‘We?’
‘All right.’ She blushed prettily. ‘So I’m the one that did the chatting, but now can we make a move? Please! We’ve wasted so much time already. It’s an emergency.’
He didn’t shift in his seat. ‘What sort of an emergency? Don’t tell me—another sheep?’
‘Not a sheep. It’s my cousin. She thinks she’s in labour,’ Ellie explained quickly, and he lifted a dark brow.
‘She thinks she’s in labour?’
Ellie shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, it’s her first baby and it’s four weeks early so we’re hoping she’s wrong.’
‘And you’re a midwife?’
‘Sadly, no. I’m a nurse.’ She swallowed and secured the blanket more firmly around her shoulders. ‘The midwife is trapped on the other side of the valley—the wrong side of the floods. I don’t think she’s had much experience of driving through fords.’
‘Clearly a sensible woman,’ he observed, and Ellie pulled a face.
‘A bit pathetic, actually, but there we are. She’s coming the long way round, which is going to take her ages. Fortunately she didn’t sound that worried on the phone. It’s Lindsay’s first baby, and she doesn’t think it will come for a while yet, but I’m not so sure...’ She broke off and he lifted an eyebrow.
‘And why is that?’
‘Because I’ve got one of my feelings.’ She wrinkled her nose anxiously. ‘Which is a problem because I didn’t even get a chance to consult my textbook before I came out.’
‘And are your—er—feelings usually reliable?’
‘Always,’ Ellie said firmly, cuddling the blanket more tightly around her. Her teeth were starting to chatter and she’d never felt so cold in her life. ‘And on top of that her husband is away so, you see, I absolutely have to get to her.’
‘Right.’ His long fingers tapped the steering-wheel. ‘But it wouldn’t exactly have improved the situation if you’d drowned yourself and all the rescue services had been forced to come out to extricate you from the river.’
‘They wouldn’t have been able to. There’s been a pile-up on the motorway, which is why they weren’t any use to Lindsay.’ She twisted in her seat and looked at him with concern. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Hungry?’ He was clearly taken aback by the question. ‘What on earth makes you ask that?’
‘Because you’re very cross,’ Ellie pointed out gently, her tone sympathetic. ‘You needn’t worry. I get cross when I’m hungry, too. You should eat something straight away to get your blood sugar up.’
There was a long pause and when he spoke his voice wasn’t quite steady. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Tired, then?’
‘Not tired.’ He looked at her and shook his head slowly, exasperation glittering in his dark eyes. ‘I’ve just never met anyone quite like you before.’
‘Well, I haven’t met anyone like you before either,’ Ellie confessed, frowning slightly as she looked at him. ‘You may be gorgeous to look at but you’re very tense and you don’t show your feelings. It’s impossible to know what you’re thinking by looking at you, which is always a bit worrying in a person. Now, do you think you could just stop lecturing me and give me a lift to the top of the road? While we’re sitting here, getting to know each other, she could be in the final stages of labour.’
She could have been mistaken but she thought she detected a glimmer of laughter in his eyes as he flicked off the internal light. ‘Come on, then, I’ll take you. If I don’t, there’s no knowing what you’ll get up to. You need a bodyguard.’
He released the handbrake and drove up the road, handling the car skilfully as he negotiated the fierce storm and the lethal driving conditions.
‘Directions?’
‘Further up on the right.’ She paused, her teeth chattering, looking for landmarks. ‘Stop here!’
The man pulled up and squinted down the dark track. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘Well, the farmhouse is in a dip.’ Ellie released the blanket and he frowned at her.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘I’ll walk from here.’
‘Like hell you will.’ He muttered something under his breath and swung the vehicle into the lane.
She gasped and grabbed the seat to steady herself as it jolted viciously into the first pothole. ‘You can’t drive down here. You’ll lose your suspension.’
‘This is a four-wheel-drive,’ he reminded her, his expression grim as he adjusted the headlights, his eyes fixed on the track. ‘Just hang on.’
In no position to argue, she did just that, bracing herself as the vehicle lurched from the left to the right.
Finally he reached the end of the lane and they could see that every light in Lindsay’s farmhouse was blazing.
He pulled to a halt and unlocked the doors.
In an impulsive gesture, she leaned across, briefly kissed his rough cheek and then shrugged the blanket off her shoulders and grabbed her sodden clothes.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved my life. Now, go and get yourself something to eat.’ She grimaced as she slid her feet into her soaking wet boots and, without giving him a chance to speak, slid out of the car and sprinted to the front door, knowing that it would be open. It was always open. Lindsay refused to lock it.
‘Linny?’ She paused in the hallway and shouted for her cousin. ‘Lin? It’s me. Where are you?’
She heard a muffled sob and took the stairs two at a time. ‘Lindsay?’
Throwing open doors, she charged around the upstairs of the farmhouse until she finally found her cousin crouching in a ball in the bathroom, her face streaked with tears.
‘Oh, Lin...’ Ellie dropped to her knees and scooped her cousin into her arms. ‘It’s OK. I’m here now. Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘I thought no one was ever going to get here—’ Lindsay broke off with a gasp of pain and clutched at Ellie’s hand. ‘Paul’s away and it’s going to take him hours to get home, the midwife is stranded, I thought I was going to be on my own...’
Ellie hugged her tightly. ‘You’re not on your own. And you should have known I’d get here.’
Lindsay gave a sob. ‘If the midwife couldn’t manage it, how come you could?’
‘I had a stroke of luck,’ Ellie said evasively, not wanting to mention the ford. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Scared.
