In the Boss's Arms

Chapter Four

WHEN the small charter plane took off it climbed to the east, taking Alice and Liam out over the shimmering, aquamarine waters of the Coral Sea before arching back towards the curving rim of the coastline. From their eagle-eye view, the sandy beaches below formed scalloped yellow trims on a string of pretty blue bays. Then the suburbs of Cairns spread out below them, reaching into an imposing hinterland of mountains clad in a thousand lush shades of green.

Liam, sitting on the far side of the narrow aisle, seemed to be entranced. He strained forward against his seat belt, eager to catch every detail of the spectacle below.

Alice had seen this view many times, but she never tired of it. She liked to imagine how it must look to international tourists used to the softer, more subtle landscapes of the northern hemisphere. Small wonder they found the vibrant colours and luxuriant vegetation of tropical Queensland exotic and exciting.

But as the small craft continued to climb she sank back into her seat and took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a minute or two. She had a faint headache which the confrontation in Liam’s office hadn’t helped. And last night she’d slept badly—thinking about this trip, and worrying about the strain of spending three whole days in her boss’s exclusive company.

I won’t come near you unless you ask me to.

Huh. In his dreams.

Problem was, if she was honest she had to admit that she hadn’t slept well since the night of her birthday. Their birthday.

Darn it. She was still finding it impossible to put that night behind her. By the end of three days her nerves would be in shreds. How dared Liam trick her into this no-choice position?

Keeping her eyes closed, she tried to relax, deliberately loosening her shoulders, her stomach, her hands. She wasn’t going to let Liam Conway upset her. After her divorce she’d vowed never to let another man undermine her confidence the way her husband had. She’d learned her lesson.

The important thing to remember was that her boss recognised how good she was at her job and, more importantly, he understood how significant the outback was to the company. It would be a real coup to bring the outback tours back on board.

Opening her eyes again, she sent a sleepy glance around the small cabin.

Liam was still intent on the scenery below. She watched the pilot, Joe Banyo, flick one of the many buttons on his complicated control panel, and saw him reach into a pack beside him for a roll of antacid tablets. From beneath heavy eyelids she watched him tear the foil and pop one into his mouth.

Joe turned, caught her watching him and sent her a quick, reassuring grin.

The monotonous, throaty roar of the plane’s motor filled the cabin. She’d always found the surroundsound hum of small planes rather hypnotic and she let her eyes drift closed again. They were heading for Redhead Downs, about an hour and a half inland. Why not take a nap? It would kill two birds with one stone. She could get rid of her headache, and she could avoid the embarrassment of having Liam ignore her.

Turning sideways, she nestled more comfortably into the padded upholstery.

‘Alice!’

Liam was shouting at her, shaking her shoulder roughly. ‘Wake up!’

She blinked. And then her eyes flicked wide. Liam had already moved on past her and was at the front of the plane. He was crouching over Joe, the pilot, who was—oh, good heavens—slumped sideways in his harness.

Oh, my God, who was flying the plane? A blast of panic brought her fully awake.

‘What’s happened?’ she shouted.

‘He’s collapsed.’

She stared in horror at Liam’s shocked expression and the pilot’s pale form. Oh, God. Flicking open her seat belt, she jumped to her feet. ‘Have you tried to wake him?’

‘Of course. He won’t respond.’

‘Is—is he breathing?’

‘Hard to tell. I don’t think so.’

They were going to crash! She struggled beneath another slam of panic. ‘Is there a pulse?’

Liam flashed her a quick, worried frown and then touched his fingers to Joe’s neck. ‘I—I can’t feel anything, but I’m not sure if I’m on the right spot.’

She tried to remember what she’d learned in various first-aid courses. ‘Feel to the left of his Adam’s apple.’ Please, Joe, have a heartbeat! Her own heart was a sledgehammer.

Liam tried and shook his head. ‘I’m not getting anything.’ He struggled with Joe’s harness. ‘I’ll have to get him out of this seat.’

Alice sent a hasty, terrified glance out of the nearest porthole to the grassy paddocks and bush below. Miles and miles below. At least the plane wasn’t doing anything dreadful like spiralling downwards the way they did in war movies.

‘Do you think he’s had a heart attack?’ She knew she sounded panicky.

‘How the hell would I know?’

She remembered seeing the antacid Joe had taken earlier. Had he taken it because he’d felt chest pain and thought he had indigestion? If he’d had a heart attack, they would have to get help fast or he would die. Oh, God, what was she thinking? They were all going to die if their pilot couldn’t land the plane.

In the confined space it was a terrible struggle but at last Liam managed to drag Joe and together they set him in the tiny aisle, on his side in the recovery position.

‘You’ll have to look after him, while I try to get help on the radio,’ Liam told her.

‘OK,’ she said, thinking she would need to be a contortionist to attempt CPR in the available space. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Good girl.’

She looked up quickly. Liam’s face was pale, his expression grim—just this side of terrified—but he managed a reassuring smile.

‘I don’t suppose you know how to fly a plane?’ she asked.

‘’Fraid not. But the plane must be set on autopilot. We don’t seem to have lost altitude, so that gives us a bit of leeway while we try for some help.’

