At His Service: Her Boss the Hero: One Night With Her Boss / Her Very Special Boss / The Surgeon's Marriage Proposal

Mikki’s mouth went suddenly dry. Could there be some kind of telepathic link being beamed by satellite? Surely there hadn’t been any clue in her own tone or recent conversations to reveal how often that name echoed in her own head. Along with images that could stir up some rather disturbing physical effects. Good grief, what if her father knew that she had thought Tama was offering her sex instead of winch training?

That she might have been incapable of declining such an offer?

Or maybe there was another link. An equally disturbing one for some unidentifiable reason.

‘You don’t know him, do you, Dad?’

‘No, of course not.’ The response was lightning fast. ‘Why would I?’

‘You’ve been known to attend the odd fundraising function to do with helicopter rescue. Especially when you’re handing over those big cheques. You just sounded like you’d heard the name before.’

‘It’s an unusual name, that’s all.’

‘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 road and it could easily have been a winching job but the tide was out and beside the rocks was a stretch of firm sand that made an ideal place to land. The car was upside down and the single occupant was sprawled, face down, half on the back seat and half on the roof that was now the vehicle’s floor. Totally out of reach.

‘We’ll have to wait for the fire service to cut access,’ Tama decreed, but Mikki wasn’t having any of it.

‘I could fit through the window.’

‘No way! Too dangerous.’

‘Not if we knock the rest of the glass out. The car’s stable enough, isn’t it?’

‘I guess.’ The crumpled wreck was perfectly stable, wedged between two giant boulders. Tama was curiously reluctant to allow Mikki to squeeze into the tiny gap of a window frame, however.

‘Ignition’s off. Fire danger should be low and it’s an old car. There won’t be any undeployed airbags. Not in the back, anyway.’

Tama turned to the chief fire officer, who was now standing beside him. ‘It’ll take us a few minutes to set up for cutting.’

‘At least let me get in to make sure his airway’s open,’ Mikki pleaded.

The fire officer grinned. ‘Keen, isn’t she?’

‘Yeah.’ And suddenly Tama was proud of how brave Mikki was. Could appreciate her diminutive size. ‘OK, go for it, Mouse. We’ll pass in whatever you need.’

By the time they freed the victim, he was set to go, with a neck collar in place, oxygen on and IV fluids running.

She was good.

So good it no longer seemed premature to take her a step further in her training. Winch work, for sure, as soon as they could fit it in. Tama was going to sit down and have a good look at his calendar tonight as well. A clear day or two and he would start the preparations needed to give Mikki her survival training.

Why did frustration seem to be an inherent part of this job?

Was it just that Mikki wanted too much, too soon?

Last shift she’d been frustrated because she’d been left behind on station and had had to use her time to study. This shift the opposite was happening. Three busy days so far and she’d gone on every mission because not one of them had needed winching.

And it was frustrating because she wanted to soak in all the background information Tama had provided for her on winching. She’d had her evenings, of course, but it wasn’t the same as being able to fire questions at Tama as they occurred to her. Something as practical as playing with the simulator was as far away as it had ever been.

Mikki knew perfectly well that hindsight would make her appreciate this full-on spell. Already, she could see that both Tama and Josh had come to trust her judgement and recognise her strengths. They simply handed her the IV gear now and her opinion on every case was always sought. They had gelled together as a team even before the milestone of their tenth mission together that had been clocked up late yesterday.

But today was the last of their four-day shift and Mikki didn’t want a stretch of days off when she was no closer to her new goal of being winch capable, so she was striding into the hanger with a purposeful step, a little earlier than usual, intent on persuading Tama to start her practical training.

The hangar was dimly lit with the new day just gathering strength, but the light was not dim enough to hide the two figures who were standing near the helicopter.

Both Tama and the station manager, Andy, were watching her with a focus that was unsettling, to say the least.

‘Something wrong?’ Mikki queried, by way of a greeting.

‘Yeah.’ Tama’s scowl deepened. ‘Josh won’t be in to work today.’

‘He’s sick?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘He was out running last night,’ Andy told her. ‘This idiot took a corner too fast, went off the road, through a fence and into the park Josh was running in.’

‘Oh, my God,’ Mikki breathed. ‘He got hit?’

‘Leg broken in three places,’ Tama said gloomily. ‘Femur, tib and fib, and his foot got squashed. He was in surgery for three hours.’

‘He’ll be in hospital for weeks,’ Andy added. ‘Off work for months.’

Mikki stood still, absorbing the bad news. Josh was a part of her team now. A friend. He’d been Tama’s partner for a long time, too, and part of her concern and sympathy had to go to her mentor who would, no doubt, have to work with someone he didn’t know nearly as well for quite some time.

Tama seemed to read and accept her mixed response. ‘At least it wasn’t his head,’ he said quietly. ‘He’ll come right.’

