from him. How hard would it have been to do something kind instead of walking away to save his own sanity? There was no answer. Only minutes in her company and she’d begun scrambling his brain like the eggs he’d had for breakfast.
‘What’s the great attraction out there?’ Jock called across the room.
‘Nothing,’ he muttered.
‘So you’re going to stand there all day gaping at nothing?’ Jock was supposedly going through patient records, removing the ones of those staff heading back to New Zealand next week.
Grabbing the interruption with both hands, he turned around. ‘What’s up? That stack of files doesn’t appear any lower than it did an hour ago.’
Jock had probably been texting his family and pals at home. Now that they both only had a few days remaining it was getting harder to focus entirely on this tour of duty. Home was beckoning. For him that meant another army base, another round of training as well as working in a local hospital surgical unit until the next posting. More time to contemplate the empty years ahead.
‘I hear the new medic’s arrived. Guess we’ll meet her shortly.’
‘She’s unpacking.’ You’re going to fall under her spell in a snap. She was everything a red-blooded male could ask for.
‘You’ve met her?’
‘Long time back.’ Yikes. He hadn’t mentioned recognising her name in the email from headquarters. Now Jock would go for his throat. Sam tried to deflect him. ‘Just passed her on the field, said hello.’ Had seen her become as still as a rock, colourless as marble, staring at something he’d been unable to figure out as though it was going to attack her. He’d caught her before she’d face planted. What had that been about? Smoke, she’d said. Dust, he’d told her. The fear that had blitzed him from the shadows lurking in her eyes had dampened her spark into a dark brown bog filled with hidden torments. Genuine, don’t-hurt-me fear. He hated that. There’d been signs that spoke of pain and anguish, signs she’d desperately tried to hide. And failed.
What happened to you, Madison?
No, he didn’t want to know. Knowing would lead to wanting to learn even more and before he knew it he’d be getting close to her. He’d seen that fearful look before—in William’s eyes as he’d lain dying. Sam’s head tipped back as pain stabbed him. William. His best friend. They’d clicked the moment they’d met on the first day of training at Papakura Military Camp. The friend who’d never returned home after following him to Afghanistan.
‘Sam,’ Jock called, loud enough to break into his maudlin thoughts. ‘You got the hots for this woman? Or is there some juicy history?’ Jock’s expression was full of expectation.
Go away, man. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, so Sam went for the obvious. ‘I guess Madison will come visiting when she’s ready,’ he told the man who’d refused to back off from becoming a friend, no matter how often he’d been pushed aside.
Jock’s head tipped sideways. ‘Something you’re not telling me?’
The guy was too shrewd for his own good. ‘Can’t think of anything.’
He got laughed at for his efforts. ‘You’ve fallen for her.’
‘In thirty seconds? Give me a break.’ He shuddered at the thought. And that wasn’t because Madison was a horror.
‘I’ve heard that’s all it takes.’
‘Shouldn’t you be sorting those files?’
Wrong thing to say.
‘So I’m right.’
He had to shut Jock up fast. ‘You couldn’t be further from the mark. I cannot, will not, fall for a woman, no matter how much she interests me.’
‘You ever think it time to let that go, mate?’ One of Jock’s eyebrows lifted nonchalantly, as if he didn’t know the boundaries he was stepping over. But he did, and wasn’t afraid to show it.
Heat hit Sam’s cheeks as he snapped, ‘Knock it off, Jock. You know the story. Nothing’s changed.’ Anger tightened his gut. He would never let it go. He didn’t deserve happiness when William had died because of him.
Jock started to say something and Sam was instantly defensive, cutting him off. ‘Don’t go there,’ he repeated, the warning loud and harsh in his voice. Back in New Zealand there was a woman hurting because of her fiancé’s death, a lovely woman who’d never have William’s children or share her life with the man she loved.
But across the room his pal merely shrugged as if this wasn’t important. ‘No problem. So where did you know Captain Hunter?’
‘Madison. We weren’t friends, just attended the same school. But there was no not knowing who she was.’ Sam dragged his hand over his face. Maddy’s career moves had been unbelievably similar to his. ‘And don’t even say we should play catch up on people we might both have known at school. I’m not interested so I’m staying out of her way as much as possible for the time I’ve got left here.’ As the words were spilling regret flicked through his jaded psyche. He wanted to spend time with her despite the restrictions he’d imposed upon himself. But he’d stay away. One week wasn’t too long to hold out on this strange need to touch base with her sneaking through him. One week.
‘You seen the roster for tomorrow’s patrol?’ There was a mischievous sparkle in Jock’s eyes that didn’t bode well for his vow to stay clear of trouble.
Dread he didn’t understand floored him. One look at the notice board partially explained. ‘Swap with me.’ Maddy had problems. He’d seen them in her eyes, in that fear, and for him to get involved, maybe help her, would endanger both of them. Ultimately he’d let her down, one way or another. He did that to people who mattered to him. Never again. ‘Please,’ he grunted. Not quite begging, but damned close.
‘No can do. I’m rostered to take my crew into town and check out the hot spots there.’
‘So swap.’
‘Nope.’ Jock shook his craggy head. ‘Captain Hunter’s all yours.’
Sam’s crew would be patrolling beyond the town’s perimeters. ‘That sucks. She’d better be up to scratch,’ was all he could come up with, though he didn’t understand his concerns. Neither did he understand why his fingertips tingled and his groin ached just thinking about her.
Like he was eighteen all over again, working hard to be Mr Popularity at school, to show it didn’t matter he was being raised by a family that was unrelated to him because his own had left him. A wonderful, kind and caring family, but not his.
Jock clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘These next few days could prove interesting. Time I witnessed you being brought to your knees over a woman.’
‘You going to let up on this any time soon?’ The guy knew what had gone down in Sam’s past so why all this bull dust?
A low cry came from the treatment room, cutting through his gloom. He raised an eyebrow at Jock. ‘One of ours?’
Jock shook his head. ‘That’s the mother of a three-year-old boy with five
