Page 30 of The Single Dad's New-Year Bride

And at this moment it didn’t matter that he was still in love with his wife. That he had a little boy. That they worked together. That they weren’t possible. None of the flashing lights mattered. None of his baggage mattered. This wasn’t about long term. About tomorrow. This was about here and now. About being wanted and desired.

Her hands found their way to his fly. There was no thought to her movements now. She was moving purely on instinct, fuelled by passion. Passion that had been dulled by a train wreck of a relationship and dampened by grief for too long. She heard him moan and any reservations she may have been able to dredge up disappeared as the first button of his fly popped easily at her touch.

And it would have led heaven knew where had not, at the precise moment Callum’s mouth closed over a nipple and her back arched, Tom let out a blood-curdling scream.

CHAPTER SIX

CALLUM pulled away abruptly. It took a few seconds for his nerve endings to deliver the impulses to his brain to realise that something was wrong with Tom.

Something was wrong with Tom.

And he was here, getting naked with Hailey? What was he doing? He was Tom’s father. Tom needed him. He pushed himself off her. Somewhere he vaguely thought about his shirt but he was moving without any conscious thought, doing up his fly, backing out of the room.

Hailey lay stunned on the lounge in a dishevelled heap, trying to gather her thoughts, get up to speed with what had just happened. Her chest heaved and her breath actually hurt. Reality invaded. Sanity returned. Tom. Tom had screamed.

She sat up, pulling her skirt down, shifting her bra back to its rightful place, adjusting her shirt, her heart still beating a crazy tattoo. She finger-combed her hair, licked her lips, savoured the trace of Callum she tasted there. Oh, God, what the hell had just happened?

Callum met a hysterical Tom halfway to his bedroom and swept him up into his arms. ‘Tommy! What’s wrong?’

‘My ear. My ear,’ Tom sobbed, his hand clutching at his right ear. ‘There’s something walking in my ear.’

Callum, his pulse pounding through his head, hugged Tom to his chest in a brief, hard embrace. A bug in the ear he could handle. For a moment, in his sluggish lust-drugged brain, he thought the hounds of hell had paid a visit.

‘Get it out, get it out,’ Tom cried, shaking his head from side to side.

Callum kissed Tom’s forehead. ‘OK, Tommy. OK.’

He strode into the lounge room, Tom still grasping the side of his head.

‘What is it?’ Hailey asked, jumping up from the chair. ‘Is he OK?’

‘Seems like he has an insect in his ear,’ Callum said. ‘Can you hold him while I get my auroscope and some oil?’

‘Of course,’ she said breathily, holding out her arms.

Callum transferred Tom into Hailey’s waiting arms, his gaze lingering for a second on the swollen fullness of her lips. They exchanged a heated look. He knew he’d be inside her now if they hadn’t been interrupted. How could he have let things get so out of hand?

‘Ow, ow, ow,’ Tom cried, pressing his ear hard as he clung to Hailey’s neck.

‘It’s OK, baby,’ Hailey crooned, sitting back down on the chair behind her. ‘Wont be long now. Daddy will get it out.’ Tom writhed on her lap and she held him tight, rocking him slowly, dropping kisses on his forehead.

‘It’s scratching. It’s scratching,’ he wailed.

‘I know. I know,’ she whispered. She’d never had an insect in her ear but she’d nursed a couple of patients who had, and they’d described it as a truly awful experience.

The insect’s tiny movements were magnified a hundredfold because of the proximity to the eardrum. A noise that would normally need a powerful microphone to hear suddenly sounded like a set of bongo drums going off inside the head. There were plenty of old wives’ tales about people who had been driven mad by insects in the ear, and if Tom’s frantic movement was any indication, she could see why.

Callum flicked on the main lights as he returned with an auroscope, some long-necked angled forceps, a bottle of olive oil and an eyedropper.

‘OK, Tom. Let me have a look in your ear.’

Hailey sat Tom so he was straddling her lap, his face pressed into her chest, his head turned slightly so Callum had easy access to his son’s right ear. Callum inserted the funnel-shaped earpiece into Tom’s ear canal and looked through the magnified viewfinder. The light of the auroscope shone straight down, illuminating everything.

‘Oh, yeah. I see it. A little black bug.’

Tom cried some more, rubbing his face into Hailey’s shirt.

‘Lie down, Tom—let’s get that bug out.’

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