Mikki nodded. ‘Is he allowed visitors yet?’

‘We’ll go and annoy him every time we’re at the hospital.’

‘But …’ A new concern emerged. ‘What’s going to happen today? With the crew, I mean?’ Would a stranger be ready to accept her as a third crew member? Make her an integral part of the team the way Tama and Josh had?

‘I was going to call in a replacement,’ Andy said. ‘But it was looking like we might have to stand you guys down. Then I thought of my old mate, Alistair.’

‘Ex-helicopter crew,’ Tama put in. ‘Before my time.’

‘Yes. He’s retired from helicopter work,’ Andy continued, ‘but his qualifications are still current. He’s got a website design business now that’s quite portable. He’s happy to hang out on station and be available for any winch jobs. Only operating the winch, mind you.’ Andy chuckled. ‘He says he’s over dangling. He can still do his normal work on station. It’s a fairly unusual arrangement but I’ve managed to clear it.’

‘For any jobs that don’t require winching,’ Tama finished, ‘I’ve told Andy that I’m more than happy to crew with you.’

Andy was frowning. ‘It’s kind of a big ask this soon in your training, Mikki. I said we’d have to see how you felt about it.’

‘I … I’m happy if Tama’s happy,’ Mikki said slowly. She caught Tama’s gaze, knowing that her questions would be written on her face.

You really want this? You trust me to be your partner?

The dark eyes were steady on hers. Warm.

Yes, they said. You can do this. We can do this.

‘I’m happy,’ was all Tama said.

Andy gave a nod. ‘Let’s see how it goes, then.’ He smiled at Mikki. ‘Tama tells me he wants to accelerate your training to include winching, but don’t go getting any ideas that you’ll be allowed to do anything in the near future.’ He was looking at Tama. ‘Safety first, remember?’

Tama cleared his throat. ‘How could I forget?’ he muttered. Then he smiled at Mikki. ‘No time like the present, is there? Good thing you got to work early, Mouse.’

It was and it wasn’t.

One frustration faded only to be replaced by a new one.

An unexpectedly fierce and potentially problematic one.

It started with Tama’s first words when Andy had gone back to his office.

‘Let’s get a nappy on you, then,’ he said.

‘The harness, I hope.’ Mikki hoped the light response would hide something more than embarrassment at the terminology. The very idea of Tama touching her in places that a nappy would cover was more than enough to send a flood of colour to her cheeks.

‘We use a nappy harness by preference.’ Tama was sorting through a box of gear in the corner of the hangar. ‘Much more dangerous winching someone in a stretcher. Get a good spin or something going and it can be hard to control. Here.’ He was holding out a collection of straps and fasteners. ‘We’ll pretend you’re the patient. I’ll just put my harness on first.’

The moment his hands touched Mikki’s waist to put her harness in place she knew she was in trouble. She actually had to close her eyes as he reached for the wide strap that went between her legs and his hands brushed the insides of her thighs.

‘Don’t mind me.’ She could hear the grin in his voice.

She tried to smile back. To appear as nonchalant as Tama sounded, but her heart was hammering and her lips felt frozen.

She knew this sensation. Kind of. She’d only ever experienced a pale imitation of this, however. Lust, pure and simple.

She didn’t mind. Far, far from it.

She wanted more.

Heaven help her, but she wanted that touch on her thighs without the barrier of clothing, and she wanted it as fiercely as she had ever wanted anything in her life.

‘Now I clip your harness to mine,’ Tama was saying.

‘Like this. And I tell you to put your arms around my neck.’

He was holding her steady. The way he would be holding a patient so that they could both be winched up to a hovering helicopter.

So close Mikki could feel the whole, hard length of Tama’s body.

Could feel a strange, humming sensation that went through the layers of clothing and then skin and muscle to settle in her bones with a liquid warmth so exquisite Mikki had to bite her lip to prevent the escape of a soft, appreciative sigh.

Tama stood very still. Silent. For just a heartbeat too long.

Long enough for the undercurrents to be shining like neon lamps.

There was no way out of this unless Mikki could pull back far enough to see Tama’s face and then say something. Anything. A stupid question about the carabiners linking their harnesses would do the trick. Something that sounded professional enough to diffuse this tension.

Mikki managed the first part of the plan but then the words failed to form and she found herself staring into Tama’s eyes and the tension rocketed up. They were so close.

Way too close. When Tama’s gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips, she knew he was thinking about kissing her. It was like that moment in the diving pool, with the major difference that they were alone here. No audience. Nobody would know.

No way could Mikki produce a single word now. Neither could she move enough to even take a new breath. She didn’t want to break the spell.

She wanted Tama to kiss her.

Any resolutions about avoiding the pull of an attraction that could cost her this career opportunity were relentlessly crushed. There was no way she could resist this man. If he wanted her, she was here. A more than willing partner.

