‘Are you injured?’ the flight attendant asked Emma, and when Emma shook her head she continued with another question. ‘Can you get off the plane with her? We prefer not to evacuate injured passengers alone and we’re all needed up here.’
Emma nodded. She unclipped her seat belt and slung her bag across her chest. She stood up behind the girl and they joined the queue of passengers waiting to be evacuated. Emma slid her sandals from her feet and took the girl’s flip-flops and held both pairs of shoes in one hand.
The flight attendant instructed the girl to evacuate first, with Emma following. She paused at the top of the slide as the heat took her breath away. It was oppressive, dry and intense, a bit like standing in front of a furnace. The air burnt her lungs as she breathed it but while it was dusty she couldn’t smell fuel or fire. The heat wasn’t coming from flames but rising from the red desert sand.
Aware of others queuing behind her, she hurriedly sat at the top of the chute and slid to the ground. She got to her feet on shaky legs and went to the girl with the broken wrist, who was looking dazed and bewildered. She led her away from the chute, away from the streams of people pouring out of the crippled plane, and sat her down.
‘Sit here, I’ll go and look for help,’ she told her as she helped her to the ground. She dropped their shoes beside her and left her sitting in the shade of the plane as she set off in search of the ambulances.
By now there were people everywhere, passengers, airline crew, airport staff and emergency workers, and the chaotic surroundings were exacerbated by the dusty conditions, which made it difficult to see who was who.
A shape materialised out of the red haze in front of her and transformed into a tall, long-legged man with a strong, muscular frame. A rather attractive, rugged man in uniform. For a moment she thought her mind was playing tricks on her, that perhaps she had bumped her head. But then he spoke to her.
‘Are you all right? Have you been separated from someone?’
He was real. His voice was deep, undoubtedly Australian, but his tone was relaxed and somewhat calming against the noisy background.
Emma shook her head.
‘Are you injured?’
Emma shook her head again. She felt perfectly fine. Possibly a bit disoriented but physically okay.
He was staring at her. So she stared back.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE had to look up to see him properly. He was tall, at a guess she’d say five inches taller than her, which would make him about six feet three. His eyes were a clear blue, quite striking against his tanned skin, and his hair was thick and dark with a slight curl. His shoulders were broad and he was solidly built but it appeared to be all muscle. He looked like he could muster sheep or cattle, or whatever it was they farmed out here, all day, and still have energy to spare.
She almost sighed with pleasure. Her first glimpse of an Outback man and he was just what she’d imagined, just what her hours of watching Australian television dramas had led her to hope for. He was gorgeous in a ruggedly handsome way.
While she was busy drooling over his gorgeousness she realised he was still staring at her, waiting for her to answer. He probably thought she was in shock.
‘I’m fine,’ she replied.
‘You’ve got blood on your lip,’ he said.
Despite the noise and disorder surrounding them, Emma didn’t need to strain to hear his words. His deep voice carried easily across the small distance that separated them. He was holding a small first-aid backpack and he took some tissues from it and held them out to her.
Emma licked her lip and tasted blood, warm and salty, on her tongue. She must have bitten it when the plane had belly-flopped onto the landing strip. As she took the tissue and pressed it to her lip she was surprised to find that her hand was shaking. Adrenalin was coursing through her system but she hadn’t had time to notice until now.
‘You’ve missed a bit,’ he said when Emma took the tissue from her lip. He delved into the backpack again and retrieved a bottle of water. He poured a little on the tissues. ‘May I?’ he asked.
His clear blue eyes were fixed on hers, drawing her in, relaxing her. The chaos, the noise and the crowd of people around them seemed to disappear into the red dust, leaving the two of them alone on the airstrip. The experience was slightly hypnotic and Emma found herself nodding automatically in reaction to his calming blue gaze.
But when he reached out and cupped her chin with his hand her response was definitely not calm and relaxed, it was something completely different altogether. Her skin tingled under his touch as his fingertips grazed her lip, leaving a trail of heat behind as he wiped the blood from her face.
She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t move, she could barely breathe. Her breaths were shallow but it was the best she could manage, and she could feel her heart pulsing in her chest. She told herself it wasn’t him, it was the adrenalin that had heightened her senses. What other possible reason could there be? She didn’t have this kind of reaction to perfect strangers. No one did. Did they?
She needed to sit down and catch her breath. She needed to get some perspective. She just needed a moment to collect herself and then everything would be back to normal. She couldn’t afford to get spellbound by tall, dark and handsome men. By any men. Not right now.
‘Do you want someone to look at that?’ he asked.
His question confused her. He was wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt with epaulettes on the shoulders and on his breast pocket was a logo she recognised, a pair of wings, the symbol of the flying doctors service. Why would he get someone else to look at her lip?
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, aware that her voice was shaky and thin. She sounded as out of breath as she felt.
‘Did you want me to get one of the medics to check it for you?’ he asked.
Emma glanced at the logo on his shirt pocket again before she looked up at him. ‘Aren’t you a doctor?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m a pilot.’
‘Oh.’
A pilot. His answer threw her off course for a moment. She hadn’t expected that.
‘I’ll be okay,’ she said. She was a nurse with a bloody lip, she was sure she didn’t need to take up anybody’s time for that. And then she remembered what she’d been doing before she’d been distracted by the appearance of a handsome pilot in her path. ‘But there’s a girl back here with a broken wrist, I was looking for a paramedic.’
‘Can you take me to her?’
She nodded. ‘It’s this way.’
She retraced her steps and he fell into step beside her.
She watched the ground to make sure she didn’t tread on anything dangerous. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought to put her sandals back on her feet, but it also kept her attention focussed on the job at hand. She’d never realised she could be so easily distracted.
Within moments they were back in the shadow of the plane and the handsome stranger picked up his pace and ran the remaining few steps.
‘Lisa! What happened?’
‘Harry!’
Emma heard the happiness in the girl’s voice even as she registered that her name was Lisa. Lisa and Harry. Lisa knew Harry. Harry knew Lisa. They knew each other.
Good, Emma told herself. This handsome stranger was nothing to her. It was just the adrenalin that had caused such an unexpected physical reaction, just the adrenalin that had left her short of breath and made her skin tingle. She could ignore the little flutter of excitement in her belly, the