‘And your point, Major?’ he demanded impatiently.
‘My point, Colonel, is that your men—my QRF—are jumpy at the moment. I know why—a helicopter is a big target for anyone on the ground with rocket launchers, and the QRF don’t want us to hang around too long. But we’re not in a warzone, Colonel. We’re on a Hearts and Minds mission and I think your men have forgotten that in the wake of Colonel Waterson’s death. They never had a problem with my getting off the heli before, and they won’t again in a few weeks. And the reason I jump off is because the casualties who can’t get to the heli in time might not make it if we just abandon them.’
There it was, she noted triumphantly.
The flash in his eyes suggested her words had hit home. She’d suspected that, of all people, this new Colonel wasn’t the type to leave a fallen man behind. And she was right; he’d reacted as soon as she’d said the word abandon.
Still, he clearly wasn’t about to give in that easily. And that didn’t surprise her.
‘My men informed me that the casualties weren’t in immediate danger.’
‘With all due respect, sir, your men aren’t trauma doctors. I am. Just because there are no bombs out here, no IEDs, with fatalities and casualties requiring multiple amputations, doesn’t mean there aren’t urgent cases.’
‘I am well aware of that, Major,’ he ground out, his eyes drilling into her. ‘I’ve carried a fair few men to a MERT over the years.’
‘Yes, but usually from the front line, I understand. Out here, we have non-combat injuries to deal with, from Road Traffic Accidents to local kids in gas bottle explosions around their home, from peace-keeping troops with appendicitis to local women in labour requiring emergency medical intervention. It might not always look fatal to your battle-hardened troops but fatality comes in less obvious guises. And I made a judgement call each time.’
And she’d been right each time too, not that she was about to offer that information up. It would have far greater impact when the Colonel found that out for himself. And she knew without a doubt that he would.
‘Indeed?’ The Colonel raised his eyebrows at her.
His mind was not entirely swayed but he was clearly considering her position. She suppressed a thrill of pleasure. It was a victory of sorts. And all the sweeter because, for a second there, she’d almost lost herself to a side of her character she had never before known existed. A side which wasn’t immune—as she had so long believed—to the tedious and feeble vagaries of an instant physical attraction.
But she had fought it, and she had won. Hopefully she’d managed to convince the new Colonel to get his men to back off for the last few weeks of her tour of duty and, with him being infantry and her being medical, there was no reason she’d have to see him again.
Relief mingled with something else which Fliss didn’t care to identify.
It was all short-lived.
He stepped in closer, almost menacingly so, and instinctively her eyes widened a fraction, her breath growing shallower.
He picked up on it immediately, but it was only when his eyes dropped instantly to her rapidly rising and falling chest, his nostrils flaring as she heard his sharp intake of breath, that Fliss realised he was as affected by her as she was by him.
Her? The girl Brody Gordon had referred to as Fusty Fliss? Attracting a guy as utterly masculine as the Colonel? It hardly seemed possible.
And then she realised what this uncharacteristic moment of weakness was all about for her. It wasn’t some incredible, irresistible attraction at all. It was merely the fact that Robert’s rejection had exposed unhealed wounds from her past which she had scarcely buried beneath the surface. Old rejections and feelings of inadequacy that her mother, her grandparents and boys like Brody Gordon had cruelly instigated.
She wanted to pull away from the Colonel now, use the revelation to her advantage. But it seemed that even knowing the truth wasn’t helping her to resist him. He pinned her down, his eyes locked with hers, inching forward until they were toe to toe and her head was tilted right up to hold the stare. For several long seconds Fliss was sure she stopped breathing.
And then, finally, he broke the spell.
‘I must say, Major, my interest is piqued.’ The fierce expression had lifted from his rough-hewn face to be replaced by a look which was simultaneously wicked and challenging. White heat licked low in her belly.
‘I understand your next forty-eight-hour shift begins at oh-six-hundred tomorrow?’
‘That’s right,’ she acknowledged carefully, a sense of foreboding brewing in the tiny office.
‘Good. Then I’ll accompany you for the first twenty-four hours and we’ll see what we discover, shall we?’
Her whole body shivered.
‘You can’t do that; you don’t have the authority. You’re not my commanding officer. You’re not even medical.’
‘No—’ he seemed unfazed ‘—but I am the CO of the infantry unit which provides your protection unit and, since they are my guys, I do have a reason to be on that heli. I hardly think your buddy Simon is going to object when I run it by him. Do you?’
‘It’s my heli, my run. I could tell my CO it wouldn’t be appropriate.’
She was grasping at straws and they both knew it. The wicked smile cranked up a notch, and so did the fire burning low in her core. He dropped his voice to a husky rasp which seemed to graze her body as surely as if he’d run callused fingers over the sensitive skin of her belly.
‘And on what grounds exactly are you going to object?’
He had a point; she could hardly tell Simon that she didn’t want to be in close confinement on a heli with the new infantry CO because there was an inexplicable chemistry between them that, when she was around him, made her body heat up and her brain shut down.
She was trapped and they both knew it. Worse, Fliss was left with the distinct impression that a tiny part of her actually liked it.
Clenching her fists and spinning around as Simon finally bustled back into the room, Fliss studiously ignored the terrifying voice which whispered that the truth was, she just might have experienced her very first lust at first sight.
CROUCHED IN THE corner of the cramped, sweltering, noisy Chinook—kitted out as a full airborne emergency room, its engines the only thing one could smell or hear—Ash fought down the nausea which was threatening to overwhelm him.
He’d seen the MERT in action too many times to count during his seven tours of duty over the last decade, several back to back. He had an incredible respect for the doctors and medics who ran what was, essentially, an airborne operating room. Many of his men, his friends, were still alive today because of the swift, skilled actions of MERT teams. But although he’d carried many casualties to the heli as part of the infantry team on the ground, the only time he’d actually been on board had been when he himself had been seriously injured.
Ash kept his eyes firmly open. If he closed them, the sounds were too brutally familiar. If he closed them, the scents, the turbulence, transported him right back to that day. If he closed them, he could almost feeling his life ebbing away.
Instead, he studiously watched the attractive blonde major who was running this flying operating room with impressive command and focus. Even now she was diligently prepping any last pieces of equipment. He could imagine her as the focused, methodical doctor, but he still couldn’t imagine her ever breaking the rules to save a soldier, the way his new unit had claimed she’d done on more than one occasion.