Amber hoped that the little girl would be all right. She remembered seeing her last night, before her mother had put her to bed. She was an angelic-looking child, with hair that curled exuberantly and matched her mother’s golden locks. She had Chloe’s blue eyes, too.
The man gave Chloe a hug, and Amber wondered how well they knew each other. That wasn’t the sort of hug that he would have given a total stranger. It was a familiar, easygoing hug that said he cared.
He waited while the paramedic attended to the little girl, and then turned and spoke to someone nearby. He said something to Chloe, and knelt down once more to talk to her small daughter.
Amber pulled off the oxygen mask. It was high time she took charge of herself. She couldn’t sit out here all night. The doctor and the paramedics seemed to have everything under control here, but her own situation was fraught with difficulty. Her purse was in the building, along with her shoes and all her immediate possessions. How was she going to get herself home?
Perhaps she could call a taxi, if she could persuade someone to lend her the coins for the call, or maybe her aunt would accept reversed charges and make the call for her. Amber winced. It wouldn’t be fair to wake her in the early hours of the morning, though, would it?
She stood up, and felt the cold paving slabs beneath her feet. Maybe one of the paramedics had a mobile phone on him and would let her make the call. She started to walk towards the ambulance, her gait a little unsteady but purposeful all the same.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Her rescuer stood in front of her, blocking her path.
‘I’m just going to make a phone call,’ she said, gazing up at him in exasperation. Why did he always have to turn up at the wrong moment? She straightened up, drawing herself to her full height, which meant that the top of her head was just about level with his shoulders. What was he, six feet two?
She looked him in the eyes. She was doing her best to make a dignified exit, but as she tried to sidestep him, the blanket began to slip down from her shoulders, exposing a line of smooth, bare flesh, hampering her efforts and forcing her to make a strategic grab for the edges.
‘Why do you need to make a phone call?’ he asked.
Pulling the blanket around herself once more, she tried to answer and found that she was struggling to get the words out. ‘Why do you think?’ she managed, between breaths. ‘I need to go home.’
‘Not just yet,’ he said, leading her back to the wheelchair. ‘You really should be going to the hospital. I would be grateful if you would just stay put for a little while longer. You’re like a jack-in-the-box, and it’s very wearing, trying to keep pace with you. First you resist my attempts to get you to move at all, and now it seems that you can’t stay still for more than five minutes at a time. Please, do me a favour and sit down and try to relax.’
‘I’m not going to hospital,’ she mumbled.
Taking no notice of her mutiny, he manoeuvred her into the chair and leaned over her. Then he placed the oxygen mask over her face once more and she sent him a frustrated stare. She didn’t see that she had much choice in the matter but to stay in the chair. She couldn’t move if she wanted to. He was blocking her exit with every inch of his tautly muscled body.
She looked up at him, her eyes troubled. ‘I should thank you for getting me out of the building,’ she muttered, pushing the mask to one side. ‘I didn’t realise that you were trying to rescue me.’
‘I guessed as much.’ He smiled at her, a crooked half-smile that lit up his face and made her catch her breath all over again. She began to feel light-headed, weak in every limb, and she pulled in oxygen as though it was a lifesaver. He was incredibly good-looking, and those eyes—they meshed with hers and seemed to see right into her soul.
She looked away. Just thinking along those lines made her feel vulnerable. She said huskily, ‘What were you doing there?’ He wasn’t wearing the uniform of a paramedic or a fireman, and she didn’t recognise him from the party. In fact, he stood out from everyone here. He was dressed in an immaculately styled grey suit, and his shirt was pristine—or it would have been before he had battled the smoke.
‘I’m here because my father owns this block of flats. He doesn’t live locally and he asked me to come and check on things and report back to him. I expect he’ll be along first thing in the morning to see what needs to be done.’
‘Oh, I see. This must all be a dreadful shock to him.’
‘It’s more of a shock for the people involved, I imagine. We’ll have to find alternative accommodation for them until the damage has been repaired.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘You’re not one of the tenants, are you?’
Amber shook her head. ‘It was late when the party finished, and I didn’t want to drive home because I’d had a drink.’ Her car keys were back in the flat. ‘The girl giving the party said I could stay in her friend’s flat. The friend is away just now, but she gave permission.’
He frowned, and she sent him an anxious look. ‘It was all right to do that, wasn’t it? I’m not getting her into trouble, am I?’
‘No, that’s all right. It’s not your problem. I was just concerned because we didn’t know that you were there until one of the other tenants remembered that you were in the room.’
Amber shuddered. ‘So I could have still been in there now?’
‘No. I made sure to check all the rooms, and the firemen were doing their own sweep of the building.’
She was humbled. ‘Thank you for getting me out of there. I’m sorry I gave you so much trouble.’ She gave him sideways glance. ‘I owe you a lot, and I don’t even know your name.’
‘I’m Nick.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘And you?’
‘Amber.’ She removed the mask and put it to one side. ‘I’m fine now. I really must think about getting home. Why don’t you go and look after the nurse and her little girl? I imagine they need you more than I do and I can manage perfectly well.’ From the gentle, considerate way he had approached them earlier, she guessed that he knew them fairly well. Perhaps, as they were tenants of his father, he had become friendly with them.
His brows drew together. ‘I doubt that. You seem to be in a worse condition than either of them. You were in the building for the longest time.’
He glanced over to where Chloe and her child were being treated by the paramedics. ‘Chloe and Lucy will be all right. You don’t need to worry. I’ve arranged for them to go and stay with Chloe’s cousin until we can fix them up with something else. She’s coming to fetch them.’ He paused. ‘In fact, I think I can see her arriving now.’
‘That’s good.’ She tried a smile. ‘Well, I’m sure there are other people who need help more than I do. Perhaps you should go and enquire after them…that poor doctor, for instance. I really need to start finding my way home.’
He gave her an odd look. ‘The doctor’s on his way to hospital, which is where you should be, too.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not going there.’
He studied her. ‘All of the other tenants seem to be managing perfectly well. Most of them are fully dressed and aware of what’s going on, and they seem to have managed to grab what belongings they needed before they made their escape. As for you, I really don’t think you’ll get very far in the state you’re in.’
He made it sound as though she was hopelessly inadequate. ‘You didn’t give me a chance to get anything that I needed,’ she said. ‘I do seem to remember looking around for my shoes, and I’m sure if you had given me a moment I would have