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Hailey felt disorientation fuddle her senses for a moment before clarity hit her. She’d fallen asleep in Tom’s bed? What must Callum think? It was too…too intimate. ‘Oh, God. I’m so sorry,’ she gasped, trying to ignore her gut reaction to Callum in the darkened room.
‘It’s OK.’ He smiled and moved so she could get off the bed. ‘I do it all the time. You must have been tired.’
‘Mmm.’ She yawned her head still foggy. She stood in the doorway and watched while Callum pulled the sheets up over Tom and stroked his cheek. It was such a simple gesture but the love behind it clawed at her heart.
He came and stood in the doorway with her and they both watched Tom sleep for a few more moments.
‘Oh, man, what smells so good?’ Hailey asked, turning to look up at Callum. He smiled at her and in the half-light his mouth looked plain wicked.
‘Chinese. I bought enough for two. I thought you might not have eaten yet. Come on, I’ll serve up.’
Hailey blinked at his retreating back. Well, she hadn’t eaten and she was starving, but she must have been more disorientated than she’d thought to be even considering sharing a meal with a man whose lips looked like pure sin in the subdued lighting.
She heard the clinking dishes and the spicy aroma of Chinese food wafted towards her.
‘Hailey?’
Her stomach growled. She shut her eyes and went to join him in the kitchen.
CHAPTER FIVE
CALLUM PUSHED a plate at her. ‘Here you go. What do you want to drink?’
‘Oh,’ she said, taking the proffered plate, knowing it would be churlish to refuse when he’d already dished up. ‘Water’s fine, thank you.’
He poured her a tall glass and cracked the lid on a long-necked beer for himself. ‘Let’s eat in the lounge. Ladies first.’ He gestured.
They made small talk while they ate. She sat in the middle of the three-seater sofa and he sat in the chair where she had read to Tom.
‘So how was the lecture?’ she asked when a gap in the conversation had gone beyond companionable and watching him eat was sensual torture.
Callum swallowed and hesitated for a moment, trying to sound professional. ‘Clinically? Fascinating.’
Hailey looked at him sharply. By the tone of his voice it seemed there was a lot missing in that statement.
‘Sounds like there’s a “but” there,’ she prodded, putting her almost clean plate on the coffee-table that separated them.
Callum sighed, putting his plate down too. ‘No. Not really. As a doctor, Remi’s lecture was full of information about the latest studies and advances in chemo and promising new treatments. The use of stem cells has so much potential. Remi called them the new frontier.’
Hailey could still hear the distinct lack of enthusiasm in his voice. ‘But?’
‘From a personal viewpoint, it was as depressing as hell.’
‘Oh.’ Hailey hadn’t thought of that. As a father who had watched his child endure the rigours of chemotherapy, it must have been a hard subject to warm to.
‘I mean, I wanted to go, to be informed. More for Tom than for any professional reasons. But it just reminded me, despite all the advances and the successes, what a horrible illness leukaemia is. And what his chances are if he relapses. It bought back…memories.’
Hailey swallowed. Callum was staring into the distance, his grey gaze stormy. ‘It was bad?’
Callum turned and looked at her directly. ‘It felt like my heart was being ripped out.’ Again.
‘I’m sorry.’
Callum went back to staring at the far wall. ‘He developed a lot of complications, picked up every infection going and ended up in ICU for a while.’
He stopped and looked up at her. ‘He looked so small and still. He didn’t even look like Tom. His hair fell out and he lost weight and he just looked like this haggard bag of bones.’
Hailey, her fingers trailing restlessly along the frosty sides of her glass, stayed silent even though she didn’t want to. She wanted to stop him. To tell him she didn’t want to know any of this stuff. She had enough fodder for her nightmares without adding mental pictures of a bald, skeletal Tom.
Callum noted her shuttered gaze and gave a sharp half-laugh, his lips twisting as he rolled his cold bottle of beer against his forehead. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear this.’
Hailey shrugged, resigned to her fate. Compelled to listen almost as strongly as she was repulsed. ‘No. It’s OK. It sounds like you need to talk. I think sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.’
What would she give to be able to unburden some of her deepest, darkest thoughts when the weight of them got too much to bear?
