipment allocation.’

Hailey sighed, resigned to her fate. She glanced at Callum and met his calm grey gaze. OK, she wasn’t going to avoid him any more but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend any extra time with him. ‘Sure,’ she said averting her gaze. ‘Is Dad there?’

‘He’s chairing it.’

Hailey’s father, John Winters, was the Brisbane General’s medical director. He spent his entire day in meetings such as these. ‘Blow him a kiss for me,’ she said, then hung up the phone.

‘Looks like you got me, folks,’ she said, addressing the entourage. She risked another glance at Callum. A small smile was playing on that very fascinating mouth. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

2B was a twenty-bed ward. In an ideal world eight beds were allocated to surgical patients, eight to medical patients and four formed a high-dependency bay for those children that needed closer monitoring. Of course, the balance was often weighted more heavily one way or the other which caused all kinds of administration headaches.

But that was the nature of hospitals and as far as nursing their patients went, Hailey couldn’t give a fig about the medical/surgical mix—they were all sick kids.

She pushed the chart trolley from bed to bed as each patient and their progress was discussed. She hadn’t done a round with Callum before and was most impressed with his unique mix of professionalism, thoroughness and quirky bedside manner. He developed a quick rapport with the parents and wasn’t afraid to take the time with the kids to touch them and try and elicit a smile or two.