At His Service: Her Boss the Hero: One Night With Her Boss / Her Very Special Boss / The Surgeon's Marriage Proposal

The undercurrent—of being completely isolated with that simmering, as yet unexplored, physical attraction between her and Tama was just that. An unacknowledged undercurrent that was there with every burst of conversation and every shared glance. A pleasant sensation that suggested they were both going with the flow rather than fighting it.

A new depth was being added to their relationship, Mikki realised. Amidst the energy that came from a skilled teacher interacting with a willing student she could sense more than Tama’s passion for his subject. There was a palpable pride in what he did. Who he was. Real patience in leading her to teach herself what she needed to know and a genuine interest in her success.

In her?

They took turns with the small shovel from Tama’s pack to heap snow into a large mound. Tama took over when the height was above Mikki’s head level. He made the task look easy and didn’t even get particularly out of breath while he talked at the same time. He told her the story of a plane-crash victim who survived against huge odds and walked out of the bush a week later, mid-winter, in nothing more than a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

‘Sometimes,’ he concluded, ‘I think survival is more about sheer bloody-mindedness and refusing to give up than all the fancy stuff we can teach. Have you got that kind of determination, Mikki?’

He’d called her ‘Mikki’. Not ‘princess’ or ‘Mouse’. This was new. And it was a personal question. Was Tama feeling the same kind of curiosity about her that she was about him?

‘I guess,’ she responded carefully. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? Given how over-protective my dad is, it’s taken a fair bit of determination to get this far.’

Tama seemed to be shovelling harder. ‘We need to get a good dome shape to this,’ he said. ‘That way we can maintain an arch shape when we hollow it out. That makes the roof self-supporting and it won’t drip on us.’ He threw another shovelful of snow upwards. ‘Why is your father so over-protective?’

‘My mother died just before my tenth birthday. Dad absolutely adored her and her death very nearly destroyed him. For a while, he pushed me away totally but … when he found he was able to love again, he went a bit too far the other way. Wanted to wrap me up in cotton wool and make sure he didn’t lose someone else, I suppose.’

‘You’re an only child?’

‘Yes. Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer at the same appointment she found out she was pregnant with me.’

The movement of the shovel ceased. ‘Wow. That must have been tough. Did she put off treatment?’

‘Yes.’ Mikki had to turn and pretend she was admiring the scenery again. Boy, Tama knew how to get straight to the heart of a painful subject, didn’t he? Had she really wanted to start treading on personal ground like this?

The silence continued. Respectful. Waiting.

‘I didn’t know that until after she died,’ Mikki said finally. ‘Some well-meaning friend was trying to find a way to help Dad with his depression and I overheard her talking to another friend. She thought he might be blaming himself because he allowed her to continue with the pregnancy instead of starting chemo.’

Another silence fell in which Mikki could feel Tama staring at her.

‘So you blamed yourself instead.’

Mikki turned swiftly. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘It’s what kids do.’ It was too hard to see Tama’s eyes behind the ski goggles from this distance but she could see sympathy in every line of his face. ‘Their world gets tipped upside down and someone they love gets ripped away from them. We’re egocentric creatures at the best of times and when you’re too young to know any better, or there’s no one around who knows or cares how you feel and you don’t get told it’s not true, it’s inevitable you end up thinking it’s your fault.’

The words were heartfelt. So heartfelt it was Mikki’s turn to stare intently at Tama.

She had to clear her throat to break the new silence. ‘What did you blame yourself for, Tama?’

Tama dug the shovel into the snow forcefully and heaved the load upwards, grateful for a physically demanding task.

Dammit. That had been unbelievably careless. But how had Mikki picked up that he was talking about himself so easily? It was like she could see the part of him he’d been able to keep so well hidden for so many years.

‘I’m just saying,’ he muttered. ‘That’s what kids are like.’

He needed to direct the conversation back to safe ground. Why had he asked such a personal question in the first place? He knew perfectly well what level of determination this pint-sized woman possessed.

