She almost jumped out of her skin when Joe’s hand grabbed her wrist. ‘You should have your seat belt on,’ he said.
‘What about you?’
‘I can’t bloody move. I’ll be OK down here.’ He was grasping the legs of seats on either side of the aisle. ‘You get in a seat. Quick!’
The plane teetered back to the correct level as Alice scrambled into her seat and buckled up. Oh, God, they were almost touching the ground. She wanted to yell to Liam that he could do this, but her throat was too jam-packed with fear. Besides, she knew he was listening intently to the person talking him down on the radio.
She held her breath.
The hard red dirt of the outback airstrip was so close now. Coming closer every second.
She shut her eyes as the wheels skimmed the earth. They bumped and bounced off again and then reconnected with a rough thump that almost jolted her out of her seat. Oxygen masks tumbled out of overhead lockers as their tiny craft bounced and streaked at breakneck speed along the rough airstrip. Alice didn’t dare to breathe.
On the floor beside her lay Joe, his face contorted with pain and the effort of holding himself in place.
But they were slowing. Yes, they were definitely slowing. They were alive and the plane…was…coming…to a stop.
‘You did it!’ she screamed, rushing over to Liam.
He turned as she reached him and he looked pale and shell-shocked, as if he didn’t quite believe he’d made it.
‘That was just fantastic!’ she cried, throwing her arms about him and hugging his shoulders.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But I think we’d better get out of here fast. God knows what I’ve done to the plane.’
She stepped back quickly, realising that her celebration was premature.
‘You get out while I get the pilot,’ he said.
‘I’ll help you.’
‘No, you look after the door.’
Right. Alice turned to the door and saw the complicated handle. Oh, heck. How on earth was she supposed to open it? For a moment she felt embarrassingly useless—especially when Liam had been so amazingly resourceful—but then she noticed a helpful sign and a diagram.
Liam hauled Joe’s arm over one shoulder and got him to his feet, but the poor fellow only took a few steps then folded, so in the end Liam had to carry him out and they settled him on the ground in the shade of a bush.
Shading her eyes against the glare, Alice saw two four-wheel-drive vehicles scorching towards them, their cabins barely showing above clouds of billowing red dust.
Minutes later they were being congratulated and slapped on the back by Bob and Noreen King, the owners of Redhead Downs, and their head stockman, Blade Finch.
‘Bloody well done, mate,’ Bob said to Liam. ‘Civil Aviation called to warn us and said you’d never flown a plane before.’
‘We made it, that’s the main thing.’ Liam nodded towards Joe and Alice, who was kneeling beside him. ‘I’m worried about the pilot.’
‘I think he’s fainted again,’ said Alice. ‘He needs urgent attention.’
‘Flying doc’s on his way, love,’ said Noreen. ‘We’re in luck. He was holding a clinic not far away, but actually…’ She walked over to Joe and he opened his eyes and gave a weak smile ‘…it looks like you’ve done the doctor’s job for him.’
Now that it was over, Alice realised that her headache was pounding, but she managed a smile. And then she looked at Liam and felt a savage little twist in her chest when she saw that his hands were trembling.
But he quickly stuffed them into his jeans pockets and flashed her a reassuring smile.
Chapter Five
HE’D almost killed them. If the nose of the plane had tipped a fraction lower…
He’d almost killed Alice. He’d forced her, against her will, to come on this trip to the outback and then he’d almost killed her.
A blind, suffocating horror hit Liam almost as soon as his feet touched the ground. He felt his knees give way, but somehow he managed to shove the horror aside and stay upright.
It was later that the enormity of their near-death experience really took him by the throat, after the flying doctor left with the sick pilot, en route for Mount Isa Hospital.
Bob and Noreen King plied them with hot, sweet tea and thick corned-beef and tomato sandwiches and showed them to their guest accommodation—cute log cabins, separate as requested, down by a billabong.
It was there, once Liam was alone in his cabin—and he thanked God that he was alone—that he broke down, shaking violently, almost weeping with the shock of knowing how close they’d come. So close to death.
Again.
He knew from guilty experience how very fragile life was, had learned first-hand the heartless ease with which a life could be lost in one moment of recklessness.
All the images he’d tried to suppress came flooding back—the lifeless body and twisted metal. One careless split-second. That was all it took to measure the distance between existence and death. He’d learned that dreadful lesson years ago, when he was twenty-one, but still the guilt lived on.
So close. Today they’d come so terribly close.
The black horror of it crowded in, dragging him down, as it had so many times before.
Hauling off his clothes, he stumbled into the shower and let the warm water pour over him, let the familiar pinprick of fine needles heat his skin. He wasn’t sure how long he was there, sagging against the tiled wall of the recess, but at some point the voice of reason finally began to make itself heard.
The thought gradually sank in that on this occasion no lives had been lost. Today he’d actually saved lives.
He clung to that knowledge. But it still wasn’t enough to reassure him.
A knock sounded on the door of his cabin.
‘Be with you in a moment,’ he called as he shut off the water and reached for a towel. Hastily he thrust his legs into jeans and roughly towelled his damp hair as he crossed the room.
Alice stood on his doorstep, showered and changed into khaki shorts and a cute white top. Her eyes were huge in her pale face, and he realised with a slam of guilt that he’d been too self-absorbed to check how she was coping with the after-shock of their ordeal.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, eyeing his state of undress, his ruffled, damp hair. ‘I’ve interrupted you.’
‘Nothing important’s happening here.’ He flipped the towel over one shoulder.
Just the same, she looked uncomfortable. She lowered her gaze, as if his bare chest bothered her, and he tried to ignore the way the tiny shoestring straps on her top revealed the exquisite perfection of her collar-bones, the way the stretch material hugged her breasts.
She waved a vague hand at the billabong. Their cabins were set on its banks, giving them a pretty view of silky, tea-coloured water almost completely covered by pink water lilies. It was encircled by towering, shady paperbark trees and lush pandanus palms.
‘So what do you think of the guest accommodation on Redhead Downs?’ she asked him.
‘Fabulous setting.’ He watched a solitary white heron fish the opposite bank, its long beak probing beneath the lily pads. Then he stepped back, pushing his door wider open. ‘And the cabins are adequate. Why don’t you come in?’
She