ledge and she hadn’t just taken a decade off her life with that one daring leap.
“You good?” he asked again, ducking his head to look into her eyes. He must have been reassured because he didn’t wait for her to reply. “Help me secure the PEP so we can get off this ledge.”
Frankie shook her head even though she knew he meant the patient extrication platform. Sucking in a shaky breath to still the churning in her gut, she shoved all her messy emotions aside and got her head in the game. She had a patient who needed her undivided attention and the litter swaying gently just over their heads was waiting to airlift him to the closest trauma center.
Everything else could wait. Including her freak-out because no way was anyone witnessing that.
Within minutes, they’d transferred the student to the backboard and strapped him into the litter. Nate then reattached the hoisting strapline and with a hand signal from him, Frankie’s patient rose into the air. She watched as hands reached out to snag the litter and pull it aboard the chopper before expelling the breath she’d been holding.
Litter rescues occasionally went bad but, despite the rocky start that had almost cost Nate his life, this one had gone relatively smoothly. But she wanted to be off the ledge before something else went wrong. Before she lost the tight grip on her emotions.
She wasn’t looking forward to climbing back the way she’d come either. Her arms and legs shook, which would make the ascent a little tricky even though the rangers at the top had set up a standing body belay and would take most of her weight as she “walked” up the cliff face.
She’d wait until Nate left with the chopper before attempting the ascent for fear of completely humiliating herself any further.
Out of the darkness the hoisting strapline appeared again and Frankie let out a tiny relieved breath. Any minute now she’d be free to fall apart without an audience.
She watched Nate catch the metal connector clip and murmur something that she couldn’t quite catch. Now would be a good time for Fearless Frankie to regain control, she thought, because smartass and cocky was way better than cowering, trembling and freaked out.
She gave a cocky grin and quipped, “So long, soldier,” adding a snappy salute for good measure.
“It’s sailor, not soldier,” he growled, as he unclipped her line and gave it a quick tug.
“What are you doing?” she snapped in outrage, making a grab for it, but it was already out of reach as the rangers above reeled it in. She turned on him with a snarled “Are you insane?” but he ignored her, snapping her onto his harness capture strap. Of course, she tried to stop him but he brushed her hands aside with a quick impatient flick and hooked them both to the hoisting line.
Eyes on hers, he wrapped his arms around her and said, “Trust me.”
The words had her heart lurching as the truth landed like a punch to the solar plexus. God, she did. Didn’t want to...but did.
“No,” she lied, but he must have read the reluctant truth in her eyes because he said, “Bring us in, Boom,” and the next instant they were airborne.
Frankie swallowed as they swung away from the ledge. She didn’t like the feeling of being suspended in a sea of blackness while wind, rain and rotor wash lashed at them from every side any more than she liked being vulnerable.
To anyone...let alone this man.
She’d tried it once and he’d devastated her, stomping on her tender heart with his size thirteen tactical boots. It was the last time she’d allowed her feelings to show.
“I’ll get you for this, soldier,” she warned through clenched teeth and squeezed her eyes closed against the overwhelming pull of the man pressed intimately against her.
Gone was the cocky, handsome boy who’d treated her with all the indulgent impatience of an older sibling. In his place was a man whose powerful cocktail of tightly coiled testosterone and simmering pheromones was even more treacherously compelling.
Even the expression in his eyes was different—sometimes intense, sometimes brooding but always distantly watchful.
This Nate might look like an older, hotter and harder version of the boy she’d once loved but somewhere along the line he’d acquired a darkness that made him more than dangerous, more than lethal, to women everywhere.
Over the sound of the chopper she heard him yell, “You falling asleep there, spider girl?”
Her eyes popped open and she looked up to see the red and white fuselage looming closer. A couple of visored men watched and controlled their ascent, reminding Frankie of a movie she’d seen about alien abduction.
“No,” she muttered. “I’m pretending I’m on a beach in Hawaii.”
He must have heard because his mouth kicked up at one corner and before she could fully grasp the sudden transformation, hands were reaching for them, pulling them in. The instant she felt the capture strap release, Frankie scrambled over to where a crewman was tending her patient and wondered what she thought she was doing, because she had a feeling that getting sucked into Nate Oliver’s force field again...would be an unmitigated disaster.
Fortunately, she was too smart to let that happen. Way too smart.
Her patient’s eyes were open but he appeared dazed and disorientated. “Focus on me, handsome,” she yelled over the noise of the engine, and quickly freed his arm to set up an IV. “You hang in there, okay?”
Looking up briefly to gauge their ETA, she noticed several pairs of eyes on her and became aware of the grins.
Frowning, she looked around and caught sight of Nate’s expression and by the firm unsmiling line of his sexy mouth, he wasn’t happy. But then again—apart from that flash of wry humor—unsmiling seemed to be his default expression.
At least when it came to her.
Her belly clenched.
“What?”
“Yowza, lady,” a crewman yelled, his wide toothy grin and smooth cheeks all she could see beneath the bug helmet. “You saved Sammy in the most awesome move I ever saw. Ever think of joining the circus?”
Sammy? she thought with a frown. Who the heck is Sammy?
Thinking maybe they were talking about her patient, Frankie drawled, “I’m allergic to rings,” laughing when she was rewarded with confused looks. She shook her head. “Never mind.”
No way was she explaining that one. She’d decided a long time ago that marriage wasn’t for her and guys seemed to think all a woman wanted was a wedding ring and a white picket fence.
Determinedly pushing aside unpleasant thoughts, Frankie willed the chopper to move faster through the air. The sooner they arrived at the hospital, the sooner her patient could be rushed into surgery. And she really needed to escape this inexorable pull Nathan appeared to still have on her double-X chromosome.
HOURS