This had been a mistake. He’d got carried away back there when they’d been visiting Josh. Pushed the boundaries of the game thanks to the temptation that nurse’s comment had provoked. A threesome? No way. But the idea of being alone—just him and Mikki—had been irresistible. And so easy to arrange with no suspicions being raised.

But it had been a mistake. He needed to back off and get this excursion onto purely professional grounds.

‘We can start digging the tunnel now.’ Tama stepped away from the impressively large mound of snow. ‘We start out here and go down about a metre. We won’t come up until we’re well under the edge of the mound and then we’ll start hollowing out from the middle. I’ll shovel it behind me and you can scoop it up and get rid of it.’

The task was not difficult but it was time-consuming and they had to rest at intervals to conserve energy.

Verbal interaction was minimal because Mikki was out of sight and busy behind him. When there was an opportunity to say something, Tama kept right away from anything personal. He had a wealth of stories he could tell about how people dealt with survival in the wilderness. Plus any number of useful tips.

‘Don’t ever carry a butane lighter with your survival kit,’ he warned Mikki. ‘Too damn dangerous. Have an airtight, melt-proof container and keep waterproof matches or magnesium fire-starters in it.

‘Use your watch for a compass. Keep it flat and point the hour hand at the sun. Half the distance between the hour hand and twelve o’clock is due south.

‘You can make a decent fishing hook by bending a syringe needle. I’ll show you tomorrow when we get near the river.’

It worked for a while, even though it felt forced at best and a bit ridiculous at times. It wasn’t so easy to control his thoughts while he was alone in the centre of the mound, carving out the space they would share for the night. He kept thinking about the kind of darkness her words had skimmed. A darkness he could understand only too well.

Was that where her astonishing strength of character came from? That period of heading into adolescence, not only missing the person she needed most. But carrying the burden of guilt that her very existence might have contributed to her mother’s death?

He gave up trying to squash his curiosity when he emerged to share a drink of water and a muesli bar from Mikki’s pack.

‘At least your dad didn’t blame you,’ he found himself saying out of the blue. ‘Or he wouldn’t have been so over-protective.’

‘That came later,’ Mikki said. ‘After the car accident when I was sixteen.’

Ah, yes. That accident. He’d been curious about that when she’d mentioned it the day of that physical assessment. It had been so easy to stay away from stepping onto personal ground back then. Not so easy now.

‘You were hurt?’ The mental image of Mikki lying badly injured in the kind of scenes he often attended was disturbing enough to give him a kick in the gut.

‘Amazingly, no, but the other three teenagers in the car were hurt. One of them died. I was the front-seat passenger and … I got lucky, I guess.’

‘They were your friends?’

‘Yeah …’ She didn’t sound sure.

‘A boyfriend was one of them?’

‘No.’ Mikki’s tone told him it was time to stop prying. Clearly, she didn’t want to talk about it.

That was fine. Good, even. They could really get away from this personal stuff. He could dismiss his curiosity about those intervening years. The ones between her mother’s death and the accident that had made her father so over-protective. Had he not cared much until then? Been so focussed on a sick wife and then too broken-hearted to really notice his kid? She must have been incredibly lonely if that had been the case. Not that he was going to ask but he didn’t like the idea of her being a lonely child any more than being injured.

Mikki broke into his thoughts. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Were you an only child?’

Maybe they couldn’t stay away from this personal stuff after all. He’d brought this on himself, though, hadn’t he?

‘Yes and no,’ Tama answered reluctantly. He pushed the top of his water bottle shut with a snap, shoved it back into the pack and turned to climb back into the tunnel. Then he caught Mikki watching him and sighed inwardly.

‘Yeah, OK. It’s just not something I tell people.’ Ever. So why did it feel like the time to break that ironclad rule? Because Mikki had experienced something that might give her insight into how it had really been? There was something there. A connection. A kind of force that pulled the words from his mouth. ‘Yes, I was an only child. I didn’t have a dad that I knew about. I got sent to live with my uncle and aunt and eleven cousins.’