She gave a brief nod, an even briefer smile. ‘Good luck.’

He was already climbing into the pilot’s seat, and she turned her attention to the unconscious man. He needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR. She hoped to God she could remember the procedure.

She checked Joe’s airway and began to breathe for him. After the initial weirdness of putting her mouth to a stranger’s, she settled into the rhythm. One breath every four seconds.

‘Mayday! Mayday!’ Liam was shouting.

How scary those words sounded. But at least he’d figured out how to work the radio.

Alice wished she was braver. She knew she mustn’t think about the plane crashing, but horrific images of their tiny cabin smashing into hard earth kept jumping into her head.

Don’t let your mind go there! Get a grip! Be disciplined. Focus on Joe, on the breathing.

She could hear Liam shouting to someone, explaining about their pilot’s collapse. Thank heavens he’d made contact. She felt a tiny bit calmer. And remembered to pray.

‘We’re close to Redhead Downs,’ Liam was saying, and then he gave their position from a control-panel monitor and reeled off a string of numbers—something to do with the plane.

She finished a round of breathing and checked again for the pilot’s pulse. Beneath her fingertips, she felt a tiny beat. Dear God, thank you. She wouldn’t need to apply CPR. But Joe still wasn’t breathing, so she began again on another round of mouth-to-mouth.

‘OK,’ Liam was shouting into the radio. ‘I’ve found the airspeed dial. It says we’re flying at—er—one hundred and twenty knots. Is that OK? It is? Great!’

Alice kept up the rhythmic breathing. Surely Joe would revive soon? As she worked she could hear the voice on the radio explaining the basic controls to Liam, and the confident replies Liam gave to each set of instructions. Wow! How did he stay so calm?

In the midst of terror, there was something commanding about his manner, something reassuring. Perhaps it was an illusion created by broad shoulders?

But the illusion was destroyed when Liam yelled, ‘Brace yourself back there. We’re already approaching the Redhead Downs airstrip. I’m going to have to land this thing soon.’

Alice’s chest squeezed like a vice, breaking the rhythm of her breathing. She had a vision of the ground racing up to meet them, fancied she heard the shriek of ripping metal, the blast of an explosion. Pain.

Idiot, stop that right now!

She heard a faint groan and stared hard at Joe. Had he made that noise? Was his colour improving? Surely he looked a little pinker?

He groaned again and coughed.

‘Joe’s alive!’ she screamed.

Liam was too busy focusing on instructions from the radio to reply.

Joe clutched at his stomach.

‘He’s coming round,’ shouted Alice.

‘Can he talk?’ Liam called back to her.

Alice gave the poor man a shake. ‘Hey, Joe, wake up. We need you!’

‘Ask him if the plane has fixed or retractable landing gear,’ yelled Liam.

‘Joe,’ Alice shouted. ‘What kind of landing gear does this plane have?’

There was no reply. Joe’s face was pale again and beaded with sweat.

‘Please, Joe,’ urged Alice. ‘Tell me about the landing gear.’

‘Fixed,’ he whispered.

‘Fixed,’ she called back to Liam.

‘Fixed,’ Liam shouted into the radio. ‘Hallelujah! We’ve got wheels!’

His excitement was contagious. Suddenly it seemed possible that somehow Liam was going to land this plane. They were going to be all right. Alice felt a surge of courage. She was going to have faith. Now. Even when poor Joe rolled onto his side and groaned wretchedly, she remained calm.

She found a hand towel and a bottle of water in her backpack and washed his face. His eyes flickered open.

‘Sorry about this. Think it must be food poisoning.’ And then he tried to sit up. ‘I’m all right now. I’ll take over.’ But he’d no sooner spoken than his face turned as white as paper and he sank backwards again, clutching his stomach.

‘If you try to fly and keep blacking out we won’t make it, Joe. The best way you can help is by lying still and staying conscious. That way, Liam can ask you questions.’

Eyes closed, he nodded.

She dampened the towel again and mopped the beads of perspiration on his brow, and as she worked she watched Liam in her periphery.

From her point of view he looked perfectly cool and collected, but she knew that was impossible. He’d never flown a plane before. He would be fighting fear every second.

‘I can see the landing strip now,’ he was telling his instructor on the radio and he sounded remarkably calm. ‘Yes, I’m pulling back on the throttle, reducing power. Yes.’

Joe grabbed Alice’s elbow. ‘Tell him he mustn’t let the nose drop more than six inches below the horizon.’

She relayed the message at the top of her voice.

‘Doing my best,’ was Liam’s grim-voiced reply.

She could feel the plane’s descent and panic rose again, but she pushed it away from her. She had faith in Liam Conway. He was going to make this. They were going to be safe.

Joe’s eyes were shut and she wondered if he’d fainted again, but when the sound of the motor suddenly changed his eyes opened and his head snapped back.

‘Pull all the way back on the throttle,’ he shouted.

‘Pull all the way back on the throttle,’ Alice repeated.

‘I’m pulling!’

This time Liam sounded really worried. Alice could see the tension in his shoulders, the strain in the back of his neck.

Through the windscreen in front of him, she saw the airstrip, tilted at an alarmingly rakish angle, zooming closer, closer.

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.