back. Simultaneously her knees buckled. John caught her an instant before she fell.
“Terrific,” he muttered. Easing her to arm’s length, he drew her harness tight and clipped it to his, so that her limp body was flush against him. “We’re going up, sweetheart. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
She stirred. “I can’t…feel my hands,” she whispered. “They’re numb. I can’t hold on.”
“You don’t have to hold on. I’ve got you.” He took her hands in his. Even through his thick gloves, he could feel the tremors wracking her body.
“Don’t…let me go,” she said.
Setting her palms against his chest, he put his arms around her shoulders. “I’m not going to let you go. I promise.”
Dark, shimmering eyes met his. He’d intended to give her a reassuring smile to keep her calm, like he had with a hundred other subjects during a hundred other rescues. But the power behind her gaze stopped him cold. For a split second the flying snow and the roar of the wind faded until his focus narrowed to the feel of her against him, the smell of her hair and the frightened, striking eyes staring back at him.
“Come on, Maitland, what are you doing? Picnicking down there?” Buzz’s voice crackled through his helmet communication gear with all the finesse of a chain saw. “Get it in gear!”
Shaking off his reaction to the woman, John forced himself to take a mental step back and signaled for the other man to winch them up. An instant later, the rope drew taut. She gasped as they were jerked off their feet.
“Damn winch operator has the mentality of a gorilla,” he grumbled, more to calm her than to complain because he knew there wasn’t a man alive who could operate a winch better than Buzz Malone.
In only a few seconds, John’s thoughts strayed from the operation at hand to the woman pressed against him—and how that closeness was affecting his body. He tried to keep his thoughts on IV fluids, the possibility of frostbite and the radio call he would be making to Lake County Hospital, but the fact that this beautiful, frightened woman was pressed flush against him with her head on his chest was doing a number on his concentration. Her arms were around his waist, and she clung to him as if he were her lifeline. Even through the bulk of his flight suit, he was aware of her body. Small-boned. Soft. Curvy as a mountain back road—and undoubtedly just as dangerous. Her fragrant hair was loose and blowing in his face.
He shouldn’t have acknowledged, even to himself, how good she felt wrapped around him like that—she was a trauma patient. He was an in-flight medic. She’d shoved a gun in his face just two minutes earlier, for crying out loud! God only knew what kind of a person she was.
All that aside, even under the best of circumstances, John figured he was the last man on earth who had the right to indulge in this woman’s vulnerability.
Steeling himself against his uncharacteristic reaction to her and physical sensations he knew better than to acknowledge, he forced his thoughts back to the operation and prepared to board the chopper. The ride up was swift and turbulent. The winds spun them like a top, but the woman didn’t make a sound. When a particularly strong gust sent them careening toward the chopper’s skid, he swiveled in midair and took the impact in the small of his back, determined to keep her from getting any more bruises.
“About time you showed up.” Buzz Malone’s voice reached him over the roar of the chopper’s engines and rush of wind. “What do we have?”
“Hypothermia. Possible frostbite.” Strong hands pulled them into the chopper. John looked down at the woman in his arms and felt a flutter of low-grade lust in his belly. Terrific. “You handled that like a pro,” he told her.
Her gaze met his. Despite her earlier terror and the fact that she was seriously hypothermic and shivering uncontrollably, a smile touched the corners of her mouth. The smile reached him as no words could have. For a moment he couldn’t look away. Simultaneously something shifted deep in his chest, something new and uncomfortable—and uncharacteristic as hell. He wanted to say something cocky, something to let his teammates know he wasn’t the least bit affected by all that red hair and her pretty eyes, but for the first time in his life, his wit failed him. He felt like he’d just been punched right between the eyes. All he could do was stare back at her and pray his team members weren’t aware that he’d suddenly lost his power of speech.
“Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to let me unfasten her, so we can get an IV started?”
John jerked at the tone of Buzz’s voice. Realizing belatedly that the woman was no longer supporting herself, that he was just standing there holding her, he unclipped her harness and relinquished her to the two waiting men.
“What the hell, John? Did you get struck by lightning out there, or what?” Buzz asked.
“Must have been that boulder Flyboy slammed me into,” John muttered. Not sure why he’d reacted so strongly to her, ready to write it off to his long-neglected male libido, he stepped back, determined to walk away and forget it.
But John couldn’t make himself turn away. He damn well couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just stepped out onto thin ice and was about to plunge headlong into something that promised to take a lot more than just his breath.
Her gaze never left him as Buzz and junior medic Pete Scully lifted her on the count of three and eased her onto the litter. Armed or not, she still had the most incredible eyes he’d ever seen. They were soft, expressive pools the color of expensive cognac. Rich with intelligence, they stared back at him with a moving mix of relief and gratitude—and the unmistakable realization that he’d saved her life.
So what if that fed his ego? There wasn’t a search-and-rescue professional alive that didn’t like having it stoked. So he’d reacted to her. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman. John wasn’t any Romeo—not by a long shot. He knew all too well the dangers of getting involved and he wasn’t going to go off the deep end over a pair of incredible eyes and handfuls of silky red hair.
Still, his reaction to her disturbed him—almost as much as the fact that she could very well have blown his head off.
“Buzz.”
Buzz tore the wrap from an IV needle. “What is it, Maitland?” the older man asked, never looking away from his work.
“Uh…she had a gun.”
Buzz swung an incredulous stare at him. “What?”
“I said she had a gun—”
“I heard you the first time.” Buzz looked down at the woman, his expression incredulous. “Where is it?”
“She dropped it.”
“Did she threaten you with it?”
John had debated telling him the part where she’d pointed it at him. But Buzz was an ex-cop. John trusted his judgment. “She was terrified. Confused.”
“Holy hell. She did, didn’t she?”
“She thought I was someone else,” he said, hating it that he felt as if he’d somehow betrayed her. He didn’t owe her anything. For all he knew, she could be a criminal.
“Who was she expecting,
