Kasey stopped and stared at her. ‘Adam’s worked here before?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know? He spent a year in Mwuranda with a French aid team but they pulled out when the fighting started. Adam decided to stay on and he only came back to England because he was injured, quite badly, too, I believe, although he never talks about it.’ June sighed. ‘I always thought there was more to it than just a desire to help which kept him here. It was almost as though he didn’t care about his own safety.’
‘When did this all happen?’ she asked slowly, feeling a cold chill envelop her.
‘I’m not sure…four, five years ago. Something like that.’
Which would be shortly after she’d told him how she’d tricked him, she realised sickly. Had that been the reason why Adam had shown such disregard for his own safety..because he’d been so upset by what she’d done that he’d no longer cared what had happened to him? She didn’t want to believe it but the timing pointed towards it being true. Frankly, she didn’t know how it made her feel to know that he’d put his life in danger because of her actions, but it did make her see how difficult it would be to resolve their differences.
She frowned. Was that what she really wanted, though? Initially, all she’d hoped to do was draw a line under the past but, strangely, it no longer seemed enough. She’d never been someone who enjoyed being at odds with other people; it simply wasn’t in her nature. Maybe that was why she’d found it so difficult to put the whole unhappy episode behind her. It had played constantly on her mind so maybe it was time to try and end the hostilities between them, although it wouldn’t be easy, of course.
Her heart suddenly sank because the thought that she might never be able to make her peace with him was very hard to bear, for some reason.
Dinner that night turned out to be quite a convivial affair. The catering team did them proud, serving up a meal which would have put many high-class restaurants to shame. Kasey found it a little daunting at first to be thrown in at the deep end and expected to mingle. Everyone else had worked together at some point and she couldn’t help feeling like the outsider. Although she knew that she could tag along with June and the other nurses, she didn’t want to get in the way when they were obviously eager to catch up with what their friends had been doing.
In the end it was Daniel who saved the day. He took it upon himself to introduce her to everyone present and soon put her at her ease as he filled her in on people’s backgrounds. He also insisted she sit with him at dinner and regaled her with stories of other missions he’d been on so that by the end of the evening Kasey felt more like one of the team. The only disquieting note throughout the whole evening, in fact, was that Adam ignored her. He spoke to everyone else present but made no attempt to speak to her. It was as though she didn’t exist and she had to admit that it hurt to be treated in such an off-hand fashion.
The party finally broke up around midnight. Everyone was worn out after the journey and started to drift away. Daniel begged her to stay and have a final cup of coffee with him but she refused first of all because she was tired and secondly because she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. She liked Daniel but there was no way that she was going to risk inciting Adam’s wrath by getting romantically involved with him or anyone else.
She bade Daniel a studiedly casual goodnight and made her way across the hall. Most people had gone straight up to bed so there was nobody about. She headed towards the stairs then paused as she passed the front door. Even though she was bone-tired as well, she desperately needed a breath of fresh air before turning in for the night.
She let herself out of the hostel and walked down the path, carefully picking her way through the rubble. Like most of the buildings they’d passed on the drive from the airfield, the hostel had suffered extensive damage during the recent fighting. Kasey stopped when she reached a clump of straggly bushes and looked back at the building, trying to imagine what it must have been like for the students who’d lived there during those troubled times. It must have been awful for them, living in constant danger—
The sharp report of a rifle cracked through the still night air and she jumped. She spun round to see where the shot had come from then gasped in alarm when a figure suddenly mate-rialised out of the shadows and hurled her to the ground.
‘Let me go,’ she screamed, punching the man’s broad back with her clenched fists. ‘Let…me…go, damn you!’
‘For God’s sake, woman!’ Adam’s face suddenly loomed into view and she gulped when she realised that he was her attacker.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she snapped, glaring up at him.
‘Saving your damned life.’ He put his hand over her mouth when she went to speak. ‘Just shut up, Kasey. There’s someone out there shooting at us so this is neither the time nor the place to discuss your injured feelings.’
Kasey fell silent, not that she could have said very much with his hand clamped over her mouth. She could feel the hard pressure of his fingers on her lips and a tingle of awareness that was totally inappropriate for the seriousness of the situation scudded through her. All of a sudden she became alarmingly aware of the intimacy of their position. Adam was lying right on top of her, his broad chest squashing her breasts, his hips and thighs crushing her against the rocky ground. Every muscle in his body was rigid with tension as he drew back his head and looked around the clearing, and a small moan rushed up her throat because she could feel every single one of them.
Intimately.
Trapezius, pectoralis major, deltoid, obliquuos externus…She made herself recite the names of all those muscles from memory, hoping it would help if she focused on some basic anatomy rather than the effect they were having on her. It worked to a point until another volley of shots suddenly cracked through the air. Yelping in fear, she buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around him. He felt so big and solid that she clung fast, using him as her rock in an unstable world.
‘It’s OK.’ His hand strayed from her mouth and her heart leapt again when she felt his fingers gently stroking her hair. ‘They’re not firing at us. Whoever they’re aiming at is in those trees over to our left.’
His voice rumbled up from his chest and she shuddered when she felt its vibrations rippling into her. Adam obviously misunderstood her reaction because his tone deepened, taking on the soothing cadence people use with the very scared.
‘They probably don’t even know we’re here, Kasey, so all we need to do is sit tight until it’s over. OK?’
‘OK,’ she muttered in mortification, because if she’d hoped to impress him with her sang-froid under fire she’d obviously failed.
They stayed where they were for another ten minutes, although it felt a lot longer than that to her. It wasn’t just the fact that Adam was squashing her with his weight that bothered her so much, but that she was enjoying the experience. She should have loathed this kind of intimate contact with him but although her mind knew that, her body didn’t. Every time he shifted his weight, she had to make a conscious effort not to respond so that it was a relief when he finally decided the danger had passed.
‘Stay there while I check out the lie of the land,’ he instructed tersely, easing himself away from her. He cautiously stood up, keeping well back into the shadows as he looked around for the gunman.
‘He seems to have gone,’ he said at last, glancing down at her. ‘Let’s get back inside but keep your head down and stay close to the bushes just in case.’
Kasey
