wait for Aaron, Nolan scanned the shredded waterway for the woman he’d seen from the air.
The woman who looked like Mandy. Good, they’d gotten her, the teachers and remaining children off the bridge. After calling “all clear” into his headset, he signaled the pilot to take him to the drop point, a nearby parking lot.
Once down, he jogged over. Awesome. All the children looked uninjured. She talked while assessing them. Her voice was as he remembered. Deeper maybe. Dark hair escaped a frazzled twist at her neck. Her hand patted it, her efforts only loosening hair from the stylish utensil holding it. Nolan smiled. Until he saw her other hand. The left angle indicated fracture. Yet she worried with her hair. Typical Mandy. If this was indeed her. Only one way to find out.
He nodded to the child she faced and approached her from the back. Petrowski strode past to where Chance knelt, securing a respiratory mask to a wheezing child while Brock held him.
“How’s it going over here?” Nolan asked.
The woman jerked at his voice. Had to be her. Only one way to be sure.
Nolan spoke their secret code.
Chapter Two
“Manda Panda,” a voice said softly behind her.
Mandy’s spine stiffened. Children giggled. She froze. Military-buzzed heads lifted to stare.
Again, the voice from moments before, and years before, suctioned the last pocket of air from her lungs.
No one had called her that in ten years. Ten.
Not possible. Can’t be him. Can it?
Warmth radiated from a presence behind her. Slightly ragged breathing. Maybe hers and not his. Hard to tell. She felt like she orbited in a pre-surgical anesthesia vortex all of a sudden. She inhaled deep, cleansing breaths and forced the shock from her face and neck. She used every ounce of strength to slowly turn around.
The instant his eyes lit on her face, his mouth slid open.
He stared.
Mandy stared.
Though he was more filled out and his impressive frame was that of a man instead of a boy now, she’d know him anywhere.
“Nolan?” He had to notice her voice sounded like a ventilator gone bad. She hated the breathlessness. Despised the tears stinging at the sight of him. The welcome sight.
No.
Only because he’s a rescuer. Not because he’s Nolan, the only man you’ve ever loved.
Eyes as kind as she remembered explored first her face, then her body, but not in a sensual way. He seemed unable to speak for a moment. Or blink.
“Manda Panda?” It awed out as a whisper.
The spoken name streaked emotional pain through her.
She didn’t want to hear it. No one had the right to call her that anymore. Especially not him.
She lifted her chin. “Mandy.” She hadn’t meant it to be so curt.
Hurt fluttered in his eyes. Then confusion. Disappointment. Concern. Maybe even a little irritation.
He stepped toward her. Ran a hand over his dark-blondish buzz and left it there as he took another slow step. He blew out a forever breath. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
He didn’t blink or take his eyes off her. His gaze reached her hand. “You’re hurt.” He took another step toward her.
Her muscles stiffened. Cold. Be cold. This is the man who broke your heart and never looked back. Never called, never—
She stood rigidly and lifted her shoulders. The way she did when she wanted to look in control, in charge, and professional at the hospital. When she called a cardiac arrest code and needed family and nurses carrying her out her lifesaving orders to believe she knew exactly what she was doing. Though she might be scared crazy. No one else needed to sense the emotion inside. Things went better for everyone that way.
He glanced around. “All children were removed okay?”
She blinked. “Children?”
He motioned a vague hand toward the bridge.
Heat rushed her face. “Oh. Yes. Yes.” She nodded at his uniform…that he more than sufficiently filled out. “Men, dressed like you, lifted them in baskets to helicopters.” She tried not to stare like a dolt. He really could be a poster boy for a military exercise regimen. Gone were those lanky arms and chicken legs she used to tease him about.
She tried to ignore how strong and eerily familiar he felt as he guided her to sit on a padded cooler full of ice and water bottles. His team had lowered it from a helicopter after rescuing everyone from the bridge.
His gaze danced down her face and lit on her neck. His jaw slackened. Lines around his eyes creased as he leaned in.
The panda necklace! That he’d given her at age sixteen. So you’ll never forget me, he’d said.
Her hand snaked up to clench it. Too late. He’d seen.
Surprise glittered over his face. “You still have it.” It came out more like a statement of disbelief than a query.
Not wanting to look like an idiot, Mandy slipped her hand from it. “It softens the children toward me in the hospital, makes them less afraid.”
As if sensing her discomfort—and her omission of the main reason she couldn’t take it off—he politely averted his gaze.
She tried not to look at his left ring finger, though it called to her like an emergency page on night shift. Forced herself not to care that his finger had no ring. Or how soft, warm and capable his hand felt as it brushed expertly over her injuries. He obviously knew what he was doing medically, not just what he was doing to her emotionally.
“Hurt anywhere?”
How ironic the question. Bottomless eyes bored into hers.
“Mostly my wrist.” Mostly.
He ceased staring only to check those areas. Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “Look, Mandy, I know this is awkward. If you’d rather someone else—”
“I’m fine.” For the most part. What else could she say? Admit her heart still ached from ten-year-old trauma? No. She refused to show herself weak around him again. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable, then rejected and abandoned her. She could never put herself in that position again.
Not liking his knowing, penetrating visual inquiry, she glanced at his uniform. “I see you made it through boot camp.”
That caused him to laugh.
“Barely.” He splinted her wrist then wrapped a sling around her arm. “You know how I was never a morning person. Those o’dark-thirty wake-up calls nearly did me in.”
She