And he did want her. She knew it. Maybe it had always been a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’, and the moment had arrived.

How long had they been like that? Staring at each other? Not long enough for Mikki to feel a desperate need for a new supply of oxygen but it was long enough to feel like for ever.

Long enough to provide a background where the slamming of a side hangar door had all the effect of a gunshot.

Steve had arrived for work and, as the sound of the metal door closing faded away, their pagers sounded.

It hung between them. That almost kiss.

Like a strand of something solid. A connection Mikki could feel with varying degrees of intensity from that moment on.

So strong to begin with as she climbed into the helicopter with the adrenaline rush of her first callout, having been promoted to second crew member but fading as they arrived at a medical centre an hour’s drive from the city where an eleven-year-old was suffering a life threatening asthma attack.

She would not have expected to notice it with the full on effort of keeping this child alive until they reached the hospital. The aggressive drug therapy they instigated was still not enough and in mid-flight the panicked child went into respiratory arrest.

The back of a helicopter had never seemed so cramped or their supplies so awkwardly packed and hard to access. Mikki was at the head of the stretcher, with her arms around their seated patient, her hands on his small rib cage, helping the exhausted boy in his efforts to expel air. Tama was doing his best to secure a second IV line. They both felt the exact moment the child gave up the struggle to breathe and for just a heartbeat the two medics made eye contact with each other.

The boy needed intubation and Mikki couldn’t stop herself remembering her failure in a situation that had been this urgent. The first time she had been under Tama’s critical evaluation for her clinical skills. They would have to swap positions if Tama was to do this intubation and it would take time they didn’t have if they wanted to save this child.

And there was that connection again. Not remotely sexual. It was deeper. Stronger.

It told Mikki that she didn’t need to move. That he trusted her. That he was here and would assist but this was something she could do. That she needed to do.

He was right on both counts. Five minutes before they landed on the rooftop helipad of the biggest hospital in town, Mikki had secured the tube that would keep the boy’s airway open and she was carefully ventilating him to avoid damaging lungs that were still far from being able to function normally. The paediatric team, including an anaesthetist, was waiting for them in the emergency department and Mikki watched as they adjusted settings on the machine that would take over his breathing, put monitoring lines in place and arranged transfer to the paediatric intensive care unit.

Tama stood beside her and when the admitting team finally nodded their satisfaction at the stability of their patient’s condition, Tama looked down and smiled at Mikki and she could feel the strength of that connection all over again.

‘Shall we go and visit Josh before we head back to station?’

‘Of course.’ Concern for their colleague came back in a rush and Mikki realised what an emotional roller-coaster this day was presenting. No wonder she was feeling a little strange.

Vulnerable.

And no wonder the relief of seeing a smile on Josh’s face brought tears to her eyes. ‘Hey, I’m not dead, Mouse.’

‘You could have been. Thank God the wheel went over your foot and not your head.’

‘He would have been fine in that case,’ Tama growled. ‘Not much to damage at that end, is there, mate?’

Laughter chased away the threat of the silly, feminine tears and then something new got thrown into the emotional cauldron of Mikki’s day.

Pride.

‘You should’ve seen Mouse on this last run,’ Tama told his partner. ‘Intubating a kid in respiratory arrest. Mid-air. Have to say, if she wasn’t heading for war-torn countries in a few months, your job might not be there to come back to.’

‘Hey, I can do a threesome. You wouldn’t get rid of me that easily.’

The nurse who had come in to check Josh’s IV and the attached self-administered pain relief looked up and grinned.

‘Threesome, huh?’ She raised an eyebrow at Mikki. ‘Lucky you.’

‘Yeah.’ Mikki returned the grin, still bursting with pride from Tama’s praise. Feeling closer to both these men than she ever had to any work colleagues.

She loved this job.

She loved them.

For the first time in her life she was exactly where she wanted to be. She belonged.

And then she made the mistake of catching Tama’s gaze, and that strand of connection was like liquid fire. There was nothing professional about this non-verbal communication. It was purely sexual. There would be no ‘threesome’, his look told her. This was between the two of them.

The temperature of the room seemed to be rising steadily but Josh was now busy flirting with his nurse and apparently didn’t notice.

‘I might not get in to see you tomorrow,’ Tama told Josh a few minutes later as they prepared to leave. ‘Depends on Mouse, of course.’

‘What does?’ Mikki asked.

‘I checked my calendar last night,’ Tama said casually. ‘And the long-range weather forecast today. If you’re keen, we could get dropped on the top of a mountain tomorrow and get your survival training out of the way.’

‘So soon?’ Mikki wasn’t sure she was ready. ‘I was expecting to have to wait until there was a group for that.’

Josh was clearly getting a good effect from his pain relief medication. He was grinning broadly. ‘You’re special,’ he told Mikki. ‘Tama wants to give you the royal treatment.’