‘He’s part Maori.’
‘And he’s the senior crew member on your shift, yes?’
‘Yes. And if I don’t impress the pants off him, I won’t get the qualification I want.’
‘What did you say?’
Mikki groaned. ‘Just an expression, Dad.’
‘Hmm. Well, you’re a big girl now. It’s none of my business. What’s he like, this Tama fellow, anyway?’
Unconsciously, Mikki licked her lips. This was like having a plate of comfort food put in front of you when you were cold and tired and hungry. An opportunity for her mind to feast on a whole smorgasbord of Tama’s attributes.
Tall. Strong. Fierce. With the single-mindedness and determination of a warrior but with a thread of sensitivity that spoke of an equal ability to be gentle.
A streak of mischief that made dark eyes gleam and a smile that would melt the heart of any woman.
Someone who lived for challenge. For the thrill of revelling in how good it was to be alive and was prepared to do whatever it took to keep others alive.
A soulmate.
‘He’s the best,’ she told her father simply. ‘I couldn’t have wished for a better teacher.’
Her father sighed again. ‘You sound happy, anyway.’
‘I am happy, Dad. I’ve never been happier. This is exactly what I’ve wanted to be doing for longer than I can remember.’
‘Do you think there’s any chance you’ll get this danger-chasing business out of your system one of these days? Find a nice bloke and settle down, even? Preferably with someone who doesn’t share your passion of leaping out of helicopters and saving lives?’
‘I can pretty well guarantee that a nice bloke who’s interested in a picket fence and a bunch of kids will not be leaping out of any helicopters.’
Someone like Tama ‘settling down’? As if!
Her falling for someone who wanted the secure, ordinary life her father was thinking of?
Again, it was unlikely enough to be amusing.
‘You’re not even sixty, Dad. It’s a bit young to be pining for grandchildren.’
The silence on the other end of the line made Mikki give herself a mental kick. Her father needed no reminder of how small his family was. Or how pining for someone had almost destroyed him in the years following her mother’s death. Of the breeding ground for the over-protectiveness they still wrangled over.
Mikki caught a breath and made herself smile to ensure she sounded cheerful.
‘I’ll have to get to work soon, Dad. You haven’t told me how it’s going in New York. When do you have to get on a plane again? It’s Zurich next, isn’t it?’
The stack of materials was large and awkward to hold but Mikki’s arms enclosed it willingly.
‘You photocopied all this on your days off? And found all these videos and DVDs? Thank you so much!’
‘No big deal.’ Tama shrugged off the gratitude. He’d owed her one and he wasn’t about to admit why. ‘Some of it’s as boring as hell, mind you. One of those videos is a lecture on the components and capabilities of winching gear. Way too many facts and figures to be interesting.’
‘I’m interested,’ Mikki assured him.
She was, too. Possibly in more than the kind of materials needed for her training. He’d been testing her the other day, hadn’t he? Teasing her by not being specific about what he was offering. Playing with fire to find out whether she might be interested in him.
She’d been confused to start with, of course, but Tama had seen the signs of a response she probably hadn’t known she’d been showing. The way her pupils had dilated, her breath quickening as her lips had parted slightly.
So damn hot, he’d had to step back before he could get burned. To stop the game before it had ended in tears. And then he knew he kind of owed her an apology and he wasn’t quite sure how to offer it. He’d spent quite a lot of time on his days off thinking about it and by last night he’d come up with a perfect penance. He’d get all the resources she needed to make her training state of the art and he’d be there, every step of the way, to ensure her success.
‘There’s some good stuff in there as well. Practical demos on one of the DVDs. They’ve even filmed some real cases.’
‘Fantastic. If you show me how to use the DVD player, I’ll get into it the first time I get left on station.’
‘What makes you think you’ll be left behind?’
‘If last shift was anything to go by, I’ll have more than enough time to absorb this lot.’
‘You’re tempting fate, you know.’
‘Ha!’ Mikki shook her head, carrying her bundle of articles and audiovisual recordings towards the messroom. ‘You’ll see.’
But it was Mikki who was proved wrong.
There were four missions that day and not one of them required the use of a winch.
They transferred a critically ill teenage girl from a rural hospital to an intensive care unit in the city, and Tama was struck by the rapport Mikki gained instantly with their patient. He watched the way she held the girl’s hand during the flight and how their eye contact seemed to reassure and calm a terrified teenager.
The second job was time-consuming because they had to wait when it took longer than expected for a ski-rescue team to bring in a man who had collided with a tree and received head injuries. The injury had made their patient combative and Mikki was the target for some fairly colourful verbal abuse.
‘Get her away from me. I don’t want some female ambulance driver looking after me.’
‘She’s a doctor,’ Tama told the man. ‘She’s more highly qualified than any of us.’
‘I don’t care. She’s a woman. You can’t trust any of them.’
Tama had seen resignation in Mikki’s gaze as she’d stepped back. Concern for the man but acknowledgement that being assertive could distress him further and worsen his condition.
And he’d seen something else. Tama couldn’t be sure what he’d read exactly in Mikki’s eyes and face but he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their patient’s impression was absolutely wrong.
Mikki could be trusted with anything. She was one hundred per cent genuine.
They went to an isolated farm where a three-week-old baby had contracted an infection and was in respiratory distress, and this time Tama could really appreciate Mikki’s skills. Tama watched the confident, deft movements of hands that were half the size of his own as they located and managed to cannulate a tiny vein that looked like a thread.
Josh was watching just as closely and was clearly equally impressed with the feat, but Tama hoped his mind wasn’t stepping in the same direction as his own. Just for a moment or two he couldn’t help imagining how soft and sure the touch of those fingers would be. How it might be to experience that touch on his own skin.
Just the kind of distracting thought that would have annoyed the hell out of him a couple of weeks ago, but he could handle it now. Could enjoy the sensation and then put it aside—ready to help set up the monitoring equipment this baby badly needed.
Maybe he was getting used to dealing with a misplaced libido. Or maybe it was a combination of the confidence he had that he could deal with it added to the respect he was gaining for his pupil.
That respect went up a notch on the final job of the day. A car had gone off a coastal